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THE WORKS
OF
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
RIVERSIDE EDITION.
VOLUME II.








AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
BY
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON.
Cambribge: )he Hiesibe Pres8s.
1876.




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
COPYRIGHT, 1876,
BY IlURD AND HOUGIITON.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.




CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION.
PERSONAL SKETCHES OF DE QUINCEY..7
CHAPTER I.
TIE AFFLICTION OF CHILDIOOD....         27
DREAM ECHOES OF THESE INFANT EXPERIENCES. 51
DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER... 53
CHAPTER II.
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE... 58
CHAPTER III.
INFANT LITERATURE...... 137
CHAPTER IV.
THE FEMALE INFIDEL.......              153
CHAPTER V.
I AM INTRODUCED TO TIIE WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 170
CHAPTER VI.
I ENTER THE WORLD....         184




v~1    ~     CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V1I.
PAGE
THE NATION OF LONDON...                   204
CHAPTER VIII.
DUBLIN...........  244
CHAPTER IX.
FIRST REBELLION IN IELAD....... 262
CHAPTER X.
FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND, AND SECOND REBELLION. 288
CHAPTER XI.
TRAVELLING....309
CHAPTER XII.
MY BROTHER......332
CHAPTER XIII.
PREMATURE MANHOOD                          366
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ORPHAN HEIRESS... 385
CHAPTER XV.
OXFORD.....499




INTRODUCTION.
[No formal life of De Quincey has ever
been published, but he has himself supplied
his readers with very full sketches of certain
periods of his life. The Confessions of an
English Opium Eater, the present volume
of Autobiographic Sketches, and the one to
follow, on Literary Reminiscences, cover the
greater part of De Quincey's life up to the
time of his maturity, and while there are
gaps not filled either by himself or by
others, the materials for a fair comprehension of his working life are abundant.
There are besides reminiscences by his contemporaries which are interesting for the
glimpses they give us of his personal appearance and characteristics. The first of
these which we give is from the Book
Hunter, by John Hill Burton, in which De
Quincey is portrayed under the name of
Papaverius: -




2             INTRODUCTION.
"In what mood or shape shall he be
brought forward? Shall it be as first we
met at the table of Lucullus, whereto he.
was seduced by the false pretence that he
would there meet with one who entertained
novel and anarchical opinions respecting the
Golden Ass of Apuleius? No one speaks of
waiting dinner for him. He will come and
depart at his own sweet will, neither burdened with punctualities nor burdening
others by exacting them. The festivities
of the afternoon are far on, when a commotion is heard in the hall, as if some dog or
other stray animal had forced its way in.
The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of
the arrival; he opens the door and fetches
in the little stranger. What can it be? A
street-boy of some sort? His costume, in
fact, is a boy's duffle great-coat, very
threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned
tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a party-colored belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list shoes, covered
with snow, for it is a stormy winter night;
and the trousers, - some one suggests that
they are inner linen garments blackened
with writing ink, but that Papaverius never




INTRODUCTION.           3
would have been at the trouble so to disguise them. What can be the theory of
such a costume? The simplest thing in the
world-it consisted of the fragments of
apparel nearest at hand.   Had   chance
thrown to him a court single-breasted coat,
with a bishop's apron, a kilt, and top-boots,
in these he would have made his entry.
"The first impression that a boy has
appeared vanishes instantly. Though in
one of the sweetest and most genial of his
essays he shows how every man retains so
much in him of the child he originally was
- and he himself retained a great deal of
that primitive simplicity —it was buried
within the depths of his heart - not visible
externally. On the contrary, on one occasion when he corrected an erroneous reference to an event as being a century old, by
saying that he recollected its occurrence,
one felt almost a surprise at the necessary
limitation in his age, so old did he appear
with his arched brow loaded with thought,
and the countless little wrinkles which engrained his skin, gathering thickly round
the curiously expressive and subtle lips.
These lips are speedily opened by some




4              INTRODUCTION.
casual remark, and presently the flood of
talk passes forth from them, free, clear, and
continuous-never rising into declamation
- never losing a certain mellow earnestness, and all consisting of sentences as exquisitely joined together, as if they were
destined to challenge the criticism of the
remotest posterity.  Still the hours stride
over each other, and still flows on the
stream of gentle rhetoric, as if it were labitur et labetur in orune volubilis ceoum. It is
now far into the night, and slight hints and
suggestions are propagated about separation
and home-going.    The topic starts new
ideas on the progress of civilization, the
effect of habit on men in all ages, and the
power of the domestic affections. Descending from generals to the specials, he could
testify to the inconvenience of late hours;
for was it not the other night that, coming
to what was, or what he believed to be, his
own door, he knocked and knocked, but
the old woman within either could n't or
would n't hear him, so he scrambled over a
wall, and having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme unpleasantness of such a couch?....




INTRODUCTION.          5
"Shall I try another sketch of him,
when, travel-stained and foot-sore, he
glided in on us one night like a shadow,
the child by the fire gazing on him with
round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting
that he should get a penny and go home, -
a proposal which he subjected to some philosophical criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How far he had wandered
since he had last refreshed himself, or even
whether he had eaten food that day, were
matters on which there was no getting articulate utterance from him.  How that
wearied, worn little body was to be refreshed was a difficult problem: soft food
disagreed with him; the hard he could not
eat. Suggestions pointed at length to the
solution of that vegetable unguent to which
he had given a sort of lustre, and it might
be supposed that there were some fifty cases
of acute toothache to be treated in the
house that night.   How  many drops?
Drops! nonsense!  If the wineglasses of
the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal size, there was no risk, - and
so the weary is at rest for a time.
" At early morn, a triumphant cry of' Eu



6             INTRODUCTION.
reka!' calls me to his place of rest. With
his unfailing instinct he has got at the books,
and lugged a considerable heap of them
around him.   That one which specially
claims his attention - my best-bound quarto
- is spread upon a piece of bedroom-furniture readily at hand, and of sufficient
height to let him pore over it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with only one article
of attire to separate him from the condition
in which Archimedes, according to the popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry.
He had discovered a very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories
of a very important period.  As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face
from the book with an almost painful expression of grave eagerness, it occurred to me
that I had seen something like the scene in
Dutch paintings of the Temptation of St.
Anthony.
" Suppose the scene changed to a pleasant country-house, where the enlivening
talk has made a guest forget'The lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,'
that lie between him and his place of rest.




[NTRODUCTION.          7
He must be instructed in his course, but the
instruction reveals more difficulties than it
removes, and there is much doubt and discussion, which Papaverius at once clears up
as effectually as he had ever dispersed a
cloud of logical sophisms; and this time the
feat is performed by a stroke of the thoroughly practical, which looks like inspiration -— he will accompany the forlorn traveller, and lead him through the difficulties
of the way - for have not midnight wanderings and musings made him familiar with
all its intricacies? Roofed by a huge wideawake, which makes his tiny figure look like
the stalk of some great fungus, with a lantern of more than common dimensions in
his hand, away he goes down the wooded
path, up the steep bank, along the brawling
stream, and across the waterfall —and ever
as he goes there comes from him a continued
stream of talk concerning the philosophy of
Immanuel Kant, and other kindred matters..
" Those who knew him a little might call
him a loose man in money matters; those
who knew him closer laughed at the idea of
coupling any notion of pecuniary or other




8              INTRODUCTION.
like responsibility with his nature. You
might as well attack the character of the
nightingale, which may have nipped up
your five-pound note and torn it to shreds
to serve as nest-building material. Only
immediate craving necessities could ever extract from him an acknowledgment of the
common vulgar agencies by which men subsist in civilized society: and only while the
necessity lasted did the acknowledgment
exist. Take just one example, which will
render this clearer than any generalities.
He arrives very late at a friend's door, and
on gaining admission - a process in which
he often endured impediments, -he represents, with his usual silver voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity of his
being then and there invested with a sum of
money in the current coin of the realm, -
the amount limited, from the nature of his
necessities, which he very freely states, to
seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering,
or fancying he discovers, that his eloquence
is likely to prove unproductive, he is fortunately reminded, that, should there be any
difficulty in connection with security for the
repayment of the loan, he is at that moment




INTRODUCTION.          9
in possession of a document which he is prepared to deposit with the lender, - a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to remove
any feeling of anxiety which the most prudent person could experience in the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets,
which develops miscellaneous and varied,
but as yet by no means valuable, possessions, he at last comes to the object of his
search, a crumpled bit of paper, and spread
it out —a fifty-pound bank note!.... All
sums of money were measured by him
through the common standard of immediate
use; and, with more solemn pomp of diction
than he applied to the bank-note, might he
inform you, that, with the gentleman opposite, to whom he had hitherto been entirely a
stranger, but who happened to be the nearest to him at the time when the exigency
occurred to him, he had just succeeded in
negotiating a loan of twopence....
4 The learned world may fairly be divided
into those who return the books borrowed
by them, and those who do not. Papaverius
belonged decidedly to the latter order. A
friend addicted to the marvellous boasts that,
under the pressure of a call by a public li



10            INTRODUCTION.
brary to replace a mutilated book with a
new copy which would have cost thirty dollars, he recovered a volume from Papaverius, through the agency of a person especially bribed, and authorized to take any
necessary measures, insolence and violence
excepted —but the power of extraction
that must have been employed in such a
process excites very painful reflections.
Some legend, too, there is of a book creditor
having forced his way into the Cacus den,
and there seen a sort of ruffle work inner
wall of volumes, with their edges outward,
while others, bound and unbound, the plebeian sheepskin and the aristocratic Russian,
were squeezed into certain tubs,1 drawn from
the washing establishment of a confiding
landlady..... It is said he once gave in' copy'written on the edges of a tall octavo,
Somnium Scipionis; and as he did not obliterate the original matter, the printer was
rather puzzled, and made a funny jumble
between the letterpress Latin and the manuscript English. All these things were the
types of an intellectual vitality which de1 The reader familiar with De Quincey's writings will be
reminded of the " Sortilege in behalf of the Glasgow Athenneum." ED.




INTRODUCTION.          11
spised and thrust aside all that was gross or
material in that wherewith it came in contact. Surely never did the austerities of
monk or anchorite so entirely cast all these
away as his peculiar nature removed them
from him. It may be questioned if he ever
knew what it was' to eat a good dinner,' or
could even comprehend the nature. of such
a felicity. Yet in all the sensuous nerves
which connect as it were the body with the
ideal, he was painfully susceptible. Hence
a false quantity or a wrong note in music
was agony to him."
A reminiscence harmonizing with this is
from Mrs. Gordon's life of her father, Professor Wilson, the Christopher North of
Blackwood, with whom De Quincey was
especially intimate.
"I remember his coming to Gloucester
Place one stormy night. He remained hour
after hour, in vain expectation that the waters would assuage and the hurly burly cease.
There was nothing for it but that our visitor
should remain all night. The Professor ordered a room to be prepared for him, and
they found each other such good company
that this accidental detention was prolonged,




12            INTRODUCTION.
without further difficulty, for the greater
part of a year. During this visit some of
his eccentricities did not escape observation.
For example, he rarely appeared at the family meals, preferring to dine in his own
room at his own hour, not unfrequently
turning night into day. His tastes were
very simple, though a little troublesome, at
least to the servant who prepared his repast.
Coffee, boiled rice and milk, and a piece of
mutton from the loin, were the materials
that invariably formed his diet. The cook,
who had an audience with him daily, received her instructions in silent awe, quite
overpowered by his manner; for had he
been addressing a duchess, he could scarcely
have spoken with more deference. He would
couch his request in such terms as these —
" Owing to dyspepsia afflicting my system,
and the possibility of any additional disarrangement of the stomach taking place, consequences incalculably distressing would
arise, so much so, indeed, as to increase nervous irritation, and prevent me from attending to matters of overwhelming importance,
if you do not remember to cut the mutton
in a diagonal rather than in a longitudinal




INTRODUCTION.         13
form.'  The cook, a Scotchwoman, had
great reverence for Mr. De Quincey, as a
man of genius; but, after one of these interviews, her patience was pretty well exhausted, and she would say,' Weel, I never
heard the like o' that in a' my days; the
bodie has an awfu' sicht o' words. If it had
been my ain maister that was wanting his
dinner, he would ha' ordered a hale tablefu'
wi' little mair than a waff o' his haun, and
and here's a' this claver aboot a bit mutton
nae bigger than a prin. Mr. De Quincey
would mak' a gran' preacher, though I'm
thinking a hautle o' the folk wouldna ken
what he was driving at.' Betty's observations were made with considerable self-satisfaction, as she considered her insight of Mr.
De Quincey's character by no means slight,
and many was the quaint remark she made,
sometimes hitting upon a truth that entitled
her to that shrewd sort of discrimination by
no means uncommon in the humble ranks of
Scottish life. But these little meals were not
the only indulgences that, when not properly attended to, brought trouble to Mr. De
Quincey. Regularity in doses of opium was
even of greater consequence. An ounce of




14            INTRODUCTION.
laudanum per diem prostrated animal life in
the early part of the day. It was no unfrequent sight to find him in his room lying
upon the rug in front of the fire, his head
resting upon a book, with his arms crossed
over his breast, plunged in profound slumber. For several hours he would lie in this
state, until the effects of the torpor had
passed away. The time when he was most
brilliant was generally toward the early
morning hours; and then, more than once, in
order to show him off, my father arranged his
supper parties so that, sitting till three or four
in the morning, he brought Mr. De Quincey
to that point at which in charm and power
of conversation he was so truly wonderful."
The present volume contains a chapter on
Oxford, but though many of the facts contained in it are drawn from De Quincey's
own experience, it bears but faint relation
to the rest of the autobiography. A writer
in the " Quarterly Review," for July, 1861,
drawing his information mainly from Dr.
Cotton, the Provost of Worcester College,
supplies some interesting memoranda: -'; His Oxford life is an unwritten chapter
of the autobiography. It is curious, indeed,




INTRODUCTION.         15
that it should be so; his career at Oxford
having been, according to the testimony of
contemporaries, highly characteristic of the
man, and one which nobody who took the
public into his confidence so freely as De
Quincey did, need have shrunk from describing. He was admitted a member of
Worcester College, and matriculated on the
17th of December, 1803; and his name remained upon the college books for seven
years, being removed from them on the
15th December, 1810. During the period
of his residence he was generally known as
a quiet and studious man. He did not frequent wine parties, though he did not abstain from wine; and he devoted himself
principally to the society of a German
named Schwartzburg, who is said to have
taught him Hebrew. He was remarkable,
even in those days, for his rare conversational powers, and for his extraordinary
stock of information upon every subject that
was started. There were men, it would appear, among his contemporaries, who were
capable of appreciating him; and they all
agreed that De Quincey was a man of singular genius as well as the most varied




16            INTRODUCTION.
talents. His knowledge of Latin and Greek
was not confined to those few standard authors with which even good scholars are, or
were, accustomed to content themselves.
He was master of the ancient literature; of
all of it, at least, which belongs to what is
called pure literature. It appears that he
brought this knowledge up to Oxford with
him; and that his university studies were
directed almost wholly to the ancient philosophy, varied by occasional excursions into
German literature and metaphysics, which
he loved to compare with those of Greece
and Rome. His knowledge of all these subjects is said to have been really sound; and
there can be no doubt that he was capable
of reproducing it in the most brilliant and
imposing forms. It was predicted, accordingly, by all who knew him, that he would
pass a memorable examination; and so, indeed, he did, though the issue was a somewhat different one from what his admirers
had anticipated. The class list had lately
been instituted, and there seems no reason
to doubt that, had De Quincey's mind been
rather more regularly trained, he would
have taken a first-class as easily as other




INTRODUCTION.          17
men take a common degree. But his reading had never been conducted upon that
system, which the Oxford examinations, essentially and very properly intended for
men of average abilities, render almost incumbent upon every candidate for the highest honors. De Quincey seems to have felt
that he was deficient in that perfect mastery of the minuter details of logic, ethics,
and rhetoric, which the practice of the
schools demanded. With the leading principle of the Aristotelian system he was evidently quite intimate. But he apparently
distrusted his own fitness to undergo a
searching oral examination in these subjects, for which a minute acquaintance with
scientific terminology, and with the finest
distinctions they involve, is thought to be
essential.  The event was unfortunate,
though so agreeable to De Quincey's character that it might have been foreseen by
his associates, as by one of them it really
was. The important moment arrived, and
De Quincey went through the first day's
examination, which was conducted upon
paper, and at that time consisted almost exclusively of scholarship, history, and what2




18            INTRODUCTION.
ever might be comprehended under the
title, of classical literature. On the evening of that day, Mr. Goodenough of Christ
Church, who was one of the examiners,
went down to a gentleman, then resident at
Worcester College, and well acquainted
with De Quincey, and said to him,' You
have sent us to-day the cleverest man I
ever met with; if his viva voce examination
to-morrow correspond with what he has done
in writing, he will carry everything before
him.' To this his friend made answer that
he feared De Quincey's viva voce would be
comparatively imperfect, even if he presented himself for examination, which he
rather doubted. The event justified his answer. That night De Quincey packed up
his things and walked away from Oxford,
never, as far as we can ascertain, to return
to it. Whether this distrust of himself was
well founded, or whether it arose from the
depression, by which his indulgence in
opium was invariably followed, we cannot
tell. So early even as his Oxford days, De
Quincey, we are told, was incapable of
steady application without large doses of
opium. He had taken a large dose on the




INTRODUCTION.          19
morning of his paper work, and the reaction that followed in the evening would, of
course, aggravate his apprehensions of the
morrow. Be that as it may, he fairly took
to his heels, and so lost the chance, which,
with every drawback, must have been an
extremely good one, of figuring in the same
class list with Sir Robert Peel, who passed
his examination in Michaelmas, 1808, which
was, no doubt, the era of De Quincey's singular catastrophe."
The volume "' Literary Reminiscences," to
succeed this, will carry forward the record
of De Quincey's life in his own words, but
only into the period of his literary work in
London.   The Reminiscences themselves
were written for Tait's Edinburgh Magazine,
after De Quincey had removed to Edinburgh, in 1832. The rest of his life was
passed in that neighborhood, the latter part
of it almost in seclusion. An article on
De Quincey appeared in the "Atlantic
Monthly" for September, 1863.    It was
written by Henry Mills Alden, but certain
biographical and other materials were supplied by Mr. J. T. Fields, who first collected
De Quincey's writings for the American




20            INTRODUCTION.
Edition, and had personal acquaintances
and correspondence with him and his famnily. From this article we make a final extract, containing the only account in print,
so far as we know, of De Quincey's last
hours.
" We are enabled to take almost the position of those who were permitted really to
watch at his bedside, through a slight unpublished sketch, from  the hand of his
daughter, in a letter to an American friend.
I tremble almost to use materials that personally are so sacred; but sympathy, and
the tender interest which is awakened in
our hearts by such a life, are also sacred,
and in privilege stand nearest to grief.
During the few last days of his life De
Quincey wandered much, mixing up'real
and imaginary, or apparently imaginary
things.' He complained, one night, that
his feet were hot and tired. His daughter
arranged the blankets around them, saying,'Is that better, papa?' when he answered,' Yes, my love, I think it is; you know, my
dear girl, these are the feet that Christ
washed.'
Everything seemed to connect itself in




INTRODUCTION.          21
his mind with little children. He aroused
one day, and said suddenly, -' You must
know, my dear, the Edinburgh cabmen are
the most brutal set of fellows under the sun.
I must tell you that I and the little children
were all invited to supper with Jesus Christ.
So, as you see, it was a great honor. I
thought I must buy new dresses for the little ones; and -would you believe it possible?- when I went out with the children,
these wretches laughed at their new
dresses.'
"' Of my brothers he often spoke, both
those that are dead and those that are
alive, as if they were his own brothers.
One night he said, when I entered the
room, -
"' IIs that you, Horace?"' " No papa."
"' Oh, I see!    I thought you were
Horace; for he was talking to me just now,
and I suppose has just left the room."'
" Speaking of his father, one day, suddenly and without introduction, he exclaimed, -' There is one thing I deeply
regret, that I did not know my dear father




22              INTRODUCTION.
better; for I am sure a better, kinder, or
juster man could never have existed.'
"When death seemed approaching, the
physician recommended that a telegram
should be sent to the eldest daughter,* who
resided in Ireland, but he forbade any mention of this fact to the patient. De Quincey
seemed to have a prophetic feeling that she
was on her way to him, saying,'Has M.
got to that town yet, that we stopped at
when we went to       Ireland?    How   many
hours will it be before she can be here?
Let me see, - there are eight hours before
I can see her, and three added to that!'
His daughter came sooner than the family
expected; but the time tallied very nearly
with  the computation     he had made.     On
the morning his daughter arrived occurred
the first intimation his family had seen that
the hand of death was laid upon him. He
had passed a quiet, but rather sleepless
night, appearing'much the same, yet more
* De Quincey, at his death, had two sons and three daughters.
The eldest of the daughters became the wife of Robert Craig of Ireland. It was this one, and the youngest, who were present during
his last hours. The second daughter, Florence, was with her husband
(a colonel of the British army) in India. The two sons were both
absent; one in India, a captain in the army; the other, a physician,
in B-azil.




INTRODUCTION.         23
than ordinarily loving.' After greeting his
child, he said,' And how does mamma's little girl like her leaving her?'  Oh, they
were very glad for me to come to grandpapa, and they sent you this kiss, - which
they did of their own accord.' He seemed
much pleased.  It was evident that M.
presented herself to him as the mother of
children, the constant theme of his wanderings. Once when his daughter quitted the
room, he said,'They are all leaving me but
my dear little children.''I heard him
caH, one day, distinctly, " Florence! Florence! Florence! " - again,' My dear, dear
mother!" -and to the last he called us
"I my love," and it sounded like no other
sound ever uttered. I never heard such
pathos as there was in it, and in every tone
of his voice. It gave me an idea of a love
that passeth all understanding.'
" During the next night he was thought
dying,'but he lingered on and on till half
past nine the next morning. He told me
something about " to-morrow morning," and
something about sunshine; but the thought
that he was talking about what he would
never see drove the exact idea out of my




24           INTRODUCTION.
head, though I am sure it was morning in
another world he was talking of.'
"' There was an extraordinary appearance of youth about him, both for some
time before and after death. He looked
more like a boy of fourteen, and very beautiful. We did not like to let in the morning light, and the candle was burning at
nine o'clock, when the post brought the following letter, which my sister and myself
glanced over by the candle-light, just as we
were listening to his decreasing breath. At
the moment it did not strike me with the
astonishment, at such an extraordinary coincidence, that when we came to read it
afterwards did.
Bc' " _ Brighton, Dec. 7, 1859.
"'" MY DEAR DE QUINCEY, - Before I
quit this world, I most ardently desire to
see your handwriting. In early life, that is,
more than sixty years ago, we were schoolfellows together and mutually attached;
nay, I remember a boyish paper (c The Observer ") in which we were engaged. Yours
has been a brilliant literary career, mine far
from brilliant, but I hope not unuseful as a




INTRODUCTION.         25
theological student. It seems a pity we
should not once more recognize one another
before quitting the stage. I have often
read your works, and never without remembering the promise of your talents at Winkfield. My life has been almost a domestic
tragedy. I have four children in lunatic
asylums. Thank God, it is now drawing to
a close; but it would cheer the evening of
my days to receive a line from you, for I
am, with much sincerity,' c " Your old and attached friend,
c" " E. H. G."'
"' I do not remember the name of G.,
but the name of Edward constantly recurred in his wanderings.
"' Half an hour after the reading of that
letter we heard those last pathetic sighs, so
terrible from their very softness, and saw
the poor, worn-out garment laid aside.'
Just before he died, he looked around the
room, and said very tenderly to the nurse,
the physician, and his daughters, who were
present,'Thank you, - thank you all!'
Sensible thus to the very last of kindness,
he breathed out his life in simple thanks,




26           INTRODUCTION.
swayed even in death by the spirit of profound courtesy that had ruled his life."
De Quincey died at his home in Edinburgh, December 8, 1859.]




AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
CHAPTER I.
THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.1
ABOUT the close of my sixth year, suddenly the first
chapter of my life came to a violent termination; that
chapter which, even within the gates of recovered paradise, might merit a remembrance. "Life is finished! 
was the secret misgiving of my heart; for the heart of
infancy is as apprehensive as that of maturest wisdom in
relation to any capital wound inflicted on the happiness.
"Life is finished! Finished it is!" was the hidden
meaning that, half unconsciously to myself, lurked within my sighs; and, as bells heard from a distance on a
summer evening seem charged at times with an ar:culate
form of words, some monitory message, that rolls round
unceasingly, even so for me some noiseless and subterraneous voice seemed to chant continually a secret word,
made audible only to my own heart - that " now is the
blossoming of life withered forever." Not that such
wvords formed themselves vocally within my ear, or issued
audibly from my lips; but such a whisper stole silently to
my heart. Yet in what sense could that be true? For
an infant not more than six years old, was it possible thai




28              AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the promises of life had been really blighted, or its
golden pleasures exhausted? Had I seen Rome? Had
I read Milton? Had I heard Mozart? No. St. Peter's,
the " Paradise Lost," the divine melodies of" Don Giovan.
ni," all alike were as yet unrevealed to me, and not more
through the accidents of my position than through the
necessity of my yet imperfect sensibilities. Raptures there
might be in arrear; but raptures are modes of troubled
pleasure. The peace, the rest, the central security which
belong to love that is past all understanding, - these could
return no more. Such a love, so unfathomable, - such a
peace, so unvexed by storms, or the fear of storms, - had
brooded over those four latter years of my infancy, which
brought me into special relations to my elder sister; she
being at this period three years older than myself. The
circumstances which attended the sudden dissolution of this
most tender connection I will here rehearse. And, that I
may do so more intelligibly, I will first describe that serene
and sequestered position which we occupied in life.*
* As occasions arise in these Sketches, when, merely for the purposes of intelligibility, it becomes requisite to call into notice such
personal distinctions in my family as otherwise might be unimportant, I here record the entire list of my brothers and sisters, according to their order of succession; and Miltonically I include myself; having surely as much logical right to count myself in the series
of my own brothers as Milton could have to pronounce Adam the
goodliest of his own sons. First and last, we counted as eight children, viz., four brothers and four sisters, though never counting more
than six living at once, viz., 1. William, older than myself by more
than five years; 2 Elizabeth; 3. Jane, who died in her fourth year;
4. Mlary; 5. myself, certainly not the goodliest man of men since
born my brothers; 6. Richard, known to us all by the household
name of Pink, who in his after years tilted up and down what might
then be called his Britannic majesty's oceans (viz., the Atlantic and
Pacific) in the quality of midshipman, until Waterloo in one day put
an extinguisher on that whole generation of midshipmen, by extin



THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.          29
Any expression of personal vanity, intruding upon impassioned records, is fatal to their effect- as being incompatible with that absorption of spirit and that selfoblivion in which only deep passion originates or can find
a genial home. It would, therefore, to myself be exceedingly painful that even a shadow, or so much as a seeming
expression of that tendency, should creep into these reminiscences. And yet, on the other hand, it is so impossible,
without laying an injurious restraint upon the natural
movement of such a narrative, to prevent oblique gleams
reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or
aristocratic elegance as surrounded my childhood, that on
all accounts I think it better to tell him, from the first,
with the simplicity of truth, in what order of society my
family moved at the time from which this preliminary narrative is dated. Otherwise it might happen that, merely
by reporting faithfully the facts of this early experience, I
could hardly prevent the reader from receiving an impression as of some higher rank than did really belong to my
family. And this impression might seem to have been
designedly insinuated by myself.
My father was a merchant; not in the sense of Scotland,
where it means a retail dealer, one, for instance, who sells
groceries in a cellar, but in the English sense, a sense
rigorously exclusive; that is, he was a man engaged in
foreign commerce, and no other; therefore, in wholesale
commerce, and no other —which last limitation of the
idea is important, because it brings him within the benefit
of Cicero's condescending distinction* as one who ought
guishing all further call for their services; 7. a second Jane; 8. Henry,
a posthumous child, who belonged to Brazennose College, Oxford,
and died about his twenty-sixth year.
* Cicero, in a well-known passage of his "Ethics," speaks of trade
as irredeemably base, if petty, but as not so absolutely felonious it
wholesale.




30            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
to be despised certainly, but not too intensely to be de.
spised even by a Roman senator. He - this imperfectly
despicable man - died at an early age, and very soon after
the incidents recorded in this chapter, leaving to his family,
then consisting of a wife and six children, an unburdened
estate producing exactly sixteen hundred pounds a year.
Naturally, therefore, at the date of my narrative, - whilst
he was still living, - he had an income very much
larger, from the addition of current commercial profits.
Now, to any man who is acquainted with commercial life
as it exists in England, it will readily occur that in an
opulent English family of that class - opulent, though not
emphatically rich in a mercantile estimate - the domestic
economy is pretty sure to move upon a scale of liberality
altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders in
foreign nations. The establishment of servants, for instance, in such houses, measured even numerically against
those establishments in other nations, would somewhat surprise the foreign appraiser, simply as interpreting the relative station in society occupied by the English merchant.
But this same establishment, when measured by the quality
and amount of the provision made for its comfort and even
elegant accommodation, would fill him with twofold astonishment, as interpreting equally the social valuation of the
English merchant, and also the social valuation of the
English servant; for, in the truest sense, England is the
paradise of household servants. Liberal housekeeping, in
fact, as extending itself to the meanest servants, and the
disdain of petty parsimonies, are peculiar to England. And
in this respect the families of English merchants, as a
class, far outrun the scale of expenditure prevalent, not
only amongst the corresponding bodies of continental nations, but even amongst the poorer sections of our own
nobility - though confessedly the most splendid in Eu




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.        31
rope; a fact which, since the period of my infancy, I have
had many personal opportunities for verifying both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly, affect
ing the domestic economy of English merchants, there
arises a disturbance upon the usual scale for measuring
the relations of rank.  The equation, so to speak, between rank and the ordinary expressions of rank, which
usually runs parallel to the graduations of expenditure, is
here interrupted and confounded, so that one rank would
be collected from the name of the occupation, and another
rank, much higher, from the splendor of the domestic
menage. I warn the reader, therefore, (or, rather, my explanation has already warned him,) that he is not to infer,
from any casual indications of luxury or elegance, a corresponding elevation of rank.
We, the children of the house, stood, in fact, upon the
very happiest tier in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer of Agur - " Give me neither poverty nor riches "- was realized for us. That blessing we
had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough we
were to see models of good manners, of self-respect, and
of simple dignity; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amply furnished with all the nobler benefits of wealth, with extra means of health, of intellectual
culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand, we
knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by
the consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted into
restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspiring,
we had no motives for shame, we had none for pride.
Grateful also to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all
things else, we were trained to a Spartan simplicity of
diet -that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously
than the servants. And if (after the model of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Provi<




32            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
dence for all the separate blessings of my early situation,
these four I would single out as worthy of special commemo,
ration- that I lived in a rus;L solitude, that this solitude
was in England; that my infant feelings were moulded
by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, pugilistic
brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving
members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church.
The earliest incidents in my life, which left stings in my
memory so as to be remembered at this day, were two,
and both before I could have completeted my second year;
namely, 1st, a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur
about a favorite nurse, which is interesting to myself for
this reason - that it demonstrates my dreaming tendencies
to have been constitutional, and not dependent upon laudanum;* and, 2dly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of pathos with the reappearance, very early
in the spring, of some crocuses. This I mention as inexplicable: for such annual resurrections of plants and
flowers affect us only as memorials, or suggestions of some
higher change, and therefore in connection with the idea
of death; yet of death I could, at that time, have had no
experience whatever.
This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest
sisters —eldest of three then living, and also elder than
myself-were summoned to an early death. The first
* It is true that in those days paregoric elixir was occasionally
given to children in colds; and in this medicine there is a small proportion of laudanum. But no medicine was ever administered to any
member of our nursery except under medical sanction; and this,
assuredly, would not have been obtained to the exhibition of laudanum in a case such as mine. For I was then not more that twen
ty-one months old; at which age the action of opium is capricious
and therefore perilous.




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.         33
who died was Jane, about two years older than myself.
She was three and a half, I one and a half, more or less
by some trifle that I do not recollect. But death was then
scarcely intelligible to me, and I could not so properly be
said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity.  There was
another death in the house about the same time, namely,
of a maternal grandmother; but, as she had come to us
for the express purpose of dying in her daughter's society,
and from illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery
circle knew her but little, and were certainly more affected
by the death (which I witnessed) of a beautiful bird, viz.,
a kingfisher, which had been injured by an accident. With
my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, as I have said,
less sorrowful than perplexing) there was, however, connected an incident which made a most fearful impression
upon myself, deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness
and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my
years. If there was one thing in this world from which,
more than from any other, nature had forced me to revolt,
it was brutality and violence. Now, a whisper arose in the
family that a female servant, who by accident was drawn
off from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for a
day or two, had on one occasion treated her harshly, if not
brutally; and as this ill treatment happened within three or
four days of her death, so that the occasion of it must have
been some fretfulness in the poor child caused by her sufferings, naturally there was a sense of awe and indignation
diffused through the family.  I believe the story never
reached my mother, and possibly it was exaggerated; but
upon me the effect was terrific. I did not often see the
person charged with this cruelty; but, when I did, my eyes
sought the ground; nor could I have borne to look her in
the face; not, however, in any spirit that could be called
anger. The feeling which fell upon me was a shuddering
3




34            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCIIES.
horror, as upon a first glimpse of the truth that I was in a
world of evil and strife. Though born in a large town,
(the town of Manchester, even then amongst the largest
of the island,) I had passed the whole of my childhood,
except for the few earliest weeks, in a rural seclusion.
With three innocent little sisters for playmates, sleeping
always amongst them, and shut up forever in a silent
garden from all knowledge of poverty, or oppression, or
outrage, I had not suspected until this moment the true
complexion of the world in which myself and my sisters
were living. Henceforward the character of my thoughts
changed greatly; for so representative are some acts, that
one single case of the class is sufficient to throw open
before you the whole theatre of possibilities in that direction. I never heard that the woman accused of this cruelty
took it at all to heart, even after the event which so immediately succeeded had reflected upon it a more painful
emphasis.  But for myself, that incident had a lasting
revolutionary power in coloring my estimate of life.
So passed away from earth one of those three sisters
that made up my nursery playmates; and so did my
acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence with
mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more of mortality
than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; but
perhaps she would come back. Happy interval of heavenborn ignorance! Gracious immunity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength! I was sad for Jane's
absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would
come again. Summer and winter came again - crocuses
and roses; why not little Jane?
Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my
infant heart. Not so the second. For thou, dear, noble
Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as thy
sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.                35
of light or a gleaming aureola * in token of thy premature
intellectual grandeur,-  thou whose head, for its superb
developments, was the astonishment of science,t - thou'next, but after an interval of happy years, thou also wert
summoned away from our nursery; and the night, which
for me gathered upon that event, ran after my steps far
into life; and perhaps at this day I resemble little for good
or for ill that which else I should have been. Pillar of fire
that didst go before me to guide and to quicken, - pillar
of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to
God, that didst too truly reveal to my dawning fears the
* " Aureola." - The aureola is the name given in the " Legends of
the Christian Saints " to that golden diadem or circlet of supernatural light (that glory, as it is commonly called in English) which,
amongst the great masters of painting in Italy, surrounded the heads
of Christ and of distinguished saints.
t " The astonishment of science." -Her medical attendants were
Dr. Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a cor.
respondent of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c., and Mr. Charles White,
the most distinguished surgeon at that time in the north of England.
It was he who pronounced her head to be the finest in its development
of any that he had ever seen - an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated in after years, and with enthusiasm. That he had
some acquaintance with the subject may be presumed from this, that,
at so early a stage of such inquiries, he had published a work on
human craniology, supported by measurement of heads selected
from all varieties of the human species. Meantime, as it would grieve
me that any trait of what might seem vanity should creep into this
record, I will admit that my sister died of hydrocephalus; and it has
been often supposed that the premature expansion of the intellect
in cases of that class is altogether morbid- forced on, in fact, by
the mere stimulation of the disease. I would, however, suggest, as
a possibility, the very opposite order of relation between the disease
and the intellectual manifestations. Not the disease may always
have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect; but, inversely,
this growth of the intellect coming on spontaneously, ind outrunning the capacities ol the physical structure, may have caused the
disease




36            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
secret shadow of death,- by what mysterious gravitation was
it that my heart had been drawn to thine? Could a child
six years old, place any special value upon intellectual forwardness?  Serene and capacious as my sister's mind
appeared to me upon after review, was that a charm for
stealing away the heart of an infant? 0, no! I think of
it now with interest, because it lends, in a stranger's ear,
some justification to the excess of my fondness. But then
it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was perceived only
through its effects. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister,
not the less I must have loved thee, having that capacious
heart - overflowing, even as mine overflowed, with tenderness; stung, even as mine was stung, by the necessity of
loving and being loved. This it was which crowned thee
with beauty and power.
" Love, the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense."
That lamp of paradise was, for myself, kindled by
reflection from the living light which burned so steadfastly in thee; and never but to thee, never again since
thy departure, had I power or temptation, courage or desire, to utter the feelings which possessed me. For I was
the shyest of children; and, at all stages of life, a natural
sense of personal dignity held me back from exposing the
least ray of feelings which I was not encouraged wholly to
reveal.
It is needless to pursue, circumstantially, the course of
that sickness which carried off my leader and companion.
She (according to my recollection at this moment) was just
as near to nine years as I to six. And perhaps this natural
precedency in authority of years and judgment, united tc
the tender humility with which she declined to assert it, had
been amongst the fascinations of her presence. It was upon




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.         37
a Sunday evening, if such conjectures can be trusted, that
the spark of fatal fire fell upon that train of predispositions
to a brain complaint which had hitherto slumbered within
her. She had been permitted to drink tea at the house
of a laboring man, the father of a favorite female servant.
The sun had set when she returned, in the company of this
servant, through meadows reeking with exhalations after a
fervent day. From that time she sickened. In such circumstances, a child, as young as myself, feels no anxieties.
Looking upon medical men as people privileged, and naturally commissioned, to make war upon pain and sickness, 1
never had a misgiving about the result. I grieved, indeed,
that my sister should lie in bed; I grieved still more to
hear her moan. But all this appeared to me no more than
as a night of trouble, on which the dawn would soon arise.
O moment of darkness and delirium, when the elder
nurse awakened me from that delusion, and launched God's
thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister
MUST die! Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that
it "cannot be remembered."*  Itself, as a rememberable
thing, is swallowed up in its own chaos. Blank anarchy
and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I
was, as I reeled under the revelation. I wisn not to recall
the circumstances of that time, when my agony was at
its height, and hers, in another sense, was approaching.
Enough it is to say that all was soon over; and the morning of that day had at last arrived which looked down upon
her innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is
no awaking, and upon me sorrowing the sorrow for which
there is no consolation.
Or, the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet
* "I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony which cannot be remembered."
Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge's Remorse.




?>8           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scrutiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing her once more.
Not for the world would I have made this known, nor have
suffered a witness to accompany me. I had never heard
of feelings that take the name of "sentimental," nor
dreamed of such a possibility. But grief, even in a child,
hates the light, and shrinks from human eyes. The house
was large enough to have two staircases; and by one of
these I knew that about midday, when all would be quiet,
(for the servants dined at one o'clock,) I could steal up into
ner chamber. I imagine that it was about an hour after
high noon when I reached the chamber door: it was locked,
but the key was not taken away. Entering, I closed the
door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall which
ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the
tilent walls. Then, turning round, I sought my sister's
iace. But the bed had been moveO and the back was
now turned towards myself. Nothing met my eyes but
one large window, wide open, through which the sun of
midsummer, at midday, was showering down torrents of
splendor. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless,
the blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and
it was not possible for eye to behold, or for heart to
conceive, any symbols more pathetic of life and the glory
of life.
Let me pause for one instant in approaching a remem.
brance so affecting for my own mind, to mention, that, in
the " Opium  Confessions," I endeavored to explain the
reason why death, other conditions remaining the same, is
more profoundly affecting in summer than in other parts
of the year — so tar, at least, as it is liable to any modification at all from accidents of scenery or season. The reason,
as 1 there suggested, lies in the antagonism between the
tropical redundancy uf life in summer and the frozen




rHE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.         39
sterilities of the grave. The summer we see, the grave we
haunt with our thoughts; the glory is around us, the darkness is within us; and, the two coming into collision, each
exalts the other into stronger relief. But, in my case,
there was even a subtler reason why the summer had this
intense power of vivifying the spectacle or the thoughts of
death. And, recollecting it, I am struck with the truth,
that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to
us through perplexed combinations of concrete objects, pass
to us as involutes (if I may coin that word) in compound
experiences incapable of being disentangled, than ever
reach us directly, and in their own abstract shapes. It had
happened, that amongst our vast nursery collection of
books was the Bible, illustrated with many pictures. And
in long dark evenings, as my three sisters, with myself, sat
by the firelight round the guard * of our nursery, no book
was so much in request among us. It ruled us and
swayed us as mysteriously as music. Our younger nurse,
whom we all loved, would sometimes, according to her
simple powers, endeavor to explain what we found obscure.
We, the children, were all constitutionally touched with
pensiveness: the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of
the room by firelight suited our evening state of feelings;
and they suited, also, the divine revelations of power and
mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the story of
a just man,- man, and yet not man, real above all things,
and yet shadowy above all things, - who had suffered the
passior of death in Palestine, slept upon our minds like
early dawn upon the waters. The nurse knew and explained to us the chief differences in Oriental climates; and
" The guard." — I know not whether the word is a local one in
this sense. What I mean is a sort of fender, four or five feet high,
which locks up the fire from too near an approach on the part of
children.




40            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHE.S
ail these differences (as it happens) express themselves
more or less, in varying relations to the great accidents
and powers of summer. The cloudless sunlights of Syria
- those seemed to argue everlasting summer; the disciples
plucking the ears of corn —that must be summer; but,
above all, the very name of Palm Sunday (a festival in the
English church) troubled me like an anthem. " Sunday!"
what was that? That was the day of peace which masked
another peace deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. " Palms! " what were they?  That was an equivocal word; palms, in the sense of trophies, expressed the
pomps of life; palms, as a product of nature, expressed
the pomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation does
not suffice; it was not merely by the peace and by the
summer, by the deep sound of rest below all rest and of
ascending glory, that I had been haunted. It was also because Jerusalem stood near to those deep images both in
time and in place. The great event of Jerusalem was at
hand when Palm Sunday came; and the scene of that
Sunday was near in place to Jerusalem. What then was
Jerusalem? Did I fancy it to be the omphalos (navel) or
physical centre of the earth? Why should that affect me?
Such a pretension had once been made for Jerusalem, and
once for a Grecian city; and both pretensions had become
ridiculous, as the figure of the planet became known.
Yes; but if not of the earth, yet of mortality; for earth's
tenant, Jerusalem, had now become the omphalos and
absolute centre.  Yet how r  There, on the contrary,
it was, as we infants understood, that mortality had been
trampled under foot. True; but, for that very reason,
there it was that mortality had opened its very gloomiest
crater. There it was, indeed, that the human had risen on
wings from the grave; but, for that reason, there also it
was that the divine had been swallowed up by the ahvss;




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.          41
he lesser star could not rise before the greater should subnit to eclipse. Summer, therefore, had connected itself
with death, not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also
as a phenomenon brought into intricate relations with death
by scriptual scenery and events.
Out of this digression, for the purpose of showing how
inextricably my feelings and images of death were entangled with those of summer, as connected with Palestine
and Jerusalem, let me come back to the bed chamber of
my sister. From the gorgeous sunlight I turned around to
the corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure; there
the angel face; and, as people usually fancy, it was said
in the house that no features had suffered any change.
Had they not? The forehead, indeed, —the serene and
noble forehead, - that might be the same; but the frozen
eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath
them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to
palm, as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish,
- could these be mistaken for life?  Had it been so,
wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips with tears
and never-ending kisses? But so it was not. I stood
checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and,
whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow -the saddest
that ear ever heard. It was a wind that might have swept
the fields of mortality for a thousand centuries. Many
times since, upon summer days, when the sun is about the
hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian,* but saintly
* " Memnonian." — For the sake of many readers, whose hearts
may go along earnestly with a record of infant sorrow, but whose
course of life has not allowed them much leisure for study, I pause to
explain - that the head of Memnon, in the British Museum, that
sublime head which wears upon its lips a smile coextensive with all
time and all space, an ZEonian smile of gracious love and Pan-like




42              AUTOBIOGRAPHIC    SKETCHES.
swell: it is in this world the one great audible symbol of
eternity.  And three times in my life have I happened to
hear the same sound in the same circumstances- namely
when standing between an open window and a dead body
on a summer day.
Instantly, when my ear caught this vast JEolian intonation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life,
mystery, the most diffusive and pathetically divine that the hand of
man has created, is represented, on the authority of ancient traditions,
to have uttered at sunrise, or soon after as the sun's rays had accumulated heat enough to rarefy the air within certain cavities in the bust,
a solemn and dirge-like series of intonations; the simple explanation
being, in its general outline, this -that sonorous currents of air
were produced by causing chambers of cold and heavy air to press
upon other collections of air, warmed, and therefore rarefied, and
therefore yielding readily to the pressure of heavier air. Currents
being thus established by artificial arrangements of tubes, a certain
succession of notes could be concerted and sustained. Near the Red
Sea lies a chain of sand hills, which, by a natural system of grooves
inosculating with each other, become vocal under changing circumstances in the position of the sun, &c. I knew a boy who, upon observing steadily, and reflecting upon a phenomenon that met him in
his daily experience, viz., that tubes, through which a stream of
water was passing, gave out a very different sound according to the
varying slenderness or fulness of the current, devised an instrument
that yielded a rude hydraulic gamut of sounds; and, indeed, upon
this simple phenomenon is founded the use and power of the stethoscope. For exactly as a thin thread of water, trickling through a
leaden tube, yields a stridulous and plaintive sound compared with
the full volume of sound corresponding to the full volume of water,
on parity of principles, nobody will doubt that the current of
blood pouring through the tubes of the human frame will utter to the
learned ear, when armed with the stethoscope, an elaborate gamut or
compass of music recording the ravages of disease, or the glorious
plenitudes of health, as faithfully as the cavities within this ancient
Mennonian bust reported this mighty event of sunrise to the rejoicing world of light and life; or, again, under the sad passion of the
dlying day, uttered the sweet requiem that belonged to its departure.




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.          43
ihe pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the flowers
below, and turning when it settled upon the frost which
overspread my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me.
A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a
shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever; and the billows
seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ran before us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit
seemed to go on forever and ever.  Frost gathering frost,
some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; some
mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled to
evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them;
shadowy meanings even yet continued to exercise and tornent, in dreams, the deciphering oracle within me. I slept
- for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my self.
possession; and, when I woke, found myself standing, as
before, close to my sister's bed.
I have reason to believe that a very long ifiterval had
elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect
mind. When I returned to myself, there was a foot (or I
fancied so) on the stairs. I was alarmed; for, if any body
had detected me, means would have been taken to prevent
my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips that
1 should kiss no more, and slunk, like a guilty thing, with
stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision,
loveliest amongst all the shows which earth has revealed to
me; thus mutilated was the parting which should have
lasted forever; tainted thus with fear was that farewell
sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and to grief that
could not be healed.
0 Ahasuerus, everlasting Jew! * fable or not a fable,
* "Everlasting Jew. — Der ewige Jude - which is the common
German expression for " The Wandering Jew," and sublimer even
than our own.




44           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
thou, when first startirg on.lny endless pilgrimage of woe,thou, when first flying through the gates Df Jerusalem, and
vainly yearning to leave the pursuing curse behind thee,couldst not more certainly in the words of Christ have read
thy doom of endless sorrow, than I when passing forever
from my sister's room. The worm was at my heart; and,
I may say, the worm that could not die. Man is doubtless
one by some subtle nexus, some system of links, that we
cannot perceive, extending from the new-born infant to the
superannuated dotard; but, as regards many affections and
passions incident to his nature at different stages, he is not
one, but an intermitting creature, ending and beginning
anew: the unity of man, in this respect, is coextensive
only with the particular stage to which the passion belongs.
Some passions, as that of sexual love, are celestial by one
half of their origin, animal and earthly by the other half.
These will not survive their own appropriate stage. But
love, which is altogether holy, like that between two
children, is privileged to revisit by glimpses the silence and
the darkness of declining years; and, possibly, this final
experience in my sister's bed room, or some other in which
her innocence was concerned, may rise again for me to
illuminate the clouds of death.
On the day following this which I have recorded came
a body of medical men to examine the brain and the particular nature of the complaint, for in some of its symptoms it had shown perplexing anomalies. An hour after
the strangers had withdrawn, I crept again to the room;
but the door was now locked, the key had been taken
away, and I was shut out forever.
Then came the filneral. I, in the ceremonial charactei
of mourner, was carried thither. I was put into a carriage
with some gentlemen whom I did not know. They were
kind and attentive to me; but naturally they talked of




THE AFFLICTION OF CH1LDHOOD.           45
things disconnected with the occasion, and their conversation was a torment.  At the church, I was told to hold
a white handkerchief to my eyes.    Empty hypocrisy!
What need had hie of masks or mockeries, whose heart
died within him at every word that was uttered?  During
that part of the service which passed within the church,
I made an effort to attend; but I sank back continually
into my own solitary darkness, and I heard little consci:uslv, except some fugitive strains from  the sublime
chapter of St. Paul, which in England is always read at
bu rials.*
Lastly came that magnificent liturgical service which
the English church performs at the side of the grave;
for this church does not forsake her dead so long as they
continue in the upper air, but waits for her last "sweet
and solemn t farewell " at the side of the grave. There is
exposed once again, and for the last time, the coffin. All
eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of age, and the
day of departure from earth - records how shadowy! and
dropped into darkness as if messages addressed to worms.
Almost at the very last comes the symbolic ritual, tearing
and shattering the heart with volleying discharges, peal
after peal, from the final artillery of woe. The coffin is
lowered into its home; it has disappeared from all eyes
but those that look down into the abyss of the grave.
The sacristan stands ready, with his shovel of earth and
stones. The priest's voice is heard once more,- earth to
* First Epistle to Corinthians, chap. xv., beginning at ver. 20.
t This beautifil expression, I am pretty certain, must belong to
Mrs. Trollope; I read it, probably, in a tale of hers connected with
the backwoods of America, where the absence of such a farewell
must unspeakably aggravate the gloom at any rate belonging to a
household separation of that eternal character occurring amongst the
shadows of those mighty forests.




46           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
earth, - and immediately the dread rattle ascends from the
lid of the coffin; ashes to ashes-and again the killing
sound is heard; dust to dust -and the farewell volley announces that the grave, the coffin, the face are sealed up
forever and ever.
Grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions.
And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also
thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest as with ague,
but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the
heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. Among the
very foremost of mine was morbid sensibility to shame.
And, ten years afterwards, I used to throw  my selfreproaches with regard to that infirmity into this shape,
viz., that if I were summoned to seek aid for a perishing
fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that aid only by
facing a vast company of critical or sneering faces, I
might, perhaps, shrink basely from the duty. It is true
that no such case had ever actually occurred; so that it
was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so shocking. But, to feel a doubt, was to feel cop.
demnation; and the crime that might have been was, in'ny eyes, the crime that had been. Now, however, all was
changed; and for any thing which regarded my sister's
memory, in one hour I received a new heart. Once in
Westmoreland I saw a case resembling it. I saw a ewe
suddenly put off and abjure her own nature, in a service
of love - yes, slough it as completely as ever serpent
sloughed his skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench,
from which all escape was hopeless without the aid of man.
And to a man she advanced, bleating clamorously, until
he followed her and rescued her beloved. Not less was
the change in myself.   Fifty thousand sneering faces
would not have troubled me now in any office of ten
ierness to my sister's memory. Ten legions would not




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.         47
have repelled me from seeking her, if there had been
a chance that she could be found. Mockery! it was lost
upon me. Laughter! I valued it not. And when I was
taunted insultingly with " my girlish tears," that word'girlish" had no sting for me, except as a verbal echo
t. the one eternal thought of my heart - that a girl was
the sweete.t thing which I, in my short life., had kno n;
that a girl it was who had crowned the earth with beauty,
and had opened to my thirst fountains of pure celestial love,
from which, in this world, I was to drink no more.
Now began to unfold themselves the consolations of
solitude, those consolations which only I was destined to
taste; now, therefore, began to open upon me those fascinations of solitude, which, when acting as a co-agency with
unresisted grief, end in the paradoxical result of making
out of grief itself a luxury; such a luxury as finally becomes a snare, overhanging life itself, and the energies of
life, with growing menaces. All deep feelings of a chronic
class agree in this, that they seek for solitude, and are fed
by solitude. Deep grief, deep love, how naturally do these
ally themselves with religious feeling! and all three -
love, grief, religion - are haunters of solitary places.
Love, grief, and the mystery of devotion, - what were
these without solitude? All day long, when it was not
impossible for me to do so, I sought the most silent and
sequestered nooks in the grounds about the house or in the
neighboring fields. The awful stillness oftentimes of summer noons, when no winds were abroad, the appealing
silence of gray or misty afternoons, - these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the woods, into the desert air,
I gazed, as if some comfort Jay hid in them. I wearied
the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. Obsti.
nately I tormented the blue depths with my scrutiny,
sweeping them forever with my eyes, and searching then




48            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for one angelic face that might, perhaps, have permission
to reveal itself for a moment.
At this time, and under this impulse of rapacious grief,
that grasped at what it could not obtain, the faculty of
shaping images in the distance out of slight elements, and
grouping them after the yearnings of the heart, grew upon
me in morbid excess. And I recall at the present moment
one instance of that sort, which may show how merely
shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all, could
furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty.
On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my family to church: it was a church on the ancient model of
England, having aisles, galleries,* organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here,
whilst the congregation knelt through the long litany, as
often as we came to that passage, so beautiful amongst
many that are so, where God is supplicated on behalf of
" all sick persons and young children," and that he would
" show his pity upon all prisoners and captives," I wept in
secret; and raising my streaming eyes to the upper windows of the galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have
beheld. The sides of the windows were rich with storied
glass; through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the
golden light; emblazonries of heavenly illumination (from
the sun) mingling with the earthly emblazonries (from art
and its gorgeous coloring) of what is grandest in man.
There were the apostles that had trampled upon earth, and
the glories of earth, out of celestial love to man.  There
* "Galleries."- These, though condemned on some grounds by
the restorers of authentic church architecture, have, nevertheless,
this one advantage - that, when the height of a church is that dimension which most of all expresses its sacred character, galleries expound and interpret that height.




THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD.          4S
were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truth through
flames, through torments, and through armies of fierce,
insulting faces.  There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by meek submission to his
will. And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from some accompaniment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field of the
window, where the glass was uncolored, white, fleecy
clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky: were it
but a fragment or a hint of such a cloud, immediately
under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, it grew and
shaped itself into visions of beds with white lawny curtains;
and in the beds lay sick children, dying children, that were
tossing in anguish, and weeping clamorously for death.
God, for some mysterious reason, could not suddenly release them from their pain; but he suffered the beds, as it
seemed, to rise slowly through the clouds; slowly the beds
ascended into the chambers of the air; slowly, also, Fs
arms descended from the heavens, that he and his young
children, whom in Palestine, once and forever, he had
blessed, though they must pass slowly through the dreadful chasm of separation, might yet meet the sooner. These
visions were self-sustained. These visions needed not
that any sound should speak to me, or music mould
my feelings. The hint from the litany, the fragment
from the clouds, - those and the storied windows were
sufficient. But not the less the blare of the tumultuous organ wrought its own separate creations. And oftentimes
in anthems, when the mighty instrument threw its vast
columns of sound, fierce yet melodious, over the voices of
the choir, -high in arches, when it seemed to rise, surmounting and overriding the strife of the vocal parts, and
gathering by strong coercion the total storm into unity,sometimes I seemed to rise and walk triumphantly upon
4




50             UTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
those clouds which, but a moment before, I had looked up
to as mementoes of prostrate sorrow; yes, sometimes under
the transfigurations of music, felt of grief itself as of a
fiery chariot for mounting victoriously above the causes
of grief.
God speaks to children, also, in dreams, and by the
oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude, above all
things, when made vocal to the meditative heart by the
truths and services of a national church, God holds witl
children "communion undisturbed."  Solitude, though it
may be silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of
agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come
into this world alone; all leave it alone. Even a little
child has a dread, whispering consciousness, that, if he
should be summoned to travel into God's presence, ne
gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor
mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share
nis trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden,
philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries
alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world appalls
or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a far deeper
solitude, through which already he has passed, and of
another solitude, deeper still, through which he has to pass:
reflex of one solitude - prefiguration of another.
0 burden of solitude, that cleavest to man through
every stage of his being! in his birth, which has been -
in his life, which is- in his death, which shall be -
mighty and essential solitude! that wast, and art, and art
to be; thou broodest, like the Spirit of God moving upon
the surface of the deeps, over every heart that sleeps in
the nurseries of Christendom. Like the vast laboratory of
the air, which, seeming to be nothing, or less than the
shadow of a shade, hides within itself the principles of all
things, solitude for the meditating child is the Agrippa's




DREAM ECHOES OF THESE INFANT EXPERIENCES.        51
mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the solitude of
millions who, with hearts welling forth love, have none to
love them. Deep is the solitude of those wlio, under secret
griefs, have none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of
those who, fighting with doubts or darkness, have none to
counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these solitudes is that which broods over childhood under the passion
of sorrow -bringing before it, at intervals, the final solitude which watches for it, and is waiting for it within the
gates of death.   0  mighty and essential solitude, that
wast, and art, and art to be, thy kingdom is made perfect
in the grave; but even over those that keep watch outside
the grave, like myself, an infant of six years old, thou
stretchest out a sceptre of fascination.
DREAM    ECHOES OF THESE INFANT EXPERIENCES.
[Notice to the reader. - The sun, in rising or setting, would produce
little effect if he were defrauded of his rays and their infinite reverberations. " Seen through a fog," says Sara Coleridge, the noble
daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "the golden, beaming sun
looks like a dull orange, or a red billiard ball." - Introd. to Biog. Lit.,
p. clxii. And, upon this same analogy, psychological experiences of
deep suffering or joy first attain their entire fulness of expression
when they are reverberated from dreams. The reader must, therefore, suppose me at Oxford; more than twelve years are gone by; I
am in the glory of youth: but I have now first tampered with opium;
and now first the agitations of my childhood reopened in strength;
now first they swept in upon the brain with power, and the grandeur
of recovered lift.]
ONCE again, after twelve years' interval, the nursery of
my childhood expanded before me: my sister was moaning
in bed; and I was beginning to be restless with fears not




52            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
intelligible to myself. Once again the elder nurse, but now
dilated to colossal proportions, stood as upon some Grecian
stage with her uplifted hand, and, like the superb Medea
towering amongst her children in the nursery at Corinth,*
smote me senseless to the ground. Again I am in the
chamber with my sister's corpse, again the pomps of life
rise up in silence, the glory of summer, the Syrian sunlights, the frost of death.  Dream forms itself mysteriously within dream; within these Oxford dreams remoulds
itself continually the trance in my sister's chamber - the
blue heavens, the everlasting vault, the soaring billows,
the throne steeped in the thought (but not the sight) of
" Who might sit thereon;" the flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps of my return to earth. Once more the
funeral procession gathers; the priest, in his white surplus,
stands waiting with a book by the side of an open grave;
the sacristan is waiting wtth his shovel; the coffin has sunk;
the dust to dust has descended. Again I was in the church
on a heavenly Sunday morning. The golden sunlight of
God slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his martyrs,
his saints; the fragment from the litany, the fragment from
the clouds, awoke again the lawny beds that went up to
scale the heavens —awoke again the shadowy arms that
moved downward to meet them. Once again arose the
swell of the anthem, the burst of the hallelujah chorus,
the storm, the trampling movement of the choral passion,
the agitation of my own trembling sympathy, the tumult of
the choir, the wrath of the organ.  Once more I, that
wallowed in the dust, became he that rose up to the clouds.
And now all was bound up into unity; the first state and
the last were melted into each other as in some sunny
glorifying haze. For high in heaven hovered a gleaming
host of fates, veiled with wings, around the pillows of the
* Euripides.




DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER.              53
dying clildren.  And such beings sympathize equally with
sorrow  that grovels and with sorrow    that soars.   Such
beings pity alike the children that are languishing in death,
and the children that live only to languish in tears.
DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER.
[In this instance the echoes, that rendered back the infant experience, might be interpreted by the reader as connected with a real
ascent of the Brocken; which was not the case. It was an ascent
through all its circumstances executed in dreams, which, under advanced stages in the development of opium, repeat with marvellous
accuracy the longest succession of phenomena derived either from
reading or from actual experience. That softening and spiritualizing
haze which belongs at any rate to the action of dreams, and to the
transfigurings worked upon troubled remembrances by retrospects so
vast as those of fifty years, was in this instance greatly aided to my
own feelings by the alliance with the ancient phantom of the forest
mountain in North Germany. The playfulness of the scene is the
very evoker of the solemn remembrances that lie hidden below
The half-sportive interlusory revealings of the symbolic tend to the
same effect. One part of the effect from the symbolic is dependent
upon the great catholic principle of the Idem in alio. The symbol
restores the theme, but under new combinations of form or coloring
gives back, but changes; restores, but idealizes.]
ASCEND   with   me   on  this dazzling  Whitsunday the
Brocken of North Germany. The dawn opened in cloud,
less beauty; it is a dawn of bridal June; but, as the
hours advanced, her youngest sister April, that sometimes
cares little for racing across both frontiers of May, - the
rearward fron+:er, and the vanward frontier, —frets the
bridal lady's sunny temper with sallies of wheeling and
careering shoAers, flying and pursuing, opening and closing, hiding  and   restoring.  On such a morning, and




~54         AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
reaching the summits of the forest mountain about sunrise, we shall have one chance the more for seeing the
famous Spectre of the Brocken.*      Who and what is he?
* "Spectre of the Brocken." - This very striking phenomenon has
been continually described by writers, both German and English, for
the last fifty years. Many readers, however, will not have met with
these descriptions; and on their account I add a few words in explanation, referring them for the best scientific comment on the case to
Sir David Brewster's " Natural Magic." The spectre takes,the shape
of a human figure, or, if the visitors are more than one, then the
spectres multiply; they arrange themselves on the blue ground of
the sky, or the dark ground of any clouds that may be in the right
quarter, or perhaps they are strongly relieved against a curtain of
rock, at a distance of some miles, and always exhibiting gigantic
proportions. At first, from the distance and the colossal size, every
spectator supposes the appearances to be quite independent of himself. But very soon he is surprised to observe his own motions and
gestures mimicked, and wakens to the conviction that the phantom
is but a dilated reflection of himself. This Titan amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly capricious, vanishing abruptly for
reasons best known to himself, and more coy in coming forward than
the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he is seen so seldom must
be ascribed to the concurrence of conditions under which only the
phenomenon can be manifested; the sun must be near to the horizon,
(which, of itself, implies a time of day inconvenient to a person starting from a station as distant as Elbingerode;) the spectator must
have his back to the sun; and the air must contain some vapor, but
partially distributed. Coleridge ascended the Brocken on the WhitQunday of 1799, with a party of English students from Goettingen,
but failed to see the phantom; afterwards in England (and under the
three same conditions) he saw a much rarer phenomenon. which he
described in the following lines:" Such thou art as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow mist weaves a glistening haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head;
This shade he worships for its golden hues,
And makes (not knowing) that which he pursues?"




DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER.           55
fle is a solitary apparition,.n the sense of loving solitude;
else he is not always solitary in his personal manifestations,
but, on proper occasions, has been known to unmask a
strength quite sufficient to alarm those who had been
insulting him.
Now, in order to test the nature of this mysterious
apparition, we will try two or three experiments upon
him. What we fear, and with some reason, is, that, as he
lived so many ages with foul pagan sorcerers, and witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries, his heart may
have been corrupted, and that even now his faith may be
wavering or impure.  We will try.
Make the sign of the cross, and observe whether he
repeats it, (as on Whitsunday   he surely ought to do.)
Look! he does repeat it; but these driving April showers
perplex the images, and that, perhaps, it is which gives
him the air of one who acts reluctantly or evasively.
Now, again, the sun shines more brightly, and the showers
have all swept off like squadrons of cavalry to the rear.
We will try him again.
Pluck an anemone, one of these many anemones which
once was called the sorcerer's flower,t and bore a part.
perhaps, in this horrid ritual of fear; carry it to that
stone which mimics the outline of a heathen altar, and
once was called the sorcerer's altar; t then, bending your
* < On Whitsunday." -It is singular, and perhaps owing to the
temperature and weather likely to prevail in that early part of summer, that more appearances of the spectre have been witnessed on
Whitsunday than on any other day.
t " The sorcerer's flower," and " The sorcerer's altar." - These are
names still clinging to the anemone of the Brocken, and to an altarshaped fragment of granite near one of the summits; and there is no
doubt that they both connect themselves, through links of ancient
tradition, with the gloomy realities of paganism, when the whole
Hartz and the Brocken formed for a very long time the last asylum
to a ferocious but perishing idolatry




56            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCIES.
knee, and raising your right hand to God, say, " Father
which art in heaven, this lovely anemone, that once glorified the worship of fear, has travelled back into thy fold;
this altar, which once reeked with bloody rites to Cortho,
has long been rebaptized into thy holy service.  The
darkness is gone; the cruelty is gone which the darkness
bred; the moans have passed away which the victims uttered; the cloud has vanished which once sat continually
upon their graves - cloud of protestation that ascended forever to thy throne from the tears of the defenceless, and
from the anger of the just. And lo! we- I thy servant,
and this dark phantom, whom for one hour on this thy festival of Pentecost I make my servant - render thee united
worship in this thy recovered temple."
Lo! the apparition plucks an anemone, and places it on
the altar; he also bends his knee, he also raises his right
hand to God. Dumb he is; but sometimes the dumb serve
God acceptably. Yet still it occurs to you, that perhaps on
this high festival of the Christian church he may have been
overruled by supernatural influence into confession of his
homage, having so often been made to bow and bend his
knee at murderous rites. In a service of religion he may
be timid. Let us try him, therefore, with an earthly passion, where he will have no bias either from favor or
from fear.
If, then, once in childhood you suffered an affliction that
was ineffable, - if once, when powerless to face such an
enemy, you were summoned to fight with the tiger that
couches within the separations of the grave, - in that case,
after the example of Juduea,* sitting under her palm tree to
weep, but sitting with her head veiled, do you also veil
vour head. Many years are passed away since then; and
* On the Roman coins.




DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER.        57
perhaps you were a little ignorant thing at that time, hardly
above six years old. But your heart was deeper than the
Danube; and, as was your love, so was your grief. Many
years are gone since that darkness settled on your head;
many summers, many winters; yet still its shadows wheel
round upon you at intervals, like these April showers upon
this glory of bridal June. Therefore now, on this dovelike morning of Pentecost, do you veil your head like
Judaea in memory of that transcendent woe, and in testimony that, indeed, it surpassed all utterance of words.
Immediately you see that the apparition of the Brocken
veils Mis head, after the model of Judaea weeping under
her palm tree, as if he also had a human heart; and as if
he also in childhood, having suffered an affliction which
was intffable, wished by these mute symbols to breathe a
sigh towards heaven in memory of that transcendent woe.
and by way of record, though many a year after, that it
was indeed unutterable by words.




CHAPTER II.
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.
So, then, one chapter in my life had finished. Already,
before the completion of my sixth year, this first chapter
had run its circle, had rendered up its music to the final
chord- might seem even, like ripe fruit from a tree, to
have detached itself forever from all the rest of the arras
that was shaping itself within my loom of life. No Eden
of lakes and forest lawns, such as the mirage suddenly
evokes in Arabian sands, - no pageant of air-built battlements and towers, that ever burned in dream-like silence
amongst the vapors of summer sunsets, mocking and
repeating with celestial pencil "the fuming vanities of
earth," -could leave behind it the mixed impression of so
much truth combined with so much absolute delusion.
Truest of all things it seemed by the excess of that happiness which it had sustained: most fiaudulent it seemed of
all things, when looked back upon as some mysterious
parenthesis in the current of life, "self-withdrawn into a
wonderous depth," hurrying as if with headlong malice to
extinction, and alienated by every feature from the new
aspects of life that seemed to await me. Were it not in
the bitter corrosion of heart that I was called upon to face,
I should have carried over to the present no connecting link
58




INTRODUCTION TO THIE WORLD OF STRIFE.    59
whatever from the past, Mere reality in this fretting it
was, and the undeniableness of its too potent remembrances,
that forbade me to regard this burned-out inaugural chapter
of my life as ilo chapter at all, but a pure exhalation of
dreams. Miseiy is a guaranty of truth too substantial to
be refused; else, by its determinate evanescence, the total
experience would have worn the character of a fantastic
illusion.
Well it was for me at this period, if well it were for me
to live at aL, that from any continued contemplation of my
misery I was forced to wean myself, and suddenly to
assume the harness of life. Else under the morbid languishing of grief, and of what the Romans called desiderium,
(the yearning too obstinate after one irrecoverable face,)
too probably I should have pined away into an early grave.
Harsh was my awaking; but the rough febrifuge which
this awaking administered broke the strength of my sickly
reveries through a period of more than two years; by
which time, under the natura, expansion of my bodily
strength, the danger had passed over.
In the first chapter I have rendered solemn thanks fol
having been trained amongst the gentlest of sisters, and not
under " horrid pugilistic brothers." Meantime, one such
brother I had, senior by much to myself, and the stormiest
uf his class: him I will immediately present to the reader;
for up to this point of my narrative he may be described as
a stranger even to myself. Odd as it sounds, I had at this
time both a brother and a father, neither of whom would
have been able to challenge me as a relative, nor I him,
had we happened to meet on the public roads.
In my father's case, this arose from the accident of his
having lived abroad for a space that, measured against my
life, was a very long one. First, he lived for months in
Portugal, at Lisbon, and at Cintra; next in Madeira; ihen




60           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
in the West Indie3; sometimes in Jamaica, sometimes in
St. Kitt's; courting the supposed benefit of hot climates in
his complaint of pulmonary consumption. He had, indeed,
repeatedly returned to England, and met my mother at
watering-places on the south coast of Devonshire, &c.
But I, as a younger child, had not been one of the party
selected for such excursions from home. And now, at last,
when all had proved unavailing, he was coming home to
die amongst his family, in his thirty-ninth year.  My
mother had gone to await his arrival at the port (whatever
port) to which the West India packet should bring him;
and amongst the deepest recollections which I connect
with that period, is one derived from the night of his
arrival at Greenhay.
It was a summer evening of unusual solemity. The
servants, and four of us children, were gathered for hours,
on the lawn before the house, listening for the sound of
wheels. Sunset came-nine, ten, eleven o'clock, and
nearly another hour had passed - without a warning sound;
for Greenhay, being so solitary a house, formed a terminus
ad quem, beyond which was nothing but a cluster of cottages, composing the little hamJet of Greenhill; so that any
sound of wheels coming from the winding lane which ther
connected us with the Rusholme Road, carried with it, of
necessity, a warning summons to prepare for visitors at
Greenhay. No such summons had yet reached us; it was
nearly midnight; and, for the last time, it was determined
that we should move in a body out of the grounds, on the
chance of meeting the travelling party, if, at so late an
hour, it could yet be expected to arrive. In fact, to our
general surprise, we met it almost immediately, but coming
at so slow a pace, that the fall of the horses' feet was not
audiole until we were close upon them. I mention the
case for the sake of the undying impressions which




INIRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      61
connected themselves with the circumstances. The first
notice of the approach was the sudden emerging of horses'
heads from the deep gloom of the shady lane; the next
was the mass of white pillows against which the dying
patient was reclining. The hearse-like pace at which the
carriage moved recalled the overwhelming spectacle of
that funeral which had so lately formed part in the most
memorable event of my life. But these elements of awe,
that might at any rate have struck forcibly upon the mind
of a child, were for me, in my condition of morbid
nervousness, raised into abiding grandeur by the antecedent
experiences of that particular summer night. The listening for hours to the sounds from horses' hoofs upon distant
roads, rising and falling, caught and lost, upon the gentle
undulation of such fitful airs as might be stirring-the
peculiar solemnity of the hours succeeding to sunset - the
glory of the dying day - the gorgeousness which, by
description, so well I knew of sunset in those West Indian
islands from which my father was returning —the knowledge that he returned only to die - the almighty pomp in
which this great idea of Death apparelled itself to my
young sorrowing heart - the corresponding pomp in which
the antagonistic idea, not less mysterious, of life, rose, as
if on wings, amidst tropic glories and floral pageanries
that seemed even more solemn and pathetic than the
vapory plumes and trophies of mortality, - all this chorus
of restless images, or of suggestive thoughts, gave to my
fathrr's return, which else had been fitted only to interpose
one transitory red-letter day in the calendar of a child, the
shadowy power of an ineffaceable agency among my
dreams. This, indeed, was the one sole memorial which
restores my father's image to me as la personal reality;
otherwise he would have been for me a bare nominis
umbra. He languished, indeed, for weeks upon a sofa;
0        defrwesuo




~62  ~     AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
and, during that interval, it happened naturally, from my
repose of manners, that I was a privileged visitor to him
throughout his waking hours. I was also present at his
bedside in the closing hour of his life, which exhaled quietly, amidst snatches of delirious conversation with some
imaginary visitors.
My brother was a stranger from causes quite as little to
be foreseen, but seeming quite as natural after they had
really occurred. In an early stage of his career, he had
been found wholly unmanageable. His genius for mischief amounted to inspiration; it was a divine affatus
which drove him in that direction; and such was his capacity for riding in whirlwinds and directing storms, that
he made it his trade to create them, as a VqOEsl7yQETea
Zev;, a cloud-compelling Jove, in order that he might direct them. For this, and other reasons, he had been sent
to the Grammar School of Louth, in Lincolnshire —one
of those many old classic institutions which form the peculiar* glory of England. To box, and to box under the
severest restraint of honorable laws, was in those days a
mere necessity of schoolboy life at public schools; and
hence the superior manliness, generosity, and self-control
of those generally who had benefited by such disciplineso systematically hostile to all meanness, pusillanimity, or
indirectness. Cowper, in his L" Tyrocinium," is far from
doing justice to our great public schools. Himself disqual* "Peculiar." - Viz., as endowed foundations to which those resort
who are rich and pay, and those also who, being poor, cannot pay,
or cannot pay so r;nch. This most honorable distinction amongst
the services of England from ancient times to the interests of educa,tion - a service absolutely unapproached by any one nation of Christendom - is amongst the foremost cases of that remarkable class
which make England, whilst often the most aristocratic, yet also for
many noble purposes, the most democratic of lands.




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.    63
ified, by delicacy of temperament, for reaping the benefits
from such a warfare, and having suffered too much in his
own Westminster experience, he could not judge them
from an impartial station; but I, though ill enough adapted
to an atmosphere so stormy, yet having tried both classes
of schools, public and private, am compelled in mere conscience to give my vote (and, if I had a thousand votes, to
give all my votes) for the former.
Fresh from such a training as this, and at a time when
his additional five or six years availed nearly to make his
age the double of nine, my brother very naturally despised me; and, from his exceeding frankness, he took no
pains to conceal that he did. Why should he? Who was
it that could have a right to feel aggrieved by his contempt?  Who, if not myself? But it happened, on the
contrary, that I had a perfect craze for being despised. I
doted on it, and considered contempt a sort of luxury that
I was in continual fear of losing. Why not? Wherefore
should any rational person shrink from contempt, if it happen to form the tenure by which he holds his repose in
life? The cases which are cited from comedy of such a
yearning after contempt, stand upon a footing altogether
different: there the contempt is wooed as a serviceable ally
and tool of religious hypocrisy. But to me, at that era
of life, it formed the main guaranty of an unmolested
repose; and security there was not, on any lower terms,
for the latentis semita vitae. The slightest approach to
any favorable construction. of my intellectual pretensions
alarmed me beyond measure; because it pledged me in a
manner with the hearer to support this first attempt by a
second, by a third, by a fourth-O Heavens! there is nc
saying how far the horrid man might go in his unreasonable demands upon me. I groaned under the weight of
his expectations; and, if I laid but the first round of such a




64            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
staircase, why, then, I saw in vision a vast Jacob's ladder
towering upwards to the clouds, mile after mile, league
after league; and myself running up and down this ladder,
like any fatigue party of Irish hodmen, to the top of any
Babel which my wretched admirer might choose to build.
But I nipped the abominable systen of extortion in the
very bud, by refusing to take the first step. The man
could have no pretence, you know, for expecting me to
climb the third or fourth round, when I had seemed quite
unequal to the first. Professing the most absolute bankruptcy from the very beginning, giving the man no sort of
hope that I would pay even one farthing in the pound, I
never could be made miserable by unknown responsibilities.
Still, with all this passion for being despised, which was
so essential to my peace of mind, 1 found at times an altitude-a starry altitude —in the station of contempt for
me assumed by my brother that nettled me. Sometimes,
indeed, the mere necessities of dispute carried me, before
I was aware of my own imprudence, so far up the staircase of Babel, that my brother was shaken for a moment
in the infinity of his contempt; and before long, when my
superiority in some bookish accomplishments displayed itself, by results that could not be entirely dissembled, mere
foolish human nature forced me into some trifle of exultation at these retributory triumphs. But more often I was
disposed to grieve over them. They tended to shake that
solid foundation of utter despicableness upon which I relied
so much for my freedom from anxiety; and therefore,
upon the whole, it was satisfactory to my mind that my
brother's opinion of me, after any little trarzient oscillation,
gravitated determinately back towards that settled contempt which had been the result of his original;nquest.
The pillars of Hercules, upon which rested the vast edifice




!NTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     65f
4f his scorn, were these two -1st, my physics; he delounced me for effeminacy: 2d, he assumed, and even
Postulated as a datum, which I myself could never have
Lhe face to refuse, my general idiocy. Physically, therefore, and intellectually, ne looked upon me as below notice; but, morally, he assured me that he would give me a
written character of the very best description, whenever I
chose to apply for it. " You're honest," he said; " you're
willing, though lazy; you would pull, if you had the
strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you
don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might have been. The
idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was no'
uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority of cases, I really was; and there were more reasons
for thinking so than the reader is yet aware of. But, as to
the effeminacy, I denied it in toto; and with good reason,
as will be seen. Neither did my brother pretend to have
any experimental proofs of it. The ground he went upon
was a mere a priori one, viz., that I had always been tied
to the apron string of women or girls; which amounted at
most to this —that, by training and the natural tendency
of circumstances, I ought to be effeminate; that is, there
was reason to expect beforehand that I should be so; but,
then, the more merit in me, if, in spite of such reasonable
presumptions, I really were not. In fact, my b: other soon
learned, by a daily experience, how entirely he might depend upon me for carrying out the most audacious of his
own warlike plans —such plans, it is true, that I abominated; but that made no difference in the fidelity with
which I tried to fulfil them.
This eldest brother of mine was in all respects a remarkable boy. Haughty he was, aspiring, immeasurably
active, fertile in resources as Robinson Crusoe; but also
5




66           AUrOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
full of quarrel as it is possible to imagine; and, in deihuli
of any other opponent, he would have fastened a quarrel
upon his own shadow for presuming to run before him
when going westwards in the morning, whereas, in all reason, a shadow, like a dutiful child, ought to keep deferentially in the rear of that majestic substance which is the
aut'lo of its existence.  Books he detested, one and all,
excepting only such as he happened to write himself.
And.hese were not a few. On all subjects known to man,
from the Thirty-nine Articles of our English church down
to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic, both black and white,
thaumaturgy, and necromancy, he favored the world
(which world was the nursery where I lived amongst my
sisters) with his select opinions. On this last subject especially-of necromancy - he was very great: witness
his profound work, though but a fragment, and, unfortunately, long since departed to the bosom of Cinderella, entitled " How to raise a Ghost; and when you've got him
down, how to keep him down." To which work he as.
sured us that some most learned and enormous man
whose name was a foot and a half long, had promised hin?
an appendix, which appendix treated of the Red Sea and
Solomon's signet ring, with forms of mittimus for ghosts
that might be refractory, and probably a riot act, for any
emeute amongst ghosts inclined to raise barricades; since
ne often thrilled our young hearts by supposing the case,
(not at all unlikely, he affirmed,) that a federation, a solemn league and conspiracy, might take place amongst the
infinite generations of ghosts against the single generation
of men at any one time composing the garrison of earth.
The Roman phrase for expressing that a man had died,
viz., "Abiit ad plures," tHe has gone over to the majority,) my brother explained to us; and we easily compre
nenliLd that any one generation of the living human race




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      67
even if combined, and acting in concert, must be in a
frightful minority, by comparison with all the incalculable
generations that had trod this earth before us. The Parliament of living men, Lords and Commons united, what a
miserable array against the Upper and Lower House composing the Parliament of ghosts! Perhaps the Pre-Adamites would constitute one wing in such a ghostly army.
My brother, dying in his sixteenth year, was far enough
from seeing or foreseeing Waterloo; else he might have
illustrated this dreadful duel of the living human race with
its ghostly predecessors, by the awful apparition which at
three o'clock in the afternoon, on the 18th of June, 1815,
the mighty contest at Waterloo must have assumed to eyes
that watched over the trembling interests of man. The
English army, about that time in the great agony of its
strife, was thrown into squares; and under that arrangement, which condensed and contracted its apparent numbers within a few black geometrical diagrams, how frightfully narrow, how spectral, did its slender quadrangles
appear at a distance, to any philosophic spectators that
knew the amount of human interests confided to that army,
and the hopes for Christendom that even then were trembling in the balance! Such a disproportion, it seems,
might exist, in the case of a ghostly war, between the harvest of possible results and the slender band of reapers that
were to gather it. And there was even a;rorse peril than
any analogous one that has been proved to exist at Waterloo. A British surgeon, indeed, in a work of two octavo
volumes, has endeavored to show that a conspiracy was
traced at Waterloo, between two or three foreign regiments, for kindling a panic in the heat of the battle, by flight,
and by a sustained blowing up of tumbrils, under the miserable purpose of shaking the British steadiness. But the
evidences ars not clear; whereas my brother insisted that




bS)             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SELTCHES.
the presence of sham men, distributed extensively amongst
the human race, and meditating treason against us all, had
been demonstrated to the satisfaction of all true philoso
phers. Who were these shams and make-believe men.;
They were, in fact, people that had been dead for centu
ries, but that, for reasons best known to themselves, had
returned to this upper earth, walked about amongst us, and
were undistinguishable, except by the most learned of necromancers, from authentic men of flesh and blood. I mention this for the sake of illustrating the fact, of which the
reader will find a singular instance in the foot note attached, that the same crazes are everlastingly revolving
upon men.*
This hypothesis, however, like a thousand others, when
it happened that they engaged no durable sympathy from
* Five years ago, during the carnival of universal anarchy equally
amongst doers and thinkers, a closely-printed pamphlet was published with this title, " A New Revelation, or the Communion of the
Incarnate Dead with the Unconscious Living. Important Fact,
without trifling Fiction, by HIM." I have not the pleasure of knowing HIM; but certainly I must concede to HIM, that he writes like a
man of extreme sobriety upon his extravagant theme. He is angry
with Swedenborg, as might be expected, for his chimeras; some of
which, however, of late years have signally altered their aspect; but
as to HIM, there is no chance that he should be occupied with chimeras, because (p. 6) " he has met with some who have acknowledged
the fact of their having come from the dead"- babes confitentern
reum. Few, however, are endowed with so much candor; and in
particular, for the honor of literature, it grieves me to find, by p. 10,
that the largest number of these shams, and perhaps the most uncandid, are to be looked for amongst " publishers and printers," of vwhom,
it seems, " the great majority" are mere forgeries: a very few speak
frankly about the matter, and say they don't care who knows it,
which, to my thinking, is impudence, but by far the larger section
doggedly deny it, and call a policeman, if you persist in charging
them with being shams. Some differences there are between my
brother and HIM. but in the great outline of their views they coincide




INTRODUCT ON TO THE WORLD OF S'IRIFE.    09
his aurserv audience, he did not pursue. For some time
he turned his thoughts to philosophy, and read lectures
to us every night upon some branch or other of physics.
This undertaking arose upon some one of us envying or
admiring flies for their power of walking upon the ceiling.'Poh!" he said, " they are impostors; they pretend to
do it, but they can't do it as it ought to be done. Ah!
you should see me standing upright on the ceiling, with my
head downwards, for half an hour together, and meditating
profoundly." My sister Mary remarked, that we should all
be very glad to see him in that position. " If that's the
case," he replied, " it's very well that all is ready, except
as to a strap or two." Being an excellent skater, he had
first imagined that, if held up until he had started, he
might then, by taking a bold sweep ahead, keep himself
in position through the continued impetus of skating. But
this he found not to answer; because, as he observed,
", the friction was too retarding from the plaster of Paris,
but the case would be very different if the ceiling were
coated with ice."  As it was not, he changed his plan.
The true secret, he now discovered, was this: he would
consider himself in the light of a humming top; he would
make an apparatus (and he made it) for having himself
launched, like a top, upon the ceiling, and regularly spun.
Then the vertiginous motion of the human top would overpower the force of gravitation. He should, of course,
spin upon his own axis, and sleep upon his own axisperhaps he might even dream upon it; and he laughed at
" those scoundrels, the flies," that never improved in their
pretended art, nor made any thing of it. The principle
was now discovered; " and, of course," he said, if a man
can keep it up for five minutes, what's to hinder him from
doing so for five months?"  "Certainly, nothing that 1
can think of," was the reply of my sister, whose scepticism




70            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
in fact, had not settled upon the five months, but altogether
upon the five minutes. The apparatus for spinning him,
however, perhaps from its complexity, would not work - a
fact evidently owing to the stupidity of the gardener. On
reconsidering the subject, he announced, to the disappointmnent of some amongst us, that, although the physical discovery was now complete, he saw a moral difficulty. It
was not a humming top that was required, but a peg top.
Now, this, in order to keep up the vertigo at full stretch,
without which, to a certainty, gravitation would prove too
much for him, needed to be whipped incessantly. But
that was precisely what a gentleman ought not to tolerate: to be scourged unintermittingly on the legs by any
grub of a gardener, unless it were father Adam himself,
was a thing that he could not bring his mind to face.
However, as some compensation, he proposed to improve
the art of flying, which was, as every body must acknowledge, in a condition disgraceful to civilized society. As
he had made many a fire balloon, and had succeeded in
some attempts at bringing down cats by parachutes, it was
not very difficult to fly downwards from moderate elevations. But, as he was reproached by my sister for never
flying back again,-which, however, was a far different
thing, and not even attempted by the philosopher in " Ras
selas," -'(for
" Revocare gradum, et superas evadere ad auras,
Hic labor, hoc opus est,")
he refused, under such poor encouragement, to try his
winged parachutes any more, either "aloft or alow," till
he had thoroughly studied Bishop Wilkins * on the art of
* " Bishop Wilkins." — Dr. W., Bishop of Chester, in the reign of
Charles II., notoriously wrote a book on the possibility of a voyage




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.       71
translating right reverend gentlemen to the moon; and. in
the mean tune, he resumed his general lectures on physics.
From these, however, he was speedily driven, or one mighi
say shelled out, by a concerted assault of my sister Mary's,
lie had been in the habit of lowering the pitch of his
lectures with ostentatious condescension to the presumed
leiel of our poor understandings.  This superciliousness
annoyed my sister; and accordingly, with the help of two
young female visitors, and my next younger brother,- in
subsequent times a little middy on board many a ship of H.
M., and the most predestined rebel upon earth against all
assumptlons, small or great, of superiority, - she arranged
a mutiny, that had the unexpected effect of suddenly extinguishing the lectures forever. He had happened to say,
what was no unusual thing with him, that he flattered him.
self he had made the point under discussion tolerably clear;
" clear," he added, bowing round the half circle of us, the
audience, " to the meanest of capacities;" and then he repeated, sonorously, "clear to the most excruciatingly mean
of capacities." Upon which, a voice, a female voice,but whose voice, in the tumult that followed, I did not
distinguish, -retorted, "No, you haven't; it's as dark as
sin;" and then, without a moment's interval, a second voice
exclaimed," Dark as night;" then came my young brother's
to the moon, which, in a bishop, would be called a translation to the
moon, and perhaps it was his name in combination with his book that
suggested the "Adventures of Peter Wilkins." It is unfair, however, to mention him in connection with that single one of his works
which announces an extravagant purpose. He was really a scientific
man, and already in the time of Cromwell (about 1656) had projected that Royal Society of London which was afterwards realized
and presided over by Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. He was also
a learned man, but still with a veil of romance about him, as may be
seen in his most elaborate work - " The Essay towards a Philosophic
or Universal Language."




72            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
insurrectlonary yell, " Dark as midnight;" then another fr
male voice chimed in melodiously, "Dark as pitch;" anIso the peal continued to come round like a catch, the whole
being so well concerted, and the rolling fire so well sustalmed, that it was impossible to make head against it;
whilst the abruptness of the interruption gave to it the protecting character of an oral "round robin,";t being impossible to challenge any one in particular as the ringleader.
Burke's phrase of "the swinish multitude," applied to
mobs, was then in every body's mouth; and, accordingly,
after my brother had recovered from his first astonishment
at this audacious mutiny, he made us several sweet'ng bows
that looked very much like tentative rehearsals of  weepingfusillade, and then addressed us in a very bri;r speech,
of which we could distinguish the words pearls and swinish
multitude, but uttered in a very low key, perhaps out of
some lurking consideration for the Nwo young strangers.
We all laughed in chorus at this i'-rting salute; my brother
himself condescended at last te join us; but there ended
the course of lectures on natural philosophy.
As it was impossible, however, that he should remain
quiet, he announced to us, that for the rest of his life he
meant to dedicate himself to the intense cultivation of the
tragic drama. He got to work instantly; and very soon
he had composed the first act of his " Sultan Selim;" but,
in defiance of the metre, he soon changed the title to
" Sultan Amurath," considering that a much fiercer name,
more bewhiskered and beturbaned. It was no part of his
intention that we should sit lolling on chairs. like ladies
and gentleman that had paid opera prices for private boxes.
He expected every one of us, he said, to pull an oar. We
were to act the tragedy. But, in fact, we had many oars
to pull. There were so many characters, that each of' us
tnok four at the least, and the fut;ire middy had six  He,




INTRODUCTION TO TRlE WORLD OF STRIFE.       73
this wicked little middy,* caused the greatest affliction to
Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order the amputation of
his head six several times (that is, once in every one of his
six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though
otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the
bowstring, and wha; by the cimeter, he had so thinned
the population with which he commenced business, that
scarcely any of the characters remained alive at the end
of act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself in an
awkward situation. Large arrears of work remained, and
hardly any body to do it but the sultan himself. In composing act the second, the author had to proceed like
Deucalion and Pyrrha, and to create an entirely new
generation. Apparently this young generation, that ought
to have been so good, took no warning by what had happened to their ancestors in act the first: one must conclude
that they were quite as wicked, since the poor sultan had
found himself reduced to order them all for execution in
the course of this act the second. To the brazen age had
succeeded an iron age; and the prospects were becoming
sadder and sadder as the tragedy advanced. But here the
author began to hesitate.  He felt it hard to resist the instinct of carnage. And was it right to do so? Which of
the felons whom he had cut off prematurely could pretend
that a court of appeal would have reversed his sentence?
But the consequences were distressing. A new set of
characters in every act brought with it the necessity of a
* " Middy." — I call him so simply to avoid confusion, and by way
of anticipation; else he was too young at this time to serve in the
navy. Afterwards he did so for many years, and saw every variety
of service in every class of ships belonging to our navy. At one
time, when yet a boy, he was captured by pirates, and compelled to
sail with them; and the end of his adventurous career was, that for
many a year he has been lying at the bottom of the Atlantic.




74            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
new plot; foi people could not succeed to the arreais of
o'd actions, or inherit ancient motives, like a landed estate
Five crops, in fact, must be taken off the ground in each
separate tragedy, amounting, in short, to five tragedies in.:)lved in one.
Such, according to the rapid sketch which at this mo.
ment my memory furnishes, was the brother who now first
laid open to me the gates of war. The occasion was this
He had resented, with a shower of stones, an affront offered to us by an individual boy, belonging to a cotton
factory: for more than two years afterwards this became
the leterrima causa of a skirmish or a battle as often as we
passed the factory; and, unfortunately, that was twice
a day on every day except Sunday. Our situation in
respect to the enemy was as follows: Greenhay, a country house newly built by my father, at that time was a
clear mile from the outskirts of Manchester; but in after
years Manchester, throwing out the tentacula of its vast
expansions, absolutely enveloped Greenhay; and, for any
thing I know, the grounds and gardens which then insutated the house may have long disappeared. Being a
modest mansion, which (including hot walls, offices, and
gardener's house) had cost only six thousand pounds, I do
not know how it should have risen to the distinction of
giving name to a region of that great town; however, it
has done so; * and at this time, therefore, after changes
so great, it will be difficult for the habitue of that region
to understand how my brother and myself could have a
solitary road to traverse between Greenhay and Princess
Street, then the terminatior, on that side, of Manchester.
* " Greenheys," with a slight variation in the spelling, is the name
given to that district of which Greenhay formed the original nucleus
Probably it was the solitary situation of the house which (failing
anv other grounds of denomination) raised it to this privilege.




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.       75
But so it was. Oxford Street, like its namesake in London was then called the Oxford Road; and during the
currency of our acquaintance with it, arose the first three
houses in its neighborhood; of which the third was built
for the Rev. S. H., one of our guardians, for whom his
friends had also built the Church of St. Peter's - not a
bowshot from the house. At present, however, he resided
in Salford, nearly two miles from Greennay; and to him
we went over daily, for the benefit of his classical instructions. One sole cotton factory had then risen along the
line of Oxford Street; and this was close to a bridge,
which also was a new creation; for previously all passengers to Manchester went round by Garrat. This factory
became to us the officina gentium, from which swarmed
forth those Goths and Vandals that continually threatened
our steps; and this bridge became the eternal arena of
combat, we taking good care to be on the right side of the
bridge for retreat, i. e., on the town side, or the country
side, accordingly as we were going out in the morning, or
returning in the afternoon. Stones were the implements
of warfare; and by continual practice both parties became
expert in throwing them.
The origin of the feud it is scarcely requisite to rehearse, since the particular accident which began it was
not the true efficient cause of our long warfare, but simply
the casual occasion. The cause lay in our aristocratic
dress. As children of an opulent family, where all provisions were liberal, and all appointments elegant, we were
uniformly well dressed; and, in particular, we wore trousers, (at that time unheard of, except among sailors,) and
we also wore Hessian boots - a crime that could not be
forgiven in the Lancashire of that day, because it expressed
the double offence of being aristocratic and being outlandish. We were aristocrats and it was vain to deny it;




76            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKFTCH1iC.
could we deny our boots? whilst our antagonists, if not
absolutely sans culottes, were slovenly and forlorn in their
dress, often unwashed, with hair totally neglected, and
always covered with flakes of cotton. Jacobins they were
not, as regarded any sympathy wtth the Jacobinism that
then desolated France; for, on the contrary, they detested
every tling French, and answered with brotherly signals to
the cry of " Church and king," or " King and constituion." But, for all that, as they were perfectly independent,
getting very high wages, and these wages in a mode of
industry that was then taking vast strides ahead, they contrived to reconcile this patriotic anti-Jacobinism with a
personal Jacobinism of that sort which is native to the heart
of man, who is by natural impulse (and not without a root
of nobility, though also of base envy) impatient of inequality, and submits to it only through a sense of its secessity, or under a long experience of its benefits.
It was on an early day of our new tyrocinium, or pei haps
on the very first, that, as we passed the bridge, a boy happening to issue from the factory * sang out to us derisively,
" Hollo, bucks! "  In this the reader may fail to perceive
any atrocious insult commensurate to the long war which
followed. But the reader is wrong. The word " dandies," F
which was what the villain meant, had not then been born,
so that he could not have called us by lhat name, unless
through the spirit of prophecy. Buck was the nearest word
at hand in his Manchester vocabulary: he gave all he
could, and let us dream the rest. But in the next moment
he discovered our boots, and he consummated his crime by
"Factory." - Such was the designation technically at that time.
At present, I believe that a building of that class would be called a'mill."
t This word, however, exists in Jack-a Sandy - a very old Englisb
word. But what does that mean?




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      77
saluting us as " Boots! boots!"  My brother made a dead
stop, surveyed him with intense disdain, and bade him draw
near, that he might " give his flesh to the fowls of the air."
The boy declined to accept this liberal invitation, and conveyed his answer by a most contemptuous and plebeian
gesture,* upon which my brother drove him in with a
shower of stones.
During this inaugural flourish of hostilities, I, for my
part, remained inactive, and therefore apparently neutral.
But this was the last time that I did so: for the moment,
indeed, I was taken by surprise. To be called a buck by
one that had it in his choice to have called me a coward,
a thief, or a murderer, struck me as a most pardonable
offence; and as to boots, that rested upon a flagrant fact
that could not be denied; so that at first I was green enough
to regard the boy as very considerate and indulgent. But
my brother soon rectified my views; or, if any doubts
remained, he impressed me, at least, with a sense of my
paramount duty to himself, which was threefold.  First,
it seems that I owed military allegiance to him, as my commander-in-chief, whenever we " took the field;" secondly,
by the law of nations, I, being a cadet of my house, owed
suit and service to him who was its head; and he assured
me, that twice in a year, on my birthday and on his, he had
a right, strictly speaking, to make me lie down, and to set
his foot upon my neck; lastly, by a law not so rigorous,
bi' valid amongst gentlemen,-viz., "by the comity of
nations," — it seems I owed eternal deference to one so
much older than myself, so much wiser, stronger, t:aver,
* Precisely, however, the same gesture, plebeian as it was, by which
the English commandant at Heligoland replied to the Danes when
civilly inviting him to surrender. Southey it was, on the authority of
Lieutenant Southey his brother, who communicated to me this an.t lote.




78           AL rOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
more beautiful, and more swift of foot. Something lhke
all this in tendency I had already believed, though I had
not so minutely investigated the modes and grounds of my
duty. By temperament, and through natural dedication to
despondency, I felt resting upon me always too deep ara
gloomy a sense of obscure duties attached to life, that I
never should be able to fulfil; a burden which I could not
carry, and which yet I did not know how to throw off.
Glad, therefore, I was to find the whole tremendous weight
of obligations- the law and the prophets-all crowded
into this one pocket command, " Thou shalt obey thy
brother as God's vicar upon earth."  For now, if, by any
future stone levelled at him who had called me a " buck,"
I should chance to draw blood, perhaps I might noL have
committed so serious a trespass on any rights which he
could plead; but if I had, (for on this subject my convictions
were still cloudy,) at any rate, the duty I might have violated in regard to this general brother, in right of Adam,
was cancelled when it came into collision with my paramount duty to this liege brother of my own individual
house.
From this day, therefore, I obeyed all my brother's military commands with the utmost docility; and happy it
made me that every sort of doubt, or question, or opening
for demur was swallowed up in the unity of this one papal
principle, discovered by my brother, viz., that all rights and.iuties of casuistry were transferred from me to himself.
His was the judgment- his was the responsibility; and to
me belonged only the sublime obligation of unconditional
faith in him.  That faith I realized. It is true that he
taxed me at times, in his reports of particular fights, with
"horrible cowardice," and even with " a cowardice that
seemed inexplicable, except on the supposition of treachery."  But this was only afapon de parler with hinr: the




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      79
idea of secret perfidy, that was constantly moving under
ground, gave an interest to the progress of the war, which
else tended to the monotonous. It was a dramatic artifice
for sustaining the interest, where the incidents might happen to be too slightly diversified. But that he did not
believe his own charges was clear, because he never repeated them in his " General History of the Campaigns,'
which was a resume, or recapitulating digest, of his daily
reports.
We fought every day, and, generally speaking, twice
every day; and the result was pretty uniform, viz., that
my brother and I terminated the battle by insisting upon
our undoubted right to run away. Mlagna Charta, I should
fancy, secures that great right to every man; else, surely,
it is sadly defective. But out of this catastrophe to most
of our skirmishes, and to all our pitched battles except one,
grew a standing schism between my brother and myself.
My unlimited obedience had respect to action, but not to
opinion.  Loyalty to my brother did not rest upon hypocrisy: because I was faithful, it did not follow that I
must be false in relation to his capricious opinions. And
these opinions sometimes took the shape of acts. Twice,
at the least, in every week, but sometimes every night, my
brother insisted on singing "Te Deum" for supposed victories which he had won; and he insisted also on my
bearing a part in these " Te Deums."  Now, as I knew of
no such victories, but resolutely asserted the truth, - viz.,
that we ran away, - a slight jar was thus given to the elie
triumphal effect of these musical ovations. Once having
uttered my protest, however, willingly I gave my aid to the
chanting; for I loved unspeakably the grand and varied
system of chanting in the Romish and English churches.
And, looking back at this day to the ineffable benefits
which I derived from the church of my childhood, I account




80           AUTOBIOGRAPHI(C SKETCHES.
among the very greatest those which reached me through
the various chants connected with the " 0, Jubilate," the
"Magnificat," the "Te Deum," the "Benedicite," &c.
Through these chants it was that the sorrow which laid
waste my infancy, and the devotion which nature had
made a necessity of my being, were profoundly interfused:
the sorrow gave reality and depth to the devotion; the devotion gave grandeur and idealization to the sorrow. Neither was my love for chanting altogether without knowledge. A son of my reverend guardian, much older than
myself, who possessed a singular faculty of producing a
sort of organ accompaniment with one half of his mouth,
whilst he sang with the other half, had given me some instructions in the art of chanting; and, as to my brother,
he, the hundred-handed Briareus, could do all things; of
course, therefore, he could chant.
Once having begun, it followed naturally that the war
should deepen in bitterness. Wounds that wrote memorials in the flesh, insults that rankled in the heart,-these
were not features of the case likely to be forgotten by our
enemies, and far less by my fiery brother. I, for my part,
entered not into any of the passions that war may be supposed to kindle, except only the chronic passion of anxiety.
Fear it was not; for experience had taught me that, under
the random firing of our undisciplined enemies, the chances
were not many of being wounded. But the uncertainties
of the war; the doubts in every separate action whether I
could keep up the requisite connection with my brother,
and, in case I could not, the utter darkness that surrounded
my fate; whether, as a trophy won from Israel, I should
be dedicated to the service of some Manchester Dagon, or
pass through fire to Moloch,- all these contingencies, for
me that had no friend to consult, ran too violently into the
master current of my constitutional despondency ever to




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.             81
give way under any casual elation of success. Success,
however, we really had at times; in slight skirmishes pretty often; and once, at least, as the reader will find to his
mortification, if he is wicked enough to take the side of the
Philistines, a most smashing victory in a pitched battle.
But even then, and whilst the hurrahs were yet ascending
from our jubilating lips, the freezing remembrance came
back to my heart of that deadly depression which, duly a,
the coming round of the morning and evening watches
travelled with me like my shadow on our approach to the
memorable bridge. A bridge of sighs * too surely it was
* " Bridge of sighs." - Two men of memorable genius, Hood last,
and Lord Byron by many years previously, have so appropriated this
phrase, and reissued it as English currency, that many readers suppose it to be theirs. But the genealogies of fine expressions should
be more carefully preserved. The expression belongs originally to
Venice. This jus postliminii becomes of real importance in many
cases, but especially in the case of Shakspeare. Could one have believed it possible beforehand? And yet it is a fact that he is made to
seem a robber of the lowest order, by mere dint of suffering robbery.
Purely through their own jewelly splendor have many hundreds of
his phrases forced themselves into usage so general, under the vulgar
infirmity of seeking to strengthen weak prose by shreds of poetic quotation, that at length the majority of careless readers come to look
upon these phrases as belonging to the language, and traceable to no
distinct proprietor any more than proverbs: and thus, on afterwards
observing them in Shakspeare, they regard him in the light of one
accepting alms (like so many meaner persons) from the common treasury of the universal mind, on which treasury, meantime, he had himself conferred these phrases as original donations of his own. Many
expressions in the "Paradise Lost." in "11 Penseroso," and in " L'AIlegro," are in the same predicament. And thus the almost incredible
ease is realized which I have described, viz., that simply by having
suffered a robbery throughi two centuries, (for the first attempt at
plundering Milton was made upon his juvenile poems,) have Shakspeare and Milton come to be taxed as robbers. N. B. -In speaking
of Hood as having appropriated the phrase Bridge of Sighs, I would
not be understood to represent him as by possibility aiming at any
6




82            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for me; and even for my brother it formed an object of
fierce yet anxious jealousy, that he could not always disguise, as we first came in sight of it; for, if it happened to
be occupied in strength, there was an end of all hope that
we could attempt the passage; and that was a fortuna.e
solution of the difficulty, as it imposed no evil beyord a
circuit; which, at least, was safe, if the world should
choose to call it inglorious. Even this shade of ignominy,
however, my brother contrived to color favorably, by caliing us —that is, me and himself —"a corps of observation;" and he condescendingly explained to me, that, although making "a lateral movement," he had his eye
upon the enemy, and " might yet come round upon his left
flank in a way that wouldn't, perhaps, prove very agreeable." This, from the nature of the ground, never hap.
pened. We crossed the river at Garrat, out of sight frooi
the enemy's position; and, on our return in the evening,
when we reached that point of our route from which the
retreat was secure to Greenhay, we took such revenge for
the morning insult as might belong to extra liberality in
our stone donations. On this line of policy there was,
therefore, no cause for anxiety; but the common case was,
that the numbers might not be such as to justify this caution, and yet quite enough for mischief. To my brother,
however, stung and carried headlong into hostility by the
martia. instincts of his nature, the uneasiness of doubt or
insecurity was swallowed up by his joy in the anticipation
of victory, or even of contest; whilst to myself, whose exultation was purely official and ceremonial, as due by loyalty from a cadet to the head of his house, no such compensation existed. The enemy was no enemy in my eyes;
concealment. He was as far above such a meanness by his nobility
of heart, as he was raised above all need for it by the overflowing
opulence of his genius.




INTRODUCTION TO TIlE WORLD 01 STRIFE.   6S
his affronts were but retaliations; and his insults were so
inapplicable to my unworthy self, being of a calibre exclusively meant for the use of my brother, that from me they
recoiled, one and all, as cannon shot from cotton bags.
The ordinary course of our day's warfare was this: between nine and ten in the morning occurred our first transit, and, consequently, our earliest opportunity for doing
business. But at this time the great sublunary interest of
breakfast, which swallowed up all nobler considerations of
glory and ambition, occupied the work people of the factory, (or what in the pedantic diction of this day are termed
the " operatives,") so that very seldom any serious business was transacted. Without any formal armistice, the
paramount convenience of such an arrangement silently
secured its own recognition. Notice there needed none of
truce, when the one side yearned for breakfast, and the
other for a respite: the groups, therefore, on or about the
bridge, if any at all, were loose in their array, and careless.
We passed through them rapidly, and, on my part, uneasily; exchanging a few snarls, perhaps, but seldom or ever
snapping at each other. The tameness was almost shocking of those who, in the aftern'Ion, would inevitably resume
their natural characters of tiger cats and wolves. Sometimes, however, my brother felt it to be a duty that we
should fight in the morning; particularly when any expression of public joy for a victory,- bells ringing in the distance, — or when a royal birthday, or some traditional commemoration of ancient feuds, (such as the 5th of November,) irritated his martial propensities. Some of these
being religious festivals, seemed to require of us an extra
homage, for which we knew not how to find any natural
or significant expression, except through sharp discharges
of stones, that being a language older than Hebrew or Sanscrit, and universally intelligible.  But, excepting thene




84            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
high days of religious solemnity, when a man is called
upon to show that he is not a pagan or a miscreant in the
eldest of senses, by thumping, or trying to thump, somebody who is accused or accusable of being heterodox, the
great ceremony of breakfast was allowed to sanctify the
hour. Some natural growls we uttered, but hushed them
soon, regardless
" Of the sweeping whirlpool's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, looked for his evening prey."
That came but too surely. Yes, evening never forgot to
come; this odious necessity of fighting never missed its
road back, or fell asleep, or loitered by the way, more than
a bill of exchange or a tertian fever. Five times a week
(Saturday sometimes, and Sunday always, were days of
rest) the same scene rehearsed itself in pretty nearly the
same succession of circumstances. Between four and five
o'clock we had crossed the bridge to the safe, or Greenhay side; then we paused, and waited for the enemy.
Sooner or later a bell rang, and from the smoky hive issued the hornets that night and day stung incurably my
peace of mind. The order and procession of the incidents
after this were odiously monotonous. My brother occupied the main high road, precisely at the point where a
very gentle rise of the ground attained its summit; for the
bridge lay in a slight valley, and the main military position was fifty or eighty yards above the bridge: then - but
having first examined my pockets, in order to be sure that
my stock of ammunition, stones, fragments of slate, with
a reasonable proportion of brickbats, was all correct and
ready for action - he detached me about forty yards to the
right, my orders being invariable, and liable to no doubts
or " quibbling." Detestable in my ears was that word
" quibbling," by which, for a thousand years, if the war




NTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.          85
had happened to last so long, he would have fastened upon
me the imputation of meaning, or wishing, at least, to do
what he called " pettifogulizing "-  that is, to plead some
distinction, or verbal demur, in bar of my orders, under
some colorable pretence that, according to their literal construction, they really did not admit of being fulfilled, or
perhaps that they admitted it too much as being capable of
fulfilment in two senses, either of them a practicable sense.
True it was that my eye was preternaturally keen for flaws
of language, not from pedantic exaction of superfluous accuracy, but, on the contrary, from too conscientious a wish
to escape the mistakes which language not rigorous is apt
to occasion. So far from seeking to " pettifogulize "- i. e.,
to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction - exactly in the opposite direction,
from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in
almost every body's words, an unintentional opening left
for double interpretations. Undesigned equivocation prevails every where; * and it is not the cavilling hair splitter,
but, on the contrary, the single-eyed servant of truth, that
is most likely to insist upon the limitation of expressions
too wide or too vague, and upon the decisive election between meanings potentially double. Not in order to resist
or evade my brother's directions, but for the very opposite
* Geometry (it has been said) would not evade disputation, if a
man could find his interest in disputing it: such is the spirit of cavil.
But I, upon a very opposite ground, assert that there is not one page
of prose that could be selected from the best writer in the English
language (far less in the German) which, upon a sufficient interest
arising, would not furnish matter, simply through its defects in precision, for a suit in Chancery. Chancery suits do not arise, it is true,
because the doubtful expressions do not touch any interest of prop
erty; but what does arise is this - that something more valuable
than a pecuniary interest is continnally suffering, viz., the interests
of truth.




t86          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
purpose - viz., that I might fulfil them to the letter; thus
and no otherwise it happened that I showed so much
scrupulosity about the exact value and position of his words,
as finally to draw upon myself the vexatious reproach of
being habitually a " pettifogulizer."
Meantime, our campaigning continued to rage. Overtures of pacification were never mentioned on either side.
And I, for my part, with the passions only of peace at my
heart, did the works of war faithfully and with distinction.
I presume so, at least, from the results. It is true, I was
continually falling into treason, without exactly knowing
how I got into it, or how I got out of it. My brother also,
it is true, sometimes assured me that he could, according to
the rigor of martial justice, have me hanged on the first
tree we passed; to which my prosaic answer had been,
that of trees there were none in Oxford Street - [which, in
imitation of Von Troil's famous chapter on the snakes of
Lapland, the reader may accept, if he pleases, as a complete course of lectures on the " dendrology " of Oxford
Street.] But, notwithstanding such little stumblings in my
career, I continued to ascend in the service; and, I am
sure, it will gratify my friendly readers to hear, that, before
my eighth birthday, I was promoted to the rank of major
general. Over this sunshine, however, soon swept a train
of clouds. Three times I was taken prisoner, and with
different results. The first time I was carried to the rear,
and not molested in any way. Finding myself thus ignominiously neglected, I watched my opportunity; and, by
making a wide circuit, easily effected my escape. In the
next case, a brief council was held over me; but I was not
allowed to hear the deliberations; the result only being
communicated to me- which result consisted in a message
nut very complimentary to my brother, and a small present
of kicks to myself. This present was paid down without




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     87
any discount, by means of a general subscription amongst
the party surrounding me - that party, luckily, not being
very numerous; besides which, I must, in honesty, acknowledge myself, generally speaking, indebted to their
forbearance. They were not disposed to be too hard upon
me. But, at the same time, they clearly did not think it
right that I should escape altogether from tasting the calam.
ities of war. And this translated the estimate of my guilt
from the public jurisdiction to that of the individual, sometimnes capricious and harsh, and carrying out the public
award by means of legs that ranged through all gradations
of weight and agility. One kick differed exceedingly from
another kick in dynamic value; and, in some cases, this
difference was so distressingly conspicuous as to imply
special malice, unworthy, I conceive, of all generous
soldiership.
On returning to our own frontiers, I had an opportunity
of displaying my exemplary greenness. That message to
my brother, with all its virus of insolence, I repeated as
faithfully for the spirit, and as literally for the expressions,
as my memory allowed me to do; and in that troublesome
effort, simpleton that I was, fancied myself exhibiting a
soldier's loyalty to his commanding officer. My brother
thought otherwise: he was more angry with me than with
the enemy. I ought, he said, to have refused all participation in such sans cullotes insolence; to carry it was to acknowledge it as fit to be carried.  One grows wiser every
day; and on this particular day I made a resolution that, if
again made prisoner, I would bring no more " jaw " (so my
brother called it) from the Philistines. If these people would
send " jaw," I settled that, henceforwards, it must go through
the post office.
In my former captures, there had been nothing special
uf worthy of commemoration    in the circumstances




88            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Neither was there in the third, excepting that, by accident,
in the second stage of the case, I was delivered over to the
custody of young women and girls; whereas the ordinary
course would have thrown me upon the vigilant attentions
(relieved from monotony by the experimental kicks) of
boys. So far, the change was very much for the better. I
had a feeling myself, on first being presented to my new
young mistresses, of a distressing sort. Having always, up
to the completion of my sixth year, been a privileged pet,
and almost, I might say, ranking amongst the sanctities of
the household, with all its female sections, whether young
or old, (an advantage which I owed originally to a long illness, an ague, stretching over two entire years of my infancy,) naturally I had learned to appreciate the indulgent
tenderness of women; and my heart thrilled with love and
gratitude, as often as they took me up into their arms and
kissed me. Here it would have been as every where else;
but, unfortunately, my introduction to these young women
was in the very worst of characters. I had been taken in
arms - in arms against their own brothers, cousins, sweet
hearts, and on pretexts too frivolous to mention. If asked
the question, it would be found that I should not myself
deny the fact of being at war with their whole order.
What was the meaning of that? What was it to which wai
pledged a man? It pledged him, in case of opportunity,
to burn, ravage, and depopulate the houses and lands of the
enemy; which enemy was these fair girls. The warrior
stood committed to universal destruction. Neither sex nor
age, neither the smiles of unoffending infancy nor the gray
hairs of the venerable patriarch, neither the sanctity of
the matron nor the loveliness of the youthful bride, would
confer any privilege with the warrior, consequently not
with me.
Many other hideous features in the military character




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      89
{ill be found in books innumerable - levelled at those who
nake war, and therefore at myself. And it appears finally'y these books, that, as one of my ordinary practices, I
make a wilderness, and call it a pacification; that I hold it
a duty to put people to the sword; which done, to plough
up the foundations of their hearths and altars, and then to
sow the ground with salt.
All this was passing through my brain, when suddenly
one young woman snatched me up in her arms, and kissed
me: from her, I was passed round to others of the party,
who all in turn caressed me, with no allusion to that warlike mission against them and theirs, which only had pro.
cured me the honor of an introduction to themselves in the
character of captive. The too palpable fact that I was not
the person meant by nature to exterminate their families,
or to make wildernesses, and call them pacifications, had
withdrawn from their minds the counterfact-that whatever had been my performances, my intentions had been
hostile, and that in'such a character only I could have become their prisoner. Not only did these young people
kiss me, but I (seeing no military reason against it) kissed
them. Really, if young women will insist on kissing major
generals, they must expect that the generals will retaliate.
One only of the crowd adverted to the character in which
I came before them: to be a lawful prisoner, it struck her
too logical mind that I must have been caught in some aggressive practices. "Think," she said, " of this little dog
fighting, and fighting our Jack." " But," said another in a
propitiatory tone, " perhaps he'll not do so any more."  I
was touched by the kindness of her suggestion, and the
sweet, merciful sound of that same "Not do so any more,"
which really was prompted, I fear, much more by that
charity in her which hopeth all things than by any signs
of amendment in myself. Well was it for me that no time




90            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
was allowed for an investigation into my morals by pointblank questions as to my future intentions. In which casc
it would have appeared too undeniably, that the same sad
necessity which had planted me hitherto in a position of
hostility to their estimable families would continue to persecute me; and that, on the very next day, duty to my
brother, howsoever it might struggle with gratitude to themselves, would range me in martial attitude, with a pocketful of stones, meant, alas! for the exclusive use of their
respectable kinsmen.  Whilst I was preparing myself,
however, for this painful exposition, my female friends
observed issuing from the factory a crowd of boys not
likely at all to improve my prospects. Instantly setting me
down on my feet, they formed a sort of cordon sanitaire
behind me, by stretching out their petticoats or aprons, as
in dancing, so as to touch; and then crying out, " Now,
little dog, run for thy life," prepared themselves (I doubt
not) for rescuing me, should my recapture be effected.
But this was not effected, although -attempted with an
energy that alarmed me, and even perplexed me with a
vague thought (far too ambitious for my years) that one or
two of the pursuing party might be possessed by some
demon of jealousy, as eye witnesses to my revelling
amongst the lips of that fair girlish bevy, kissing and being
kissed, loving and being loved; in which case, from all that
ever I had read about jealousy, (and I had read a great
deal — viz., " Othello," and Collins's "Ode to the Passions,") I was satisfied that, if again captured, I had very
little chance for my life. That jealousy was a green-eyed
monster, nobody could know better than I did. " 0, my
lord, beware of jealousy! "  Yes; and my lord couldn't
possibly have more reason for bewaring of it than myself;
indeed, well it would have been had his lordship run away
from  all the ministers of jealousy —Iago, Cassio, and




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE,     91
embroidered handkerchiefs - at the same pace of six miles
an hour which kept me ahead of my infuriated pursuers.
Ah, that maniac, white as a leper with flakes of cotton, can
I ever forget him - him that ran so far in advance of his
party? What passion but jealousy could have sustained
him in so hot a chase? There were some lovely girls in
the fair company that had so condescendingly caressed
me; but, doubtless, upon that sweet creature his love must
have settled, who suggested, in her soft, relenting voice, a
penitence in me that, alas! had not dawned, saying, "Yes;
but perhaps he will not do so any more."  Thinking, as I
ran, of her beauty, I felt that this jealous demoniac must
fancy himself justified in committing seven times seven
murders upon me, if he should have it in his power. But,
thank Heaven, if jealousy can run six miles'an hour, there
are other passions - as, for instance, panic - that can run,
upon occasion, six and a half; so, as I had the start of him,
(you know, reader,) and not a very short start, - thanks
be to the expanded petticoats of my dear female friends!
- naturally it happened that the green-eyed monster came
in second best. Time, luckily, was precious with him;
and, accordingly, when he had chased me into the by-road
leading down to Greenhay, he turned back. For the moment, therefore, I found myself suddenly released from
danger. But this counted for nothing. The same scene
would probably revolve upon me continually; and, on the
next rehearsal, Green-eyes might have better luck.  It
saddened me, besides, to find myself under the political
necessity of numbering amongst the Philistines, and as
daughters of Gath, so many kind-hearted girls, whom, by
personal proof, I knew to be such. In the profoundest
sense, I was unhappy; and, not from any momentary accident of distress, but from deep glimpses which now, and
heretofore, had opened themselves, as occasions arose, intc




92            AUTOPIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the inevitable conflic's of life. One of the saddest among
such conflicts is the necessity, wheresoever it occurs, of
adopting - though the heart should disown -the enmities
of one's own family, or country, or religious sect. In
forms how afflicting must that necessity have sometimes
occurred during the Parliamentary war! And, in after
years, amongst our beautiful old English metrical romances, I found the same impassioned complaint uttered
by a knight, Sir Ywain, as early as A. D. 1240 -
" But now, where'er I stray or go,
My heart SHE has that is my foe!"
I knew —I anticipated to a certainty —that my brother
would not hear of any merit belonging to the factory
population whom every day we had to meet in battle; on
the contrary, even submission on their part, and willingness to walk penitentially through the Furcea CaudinaB,
would hardly have satisfied his sense of their criminality.
Often, indeed, as we came in view of the factory, he would
shake his fist at it, and say, in a ferocious tone of voice,
" Delenda est Carthago!"  And certainly, I thought to
myself, it must be admitted by every body, that the fact'ly
people are inexcusable in raising a rebellion against my
brother. But still rebels were men, and sometimes were
women; and rebels, that stretch out their petticoats like
fans for the sake of screening one from the hot pursuit of
enemies with fiery eyes, (green or otherwise,) really are not
the sort of people that one wishes to hate.
Homewards, therefore, I drew in sadness, and little
doubting that hereafter I might have verbal feuds with my
brother on behalf of my fair friends, but not dreaming how
much displeasure I had already incurred by my treason.
able collusion with their caresses. That part of the affair
he had seen with his own eyes, from his position on thb




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     93
field; and then it was that he left me indignantly to my
fate, which, by my first reception, it was easy to see would
not prove very gloomy. When I came into our own study,
[ found him engaged in preparing a bulletin, (which word
was just then travelling into universal use,) reporting briefly
the events of the day. The art of drawing, as I shall again
have occasion to mention, was amongst his foremost accomplishments; and round the margin of the border ran a
black border, ornamented with cyprus and other funereal
emblems. When finished, it was carried into the room of
Mrs. Evans. This Mrs. Evans was an important person in
our affairs.  My mother, who never chose to have any
direct communication with her servants, always had a
housekeeper for the regulation of all domestic business,
and the housekeeper, for some years, was this Mrs. Evans.
Into her private parlor, where she sat aloof from the under
servants, my brother and I had the entree at all times, but
upon very different terms of acceptance: he as a favorite
of the first class; I, by sufferance, as a sort of gloomy
shadow that ran after his person, and could not well be
shut out if he were let in. Him she admired in the very
highest degree; myself, on the contrary, she detested,
which made me unhappy. But then, in some measure,
she made amends for this, by despising me in extremity;
and for that I was truly thankful - I need not say why, as
the reader already knows. Why she detested me, so far
as I know, arose in part out of my thoughtfulness indisposed to garrulity, and in part out of my savage, Orsonlike sincerity. I had a great deal to say,')ut then I could
say it only to a very few people, amongst whom Mrs.
Evans was certainly not one; and, when I did say any
thing, I fear that dire ignorance prevented my laying the
proper restraints upon my too liberal candor; and that
2ould not prove acceptable to one who thought nothing of




94            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
working for any purpose, or for no purpose, by petty tricks,
or even falsehoods-all which I held in stern abhorrence
that I was at no pains to conceal. The bulletin on this
occasion, garnished with this pageantry of woe, cypress
wreaths, and arms reversed, was read aloud to Mrs. Evans,
indirectly, therefore, to me. It communicated, with Spartan brevity, the sad intelligence (but not sad to Mrs. E.)
"that the major general had forever disgraced himself, by
submitting to the     caresses of the enemy."  I leave
a blank for the epithet affixed to " caresses," not because
there was any blank, but, on the contrary, because my
brother's wrath had boiled over in such a hubble-bubble of
epithets, some only half erased, some doubtfully erased,
that it was impossible, out of the various readings, to pick
out the true classical text.  " infamous," " disgusting,"
and "odious" struggled for precedency; and infamous
they might be; but on the other affixes I held my own
private opinions. For some davs. my brother's displeasure
continued to roll in reverberating thunders; but at length
it growled itself to rest; and at last he descended to mild
expostulations with me, showing clearly, in a series of
general orders, what frightful consequences must ensue, if
major generals (as a general principle) should allow them'
selves to be kissed by the enemy.
AbOut this time my brother began to issue, instead of
occasional bulletins, through which hitherto he had breathed
his opinions into the ear of the public, (viz., of Mrs. Evans,)
a regular gazette, which, in imitation of the London Ga.
zette, was published twice a week. I suppose that no
creature ever led such a life as I did in that gazette.
lRun up to the giddiest heights of promotion on one day, for
merits which I could not myself discern, in a week or two
I was brought to a court martial for offences equally obscure. I was cashiered; I was restored " on the interces



INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      95
sion of a distinguished lady; " (Mrs. Evans, to wit;) 1 was
threatened with being drummed out of the army, to the
music of the " Rogue's March;" and then, in the midst of
all this misery and degradation, upon the discovery of some
supposed energy that I had manifested, I was decorated
with the Order of the Bath. My reading had been extensive enough to give me some vague aerial sense of the
ionor involved in such a decoration, whilst I was piofoundly ignorant of the channels through which it cculd
reach an individual, and of the sole fountain from which it
could flow. But, in this enormity of disproportion between
the cause and the effect, between the agency and the result
I saw nothing more astonishing than I had seen in many
other cases confessedly true. Thousands of vast effects,
by all that I had heard, linked themselves to causes apparently trivial.  The dreadful taint of scrofula, according
to the belief of all Christendom, fled at the simple touch
of a Stuart* sovereign: no miracle in the Bible, from
Jordan or from Bethesda, could be more sudden or more
astoundingly victorious. By my own experience, again, I
knew that a styan (as it is called) upon the eyelid could be
easily reduced, though not instantaneously, by the slight
application of any golden trinket. Warts upon the fingers
of children I had myself known to vanish under the verbal
charm of a gypsy woman, without any medicinal application whatever. And I well knew, that almost all nations
* "Of a Stuart sovereign," and by no means of a Stuart only.
Queen Anne, the last Stuart who sat on the British throne, was the
last of our princes who touched for the king's evil, (as scrofula was
generally called until lately;) but the Bourbon houses, on the
thrones of France, Spain, and Naples, as well as the house of
Savoy, claimed and exercised the same supernatural privilege down
to a much later period than the year 1714 - the last of Queen Anne:
according to their own and the popular faith, they couli have
cleansed Naaman the Syrian, and Gehazi too.




96           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
believed in the dreadful mystery of the evil eye; some requiring, as a condition of the evil agency, the co-presence of
malice in the agent; but others, as appeared from my
father's Portuguese recollections, ascribing the same horrid
power to the eye of certain select persons, even though
innocent of all malignant purpose, and absolutely unconscious of their own fatal gift, until awakened to it by the
results. Why, therefore, should there be any thing to
shock, or even to surprise, in the power claimed by my
brother, as an attribute inalienable from primogeniture in
certain select families, of conferring knightly honors?
The red ribbon of the Bath he certainly did confer upon
me; and once, in a paroxysm of imprudent liberality, he
promised me at the end of certain months, supposing that
I swerved from my duty by no atrocious delinquency, the
Garter itself. This, I knew, was a far loftier distinction
than the Bath. Even then it was so; and since those days
it has become much more so; because the long roll of
martial services in the great war with Napoleon compelled
our government greatly to widen the basis of the Bath.
This promise was never fulfilled; but not for any want
of clamorous persecution on my part addressed to my
brother's wearied ear and somewhat callous sense of
honor. Every fortnight, or so, I took care that he should receive a " refresher," as lawyers call it, - a new and revised
brief, -memorializing my pretensions. These it was my
brother's policy to parry, by alleged instances of recent
misconduct on my part. But all such offences, I insisted,
were thoroughly washed away by subsequent services in
moments of peril, such as he himself could not always
deny. In reality, I believe his real motive for withholding
the Garter was, that he had nothing better to bestow upon
nimself.
" Now, look here," he would say, appealing to Mrs




INITRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF S rRIFE.   97
Evans; " I suppose there's a matter of half a dozen kings
on the continent, that would consent to lose three of their
fingers, if by such a sacrifice they could purchase the blue
ribbon; and here is this little scamp, conceiting himself
entitled to it before he has finished two campaigns." But
I was not the person to be beaten off in this fashion. I
took my stand upon the promise. A promise was a promise, even if made to a scamp; and then, besides - but
there I hesitated; awful thoughts interposed to check me;
else I wished to suggest that, perhaps, some two or three
among that half dozen kings might also be scamps. However, I reduced the case to this plain dilemma: These six
kings had received a promise, or they had not. If they had
not, my case was better than theirs; if they had, then, said
I, " all seven of us" -- I was going to add, " are sailing
in the same boat," or something to that effect, though not
so picturesquely expressed; but I was interrupted by his
deadly frown at my audacity in thus linking myself on as a
seventh to this attelage of kings, and that such an absolute
grub should dream of ranking as one in a bright pleiad of
pretenders to the Garter. I had not particularly thought of
that; but now, that such a demur was offered to my consideration, I thought of reminding him that, in a certain
shadowy sense, I also might presume to class myself as a
king, the meaning of which was this: Both my brother and
myself, for the sake of varying our intellectual amusements, occupied ourselves at times in governing imaginary
kingdoms. I do not mention this as any thing unusual; it
is a common resource of mental activity and of aspiring
energies amongst boys. Hartley Coleridge, for example,
had a kingdom which he governed for many years, whether
well or ill, is more than I can say. Kindly, I am sure, he
would govern it; but, unless a machine had been invented
for enabling him to write without effort, (as was really done
7




9W             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for our fourth George during the pressure of illness,) I feat
that the public service must have languished deplorably for
want of the royal signature. In sailing past his own dominl
ions, what dolorous outcries would have saluted him from
the shore -' Hollo, royal sir! here's the deuse to pay: a
perfect lock there is, as tight as locked jaw, upon the course
of our public business; throats there are to be cut, from the
product of ten jail deliveries, and nobody dares to cut them,
for want of the proper warrant; archbishoprics there are to be
filled; and, because they are not filled, the whole nation is
running helter skelter into heresy - and all in consequence
of your majesty's sacred   laziness."  Our governments
were less remissly administered; since each of us, by continued reports of improvements and gracious concessions
to the folly or the weakness of our subjects, stimulated the
zeal of his rival. And here, at least, there seemed to be
no reason why I should come into collision with my
brother. At any rate, I took pains not to do so. But all
was in vain. My destiny was, to live in one eternal element of feud.
My own kingdom was an island called Gombroon. But
in what parallel of north or south latitude it lay, I concealed for a time as rigorously as ancient Rome through
every century concealed her real name.* The object in
this provisional concealment was, to regulate the position of my own territory by that of my brother's; for I: One reason, I believe, why it was held a point of wisdom in ancient days that the metropolis of a warlike state should have a secret
name hidden from the world, lay in tile pagan practice of evocation,
applied to the tutelary deities of such a state. These deities migb&
be lured by certain rites and briberies into a transfer of their favcrs
to the besieging army. But, in order to make such an evocation
effectual, it was necessary to know the original and secret name of
the beleag'lered city; and this, therefore, was religiously concealed.




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORID OF STRIFE.     09
was determined to place a monstrous world of waters be.
wveen us as the only chance (and a very poor one it
proved) for compelling my brother to keep the peace. At
length, for some reason unknown to me, and much to my as*onishment, he located his capital city in the high latitude of
55 deg. N. That fact being once published and settled, instantly I smacked my little kingdom of Gombroon down into
the tropics, 10 dog., I think, south of the line. Now, at
least, I was on the right side of the hedge, or so I flattered
myself; for it struck me that my brother never would degrade himself by fitting out a costly nautical expedition
against poor little Gombroon; and how else could he get
at me r Surely the very fiend himself, if he happened to
be in a high arctic latitude, would not indulge his malice
so far as to follow its trail into the tropic of Capricorn
And what was to be got by such a freak? There was no
Golden Fleece in Gombroon. If the fiend or my brother
fancied that, for once they were in the wrong box; and
there was no variety of vegetable produce, for I never denied that the poor little island was only 270 miles in circuit. Think, then, of sailing through 75 deg. of latitude
only to crack such a miserable little filbert as that. But
my brother stunned me by explaining, that, although his:capita' lay in lat. 65 deg. N., not the less his dominions
swep' southwards through a matter of 80 or 90 deg.; and
as to the tropic of Capricorn, much of it was his own private property. I was aghast at hearing that. It seemed
that vast horns and promontories ran down from all parts
of his dominions towards any country whatsoever, in either
hemisphere, - empire or republic, monarchy, polyarchy,,jr anarchy, - that he might have reasons for assaulting.
Here in one moment vanished all that I had relied on
for protection: distance I had relied on, and suddenly I
was found ii c'ose neighborhood to my most formidable




100          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
enemy. Poverty I had relied on, and that was not denied
tie granted the poverty, but it was dependent on the barbarism of the Gombroonians. It seems that in the central
forests of Gombroonia there were diamond mines, which
my people, from their low condition of civilization, did not
value, nor had any means of working. Farewell, therefore, on my side, to all hopes of enduring peace, for here
was established, in legal phrase, a lien forever upon my
island, and not upon its margin, but its very centre, in favor of any irvaders better able than the natives to make
its treasures available. For, of old, it was an article in
my brother's code of morals, that, supposing a contest
between any two parties, of which one possessed an article,
whilst the other was better able to use it, the rightful property vested in the latter. As if you met a man with a
musket, then you might justly challenge him to a trial in
the art of making gunpowder; which if you could make,
and he could not, in that case the musket was de Jure
yours. For what shadow of a right had the fellow to a
noble instrument which he could not " maintain" in a serviceable condition, and "feed" with its daily rations of
powder and shot? Still, it may be fancied that, since
all the relations between us as independent sovereigns
(whether of war, or peace, or treaty) rested upon our ownr
representations and official reports, it was surely within
my competence to deny or qualify as much as within his
o assert. But, in reality, the law of the contest between
us, as suggested by some instinct of propriety in my own
mind, would not allow me to proceed in such a method.
What he said was like a move at chess or draughts, which
it was childish to dispute. The move bei g made, my
business was - to face it, to parry it, to evae it, and, if I
could, to overthrow it. I proceeded as a lawyer who
moves as long as he can, not by blank denial of facts; (or




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.    101:omi.ng to an issue,) but by demurring, (i. e., admitting the
allegations of fact, but otherwise interpreting their construct.on.) It was the understood necessity of the cast
that I must passively accept my brother's statements so fa'
as regarded their verbal expression; and, if I would extricate my poor islanders from their troubles, it must be by
some distinction or evasion lying within this expression, oI
not blankly contradicting it.
" How, and to what extent," my brother asked, " did 1
raise taxes upon my subjects? " My first impulse was to
say, that I did not tax them at all, for I had a perfect horror of doing so; but prudence would not allow of my saying that; because it was too probable he would demand to
know how, in that case, I maintained a standing army; and
if I once allowed it to be supposed that I had none, there
was an end forever to the independence of my people.
Poor things! they would have been invaded and dragooned
in a month. I took some days, therefore, to consider that
point; but at last replied, that my people, being maritime,
supported themselves mainly by a herring fishery, from
which I deducted a part of the produce, and afterwards
sold it for manure to neighboring nations. This last hint 1
borrowed from the conversation of a stranger who happened to dine one day at Greenhay, and mentioned that in
Devonshire, or at least on the western coast of that county,
near Ilfracombe, upon any excessive take of herrings, beyond what the markets could absorb, the surplus was applied to the land as a valuable dressing. It might be inferred from this account, however, that the arts must be in
a languishing state amongst a people that did not understand the process of salting fish; and my brother observed
derisively, mi ch to my grief, that a wretched ichthyophagous people must make shocking soldiers, weak as water,
and liable to be knocked over like ninepins; whereas, in




102           AUTOBIO(RAPHIC SKETCHES.
his army, not a man ever ate herrings, pilchards, mack
erels, or, in fact, condescended to any thing worse than surloins of beef.
At every step I had to contend for the honor and independence of my islanders; so that early I came to understand the weight of Shakspeare's sentiment" Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!"
0 reader, do not laugh! I lived forever under the terror
)f two separate wars in two separate worlds: one against,he factory boys, in a real world of flesh and blood, of
stones and brickbats, of flight and pursuit, that were any
thing but figurative; the other in a world purely aerial,
where all the combats and the sufferings were absolute
moonshine. And yet the simple truth is, that, for anxiety
and distress of mind, the reality (which almost every morning's light brought round) was as nothing in comparison of
that dream kingdom which rose like a vapor from my own
brain, and which apparently by thefiat of rmy will could be
forever dissolved. Ah! but no; I had contracted obligations to Gombroon; I had submitted my conscience to a
yoke; and in secret truth my will had no such autocratic
power. Long contemplation of a shadow, earnest study
for the welfare of that shadow, sympathy with the wounded
sensibilities of that shadow under accumulated wrongs,
these bitter experiences, nursed by brooding thought, had
gradually frozen that shadow into a rigor of reality far denser than the material realities of brass or granite. Who
builds the most durable dwellings? asks the laborer in
Hamlet;" and the answer is, The gravedigger.    He
bailds for corruption; and yet his tenements are incorruptible: "the houses which he makes last to doomsday."*
* Hamlet, Act v., scene 1.




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.            10_
Who is it that seeks for concealment?   Let him hide hnmself* in the unsearchable chambers of light,-of light
which at noonday, more effectually than any gloom, con* "Hide himself in -light." —The greatest scholar, by far, that
this island ever produced, viz., Richard Bentley, published (as is well
known) a 4to volume that in some respects is the very worst 4to now
extant in the world -viz., a critical edition of the "Paradise Lost."
I observe, in the "Edinburgh Review," (July, 1851, No. 191, p. 15,)
that a learned critic supposes Bentley to have meant this edition as a
"practical jest." Not at all. Neither could the critic have fancied
such a possibility, if he had taken the trouble (which I did many a
year back) to examine it. A jest book it certainly is, and the most
prosperous of jest books, but undoubtedly never meant for such by
the author. A man whose lips are livid with anger does not jest, and
does not understand jesting. Still, the Edinbargh Reviewer is right
about the proper functions of the book, though wrong about the intentions of the author. The fact is, the man was maniacally in error,
and always in error, as regarded the ultimate or poetic truth of Milton; but, as regarded truth reputed and truth apparent, he often had
the air of being furiously in the right; an example of which I will
cite. Milton, in the First Book of the "Paradise Lost," had said," That from the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire;"
upon which Bentley comments in effect thus: " How! —the exposed
summit of a mountain secret? Why, it's like Charing Cross-always the least secret place in the whole county." So one might fancy; since the summit of a mountain, like Plinlimmon or Cader Idris
in Wales, like Skiddaw or Helvellyn in England, constitutes a central object of attention and gaze for the whole circumjacent district,
measured by a radius sometimes of 15 to 20 miles. Upon this consideration, Bentley instructs us to substitute as the true reading"That on the sacred top," &c. Meantime, an actual experiment will
demonstrate that there is no place so absolutely secret and hidden as
the exposed summit of a mountain, 3500 feet high, in respect to an
eye stationed in the valley immediately below. A whole party of
men, women, hors ~s, and even tents, looked at under those circumn
stances, is absolutely invisible unless by the aid of glasses: and it be.
comes evident that a murder might be committed on the bare open
summit of such a mountain with more assurance of absolute secrecy
than any where c'se in the whole surrounding district.




1C4          AUTOBIOGRAPIHIC SKETCI1L6.
ceals the vey brightest stars,-rather than in labyrirtns of
darkness the thickest. What criminal is that who wishes to
abscond fiom public justice? Let him hurry into the fran.
tic publicities of London, and by no means into the quiet
privacies of the country. So, and upon the analogy of these
cases, we may understand that, to make a strife overwhelming by a thousand fold to the feelings, it must not deal with
gross material interests, but with such as rise into the world
of dreams, and act upon the nerves through spiritual, and
not through fleshly torments. Mine, in the present case,
rose suddenly, like a rocket, into their meridian altitude, by
means of a hint furnished to my brother from a Scotch advocate's reveries.
This advocate, who by his writings became the remote
cause of so much affliction to my childhood, and struck a
blow at the dignity of Gombroon, that neither my brother
nor all the forces of Tigrosylvania (my brother's kingdom)
ever could have devised, was the celebrated James Burnett,
better known to the English public by his judicial title of
Lord Monboddo. The Burnetts of Monboddo, I have often
heard, were a race distinguished for their intellectual accomplishments tlrough several successive generations; and
the judge in question was eminently so. It did him no injury that many people regarded him as crazy. In England, at the beginning of the last century, we had a saying,* in reference to the Harveys of Lord Bristol's family,
equally distinguished for wit, beauty, and eccentricity, tha'
at the creation there had been three kinds of people made,
viz., men, women, and Harveys; and by all accounts,
something of the same kind might plausibly have been
said in Scotland about the Burnet.s. Lord Monboddo's
nieces, of whom one perished by falling from a precipice,
* Whichl "saying" is sometimes ascribed, I know not how truly
to Lady Mary Worqlcy Montagu.




IN'RODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE           105
(ard, as I have heard, through mere;tbsence of mind,
whilst musing upon a book which she carried in her hand,)
still survive in the affection of many friends, through the
interest attached to their intellectual gifts; and Miss Burnett, the daughter of the judge, is remembered in all the
memorials of Burns the poet, as the most beautiful, and
otherwise the most interesting, of his female aristocratic
friends in Edinburgh. Lord Monboddo himself trod an
eccentric path in literature and philosophy; and our tutor,
who spent his whole life in reading, withdrawing himself in
that way from the anxieties incident to a narrow income
and a large family, found, no doubt, a vast fund of interesting suggestions in Lord M.'s " Dissertations on the Origin
of Language;" but to us he communicated only one section of the work. It was a long passage, containing some
very useful illustrations of a Greek idiom; useful I call
them, because four years afterwards, when I had made
great advances in my knowledge of Greek, they so appeared to me.* But then, being scarcely seven years old,
* It strikes me, upon second thoughts, that the particular idiom,
which Lord Monboddo illustrated as regarded the Greek language,
merits a momentary notice; and for this reason - that it rlays a part
not at all less conspicuous or less delicate in the Latin. Here is an
instance of its use in Greek, taken from the well-known night scene in
the "Iliad:"----- yrOr]acs e 7roIlevos rfrop,
And the heart of the shepherd rejoices; where the verb yioiosE is in
the indefinite or aorist tense, and is meant to indicate a condition of
feeling not limited to any time whatever-past, present, or future
In Latin, the force and elegance of this usage are equally impressive,
if not more so. At this moment, I remember two cases of this in
Horace: --
1. " Rar6 antecedentem scelestum
Deseruit pede pcena claudo;"
2.             " saepe Diespiter
Neglectus incesto addidit integrum."




106            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHL3.'is soon as our tutor had finished his long extract from the
Scottish judge's prelection, I could express my thankfuiness foj what I had received only by composing my fea.
tures to a deeper solemnity and sadness than usual-no
very easy task, I have been told; otherwise, I really had
not the remotest conception of what his lordship meant.
I knew very well the thing callec a tense; I knew even
then by name the Aoristus Primus, as a resnectable tense
in the Greek language. It (or shall we say he?) was
known to the whole Christian world by this distinction cf
Primus; clearly, therefore, there must be some low, vulgar tense in the background, pretending also to the name
of Aorist, but universally scouted as the Aoristus Secundus, or Birmingham counterfeit.  So that, unable as I was,
from ignorance, to go along with Lord M.'s appreciation
of his pretensions, still, had it been possible to meet an
Aoristus Primus in the flesh, I should have bowed to him
submissively, as to one apparently endowed with the mysterious rights of primogeniture.   Not so my brother.
That is - " oftentimes the supreme ruler, when treated with neglect,
confounds or unites (not has united, as the tyro might rancy) the impure man with the upright in one common fate."
Exceedingly common is this usage in Latin poetry, when the object is to generalize a remark - as not connected with one mode of
time more than another. In reality, all three modes of time-past,
present, future -are used (though not equally used) in all languages
for this purpose of generalization. Thus,1. The future; as, Sapiens dominabitur astris;
2. The present; as, Fortes fortuna juvat;
3. The past; as in the two cases cited from Horace.
But this practice holds equally in English: as to the future and
the present, nobody will doubt it; and here is a case from the past:
" The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God;" not meaning,
that in some past time he has said so, but that generally in all times
te does say so, and will say so.




INTRODUCTION TC THE WORLD OF STRIFE.      1(i7
Aorist, indeed! Primus or Secundus, what mattered it?
Paving stones were something, brickbats were something;
but ar old superannuated tense! That any grown man
should trouble himself about that! Indeed, there was something extraordinary there. For it is not amongst the ordinary functions of lawyers to take charge of Greek; far.ess, one might suppose, of lawyers in Scotland, where the
general system of education has moved for two centuries
upon a principle of slight regard to classical literature.
La'.in literature was very much neglected, and Greek nearly
altogether. The more was the astonishment at finding a
rare delicacy of critical instinct, as well as of critical sa.
gacity, applied to the Greek idiomatic niceties by a Scottish
lawyer, viz., that same eccentric judge, first made known
to us by our tutor.
To the majority of readers, meantime, at this day, Lord
M. is memorable chiefly for his craze about the degeneracy
of us poor moderns, when compared with the men of pagan
antiquity; which craze itself might possibly not have been
generally known, except in connection with the little skirmish between him and Dr. Johnson, noticed in Boswell's
account of the doctor's Scottish tour.  "Ah, doctor," said
Lord M., upon some casual suggestion of that topic, "poor
creatures are we of this eighteenth century; our fathers
were better men than we!"    "0, no, my lord," was
Johnson's reply; "L we are quite as strong as our forefathers,
and a great deal wiser! " Such a craze, however, is too
widely diffused, and falls in with too obstinate a preconception * in the human race, which has in every age hypochon* "Too obstinate a preconception." - Until the birth of geology, and
of fossil paleontology, concurring with vast strides ahead in the
science of comparative anatomy, it is a well-established fact, that
oftentimes the most scientific museum admitted as genuine fragments
tf the human osteology what in fact belonged to the gigantic brutes




108             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
driacally regarded itself as under some fatal necessity of
dwindling, much to have challenged public attention. As
real paradoxes (spite of the idle meaning attached usually
to the word paradox) have often no falsehood in then, so
here, on the contrary, was a falsehood which had in it nothing paradoxical. It contradicted all the indications of history
of our earth in her earliest stages of development. This mistake
would go some way in accounting for the absurd disposition in all
generations to view themselves as abridged editions of their forefathers. Added to which, as a separate cause of error, there can be
little doubt, that intermingled with the human race there has at most
periods of the world been a separate and Titanic race, such as the
Anakim amongst the peoples of Palestine, the Cyclopean race diffused over the Mediterranean in the elder ages of Greece, and certain
tribes amongst the Alps, known to Evelyn in his youth (about Cromwell's time) by an unpleasant travelling experience. These gigantic
races, however, were no arguments for a degeneration amongst the
rest of mankind. They were evidently a variety of man, coexistent
with the ordinary races, but liable to be absorbed and gradually lost
by intermarriage amongst other tribes of the ordinary standard. Oceasional exhumations of such Titan skeletons would strengthen the
common prejudice. They would be taken, not for a local variety, but
for an antediluvian or prehistoric type, from which the present races
of man had arisen by gradual degeneration.
These cases of actual but misinterpreted experience, at the same
time that they naturally must tend to fortify the popular prejudice,
would also, by accounting for it, and ingrafting it upon a reasonable
origin, so far tend to take fiom it the reproach of a prejudice. Though
elToneous, it would yet seem to us, in looking back upon it, a rational
and even an inevitable opinion, having such plausible grounds to
stand upon; plausible, I mean, until science and accurate examination of the several cases had begun to read them into a different construction. Yet, on the other hand, in spite of any colorable excuses
that may be pleaded for this prejudice, it is pretty plain that, after all,
there is in human nature a deep-laid predisposition to an obstinate
craze of this nature. Else why is it that, in every age alike, men have
asserted or even assumed the downward tendency of the human race
in all that regards moral qualities. For the physical degeneration of




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.           109
ana experience, which uniformly had pointed in the very
opposite directioln; and so far it ought to have been paradoxical, (that is, revolting to popular opinion,) but was not
so; for it fell in with prevailing opinions, with the oldest,
blindest, and most inveterate of human superstitions. If
extravagant, yet to the multitude it did not seem extrava
gant. So natural a craze, therefore, however baseless,
would never have carried Lord Monboddo's name into that
meteoric notoriety and atmosphere of astonishment which
soon invested it in England. And, in that case, my child
hood would have escaped the deadliest blight of mortifica.
tion and despondency that could have been incident to a
man there really were some apparent (though erroneous) arguments;
hut, for the moral degeneration, no argument at all, small or great.
Yet a bigotry of belief in this idle notion has always prevailed
amongst moralists, pagan alike and Christian. Horace, for example,
informs us that
"Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores - mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem."
The last generation was worse, it seems, than the penultimate, as thu
present is worst than the last. We, however, of the present, bad as
we may be, shall be kept in countenance by the coming generation,
which will prove much worse than ourselves. On the same precedent, all the sermons through the last three centuries, if traced back
through decennial periods, so as to lorm thirty successive strata, will
be found regularly claiming the precedency in wickedness for the
immediate period of the writer. Upon which theories, as men ought
physically to have dwindled long ago into pygmies, so, on the other
hand, morally they must by this time have left Sodom and Gomorrah far behind. What a strange animal must man upon this
scheme offer to our contemplation; shrinking in size, by graduated
process, through every century, until at last he would not rise an
inch from the ground; and, on the other hand, as regards villany,
towering evermore and more up to the heavens. What a dwarf!
what a giant! Why, the very crows would combine to destroy
such a little monster.




110           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES..nost morbid temperament concurring with a situation of
visionary (yes! if you please, of fantastic) but still of most
real distress.
How much it would have astonished Lord Monboddo to
find himself made answerable, virtually made answerable,
by the evidence of secret tears, for the misery of an unknown child in Lancashire. Yet night and day these
silent memorials of suffering were accusing him as the
founder of a wound that could not be healed. It happened
that the several volumes of his work lay for weeks in the
study of our tutor. Chance directed the eye of my brother,
one day, upon that part of the work in which Lord M. unfolds his hypothesis that originally the human race had been
a variety of the ape. On which hypothesis, by the way,
Dr. Adam Clarke's substitution of ape for serpent, in translating the word nachasih, (the brute tempter of Eve,) would
have fallen to the ground, since this would simply have
been the case of one human being tempting another. It
followed inevitably, according to Lord M., however painful
it might be to human dignity, that in this, their early stage
of brutality, men must have had tails. My brother mused
upon this revery, and, in a few days, published an extract
from some scoundrel's travels in Gombroon, according to
which the Gombroonians had not yet emerged from this
early condition of apedom. They, it seems, were still
homrines caudati. Overwhelming to me and stunning was
the ignominy of this horrible discovery. Lord M. had not
overlooked the natural question - In what way did men get
rid of their tails? To speak the truth, they never would
have got rid of them had they continued to run wild; bum
growing civilization introduced arts, and the arts introduced
sedentary habits. By these it was by the mere necessity
of c ntinually sitting down, that men gradually wore off
theii tails. Well and what should hinder the Gombroou.




INTRODUlITION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.   1ll
fains from sitting down?  Their tailors and shoemakers
would and could, I hope, sit down as well as those of
Tigrosylvania.  Why not? Ay, but my brother had insisted already that they had no tailors, that they had no
shoemakers; which, then, I did not care much about, as it
merely put back the clock of our history - throwing us
into an earlier, and therefore, perhaps, into a more warlike
stage of society. But, as the case stood now, this want of
tailors, &c., showed clearly that the process of sitting down
so essential to the ennobling of the race, had not commenced. My brother, with an air of consolation, suggested that I might even now, without an hour's delay,
compel the whole nation to sit down for six hours a day,
which would always " make a beginning." But the truth
would remain as before, viz., that I was the king of a people that had tails; and the slow, slow process by which, in
a course of many centuries, their posterity might rub them
off,- a hope of vintages never to be enjoyed by any generations that are yet heaving in sight,-that was to me the
worst form of despair.
Still there was one resource: if I " didn't like it," meaning the state of things in Gombroon, I might " abdicate."
Yes, I knew that. I might abdicate; and, once having cut
ne connection between myself and the poor abject islanders,
I might seem to have no further interest in the degradation that affected them. After such a disruption between
us, what was it to me if they had even three tails apiece?
Ah, that was fine talking; but this connection with my
poor subjects had grown up so slowly and so genially, in
the midst of struggles so constant against the encroachinents of my brother and his rascally people; we had suffered so much together; and the filaments connecting them
wilh my heart were so aerially fine and fantastic, but for
that reason so inseverable, that I abated nothing of my




12           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
anxiety on their account; making this difference only in
my legislation and administrative cares, that I pursued
them more in a spirit of despondency, and retreated more
shyly from communicating them. It was in vain that my
brother counselled me to dress my people in the Roman
toga, as the best means of concealing their ignominious appendages: if he meant this as comfort, it was none to me;
the disgrace lay in the fact, not in its publication; and in
my heart, though I continued to honor Lord Mcnboddo
(whom I heard my guardian also daily delighting to honor)
as a good Grecian, yet secretly I cursed the Aoristus Primus, as the indirect occasion of a misery which was not
and could not be comprehended.
From this deep degradation of myself and my people, I
was drawn off at intervals to contemplate a different mode
of degradation affecting two persons, twin sisters, whom I
saw intermittingly; sometimes once a week, sometimes
frequently on each separate day. You have heard, reader,
of pariahs. The pathos of that great idea possibly never
reached you. Did it ever strike you how far that idea had
extended? Do not fancy it peculiar to Hindostan. Before Delhi was, before Agra, or Lahore, might the pariah
say, I was. The most interesting, if only as the most mysterious, race of ancient days, the Pelasgi, that overspread,
in early times of Greece, the total Mediterranean,-a race
distinguished for beauty and for intellect, and sorrowful
beyond all power of man to read the cause that could lie
deep enough for so imperishable an impression, —they
were pariahs. The Jews that, in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, were cursed in a certain contingency
with a sublimer curse than ever rang through the passionate wrath of prophecy, and that afterwards, in Jerusalem,
cursed themselves, voluntarily taking on their own heads,
and on the heads of their children's children forever and




INTRODUCTIOxA TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.          113
ver, the guilt of innocent blood,-they are pariahs to this,our.  Yet for them there has ever shone a sullen light of
lope. The gypsies, for whom no conscious or acknowl-?dged hope burns through the mighty darkness that surrounds them,-they are pariahs of pariahs. Lepers were
a race of mediueval pariahs, rejected of men, that now have
gone to rest.  But travel into the forests of the Pyrenee*,
and there you will find their modern representatives in the
Cagots.  Are these Pyrenean Cagots pagans?      Not at all.
They are good Christians. Wherefore, then, that low door
in the Pyrenean churches, through which the Cagots are
forced to enter, and which, obliging them to stoop almost
to the ground, is a perpetual memento of their degradation? Wherefore is it that men of pure Spanish blood will
hold no intercourse with the Cagot? Wherefore is it that
even the shadow of a Cagot, if it falls across a fountain, is
held to have polluted that fountain?    All this points to
some dreadful taint of guilt, real or imputed, in ages far
remote.*
But in ages far nearer to ourselves, nay, in our own
generation and our own land, are many pariahs, sitting
The name and the history of the Pyrenean Cagots are equally
obscure. Some have supposed that, during the period of the Gothic
warfare with the Moors, the Cagots were a Christian tribe that betrayed the Christian cause and interests at a critical moment. But
all is conjecture. As to the name, Southey has somewhere offered a
possible interpretation of it; but it struck me as far from felicitous,
and not what might have been expected from Southey, whose vast
historical research and commanding talent should naturally have unlocked this most mysterious of modern secrets, if any unlocking does
vet lie within the resources of human skill and combining power,
now that so many ages divide us from the original steps of the case.
[ may here mention, as a fact accidentally made known to myself,
and apparently not known to Southey, that the Cagots, under a name
cry slightly altered, are found in France also, as well as Spain, and
in provinces of France that have no connection at all with Spain.
S




114          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
amongst us all, nay, oftentimes sitting (yet not recognized
for what they really are) at good men's tables. How
general is that sensuous dulness, that deafness of the
heart, which the Scriptures attribute to human beings!
"Having ears, they hear not; and, seeing, they do not
understand." In the very act of facing or touching a
dreadful object, they will utterly deny its existence. Men
say to me daily, when I ask them, in passing, " Any thing
in this morning's paper? " " 0, no; nothing at all." And,
as I never had any other answer, I am bound to suppose
that there never was any thing in a daily newspaper; and,
therefore, that the horrible burden of misery and of change,
which a century accumulates as itsfacit or total result, has
not been distributed at all amongst its thirty-six thousand
five hundred and twenty-five days: every day, it seems,
was separately a blank day, yielding absolutely nothingwhat children call a deaf nut, offering no kernel; and yet
the total product has caused angels to weep and tremble.
Meantime, when I come to look at the newspaper with my
own eyes, I am astonished at the misreport of my informants. Were there no other section in it than simply that
allotted to the police reports, oftentimes I stand aghast at
the revelations there made of human life and the human
heart; at its colossal guilt, and its colossal misery; at
the suffering which oftentimes throws its shadow over
palaces, and the grandeur of mute endurance which
sometimes glorifies a cottage. Here transpires the dreadful truth of what is going on forever under the thick
curtains of domestic life, close behind us, and before us,
and all around us. Newspapers are evanescent, and are
too rapidly recurrent, and people see nothing great in what
is familiar, nor can ever be trained to read the silent and
the shadowy in what, for the moment, is covered with the
tbbbling garrulity of daylight. I suppose now, that, in




INTRODUCTION TO TIE WORLD OF STRIFE.     115
hle next generation after that which is here concerned,
had any neighbor of our tutor been questioned on the subject of a domestic tragedy, which travelled through its
natural stages in a leisurely way, and under the eyes of
good Dr. S, he would have replied, "Tragedy! 0,
sir, nothing of the kind! You have been misled; the
gentleman must lie under a mistake: perhaps "t was in
the next street." No, it was not in the next street; and
the gentleman does not lie under a mistake, or, in fact, lie
at all. The simple truth is, blind old neighbor, that you,
being rarely in the house, and, when there, only in one
particular room, saw no more of what was hourly going
on than if you had been residing with the Sultan of Bokhara. But I, a child between seven and eight years old,
had access every where. I was privileged, and had the
entree even of the female apartments; one consequence
of which was, that I put this and that together. A number of syllables, that each for itself separately might have
meant nothing at all, did yet, when put together, through
weeks and months, read for my eyes into sentences, as
deadly and significant as Tekel, upharsin. And another
consequence was, that, being, on account of my age,
nobody at all, or very near it, I sometimes witnessed
things that perhaps it had not been meant for any body
to witness, or perhaps some half-conscious negligence
overlooked my presence. " Saw things! What was it
now? Was it a man at midnight, with a dark lantern
and a six-barrel revolver?"  No, that was not in the least
like what I saw: it was a great deal more like what I will
endeavor to describe. Imagine two young girls, of what
exact age I really do not know, but apparently from twelve
to fourteen, twins, remarkably plain in person and features,
unhealthy, and obscurely reputed to be idiots. Whether
Lney really were such was more than I knew, or could




116          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
devise any plan for learning. Without dreaming of any
thing unkind or uncourteous, my original impulse had been
to say, " If you please, are you idiots?"  But I felt that
such a question had an air of coarseness about it, though,
for my own part, I had long reconciled myself to being
called an idiot by my brother. There was, however, a
further difficulty: breathed as a gentle murmuring whisper,
the question might possibly be reconciled to an indulgent
ear as confidential and tender. Even to take a liberty
with those you love is to show your trust in their affection,
but, alas! these poor girls were deaf; and to have shouted
out, "Are you idiots, if you please?" in a voice that would
have rung down three flights of stairs, promised (as I felt,
without exactly seeing why) a dreadful exaggeration to
whatever incivility might, at any rate, attach to the queslion; and some did attach, that was clear, even if warbled
through an air of Cherubini's and accompanied on the
flute. Perhaps they were not idiots, and only seemed to
be such from the slowness of apprehension naturally connected with deafness. That 1 saw them but seldom, arose
from their peculiar position in the family. Their father
had no private fortune; his income from the church was
very slender; and, though considerably increased by the
allowance made for us, his two pupils, still, in a great
town, and with so large a family, it left him little room for
luxuries. Consequently, he never had more than two servants, and at times only one. Upon this plea rose the
scheme of the mother for employing these two young girls
in menial offices of the household economy. One reason
for that was, that she thus indulged her dislike for them,
which she took no pains to conceal; and thus, also, she
withdrew them from the notice of strangers. In this way,
It happened that I saw them myself but at uncertain intervals. Gradually, however, 1 cams to be aware of their




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.    11 
Forlorn condition, to pity them, and to love them. The
poor twins were undoubtedly plain to the degree which is
called, by unfeeling people, ugliness.  They were also
deaf, as I have said, and they were scrofulous; one of
them was disfigured by the small pox; they had glimmering eyes, red, like the eyes of ferrets, and scarcely half
open; and they did not walk so much as stumble along.
There, you -have the worst of them. Now, hear something
on the other side. What first won my pity was, their affection for each other, united to their constant sadness;
secondly, a notion which had crept into my head, probably
derived from something said in my presence by elder people, that they were destined to an early death; and, lastly,
the incessant persecutions of their mother. This lady belonged, by birth, to a more elevated rank than that of her
husband, and she was remarkably well bred as regarded
her manners. But she had probably a weak understanding; she was shrewish in her temper; was a severe economist; a merciless exactor of what she viewed as duty;
and, in persecuting her two unhappy daughters, though she
yielded blindly to her unconscious dislike of them, as creatures that disgraced her, she was not aware, perhaps, of
ever having put forth more expressions of anger and sever.
ity than were absolutely required to rouse the constitutional
torpor of her daughters' nature; and where disgust has
once rooted itself, and been habitually expressed in tones
of harshness, the mere sight of the hateful object mechanically calls forth the eternal tones of anger, without distinct
consciousness or separate intention in the speaker. Loud
speaking, besides, or even shouting, was required by the
deafness of the two girls. From anger so constantly discharging its thunders, naturally they did not show open
signs of recoiling; but that they felt it deeply, may be presumed from their sensibility to kindness. My own experi




11US          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
once showed that; for, as often as I met them, we exchanged kisses; and my wish had always been to beg
them, if they really were idiots, not to mind it, since I
should not like them the less on that account. This wish
of mine never came to utterance; but not the less they
were aware, by my manner of salutation, that one person
at least, amongst those who might be considered strangers,
did not find any thing repulsive about them; and the pleasure they felt was expressed broadly upon their kindling
faces.
Such was the outline of their position; and, that being
explained, what I saw was simply this: it composed a silent and symbolic scene, a momentary interlude in dumb
show, which interpreted itself, and settled forever in my
recollection, as if it had prophesied and interpreted the
event which soon followed. They were resting from toil,
and both sitting down. This had lasted for perhaps ten or
fifteen minutes. Suddenly from below stairs the voice of
angry summons rang up to their ears. Both rose, in an
instant, as if the echoing scourge of some avenging Tisiphone were uplifted above their heads; both opened their
arms; flung them round each other's necks; and then, unclasping them, parted to their separate labors. This was
my last rememberable interview with the two sisters; in a
week both were corpses. They had died, I believe, of
scarlatina, and very nearly at the same moment.
But surely it was no matter for grief, that the two scrofulous idiots were dead and buried. 0, no! Call them
idiots at your pleasure, serfs- or slaves, strulbrugs * or pa.
* " Strulbrugs." - Hardly strulbrlus, will be the thought of the learned reader, who knows that young women could not be strulbrugs;
since the true strulbrug was one who, from base fear of dying, had
lingered on into an old age, omnivorous of every genial or vital im



INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.           119
rans; their case was certainly not worsened by being
booked for places in the grave. Idiocy, for any thing I
know, may, in that vast kingdom, enjoy a natural precedency; scrofula and leprosy may have some mystic privilege in a coffin; and the pariahs of the upper earth may
form the aristocracy of the deal. That the idiots, real or
reputed, were at rest,-that their warfare was accomplished, —might, if a man happened to know enough, be interpreted as a glorious festival. The sisters were seen no more
upon staircases or in bed rooms, and deadly silence had
succeeded to the sound of continual uproars. Memorials
of them were none surviving on earth. Not they it was
that furnished mementoes of themselves. The mother it
was, the father it was-that mother who by persecution
had avenged the wounds offered to her pride; that father,
pulse. The strulbrug of Swift (and Swift, being his horrid creator,
ought to understand his own horrid creation) was a wreck, a shell,
that had been burned hollow, and cancered by the fierce furnace of
life. His clockwork was gone, or carious; only some miserable fragment of a pendulum continued to oscillate paralytically from mere incapacity of any thing so abrupt, and therefore so vigorous, as a decided HALT! However, the use of this dreadful word may be reasonably extended to the young who happen to have become essentially old
in misery. Intensity of a suffering existence may compensate the
want of extension; and a boundless depth of misery may be a transformed expression for a boundless duration of misery. The most
aged person, to all appearance, that ever came under my eyes, was
an infant- hardly eight months old. He was the illegitimate son
of a poor idiot girl, who had herself been shamefully ill treated; and
the poor infant, falling under the care of an enraged grandmother,
who felt herself at once burdened and disgraced, was certainly not
better treated. He was dying, when I saw him, of a lingering malady, with features expressive of frantic misery; and it seemed to me
that he looked at the least three centuries old. One might have fancied him one of Swift's strulbrugs, that, through long attenuation and
decay, had dwindled back into infancy, with one organ only left per
fect -- the organ of fear and misery.




120          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
who had tolerated this persecution; she it was, he it was.
that by the altered glances of her haunted eye, that by the
altered character of his else stationary habits, had revived
for me a spectacle, once real, of visionary twin sisters, moving forever up and down the stairs —sisters, patient, humble, silent, that snatched convulsively at a loving smile, or
loving gesture, from a child, as at some message of remembrance from God, whispering to them, "You are not forgotten" —sisters born apparently for the single purpose
of suffering, whose trials, it is true, were over, and could
not be repeated, but (alas for her who had been their
cause!) could not be recalled. Her face grew thin, her
eye sunken and hollow, after the death of her daughters;
and, meeting her on the staircase, I sometimes fancied that
she did not see me so much as something beyond me. Did
any misfortune befall her after this double funeral? Did
the Nemesis that waits upon the sighs of children pursue
her steps? Not apparently: externally, things went well;
her sons were reasonably prosperous; her handsome
daughter-for she had a more youthful daughter, who
really was handsome -continued to improve in personal
attractions; and some years after, I have heard, she married happily. But from herself, so long as I continued to
know her, the altered character of countenance did not depart, nor the gloomy eye, that seemed to converse with secret and visionary objects.
This result from the irrevocable past was not altogether
confined to herself. It is one evil attached to chronic and
domestic oppression, that it draws into its vortex, as unwilling, or even as loathing, cooperators, others who
either see but partially the wrong they are abetting, or,
in cases where they do see it, are unable to make head
against it, through the inertia of their own nature, or
through the coercion of circumstances. Too clearly, by




NT'RODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.   121
thre restless irritation of his manner for some time after the
children's death, their father testified, in a language not
fully, perhaps, perceived by himself, or meant to be understood by others, that to his inner conscience he also was not
clear of blame. Had he, then, in any degree sanctioned
the injustice which sometimes he must have witnessed?
Far from it; he had been roused from his habitual indolence into energetic expressions of anger; he had put an
end to the wrong, when it came openly before him. I had
myself heard him say on many occasions, with patriarchal
fervor, " Woman, they are your children, and God made
them. Show mercy to them, as you expect it for yourself."
But he must have been aware, that, for any three instances
of tyrannical usage that fell under his notice, at least five
hundred would escape it.  That was the sting of the
case-that was its poisonous aggravation.  But with a
nature that sought for peace before all things, in this very
worst of its aggravations was found a morbid cure —the
effectual temptation to wilful blindness and forgetfulness.
The sting became the palliation of the wrong, and the
poison became its anodyne.  For together with the five
hundred hidden wrongs, arose the necessity that they must
be hidden. Could he be pinned on, morning, noon, and
night, to his wife's apron? And if not, what else should
he do by angry interferences at chance times than add
special vindictive impulses to those of general irritation
and dislike? Some truth there was in this, it cannot be
denied: innumerable cases arise, in which a man the most
just is obliged, in some imperfect sense, to connive at injustice; his chance experience must convince him that
injustice is continually going on; and yet, in any attempt
to intercept it or to check it, he is met and baffled by the
insuperable obstacles of household necessities.  Dr. S.
therefore surrendered himself, as under a coercion that




122           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
was none of his creating, to a passive acquiescence and t
blindness that soothed his constitutional indolence; and he
reconciled his feelings to a tyranny which he tolerated,
under some self-flattering idea of submitting with resignation to a calamity that he suffered.
Some years after this, I read the "Agamemnon" of
ZEschylus; and then, in the prophetic horror with which
Cassandra surveys the regal abode in Mycenm, destined
to be the scene of murders so memorable through the long
traditions of the Grecian stage, murders that, many cen.
tries after all the parties to them - perpetrators, sufferers, avengers- had become dust and ashes, kindled again
into mighty life through a thousand years upon the vast
theatres of Athens and Rome, I retraced the horrors, not
prophetic but memorial, with which I myself had invested
that humble dwelling of Dr. S.; and read again, repeated
in visionary proportions, the sufferings which there had
darkened the days of people known to myself through two
distinct successions - not, as was natural to expect, of
parents first and then of children, but inversely of children and parents. Manchester was not Mycene. No,
but by many degrees nobler. In some of the features
most favorable to tragic effects, it was so; and wanted
only those idealizing advantages for withdrawing mean
details which are in the gift of distance and hazy antiquity.
Even at that day Manichester was far larger, teeming with
more and with stronger hearts; and it contained a population the most energetic even in the modern world - how
much more so, therefore, by comparison with any race in
ancient Greece, inevitably rendered effeminate by dependence too generally upon slaves.  Add to this superior
energy in Lancashire, the immeasurably profounder feelings generated by the mysteries which stand behind Christianity, as compared with the shallow mysteries that stood




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD 3F STRIFE.    123
behilnd paganism, and it would be easy to draw the inference, that, in the capacity for the infinite and the impassioned, for horror and for pathos, Mycense could have
had no pretensions to measure herself against Manchester.
Not that I had drawn such an inference myself. Why
should I? there being nothing to suggest the poirts in
which the two cities differed, but only the single one in
which they agreed, viz., the dusky veil that overshadowed
io both the noonday tragedies haunting their household
recesses; which veil was raised only to the gifted eyes of
a Cassandra, or to eyes that, like my own, had exper.mentally become acquainted with them as facts. Pitiably
mean is he that measures the relations of such cases by
the scenical apparatus of purple and gold. That which
never has been apparelled in royal robes, and hung with
theatrical jewels, is but suffering from an accidental fraud,
having the same right to them that any similari misery can
have, or calamity upon an equal scale. These proportions
are best measured from the fathoming ground of a real
uncounterfeit sympathy.
I have mentioned already that we had four male guardians, (a fifth being my mother.) These four were B., E.,
G., and H. The two consonants, B. and G., gave us little
trouble. G., the wisest of the whole band, lived at a distance of more than one hundred miles: him, therefore, we
rarely saw; but B., living within four miles of Greenhay,
washed his hands of us by inviting us, every now and then,
to spend a few days at his house.
At this house, which stood in the country, there was a
family of amiable children, who were more skilfully trained
in their musical studies than at that day was usual. They
sang the old English glees and madrigals, and correctly
enough for me, who, having, even at that childish age, a
proternatural sensibility to music, lad also, as may be




124           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
supposed, the most entire want of musical knowledge. No
blunders could do much to mar my pleasure. There first
I heard the concertos of Corelli; but also, which far more
profoundly affected me, a few selections from Jomelli and
Cimarosa. With Handel I had long been familiar, for the
famos chorus singers of Lancashire sang continually at
churches the most offective parts from his chief oratorios.
Mozart was yet to come; for, except perhaps at the opera
in London, even at this time, his music was most imperfectly diffused through England. But, above all, a thing
which to my dying day I could never forget, at the house
of this guardian I heard sung a long canon of Cherubini's.
Forty years later I heard it again, and better sung; but at
that time I needed nothing better. It was sung by four
male voices, and rose into a region of thrilling passion,
such as my heart had always dimly craved and hungered
after, but which now first interpreted itself, as a physical
possibility, to my ear.
My brother did not share my inexpressible delight; his
taste ran in a different channel; and the arrangements of
the house did not meet his approbation; particularly this,
that either Mrs. B. herself, or else the governess, was
always present when the young ladies joined our society,
which my brother considered particularly vulgar, since
natural propriety and decorum should have whispered to
an old lady that a young gentleman might have "' things"
to say to her daughters which he could not possibly intend
for the generai ear of eavesdroppers - things tending to
the confidential or the sentimental, which none but a shameless old lady would seek to participate; by that means
compelling a young man to talk as loud as if he were
addressing a mob at Charing Cross, or reading the Riot
Act. There were other out-of-door amusements, amongst
which a swing-which I mention for the sake of illustrat




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.    125
ing the passive obedience which my brother levied upon
me, either through my conscience, as mastered by his doctrine of primogeniture, or, as in this case, through my sensibility to shame under his taunts of cowardice. It was a
most ambitious swing, ascending to a height beyond any
that I have since seen in fairs or public gardens. Horror
was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its most
aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the
swoop downwards threatened always to make me sick, in
which it is probable that I must have relaxed my hold of
the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to
the ground. But, in defiance of all this miserable panic, I
continued to swing whenever he tauntingly invited me. It
was well that my brother's path in life soon ceased to coincide with my own, else I should infallibly have broken my
neck in confronting perils which brought me neither honor
nor profit, and in accepting defiances which, issue how they
might, won self-reproach from myself, and sometimes a
gayety of derision from him. One only of these defiances
I declined. There was a horse of this same guardian B.'s,
who always, after listening to Cherubini's music, grew
irritable to excess; and, if any body mounted him, would
seek relief to his wounded feelings in kicking, more or less
violently, for an hour. This habit endeared him to my
brother, who acknowledged to a propensity of the same
amiable kind; protesting that an abstract desire of kicking
seized him always after hearing good performers on particular instruments, especially the bagpipes. Of kicking?
But of kicking what or whom? I fear of kicking the venerable public collectively, creditors without exception, but
also as many of the debtors as might be found at large;
doctors of medicine more especially, but with no absolute
immunity for the majority of their patients; Jacobins, but
not the leis anti-Jacobins; every Calvinist, which seems




126          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHEb.
reasonable  but then also, which is intolerable, every
Arminian. Is philosophy able to account for this morbid
affection, and particularly when it takes the restricted form
(as sometimes it does, in the bagpipe case) of seeking furiously to kick the piper, instead of paying him? In this
case, my brother was urgent with me to mount en croupe
behind himself. But weak as I usually was, this proposal
I resisted as an immediate suggestion of the fiend; for I
had heard, and have since known proofs of it, that a horse,
when lie is ingeniously vicious, sometimes has the power,
in lashing out, of curving round his hoofs, so as to lodge
them, by way of indorsement, in the small of his rider's
back; and, of course, he would have an advantage for such
a purpose, in the case of a rider sitting on the crupper.
That sole invitation I persisted in declining.
A young gentleman had joined us as a fellow-student
under the care of our tutor. He was an only son; indeed,
the only child of an amiable widow, whose love and hopes
all centred in him. He was destined to inherit several
separate estates, and a great deal had been done to spoil
him by indulgent aunts; but his good natural disposition
defeated all these efforts; and, upon joining us, he proved
to be a very amiable boy, clever, quick at learning, and
abundantly courageous. In the summer months, his mother
usually took a house out in the country, sometimes on one
side of Manchester, sometimes on another. At these rusticating seasons, he had often rrucn farther to come than
ourselves, and on that account he rode on horseback.
Generally it was a fierce mountain pony that he rode; and
it was worth while to cultivate the pony's acquintance, for
the sake of understanding the extent to which the fiend can
sometimes incarnate himself in a horse. I do not trouble
the reader with any account of his tricks, and drolleries,
and scoundrelisms; but this I may mention, that he had the




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     127
propensity ascribed many centuries ago to the Scandinaviarn
horses for sharing and practically asserting his share in the
angry passions of a battle. He would fight, or attempt to
fight, on his rider's side, by biting, rearing, and suddenly
wheeling round, for the purpose of lashing out when he
found himself within kicking range.* This little monster
was coal black; and, in virtue of his carcass, would not have
seemed very formidable; but his head made amends - it
was the head of a buffalo, or of a bison, and his vast jungle
of mane was the mane of a lion. His eyes, by reason of
this intolerable and unshorn mane, one did not often see,
except as lights that sparkled in the rear of a thicket; but,
once seen, they were not easily forgotten, for their malignity was diabolic. A few miles more or less being a matter
of indifference to one who was so well mounted, 0. would
sometimes ride out with us to the field of battle; and, by
manceuvring so as to menace the enemy on the flanks, in
skirmishes he did good service. But at length came a day
of pitched battle. The enemy had mustered in unusual
strength, and would certainly have accomplished the usual
result of putting us to flight with more than usual ease,
but, under the turn which things took, their very numbers
aided their overthrow, by deepening their confusion. 0.
had, on this occasion, accompanied us; and, as he had
hitherto taken no very decisive part in the war, confining
himself to distant " demonstrations," the enemy did not
much regard his presence in the field. This carelessness
threw them into a dense mass, upon which my brother's
rapid eye saw instantly the opportunity offered for operating most effectually by a charge. 0. saw it too; and,
* This was a manceuvre regularly taught to the Austrian cavalry
in the middle of the last century, as a ready way of opening the doors
of cottages.




128          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
happening to have his spurs on, he complied cheerfully
with my brother's suggestion. He had the advantage of a
slight descent: the wicked pony went down " with a will;"
his echoing hoofs drew the general gaze upon him; his
head, his leonine mane, his diabolic eyes, did the rest; and
in a moment the whole hostile array had broken, and was
in rapid flight across the brick fields. I leave the reader
to judge whether " Te Deum " would be sung on that niglht.
A Gazette Extraordinary was issued; and my brother had
really some reason for his assertion, " that in conscience
he could not think of comparing Cannm to this smashing
defeat;" since at Canne many brave men had refused to
fly- the consul himself, Terentius Varro, amongst them;
but, in the present rout, there was no Terentius Varro -
every body fled.
The victory, indeed, considered in itself, was complete.
But it had consequences which we had not looked for. In
the ardor of our conflict, neither my brother nor myself
had remarked a stout, square-built man, mounted on an uneasy horse, who sat quietly in his saddle as spectator of
the battle, and, in fact, as the sole non-combatant present.
This man, however, had been observed by 0., both before
and after his own brilliant charge; and, by the description,
there could be no doubt that it had been our guardian B.,
as also, by the description of the horse, we could as little
doubt that he had been mounted on Cherubini.   My
brother's commentary was in a tone of bitter complaint,
that so noble an opportunity should have been lost for
strengthening O.'s charge. But the consequences of this
incident were graver than we anticipated. A general
board of our guardians, vowels and consonants, was summoned to investigate the matter. The origin of the feud,
or " war," as my brother called it, was inquired into. As
well might the war of Troy or the purser's accounts from




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     129
the Argonautic expedition have been overhauled. Ancient
night and chaos had closed over the " incunabula belli;"
and that point was given up in despair. But what hindered
a general pacification, no matter in how many wrongs
the original dispute had arisen? Who stopped the way
which led to peace? Not we, was our firm declaration;
we were most pacifically inclined, and ever had been;
we were, in fact, little saints. But the enemy could not
be brought to any terms of accommodation. " That we
will try," said the voweL amongst our guardians, Mr. E.
He, being a magistrate, had naturally some weight with the
proprietors of the cotton factory. The foremen of the
several floors were summoned, and gave it as their humble
opinion that we, the aristocratic party in the war, were a:
bad as the sans culottes-" not a pin to choose between us."
Well, but no matter for the past: could any plan be devised
for a pacific future? Not easily. The workpeople were so
thoroughly independent of their employers, and so careless of their displeasure, that finally this only settlement
was available as wearing any promise of permanence, viz.,
that we should alter our hours, so as not to come into collision with the exits or returns of the boys.
Under this arrangement, a sort of hollow armistice prevailed for some time; but it was beginning to give way,
when suddenly an internal change in our own home put an
end to the war forever. My brother, amongst his many
accomplishments, was distinguished for his skill in drawing.
Some of his sketches had been shown to Mr. De Loutherbourg, an academician well known in those days, esteemed
even in these days, after he has been dead for forty or fifty
years, and personally a distinguished favorite with the king,
(George III.) He pronounced a very flattering opinion
upon my brother's promise of excellence. This being
known, a fee of a thousand gulineas was offered to Mr. L.
9




130          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
by the guardians; and finally that gentleman took clarge
of my brother as a pupl,  Now, therefore, my brother,
King of Tigrosylvania, scourge of Gombroon, separated
from me; and, as it turned out, forever. I never saw him
again; and, at Mr. De L.'s house in Hammersmith, before
he had completed his sixteenth year, he died of typhus
fever. And thus it happened that a little gold dust skilfully applied put an end to wars that else threatened to ax.
tend into a Carthaginian length. In one week's time
" Hi motus animorum atquc hec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quidrunt."
Here I had terminated this chapter, as at a natural
pause, which, whilst shutting out forever my eldest brother
from the reader's sight and from my own, necessarily at
the same moment worked a permanent revolution in the
character of my daily life. Two such changes, and both
so abrupt, indicated imperiously the close of one era and
the opening of another. The advantages, indeed, which
my brother had over me in years, in physical activities of
every kind, in decision of purpose, and in energy of will,all which advantages, besides, borrowed a ratification from
an obscure sense, on my part, of duty as incident to what
seemed an appointment of Providence, - inevitably had
controlled, and for years to come would have controlled,
the free spontaneous movements of a contemplative dreamer
like myself. Consequently, this separation, which proved
an eternal one, and contributed to deepen my constitutional
propensity to gloomy meditation, had for me (partly on
that account, but much more through the sudden birth of
perfect independence which so unexpectedly it opened) the
value of a revolutionary experience. A new date, a new
starting point, a redemption (as it might be called) into the




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF S'IRIFE.    131
gol]en sleep of halcyon quiet, after everlasting st.rms,
suddenly dawned upon me; and not as any casual interMalation of holidays that would come to an end, but, for
any thing that appeared to the contrary, as the perpetual
tenor of my future career. No longer was the factory a
Carthage for me: if any obdurate old Cato there were who
found his amusement in denouncing it with a daily "Delenda
est," take notice, (I said silently to myself,) that I acknowledge no such tiger for a friend of mine. Nevermore was
the bridge across the Irwell a bridge of sighs for me. And
the meanest of the factory population - thanks be to their
discrimination - despised my pretensions too entirely to
waste a thought or a menace upon a cipher so abject.
This change, therefore, being so sudden and so total,
ought to signalize itself externally by a commensurate
break in the narrative. A new chapter, at the least, with
a hugh interspace of blank white paper, or even a new
book, ought rightfully to solemnize so profound a revolution. And virtually it shall. But, according to the general
agreement of antiquity, it is not felt as at all disturbing to
the unity of that event which winds up the " Iliad," viz.,
the death of Hector, that Homer expands it circumstantially into the whole ceremonial of his funeral obsequies;
and upon that same principle I - when looking back to this
abrupt close of all connection with my brother, whether
in my character of major general or of potentate trembling daily for my people - am reminded that the very last
morning of this connection had its own separate distinction;rom all other mornings, in a way that entitles it to its own
separate share in the general commemoration. A shadow
fell upon this particular morning as from a cloud of danger,
that lingered for a moment over our heads, might seem
even to muse and hesitate, and then sullenly passed away
into distant quarters. It is noticeable that a dange- whicl




132           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
approaches, but wheels away, - which threatens, but finally
forbears to strike,- is more interesting by much on a dis.
tant retrospect than the danger which accomplishes its
mission. The Alpine precipice, down which many pilgrims have fallen, is passed without much attention; but
that precipice, within one inch of which a traveller has
passed unconsciously in the dark, first tracing his peril
along the snowy margin on the next morning, becomes
invested with an attraction of horror for all who hear the
story. The dignity of mortal danger ever after consecrates
the spot; and, in this particular case which I am now
recalling, the remembrance of such a danger consecrates
the day.
That day was amongst the most splendid in a splendid
June: it was - to borrow the line of Wordsworth" One of those heavenly days which cannot die; "
and, early as it was at that moment, we children, all six
of us that then survived, were already abroad upon the
lawn. There were two lawns at Greenhay in the shrubbery that invested three sides of the house: one of these,
which ran along one side of the house, extended to a little
bridge traversed by the gates of entrance. The central
gate admitted carriages: on each side of this was a smaller
gate for foot passengers; and, in a family containing so
many as six children, it may be supposed that often enough
one or other of the gates was open; which, most fortunate.
ly, on this day was not the case. Along the margin of
this side lawn ran a little brook, which had been raised to a
uniform level, and kept up by means of a wear at the point
where it quitted the premises; after which it resumed its
natural character of wildness, as it trotted on to the little
hamlet of Greenhill. This brook my brother was at one
time disposed to treat as Remus treated the infant walls of




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     133
Rome; but, on maturer thoughts, having built a fleet of
rafts, he treated it more respectfully; and this morning, as
will be seen, the breadth of the little brook did us " yeo.
man's service." Me at one time he had meant to put on
board this fleet, as his man Friday; and I had a fair prospect of first entering life in the respectable character of supercargo.  But it happened that the current carried his
rafts and himself over the wear; which, he assured us, was
no accident, but a lesson by way of practice in the art of
contending with the rapids of the St. Lawrence and other
Canadian streams. However, as the danger had been considerable, he was prohibited from trying such experiments
with me. On the centre of the lawn stood my eldest surviving sister, Mary, and my brother William. Round him,
attracted (as ever) by his inexhaustible opulence of thought
and fun, stood, laughing and dancing, my youngest sister,
a second Jane, and my youngest brother Henry, a posthumous child, feeble, and in his nurse's arms, but on this
morning showing signs of unusual animation and of sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day.
Whirling round on his heel, at a little distance, and utterly
abstracted from all around him, my next brother, Richard.
he that had caused so much affliction by his incorrigible
morals to the Sultan Amurath, pursued his own solitary
thoughts -whatever those might be. And, finally, as regards myself, it happened that I was standing close to the
edge of the brook, looking back at intervals to the group
of five children and two nurse maids who occupied the
centre of the lawn; time, about an hour before our breakfast, or about two hours before the world's breakfast, - i. e.,
a little after seven, - when as yet in shady parts of the
grounds the dazzling jewelry of the early dews had not entirely exhaled. So standing, and so occupied, suddenly we
were alarmed by shouts as of some great mob manifestly




134         AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
in rapid motion, and probably, at this instant, taking the
right-angled turn into the lane connecting Greenhay with
the Oxford Road. The shouts indicated hostile and headlong pursuit: within one minute another right-angled turn
in the lane itself brought the uproar fully upon the ear;
and it became evident that some imminent danger - of
what nature it was impossible to guess - must be hastily
nearing us. We were all rooted to the spot; and all
turned anxiously to the gates, which happily seemed to be
closed. Had this been otherwise, we should have had no
time to apply any remedy whatever, and the consequences
must probably have involved us all. In a few seconds, a
powerful dog, not much above a furlong ahead of his pursuers, wheeled into sight. We all saw him pause at the
gates; but, finding no ready access through the iron lattice work that protected the side battlements of the little
bridge, and the pursuit being so hot, he resumed his course
along the outer margin of the brook. Coming opposite
to myself, he made a dead stop. I had thus an opportunity of looking him steadily in the face; which I did, without more fear than belonged naturally to a case of so much
hurry, and to me, in particular, of mystery. I had never
heard of hydrophobia. But necessarily connecting the
furious pursuit with the dog that now gazed at me from
the opposite side of the water, and feeling obliged to presume that he had made an assault upon somebody or other,
I looked searchingly into his eyes, and observed that they
seemed glazed, and as if in a dreamy state, but at the same
time suffused with some watery discharge, while his mouth
was covered with masses of white foam. He looked most
earnestly at myself and the group beyond me; but he
made no effort whatever to cross the brook, and apparently
had not the energy to attempt it by a flying leap. My
brother William, who did not in the least suspect the real




INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.     135
danger, invited the dog to try his chance in a leap -assuring him that, if he succeeded, he would knight him on
the spot. The temptation of a knighthood, however, did
not prove sufficient. A very few seconds brought his pursuers within sight; and steadily, without sound or gesture
of any kind, he resumed his flight in the only direction
open to him, viz., by a field path across stiles to Greenhill.
Half an hour later he would have met a bevy of children
going to a dame's school, or carrying milk to rustic neighbors. As it was, the early morning kept the road clear in
front. But behind immense was the body of agitated pursuers. Leading the chase came, probably, half a troop of
light cavalry, all on foot, nearly all in their stable dresses,
and armed generally with pitchforks, though some eight or
ten carried carabines. Half mingled with these, and very
little in the rear, succeeded a vast miscellaneous mob, that
had gathered on the chase as it hurried through the purlieus
of Deansgate, and all that populous suburb of Manchester.
From some of these, who halted to recover breath, we obtained an explanation of the affair. About a mile and a
half from Greenhay stood some horse barracks, occupied
usually by an entire regiment of cavalry. A large dog -
one of a multitude that haunted the barracks- had for
some days manifested an increasing sullenness, snapping
occasionally at dogs and horses, but finally at men. Upon
this, he had been tied up; but in some way he had this
morning liberated himself: two troop horses he had immediately bitten; and had made attacks upon several of the
men, who fortunately parried these attacks by means of
the pitchforks standing ready to their hands. On this evidence, coupled with the knowledge of his previous illness,
he was summarily condemned as mad; and the general
pursuit commenced, which brought all parties (hunters and
game) sweeping so wildly past the quiet grounds of GreeD



136          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
hay. The sequel of the affair was this: none of the earabineers succeeded in getting a shot at the dog; in consequence of which, the chase lasted for 17 miles nominally;
but, allowing for all the doublings and headings back of
the dog, by computation for about 24; and finally, in a
state of utter exhaustion, he was run into and killed, somewhere in Cheshire. Of the two horses whom he had bitten,
both treated alike, one died in a state of furious hydrophobia some two months later, but the other (though the more
seriously wounded of the two) manifested no symptoms
whatever of constitutional derangement. And thus it happened that for me this general event of separation from my
eldest brother, and the particular morning on which it occurred, were each for itself separately and equally memorable.
Freedom won, and death escaped, almost in the same hour,freedom from a yoke of such secret and fretful annoyance
as none could measure but myself, and death probably
through the fiercest of torments, —these double cases of
deliverance, so sudden and so unlooked for, signalized by
what heraldically might have been described as a two-headed memorial, the establishment of an epoch in my life.
Not only was the chapter of INFANCY thus solemnly finished forever, and the record closed, but - which cannot
often happen - the chapter was closed pompously ana
conspicuously by what the early printers through the 15th
and 16th centuries would have called a bright and illumi.
nated colophon.




CHAPTER liI.
INFANT LITERATURE.' "The child," says Wordsworth, " is father of the man;.hus calling into conscious notice the fact, else faintly or
not at all perceived, that whatsoever is seen in the maturest
idult, blossoming and bearing fruit, must have preexisted
jy way of germ in the infant. Yes; all that is now broadly
Emblazoned in the man once was latent-seen or not seen
- as a vernal bud in the child. But not, therefore, is it
true inversely, that all which preexists in the child finds
its development in the man. Rudiments and tendencies,
which might have found, sometimes by accidental, do not
find, sometimes under the killing frost of counter forces,
cannot find, their natural evolution. Infancy, therefore, is
to be viewed, not only as part of a larger world that waits
for its final complement in old age, but also as a separate
wor'd itself; part of a continent, but also a distinct penin.
sula. Most of what he has, the grown-up man inherits
from his infant self; but it does not follow that he always
enters upon the whole of his natural inheritance.
Childhood, therefore, in the midst of its intellectual weakness, and sometimes even by means of this weakness, enjuys a limited privilege of strength. The heart in this season of life is apprehensive, and, where its sensibilities are
137




138           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
profound, is endowed with a special power of listening for
the tones of truth - hidden, struggling, or remote; for the
knowledge being then narrow, the interest is narrow in trie
objects of knowledge; consequently the sensibilities are
not scattered, are not multiplied, are not crushed and confounded (as afterwards they are) under the burden ct that
distraction which lurks in the infinite littleness of details.
That mighty silence which infancy is thus privileged
by nature and by position to enjoy codperates with another source of power, - almost peculiar to youth and
youthful circumstances, - which Wordsworth also was the
first person to notice. It belongs to a profound experience of the relations subsisting between ourselves and
nature - that not always are we called upon to seek;
sometimes, and in childhood above all, we are sought.
"Think you,'mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking "
And again: 
"Nor less I deem that there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
And we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness."
These cases of infancy, reached at intervals by special
revelations, or creating for itself, through its privileged
silence of heart, authentic whispers of truth, or beauty, or
power, have some analogy to those other cases, more directly supernatural, in which (according to the old traditional faith of our ancestors) deep messages of admonition
reached an individual through sudden angular deflexions
of words, uttered or written, that had not been originally
addressed to himself. Of these there were two distinct




INFANT LITERATURE.                139
classes -those where the    person concerned had been
purely passive; and, secondly, those in which he himself
had to some extent cooperated. The first class have been
noticed by Cowper, the poet, and by George Herbert, the
well-known pious brother of the still better-known infidel,
Lord Herbert, (of Cherbury,) in a memorable sonnet; scintillations they are of what seem nothing less than providential lights oftentimes arresting our attention, from the
very centre of what else seems the blank darkness of
chance and blind accident. " Books lying open, millions
of surprises," -these are among the cases to which Herbert (and to which Cowper) alludes, —books, that is to
say, left casually open without design or consciousness,
from which some careless passer-by, when throwing the
most negligent of glances upon the page, has been startled
by a solitary word lying, as it were, in ambush, v'aiting
and lurking for him, and looking at him steadily as an eye
searching the haunted places in his conscience. These cases
are in principle identical with those of the szcond class,
where the inquirer himself cooperated, or was not entirely passive; cases such as those which the Jews called
Bath-col, or daughter of a voice, (the echo* augury,) viz.,
* " Echo augury." - The daughter of a voice meant an echo, the
original sound being viewed as the mother, and the reverberation, or
secondary sound, as the daughter. Analogically, therefore, the direct
and original meaning of any word, or sentence, or counsel, was the
mother meaning; but the secondary, or mystical meaning, created by
peculiar circumstances for one separate and peculiar ear, the daughter meaning, or echo meaning. This mode of augury, through secondary interpretations of chance words, is not, as some readers may
fancy, an old, obsolete, or merely Jewish form of seeking the divine
pleasure. About a century ago, a man so famous, and by repute so
unsuperstitious, as Dr. Doddridge, was guided in a primary act of
choice, influencing his whole after life, by a few chance words from a
child reading aloud to his mother. With the other mode of augury




140             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKE7ICHES.
where a man, perplexed in judgment and sighing for some
determining counsel, suddenly heard from a stranger in
some unlooked-for quarter words not meant for himself,
but clamorously applying to the difficulty besetting him.
In these instances, the mystical word, that carried a secret
meaning and message to one sole ear in the world, was
unsought for: that constituted its virtue and its divinity;
and to arrange means wilfully for catching at such casual
words, would have defeated the purpose. A well-known
variety of augury, conducted upon this principle, lay in the' Sortes Biblicae," where the Bible was the oracular book
consulted, and far more extensively at a later period in the
" Sortes Virgilianae," * where the jEneid was the oracle
consulted.
viz., that noticed by Herbert, where not the ear but the eye presides.
catching at some word that chance has thrown upon the eye in some
book left open by negligence, or opened at random by one's self,
Cowper, the poet, and his friend Newton, with scores of others that
could be mentioned, were made acquainted through practical results
and personal experiences that in their belief were memorably important.
* " Sortes Virgiliance." - Upon what principle could it have been
that Virgil was adopted as the oracular fountain in such a case? An
author so limited even as to bulk, and much more limited as regards
compass of thought and variety of situation or character, was about
the worst that pagan literature offered. But I myself once threw out
a suggestion, which (if it is sound) exposes a motive in behalf of such
a choice that would be likely to overrule the strong motives against
it. That motive was, unless my whole speculation is groundless, the
very same which led Dante, in an age of ignorance, to select Virgil
as his guide in Hades. The seventh son of a seventh son has always
traditionally been honored as the depositary of magical and other
supernatural gifts. And the same traditional privilege attached to
any man whose maternal grandfather was a sorcerer. Now, it happened that Virgil's maternal grandfather bore the name of Magus
This, by the ignorant multitude in Naples, &c., who had been taught
to reverence his tomb. was translated from its true acceptation as a




INFANT LITERATURE.               141
Something analogous to these spiritual transfigurations
of a word or a sentence, by a bodily organ (eye or ear)
that has been touched with virtue for evoking the spiritual
echo lurking in its recesses, belongs, perhaps, to every impassioned mind for the kindred result of forcing out the
peculiar beauty, pathos, or grandeur that may happen to
lodge (unobserved by ruder forms of sensibility) in special
passages scattered up and down literature. Meantime, I
wish the reader to understand that, in putting forward the
peculiar power with which my childish eye detected a
grandeur or a pomp of beauty not seen by others in some
special instances, I am not arrogating more than it is lawful for every man the very humblest to arrogate, viz., an
individuality of mental constitution so far applicable to
special and exceptionable cases as to reveal in them a life
and power of beauty which others (and sometimes which
all others) had missed.
The first case belongs to the march (or boundary) line
between my eighth and ninth years; the others to a period
earlier by two and a half years. But I notice the latest
case before the others, as it connected itself with a great
epoch in the movement of my intellect. There is a'dignity
to every man in the mere historical assigning, if accurately he can assign, the first dawning upon his mind of any
godlike faculty or apprehension, and more especially if that
first dawning happened to connect itself with circumstances
of individual or incommunicable splendor. The passage
proper name, to a false one as an appellative: it was supposed to indicate, not the name, but the profession of the old gentleman. And
thus, according to the belief of the lazzaroni, that excellent Christian, P. Virgilius Maro, had stepped by mere succession and right of
inheritance into his wicked old grandpapa s infernal powers and
knowledge, both of which he exercised, doubtless, %or centuries with
out blame, and fur t'c bhc1;efit of the faithful.




142            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
which I am going to cite first of all revealed to me the
immeasurableness of the morally sublime.  Wlat was it,
and where was it? Strange the reader will think it, and
strange * it is, that a case of colossal sublimity should first
emerge from such a writer as Phedrus, the 4Esopian fabulist. A great mistake it was, on the part of Doctor S.,
that the second book in the Latin language which I was
summoned to study should have been Phedrus-a writer
ambitious of investing the simplicity, or rather homeliness,
of AEsop with aulic graces and satiric brilliancy. But so
it was; and Phmedrus naturally towered into enthusiasm
when he had occasion to mention that the most intellectual
of all races amongst men, viz., the Athenians, had raised
a mighty statue to one who belonged to the same class in
a social sense as himself, viz., the class of slaves, and rose
above that class by the same intellectual power applying
itself to the same object, viz., the moral apologue. These
were the two lines in which that glory of the sublime, so
stirring to my childish sense, seemed to burn as in some
mighty pharos: -
" Esopo statuam ingentem posuere Attici;
Servumque collocArunt eterna in basi:"
A colossal statue did the Athenians raise to iEsop; and a
poor pariah slave they planted upon an everlasting pedes.
tal. I have not scrupled to introduce the word pariah
because in that way only could I decipher to the reader by
what particular avenue it was that the sublimity which I fancy
in the passage reached my heart. This sublimity originate 4
*'Strange,' &c -Yet I remember that, in' The Pursuits of
Literature," - a satirical poem once universally famous, - the lines
about Mnemosyne and her daughters, the Pierides, are cited as exhibiting matchless sublimity. Perhaps, therefore, if carefully searched
this writer may contain other jewels not yet appreciated.




INFANT LITERATURE.             143
in the awful chasm, in the abyss that no eye could bridge,
between the pollution of slavery, - the being a man, yet
without right or lawful power belonging to a man,- between this unutterable degradation and the starry altitude
of the slave at that moment when, upon the unveiling of
his everlasting statue, all the armies of the earth might be
conceived as presenting arms to the emancipated man,
the cymbals and kettledrums of kings as drowning the
whispers of his ignominy, and the harps of all his sisters
that wept over slavery yet joining in one choral gratulation to the regenerated slave. I assign the elements of
what I did in reality feel at that time, which to the reader
may seem extravagant, and by no means of what it was
reasonable to feel. But, in order that full justice may be
done to my childish self, I must point out to the reader
another source of what strikes me as real grandeur.
Horace, that exquisite master of the lyre, and that most
shallow of critics, it is needless to say that in those days I
had not read. Consequently I knew nothing of his idle
canon, that the opening of poems must be humble and
subdued. But my own sensibility told me how much of
additional grandeur accrued to these two lines as being the
immediate and all-pompous opening of the poem. The
same feeling I had received from the crashing overture to
the grand chapter of Daniel —" Belshazzar the king made
a great feast to a thousand of his lords."  But, above all,
I felt this effect produced in the two opening lines of
"Macbeth: "WHrEN - (but watch that an emphasis of thunder dwells upon that
word'when') -
WHEN shall we three meet again -
In thunder, lightning, or in rain "
What an orchestral crash bursts upon the ear in that all.
shattering question! And one syllable of apologetic prep




144            ATJTOBIOGRAPHIG SKf TCHES.
aration, so as to meet the suggestion of Horace, would have
the effect of emasculating the whole tremendous alarum.
The passage in Phmedrus differs thus far from that in
Macbeth," that the first line, simply stating a matter of
fact, with no more of sentiment than belongs to the word
ingentem, and to the antithesis between the two parties so
enormously divided, -   Esop the slave and the Athenians,
- must be read as an appoggiatura, or hurried note of introduction flying forward as if on wings to descend with
the fury and weight of a thousand orchestras upon the
immortal passion of the second line —" Servumque collocarunt ETERNA IN BASI." This passage from Phmedrus,
which might be briefly designated The Apotheosis of the
Slave, gave to me my first grand and jubilant sense of the
moral sublime.
Two other experiences of mine of the same class had
been earlier, and these I had shared with my sister Elizabeth.  The first was derived from  the "Arabian Nights."
Mrs. Barbauld, a lady now very nearly forgotten,* then
* " Very nearly forgotten."-Not quite, however. It must be
hard upon eighty or eighty-five years since she first commenced
authorship- a period which allows time for a great deal of forgetting; and yet, in the very week when I am revising this passage, I
observe advertised a new edition, attractively illustrated, of the
"Evenings at Home" - a joint work of Mrs. Barbauld's and her
brother's, (the elder Dr. Aikin.) Mrs. Barbauld was exceedingly
clever. Her mimicry of Dr. Johnson's style was the best of all that
exist. Her blank verse " Washing Day," descriptive of the discomforts attending a mistimed visit to a rustic friend, under the affliction
of a family washing, is picturesquely circumstantiated. And her
prose hymns for children have left upon my childish recollection a
deep impression of solemn beauty and simplicity. Coleridge, who
scattered his sneering compliments very liberally up and down the
world, used to call the elder Dr. Aikin (allusively to Pope's well.
known line -
"No craving void left aching in the breast ")




INFANT LITERATURE.             145
filled a la. ge space in the public eye; in fact, as a writer
for childreu, she occupied the place fiom about 1780 to
1805 which, from  1805 to 1835, was occupied by Miss
Edgeworth. Only, as unhappily Miss Edgeworth is also
now very nearly forgotten, this is to explain ignotum per
ignotius, or at least one ignotum by another ignotum.
However, since it cannot be helped, this unknown and also
most well-known woman, having occasion, in the days of
her glory, to speak of the "Arabian Nights," insisted on
Aladdin, and, secondly, on Sinbad, as the two jewels of the
collection. Now, on the contrary, my sister and myself
pronounced Sinbad to be very bad, and Aladdin to be
pretty nearly the worst, and upon grounds that still strike
me as just. For, as to Sinbad, it is not a story at all, but.
a mere succession of adventures, having no unity of inter.
est whatsoever; and in Alladin, after the possession of the
lamp has been once secured by a pure accident, the story
ceases to move. All the rest is a mere record of upholstery: how this saloon was finished to-day, and that window
on the next day, with no fresh incident whatever, except
the single and transient misfortune arising out of the
advantage given to the magician by the unpardonable
stupidity of Aladdin in regard to the lamp. But, whilst
my sister and I agreed in despising Aladdin so much as
almost to be on the verge of despising the queen of all the
bluestockings for so ill-directed a preference, one solitary
section there was of that tale which fixed and fascinated
my gaze, in a degree that I never afterwards forgot, and
did not at that time comprehend. The sublimity which it
involved was mysterious and unfathomable as regarded
an aching void; and the nephew, Dr. Arthur Aikin, by way of variety,
a void aching; whilst Mrs. Barbauld he designated as that pleonasm
of nakedness; since, as if it were not enough to be bare, she was also
Wald.
10




146           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
any key which I possessed for deciphering its law or origin
Made restless by the blind sense which I had of its gran
deur, I could not for a moment succeed in finding out why
it should be grand. Unable to explain my own impressions
in " Aladdin," I did not the less obstinately persist in believing a sublimity which I could not understand. It was,
in fact, one of those many important cases which elsewhere I have called involutes of human sensibility; combinations in which the materials of future thought or feeling
are carried as imperceptibly into the mind as vegetable
seeds are carried variously combined through the atmosphere, or by means of rivers, by birds, by winds, by
waters, into remote countries. But the reader shall judge
for himself. At the opening of the tale, a magician living
in the central depths of Africa is introduced to us as one
made aware by his secret art of an enchanted lamp endowed with supernatural powers available for the service
of any man whatever who should get it into his keeping.
But there lies the difficulty. The lamp is imprisoned in
subterraneous chambers, and from these it can be released
only by the hands of an innocent child. But this is rot
enough: the child must have a special horoscope written
in the stars, or else a peculiar destiny written in his constitution, entitling him to take possession of the lamp. Where
shall such a child be found? Where shall he be sought?
The magician knows: he applies his ear to the earth; he
listens to the innumerable sounds of footsteps that at the
moment of his experiment are tormenting the surface of
the globe; and amongst them all, at a distance of six
thousand miles, playing in the streets of Bagdad, he distinguishes the peculiar steps of the child Aladdin. Through
this m:ghty labyrinth of sounds, which Archimedes, aided
by his arenarius, could not sum or disentangle, one solilary
infant's feet are distinctly recognized on the banks of the




INFANT LITERATURE.              1 i
Tigris, distant by four hundred and forty days' march of
an army or a caravan. These feet, these steps, the sorcerer knows, and challenges in his heart as the feet, as the
steps of that innocent boy, through whose hands only he
could have a chance for reaching the lamp.
It follows, therefore, that the wicked magician exercises
two demoniac gifts. First, he has the power to disarm
Babel itself of its confusion. Secondly, after having laid
aside as useless many billions of earthly sounds, and after
having fastened his murderous * attention upon one insulated tread, he has the power, still more unsearchable, of
reading in that hasty movement an alphabet of new and
infinite symbols; for, in order that the sound of the child's
feet should be significant and intelligible, that sound must
open into a gamut of infinite compass. The pulses of the
heart, the motions of the will, the phantoms of the brain
must repeat themselves in secret hieroglyphics uttered by
the flying footsteps.  Even  the inarticulate or brutal
sounds of the globe must be all so many languages ard
ciphers that somewhere have their corresponding keys —
have their own grammar and syntax; and thus the least
things in the universe must be secret mirrors to the greatest.
Palmistry has something of the same dark sublimity. All
this, by rude efforts at explanation that mocked my feeble
command of words, I communicated to my sister; and
she, whose sympathy with my meaning was always so
quick and true, often outrunning electrically my imperfect
expressions, felt the passage in the same way as myself,'
"Murderous;" for it was his intention to leave Aladdin immured
in the subterraneous chambers.
t The reader will not understand me as attributing to the Arabian
originator of Aladdin all the sentiment of the case as I have endeavored to disentangle it. He spoke what he did not understand; for,
as to sentiment of any kind, all Orientals are obtuse and ina,,pssive.




148           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
but not, perhaps, in the same degree. She was much be.
yond me in velocity of apprehension and many other qualities of intellect. Here only, viz., on cases of the dark
sublime, where-it rested upon dim abstractions, and when
no particular trait of moral grandeur came forward, we dif
fered -differed, that is to say, as by more or by less. Else
even as to the sublime, and numbers of other intellectual
questions which rose up to us from our immense reading, we
drew together with a perfect fidelity of sympathy; and therefore I pass willingly froni a case which exemplified one of our
rare differences to another, not less interesting for itself,
which illustrated (what occurred so continually) the intensity
of our agreement.
No instance of noble revenge that ever I heard of seems
so effective, if considered as applied to a noble-minded
wrong doer, or in any case as so pathetic. From what
quarter the story comes originally, was unknown to us at
the time, and I have never met it since; so that possibly
it may be new to the reader. We found it in a book written for the use of his own children by Dr. Percival, the
physician who attended at Greenhay. Dr. P. was a literary
man, of elegant tastes and philosophic habits. Some of his
papers may be found in the "Manchester Philosophic
Transactions;" and these I have heard mentioned with
respect, though, for myself, I have no personal knowledge
of them. Some presumption meantime arises in their
favor from the fact that he had been a favored correspond.
ent of the most eminent Frenchmen at that time who culti.
vated literature jointly with philosophy. Voltaire, Diderot
Maupertuis, Condorcet, and D'Alembert had all treated him
There are other sublimities (some, at least) in the "Arabian Nights,"
which first become such - a gas that first kindles - when entering
into combination with new elements in a Christian atmosphere.




INFANT LITERATURE.             149
with distinction; and I have heard my mother say that, in
days before I or my sister could have known him, he
attempted vainly to interest her in these French luminaries
by reading extracts from their frequent letters; which,
however, so far from reconciling her to the letters, or to
the writers of the letters, had the unhappy effect of riveting her dislike (previously budding) to the doctor, as their
receiver, and the proneur of their authors. The tone of
the letters- hollow, insincere, and full of courtly civilities
to Dr. P., as a known friend of " the tolerance " (meaning,
of toleration) - certainly was not adapted to the English
taste; and in this respect was specially offensive to my
mother, as always assuming of the doctor, that, by mere
necessity, as being a philosopher, he must be an infidel.
Dr. P. left that question, I believe, " in medio," neither
assenting nor denying; and undoubtedly there was no particular call upon him to publish his Confession of Faith
before one who, in the midst of her rigorous politeness,
suffered it to be too transparent that she did not like him.
It is always a pity to see any thing lost and wasted, especially love; and, therefore, it was no subject for lamentation, that too probably the philosophic doctor did not
enthusiastically like her. But, if really so, that made no
difference in his feelings towards my sister and myself. Us
he did like; and, as one proof of his regard, he presented us
jointly with such of his works as could be supposed inter.
esting to two young literati, whose combined ages made no
more at this period than a baker's dozen. These presentation copies amounted to two at the least, both octavoes,
and one of them entitled The Father's- something or
other; what was it? - Assistant, perhaps. How much
assistance the doctor might furnish to the fathers upon this
wicked little planet, I cannot say. But fathers are a stubborn race, it is very little use trying to assist them. Better




150           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
always to prescribe for the rising generation. And cer.
tainly the impression which he made upon us - my sister
and myself —by the story in question was deep and
memorable: my sister wept over it, and wept over the
remembrance of it; and, not long after, carried its sweet
aroma off with her to heaven; whilst I, for my part, have
never forgotten it. Yet, perhaps, it is injudicious to have
too much excited the reader's expectations; therefore,
reader, understand what it is that you are invited to hear -
not much of a story, but simply a noble sentiment, such as
that of Louis XII. when he refused, as King of France, to
avenge his own injuries as Duke of Orleans -such as that
of Hadrian, when he said that a Roman imperator ought
to die standing, meaning that Caesar, as the man who represented almighty Rome, should face the last enemy as the
first in an attitude of unconquerable defiance. Here is Dr.
Percival's story, which (again I warn you) will collapse
into nothing at all, unless you yourself are able to dilate it
by expansive sympathy with its sentiment.
A young officer (in what army, no matter) had so far
forgotten himself, in a moment of irritation, as to strike a
private soldier, full of personal dignity, (as sometimes happens in all ranks,) and distinguished for his courage. The
inexorable laws of military discipline forbade to the injured
soldier any practical redress- he could look for no retaliation by acts. Words only were at his command; and, in
a tumult of indignation, as he turned away, the soldier said
to his officer that he would " make him repent it." This,
wearing the shape of a menace, naturally rekindled the
officer's anger, and intercepted any disposition which might
be rising within him towards a sentiment of remorse; and
thus the irritation between the two young men grew hotter
than before. Some weeks after this a partial action took
plac e with the enemy, Suppose yourself a spectator, and




INFANT I ITERATURE.            151
looking aown into a valley occupied by the two armies.
l'hev are facing each other, you see, in martial array.
But it is no more than a skirmish which is going on; in
the course of which, however, an occasion suddenly arises
for a desperate service. A redoubt, which has fallen into
the enemy's hands, must be recaptured at any price, and
under circumstances of all but hopeless difficulty. A strong
party has volunteered for the service; there is a cry for
somebody to head them; you see a soldier step out from
the ranks to assume this dangerous leadership; the party
moves rapidly forward; in a few minutes it is swallowed up
from your eyes in clouds of smoke; for one half hour,
from behind these clouds, you receive hieroglyphic reports
of bloody strife - fierce repeating signals, flashes from the
guns, rolling musketry, and exulting hurrahs advancing or
receding, slackening or redoubling. At length all is over;
the redoubt has been recovered; that which was lost is
found again; the jewel which had been made captive is
ransomed with blood. Crimsoned with glorious gore, the
wreck of the conquering party is relieved, and at liberty to
return. From the river you see it ascending. The plumecrested officer in command rushes forward, with his left
hand raising his hat in homage to the blackened fragments
of what once was a flag, whilst, with his right hand, he
seizes that of the leader, though no more than a private from
the ranks.  That perplexes you not; mystery you see none
in that. For distinctions of order perish, ranks are confounded, "high and low" are words without a meaning,
and to wreck goes every notion or feeling that divides the
noble from the noble, or the brave man from the brave. But
wherefore is it that now, when suddenly they wheel into
mutual recognition, suddenly they pause? This soldier,
this officer- who are they? O reader! once before they
had stood face to face - the soldier it is that was struck;




152           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the officer it is that struck him. Once again they are
meeting; and the gaze of armies is upon them. If for a
moment a doubt divides them, in a moment the doubt has
perished. One glance exchanged between them publishes
the forgiveness that is sealed forever. As one who recovers a brother whom he had accounted dead, the officer sprang
forward, threw his arms around the neck of the soldier,
and kissed him, as if he were some martyr glorified by
that shadow of death from which he was returning; whilst,
on his part, the soldier, stepping back, and carrying his
open hand through the beautiful motions of the military
salute to a superior, makes this immortal answer - that
answer which shut up forever the memory of the indignity offered to him, even whilst for the last time alluding to
it: " Sir," he said, " I told you before that I would make
you repent it."




CHAPTER IV.
THE FEMALE INFIDEL.
AT the time of my father's death, I was nearly seven
years old. In the next four years, during which we con.
tinued to live at Greenhay, nothing memorable occurred,
except, indeed, that troubled parenthesis in my life which
connected me with my brother William, —this certainly
was memorable to myself, - and, secondly, the visit of a
most eccentric young woman, who, about nine years later,
drew the eyes of all England upon herself by her unprincipled conduct in an affair affecting the life of two Oxonian
undergraduates. She was the daughter of Lord Le Despencer, (known previously as Sir Francis Dashwood;) and
at this time (meaning the time of her visit to Greenhay)
she was about twenty-two years old, with a face and a
figure classically beautiful, and with the reputation of extraordinary accomplishments; these accomplishments being
not only eminent in their degree, but rare and interesting in
their kind. In particular, she astonished every person by her
impromptu performances on the organ, and by her powers
of disputation. These last she applied entirely to attacks
upon Christianity; for she openly professed infidelity in the
most audacious form; and at my mother's table she certainly proved more than a match for all the clergymen of
153




154             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the neighboring towns, some of whom (as the most intel.
lectual persons of that neighborhood) were daily invited to
meet her. It was a mere accident which had introduced
her to my mother's house. Happening to hear from my
sister Mary's governess * that she and her pupil were going
on a visit to an old Catholic family in the county of Durham, (the family of Mr. Swinburne, who was known advantageously to the public by his " Travels in Spain and
Sicily," &c.,) Mrs. Lee, whose education in a French convent, aided by her father's influence, had introduced her
extensively to the knowledge of Catholic families in Eng* "'My sister Mary's governess."-Th T   governess was a Miss
Wesley,niecetoJohn Wesley, the founder. l"ethodism. And the
mention of her recalls to me a fact, which wa, recently revived and
misstated by the whole newspaper press of the island. It had been
always known that some relationship existed between the Wellesleys
and John Wesley. Their names had, in fact, been originally the
same; and the Duke of Wellington himself, in the earlier part of his
career, when sitting in the Irish House of Commons, was always
known to the Irish journals as Captain Wesley. Upon this arose a
natural belief that the aristocratic branch of the house had improved
the name into Wellesley. But the true process of change had been
precisely the other way.  Not Wesley had been expanded into
Wellesley, but, inversely, Wellesley had been contracted by household
usage into Wesley. The name must have been Wellesley in its earliest
stage, since it was founded upon a connection with Wells Cathedral.
It had obeyed the same process as prevails in many hundreds of other
names: St. Leger, for instance, is always pronounced as if written
Sillinger; Cholmondeley as Chumleigh; Marjoribanks as Marchbanks: and the illustrious name of Cavendish was for'centuries familiarly pronounced Candish; and Wordsworth has even introduced
this name into verse so as to compel the reader, by a metrical coercion, into calling it Candish. Miss Wcsley's family had great musical sensibility and skill. This led the family into giving musical
parties, at which was constantly to be found Lord Mornington, the
father of the Duke of Wellington. For these parties it was, as Miss
Wesley informed me, that the earl comrosed his most celebrated glee




THE FEMALE INFI. L.                155
land, and who had herself an invitation to the same house
at the same time, wrote to offer the use of hei carriage to
convey all three -i. e., herself, my sister, and her governess - to Mr. Swinburne's. This naturally drew forth
from my mother an invitation to Greenhay; and to Green.
hay she came. On the imperial of her carriage, and elsewhere, she described herself as the Hon. Antonina Dashwcod Lee. But, in fact, being only the illegitimate daughter
of Lord Le Despencer, she was not entitled to that designation. She had, however, received a bequest even more enviable from her father, viz., not less than forty-five thousand
pounds. At a very early age, she had married a young
Oxonian, distinguished for nothing but a very splendid person, which had procured him the distinguishing title of
Handsome Lee; and from him she had speedily separated,
on the agreement of dividing the fortune.
My mother little guessed what sort of person it was
whom she had asked into her family. So much, however,
she had understood from Miss Wesley -that Mrs. Lee was
a bold thinker; and that, for a woman, she had an astonishing command of theological learning. This it was that
suggested the clerical invitations, as in such a case likely to
furnish the most appropriate society. But this led to a
painful result. It might easily have happened that a very
Here also it was, or in similar musical circles gathered about himself
by the first Lord Mornington, that the Duke of Wellington had
formed and cultivated his unaffected love for music of the highest
class, i. e., for the impassioned music of the serious opera. And it
occurs to me as highly probable, that Mrs. Lee's connection with the
Wesleys, through which it was that she became acquainted with my
mother, must have rested upon the common interest which she and
the Wesleys had in the organ and in the class of music suited to that
instrument. Mrs. Lee herself was an improvisatrice of the first class
ipon the organ; and the two brothers of Miss Wesley, Samuel and
Charles, ranked for very many years as the first organists in Europe




156           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
learned clergyman should not specially have qualified hint
self for the service of a theological tournament; and my
mother's range of acquaintance was not very extensive
amongst the clerical body. But of these the two leaders,
as regarded public consideration, were Mr. H -, my
guardian, and Mr. Clowes,2 who for more than fifty years
officiated as rector of St. Ji)hn's Church in Manchester.
In fact, the golden * jubilee of his pastoral connection with
St. John's was celebrated many years after with much
demonstrative expression of public sympathy on the part
of universal Manchester- the most important city in the
island next after London. No men could have been found
who were less fitted to act as champions in a duel on behalf
of Christianity. Mr. H —-   was dreadfully commonplace;
dull, dreadfully dull; and, by the necessity of his nature,
incapable of being in deadly earnest, which his splendid
antagonist at all times was. His encounter, therefore, with
Mrs. Lee presented the distressing spectacle of an old,
toothless, mumbling mastiff, fighting for the household to
which he owed allegiance against a young leopardess fresh
from the forests.  Every touch from her, every velvety pat,
drew blood. And something comic mingled with what my
mother felt to be paramount tragedy. Far different was
Mr. Clowes: holy, visionary, apostolic, he could not be
treated disrespectfully. No man could deny him a qualified
homage. But for any polemic service he wanted the taste,
the training, and the particular sort of erudition required.
Neither would such advantages, if he had happened to
* "The golden jubilee." - This, in Germany, is used popularly as a
technical expression: a married couple, when celebrating the fiftietL
anniversary of their marriage day, are said to keep their golden;ubilee; but on the twenty-fifth anniversary they have credit only for
a silver jubilee.




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.             157
possess tlem, have at all availed him in a case like this.
Horror, blank horror, seized him upon seeing a woman, a
young woman, a woman of captivating beauty, whom God
had adorned so eminently with gifts of person and of mind,
breathing sentiments that to him seemed fresh from the
mintage of hell. He could have apostrophized her (as
long afterwards he himself told me) in the words of Shakspeare's Juliet"Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! "
for he was one of those who never think of Christianity as
the subject of defence. Could sunshine, could light, could
the glories of the dawn call for defence? Not as a thing
to be defended, but as a thing to be interpreted, as a thing
to be illuminated, did Christianity exist for him.  He,
therefore, was even more unserviceable as a champion
against the deliberate impeacher of Christian evidences
than my reverend guardian.
Thus it was that he himself explained his own position
in after days, when I had reached my sixteenth year, and
visited him upon terms of friendship as close as can ever
have existed between a boy and a man already gray headed.
Him and his noiseless parsonage, the pensive abode for sixty
years of religious revery and anchoritish self-denial, I have
described farther on. In some limited sense he belongs to
our literature, for he was, in fact, the introducer of Swedenborg to this country; as being himself partially the
translator of Swedenborg; and still more as organizing a
patronage to other people's translations; and also, I believe,
as republishing the original Latin works of Swedenborg.
To say that of Mr. Clowes, was, until lately, but another
way of describing him as a delirious dreamer. At present,'1853,) I presume the reader to be aware that Camoridge has, within the last few years, unsettled and even




15          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
revolutionized our estimates of Swedenborg as a philoso.
pher. That man, indeed, whom Emerson ranks as one
amongst his inner consistory of intellectual potentates
cannot be the absolute trifler that Kant, (who knew him
only by the most trivial of his pretensions,) eighty years
ago, supposed hini. Assuredly, Mr. Clowes was no trifler
but lived habitually a life of power, though in a world of
religious mysticism and of apocalyptic visions. To him,
being such a man by nature and by habit, it was in effect
the lofty Lady Geraldine from Coleridge's " Christabel"
that stood before him in this infidel lady. A magnificent
witch she was, like the Lady Geraldine; having the same
superb beauty; the same power of throwing spells over
the ordinary gazer; and yet at intervals unmasking to
some solitary, unfascinated spectator the same dull blink
of a snaky eye; and revealing, through the most fugitive
of gleams, a traitress couchant beneath what else to all
others seemed the form of a lady, armed with incomparable
pretensions - one that was
" Beautiful exceedingly,
Like a lady from a far countrie."
The scene, as I heard it sketched long years afterwards
by more than one of those who had witnessed it, was painful in excess. And the shock given to my mother was
memorable. For the first and the last time in her long
and healthy life, she suffered an alarming nervous attack.
Partly this arose from the conflict between herself in the
character of hostess, and herself as a loyal daughter of
Christian faith; she shuddered, in a degree almost incontrollable and beyond her power to dissemble, at the unfeminine intrepidity with which "the leopardess" conducted her assaults upon the sheepfolds of orthodoxy;
and partly, also, this internal conflict arose from concern




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.             159
on behalf of hei own servants, who waited at dinner, and
were inevitably liable to impressions from what they
heard. My mother, by original choice, and by early training under a very aristocratic father, recoiled as austerely
from all direct communication with her servants as the
Pythia at Delphi from the attendants that swept out the
temple. But not the less her conscience, in all stages of
her life, having or not having any special knowledge of
religion, acknowledgeu a pathetic weight of obligation to
remove from her household all confessedly corrupting influences. And here was one which she could not remove.
What chiefly she feared, on behalf of her servants, was
either, 1st, the danger from the simple fact, now suddenly
made known to them, that it was possible for a person
unusually gifted to deny Christianity; such a denial and
haughty abjuration could not but carry itself more profoundly into the reflective mind, even of servants, when
the arrow came winged and made buoyant by the gay
feathering of so many splendid accomplishments. This
general fact was appreciable by those who would forget,
and never could have understood, the particular arguments
of the infidel. Yet, even as regarded these particular arguments, 2dly, my mother feared that some one- brief,
telling, and rememberable- might be singled out from the
rest, might transplant itself to the servants' hall, and take
root for life in some mind sufficiently thoughtful to invest it
with interest, and yet far removed from any opportunities,
through books or society, for disarming the argument of
its sling. Such a danger was quickened by the character
and pretensions of Mrs. Lee's footman, who was a daily
witness, whilst standing behind his mistress's chair at dinter, to the confusion which she carried into the hostile
camp, and might be supposed to renew such discussions in
the servants' hall with singular advantages for a favorable




160          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
attention. For he was a showy and most audacious Londoner, and what is technically known in the language of
servants' hiring offices as " a man of figure."  He might,
therefore, be considered as one dangerously armed for
shaking religious principles, especially amongst the female
servants. Here, however, I believe that my mother was
mistaken. Women of humble station, less than any other
class, have any tendency to sympathize with boldness that
manifests itself in throwing off the yoke of religion. Perhaps a ratural instinct tells them that levity of that nature
will pretty surely extend itself contagiously to other modes
of conscientious obligation; at any rate, my own experience would warrant me in doubting whether any instance
were ever known of a woman, in the rank of servant, regarding infidelity or irreligion as something brilliant, or interesting, or in any way as favorably distinguishing a man.
Meantime, this conscientious apprehension on account of
the servants applied to contingencies that were remote.
But the pity on account of the poor lady herself applied to
a danger that seemed imminent and deadly. This beautiful
and splendid young creature, as my mother knew, was
floating, without anchor or knowledge of any anchoring
grounds, upon the unfathomable ocean of a London world,
which, for her, was wrapped in darkness as regarded its dangers, and thus for her the chances of shipwreck were seven
times multiplied. It was notorious that Mrs. Lee had no
protector or guide, natural or legal. Her marriage had, in
fact, instead of imposing new restraints, released her from
old ones. For the legal separation of Doctors' Commons -
technically called a divorce simply d mensd et thoro, (from
bed and board,) and not d vinculo matrimonii (from the
very tie and obligation of marriage) - had removed her by
law from the control of her husband; whilst, at the same
time, the matrimonial condition, of course, enlarged that




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.            161
Iberty of action which else is unavoidably narrowed by
he reserve and delicacy natural to a young woman, whilst
vet unmarried. Here arose one peril more; and, 2dly, arose
this most unusual aggravation of that peril - that Mrs Lee
was deplorably ignorant of English life; indeed, of life
universally. Strictly speaking, she was even yet a raw,
untutored novice, turned suddenly loose from the twilight of
a monastic seclusion. Under any circumstances, such a
situation lay open to an amount of danger that was afflicting to contemplate. But one dreadful exasperation of these
fatal auguries lay in the peculiar temper of Mrs. Lee, as
connected with her infidel thinking. Her nature was too
frank and bold to tolerate any disguise; and my mother's
own experience had now taught her that Mrs. Lee would
not be content to leave to the random call of accident the
avowal of her principles. No passive or latent spirit of
freethinking was hers - headlong it was, uncompromising, almost fierce, and regarding no restraints of place
or season. Like Shelley, some few years later, whose day
she would have gloried to welcome, she looked upon her
principles not only as conferring rights, but also as imposing duties of active proselytism. From this feature in
her character it was that my mother foresaw an instant
evil, which she urged Miss Wesley to press earnestly on
her attention, viz., the inevitable alienation of all her female friends.  In many parts of the continent (but too
much we are all in the habit of calling by the wide name
of "the continent," France, Germany, Switzerland, and
Belgium) my mother was aware that the most flagrant
proclamation of infidelity would not stand in the way of a
woman's favorable reception into society. But in England,
at that time, this was far otherwise. A display such as Mrs.
Lee habitually forced upon people's attention would at
once nave the effect of banishing from her house all
11




162          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
women of respectability. She would be thrown upon the
society of men -bold and reckless, such as either agreed
with herself, or, being careless on the whole subject of religion, pretended to do so. Her income, though diminished
now by the partition with Mr. Lee, was still above a thousand
per annum; which, though trivial for any purpose of display in a place so costly as London, was still important
enough to gather round her unprincipled adventurers, some
of whom might be noble enough to obey no attraction but
that which lay in her marble beauty, in her Athenian grace
and eloquence, and the wild, impassioned nature of her accomplishments. By her acting, her dancing, her conversation, her musical improvisations, she was qualified to attract the most intellectual men; but baser attractions
would exist for baser men; and my mother urged Miss
Wesley, as one whom Mrs. Lee admitted to her confidence,
above all things to act upon her pride by forewarning her
that such men, in the midst of lip homage to her charms,
would be sure to betray its hollowness by declining to let
their wives and daughters visit her.  Plead what excuses
they would, Mrs. Lee might rely upon it, that the true
ground for this insulting absence of female visitors would
be found to lie in her profession of infidelity. This alienation of female society would, it was clear, be precipitated
enormously by Mrs. Lee's frankness. A result that might
by a dissembling policy have been delayed indefinitely
would now be hurried forward to an immediate crisis.
And in this result went to wreck the very best part of Mrs.
Lee's securities against ruin.
It is scarcely necessary to say, that all the evil followed
which had been predicted, and through the channels which
had been predicted. Some time was required on so vast a
stage as London to publish the facts of Mrs. Lee's freethinking -that is, to publish it as a matter of systematic




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.            163
purpose. Many persons had at first made a liberal allowance for her, as tempted by some momentary impulse into
opinions that she had not sufficiently considered, and
might forget as hastily as she had adopted them. But no
sooner was it made known as a settled fact, that she had
deliberately dedicated her energies to the interests of an
anti-Christian system, and that she hated Christianity, than
the whole body of her friends within the pale of social
respectability fell away from her, and forsook her house.
To them succeeded a clique of male visitors, some of whom
were doubtfully respectable, and others (like Mr. Frend,
memorable for his expulsion from Cambridge on account
of his public hostility to Trinitarianism) were distinguished
by a tone of intemperate defiance to the spirit of English
society. Thrown upon such a circle, and emancipated
from all that temper of reserve which would have been impressed upon her by habitual anxiety for the good opinion
of virtuous and high-principled women, the poor lady was
tempted into an elopement with two dissolute brothers; for
what ultimate purpose on either side, was never made
clear to the public. Why a lady should elope from her
own house, and the protection of her own servants, under
whatever impulse, seemed generally unintelligible. But
apparently it was precisely this protection from her own
servants which presented itself to the brothers in the light
of an obstacle to their objects. What these objects might
ultimately be, I do not entirely know; and I do not feel
myself authorized, by any thing which of my own knowledge I know, to load either of them with mercenary imputations. One of them (the younger) was, or fancied
himself, in love with Mrs. Lee. It was impossible for him
to marry her; and possibly he may have fancied that in
some rustic retirement, where the parties were unknown,
it would be easier than in London to appease the lady's




Ab'4          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
scruples in respect to the sole mode of connection which
the law left open to them. The frailty of the will in Mrs,
Lee was as manifest in this stage of the case as subsequently, when she allowed herself to be over-clamored
by Mr. Lee and his friends into a capital prosecution of
the brothers. After she had once allowed herself to be
put into a post chaise, she was persuaded to believe (and
such was her ignorance of English society, that possibly
she did believe) herself through the rest of the journey
liable at any moment to summary coercion in the case of
attempting any resistance. The brothers and herself left
London in the evening. Consequently, it was long after
midnight when the party halted at a town in Gloucestershire, two stages beyond Oxford. The younger gentleman
then persuaded her, but (as she alleged) under the impression on her part that resistance was unavailing, and that
the injury to her reputation was by this time irreparable, to
allow of his coming to her bed room. This was perhaps
not entirely a fraudulert representation in Mrs. Lee. The
whole circumstances of the case made it clear, that, with
any decided opening for deliverance, she wouid have
caught at it; and probably would again, from wavering of
mind, have dallied with the danger.
Perhaps at this point, having already in this last para.
graph shot ahead by some nine years of the period when
she visited Greenhay, allowing myself this license in order
to connect my mother's warning through Miss Wesley with
the practical sequel of the case, it may be as well for me
to pursue the arrears of the story down to its final incident.
In 1804, at the Lent Assizes for the county of Oxford, she
appeared as principal witness against two brothers, L-  t
G — n, and L-n G         n, on a capital charge of hav.
ing forcibly carried her off from her own house in London
and afterwards of having, at some place in Gloucestershire




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.            165
b) collusion with each other and by terror, enabled one of
Lhe brothers to offer the last violence to her person. The
circumstantial accounts published at the time by the newspapers were of a nature to conciliate the public sympathy
altogether to the prisoners; and the general belief accorded
with what was, no doubt, the truth —that the lady had
been driven into a false accusation by the overpowering
remonstrances of her friends, joined, in this instance, by
her husband, all of whom were willing to believe, or willing to have it believed by the public, that advantage had
been taken of her little acquaintance with English usages.
I was present at the trial. The court was opened at eight
o'clock in the morning; and such was the interest in the
case, that a mob, composed chiefly of gownsmen, besieged
the doors for some time before the moment of admission.
On this occasion, by the way, I witnessed a remarkable
illustration of the profound obedience which Englishmen
under all circumstances pay to the law. The constables,
for what reason I do not know, were very numerous and
very violent. Such of us as happened to have gone in our
academic dress had our caps smashed in two by the constables' staves; why, it might be difficult for the officers to
say, as none of us were making any tumult, nor had any
motive for doing so, unless by way of retaliation. Many
of these constables were bargemen or petty tradesmen, who
in their ex-official character had often been engaged in
rows with undergraduates, and usually had had the worst
of it. At present, in the service of the blindfold goddess,
these equitable men were no doubt taking out their vengeance for past favors. But, under all this wanton display
of violence, the gownsmen practised the severest forbearance. The pressure from behind made it impossible to
forbear pressing ahead; crushed, you were obliged to
crush; but, bryond that, there was no movement or ges




166          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
ture on our part to give any colorable warrant to the brutality of the officers. For nearly a whole hour, I saw this
expression of reverence to the law triumphant over all provocations. It may be presumed, that, to prompt so much
crowding, there must have been some commensurate interest. There was so, but that interest was not at all in Mrs.
Lee. She was entirely unknown; and even by reputation
or rumor, from so vast a wilderness as London, neither her
beauty nor her intellectual pretensions had travelled down
to Oxford. Possibly, in each section of 300 men, there
might be one individual whom accident had brought acquainted, as it had myself, with her extraordinary endowments. But the general and academic interest belonged
exclusively to the accused. They were both Oxonians —
one belonging to University College, and the other, perhaps, to Baliol; and, as they had severally taken the degree of A. B., which implies a residence of at least three
years, they were pretty extensively known. But, known
or not known personally, in virtue of the esprit de corps,
the accused parties would have benefited in any case by a
general brotherly interest. Over and above which, there
was in this case the interest attached to an almost unintelligible accusation. A charge of personal violence, under the
roof of a respectable English posting house, occupied always by a responsible master and mistress, and within call
at every moment of numerous servants,-what could that
mean? And, again, when it became understood that this
violence was alleged to have realized itself under a delusion, under a preoccupation of the victim's mind, that re.
sistance to it was hopeless, how, and under what profound
ignorance of English society, had such a preoccupation
been possible? To the accused, and to the incomprehen.
sible accusation, therefore, belonged the whole weight of
the interest; and it was a very secondary interest indeed




THE FEMALE INFIDEL.            167
and purely as a reflex interest from the main one, which
awaited the prosecutress. And yet, though so little curiosity " awaited " her, it happened of necessity that, within a
few moments after her first coming forward in the witness
box, she had created a separate one for herself-first,
through her impressive appearance; secondly, through the
appalling coolness of her answers. The trial began, I
think, about nine o'clock in the morning; and, as some
time was spent on the examination of Mrs. Lee's servants,
of postilions, hostlers, &c., in pursuing the traces of the affair from London to a place seventy miles north of London, it was probably about eleven in the forenoon before
the prosecutress was summoned. My heart throbbed a
little as the court lulled suddenly into the deep stillness of
expectation, when that summons was heard: "Rachael
Frances Antonina Dashwood Lee" resounded through all
the passages; and immediately in an adjoining anteroom,
through which she was led by her attorney, for the purpose of evading the mob that surrounded the public approaches, we heard her advancing steps. Pitiable was the
humiliation expressed by her carriage, as she entered the
witness box. Pitiable was the change, the world of distance, between this faltering and dejected accuser, and that
wild leopardess that had once worked her pleasure amongst
the sheepfolds of Christianity, and had cuffed my poor
guardian so unrelentingly, right and left, front and rear,
when he attempted the feeblest of defences. However,
she was not long exposed to the searching gaze of the
court and the trying embarrassments of her situation. A
single question brought the whole investigation to a close
Mrs. Lee had been sworn. After a few questions, she was
suddenly asked by the counsel for the defence whether she
believed in the Christian religion? Her answer was brief
and peremptory, without distinction or circumlocution



168          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
No. Or, perhaps, not in God? Again she replied, No.
and again her answer was prompt and sans phrase. Upon
this the judge declared that he could not permit the trial to
proceed. The jury had heard what the witness said: she
only could give evidence upon the capital part of the
charge; and she had openly incapacitated herself before
the whole court. The jury instantly acquitted the prisoners. In the course of the day I left my name at Mrs. Lee's
lodgings; but her servant assured me that she was too
much agitated to see any body till the evening. At the
hour assigned I called again. It was dusk, and a mob had
assembled. At the moment I came up to the door, a lady
was issuing, muffled up, and in some measure disguised.
It was Mrs. Lee. At the corner of an adjacent street a
post chaise was drawn up. Towards this, under the protection of the attorney who had managed her case, she
made her way as eagerly as possible. Before she could
reach it, however, she was detected; a savage howl was
raised, and a rush made to seize her. Fortunately, a body
of gownsmen formed round her, so as to secure her from
personal assault: they put her rapidly into the carriage;
and then, joining the mob in their hootings, sent off the
horses at a gallop. Such was the mode of her exit from
Oxford.
Subsequently to this painful collision with Mrs. Lee at
the Oxford Assizes, I heard nothing of her for many years,
excepting only this —that she was residing in the family
of an English clergyman distinguished for his learning and
piety. This account gave great pleasure to my mothernot only as implying some chance that Mrs. Lee might be
finally reclaimed from her unhappy opinions, but also as a
proof that, in submitting to a rustication so mortifying to a
woman of her brilliant qualifications, she must have fallen
under some influences more promising for her respectabil



THE FEMALE INFIDEL.            169
it) and happiness than those which had surrounded her in
London. Finally, we saw by the public journals that she
had written and published a book. The title I forget; but
by its subject it was connected with political or social philosophy. And one eminent testimony to its merit I myself
am able to allege, viz., Wordsworth's. Singular enough it
seems, that he who read so very little of modern literature,
in fact, next to nothing, should be the sole critic and reporter whom I have hapnened to meet upon Mrs. Lee's
work. But so it was: accident had thrown the book in his
way during one of his annual visits to London, and a second time at Lowther Castle. He paid to Mrs. Lee a compliment which certainly he paid to no other of her contemporaries, viz., that of reading her book very nearly to the
end; and he spoke of it repeatedly as distinguished for vigor and originality of thought.




CHAPTER     V.
I An1 INTRODUCED TO THE WARFARE OF A
PUBLIC SCHOOL.
FOUR years after my father's death, it began to be per.
ceived that there was no purpose to be answered in any
longer keeping up the costly establishment of Greenhay.
A head gardener, besides laborers equal to at least two
more, were required for the grounds and gardens. And
no motive existed any longer for being near to a great
trading town, so long after the commercial connection with
it had ceased. Bath seemed, on all accounts, the natural
station for a person in my mother's situation; and thither,
accordingly, she went. I, who had been placed under the
tuition of one of my guardians, remained some time longer
under his care. I was then transferred to Bath. During
this interval the sale of the house and grounds took place
It may illustrate the subject of guardianship, and the ordinary execution of its duties, to mention the result. The
year was in itself a year of great depression, and every
way unfavorable to such a transaction; and the particular
night for which the sale had been fixed turned out remark.
ably wet; yet no attempt was made to postpone it, and it
proceeded.  Originally the house and grounds had cost
170




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.         171
about ~6000. I have heard that only one offer was made,
viz., of ~2500  Be that as it may, for the sum of ~2500
it was sold; and I have been often assured that, by waiting
a few years, four to six times that sum might have been
obtained with ease. This is not improbable, as the house
was then out in the country; but since then the town of
Manchester has gathered round it and enveloped it. Meantime, my guardians were all men of honor and integrity;
but their hands were filled with their own affairs. One
(my tutor) was a clergyman, rector of a churcl, and
having his parish, his large family, and three pupils to
attend. He was, besides, a very sedentary and indolent
man -loving books, hating business. Another was a merchant. A third was a country magistrate, overladen with
official business: him we rarely saw. Finally, the fourth
was a banker in a distant county, having more knowledge
of the world, more energy, and more practical wisdom
than all the rest united, but too remote for interfering
effectually.
Reflecting upon the evils which befell me, and the gross
mismanagement, under my guardians, of my small fortune,
and that of my brothers and sisters, it has often occurred to
me that so important an office, which, from the time of Demosthenes, has been proverbially maladministered, ought
to be put upon a new footing, plainly guarded by a few obvious provisions. As under the Roman laws, for a long
period, the guardian should be made responsible in law,
and should give security from the first for the due performance of his duties. But, to give him a motive foi doing
this, of course he must be paid. With the new obligations
and liabilities will commence commensurate emoluments.
If a child is made a ward in Chancery, its property is man.
aged expensively, but always advantageously. Some great
change is imperatively called for -no duty in the whole




172             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
compass of human life being so scandalously treated as
this.
In my twelfth year it was that first of all I entered upon
the arena of a great public school, viz., the Grammar
School * of Bath, over which at that time presided a most
accomplished Etcnian - Mr. (or was he as yet Doctor?)
Morgan. If he was not, I am sure he ought to have been;
and, with the reader's concurrence, will therefore create
him  a doctor on the spot.      Every   man   has reason to
* " Grammar School." -By the way, as the grammar schools of
England are amongst her most eminent distinctions, and, with submission to the innumerable wretches (gentlemen I should say) that
hate England " worse than toad or asp," have never been rivalled by
any corresponding institutions in other lands, I may as well take this
opportunity of explaining the word grammar, which most people misapprehend. Men suppose a grammar school to mean a school where
they teach grammar. But this is not the true meaning, and tends to
calumniate such schools by ignoring their highest functions. Limiting by a false limitation the earliest object contemplated by such
schools, they obtain a plausible pretext for representing all beyond
grammar as something extraneous and casual that did not enter into
the original or normal conception of the founders, and that may
therefore have been due to alien suggestion. But now, when Suetonius writes a little book, bearing this title, " De Illustribus Grammaticis," what does he mean? What is it that he promises? A memoir
upon the eminent grammarians of Rome? Not at all, but a memoir
upon the distinguished literati of Rome. Grammatica does certainly
mean sometimes grammar; but it is also the best Latin word for literature. A grammaticus is what the French express by the word litteruteur. We unfortunately have no corresponding term in English:
a man of letters is our awkward periphrasis in the singular, (too apt,
as our jest books remind us, to suggest the postman;) whilst in the
plural we resort to the Latin word literati. The school which professes to teach grammatica, professes, therefore, the culture of literature in the widest and most liberal extent, and is opposed generically
to schools for teaching mechanic arts; and, within its own sub-genus
of schools dedicated to liberal objects, is opposed to schools for teaching
mathematics, or, more widely, to schools for teaching science.




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.        173
rejoice who enjoys the advantage of a public training. I
condemned, and do condemn, the practice of sending out
into such stormy exposures those who are as yet too young,
too dependent on female gentleness, and endowed with sensibilities originally too exquisite for such a warfare. But
at nine or ten the masculine energies of the character are
beginning to develop themselves; or, if not, no discipline
will better aid in their development than the bracing intercourse of a great English classical school. Even the selfish are there forced into accommodating themselves to a
public standard of generosity, and the effeminate in conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself at two public schools, and I think with gratitude of the benefits which
I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude of that
guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so effectually. But the small private schools, of which I had opportunities for gathering some brief experience, - schools
containing thirty to forty boys, - were models of ignoble
manners as regarded part of the juniors, and of favoritism
as regarded the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of public justice so broadly exemplified as in an English public
school on the old Edward the Sixth or Elizabeth foundation.
There is not in the universe such an Areopagus for fair
play, and abhorrence of all crooked ways, as an English
mob, or one of the time-honored English " foundation"
schools. But my own first introduction to such an establishment was under peculiar and contradictory circumstances. When my" rating," or graduation in the school, was
to be settled, naturally my altitude (to speak astronomically) was taken by my proficiency in Greek. But here 1
had no advantage over others of my age. My guardian
was a feeble Grecian, and had not excited my ambition;
so that I could barely construe books as easy as the Greek
Testament and the Iliad. This was considered quite well




174          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
enough for my age; but still it caused me to be placed under
the care of Mr. Wilkins, the second master out of four, and
not under Dr. Morgan himself. Within one month, however, my talent for Latin verses, which had by this time
gathered strength and expansion, became known. Suddenly I was honored as never was man or boy since Mordecai the Jew. Without any colorable relation to the doctor's jurisdiction, I was now weekly paraded for distinction
at the supreme tribunal of the school; out of which, at
first, grew nothing but a sunshine of approbation delightful
to my heart. Within six weeks all this had changed. The
approbation indeed continued, and the public expression of
it. Neither would there, in the ordinary course, have been
any painful reaction from jealousy, or fretful resistance, to
the soundness of my pretensions; since it was sufficiently
known to such of r;y school-fellows as stood on my own
level in the school, that I, who had no male relatives but
military men, and those in India, could not have benefited
by any clandestine aid. But, unhappily, Dr. Morgan was
at that time dissatisfied with some points in the progress of
his head class; * and, as it soon appeared, was continually
throwing in their teeth the brilliancy of my verses at
eleven or twelve, by comparison with theirs at seventeen,
eighteen, and even nineteen. I had observed him sometimes pointing to myself, and was perplexed at seeing this
gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what French reporters call " sensation," in these young men, whom naturally
I viewed with awe as my leaders - boys that were called
young men, men that were reading Sophocles, (a name that
carried with it the sound of something seraphic to my
ears,) and who had never vouchsafed to waste a word on
* " Cl ss," or "form." - One knows not how to make one's self
intelligible, so different are the terms locally.




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.         175
such a child as myself. The day was come, however,
when all that would be changed. One of these leaders
stIode up to me in the public playground, and, delivering
a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended to hurt me
but as a mere formula of introduction, asked me " what
the devil I meant by bolting out of the course, and annoy.
ing other people in that manner.  Were' other people' to
have no rest for me and my verses, which, after all, were
horribly bad?"  There might have been some difficulty
in returning an answer to this address, but none was required. I was briefly admonished to see that I wrote worse
for the future, or else. At this aposiopesis I looked
inquiringly at the speaker, and he filled up the chasm by
saying that he would " annihilate " me.  Could any person fail to be aghast at such a demand? I was to write
worse than my own standard, which, by his account of my
verses, must be difficult; and I was to write worse than
himself, which might be impossible. My feelings revolted
against so arrogant a demand, unless it had been far otherwise expressed; if death on the spot had awaited me, I
could not have controlled myself; and on the next occasion for sending up verses to the head master, so far from
attending to the orders issued, I double-shotted my guns;
double applause descended on myself; but I remarked
with some awe, though not repenting of what I had done,
that double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my
enemies. Amongst them loomed out in the distance my
"' annihilating" friend, who shook his huge fist at me, but
with something like a grim smile about his eyes. He took
an early opportunity of paying his respects to me again,
saying, "You little devil, do you call this writing your
worst?"  " No," I replied; "I call it writing my best."
The annihilator, as it turned out, was really a good-natured
young man; but he was on the wing for Cambridge; and




176          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
with the lest, or some of them, I continued to wage war for
more than a year. And yet, for a word spoken with kindness, how readily I would have resigned (had it been altogether at my own choice to do so) the peacock's feather in
my cap as the merest of bawbles. Undoubtedly, praise
sounded sweet in my ears also; but that was nothing by
comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested
distinctions that were connected with mortification to others;
and, even if I could have got over that, the eternal feud
fretted and tormented my nature. Love, that once in childhood had been so mere a necessity to me, that had long
been a reflected ray from a departed sunset. But peace,
and freedom from strife, if love were no longer possible,
(as so rarely it is in this world,) was the clamorous necessity of my nature. To contend with somebody was still
my fate; how to escape the contention I could not see;
and yet, for itself, and for the deadly passions into which it
forced me, I hated and loathed it more than death. It added to the distraction and internal feud of my mind, that I
could not altogether condemn the upper boys. I was made
a handle of humiliation to them. And, in the mean time,
if I had an undeniable advantage in one solitary accomplishment, which is all a matter of accident, or sometimes
of peculiar direction given to the taste, they, on the other
hand, had a great advantage over me in the more elaborate
difficulties of Greek and of choral Greek poetry. I could
not altogether wonder at their hatred of myself. Yet still,
as they had chosen to adopt this mode of conflict with me,
I did not feel that I had any choice but to resist. The contest was terminated for me by my removal from the school
in consequence of a very threatening illness affecting my
head; but it lasted more than a year, and it did not close
before several among my public enemies had become my
nrivate friends. They were much older, but they invited




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.         177
me to the houses of their friends, and showed me a respect
which affected me - this respect having more reference
apparently, to the firmness I had exhibited, than to any
splendor in my verses.  And, indeed, these had rather
drooped from a natural accident; several persons of my
own class had formed the practice of asking me to write
verses for them. I could not refuse. But, as the subjects
given out were the same for the entire class, it was not possible to take so many crops off the ground without starving
the quality of all.
The most interesting public event which, during my stay
at this school, at all connected itself with Bath, and indeed
with the school itself, was the sudden escape of Sir Sidney
Smith from the prison of the Temple in Paris. The mode
of his escape was as striking as its time was critical.  Having accidently thrown a ball beyond the prison bounds in
playing at tennis, or some such game, Sir Sidney was surprised to observe that the ball thrown back was not the
same. Fortunately, he had the presence of mind to dissemble his sudden surprise. He retired, examined the
ball, found it stuffed with letters; and, in the same way, he
subsequently conducted a long correspondence, and arranged the whole circumstances of his escape; which, remarkably enough, was accomplished exactly eight days
before the sailing of Napoleon with the Egyptian expedition; so that Sir Sidney was just in time to confront, and
utterly to defeat, Napoleon in the breach of Acre. But
for Sir Sidney, Bonaparte would have overrun Syria, that
is certain. What would have followed from that event is
a far more obscure problem.
Sir Sidney Smith, I must explain to readers of this gen.
eration, and Sir Edward Pellew, (afterwards Lord Exmouth,) figured as the two * Paladins of the first war with
* To them in the next stage of the war succeeded Sir Michael
12




178           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
revolutionary France. Rarely were these two names mentioned but in connection with some splendid, prosperous,
and un qual contest. Hence the whole nation was saddened by the account of Sir Sidney's capture; and this
must be understood, in order to make the joy of his sudden
return perfectly intelligible. Not even a rumor of Sir
Sidney's escape had or could have run before him; for, at
the moment of reaching the coast of England, he hdc 
started with post horses to Bath. It was about dusk when
he arrived: the postilions were directed to the square in
which his mother lived: in a few minutes he was in his
mother's arms, and in fifty minutes more the news had
flown to the remotest suburb of the city. The agitation of
Bath on this occasion was indescribable. All the troops
of the line then quartered in that city, and a whole regiment of volunteers, immediately got under arms, and
marched to the quarter in which Sir Sidney lived. The
small square overflowed with the soldiery; Sir Sidney
went out, and was immediately lost to us, who were watching for him, in the closing ranks of the troops. Next
morning, however, I, my younger brother, and a schoolfellow of my own age, called formally upon the naval hero.
Why, I know not, unless as alumni of the school at which
Sir Sidney Smith had received his own education, we were
admitted without question or demur; and I may record it
as an amiable trait in Sir Sidney, that he received us then
with great kindness, and took us down with him to the
pump room. Considering, however, that we must have
Seymour, and Lord Cochrane, (the present Earl of Dundonald,) and
Lord Camelford. The two last were the regular fireeaters of the
day. Sir Horatio Nelson being already an admiral, was no longer
looked to for insulated exploits of brilliant adventure: his name was
now connected with larger and combined attacks, less dashing and ad-enturous, because including heavier responsibilities.




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.        179
been most afflicting bores to Sir Sidney, -a fact which no
self-esteem could even then disguise from us, - it puzzled
me at first to understand the principle of his conduct.
Having already done more than enough in courteous acknowledgment of our fraternal claims as fellow-students
at the Bath Grammar School, why should he think it necessary to burden himself further with our worshipful
society? I found out the secret, and will explain it. A
very slight attention to Sir Sidney's deportment in public
revealed to me that he was morbidly afflicted with nervous
sensibility and with mauvaise honte. He that had faced so
cheerfully crowds of hostile and threatening eyes, could
not support without trepidation those gentle eyes, beaming
with gracious admiration, of his fair young countrywomen.
By accident, at that moment Sir Sidney had no acquaint
ances in Bath,* a fact which is not at all to be wondered
at. Living so much abroad and at sea, an English sailor,
of whatever rank, has few opportunities for making friends
at home. And yet there was a necessity that Sir Sidney
should gratify the public interest, so warmly expressed, by
presenting himself somewhere or other to the public eye.
But how trying a service to the most practised and otherwise most callous veteran on such an occasion, that he
should step forward, saying in effect, " So you are wanting to see me: well, then, here I am: come and look at
me! " Put it into what language you please, such a summons was written on all faces, and countersigned by his
worship the mayor, who began to whisper insinuations of
riots if Sir Sidney did not comply. Yet, if he did, inevi.
tably his own act of obedience to the public pleasure took.Je shape of an ostentatious self-parading under the con* Lord Camelford was, I believe, his first cousin; Sir Sidney's
mother and Lady Camelford being sisters. But Lord Camelft rd vwas
then absent from Bath.




ISO          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
struction of those numerous persons who knew nothing of
the public importunity, or of Sir Sidney's unaffected and
even morbid reluctance to obtrude himself upon the public
eye. The thing was unavoidable; and the sole palliation
that it admitted was -to break the concentration of the
public gaze, by associating Sir Sidney with some alien
group, no matter of what cattle. Such a group would
relieve both parties-gazer and gazee-from  too distressing a consciousness of the little business on which they
had met. We, the schoolboys, being three, intercepted and
absorbed part of the enemy's fire, and, by furnishing Sir
Sidney with real bona fide matter of conversation, we released him from the most distressing part of his sufferings, viz., the passive and silent acquiescence in his own
apotheosis -holding a lighted candle, as it were, to the
glorification of his own shrine. With our help, he weathered
the storm of homage silently ascending. And we, in fact,
whilst seeming to ourselves too undeniably a triad of bores,
turned out the most serviceable allies that Sir Sidney ever
had by land or sea, until several moons later, when he
formed the invaluable acquaintance of the Syrian "butcher," viz., Djezzar, the Pacha of Acre. I record this little trait
of Sir Sidney's constitutional temperament, and the little
service through which I and my two comrades contributed
materially to his relief, as an illustration of that infirmity
which besieges the nervous system of our nation. It is a
sensitiveness which sometimes amounts to lunacy, and
sometimes even tempts to suicide. It is a mistake, however, to suppose this morbid affection unknown to Frenchmen, or unknown to men of the world. I have myself
known it to exist in both, and particularly in a man that
might be said to live in the street, such was the American
publicity which circumstances threw around his life; and
so far were his habits of life removed from reserve, or




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.         181
From any predisposition to gloom. And at this moment I
recall a remarkable illustration of what I am saying, communicated by Wordsworth's accomplished friend, Sir George
Beaumont. To him I had been sketching the distressing
sensitiveness of Sir Sidney pretty much as I have sketched
it to the reader; and how he, the man that on the breach
at Acre valued not the eye of Jew, Christian, or Turk,
shrank back —me ipso teste —from  the gentle, though
eager-from the admiring, yet affectionate -glances of
three very young ladies in Gay Street, Bath, the oldest (1
should say) not more than seventeen. Upon which Sir
George mentioned, as a parallel experience of his own,
that Mr. Canning, being ceremoniously introduced to himself (Sir George) about the time when he had reached the
meridian of his fame as an orator, and should therefore
have become blase to the extremity of being absolutely
seared and case-hardened against all impressions whatever
appealing to his vanity or egotism, did absolutely (credite
posteri!) blush like any roseate girl of fifteen. And that
this was no accident growing out of a momentary agitation,
no sudden spasmodic pang, anomalous and transitory, appeared from other concurrent anecdotes of Canning, reported by gentlemen from Liverpool, who described to us
most graphically and picturesquely the wayward fitfulness
(not coquettish, or wilful, but nervously overmastering and
most unaffectedly distressing) which besieged this great artist in oratory, as the time approached —was comingwas going, at which the private signal should have been
shown for proposing his health. Mr. P. (who had been, I
think, the mayor on the particular occasion indicated) de.
scribed the restlessness of his manner; how he rose, and
retired for half a minute into a little parlor behind the
chairman's seat; then came back; then whispered, Not
yet, I beseech you; I cannot face them yet; then sipped u




182          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
little water, then moved uneasily -n his chair, saying, One
moment, if you please: stop, stop: don't hurry: one moment, and I shall be up to the mark: in short, fighting with
the necessity of taking the final plunge, like one who lingers on the scaffold.
Sir Sidney was at that time slender and thin; having an
appearance of emaciation, as though he had suffered hardships and ill treatment, which, however, I do not remember
to have heard. Meantime, his appearance, connected with
his recent history, made him a very interesting person to
women; and to this hour it remains a mystery with me,
why and how it came about, that in every distribution of
honors Sir Sidney Smith was overlooked. In the Mediterranean he made many enemies, especially amongst those
of his own profession, who used to speak of him as far too
fine a gentleman, and above his calling. Certain it is that
he liked better to be doing business on shore, as at Acre,
although he commanded a fine 80 gun ship, the Tiger.
But however that may have been, his services, whether
classed as military or naval, were memorably splendid.
And, at that time, his connection, of whatsoever nature,
with the late Queen Caroline had not occurred. So that
altogether, to me, his case is inexplicable.
From the Bath Grammar School I was removed, in consequence of an accident, by which at first it was supposed
that my skull had been fractured; and the surgeon who attended me at one time talked of trepanning. This was an
awful word; but at present I doubt whether in reality any
thing very serious had happened. In fact, I was always
under a nervous panic for my head, and certainly exaggerated my internal feelings without meaning to do so;
and this misled the medical attendants. During a long
illness which succeeded, my mother, amongst other books
past all counting, read to me, in Hoole's translation, the




WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.         183
whole of the " Orlando Furioso;" meaning by the whole
the entire twenty-four books into which Hoole had condensed the original forty-six of Ariosto; and, from my own
experience at that time, I am disposed to think that the
homeliness of this version is an advantage, from not calling
off the attention at all from the narration to the narrator.
At this time also I first read the "Paradise Lost;" but,
oddly enough, in the edition of Bentley, that great nauxSto0OwrsJ, (or pseudo-restorer of the text.) At the close of
my illness, the head master called upon my mother, in
company with his son-in-law, Mr. Wilkins, as did a certain
Irish Colonel Bowes, who had sons at the school, requesting earnestly, in terms most flattering to myself, that I
might be suffered to remain there. But it illustrates my
mother's moral austerity, that she was shocked at my hearing compliments to my own merits, and was altogether disturbed at what doubtless these gentlemen expected to see
received with maternal pride. She declined to let me con.
tinue at the Bath School; and I went to another, at Wink.
field, in the county of Wilts, of which the chief recommen
dation lay in the religious character of the master.




CHAPTER VI.
I ENTER THE WORLD.
YES, at this stage of my life, viz., in my fifteenth year
and from this sequestered school, ankle deep I first stepped
into the world. At Winkfield I had staid about a year, or
not much more, when I received a letter from a young
friend of my own age, Lord Westport,* the son of Lord
Altamont, inviting me to accompany him to Ireland for the
ensuing summer and autumn. This invitation was repeated by his tutor; and my mother, after some consideration,
allowed me to accept it.
In the spring of 1800, accordingly, I went up to Eton,
for the purpose of joining my friend. Here I several timeq
visited the gardens of the queen's villa at Frogmore; and,
privileged by my young friend's introduction, I had oppor.
tunities of seeing and hearing the queen and all the prin.
cesses; which at that time was a novelty in my life, naturally a good deal prized. Lord Westport's mother had
been, before her marriage, Lady Louisa Howe, daughter to
the great admiral, Earl Howe, and intimately known to the
* My acquaintance with Lord Westport was of some years' stand.
ing. My father, whose commercial interests led him often to Ireland
had many friends there. One of these was a country gentleman con
nected with the west; and at his house I first met Lord Westport.
184




I ENTER THE WORLD.             185
~yal family, who, on her account, took a continual and
special notice of her son.
On one of these occasions I had the honor of a brief inerview with the king. Madame De Campan mentions, as
Ln amusing incident in her early life, though terrific at the
time, and overwhelming to her sense of shame, that not
long after her establishment at Versailles, in the service of
some one amongst the daughters of Louis XV., having as
yet never seen the king, she was one day suddenly intro.
duced to his particular notice, under the following circumstances: The time was morning; the young lady was not
fifteen; her spirits were as the spirits of a fawn in May;
her tour of duty for the day was either not come, or was
gone; and, finding herself alone in a spacious room, what
more reasonable thing could she do than amuse herself
with making cheeses? that is, whirling round, according to
a fashion practised by young ladies both in France and
England, and pirouetting until the petticoat is inflated like
a balloon, and then sinking into a courtesy. Mademoiselle
was very solemnly rising from one of these courtesies, in
the centre of her collapsing petticoats, when a slight noise
alarmed her. Jealous of intruding eyes, yet not dreading
more than a servant at worst, she turned, and, 0 Heavens!
whom should she behold but his most Christian majesty
advancing upon her, with a brilliant suite of gentlemen,
young and old, equipped for the chase, who had been all
silent spectators of her performances? From the king to
the last of the train, all bowed to her, and all laughed without restraint, as they passed the abashed amateur of cheese
making. But she, to speak Homerically, wished in that
hour that the earth might gape and cover her confusion.
Lord Westport and I were about the age of mademoiselle,
and not much more decorously engaged, when a turn
brought us full in view of a royal party coming along one




186             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
of the walks at Frogmore.     We were, in fact, theorizing
and practically commenting on the art of throwing stones.
Boys have a peculiar contempt for female attempts in that
way. For, besides that girls fling wide of the mark, with a
certainty that might have won the applause of Galerius,*
there is a peculiar sling and rotary motion of the arm il
launching a stone, which no girl ever can attain. From
ancient practice, I was somewhat of a proficient in this art,
and was discussing the philosophy of female failures, illustrating my doctrines with pebbles, as the case happened to
demand; whilst Lord Westport was practising on the peculiar whirl of the wrist with a shilling; when suddenly he
turned the head of the coin towards me with a significant
glance, and in a low voice he muttered some words, of
which I caught "Grace of God," "France t and Ireland,"
* "Sir," said that emperor to a soldier who had missed the target
in succession I know not how many times, (suppose we say fifteen,)' allow me to offer my congratulations on the truly admirable
skill you have shown in keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit
once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing."
t France was at that time among the royal titles, the act for altering the king's style and title not having then passed. As connected
with this subject, I may here mention a project (reported to have been
canvassed in council at the time when that alteration did take place)
for changing the title from king to emperor. What then occurred
strikingly illustrates the general character of the British policy as to
all external demonstrations of pomp and national pretension, and its
strong opposition to that of France under corresponding circumstances. The principle of esse quam videri, and the carelessness about
names when the thing is unaffected, generally speaking, must command praise and respect. Yet, considering how often the reputation
of power becomes, for international purposes, nothing less than power itself, and that words, in many relations of human life, are emphatically things, and sometimes are so to the exclusion of the most
absolute things themselves, men of all qualities being often governed
by names, the policy of France seems the wiser, viz., se faire raloir
even at the price of ostentation. But, at all events, no man is enti




I ENTER THE WORLD                    187' Defender of the F ith, and so forth."   This solemn recitation of the legend on the coin was meant as a fanciful
way of apprising me that the king was approaching; for
Lord W. had himself lost somewhat of the awe natural to
tied to exercise that extreme candor, forbearance, and spirit of ready
concession in re aliena, and, above all, in re politica, which, on his own
account, might be altogether honorable. The council might give
away their own honors, but not yours and mine. On a public (or at
least on a foreign) interest, it is the duty of a good citizen to be lofty,
exacting, almost insolent. And, on this principle, when the ancient
style and title of the kingdom fell under revision, if- as I do not
deny - it was advisable to retrench all obsolete pretensions as so
many memorials of a greatness that in that particular manifestation
was now extinct, and therefore, pro tanto, rather presumptions of
weakness than of strength. as being mementoes of our losses, yet, on
the other hand, all countervailing claims which had since arisen, and
had far more than equiponderated the declension in that one direction,
should have been then adopted into the titular heraldry of the nation.
It was neither wise nor just to insult foreign nations with assumptions which no longer stood upon any basis of reality. And on that
ground France was, perhaps, rightly omitted. But why, when the
crown was thus remoulded, and its jewelry unset, if this one pearl
were to be surrendered as an ornament no longer ours, why, we may
ask, were not the many and gorgeous jewels, achieved by the national
wisdom and power in later times, adopted into the recomposed tiara?
Upon what principle did the Romans, the wisest among the children
of this world, leave so many inscriptions, as records of their power or
their triumphs, upon columns, arches, temples, basilice, or medals?
A national act, a solemn and deliberate act, delivered to history, is a
more imperishable monument than any made by hands; and the
title, as revised, which ought to have expressed a change in the dominion simply as to the mode and form of its expansion, now remains as a false, base, abject confession of absolute contraction: once
we had A, B, and C; now we have dwindled into A and B: true,
most unfaithful guardian of the national honors, we had lost C, and
that you were careful to remember. But we happened to have gained
D, E, F, - and so downwards to Z, - all of which duly you forgot.
On this argument, it was urged at the time, in high quarters, that
the new re-cast of the crown and sceptre should come out of the




188             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
a young person in a first situation of this nature, through
his frequent admissions to the royal presence. For my
own part, I was as yet a stranger even to the king's person.
I had, indeed, seen most or all the princesses in the way I
furnace equably improved; as much for what they were authorized to
claim as for what they were compelled to disclaim. And, as one
mode of effecting this, it was proposed that the king should become
an emperor. Some, indeed, alleged that an emperor, by its very idea,
as received in the Chancery of Europe, presupposes a king paramount over vassal or tributary kings. But it is a sufficient answer to
say that an emperor is a prince, uniting in his own person the thrones
of several distinct kingdoms; and in effect we adopt that view of the
case in giving the title of imperial to the parliament, or common as
sembly of the three kingdoms. However, the title of the prince was
a matter trivial in comparison of the title of his ditio, or extent of
jurisdiction.  This point admits of a striking illustration: in the
"Paradise Regained," Milton has given us, in close succession, three
matchless pictures of civil grandeur, as exemplified in three different
modes by three different states. Availing himself of the brief scriptural
notice, -" The devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain,
and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,"
- he causes to pass, as in a solemn pageant before us, the two military empires then coexisting, of Parthia and Rome, and finally (undel
another idea of political greatness) the intellectual glories of Athens
From the picture of the Roman grandeur I extract, and beg the
reader to weigh, the following lines: -
" Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see -at
What conflux issuing forth or entering in;
Pretors, proconsuls, to their provinces
Hasting, or on return in robes of state;
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power;
Legions or cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or 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, Nilotic isle: and, more to west,
The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor Sea,
From India and the Golden Chersonese,




1 ENTER THE WORLD.                   189
have mentioned above; and occasionally, in the streets of
Windsor, the sudden disappearance of all hats from all
heads had admonished me that some royal personage or
other was then traversing (or, if not traversing, was crossAnd utmost Indian isle, Taprobane,
- Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed;
From Gallia, Gades, and the British, west,
Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, north,
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool."
With this superb picture, or abstraction of the Roman pomps and
power, when ascending to their utmost altitude, confront the following representative sketch of a great English levee on some high solemnity, suppose the king's birthday: "Amongst the presentations
to his majesty, we noticed Lord O. S., the governor general of India. on his departure for Bengal; Mr. U. Z., with an address from the
Upper and Lower Canadas; Sir L. V., on his appointment as commander of the forces in Nova Scotia; General Sir -, on his return from the Burmese war, [" the Golden Chersonese,"] the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet; Mr. B. Z., on his appointment to the chief justiceship at Madras; Sir R. G., the late
attorney general at the Cape of Good Hope; General Y. X., on
taking leave for the governorship of Ceylon, [" the utmost Indian
isle, Taprobane;"] Lord F. M., the bearer of the last despatches
from head quarters in Spain; Col. P., on going out as captain general of the forces in New Holland; Commodore St. L., on his return
from a voyage of discovery towards the north pole; the King of
Owhyhee, attended by chieftains from the other islands of that cluster; Col. M'P., on his return from the war in Ashantee, upon which
occasion the gallant colonel presented the treaty and tribute from that
country; Admiral -, on his appointment to the Baltic fleet; Captain 0. N., with despatches from the Red Sea, advising the destruction of the piratical armament and settlements in that quarter, as
also in the Persian Gulf; Sir T. O'N., the late resident in Nepaul, to
present his report of the war in that territory, and in adjacent re
gions -names as yet unknown in Europe; the governor of the
Leeward Islands, on departing for the West Indies; various deputa
tions with petitions, addresses, &c., from islands in remote quarters
of the globe, amongst which we distinguished those from Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from the Mauritius, from




190             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
ing) the street; but either his majesty had never been of
the party, or, from distance, I had failed to distinguish him,
Now, for the first time, I was meeting him nearly face tc
face; for, though the walk we occupied was not that in
which the royal party were moving, it ran so near it, and
was connected by so many cross walks at short intervals,
that it was a matter of necessity for us, as we were now
observed, to go and present ourselves. What happened
Java, from the British settlement in Terra del Fuego, from the Christian churches in the Society, Friendly, and Sandwich Islands -as
well as other groups less known in the South Seas; Admiral H. A.,
on assuming the command of the Channel fleet; Major Gen. X. L.,
on resigning the lieutenant governorship of Gibraltar; Hon. G. F., on
going out as secretary to the governor of Malta," &c.
This sketch, too hastily made up, is founded upon a base of a very
few years; i. e., we have, in one or two instances, placed in juxtaposition, as coexistences, events separated by a few years. But if (like
Milton's picture of the Roman grandeur) the abstraction had been
made from a base of thirty years in extent, and had there been added
to the picture (according to his precedent) the many and remote embassies to and from independent states, in all quarters of the earth,
with how many more groups might the spectacle have been crowded,
and especially of those who fall within that most picturesque delineation -
"Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed"!
As it is, I have noticed hardly any places but such as lie absolutely
within our jurisdiction. And yet, even under that limitation, how
vastly more comprehensive is the chart of British dominion than of
the Roman! To this gorgeous empire, some corresponding style and
title should have been adapted at the revision of the old title, and
should yet be adapted.
Apropos of the proposed change in the king's title: Coleridge, on
being assured that the new title of the king was to be Emperor of
the British Islands and their dependencies, and on the coin Imnperator Britanniarum, remarked, that, in this remanufactured form, the
title might be said to be japanned; alluding to this fact, that amongst
insular sovereigns, the only one known to Christian diplomacy by the
title of emperor is the Sovereign of Japan.




I ENTER THE WORLD               191
was pretty nearly as follows: The king, having first
spoken with great kindness to my companion, inquiring
circumstantially about his mother and grandmother, as persons particularly well known to himself, then turned his
eye upon me. My name, it seems, had been communicated to him; he did not, therefore, inquire about that. Was
I of Eton? This was his first question. I replied that I was
not, but hoped I should be. Had I a father living? I had
not: my father had been dead about eight years. "But
you have a mother?"  I had. "And she thinks of sending you to Eton?" I answered, that she had expressed
such an intention in my hearing; but I was not sure whether that might not be in order to waive an argument with
the person to whom she spoke, who happened to have been
an Etonian. "0, but all people think highly of Eton;
every body praises Eton. Your mother does right to inquire; there can be no harm in that; but the more she in.
quires, the more she will be satisfied - that I can answer
for."
Next came a question which had been suggested by my
name. Had my family come into England with the Huguenots at the revocation of the edict of Nantz? This
was a tender point with me: of all things I could not endure to be supposed of French descent; yet it was a vexation I had constantly to face, as most people supposed that
my name argued a French origin; whereas a Norman
origin argued pretty certainly an origin not French. I replied, with some haste, " Please your majesty, the family
has been in England since the conquest." It is probable
that I colored, or showed some mark of discomposure, with
which, however, the king was not displeased, for he smiled,
and said, " How do you know that?"  Here I was at a
loss for a moment how to answer; for I was sensible that it
did not become me to occupy the king's attention with any




192          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
long stories or traditions about a subject so unimportant ar
my own family; and yet it was necessary that I should
say something, unless I would be thought to have denied
my Huguenot descent upon no reason or authority. After
a moment's hesitation, I said, in effect, that the family from
which I traced my descent had certainly been a great and
leading one at the era of the barons' wars, as also in one
at least of the crusades; and that I had myself seen many
notices of this family, not only in books of heraldry, &c.,
but in the very earliest of all English books. " And what
book was that?"   "Robert of Gloucester's' Metrical
Chronicle,' which I understood, from internal evidence,
to have been written about 1280."  The king smiled
again, and said, " I know, I know."  But what it was that
he knew, long afterwards puzzled me to conjecture. I
now imagine, however, that he meant to claim a knowledge of the book I referred to- a thing which at that
time I thought improbable, supposing the king's acquaintance with literature not to be very extensive, nor likely to
have comprehended any knowledge at all of the blackletter period. But in this belief I was greatly mistaken, as
I was afterwards fully convinced by the best evidence from
various quarters. That library of 120,000 volumes, which
George IV. presented to the nation, and which has since
gone to swell the collection at the British Museum, had
been formed (as I was often assured by persons to whom
the whole history of the library, and its growth from small
rudiments, was familiarly known) under the direct personal superintendence of George III. It was a favorite and
pet creation; and his care extended even to the dressing of the books in appropriate bindings, and (as one man
told me) to their health; explaining himself to mean, that
in any case where a book was worm-eaten, or touched
however slightly with the worm, the king was anxious to




r ENTER THE WORLD.             193
prevent the injury from extending, or from infecting others
by close neighborhood; for it is supposed by many that
such injuries spread rapidly in favorable situations. One
of my informants was a German bookbinder of great respectability, settled in London, and for many years employed by the Admiralty as a confidential binder of records
or journals containing secrets of office, &c. Through this
connection he had been recommended to the service of his
majesty, whom he used to see continually in the course of
his attendance at Buckingham House, where the books
were deposited. This artist had (originally in the way of
his trade) become well acquainted with the money value
of English books; and that knowledge cannot be acquired
without some concurrent knowledge of their subject and
their kind of merit. Accordingly, he was tolerably well
qualified to estimate any man's attainments as a reading
man; and from him I received such circumstantial accounts of many conversations he had held with the king,
evidently reported with entire good faith and simplicity,
that I cannot doubt the fact of his majesty's very general
acquaintance with English literature. Not a day passed,
whenever the king happened to be at Buckingham House,
without his coming into the binding room, and minutely inspecting the progress of the binder and his allies - the gilders, toolers, &c. From the outside of the book the transition
was natural to its value in the scale of bibliography; and
in that way my informant had ascertained that the king
was well acquainted, not only with Robert of Gloucester,
but with all the other early chronicles, published by Hearne,
and, in fact, possessed that entire series which rose at one
period to so enormous a price. From this person I learned
afterwards that the king prided himself especially upon
his early folios of Shakspeare; that is to say, not merely
upon the excellence of the individual copies in a biblioi3




194           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCTIEn.
graphical sense, as "tall copies" and having large margins, &c., but chiefly from their value in relation to the
most authentic basis for the text of the poet. And thus
it appears, that at least two of our kings, Charles I. and
George III., have made it their pride to profess a reverential esteem for Shakspeare. This bookbinder added his
attestation to the truth (or to the generally reputed truth)
of a story which I had heard from other authority, viz.,
that the librarian, or, if not officially the librarian, at least
the chief director in every thing relating to the books, was
an illegitimate son of Frederic, Prince of Wales, (son to
George II.,) and therefore half-brother of the king. His
own taste and inclinations, it seemed, concurred with his
brother's wishes in keeping him in a subordinate rank
and an obscure station; in which, however, he enjoyed
affluence without anxiety, or trouble, or courtly envy, and
the luxury, which he most valued, of a superb library.
He lived and died, I have heard, as plain Mr. Barnard.
At one time I disbelieved the story, (which possibly may
have been long known to the public,) on the ground that
even George III. would not have differed so widely from
princes in general as to leave a brother of his own, how.
ever unaspiring, wholly undistinguished by public honors.
But having since ascertained that a naval officer, well
known to my own family, and to a naval brother of my
own in particular, by assistance rendered to him repeatedly when a midshipman in changing his ship, was undoubtedly an illegitimate son of George III., and yet that
he never rose higher than the rank of post captain, though
privately acknowledged by his father and other members
of the royal family, I found the insufficiency of that objection. The fact is, and it does honor to the kingss memory, he reverenced the moral feelings of his country,
which are, in this and in all points of domestic morals,




1 ENTER THE WORLD.             195
severe and high toned, (I say it in defiance of writers, such
as Lord Byron, Mr. Hazlitt, &c., who hated alike the just
and the unjust pretensions of England,) in a degree absolutely incomprehensible to Southern Europe. He had his
frailties like other children of Adam; but he did not seek
to fix the public attention upon them, after the fashion of
Louis Quatorze, or our Charles II., and so many other
continental princes. There were living witnesses (more
than one) of his aberrations as of theirs; but he, with
better feelings than they, did not choose, by placing these
witnesses upon a pedestal of honor, surmounted by heraldic trophies, to emblazon his own transgressions to
coming generations, and to force back the gaze of a remote posterity upon his own infirmities. It was his ambition to be the father of his people in a sense not quite so
literal. These were things, however, of which at that time
I had not heard.
During the whole dialogue, I did not even once remark
that hesitation and iteration of words generally attributed
to George III.; indeed, so generally, that it must often have
existed; but in this case, I suppose that the brevity of his
sentences operated to deliver him from any embarrassment
of utterance, such as might have attended longer and more
complex sentences, where some anxiety was natural to
overtake the thoughts as they arose. When we observed
that the king had paused in his stream of questions, which
succeeded rapidly to each other, we understood it as a signal of dismissal; and making a profound obeisance, we retired backwards a few steps. His majesty smiled in a very
gracious manner, waved his hand towards us, and said
something (I did not know what) in a peculiarly kind accent; he then turned round, and the whole party along with
him; which set us at liberty without impropriety to turn to
the right about ourselves, and make our egress from the
gardens.




196           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
This incident, to me at my age, was very naturally ont
of considerable interest. One reflection it suggested after
wards, which was this: Could it be likely that much truth
of a general nature, bearing upon man and social interests,
could ever reach the ear of a king, under the etiquette of a
court, and under that one rule which seemed singly sufficient to foreclose all natural avenues to truth? -the rule, I
mean, by which it is forbidden to address a question to the
king. I was well aware, before I saw him, that in the
royal presence, like the dead soldier in Lucan, whom the
mighty necromancing witch tortures back into a momentary life, I must have no voice except for answers:" Vox illi linguaque tantum
Responsura datur." *
1 was to originate nothing myself; and at my age, before
so exalted a personage, the mere instincts of reverential
demeanor would at any rate have dictated such a rule.
But what becomes of that man's general condition of mind
in relation to all the great objects moving on the field of
human experience, where it is a law generally for almost
all who approach him, that they shall confine themselves
to replies, absolute responses, or, at most, to a prosecution
or carrying forward of a proposition delivered by the protagonist, or supreme leader of the conversation? For it
must be remembered that, generally speaking, the effect
of putting no question is to transfer into the other party's
hands the entire originating movement of the dialogue;
and thus, in a musical metaphor, the great man is the sole
modulator and determiner of the key in which the conversation proceeds, It is true, that sometimes, by travelling a
* For the sake of those who are no classical scholars, I explain:
Voice and language are restored to him only to the extent of replying




ENTER THE WORLD               19'
little beyond the question;n your answer, you may enlarge
the basis, so as to bring up some new train of thought
which you wish to introduce, and may suggest fresh matter as effectually as if you had the liberty of more openly
guiding the conversation, whether by way of question or by
direct origination of a topic; but this depends on skill to
improve an opening, or vigilance to seize it at the instant,
and, after all, much upon accident; to say nothing of the
crime, (a sort of petty treason, perhaps, or, what is it?) if
you should be detected in your " improvements " and " enlargements of basis."  The king might say, "Friend, I
must tell my attorney general to speak with you, for I detect a kind of treason in your replies. They go too far.
They include something which tempts my majesty to a notice; which is, in fact, for the long and the short of it, that
you have been circumventing me half unconsciously into
answering a question which has silently been insinuated by
you." Freedom of communication, unfettered movement
of thought, there can be none under such a ritual, which
tends violently to a Byzantine, or even to a Chinese result
of freezing, as it were, all natural and healthy play of the
faculties under the petrific mace of absolute ceremonial
and fixed precedent. For it will hardly be objected, that
the privileged condition of a few official councillors and
state ministers, whose hurry and oppression of thought
from public care will rarely allow them to speak on any
other subject than business, can be a remedy large enough
for so large an evil. True it is, that a peculiarly frank or
jovial temperament in a sovereign may do much for a season to thaw this punctilious reserve and ungenial constraint; but that is an accident, and personal to an individual. And, on the other hand, to balance even this, it may
be remarked, that, in all noble and fashionable society,
where there happens to be  pride in sustaining what is




198          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
deemed a good tone in conversation, it is peculiarly aimed
at, (and even artificially managed,) that no lingering or loi.
tering upon one theme, no protracted discussion, shall be
allowed. And, doubtless, as regards merely the treatment
of convivial or purely social communication of ideas,
(which also is a great art,) this practice is right. I admit
willingly that an uncultured brute, who is detected at an
elegant table in the atrocity of absolute discussion or dispu.
tation, ought to be summarily removed by a police officer;
and possibly the law will warrant his being held to bail for
one or two years, according to the enormity of his case.
But men are not always enjoying, or seeking to enjoy, social pleasure; they seek also, and have need to seek continually, both through books and men, intellectual growth,
fresh power, fresh strength, to keep themselves ahead or
abreast of this moving, surging, billowing world of ours;
especially in these modern times, when society revolves
through so many new phases, and shifts its aspects with so
much more velocity than in past ages. A king, especially
of this country, needs, beyond most other men, to keep
himself in a continual state of communication, as it were,
by some vital and organic sympathy, with the most essential of these changes. And yet this punctilio of etiquette
like some vicious forms of law or technical fictions grown
too narrow for the age, which will not allow of cases coming before the court in a shape desired alike by the plaintiff and the defendant, is so framed as to defeat equally the
wishes of a prince disposed to gather knowledge wherever
he can find it, and of those who may be best fitted to give it.
For a few minutes on three other occasions, before we
finally quitted Eton, I again saw the king, and always
with renewed interest. He was kind to every body - condescending and affable in a degree which I am bound to
remember with personal gratitude; and one thing I had




ENTER THE WORLD.                199
heard of him, which even then, and much more as my
mind opened to a wider compass of deeper reflection, won
my respect. I have always reverenced a man of whom it
could be truly said that he had once, and once only, (for
more than once implies another unsoundness in the quality
of the passion,) been desperately in love; in love, that is to
say, in a terrific excess, so as to daily, under suitable circumstances, with the thoughts of cutting his own throat, or
even (as the case might be) the throat of her whom he loved
above all this world. It will be understood that I am not
justifying such enormities; on the contrary, they are
wrong, exceedingly wrong; but it is evident that people in
general feel pretty much as I do, from the extreme sym.
pathy with which the public always pursue the fate of any
criminal who has committed a murder of this class, even
though tainted (as generally it is) with jealousy, which, in
itself, wherever it argues habitual mistrust, is an ignoble
passion.*
Great passions, (do not understand me, reader, as though
I meant great appetites,) passions moving in a great orbit,
and transcending little regards, are always arguments of
some latent nobility. There are, indeed, but few men and
few women capable of great passions, or (properly speaking) of passions at all. Hartley, in his mechanism of the
human mind, propagates the sensations by means of vibrations, and by miniature vibrations, which, in a Roman form
* Accordingly, Coleridge has contended, and I think with truth,
that the passion of Othello is not jealousy. So much I know by report, as the result of a lecture which he read at the Royal Institution.
His arguments I did not hear. To me it is evident that Othello's
state of feeling was not that of a degrading, suspicious rivalship, but
the state of perfect misery, arising out of this dilemma, the most affecting, perhaps, to contemplate of any which can exist, viz., the dire
necessity of loving without limit one whom the heart pronounces tc
be unworthy of that love




200           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for such miniatures, he terms vibratiuncles. Now, of men
and women generally, parodying that terminology, we
ought to say - not that they are governed by passions, or
at all capable of passions, but of passiuncles. And thence
it is that few men go, or can go, beyond a little love-liking,
as it is called; and hence also, that, in a world where so
little conformity takes place between the ideal speculations
of men and the gross realities of life, where marriages are
governed in so vast a proportion by convenience, prudence,
self-interest, -any thing, in short, rather than deep sympathy between the parties, —and, consequently, where so
many men must be crossed in their inclinations, we yet
hear of so few tragic catastrophes on that account. The
king, however, was certainly among the number of those
who are susceptible of a deep passion, if every thing be
true that is reported of him. All the world has heard that
he was passionately devoted to the beautiful sister of the
then Duke of Richmond. That was before his marriage;
and I believe it is certain that he not only wished, but sincerely meditated, to have married her. So much is matter
of notoriety. But other circumstances of the case have
been sometimes reported, which imply great distraction
of mind and a truly profound possession of his heart
by that early passion; which, in a prince whose feelings
are liable so much to the dispersing and dissipating power
of endless interruption from new objects and fresh claims
on the attention, coupled also with the fact that he never,
but in this one case, professed any thing amounting to extravagant or frantic attachment, do seem to argue that the
king was truly and passionately in love with Lady Sarah
Lennox. He had a demon upon him, and was under a real
possession. If so, what a lively expression of the mixed
condition of human fortunes, and not less of another truth
equally affecting, viz., the dread conflicts with the will,



I ENTER THE WORLD.             201
the mighty agitations which silently and in darkness are
convulsing many a heart, where, to the external eye, all is
tranquil, —that this king, at the very threshold of his public
career, at the very moment when he was binding about his
brows the golden circle of sovereignty, when Europe
watched him with interest, and the kings of the earth with
envy, not one of the vulgar titles to happiness being wanting,-youth, health, a throne the most splendid on this
planet, general popularity amongst a nation of freemen,
and the hope which belongs to powers as yet almost untried,-that, even under these most flattering auspices, he
should be called upon to make a sacrifice the most bitter of
all to which human life is liable! He made it; and he
might then have said to his people, " For you, and to my
public duties, I have made a sacrifice which none of you
would have made for me." In years long ago, I have
heard a woman of rank recurring to the circumstances of
Lady Sarah's first appearance at court after the king's
marriage. If I recollect rightly, it occurred after that
lady's own marriage with Sir Charles Bunbury. Many
eyes were upon both parties at that moment,-female eyes,
especially,-and the speaker did not disguise the excessive
interest with which she herself observed them. Lady
Sarah was not agitated, but the king was. He seemed
anxious, sensibly trembled, changed color, and shivered, as
Lady S. B. drew near. But, to quote the one single
eloquent sentiment, which I remember after a lapse of
thirty years, in Monk Lewis's Romantic Tales, "In
this world all things pass away; blessed be Heaven, and
the bitter pangs by which sometimes it is pleased to recall
its wanderers, even our passions pass away! "  And thus
it happened that this storm also was laid asleep and forgotten, together with so many others of its kind that have
teen, and that shall be again, so long as man is man, and




202              AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKI.ICHES.
woman woman.      Meantime, in justification of a passion so
profound, one would be glad to think highly of the lady
that inspired it; and, therefore, I heartily hope that the in
suits offered to her memory in the scandalous " Memoirs
of the Duc de Lauzun" are mere calumnies, and records
rather of his presumptuous wishes than of any actual
successes.*
* That book, I am aware, is generally treated as a forgery; but
internal evidence, drawn from the tone and quality of the revelations
there made, will not allow me to think it altogether such. There is
an abandon and carelessness in parts which mark its sincerity. Its
authenticity I cannot doubt. But that proves nothing for the truth
of the particular stories which it contains. A book of scandalous
and defamatory stories, especially where the writer has had the baseness to betray the confidence reposed in his honor by women, and to
boast of favors alleged to have been granted him, it is always fair to
consider as ipso facto a tissue of falsehoods; and on the following
argument, that these are exposures which, even if true, none but the
basest of men would have made. Being, therefore, on the hypothesis
most favorable to his veracity, the basest of men, the author is selfdenounced as vile enough to have forged the stories, and cannot coInplain if he should be roundly accused of doing that which he has
taken pains to prove himself capable of doing. This way of arguing
might be applied with fatal effect to the Duc de Lauzun's " Memoirs,"
supposing them written with a view to publication. But, by possibility, that was not the case. The Duc de L. terminated his profligate life, as is well known, on the scaffold, during the storms of the
French revolution; and nothing in his whole career won him so
much credit as the way in which he closed it; for he went to his
death with a romantic carelessness, and even gayety of demeanor.
His "Memoirs " were not published by himself: the publication was
posthumous; and by whom authorized, or for what purpose, is not
exactly known. Probably the manuscript fell into mercenary hands,
and was published merely on a speculation of pecuniary gain. From
some passages, however, I cannot but infer that the writer did not
mean to bring it before the public, but wrote it rather as a series of private memoranda, to aid his own recollection of circumstances and
dates. The Duc de Lauzun's account of his intrigue with Lady
Sarah goes so far as to allege, that he rode down in disguise, from




I ENTER THE WORLD.                  203
However, to eave dissertation behind me, and to resume the thread of my narrative, an incident, which about
this period impressed me even more profoundly than my
introduction to a royal presence, was my first visit to
London.
London to Sir Charles B.'s country seat, agreeably to a previous assignation, and that he was admitted, by that lady's confidential attendant, through a back staircase, at the time when Sir Charles (a
fox hunter, but a man of the highest breeding and fashion) was himself at home, and occupied in the duties of hospitality.




CHAPTER V1I.
THE NATION OF LONDON.
IT was a most heavenly day in May of this year (1800)
when I first beheld and first entered this mighty wilderness, the city - no, not the city, but the nation - of London. Often since then, at distances of two and three hundred miles or more from this colossal emporium of men,
wealth, arts, and intellectual power, have I felt the sublime
expression of her enormous magnitude in one simple form
of ordinary occurrence, viz., in the vast droves of cattle,
suppose upon the great north roads, all with their heads directed to London, and expounding the size of the attracting
body, together with the force of its attractive power, by the
never-ending succession of these droves, and the remoteness from the capital of the lines upon which they were
moving. A suction so powerful, felt along radii so vast,
and a consciousness, at the same time, that upon other
radii still more vast, both by land and by sea, the same
suction is operating, night and day, summer and winter,
and hurrying forever into one centre the infinite means
needed for her infinite purposes, and the endless tributes to
the skill or tc the luxury of her endless population, crowds
the imagination with a pomp to which there is nothing
corresponding upon this planet, either amongst the things
204




THE NATION OF LONDON.                  205
that have beer or the things that are. Or, if any exception there is, it must be sought in ancient Rome.* We,
upon this occasion, were in an open carriage, and, chiefly
(as I imagine) to avoid the dust, we approached London
* " Ancient Rome." - Vast, however, as the London is of this day, I
incline to think that it is below the Rome of Trajan. It has long
been a settled opinion amongst scholars, that the computations of Lipsius, on this point, were prodigiously overcharged; and formerly I
shared in that belief. But closer study of the question, and a laborious collation of the different data, (for any single record, independently considered, can here establish nothing,) have satisfied me that
Lipsius was nearer the truth than his critics; and that the Roman
population of every class - slaves, aliens, peoples of the suburbs, included - lay between four and six millions; in which case the London
of 1833, which counts more than a million and a half, but less than
two millions, [Note. - Our present London of 1853 counts two millions,
plus as many thousands as there are days in the year,] may be taken,
xala n;.aTooS, as lying between one fourth and one third of Rome. To
discuss this question thoroughly would require a separate memoir,
for which, after all, there are not sufficient materials: meantime I
will make this remark: That the ordinary computations of a million,
or a million and a quarter, derived from the surviving accounts of the
different " regions," apply to Rome within the Pomaerium, and are,
therefore, no more valid for the total Rome of Trajan's time, stretching so many miles beyond it, than the bills of mortality for what is
technically " London within the walls " can serve at this day as a base
for estimating the population of that total London which we mean and
presume in our daily conversation. Secondly, even for the Rome
within these limits the computations are not commensurate, by not
allowing for the prodigious heqiht of the houses in Rome, which much
transcended that of modern cities. On this last point I will translate
a remarkable sentence from the Greek rhetorician Aristides, [Note. —
Aelius Aristides, Greek by his birth, who flourished in the time of the
Antonines;] to some readers it will be new and interesting: "And,
as oftentimes we see that a man who greatly excels others in bulk and
strength is not content with any display, however ostentatious, of his
powers, short of that where he is exhibited surmounting himself with
a pyramid of other men, one set standing upon the shoulders of another, so also this city, stretching forth her foundations over areas so




206              AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
by rural lanes, where any such could be found, or, at least,
along by-roads, quiet and shady, collateral to the main
roads. In that mode of approach we missed some features of the sublimity belonging to any of the comvast, is yet not satisfied with those superficial dimensions; that contents
her not; but upon one city rearing another of corresponding proportions, and upon that another, pile resting upon pile, houses overlaying
houses, in aerial succession; so, and by similar steps, she achieves a
character of architecture justifying, as it were, the very promise of
her name; and with reference to that name, and its Grecian meaning,
we may say, that here nothing meets our eyes in any direction but
mere Rome! Rome! " [Note. - This word'Pwt1, (Rome,) on which
the rhetorician plays, is the common Greek term for strength.] " And
hence," says Aristides, "I derive the following conclusion: that if
any one, decomposing this series of strata, were disposed to unshell, as
it were, this existing Rome from its present crowded and towering
coacervations, and, thus degrading these aerial Romes, were to plant
them on the ground, side by side, in orderly succession, according to
all appearance, the whole vacant area of Italy would be filled with
these dismantled stories of Rome, and we should be presented with
the spectacle of one continuous city, stretching its labyrinthine pomp
to the shores of the Adriatic." This is so far from being meant as a
piece of rhetoric, that, on the very contrary, the whole purpose is to
substitute for a vague and rhetorical expression of the Roman grandeur one of a more definite character - viz., by presenting its dimensions in a new form, and supposing the city to be uncrested, as it were;
its upper tiers to be what the sailors call unshipped; and the dethroned
stories to be all drawn up in rank and file upon the ground; according to which assumption he implies that the city would stretch from
the mare Superum to the mare Inferum, i. e., from the sea of Tuscany
to the Adriatic.
The fact is, as Casaubon remarked, upon occasion of a ridiculous
blunder in estimating the largesses of a Roman emperor, that the
error on most questions of Roman policy or institutions tends not, as
is usual, in the direction of excess, but of defect. All things were
colossal there; and the probable, as estimated upon our modern scale.
is not unfrequently the impossible, as regarded Roman habits. Lipsins certainly erred extravagantly at times, and was a rash speculator
on many subjects; witness his books on the Roman amphitheatres; but




THE NATION OF LONDON.              207
nlon approaches upon a main road; we missed the whirl
and the uproar, the tumult and the agitation, which continually thicken and thicken throughout the last dozen
miles before you reach the suburbs. Already at three
stages' distance, (say 40 miles from London,) upon some
of the greatest roads, the dim presentiment of some vast
capital reaches you obscurely and like a misgiving  This
blind sympathy with a mighty but unseen object, some vast
magnetic range of Alps, in your neighborhood, continues
to increase you know not how. Arrived at the last station
for changing horses, Barnet, suppose, on one of the north
roads, or Hounslow on the western, you no longer think
(as in all other places) of naming the next stage; nobody
says, on pulling up, " Horses on to London " - that would
sound ludicrous; one mighty idea broods over all minds,
making it impossible to suppose any other destination.
Launched upon this final stage, you soon begin to feel
yourself entering the stream as it were of a Norwegian
maelstrom; and the stream at length becomes the rush of
a cataract. What is meant by the Latin word trepidatio?
Not any thing peculiarly connected with panic; it belongs
as much to the hurrying to and fro of a coming battle as
of a coming flight; to a marriage festival as much as to a
massacre; agitation is the nearest English word. This
inspidation increases both audibly and visibly at every half
not on the magnitude of Rome, or the amount of its population. I
will add, upon this subject, that the whole political economy of the
ancients, if we except Boeckh's accurate investigations, (Die StaatskausJ!altung der Athener,) which, properly speaking, cannot be called
political economy, is a mine into which scarce a single shaft has yet
been sunk. But I must also add, that every thing will depend upon
collation of facts, and the bringing of indirect notices into immediate
juxtaposition, so as to throw light on each other. Direct and positive
information there is little on these topics; and that little has beeu
gleaned.




208           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
mile, pretty much as one may suppose the roar of Niagara
and the thrilling of the ground to grow upon the senses in
the last ten miles of approach, with the wind in its favor,
until at length it would absorb and extinguish all other
sounds whatsoever. Finally, for miles before you reach a
suburb of London such as Islington, for instance, a last
great sign and augury of the immensity which belongs to
the coming metropolis forces itself uponr the dullest
observer, in the growing sense of his own utter insignificance. Every where else in England, you yourself,
horses, carriage, attendants, (if you travel with any,) are
regarded with attention, perhaps even curiosity; at all
events, you are seen. But after passing the final posthouse
on every avenue to London, for the latter ten or twelve
miles, you become aware that you are no longer noticed:
nobody sees you; nobody hears you; nobody regards you;
you do not even regard yonrself. In fact, how should you,
at the moment of first ascertaining your own total unimportance in the sum of things?- a poor shivering unit in
the aggregate of human life. Now, for the first time,
whatever manner of man you were, or seemed to be, at
starting, squire or "squireen," lord or lordling, and however related to that city, hamlet, or solitary house from
which yesterday'or to-day you slipped your cable, beyond disguise you find yourself but one wave in a total Atlantic, one plant (and a parasitical plant besides, needing
alien props) in a forest of America.
These are feelings which do not belong by preference
to thoughtful people - far less to people merely sentimental. No man ever was left to himself for the first
time in the streets, as yet unknown, of London, but he
must have been saddened and mortified, perhaps terrified,
by the sense of desertion and utter loneliness which belong
tt his situation. No loneliness can be like that which




THE NATION OF LONDON.            209
u eighs upon the heart in the centre of faces never ending,
without voice or utterance for him; eyes innumerable, that
have "no speculation" in their orbs which he can understand; and hurrying figures of men and women weaving
to and fro, with no apparent purposes intelligible to a
stranger, seeming like a mask of maniacs, or, oftentimes,
like a pageant of phantoms. The great length of the
streets in many quarters of London; the continual opening
of transient glimpses into other vistas equally far stretching, going off at right angles to the one which you are
traversing; and the murky atmosphere which, settling upon
the remoter end of every long avenue, wraps its termination in gloom and uncertainty,- all these are circumstances.aiding that sense of vastness and illimitable proportions
which forever brood over the aspect of London in its interior. Much of the feeling which belongs to the outside
of London, in its approaches for the last few miles, I had
lost, in consequence of the stealthy route of by-roads, lying near Uxbridge and Watford, through which we crept
into the suburbs. But for that reason, the more abrupt and
startling had been the effect of emerging somewhere
into the Edgeware Road, and soon afterwards into the very
streets of London itself; through what streets, or even
what quarter of London, is now totally obliterated from my
mind, having perhaps never been comprehended. All that
I remember is one monotonous awe and blind sense of
mysterious grandeur and Babylonian confusion, which
seemed to pursue and to invest the whole equipage of human
life, as we moved for nearly two * hours through streets;
sometimes brought to anchor for ten minutes or more by
* " Two hours." - This slow progress must, however, in part be
ascribed to Mr. Gr-'s non-acquaintance with the roads, both town
and rural, along the whole line of our progress from Uxbridge.
14




2 10          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHEb.
what is technically called a "' lock," that is, a line of carriages of every description inextricably massed, and obstructing each other, far as the eye could stretch; and then,
as if under an enchanter's rod, the "lock" seemed to
thaw; motion spread with the fluent race of light or sound
through the whole ice-bound mass, until the subtile influence
reached us also, who were again absorbed into the great
rush of flying carriages; or, at times, we turned off into
some less tumultuous street, but of the same mile-long
character, and, finally, drawing up about noon, we alighted
at some place, which is as little within my distinct remembrance as the route by which we reached it.
For what had we come? To see London. And what
were the limits within which we proposed to crowd that
little feat? At five o'clock we were to dine at Porters -,
a seat of Lord Westport's grandfather; and, from the distance, it was necessary that we should leave London at
half past three; so that a little more than three hours were
all we had for London. Our charioteer, my friend's tutor,
was summoned away from us on business until that hour;
and we were left, therefore, entirely to ourselves and to
our own skill in turning the time to the best account, for
contriving (if such a thing were possible) to do something
or other which, by any fiction of courtesy, or constructively,
so as to satisfy a lawyer, or in a sense sufficient to win a
wager, might be taken and received for having " seen
London."
What could be done? We sat down, I remember, in a
mood of despondency, to consider. The spectacles were
too many by thousands; inopes nos copia fecit; our very
wealth made us poor; and the choice was distracted. But
which of them all could be thought general or representative enough to stand for the universe of London? We
could not traverse the whole circumference of this mighty




THE NATION OF LONDON.            211
orb; that was clear; and, therefore, the next best thing was
to place ourselves as much as possible in some relation to the
spectacles of London, which might answer to the centre.
Yet how? That sounded well and metaphysical; but what
did it mean if acted upon? What was the centre of London
for any purpose whatever, latitudinarian or longitudinanan,
literary, social, or mercantile, geographical, astronomical,
or (as Mrs. Malaprop kindly suggests) diabolical?  Apparently that we should stay at our inn; for in that way we
seemed best to distribute our presence equally amongst
all, viz., by going to none in particular.
Three times in my life I have had my taste - that is, my
sense of proportions- memorably outraged. Once was by
a painting of Cape Horn, which seemed almost treasonably
below its rank and office in this world, as the terminal
abutment of our mightiest continent, and also the hinge, as
it were, of our greatest circumnavigations-of all, in fact,
which can be called classical circumnavigations. To have
" doubled Cape Horn " - at one time, what a sound it had!
yet how ashamed we should be if that cape were ever to
be seen from the moon! A party of Englishmen, I have
heard, went up Mount jEtna, during the night, to be ready
for sunrise - a common practice with tourists both in Switzerland, Wales, Cumberland, &c.; but, as all must see
who take the trouble to reflect, not likely to repay the
trouble; seeing that every thing which offers a picture, when
viewed from a station nearly horizontal, becomes a mere
map to an eye placed at an elevation of 3000 feet above it;
and so thought, in the sequel, the -Etna party. The sun,
indeed, rose visibly, and not more apparelled in clouds
than was desirable; yet so disappointed were they, and so
disgusted with the sun in particular, that they unanimously
hissed him; though, of course, it was useless to cry " Off!
off! " Here, however, the fault was in their own erroneous




212             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
expectations, and not in the sun, who, doubtless, did his
best. For, generally, a sunrise and a sunset ought to he
seen from   the valley, or at most horizontally.*  But as to
Cape Horn, that (by comparison with its position and its
functions) was really a disgrace to the planet; it is not the
spectator that is in fault here, but the object itself, the
Birmingham cape. For, consider, it is not only the " specular mount," keeping watch and ward over a sort of trinity
of oceans, and, by all tradition, the circumnavigator's gate
of entrance to the Pacific, but also it is the temple of the
god Terminus for all the Americas. So that, in relation to
such dignities, it seemed to me, in the drawing, a makeshift, put up by a carpenter, until the true Cape Horn
should be ready; or, perhaps, a drop scene from the opera
house. This was one case of disproportion: the others
were -the final and ceremonial valediction of Garrick, on
retiring from his profession; and the Pall Mall inauguration of George IV. on the day of his accession t to the
* Hence it may be said, that nature regulates our position for such
spectacles, without any intermeddling of ours. When, indeed, a
mountain stands, like Snowdon or Great Gavel in Cumberland, at the
centre of a mountainous region, it is not denied that, at some seasons,
when the early beams strike through great vistas in the hills, splendid
effects of light and shade are produced; strange, however, rather
than beautiful. But from an insulated mountain, or one upon the
outer ring of the hilly tract, such as Skiddaw, in Cumberland, the
first effect is to translate the landscape from a picture into a map,
and the total result, as a celebrated author once said, is the infinity of
littleness.
t Accession was it, or his proclamation? The case was this
About the middle of the day, the king came out into the portico of
Carlton House; and addressing himself (addressing his gestures, I
mean) to the assemblage of people in Pall Mall, he bowed repeatedly
to the right and to the left. and then retired. I mean no disrespect
t( that prince in recalling those circumstances; no doubt, he acted
upon the suggestion of others, and perhaps, also, under a sincere




THE NATION OF LONDON.              21]
throne. The'itter irrelation, in both cases, of the audience
to the scene, (audience, I say, as say we must, for the sum
of the spectators in the second instance, as well as of the
auditors in the first,) threw upon each a ridicule not to be
effaced. It is in any case impossible for an actor to say
words of farewell to those for whom he really designs his
farewell. He cannot bring his true object before himself.
To whom is it that he would offer his last adieus?  We
are told by one - who, if he loved Garrick, certainly did not
love Garrick's profession, nor would even, through him,
have paid it any undue compliment - that the retirement of
this great artist had " eclipsed the gayety of nations." To
nations, then, to his own generation, it was that he owed
his farewell; but, of a generation, what organ is theie
which can sue or be sued, that can thank or be thanked?
Neither by fiction nor by delegation can you bring their
bodies into court. A king's audience, on the other hand,
might be had as an authorized representative body. But,
when we consider the composition of a casual and chance
auditory, whether in a street or a theatre, -secondly, the
small size of a modern audience, even in Drury Lane, (4500
at the most,) not by one eightieth part the complement of
the Circus Maximus, - most of all, when we consider the
want of symmetry or commensurateness, to any extended
duration of time, in the acts of such an audience, which
acts lie in the vanishing expressions of its vanishing emotions, - acts so essentially fugitive, even when organized
emotion on witnessing the enthusiasm of those outside; but that could
not cure the original absurdity of recognizing as a representative
audience, clothed with the national functions of recognizing himself% a
chance gathering of passengers through asingle street, between whom
and any mob from his own stables and kitchens there could be no
essential difference which logic, or law, or constitutional principle
could recognize.




214           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
into an art and a tactical system of imbrices and bombz, (as
they were at Alexandria, and afterwards at the Neapolitar,
and Roman theatres,) that they could not protect them,
selves from dying in the very moment of their birth,- laying together all these considerations, we see the incongruity
of any audience, so constitued, to any purpose less evanescent than their own tenure of existence.
Just such in disproportion as these cases had severally
been, was our present problem in relation to our time or
other means for accomplishing it. In debating the matter,
we lost half an hour; but at length we reduced the question
to a choice between Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's
Cathedral. I know not that we could have chosen better.
The rival edifices, as we understood from the waiter, were
about equidistant from our own station; but, being too remote from each other to allow of our seeing both, "we
tossed up," to settle the question between the elder lady
and the younger. "Heads" came up, which stood for the
abbey. But, as neither of us was quite satisfied with this
decision, we agreed to make another appeal to the wisdom
of chance, second thoughts being best. This time the
cathedral turned up; and so it came to pass that, with us,
the having seen London meant having seen St. Paul's.
The first view of St. Paul's, it may be supposed, over.
whelmed us with awe; and I did not at that time imagine
that the sense of magnitude could be more deeply impressed. One thing interrupted our pleasure. The superb
objects of curiosity within the cathedral were shown fvi
separate fees. There were seven, I think; and any one
could be seen independently of the rest for a few pence.
The whole amount was a trifle; fourteen pence, I think
but we were followed by a sort of persecution -" Would
we not see the bell? " " Would we not see the model?'
"' Surel y we would not go away without visiting the whis



THE NATION OF LONDON.            21.5
pering gallery? "- solicitations which troubled the silence
and sanctity of the place, and must tease others as it then
teased us, who wished to contemplate in quiet this great
monument of the national grandeur, which was at that very
time * beginning to take a station also in the land, as a depository for the dust of her heroes. What struck us most;n the whole interior of the pile was the view taken from
the spot immediately under the dome, being, in fact, the
very same which, five years afterwards, received the remains of Lord Nelson. In one of the aisles going off from
this centre, we saw the flags of France, Spain, and Holland
the whole trophies of the war, swinging pompously, and
expanding their massy draperies, slowly and heavily, in the
upper gloom, as they were swept at intervals by currents
of air. At this moment we were provoked by the showman at our elbow renewing his vile iteration of "Twopence, gentlemen; no more than twopence for each;" and
so on, until we left the place. The same complaint has
been often made as to Westminster Abbey. Where the
wrong lies, or where it commences, I know not. Certainly
I nor any man can have a right to expect that the poor
men who attended us should give up their time for noth.
ing, or even to be angry with them for a sort of persecution,
on the degree of which possibly might depend the comfort
of their own families. Thoughts of famishing children at
home leave little room for nice regards of delicacy abroad.
The individuals, therefore, might or might not be blamable.
But in any case, the system is palpably wrong. The nation
is entitled to a free enjoyment of its own public monuments; not free only in the sense of being gratuitous, but
free also from the molestation of showmen, with their imperfect knowledge and their vulgar sentiment.
Already monuments had been voted by the House of Commons
in this cathedral, and I am not sure but they were nearly completed,
to two captains who had fallen at the Nile.




216            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Yet, after all, what is this system of restriction and
annoyance, compared with that which operates on the use of
the national libraries? or that, again, to the system of exclusion from some of these, where an absolute interdict lies
upon any use at'all of that which is confessedly national
property? Books and manuscripts, which were originally
collected and formally bequeathed to the public, under the
generous and noble idea of giving to future generations
advantages which the collector had himself not enjoyed,
and liberating them from obstacles in the pursuit of knowledge which experience had bitterly imprinted upon his
own mind, are at this day locked up as absolutely against
me, you, or any body, as collections confessedly private.
Nay, far more so; for most private collectors of eminence,
as the late Mr. Heber, for instance, have been distinguished
for liberality in lending the rarest of their books to those
who knew how to use them with effect. But, in the cases
I now contemplate, the whole funds for supporting the
proper offices attached to a library, such as librarians, sublibrarians, &c., which of themselves (and without the express verbal evidence of the founder's will) presume apublic
in the daily use of the books, else they are superfluous
have been applied to the creation of lazy sinecures, in behalf of persons expressly charged with the care of shutting
out the public. Therefore, it is true, they are not sinecures; for that one care, vigilantly to keep out the public,*
* This place suggests the mention of another crying abuse connected with this subject. In the year 1811 or 1810 came under parliamentary notice and revision the law of copyright. In some excellent pamphlets drawn forth by the occasion, from Mr. Duppa, for
instance, and several others, the whole subject was well probed, and
many aspects, little noticed by the public, were exposed of that
extreme injustice attached to the law as it then stood. The several
monopolies connected with books were noticed a little; and not a
little notice wvas taken of the oppressive privilege with which certain public libraries (at that time, I think, S'even) were invested,




THE NATION OF LONDON.                  217
they do take upon themselves; and why? A man loving
books, like myself, might suppose that their motive was
the ungenerous one of keeping the books to themselves.
Far from it. In several instances, they will as little use
of exacting, severally, a copy of each new book published. This
downright robbery was palliated by some members of the House in
that day under the notion of its being a sort of exchange, or quid
pro quo.n return for the relief obtained by the statute of Queen
Anne - the first which recognized literary property. " For," argued
they, "previously to that statute, supposing your book pirated, at
common law you could obtain redress only for each copy proved to
have been sold by the pirate; and that might not be a thousandth
part of the actual loss. Now, the statute of Queen Anne granting
you a general redress, upon proof that a piracy had been committed, you, the party relieved, were bound to express your sense
of this relief by a return made to the public; and the public is here
represented by the great endowed libraries of the seven universities,
the British Museum," &c., &c. But prima facie, this was that selling
of justice which is expressly renounced in Magna Charta; and why
were proprietors of copyright, more than other proprietors, to make an
"acknowledgment" for their rights? But supposing that just, why,
especially, to the given public bodies? Now, for my part, I think
that this admits of an explanation: nine tenths of the authors in
former days lay amongst the class who had received a college education; and most of these, in their academic life, had benefited largely
by old endowments. Giving up, therefore, a small tribute from their
copyright, there was some color of justice in supposing that they
were making a slight acknowledgment for past benefits received, and
exactly for those benefits which enabled them to appear with any
advantage as authors. So, I am convinced, the " servitude " first arose,
and under this construction; which, even for those days, was often a
fiction, but now is generally such. However, be the origin what it
may, the ground upon which the public mind in 1811 (that small
Dart of it, at least, which the question attracted) reconciled itself to
the abuse was this -for a trivial wrong, they alleged (but it was
then shown that the wrong was not always trivial) one great good is
achieved, viz., that all over the kingdom are dispersed eleven great
depositories, in which all persons interested may, at all times, be sure
of finding one copy of every book published. That did seem a great




218             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the books as suffer them to be used.   And thus the whole
plans and cares of the good (weighing his motives, I will
say of the pious) founder have terminated in locking up and
sequestering a large collection of books, some being great
advantage, and a balance in point of utility (if none in point of justice) to the wrong upon which it grew. But now mark the degree in
which this balancing advantage is made available. 1. The eleven
bodies are not equally careful to exact their copies; that can only be
done by retaining an agent in London; and this agent is careless about
books of slight money value. 2. Were it otherwise, of what final
avail would a perfect set of the year's productions prove to a public
not admitted freely to the eleven libraries? 3. But, finally, if they
were admitted, to what purpose (as regards this particular advantage)
under the following custom, which, in some of these eleven libraries,
(possibly in all,) was, I well knew, established: annually the principal librarian weeded the annual crop of all such books as displeased
himself; upon which two questions arise: 1. Upon what principle 
2. With what result? I answer as to the first, that in this lustration
he went upon no principle at all, but his own caprice, or what he
called his own discretion; and accordingly it is a fact known to many
as well as myself, that a book, which some people (and certainly not
the least meditative of this age) have pronounced the most original
work of modern times, was actually amongst the books thus degraded;
it was one of those, as the phrase is, tossed " into the basket;" and
universally this fate is more likely to befall a work of original merit,
which disturbs the previous way of thinking and feeling, than one of
timid compliance with ordinary models. Secondly, with what result?
For the present, the degraded books, having been consigned to the
basket, were forthwith consigned to a damp cellar. There, at any
rate, they were in no condition to be consulted by the public, being
piled up in close bales, and in a place not publicly accessible. But
there can be no doubt that, sooner or later, their mouldering condition
would be made an argument for selling them. And such, when we
trace the operation of this law to its final stage, is the ultimate
result of an infringement upon private rights almost unexampled in
any other part of our civil economy. That sole beneficial result, for
the sake of which some legislators were willing to sanction a wrong
otherwise admitted to be indefensible, is so little protected and secured
to the public, that it is first of all placed at the mercy of an agent in




THE NATION OF LON DON.             219
rarities, in situations where they are not accessible. Had
he bequeathed them to the catacombs of Paris or of Naples,
he could not have better provided for their virtual extinction. I ask, Does no action at common law lie against the
promoters of such enormous abuses? O thou fervent reformer, - whose fatal tread he that puts his ear to the ground
may hear at a distance coming onwards upon every road, -
if too surely thou wilt work for me and others irreparable
wrong and suffering, work also for us a little good; this
way turn the great hurricanes and levanters of thy wrath;
winnow me this chaff; and let us enter at last the garners
of pure wheat laid up in elder days for our benefit, and
which for two centuries have been closed against our use!
London we left in haste, to keep an engagement of some
standing at the Earl Howe's, my friend's grandfather.
This great admiral, who had filled so large a station in the
public eye, being the earliest among the naval heroes of
England in the first war of the revolution, and the only
one of noble birth, I should have been delighted to see; St.
Paul's, and its naval monuments to Captain Riou and Captain -, together with its floating pageantries of conquered flags, having awakened within me, in a form of
peculiar solemnity, those patriotic remembrances of past
glories, which all boys feel so much more vividly than men
can do, in whom the sensibility to such impressions is
blunted. Lord Howe, however, I was not destined to see;
he had died about a year before. Another death there had
London, whose negligence or indifference may defeat the provision
altogether, (I know a publisher of a splendid botanical work, who told
me that, by forbearing to attract notice to it within the statutable
time, he saved his eleven copies;) and placed at the mercy of a librarian, who (or any one of his successors) may, upon a motive of malice
to the author or an impulse of false taste, after all proscribe any part
of the books thus dishonorably acquired.




220           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
been, and very recently, in the family, and under circumstances peculiarly startling; and the spirits of the whole
house were painfully depressed by that event at the time
of our visit. One of the daughters, a younger sister of my
friend's mother, had been engaged for some time to a
Scottish nobleman, the Earl of Morton, much esteemed
by the royal family. The day was at length fixed for the
marriage; and about a fortnight before that day arrived,
some particular dress or ornament was brought to Porters,
in which it was designed that the bride should appear at
the altar. The fashion as to this point has often varied;
but at that time, I believe the custom was for bridal parties
to be in full dress. The lady, when the dress arrived,
was, to all appearance, in good health; but, by one of those
unaccountable misgivings which are on record in so many
well-attested cases, (as that, for example, of Andrew Marvell's father,) she said, after gazing for a minute or two at
the beautiful dress, firmly and pointedly, " So, then, that is
my wedding dress; and it is expected that I shall wear it
on the 17th; but I shall not; I shall never wear it. On
Thursday, the 17th, I shall be dressed in a shroud! " All
present were shocked at such a declaration, which the
solemnity of the lady's manner made it impossible to receive as a jest. The countess, her mother, even reproved
her with some severity for the words, as an expression of
distrust in the goodness of God. The bride elect made no
answer but by sighing heavily. Within a fortnight, all
happened, to the letter, as she had predicted. She was
taken suddenly ill; she died about three days before the
marriage day, and was finally dressed in her shroud
according to the natural course of the funeral arrangements, on the morning that was to have been the wedding
festival.
Lord Morton, the nobleman thus suddenly and remark




THE NATION OF LONDON.            221
ably bereaved of his bride, was the only gentleman who
appeared at the dinner table. He took a particular interest in literature; and it was, in fact, through his kindness
that, for the first time in my life, I found myself somewhat
in the situation of a " lion." The occasion of Lord Morton's flattering notice was a particular copy of verses which
had gained for me a public distinction; not, however, I
must own, a very brilliant one; the prize awarded to me
being not the first, nor even the second, - what on the
continent is called the accessit, -it was simply the third;
and that fact, stated nakedly, might have left it doubtful
whether I were to be considered in the light of one honored
or of one stigmatized. However, the judges in this case,
with more honesty, or more self-distrust, than belongs to
most adjudications of the kind, had printed the first three
of the successful essays. Consequently, it was left open
to each of the less successful candidates to benefit by any
difference of taste amongst their several friends; and my
friends in particular, with the single and singular exception
of my mother, who always thought her own children inferior to other people's, had generally assigned the palm to
myself. Lord Morton protested loudly that the case admitted of no doubt; that gross injustice had been done me;
and, as the ladies of the family were much influenced by
his opinion, I thus came, not only to wear the laurel in
their estimation, but also with the advantageous addition
of having suffered some injustice. I was not only a victor,
but a victor in misfortune.
At this moment, looking back from a distance of fifty
years upon those trifles, it may well be supposed that I do
not attach so much importance to the subject of my fugitive honors as to have any very decided opinion one way,r the other upon my own proportion of merit. I do no,
e'-en recollect the major part of the verses: that which T




222          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHE3
do recollect, inclines me to think that, in the structure of
the metre and in the choice of the expressions, I had some
advantage over my competitors, though otherwise, perhaps
my verses were less finished; Lord Morton migh therefore, in a partial sense, have been just, as well as kind.
But, little as that may seem likely, even then, and at the
moment of reaping some advantage from my honors, which
gave me a consideration with the family I was amongst
such as I could not else have had, most unaffectedly I
doubted in my own mind whether I were really entitled to
the, praises which I received. My own verses had not at
all satisfied myself; and though I felt elated by the notice
they had gained me, and gratified by the generosity of
the earl in taking my part so warmly, I was so more in a
spirit of sympathy with the kindness thus manifested in
my behalf, and with the consequent kindness which it procured me from others, than from any incitement or support
which it gave to my intellectual pride. In fact, whatever
estimate I might make of those intellectual gifts which I
believed or which I knew myself to possess, I was inclined,
even in those days, to doubt whether my natural vocation
lay towards poetry. Well, indeed, I knew, and I know
that, had I chosen to enlist amongst the soi disant poets
of the day, -amongst those, I mean, who, by mere force
of talent and mimetic skill, contrive to sustain the part of
poet in a scenical sense and with a scenical effect, — I also
could have won such laurels as are won by such merit; I
also could have taken and sustained a place taliter qualiter
amongst the poets of the time. Why not then? Simply
because 1 knew that me, as them, would await the certain
destiny in reversion of resigning that place in the next
generation to some younger candidate having equal or
greater skill in appropriating the vague sentiments and old
traditionary language of passion spread through books, but




THE NATION OF LONDON.              223
having also the advantage of novelty, and of a closer
adaptation to the prevailing taste of the day. Even at
that early age, I was keenly alive, if not so keenly as at
this moment, to the fact, that by far the larger proportion
of what is received in every age for poetry, and for a
season usurps that consecrated name, is not the spontaneous
overflow of real unaffected passion, deep, and at the same
time original, and also forced into public manifestation of
itself from the necessity which cleaves to all passion alike
of seeking external sympathy: this it is not; but a counterfeit assumption of such passion, according to the more
or less accurate skill of the writer in distinguishing the key
of passion suited to the particular age; and a concurrent
assumption of the language of passion, according to his
more or less skill in separating the spurious from tie
native and legitimate diction of genuine emotion. Rarely
indeed, are the reputed poets of any age men who groan,
like prophets, under the burden of a message which they
have to deliver, and must deliver, of a mission which they
must discharge. Generally, nay, with much fewer exceptions, perhaps, than would be readily believed, they are
merely simulators of the part they sustain; speaking not
out of the abundance of their own hearts, but by skill and
artifice assuming or personating emotions at second hand;
and the whole is a business of talent, (sometimes even of
great talent,) but not of original power, of genius,* or
authentic inspiration.
* The words genius and talent are frequently distinguished from
each other by those who evidently misconstrue the true distinction
entirely, and sometimes so grossly as to use them by way of expressions for a mere difference in degree. Thus, "a man of great talent,
absolutely a genius," occurs in a very well-written tale at this moment
before me; as if being a man of genius implied only a greater than
ordinary degree of talent.




224             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
From Porters, after a few days' visit, we returned to
Eton. Her majesty about this time gave some splendid
fetes at Frogmore, to one or two of which she had directed
that we should be invited. The invitation was, of course,
Talent and genius are in no one point allied to each other, except
generically - that both express modes of intellectual power. But the
kinds of power are not merely different; they are in polar opposition
to each other. Talent is intellectual power of every kind, which acts
and manifests itself by and through the will and the active forces.
Genius, as the verbal origin implies, is that much rarer species of intellectual power which is derived from the genial nature, -from the
spirit of suffering and enjoying, - from the spirit of pleasure and pain,
as organized more or less perfectly; and this is independent of the
will. It is a functionof the passive nature. Talent is conversant with
the adaptation of means to ends. But genius is conversant only with
ends. Talent has no sort of connection, not the most remote or
shadowy, with the moral nature or temperament; genius is steeped
and saturated with this moral nature.
This was written twenty years ago. Now, (1853,) when revising it,
1 am tempted to add three brief annotations: -
1st. It scandalizes me that, in the occasional comments upon this
distinction which have reached my eye, no attention should have been
paid to the profound suggestions as to the radix of what is meant by
genius latent in the word genial. For instance, in an extract made
by " The Leader," a distinguished literary journal, from a recent
work entitled "Poetics," by Mr. Dallas, there is not the slightest
notice taken of this subtile indication and leading towards the truth.
Yet surely that is hardly philosophic. For could Mr. Dallas suppose
that the idea involved in the word genial had no connection, or
none but an accidental one, with the idea involved in the word
genius? It is clear that from the Roman conception (whencesoever
emanating) of the natal genius, as the secret and central representative of what is most characteristic and individual in the nature of
every human being, are derived alike the notion of the genial and our
modern notion of genius as contradistinguished from talent.
2d. As another broad character of distinction between genius and
talent, I would observe, that genius differentiates a man from all
other men; whereas talent is the same in one man as in another'
that is, where it exists at all, it is the mere echo and reflex of the




THE NATION OF LONDON.              225
on my friend's account; but her majesty had condescended to
direct that I, as his visitor, should be specially included.
Lord Westport, young as he was, had become tolerably indifferent about such things; but to me such a scene was a
novelty; and, on that account, it was settled we should go
as early as was permissible. We did go; and I was not
sorry to have had the gratification of witnessing (if it were
but for once or twice) the splendors of a royal party. But,
after the first edge of expectation was taken off, - after the
vague uncertainties of rustic ignorance had given place to
absolute realities, and the eye had become a little familiar
with the flashing of the jewelry, -I began to suffer under
the constraints incident to a young person in such a situation -the situation, namely, of sedentary passiveness,
where one is acted upon, but does not act. The music, in
fact, was all that continued to delight me; and, but for that,
I believe I should have had some difficulty in avoiding so
monstrous an indecorum as yawning. I revise this faulty
expression, however, on the spot; not the music only it
was, but the music combined with the dancing, that so
deeply impressed me. The ball room - a temporary erection, with something of the character of a pavilion about
it - wore an elegant and festal air; the part allotted to the
dancers being fenced off by a gilded lattice work, and ornamented beautifully from the upper part with drooping
same talent, as seen in thousands of other men, differing only by more
and less, but not at all in quality. In genius, on the contrary, no
two men were ever duplicates of each other.
3d. All talent, in whatsoever class, reveals itself as an effort —as
a counteraction to an opposing difficulty or hinderance; whereas
genius universally moves in headlong sympathy and concurrence
with spontaneous power. Talent works universally bv intense resistance to an antagonist force; whereas genius works under a rapture,f necessity and spontaneity.
15




~226            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
festoons of flowers. But all the luxury that spoke to the
eye merely faded at once by the side of impassioned dancing sustained by impassioned music. Of all the scenes
which this world offers, none is to me so profoundly interesting, none (I say it deliberately) so affecting, as the
spectacle of men and women floating through the mazes of
a dance; under these conditions, however, that the music
shall be rich, resonant, and festal, the execution of the
dancers perfect, and the dance itself of a character to admit of free, fluent, and continuous motion. But this last
condition will be sought vainly in the quadrilles, &c., which
have for so many years banished the truly beautiful country
dances native to England. Those whose taste and sensibility were so defective as to substitute for the beautiful in
dancing the merely difficult, were sure, in the end, to transfer the depravations of this art from the opera house to the
floors of private ball rooms. The tendencies even then
were in that direction; but as yet they had not attained
their final stage; and the English country dance * was still
V This word, I am well aware, grew out of the French word contre
danse; indicating the regular contraposition of male and female partners in the first arrangement of the dancers. The word country dance
was therefore originally a corruption; but, having once arisen and
taken root in the language, it is far better to retain it in its colloquial
form; better, I mean, on the general principle concerned in such
cases. For it is, in fact, by such corruptions, by offsets upon an old
stock, arising through ignorance or mispronunciation originally, that
every language is frequently enriched; and new modifications of
thought, unfolding themselves in the progress of society, generate for
themselves concurrently appropriate expressions. Many words in the
Latin can be pointed out as having passed through this process. It
must not be allowed to weigh against the validity of a word once fairly
naturalized by use, that originally it crept in upon an abuse or a corruption. Prescription is as strong a ground of legitimation in a case
of this nature as it is in law. And the old axiom is applicable - Fieri
non debuit, factum valet. Were it otherwise, languages would be




THE NATION OF LONDON.               227
in estimation at the courts of princes. Now, of all dances,
this is the only one, as a class, of which you can truly describe the motion to be continuous, that is, not interrupted
or fitful, but unfolding its fine mazes with the equability of
light in its diffusion through free space. And wherever
the music happens to be not of a light, trivial character,
but charged with the spirit of festal pleasure, and the per.
formers in the dance so far skilful as to betray no awkwardness verging on the ludicrous, I believe that many people feel as I feel in such circumstances, viz., derive from
the spectacle the very grandest form of passionate sadness
which can belong to any spectacle whatsoever. Sadness
is not the exact word; nor is there any word in any language (because none in the finest languages) which exactly expresses the state; since it is not a depressing, but a
most elevating state to which I allude. And, certainly, it
is easy to understand, that many states of pleasure, and in
particular the highest, are the most of all removed from
merriment. The day on which a Roman triumphed was
the most gladsome day of his existence; it was the crown
and consummation of his prosperity; yet assuredly it was
also to him the most solemn of his days. Festal music, of
a rich and passionate character, is the most remote of any
robbed of much of their wealth. And, universally, the class of purzsts,
in matters of language, are liable to grievous suspicion, as almost con
stantly proceeding on half knowledge and on insufficient principles
For example, if I have read one, I have read twenty letters, addressed
to newspapers, denouncing the name of a great quarter in London
Mary-le-bone, as ludicrously ungrammatical. The writers had learned
(or were learning) French; and they had thus become aware, that
neither the article nor the adjective was right. True, not right foi
the current age, but perfectly right for the age in which the name
arose; but, for want of elder French, they did not know that in our
Chaucer's time both were right. Le was then the article feminine as
well as masculine, and bone was then the true form for the adjective




228           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
from vulgar hilarity. Its very gladness and pomp is ri.pregnated with sadness, but sadness of a grand and aspiring order. Let, for instance, (since without individual illustrations there is the greatest risk of being misunderstood,)
any person of musical sensibility listen to the exquisite music composed by Beethoven, as an opening for Biirger's
" Lenore," the running idea of which is the triumphal return
of a crusading host, decorated with hlarels and with palms,
within the gates of their native city; and then say whether
the presiding feeling, in the midst of this tumultuous festivity, be not, by infinite degrees, transcendent to any thing so
vulgar as hilarity. In fact, laughter itself is of all things.the most equivocal; as the organ of the ludicrous, laughter
is allied to the trivial and the mean; as the organ of joy, it
is allied to the passionate and the noble. From all which
the reader may comprehend, if he should not happen experimentally to have felt, that a spectacle of young men
and women, flowing through the mazes of an intricate
dance under a full volume of music, taken with all the cir.
cumstantial adjuncts of such a scene in rich men's halls;
the blaze of lights and jewels, the life, the motion, the seaiike undulation of heads, the interweaving of the figures,
the avaxuvxalwu  or self-revolving, both of the dance and
the music, "never ending, still beginning," and the continual regeneration of order from a system of motions which
forever touch the very brink of confusion; that such a spectacle, with such circumstances, may happen to be capable
of exciting and sustaining the very grandest emotions of
philosophic melancholy to which the human spirit is open.
The reason is, in part, that such a scene presents a sort of
mask of human life, with its whole equipage of pomps and
glories, its luxury of sight and sound, its hours of golden
youth, and the interminable revolution of ages hurrying
after ages, and one generation treading upon the flying foot



THE NATION OF LONDON.            229
steps of another; whilst all the while the overruling music
attempers the mind to the spectacle, the subject to the object,
the beholder to the vision. And, although this is known to
be but one phasis of life, - of life culminating and in ascent,
-yet the other (and repulsive) phasis is concealed upon the
hidden or averted side of the golden arras, known but not
felt; or is seen but dimly in the rear, crowding into indistinct
proportions. The effect of the music is, to place the mind
in a state of elective attraction for every thing in harmony
with its own prevailing key.
This pleasure, as always on similar occasions, I had at
present; but naturally in a degree corresponding to the
circumstances of royal splendor through which the scene
revolved; and, if I have spent rather more words than
should reasonably have been requisite in describing any
obvious state of emotion, it is not because, in itself, it is
either vague or doubtful, but because it is difficult, without
calling upon a reader for a little reflection, to convince
him that there is not something paradoxical in the assertion, that joy and festal pleasure, of the highest kind, are
liable to a natural combination with solemnity, or even
with melancholy the most profound. Yet, to speak in the
mere simplicity of truth, so mysterious is human nature,
and so little to be read by him who runs, that almost every
weighty aspect of truth upon that theme will be found at
first sight to be startling, or sometimes paradoxical. And
so little need is there for chasing or courting paradox,
that, on the contrary, he who is faithful to his own experiences will find all his efforts little enough to keep
down the paradoxical air besieging much of what he knows
to be the truth. No man needs to search for paradox in
this world of ours. Let him simply confine himself to the
truth, and he will find paradox growing every where under
his hands as rank as weeds. For new truths of impor



230            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
tance are rarely agreeable to any preconceived theories;
that is, cannot be explained by these theories; which are
insufficient, therefore, even where they are true. And
universally, it must be borne in mind, that not that is
paradox which, seeming to be true, is upon examination
false, but that which, seeming to be false, may upon examination be found true.*
The pleasure of which I have been speaking belongs to
all such scenes; but on this particular occasion there was
also something more. To see persons in " the body " of
whom you have been reading in newspapers from the very
earliest of your reading days, -those, who have hitherto
been great ideas in your childish thoughts, to see and to
hear moving and talking as carnal existences amongst
other human beings, - had, for the first half hour or so,
a singular and strange effect. But this naturally waned
rapidly after it had once begun to wane. And when these
first startling impressions of novelty had worn off, it must
be confessed that the peculiar circumstances attaching
to a royal ball were not favorable to its joyousness or
genial spirit of enjoyment. I am  not going to repay hei
majesty's condescension so ill, or so much to abuse the
privileges of a guest, as to draw upon my recollections
of what passed for the materials of a cynical critique.
Every thing was done, I doubt not, which court etiquette
permitted, to thaw those ungenial restraints which gave to
* And therefore it was with strict propriety that Boyle, anxious
to fix public attention upon some truths of hydrostatics, published
them avowedly as paradoxes. According to the false popular notion
of what it is that constitutes a paradox, Boyle should be taken to
mean that these hydrostatic theorems were fallacies. But far from
it. Boyle solicits attention to these propositions - not as seeming to
be true and turning out false, but, reversely, as wearing an air of
falsehood and turning out true.




THE NATION OF LONDON.            231
the whole too much of a ceremonial and official character
and to each actor in the scene gave too much of the ail
belonging to one who is discharging a duty, and to the
youngest even among the principal personages concerned
gave an apparent anxiety and jealousy of manner-jealousy, I mean, not of others, but a prudential jealousy of
his own possible oversights or trespasses. In fact, a great
personage bearing a state character cannot be regarded,
nor regard himself, with the perfect freedom which belongs
to social intercourse; no, nor ought to be. It is not rank
alone which is here concerned; that, as being his own, he
might lay aside for an hour or two; but he bears a representative character also. He has not his own rank
only, but the rank of others, to protect; he (supposing him
the sovereign or a prince near to the succession) embodies
and impersonates the majesty of a great people; and this
character, were you ever so much encouraged to do so,
you, the t&LWTIS, the lay spectator or " assister," neither
could nor ought to dismiss from your thoughts. Besides
all which, it must be acknowledged, that to see brothers
dancing with sisters -as too often occurred in those dances
to which the princesses were parties - disturbed the appropriate interest of the scene, being irreconcilable with the
allusive meaning of dancing in general, and laid a weight
upon its gayety which no condescensions from the highest
quarter could remove.   This infelicitous arrangement
forced the thoughts of all present upon the exalted rank
of the parties which could dictate and exact so unusual
an assortment. And that rank, again, it presented to us
under one of its least happy aspects; as insulating a
blooming young woman amidst the choir of her coevals,
and surrounding her with dreadful solitude amidst a vast
crowd of the young, the brave, the beautiful, and the
accomplished.




232           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Meantime, as respected myself individually, I had reascn
to be grateful: every kindness and attention were shown
to me. My invitation I was sensible that I owed entirely
to my noble friend. But, having been invited, I felt assured, from what passed, that it was meant and provided
that I should not, by any possibility, be suffered to think
myself overlooked. Lord Westport and I communicated
our thoughts occasionally by means of a language which
we, in those days, found useful enough at times, and which
bore the name of Ziph. The language and the name were
both derived (that is, were immediately so derived, for
remotely the Ziph language may ascend to Nineveh) from
Winchester. Dr. Mapleton, a physician in Bath, who attended me in concert with Mr. Grant, an eminent surgeon,
during the nondescript malady of the head, happened to
have had three sons at Winchester; and his reason for removing them is worth mentioning, as it illustrates the wellknown system of fagging. One or more of them showed
to the quick medical eye of Dr. Mapleton symptoms of
declining health-; and, upon cross questioning, he found
that, being (as juniors) fags (that is, bondsmen by old prescription) to appointed seniors, they were under the neces.
sity of going out nightly into the town for the purpose of
executing commissions; but this was not easy, as all the
regular outlets were closed at an early hour. In such a
dilemma, any route, that was barely practicable at whatever risk, must be traversed by the loyal fag; and it so hap.
pened that none of any kind remained open or accessible
except one; and this one communication happened to have
escaped suspicion, simply because it lay through a succession of temples and sewers sacred to the goddesses Cloacina and Scavengerina. That of itself was not so extraordinary a fact: the wonder lay in the number, viz.,
seventeen. Such were the actual amount of sacred edifices




rHE NATION OF LONDON.            233
which, through all' their dust, and garbage, and mephitic
morasses, these miserable vassals had to thread all but
every night of the week. Dr. Mapleton, when he had
made this discovery, ceased to wonder at the medical symptoms; and, as faggery was an abuse too venerable and
sacred to be touched by profane hands, he lodged no idle complaints, but simply removed his sons to a school where the
Serbonian bogs of the subterraneous goddess might not intersect the nocturnal line of march so very often. One day, during the worst of my illness, when the kind-hearted doctor
was attempting to amuse me with this anecdote, and asking me whether I thought Hannibal would have attempted
his march over the Little St. Bernard,- supposing that he
and the elephant which he rode had been summoned to
explore a route through seventeen similar nuisances,- he
went on to mention the one sole accomplishment which his
sons had imported from Winchester. This was the Ziph
language, communicated at Winchester to any aspirant
for a fixed fee of one half guinea, but which the doctor
then communicated to me   as I do now to the reader -
gratis. I make a present of this language without fee, or
price, or entrance money, to my honored reader; and let
him understand that it is undoubtedly a bequest of elder
times. Perhaps it may be coeval with the pyramids. For
in the famous " Essay on a Philosophical Character," (I forget whether that is the exact title,) a large folio written by
the ingenious Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester,* and pub.
lished early in the reign of Charles II., a folio which I, in
youthful days, not only read but studied, this language is
* This Dr. Wilkins was related by marriage to Cromwell, and is
better known to the world, perhaps, by his Essay on the possibility
of a passage (or, as the famous author of the " Pursuits of Literature" said, by way of an episcopal metaphor, the possibility of a
translation) to the moon.




234           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
recorded and accurately described amongst many other
modes of cryptical communication, oral and visual, spoken,
written, or symbolic. And, as the bishop does not speak
of it as at all a recent invention, it may probably at that
time have been regarded as an antique device for conducting a conversation in secrecy amongst bystanders; and
this advantage it has, that it is applicable to all languages
alike; nor can it possibly be penetrated by one not initiated
in the mystery.  The secret is this -(and the grandeur
of simplicity at any rate it has)- repeat the vowel or
diphthong of every syllable, prefixing to the vowel so
repeated the letter G. Thus, for example: Shall we go
away in an hour? Three hours we have already staid.
This in Ziph becomes: Shagall wege gogo agawagay
igin agan hougour?   Threegee hougours wege hagave
agalreageadygy stagaid.*  It must not be supposed that
Ziph proceeds slowly. A very little practice gives the
greatest fluency; so that even now, though certainly I
cannot have practised it.for fifty years, my power of speaking the Ziph remains unimpaired. I forget whether in the
Bishop of Chester's account of this cryptical language the
consonant intercalated be G or not. Evidently any consonant will answer the purpose. F or L would be softer,
and so far better.
In this learned tongue it was that my friend and I
communicated our feelings; and, having staid nearly four
hours, a time quite sufficient to express a proper sense of
the honor, we departed; and, on emerging into the open
high road, we threw up our hats and huzzaed, meaning
* One omission occurs to me on reviewing this account of the
Ziph, which is - that I should have directed the accent to be placed
on the intercalated syllable: thus, ship becomes shigip, with the emphasis on gip; run becomes ruq.gin, &c.




THE NATION OF LONDON.            235
no sort of disrespect, but from uncontrollable pleasure in
recovered liberty.
Soon after this we left Eton for Ireland. Our first
destination being Dublin, of course we went by Holyhead.
The route at that time, from Southern England to Dublin,
did not (as in elder and in later days) go round by Chester.
A few miles after leaving Shrewsbury, somewhere about
Oswesiry, it entered North Wales; a stage farther Drought
us to the celebrated vale of Llangollen; and, on reaching
the approach to this about sunset on a beautiful evening
of June, I first found myself amongst the mountains -a
feature in natural scenery for which, from my earliest
days, it was not extravagant to say that I had hungered and
thirsted. In no one expectation of my life have I been
less disappointed; and I may add, that no one enjoyment
has less decayed or palled upon my continued experience.
A mountainous region, with a slender population, and
that of a simple pastoral character; behold my chief conditions of a pleasant permanent dwelling-place! But,
thus far I have altered, that now I should greatly prefer
forest scenery- such as the New Forest, or the Forest of
Dean in Gloucestershire. The mountains of Wales range
at about the same elevation as those of Northern England;
three thousand and four to six hundred feet being the
extreme limit which they reach.  Generally speaking,
their forms are less picturesque individually, and they are
less happily grouped than their English brethren. I have
since also been made sensible by Wordsworth of one
grievous defect in the structure of the Welsh valleys; too
generally they take the basin shape —the level area a*
their foot does not detach itself with sufficient precision
from the declivities that surround them. Of this, however,
I was not aware at the time of first seeing Wales; although
the striking effect from the opposite form of the Cumber.




236           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKET( IES.
land and Westmoreland valleys, which almost universally
present a flat area at the base of the surrounding hills,
level, to use Wordsworth's expression,' as the floor of a
temple," would, at any rate, have arrested my eye, as a
circumstance of impressive beauty, even though the want
of such a feature might not, in any case, have affected me
as a fault. As something that had a positive value, this
characteristic of the Cumbrian valleys had fixed my attention, but not as any telling point of contrast against the
Cambrian valleys. No faults, however, at that early age
disturbed my pleasure, except that, after one whole day's
travelling, (for so long it cost us between Llangollen and
Holyhead,) the want of water struck me upon review as
painfully remarkable. From Conway to Bangor (seventeen
miles) we were often in sight of the sea; but fresh water
we had seen hardly any; no lake, no stream much beyond
a brook. This is certainly a conspicuous defect in North
Wales, considered as a region of fine scenery. The few
lakes I have since become acquainted with, as that near
Bala, near Beddkelert, and beyond Machynleth, are not
attractive either in their forms or in their accompaniments;
the Bala Lake being meagre and insipid, the others as
it were unfinished, and unaccompanied with their furniture
of wood.
At the Head (to call it by its common colloquial name)
we were detained a few days in those unsteaming times
by foul winds. Our time, however, thanks to the hospitality of a certain Captain Skinner on that station, did aot
hang heavy on our hands, though we were imprisoned,
as it were, on a dull rock; for Holyhead itself is a little
island of rock, an insulated dependency of Anglesea;
which, again, is a little insulated dependency of North
Wales. The packets on this station were at that time




THE NATION OF LONDON.            237
lucrative comrrands; and they were given (perhaps are*
given?) to post captains in the navy. Captain Skinner
was celebiated for his convivial talents; he did the
honors of the place in a hospitable style; daily asked us
to dine with him, and seemed as inexhaustible in his wit
as in his hospitality.
This answered one purpose, at least, of special convenience to our party at that moment: it kept us from
all necessity of meeting each other during the day, except
under circumstances where we escaped the necessity of
any familiar communication.  Why that should have
become desirable, arose upon the following mysterious
change of relations between ourselves and the Rev. Mr.
Gr —, Lord Westport's tutor. On the last day of our
journey, Mr. G., who had accompanied us thus far, but
now at Holyhead was to leave us, suddenly took offence
(or, at least, then first showed his offence) at something
we had said, done, or omitted, and never spoke one
syllable to either of us again. Being both of us amiably
disposed, and incapable of having seriously meditated
either word or deed likely to wound any person's feelings,
we were much hurt at the time, and often retraced the
little incidents upon the road, to discover, if possible,
what it was that had laid us open to misconstruction.
But it remained to both of us a lasting mystery. This
tutor was an Irishman, of Trinity College, Dublin, and, I
believe, of considerable pretensions as a scholar; but,
being reserved and haughty, or else presuming in us a
knowledge of our offerce, which we really had not, he
gave us no opening for any explanation.  To the last
moment, however, he manifested a punctilious regard to
the duties of his charge. He accompanied us in our
boat, on a dark and gusty night, to the packet, which
* Writte~i twenty years ago.




238           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCIHS.
lay a little out at sea. He saw us on board; and then,
standing up for one moment, he said, " Is all right on
deck? "  "All right, sir," sang out the ship's steward.
"1 Have you, Lord Westport, got your boat cloak with
you?" "Yes, sir."    " Then, pull away, boatmen."
We listened for a time to the measured beat of his re.
treating oars, marvelling more and more at the atrocious
nature of our crime which could thus avail to intercept
even his last adieus. I, for my part, never saw him again;
nor, as I have reason to think, did Lord Westport. Neither
did we ever unravel the mystery.
As if to irritate our curiosity still more, Lord Westport
showed me a torn fragment of paper in his tutor's handwriting, which, together with others, had been thrown (as
he believed) purposely in his way. If he was right in that
belief, it appeared that he had missed the particular fragment which was designed to raise the veil upon our guilt;
for the one he produced contained exactly these words:
"With respect to your ladyship's anxiety to know how far
the acquaintance with Mr. De Q. is likely to be of service
to your son, I think I may now venture to say that"There the sibylline fragment ended; nor could we torture
it into any further revelation. However, both of us saw
the propriety of not ourselves practising any mystery, nor
giving any advantage to Mr. G. by imperfect communications; and accordingly, on the day after we reached
Dublin, we addressed a circumstantial account of our journey and our little mystery to Lady Altamont in England;
for to her it was clear that the tutor had confided his
mysterious wrongs.  Her ladyship answered with kindness; but did not throw any light on the problem which
exercised at once our memories, our skill in conjectural
interpretation, and our sincere regrets.  Lord Westport
and I regretted much that there had not been a wider




THE NATION OF LONDON             239
margin attached to the fragment of Mr. G.'s letter to
Lady Altamont; in which case, as I could readily have
mimicked his style of writing, it would have been easy for
me to fill up thus: "With respect to your ladyship's
anxiety, &c., I think I may now venture to say that, if tho
solar system were searched, there could not be found a
companion more serviceable to your son than Mr. De Q.
He speaks the Ziph most beautifully. He writes it, I am
told, classically. And if there were a Ziph nation as well
as a Ziph language, I am satisfied that he would very soon
be at the head of it; as he already is, beyond all competition, at the head of the Ziph literature." Lady Altamont,
on receiving this, would infallibly have supposed him
mad; she would have written so to all her Irish friends,
and would have commended the poor gentleman to the
care of his nearest kinsmen; and thus we should have had
some little indemnification for the annoyance he had
caused us. I mention this trifle, simply because, trifle as
it is, it involved a mystery, and furnishes an occasion for
glancing at that topic. Mysteries as deep, with results a
little more important and foundations a little sounder, have
many times crossed me in life; one, for instance, I recollect at this moment, known pretty extensively to the neighborhood in which it occurred. It was in the county of
S-. A lady married, and married well, as was thought.
About twelve months afterwards, she returned alone in a
post chaise to her father's house; paid, and herself dismissed, the postilion at the gate; entered the house; ascended to the room in which she had passed her youth, and
known in the family by her name; took possession of it again;
intimated by signs, and by one short letter at her first
arrival, what she would require; lived for nearly twenty
years in this state of La Trappe seclusion and silence; nor
ever, to the hour of her death, explained what circum



240           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
stances had dissolved the supposed happy connection she had
formed, or what had become of her husband. Her looks
and gestures were of a nature to repress all questions in
the spirit of mere curiosity; and the spirit of affection
naturally respected a secret which was guarded so severely. This might be supposed a Spanish tale; yet it
happened in England, and in a pretty populous neighborhood. The romances which occur in real life are too
often connected with circumstances of criminality in some
one among the parties concerned; on that account, more
than any other, they are often suppressed; else, judging by
the number which have fallen within my own knowledge,
they must be of more frequent occurrence than is usually
supposed. Among such romances, those cases, perhaps,
form an unusual proportion in which young, innocent, and
high-minded persons have made a sudden discovery of
some great profligacy or deep unworthiness in the person
to whom they had surrendered their entire affections.
That shock, more than any other, is capable of blighting,
in one hour, the whole after existence, and sometimes of
at once overthrowing the balance of life or of reason. Instances I have known of both; and such afflictions are the
less open to any alleviation, that sometimes they are of a
nature so delicate as to preclude all confidential communication of them to another; and sometimes it would be even
dangerous, in a legal sense, to communicate them.
A sort of adventure occurred, and not of a kind pleasant
to recall, even on this short voyage. The passage to
Dublin from the Head is about sixty miles, I believe; yet,
from baffling winds, it cost us upwards of thirty hours.
On the second day, going upon deck, we found that our
only fellow-passenger of note was a woman of rank, celeorated for her beauty; and not undeservedly, for a lovely
creature she was. The body of her travelling coach had




THE NATION OF LONDON.            241
been, as usual, unslung from the " carriage," (by which is
technically meant the wheels and the perch,) and placed
upon deck. This she used as a place of retreat from the
sun during the day, and as a resting-place at night. For
want of more interesting companions, she invited us, during
the day, into her coach; and we taxed our abilities to
make ourselves as entertaining as we could, for we were
greatly fascinated by the lady's beauty.  The second night
proved very sultry; and Lord Westport and myself, sufferiag from the oppression of the cabin, left our berths, and
lay, wrapped up in cloaks, upon deck. Having talked for
some hours, we were both on the point of falling asleep,
when a stealthy tread near our heads awoke us. It was
starlight; and we traced between ourselves and the sky the
outline of a man's figure. Lying upon a mass of tarpaulings, we were ourselves undistinguishable, and the figure
moved in the direction of the coach. Our first thought
was to raise an alarm, scarcely doubting that the purpose
of the man was to rob the unprotected lady of her watch
or purse. But, to our astonishment, we saw the coach
door silently swing open under a touch from within. All
was as silent as a dream; the figure entered, the door
closed, and we were left to interpret the case as we might.
Strange it was that this lady could permit herself to calculate upon absolute concealment in such circumstances.
We recollected afterwards to have heard some indistinct
rumor buzzed about the packet on the day preceding,
that a gentleman, and some even spoke of him by name
as a Colonel -, for some unknown purpose, was concealed in the steerage of the packet. And other appearances indicated that the affair was not entirely a secret
even amongst the lady's servants. To both of us the story
proclaimed a moral already sufficiently current, viz., that
women of the highest and the very lowest rank are alike
16




242           AU rOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
thrown too much into situations of danger and temptation.
I might mention some additional circumstances of criminal
aggravation in this lady's case; but, as they would tend to
point out the real person to those acquainted with her
history, I shall forbear. She has since made a noise in
the world, and has maintained, I believe, a tolerably fair
reputation.  Soon after sunrise the  next morning, a
heavenly morning of June, we dropped our anchor in the
famous Bay of Dublin. There was a dead calm; the sea
was like a lake; and, as we were some miles from the
Pigeon House, a boat was manned to put us on shore. The
lovely lady, unaware that we were parties to her guilty
secret, went with us, accompanied by her numerous attendants, and looking as beautiful, and hardly less innocent,
than an angel. Long afterwards, Lord Westport and I
met her, hanging upon the arm of her husband, a manly
and good-natured man, of polished manners, to whom she
introduced us; for she voluntarily challenged us as her
fellow-voyagers, and, I suppose, had no suspicion which
pointed in our direction. She even joined her husband in
cordially pressing us to visit them at their magnificent
chateau. Upon us, meantime, whatever might be her levity,
the secret of which accident had put us in possession
pressed with a weight of awe; we shuddered at our own
discovery; and we both agreed to drop no hint of it in any
direction.*
* Lord Westport's age at that time was the same as my own; that
is, we both wanted a few months of being fifteen. But I had the
advantage, perhaps, in thoughtfulness and observation of life. Being
thoroughly free, however, from opinionativeness, Lord Westport
readily came over to any views of mine for which I could show sufficient grounds. And on this occasion I found no difficulty in convincing him that honor and fidelity did not form sufficient guaranties




THE NATION OF LONDON.                  243
Landing about three miles from Dublin, (according to my
present remembrance at Dunleary,) we were not long in
reaching Sackville Street.
for the custody of secrets. Presence of mind so as to revive one's
obligations in time, tenacity of recollection, and vigilance over one's
own momentary slips of tongue, so as to keep watch over indirect
disclosures, are also requisite. And at that time I had an instance
within my own remembrance where a secret had been betrayed, by-a
person of undoubted honor, but most inadvertently betrayed, and in
pure oblivion of his engagement to silence. Indeed, unless where the
secret is of a nature to affect some person's life, I do not believe that
most people would remember beyond a period of two years the most
solemn obligations to secrecy. After a lapse of time, varying of
course with the person, the substance of the secret will remain upon
the mind; but how he came by the secret, or under what circumstances, he will very probably have forgotten. It is unsafe to rely
upon the most religious or sacramental obligation to secrecy, unless,
together with the secret, you could transfer also a magic ring that
should, by a growing pressure or puncture, stinq a man into timelv
alarm and warning.




CHAPTER VIII.
DUBLIN.
IN Sackville Street stood the town house of Lord Altamont; and here, ir. the breakfast room, we found the earl
seated. Long and intimately as I had known Lord West.
port, it so happened that I had never seen his father, who
had. indeed, of late almost pledged himself to a continued
residence in Ireland by his own patriotic earnestness as an
agricultural improver; whilst for his son, under the difficulties and delays at that time of all travelling, any residence whatever in England seemed preferable, but especially a residence with his mother amongst the relatives of
his distinguished English grandfather, and in such close
neighborhood to Eton.  Lord Altamont once told me,
that the journey outward and inward between Eton and
Westport, taking into account all the unavoidable deviations from the direct route, in compliance with the claims
of kinship, &c., (a case which in Ireland forced a traveller
often into a perpetual zigzag,) counted up to som(thing
more than a thousand miles.  That is, in effect, when
valued in loss of time, and allowance being made for the
want of continuity in those parts of the travelling system
that did not accurately dovetail into each other, not less
than one entire fortnight must be arnually sunk upon a
244




DUBLIN.                  245
labor that yielded no commensurate fruit.  Hence the
loi.g three-years' interval which had separated father and
son; and hence my own nervous apprehension, as we were
racing through the suburbs of Dublin, that I should unavoidably lay a freezing restraint upon that reunion to
which, after such a separation, both father and son must
have looked forward with anticipation so anxious. Such
cases of unintentional intrusion are at times inevitable;
but, even to the least sensitive, they are always distressing;
most of all they are so to the intruder, who in fact feels
himself in the odd position of a criminal without a crime.
He is in the situation of one who might have happened to
be chased by a Bengal tiger (or, say that the tiger were a
sheriff's officer) into the very centre of the Eleusinian
mysteries. Do not tease me, my reader, by alleging that
there were no sheriffs' officers at Athens or Eleusis. Not
many, I admit; but perhaps quite as many as there were
of Bengal tigers. In such a case, under whatever compulsion, the man has violated a holy seclusion. He has
seen that which he ought not to have seen; and he is
viewed with horror by the privileged spectators. Should
he plead that this was his misfortune, and not his fault, the
answer would be, "True; it was your misfortune; we
know it; and it is our misfortune to be under the necessity
of hating you for it." But there was no cause for similar
fears at present; so uniformly considerate in his kindness
was Lord Altamont. It is true, that Lord Westport, as an
only child, and a child to be proud of, —for he was at
that time rather handsome, and conciliated general good
will by his engaging manners,- was viewed by his father
with an anxiety of love that sometimes became almost
painful to witness.  But this natural self-surrender to a
first involuntary emotion Lord Altamont did not suffer to
usurp any such lengthened expression as might too pain




246          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
fully have reminded me of being "one too many."  One
solitary half minute being paid down as a tribute to the
sanctities of the case, his next care was to withdraw me,
the stranger, from any oppressive feeling of strangership.
And accordingly, so far from realizing the sense of being
an intruder, in one minute under his courteous welcome
I had come to feel that, as the companion of his one
darling upon earth, me also he comprehended within his
paternal regards.
It must have been nine o'clock precisely when we en.
tered the breakfast room. So much I know by an a priori
argument, and could wish, therefore, that it had been
scientifically important to know it - as important, for instance, as to know the occultation of a star, or the transit
of Venus to a second. For the urn was at that moment
placed on the table; and though Ireland, as a whole, is
privileged to be irregular, yet such was our Sackville
Street regularity, that not so much nine o'clock announced
this periodic event, as inversely this event announced nine
o'clock. And I used to affirm, however shocking it might
sound to poor threadbare metaphysicians incapable of
transcendental truths, that not nine o'clock was the cause
of revealing the breakfast urn, but, on the contrary, that
the revelation of the breakfast urn was the true and secret
cause of nine o'clock- a phenomenon which otherwise
no candid reader will pretend that he can satisfactorily
account for, often as he has known it to come round. The
arn was already throwing up its column of fuming mist;
and the breakfast table was covered with June flowers sent
oy a lady on the chance of Lord Westport's arrival. It
was clear, therefore, that we were expected; but so we
had been for three or four days previously; and it illustrates the enormous uncertainties of travelling at this
closing era of the eighteenth century, that for three oi




DUBLIN.                  247
four days more we should have been expected without the
least anxiety in case any thing had occurred to detain us
on the road. In fact, the possibility of a Holyhead packet
being lost had no place in the catalogue of adverse contin.
gencies -not even when calculated by mothers. To
come by way of Liverpool or Parkgate, was not without
grounds of reasonable fear: I myself had lost acquaint.
ances (schoolboys) on each of those lines of transit.
Neither Bristol nor Milford Haven was entirely cloudless
in reputation. But from Holyhead only one packet had
ever been lost; and that was in the days of Queen Anne,
when I have good reason to think that a villain was on
board, who hated the Duke of Marlborough; so that this
one exceptional case, far from being looked upon as a
public calamity, would, of course, be received thankfully
as cleansing the nation from a scamp.
Ireland was still smoking with the embers of rebellion,
and Lord Cornwallis, who had been sent expressly to extinguish it, and had won the reputation of having fulfilled this
mission with energy and success, was then the lord
lieutenant; and at that moment he was regarded with
more interest than any other public man. Accordingly I
was not sorry when, two mornings after our arrival, Lord
Altamont said to us at breakfast, " Now, if you wish to see
what I call a great man, go with me this morning, and you
shall see Lord Cornwallis; for that man who has given
peace both to the east and to the west -taming a tiger in
the Mysore that hated England as much as Hannibal hated
Rome, and in Ireland pulling up by the roots a French
invasion, combined with an Irish insurrection -will always
for me rank as a great man." We willingly accompanied
the earl to the Phoenix Park, where the lord lieutenant
was then residing, and were privately presented to him. I




248           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
had seen an engraving (celebrated, I believe, in its day)
of Lord Cornwallis receiving the young Mysore princes as
hostages at Seringapatam; and I knew the outline of his
public services. This gave me an additional interest in
seeing him; but I was disappointed to find no traces in his
manner of the energy and activity I presumed him to
possess; he seemed, on the contrary, slow or even heavy
but benevolent and considerate in a degree which won the
confidence at once. Him we saw often; for Lord Altamont took us with him wherever and whenever we wished;
and me in particular (to whom the Irish leaders of society
were as yet entirely unknown by sight) it gratified highly
to see persons of historical names -names, I mean, historically connected with the great events of Elizabeth's or
Cromwell's era -attending at the Phoenix Park. But the
persons whom I remember most distinctly of all whom I
was then in the habit of seeing, were Lord Clare, the
chancellor, the late Lord Londonderry, (then Castlereagh,)
at that time the Irish chancellor of the exchequer, and the
speaker of the House of Commons, (Mr. Foster, since, I
believe, created Lord Oriel.) With the speaker, indeed,
Lord Altamont had more intimate grounds of connection
than with any other public man; both being devoted to the
encouragement and personal superintendence of great
agricultural improvements.  Both were bent on introducing, through models diffused extensively on their own
estates, English husbandry, English improved breeds of
cattle, and, where that was possible, English capital and
skill, into the rural economy of Ireland.
Amongst the splendid spectacles which I witnessed, a;
the most splendid I may mention an installation of the
Knights of St. Patrick. There were six knights installed
on this occasion, one of the six being Lord Altamont. He
had no doubt received his ribbon as a reward for his




DUBLIN.                  249
parliam entary votes, and especially in the matter of the union;
yet, from all his conversation upon that question, and from
the general conscientiousness of his private life, I am convinced that he acted all along upon patriotic motives, and
in obedience to his real views (whether right or wrong) of
the Irish interests. One chief reason, indeed, which detained us in Dublin, was the necessity of staying for this
particular installation. At one time, Lord Altamont had
designed to take his son and myself for the two esquires
who attend the new-made knight, according to the ritual
of this ceremony; but that plan was laid aside, on learning that the other five knights were to be attended by
adults; and thus, from being partakers as actors, my friend
and I became simple spectators of this splendid scene
which took place in the Cathedral of St. Patrick. So
easily does mere external pomp slip out of the memory
as to all its circumstantial items, leaving behind nothing
beyond the general impression, that at this moment I remember no one incident of the whole ceremonial, except
that some foolish person laughed aloud as the knights went
up with their offerings to the altar; the object of this unfeeling laughter being apparently Lord Altamont, who happened to be lame- a singular instance of levity to exhibit
within the walls of such a building, and at the most solemn
part of such a ceremony, which to my mind had a threefold grandeur: 1st, as symbolic and shadowy; 2d, as representing the interlacings of chivalry with religion in the
highest aspirations of both; 3d, as national; placing the
heraldries and military pomps of a people, so memorably
faithful to St. Peter's chair, at the foot of the altar. Lord
Westport and I sat with Lord and Lady Castlereagh. They
were both young at this time, and both wore an impressive
appearance of youthful happiness; neither, happily for
their peace of mind, able to pierce that cloud of years,




250            AUT BIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
not much more than twenty, which divided them  from the
day destined in one hour to wreck the happiness of both.
We had met both on other occasions; and their conversation, through the course of that day's pomps, was the most
interesting circumstance to me, and the one which 1
remember with most distinctness of all that belonged tt
the installation. By the way, one morning, on occasion
of some conversation arising about Irish bulls, I made an
agreement with Lord Altamont to note down in a memo.
randum book every thing throughout my stay in Ireland,
which, to my feeling as an Englishman, should seem to
be, or should approach to, a bull. And this day, at dinner,
I reported from Lady Castlereagh's conversation what
struck me as such. Lord Altamont laughed, and said,
" My dear child, I am sorry that it should so happen, for it
is bad to stumble at the beginning; your bull is certainly
a bull; * but as certainly Lady Castlereagh is your countrywoman, and not an Irishwoman at all." Lady Castlereagh,
it seems, was a daughter of Lord Buckinghamshire; and
her maiden name was Lady Emily Hobart.
One other public scene there was, about this time, in
Dublin, to the eye less captivating, but far more so in a
* The idea of a bull is even yet undefined; which is most extraordinary, considering that Miss Edgeworth has applied all her tact and
illustrative power to furnish the matter for such a definition, and
Coleridge all his philosophic subtlety (but in this instance, I think,
with a most infelicitous result) to furnish its form. But both have
been too fastidious in their admission of bulls. Thus, for example,
Miss Edgeworth rejects, as no true bull, the common Joe Miller story,
that, upon two Irishmen reaching Barnet, and being told that it was
still twelve miles to London, one of them remarked, " Ah! just six
miles apace." This, says Miss E., is no bull, but a sentimental remark on the maxim, that friendship divides our pains. Nothing of
the kind: Miss Edgeworth cannot have understood it. The bull is a
true representative and exemplary specimen of the genus.




DUBLIN.                  251
moral sense; more significant practically, more burdened
with hope and with fear. This was the final ratification
of the bill which united Ireland to Great Britain. I do not
know that any one public act, or celebration, or solemnity,
in my time, did, or could, so much engage my profoundest
sympathies. Wordsworth's fine sonnet on the extinction
of the Venetian republic had not then been published,
else the last two lines would have expressed my feelings.
After admitting that changes had taken place in Venice,
which in a manner challenged and presumed this last and
mortal change, the poet goes on to say, that all this long
preparation for the event could not break the shock of it.
Venice, it is true, had become a shade; but, after all,"Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great has passed away."
But here the previous circumstances were far different
from those of Venice. There we saw a superannuated and
paralytic state, sinking at any rate into the grave, and
yielding, to the touch of military violence, that only which
a brief lapse of years must otherwise have yielded to
internal decay. Here, on the contrary, we saw a young
eagle, rising into power, and robbed prematurely of her
natural honors, only because she did not comprehend their
value, or because at this great crisis she had no champion.
Ireland, in a political sense, was surely then in her youth,
considering the prodigious developments she has since
experienced in population and in resources of all kinds.
This great day of UNION had been long looked forward
to by me; with some mixed feelings also by my young
friend, for he had an Irish heart, and was jealous of what.
ever appeared to touch the banner of Ireland. But it was
not for him to say any thing which should seem to impeach
h"s father's patriotism in voting for the union, and promol



'252          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
ing it through his borough influence. Yet oftentimes it
seemed to me, when I introduced the subject, and sought to
learn from Lord Altamont the main grounds which had
reconciled him anJ other men, anxious for the welfare of
Ireland, to a measure which at least robbed her of some
splendor, and, above all, robbed her of a name and place
amongst the independent states of Europe, that neither
father nor son was likely to be displeased, should some
great popular violence put force upon the recorded will of
Parliament, and compel the two Houses to perpetuate them.
selves. Dolorous they must of course have looked, in mere
consistency; but I fancied that internally they would have
laughed. Lord Altamont, I am certain, believed (as multitudes believed) that Ireland would be bettered by the commercial advantages conceded to her as an integral province
of the empire, and would have benefits which, as an independent kingdom, she had not. It is notorious that this
expectation was partially realized. But let us ask, Could
not a large part of these benefits have been secured to Ireland, remaining as she was? Were they, in any sense,
dependent on the sacrifice of her separate parliament?
For my part, I believe that Mr. Pitt's motive for insisting
on a legislative union was, in a small proportion, perhaps,
the somewhat elevated desire to connect his own name with
the historical changes of the empire; to have it stamped,
not on events so fugitive as those of war and peace, liable
to oblivion or eclipse, but on the permanent relations of its
integral parts. In a still larger proportion I believe his
motive to have been one of pure convenience, the wish to
exonerate himself from the intolerable vexation of a double
parliament. In a government such as ours, so care-laden
at any rate, it is certainly most harassing to have the task
of soliciting a measure by management and influence twice
user-two trials to organize, two storms of anxiety to




DUBLIN.                  253
face, and two refractory gangs to discipline, instead of one.
It must also be conceded that no treasury influence could,always avail to prevent injurious collisions between acts of
the Irish and the British Parliaments. In Dublin, as in
London, the government must lay its account with being
occasionally outvoted; this would be likely to happen peculiarly upon Irish questions. And acts of favor or protection would at times pass on behalf of Irish interests,
not only clashing with more general ones of the central
government, but indirectly also (through the virtual consolidation of the two islands since the era of steam) opening
endless means for evading British acts, even within their
own separate sphere of operation. On these considerations,
even an Irishman must grant that public convenience called
for the absorption of all local or provincial supremacies
into the central supremacy. And there were two brief
arguments which gave weight to those considerations: First,
that the evils likely to arise (and which in France have
arisen) from what is termed, in modern politics, the principle of centralization, have been for us either evaded or
neutralized. The provinces, to the very farthest nook of
these " nook-shotten " islands, react upon London as powerfully as London acts upon them; so that no counterpoise is required with us, as in France it is, to any inordinate influence at the centre. Secondly, the very pride and jealousy
which could avail to dictate the retention of an independent
parliament would effectually preclude any modern " Poyning's Act," having for its object to prevent the collision of
the local with the central government. Each would be
supreme within its own sphere, and those spheres could not
but clash. The separate Irish Parliament was originally no
badge of honor or independence: it began in motives of
convenience, cr perhaps necessity, at a period when the
communication was difficult, slow, and interrupted. Any




254           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
parliament, which arose on that footing, it was possible to
guard by a Poyning's Act, making, in effect, all laws null
which should happsn to contradict the supreme or central
will. But what law, in a corresponding temper, could
avail to limit the jurisdiction of a parliament which con
fessedly had been retained on a principle of national hon.
or? Upon every consideration, therefore, of convenience,
and were it only for the necessities of public business, the
absorption of the local into the central parliament had now
come to speak a language that perhaps could no longer be
evaded; and that Irishman only could consistently oppose
the measure who should take his stand upon principles
transcending convenience; looking, in fact, singly to the
honor and dignity of a country which it was annually becoming less absurd to suppose capable of an independent
existence.
Meantime, in those days, Ireland had no adequate champion; the Hoods and the Grattans were not up to the mark.
Refractory as they were, they moved within the paling of
order and decorum; they were not the Titans for a war
against the heavens. When the public feeling beckoned
and loudly supported them, they could follow a lead which
they appeared to head; but they could not create such a
body of public feeling, nor, when created, could they throw
it into a suitable organization. What they could do, was
simply as ministerial agents and rhetoricians to prosecute
any general movement, when the national arm had cloven
a channel and opened the road before them. Consequently,
that great opening for a turbulent son of thunder passed
unimproved; and the great day drew near without symptoms of tempest. At last it arrived; and I remember
nothing which indicated as much ill temper in the public
mind as I have seen on many hundreds of occasions, trivial
by comparison, in London. Lord Westport and I were




DUBLIN.                  255
determined to lose no part of the scene, and we went down
with Lord Altamont to the house.   It was about the
middle of the (lay, and a great mob filled the whole space
about the two houses. As Lord Altamont's coach drew up
to the steps of that splendid edifice, we heard a prodigious
hissing and hooting; and I was really agitated to think that
Lord Altamont, whom I loved and respected, would probably
have to make his way through a tempest of public wrath
a situation more terrific to him than to others, from his
embarrassed walking. I found, however, that I might
have spared my anxiety; the subject of commotion was,
simply, that Major Sirr, or Major Swan, I forget which,
(both being celebrated in those days for their energy, as
leaders of the police,) had detected a person in the act of
mistaking some other man's pocket handkerchief for his
own - a most natural mistake, I should fancy, where people
stood crowded together so thickly. No storm of any kind
awaited us, and yet at that moment there was no other
arrival to divide the public attention; for, in order that we
might see every thing from first to last, we were amongst
the very earliest parties. Neither did our party escape
under any mistake of the crowd: silence had succeeded to
the uproar caused by the tender meeting between the thief
and the major; and a man, who stood in a conspicuous
situation, proclaimed aloud to those below him, the name
or title of members as they drove up. " That," said he,
" is the Earl of Altamont; the lame gentleman, I mean."
Perhaps, however, his knowledge did not extend so far as
to the politics of a nobleman who had taken no violent or
factious part in public affairs. At least, the dreaded insults did not follow, or only in the very feeblest manifestations. We entered; and, by way of seeing every thing, we
went even to the robing room. The man who presented
his robes to Lord Altamont seemed to me, of all whom I




256           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
saw on that day, the one who wore the face of deepest depression. But whether this indicated the loss of a lucrative situation, or was really disinterested sorrow, growing
out of a patriotic trouble, at the knowledge that he was
now officiating for the last time, I could not guess. The
House of Lords, decorated (if I remember) with hangings,
representing the battle of the Boyne, was nearly empty
when we entered - an accident which furnished to Lcrd
Altamont the opportunity required for explaining to us the
whole course and ceremonial of public business on ordinary
occasions.
Gradually the house filled; beautiful women sat intermingled amongst the peers; and, in one party of these, surrounded by a bevy of admirers, we saw our fair but frail
enchantress of the packet. She, on her part, saw and recognized us by an affable nod; no stain upon her cheek, indicating that she suspected to what extent she was indebted
to our discretion; for it is a proof of the unaffected sorrow
and the solemn awe which oppressed us both, that we had
not mentioned even to Lord Altamont, nor ever did mention, the scene which chance had revealed to us. Next
came a stir within the house, and an uproar resounding
from without, which announced the arrival of his excellency. Entering the house, he also, like the other peers,
wheeled round to the throne, and made to that mysterious
seat a profound homage. Then commenced the public
business, in which, if I recollect, the chancellor played the
most conspicuous part —that chancellor (Lord Clare) of
whom it was affirmed in those days, by a political opponent, that he might swim in the innocent blood which he
nad caused to be shed. But nautical men, I suspect, would
have demurred to that estimate. Then were summoned to
the bar- summoned for the last time -the gentlemen of
the House of Commons; in the van of whom, and drawing




DUBLIN.                  257
all eyes upon himself, stood Lord Castlereagh. Then
came the recitation of many acts passed during the session,
and the sounding ratification, the Jovian
" Annuit, et nutu totum trcmefecit Olympum,"
contained in the Soit fait comme il est desire, or the more
peremptory Le roi le veut. At which point in the order
of succession came the royal assent to the union bill I
cannot distinctly recollect. But one thing I do recollectthat no audible expression, no buzz, nor murmur, nor susurrus even, testified the feelings which, doubtless, lay
rankling in many bosoms. Setting apart all public or patriotic considerations, even then I said to myself, as I surveyed the whole assemblage of ermined peers, " How is it,
and by what unaccountable magic, that William Pitt can
have prevailed on all these hereditary legislators and heads
of patrician houses to renounce so easily, with nothing
worth the name of a struggle, and no reward worth the
name of an indemnification, the very brightest jewel in
their coronets? This morning they all rose from their
couches peers of Parliament, individual pillars of the realm
indispensable parties to every law that could pass. To
morrow they will be nobody- men of straw - terrce filii.
What madness has persuaded them to part with their birthright, and to cashier themselves and their children forever
into mere titular lords? As to the commoners at the bar,
their case was different: they had no life estate at all
events in their honors; and they might have the same
chance for entering the imperial Parliament amongst the
hundred Irish members as for reentering a native parliament. Neither, again, amongst the peers was the case
always equal. Several of the higher had English titles,
which would, at any rate, open the central Parliament to
their ambition. That privilege, in particular, attached to
17




258           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Lord Altamont.* And he, in any case, from his large
prope:ty, was tolerably sure of finding his way thither (as
in fact for the rest of his life he did) amongst the twentyeight representative peers. The wonder was in the case
of petty and obscure lords, who had no weight personally
and none in right of their estates. Of these men, as they
were notoriously not enriched by Mr. Pitt, as the distribution of honors was not very large, and as no honor could
countervail the one they lost, I could not, and cannot,
fathom the policy. Thus much I am sure of-that, had
suih a measure been proposed by a political speculator
previously to Queen Anne's reign, he would have been
scouted as a dreamer and a visionary, who calculated upon
men being generally somewhat worse than Esau, viz., giving up their birthrights, and without the mess of pottage.
However, on this memorable day, thus it was the union
was ratified; the bill received the royal assent without a
muttering, or a whispering, or the protesting echo of a sigh.
Perhaps there might be a little pause -a silence like that
which follows an earthquake; but there was no plain-spoken
Lord Belhaven, as on the corresponding occasion in Edinburgh, to fill up the silence with " So, there's an end of an
auld sang!"  All was, or looked courtly, and free from
vulgar emotion. One person only I remarked whose features were suddenly illuminated by a smile, a sarcastic
smile, as I read it; which, however, might be all a fancy.
It was Lord Castlereagh, who, at the moment when the ir
revocable words were pronounced, looked with a penetrating glance amongst a party of ladies. His own wife was
one of that party; but I did not discover the particular object on whom his smile had settled. After this I had no
* According to my remembrance, he was Baron Mounteagle in the
Erglish peerage.




DUBLIN.                  259
leisure to be internsted in any thing which followed.'You
are all," thought I to myself, " a pack of vagabonds hence
forward, and interlopers, with actually no more right to be
here than myself. I am an intruder; so are you." Apparently they thought so themselves; for, soon after this solemn fiat of Jove had gone forth, their lordships, having no
further title to their robes, (for which I could not help wishing that a party of Jewish old clothes men would at this moment have appeared, and made a loud bidding,) made what
haste they could to lay them aside forever. The house
dispersed much more rapidly than it had assembled. Major Sirr was found outside, just where we left him, laying
down the law (as before) about pocket handkerchiefs to old
and young practitioners; and all parties adjourned to find
what consolation they might in the great evening event of
dinner.
Thus we were set at liberty from Dublin. Parliaments,
and installations, and masked balls, with all other secondary splendors in celebration of primary splendors,
reflex glories that reverberated original glories, at length
had ceased to shine upon the Irish metropolis. The
" season," as it is called in great cities, was over; unfortunately the last season that was ever destined to illuminate
the society or to stimulate the domestic trade of Dublin.
It began to be thought scandalous to be found in town'
nobody, in fact, remained, except some two hundred thou.
sand people, who never did, nor ever would, wear ermine;
and in all Ireland there remained nothing at all to attract,
except that whic i no king, and no two houses, can by any
conspiracy abolish, viz., the beauty of her most verdant
scenery. I speak of that part which chiefly it is that I
know, —the scenery of the west, -Connaught beyond
other provinces, and in Connaught, Mayo beyond other
counties. There it was, and in the county next adjoining,




260          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
that Lord Altamont's large estates were situated, the Iam
ily mansion and beautiful park being in Mayo. Thither,
as nothing else now remained to divert us from what, ini
fact, we had thirsted for throughout the heats of summer,
and throughout the magnificences of the capital, at length
we set off by movements as slow and circuitous as those
of any royal progress in the reign of Elizabeth. Making
but short journeys on each day, and resting always at the
house of some private friend, I thus obtained an opportunity of seeing the old Irish nobility and gentry more
extensively, and on a more intimate footing, than I had
hoped for. No experience of this kind, throughout my
whole life, so much interested me. In a little work, not
much known, of Suetonius, the most interesting record
which survives of the early Roman literature, it comes out
incidentally that many books, many idioms, and verbal
peculiarities belonging to the primitive ages of Roman culture were to be found still lingering in the old Roman
settlements, both Gaulish and Spanish, long after they had
become obsolete (and sometimes unintelligible) in Rome.
From the tardiness and the difficulty of communication,
the want of newspapers, &c., it followed, naturally enough,
that the distant provincial towns, though not without their
own separate literature and their own literary professors,
were always two or three generations in the rear of the
metropolis; and thus it happened, that, about the time of
Augustus, there were some grammatici in Rome, answering to our black-letter critics, who sought the material
of their researches in Boulogne, (Gessoriacum,) in Aries,
(Arelata,) or in Marseilles, (Massilia.)  Now, the old
Irish nobility - that part, I mean, which might be callec
the rural nobility - stood in the same relation to Englisl,
manners and customs. Here might be found old rambling
houses in the style of antique English manorial chateaus.




DUBLIN.                  261
ill planned, perhaps, as regarded convenience and econ.
omy, with long rambling galleries, and windows innumera.
ble, that evidently had never looked for that severe audit
to which they were afterwards summoned by William
Pitt; but displaying, in the dwelling rooms, a comfort and
"cosiness," combined with magnificence, not always so
effectually attained in modern times.  Here were old
libraries, old butlers, and old customs, that seemed all
alike to belong to the era of Cromwell, or even an earlier
era than his; whilst the ancient names, to one who had
some acquaintance with the great events of Irish history,
often strengthened the illusion. Not that I could pretend
to be familiar with Irish history as Irish; but as a conspicuous chapter in the difficult policy of Queen Elizabeth, of
Charles I., and of Cromwell, nobody who had read the
English history could be a stranger to the O'Neils, the
O'Donnells, the Ormonds, (i. e., the Butlers,) the Inchiquins,
or the De Burghs, and many scores beside. I soon found,
in fact, that the aristocracy of Ireland might be divided
into two great sections: the native Irish - territorial fixtures, so powerfully described by Maturin; and those, on
the other hand, who spent so much of their time and revenues at Bath, Cheltenham, Weymouth, London, &c., as
to have become almost entirely English. It was the
former whom we chiefly visited; and I remarked that, in
the midst of hospitality the most unbounded, and the
amplest comfort, some of these were conspicuously in the
rear of the English commercial gentry, as to modern refinements of luxury. There was at the same time an
apparent strength of character, as if formed amidst turbulent scenes, and a raciness of manner, which were fitted to
interest a stranger profoundly, and to impress themselves
on his recollection.




CHAPTER IX.
FIRST REBELLION.
IN our road to Mayo, we were often upon ground ren.
dered memorable, not only by historical events, but more
recently by the disastrous scenes of the rebellion, by its
horrors or its calamities. On reaching Westport House,
we found ourselves in situations and a neighborhood which
had become the very centre of the final military operations, those which succeeded to the main rebellion; and
which, to the people of England, and still more to the
people of the continent, had offered a character of interest
wanting to the inartificial movements of Father Roche and
Bagenal Harvey.
In the year 1798, there were two great popular msurrections in Ireland.  It is usual to talk of the Irish
rebellion, as though there had been one rebellion and no
more; but it must satisfy the reader of the inaccuracy
pervading the common reports of this period, when Le
hears that there were two separate rebellions, separate
in time, separate in space, separate by the character of
their events, and separate even as regarded their proximate causes. The first of these arose in the vernal part
of summer, and wasted its fury upon the county of Wexfrll, in the centre of the kingdom. The second arose in
262




FIRST REBELLION.              263
the autumn, and was confined entirely to the western prov
ince of Connaught. Each, resting (it is true) upon causes
ultimately the same, had yet its own separate occasions
and excitements; for the first arose upon a premature explosion from a secret society of most subtle organization;
and the second upon the encouragement of a French invasion.  And each of these insurrections had its own
separate leaders and its own local agents.  The first,
though precipitated into action by fortunate discoveries
on the part of the government, had been anxiously preconcerted for three years. The second was an unpremeditated effort, called forth by a most ill-timed, and also
ill-concerted, foreign invasion. The general predisposing
causes to rebellion were doubtless the same in both cases
but the exciting causes of the moment were different in
each. And, finally, they were divided by a complete interval of two months.
One very remarkable feature there was, however, in
which these two separate rebellions of 1798 coincided;
and that was, the narrow range, as to time, within which
each ran its course. Neither of them outran the limits of
one lunar month. It is a fact, however startling, that each,
though a perfect civil war in all its proportions, frequent
in warlike incident, and the former rich in tragedy, passed
through all the stages of growth, maturity, and final extinction within one single revolution of the moon. For
all the rebel movements, subsequent to the morning of
Vinegar Hill, are to be viewed not at all in the light of
maneuvres made in the spirit of military hope, but in the
light of final struggles for self-preservation made in the
spirit of absolute despair, as regarded the original pur.
poses of the war, or, indeed, as regarded any purposes
whatever beyond that of instant safety.  The solitary
abject contemplated was, to reach some district lonely




2f4           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
enough, and with elbow room enough, for quiet, unmolested
dispersion.
A few pages will recapitulate these two civil wars. I
begin with the first. The war of American separation
touched and quickened the dry bones that lay waiting as
it were for life through the west of Christendom. The
year 1782 brought that war to its winding up; and the
same year it was that called forth Grattan and the Irish
volunteers. These volunteers came forward as allies of
England against French and Spanish invasion; but once
embattled, what should hinder them from detecting a flaw
in their commission, and reading it as valid against England herself?  In that sense they did read it. That Ireland had seen her own case dimly reflected in that of
America, and that such a reference was stirring through
the national mind, appears from a remarkable fact in the
history of the year which followed. In 1783, a haughty
petition was addressed to the throne, on behalf of the Roman Catholics, by an association that arrogated to itself
the style and title of a congress. No man could suppose
that a designation so ominously significant had been chosen
by accident; and by the English government it was received, as it was meant, for an insult and a menace.
What came next?    The French revolution.  All flesh
moved under that inspiration. Fast and rank now began
to germinate the seed sown for the ten years preceding in
Ireland; too fast and too rankly for the policy that suited
her situation. Concealment or delay, compromise or tem.
porizing, would not have been brooked, at this moment, by
the fiery temperament of Ireland, had it not been through
the extraordinary composition of that secret society into
which the management of her affairs now began to devolve. In the year 1792, as we are told, commenced, and
in 1795 was finished, the famous association of United




FIRST REBELLION.              265
Irishmen. By these terms, commenced and finished, we are
to understand, not the purposes or the arrangements of
(heir conspiracy against the existing government, but that
network of organization, delicate as lace for ladies, and
strong as the harness of artillery horses, which now enmeshed almost every province of Ireland, knitting the
strength of her peasantry into unity and disposable divisions. This, it seems, was completed in 1795. In a
complete history of these times, no one chapter would deserve so ample an investigation as this subtile web of association, rising upon a large base, expanding in proportion
to the extent of the particular county, and by intermediate
links ascending to some unknown apex; all so graduated,
and in such nice interdependency, as to secure the instantaneous propagation upwards and downwards, laterally or
obliquely, of any impulse whatever; and yet so effectually
shrouded, that nobody knew more than the two or three
individual agents in immediate juxtaposition with himself,
by whom he communicated with those above his head or
below his feet. This organization, in fact, of the United
Irishmen, combined the best features, as to skill, of the
two most elaborate and most successful of all secret societies recorded in history; one of which went before the
Irish Society by centuries, and one followed it after an interval of five-and-twenty years. These two are the FehmGericht, or court of ban and extermination, which, having
taken its rise in Westphalia, is usually called the secret Tribunal of Westphalia, and which reached its full development
in the fourteenth century. The other is the Hellenistic
Hetaria, ('ETaxQLa) -a society which, passing for one of
pure literary dilettanti, under the secret countenance of
the late Capo d'Istria, (then a confidential minister of the
czar,) did actually succeed so far in hoaxing the cabinets
of Europe, that one third of European kings put down




266           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
their names, and gave their aid, as conspirators against the
Sultan of Turkey, whilst credulously supposing themselves
honorary correspondents of a learned body for reviving
the arts and literature of Athens. These two I call the
most successful of all secret societies, because both were
arrayed against the existing administrations throughout the
entire lands upon which they sought to operate.  The
German society disowned the legal authorities as too weak
for the ends of justice, and succeeded in bringing the cog.
nizance of crimes within its own secret yet consecrated
usurpation. The Grecian society made the existing powers the final object of its hostility; lived unarmed amongst
the very oppressors whose throats it had dedicated to the
sabre; and, in a very few years, saw its purpose accomplished.
The society of United Irishmen combined the best parts
in the organization of both these secret fraternities, and
obtained their advantages. The society prospered in defiance of the government; nor would the government, though
armed with all the powers of the Dublin police and of state
thunder, have succeeded in mastering this society, but, on
the contrary, the society would assuredly have surprised
dnd mastered the government, had it not been undermined
by the perfidy of a confidential brother. One instrument
for dispersing knowledge, employed by the United Irishmen, is worth mentioning, as it is applicable to any cause,
and may be used with much greater effect in an age when
every body is taught to read. They printed newspapers on
a single side of the sheet, which were thus fitted for being
placarded againsf the walls. This expedient had probably
been suggested by Paris, where such newspapers were often
placarded, and generally for the bloodiest purposes. But
Louvet, in his " Memoirs," mentions one conducted by
himself on better principles: it was printed at the public




FIRST REBELLION.             267
expense; and sometimes more than twenty thousand copies
of a single number were attached to the corners of streets.
This was called the "Centinel;" and those who are acquainted with the " Memoirs of Madame Roland " will remember that she cites Louvet's paper as a model for all of its
class. The " Union Star " was the paper which the United
Irishmen published upon this plan; previous papers, on the
ordinary plan, viz., the "' Northern Star" and the " Press,5'
having been violently put down by the government. The
L" Union Star," however, it must be acknowledged, did not
seek much to elevate the people by addressing them through
their understandings; it was merely a violent appeal to
their passions, and directed against all who had incurred
the displeasure of the society. Newspapers, meantime, of
every kind, it was easy for the government to suppress.
But the secret society annoyed and crippled the government in other modes, which it was not easy to parry; and
all blows dealt in return were dealt in the dark, and aimed
at a shadow. The society called upon Irishmen to abstain
generally from ardent spirits, as a means of destroying the
-excise; and it is'certain that the society was obeyed, in a
degree which astonished neutral observers, all over Ireland.
The same society, by a printed proclamation, called upon
the people not to purchase the quitrents of the crown, which
were then on sale; and not to receive bank notes in payment, because (as the proclamation told them) a l burst"
was coming, when such paper, and the securities for such
purchases, would fall to a ruinous discount. In this case
after much distress to the public service, government obtained a partial triumph by the law which cancelled the
debt on a refusal to receive the state paper, and which
quartered soldiers upon all tradesmen who demurred to
such a tender. But, upon the whole,it was becoming pain
fully evident, that in Ireland there were two coordinate




268           AUTOBIOtRAPHIC SKETCHES.
governments coming into collision at every step, and that
the one which more generally had the upper hand in the
struggle was the secret society of United Irishmen; whose
members individually, and whose local head quarters, were
alike screened from the attacks of its rival, viz., the state
government at the Castle, by a cloud of impenetrable
darkness.
That cloud was at last pierced. A treacherous or weak
brother, high in the ranks of the society, and deep in their
confidence, happened, when travelling up to Dublin in corn
pany with a royalist, to speak half mysteriously, half
ostentatiously, upon the delicate position which he held in
the councils of his dangerous party.  This weak man,
Thomas Reynolds, a Roman Catholic gentleman, of Kilkea
Castle, in Kildare, colonel of a regiment of United Irish.
treasurer for Kildare, and in other offices of trust for the
secret society, was prevailed on by Mr. William Cope, a
rich merchant of Dublin, who alarmed his mind by pictures
of the horrors attending a revolution under the circumstances of Ireland, to betray all he knew to the government.
His treachery was first meditated in the last week of February, 1798; and, in consequence of his depositions, on
March 12, at the house of Oliver Bond, in Dublin, the
government succeeded in arresting a large body of the leading conspirators. The whole committee ofLeinster, amount 
ing to thirteen members, was captured on this occasion; but.
a still more valuable prize was made in the persons of those
who presided over the Irish Directory, viz., Emmet, M'Niven, Arthur O'Connor, and Oliver Bond. As far as names
went, their places were immediately filled up; and a handbill was issued, on the same day, with the purpose of intercepting the effects of despondency amongst the great
body of the conspirators. But Emmet and O'Connor were
not men to be effectually replaced: government had struck




FIRST REBELLION.              269
a fatal blow, without being fully aware at first of their own
good luck. On the 19th of May following, in consequence
of a proclamation (May 11) offering a thousand pounds
for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was apprehended
at the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin, but after a very desperate resistance.  The leader of
the arresting party, Major Swan, a Dublin magistrate, distinguished for his energy, was wounded by Lord Edward;
and Ryan, one of the officers, so desperately, that he died
within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for
some time, and died in great agony on the 3d of June,
from a pistol shot which took effect on his shoulder. Lord
Edward Fitzgerald might be regarded as an injured man.
From the exuberant generosity of his temper, he had powerfully sympathized with the French republicans at an
early stage of their revolution; and having, with great
indiscretion, but an indiscretion that admitted of some
palliation in so young a man and of so ardent a temperament, publicly avowed his sympathy, he was ignominiously dismissed from the army. That act made an enemy
of one who, on several grounds, was not a man to be despised; for, though weak as respected his powers of selfcontrol, Lord Edward was well qualified to make himself
beloved: he had considerable talents; his very name, as a
son of the only * ducal house in Ireland, was a spell and
a rallying word for a day of battle to the Irish peasantry;
and, finally, by his marriage with a natural daughter of the
then Duke of Orleans, he had founded some important connections and openings to secret influence in France. The
* " The only ducal house." - That is, the only one not royal.
There are four provinces in Ireland - Ulster, Connaught, Munster,
which three give old traditional titles to three personages of the
blood royal. Remains only Leinster, which gives the title of duke
to the Fitzgeralds.




O           A1 ThUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
young lady whom he had married was generally known by
the name of Pamela; and it has been usually supposed
that she is the person described by Miss Edgeworth, under
the name of Virginia, in the latter part of her " Belinda."
How that may be, I cannot pretend to say: Pamela was
certainly led into some indiscretions; in particular, she was
said to have gone to a ball without shoes or stockings, which
seems to argue the same sort of ignorance, and the same
docility to any chance impressions, which characterize the
Virginia of Miss Edgeworth. She was a reputed daughter
(as I have said) of Philippe Egalit; and her putative
mother was Madame de Genlis, who had been settled in
that prince's family, as governess to his children, more especially to the sister of the present * French king. Lord
Edward's whole course had been marked by generosity and
noble feeling. Far better to have pardoned t such a man,
and (if that were possible) to have conciliated his support;
4 " Present French ing." - Viz., in the year 1833.
t " To have pardoned," &c. - This was written under circumstances
of great hurry; and, were it not for that palliation, would be inexcusably thoughtless. For, in a double sense, it is doubtful how far the
government could have pardoned Lord Edward. First, in a prudential sense, was it possible (except in the spirit of a German sentimentalizing drama) to pardon a conspicuous, and within certain
limits a very influential, officer for publicly avowing opinions tending
to treason, and at war with the constitutional system of the land which
fed him and which claimed his allegiance? Was it possible, in point
of prudence or in point of dignity, to overlook such anti-national sentiments, whilst neither disavowed nor ever likely to be disavowed?
Was this possible, regard being had to the inevitable effect of such
unearned forgiveness upon the army at large? But secondly, in a
merely logical sense of practical self-consistency, would it have been
rational or even intelligible to pardon a mal who probably would not
be pardoned; that is, who must (consenting o. not consenting) benefit
by the concessions of the pardon, whilst disowning all reciprocal
obligations?




FIRST REBELLION               27 
but, says a contemporary Irishman, " those were not times
of conciliation.
Some days after this event were arrested the two brothers named Shearer, men of talent, who eventually suffered
for treason. These discoveries were due to treachery of a
peculiar sort; not to the treachery of an apostate brother
breaking his faith, but of a counterfeit brother simulating
the character of conspirator, and by that fraud obtaining a
key to the fatal secrets of the United Irishmen. His perfidy, therefore, consisted, not in any betrayal of secrets,
but in the fraud by which he obtained them. Government,
without having yet penetrated to the very heart of the
mystery, had now discovered enough to guide them in their
most energetic precautions; and the result was, that the
conspirators, whose policy had hitherto been to wait for the
cooperation of a French army, now suddenly began to distrust that policy: their fear was, that the ground would be
cut from beneath their feet if they waited any longer. More
was evidently risked by delay than by dispensing altogether
with foreign aid. To forego this aid was perilous; to wait
for it was ruin. It was resolved, therefore, to commence
the insurrection on the 23d of May; and, in order to distract the government, to commence it by simultaneous assaults upon all the military posts in the neighborhood of
Dublin. This plan was discovered, but scarcely in time to
prevent the effects of a surprise. On the 21st, late in the
evening, the conspiracy had been announced by the lord
lieutenant's secretary to the lord mayor; and, on the following day, by a message from his excellency to both
Houses of Parliament.
The insurrection, however, in spite of this official warning, began at the appointed hour. The skirmishes were
many, and in many places; but, generally speaking, they,ere not favorable in their results to the insurgents. The




272           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
mail coaches, agreeably to the preconcerted plan, had all
been intercepted; their non-arrival being every where understood by the conspirators as a silent signal that the war
had commenced. Yet this summons to the more distant
provinces, though truly interpreted, had not been truly
answered. The communication between the capital and
the interior, almost completely interrupted at first, had been
at length fully restored; and a few days saw the main
strength (as it was supposed) of the insurrection suppressed
without much bloodshed. But hush! what is that in the
rear?
Just at this moment, when all the world was disposed to
think the whole affair quietly composed, the flame burst
out with tenfold fury in a part of the country from which
government, with some reason, had turned away their anxieties and their preparations. This was the county of Wexford, which the Earl of Mountnorris had described to the
government as so entirely well affected to the loyal cause,
that he had personally pledged himself for its good conduct.
On the night before Whitsunday, however, May 27, the
standard of revolt was there raised by John Murphy, a
Catholic priest, well known henceforwards under the title
of Father Murphy.
The campaign opened inauspiciously for the royalists.
The rebels had posted themselves on two eminencesKilthomas, about ten miles to the westward of Gorey; and
the Hill of Oulart, half way (i. e., about a dozen miles) between Gorey and Wexford. They were attacked at each
point on Whitsunday. From the first point they were
driven easily, and with considerable loss; but at Oulart the
issue was very different. Father Murphy commanded here
in person; and, finding that his men gave way in great
confusion before a picked body of the North Cork militia,
under the command of Colonel Foote, he contrived tc




FIRST REBELLION.              273
persuade them that their flight was leading them right upon
a body of royal cavalry posted to intercept their retreat.
This fear effectually halted them. The insurgents, through
a prejudice natural to inexperience, had an unreasonable
dread of cavalry. A second time, therefore, facing about
to retreat from this imaginary body of horse, they came
of necessity, and without design, full upon their pursuers,
whom unhappily the intoxication of victory had by this
time brought into the most careless disarray. These, almost to a man, the rebels annihilated: universal consternation followed amongst the royalists; Father Murphy led
them to Ferns, and thence to the attack of Enniscorthy.
Has the reader witnessed, or has he heard described, the
sudden burst -the explosion, one might say- by which a
Swedish winter passes into spring, and spring simultaneously into summer? The icy sceptre of winter does not
there thaw and melt away by just gradations; it is broken,
it is shattered, in a day, in an hour, and with a violence
brought horne to every sense. No second type of resurrection, so mighty or so affecting, is manifested by nature in
southern climates.  Such is the headlong tumult, such
" the torrent rapture," by which life is let loose amongst
the air, the earth, and the waters under the earth. Exactly what this vernal resurrection is in manifestations of
power and life, by comparison with climates that have no
winter, such, and marked with features as distinct, was
this Irish insurrection, when suddenly surrendered to the
whole contagion of politico-religious fanaticism, by coinparison with vulgar martinet strategics and the pedantry
of technical warfare. What a picture must Enniscorthy
have presented on the 27th of May! Fugitives, crowding
in from Ferns, announced the rapid advance of the rebels,
now, at least, 7000 strong, drunk with victory, and mad
lened with vindictive fury. Not long after midday, their
18




274           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
advanced guard, well armed with muskets, (pillaged, be it
observed, from  royal magazines hastily deserted,) commenced a tumultuous assault. Less than 300 militia and
yeomanry formed the garrison of the place, which had no
sort of defences except the natural one of the River Slaney.
This, however, was fordable, and that the assailants knew
The slaughter amongst the rebels, meantime, from the little
caution they exhibited, and their total defect of military
skill, was murderous. Spite of their immense numerical
advantages, it is probable they would have been defeated.
But in Enniscorthy, (as where not?) treason from within
was emboldened to raise its crest at the very crisis of suspense; incendiaries were at' work; and flames began to
issue from many houses at once. Retreat itself became
suddenly doubtful, depending, as it did, altogether upon
the state of the wind. At the right hand of every royalist
stood a traitor; in his own house oftentimes lurked other
traitors, waiting for the signal to begin; in the front was
the enemy; in the rear was a line of blazing streets.
Three hours the battle had raged; it was now four, P. M.,
and at this moment the garrison hastily gave way, and fled
to Wexford.
Now came a scene, which swallowed up all distinct or
separate features in its frantic confluence of horrors. All
the loyalists of Enniscorthy, all the gentry for miles around,
who had congregated in that town, as a centre of security,
were summoned at that moment, not to an orderly retreat,
nut to instant flight. At one end of the street were seen
the rebel pikes, and bayonets, and fierce faces, already
gleaming through the smoke; at the other end, volumes of
fire, surging and billowing from the thatched roofs and
blazing rafters, beginning to block up the avenues of escape.
Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of what is
worst and what is best in human nature. Then was to be




FIRST REBELLION.              275
seen the very delirium of fear, and the very delirium of
vindictive malice; private and ignoble hatred, of ancient
origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic wrath; the
tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs
and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes and personal degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess;
flight, eager or stealthy, according to the temper and the
means; volleying pursuit; the very frenzy of agitation,
under every mode of excitement; and here and there,
towering aloft, the desperation of maternal love, victorious
and supreme above all lower passions. I recapitulate and
gather under general abstractions many an individual anecdote, reported by those who were on that day present in
Enniscorthy; for at Ferns, not far off, and deeply interested
in all those transactions, I had private friends, intimate
participators in the trials of that fierce hurricane, and joint
sufferers with those who suffered most. Ladies were then
seen in crowds, hurrying on foot to Wexford, the nearest
asylum, though fourteen miles distant, many in slippers,
bareheaded, and without any supporting arm; for the
flight of their defenders, having been determined by a
sudden angular movement of the assailants, coinciding with
the failure of their own ammunition, had left no time foi
warning; and fortunate it was for the unhappy fugitives,
that the confusion of burning streets, concurring with the
seductions of pillage, drew aside so many of the victors as
to break the unity of a pursuit else hellishly unrelenting.
Wexford, meantime, was in no condition to promise more
than a momentary shelter. Orders had been already issued
to extinguish all domestic fires throughout the town, and to
unroof all the thatched houses; so great was the jealousy
of internal treason. From without, also, the alarm was
every hour increasing. On Tuesday, the 29th of May, the
rebel army advanced from Enniscorthy to a post called




276           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Three Rocks, not much above two miles from Wexford
Their strength was now increased to at least 15,000 men
Never was there a case requiring more energy in the dis.
posers of the royal forces; never one which met with less,
even in the most responsible quarters. The nearest military
station was the fort at Duncannon, twenty-three miles
distant. Thither, on the 29th, an express had been despatched by the mayor of Wexford, reporting their situation,
and calling immediate aid. General Fawcet replied, that
he would himself march that same evening with the 13th
regiment, part of the Meath militia, and sufficient artillery.
Relying upon these assurances, the small parties of militia
and yeomanry then in Wexford gallantly threw themselves
upon the most trying services in advance. Some companies
of the Donegal militia, not mustering above 200 men,
marched immediately to a position between the rebel camp
and Wexford; whilst others of the North Cork militia and
the local yeomanry, with equal cheerfulness, undertook the
defence of that town.  Meantime, General Fawcet had
consulted his personal comfort by halting for the night,
though aware of the dreadful emergency, at a station sixteen
miles short of Wexford. A small detachment, however,
with part of his artillery, he sent forward; these were the
next morning intercepted by the rebels at Three Rocks,
and massacred almost to a man. Two officers, who escaped
the slaughter, carried the intelligence to the advanced post
of the Donegals; but they, so far from being disheartened,
marched immediately against the rebel army, enormous as
was the disproportion, with the purpose of recapturing the
artillery. A singular contrast this to the conduct of General
tFawcet, who retreated hastily to Duncannon upon the first
i ltelligence of this disaster. Such a regressive movement
was so little anticipated by the gallant Donegals, that they
clutinued to advance against the enemy, until the precision




FIRST REBELLION.              277
with which the captured artillery was served against themselves, and the non-appearance of the promised aid,
warned them to retire. At Wexford, they found all In
confusion and the hurry of retreat. The flight, as it n.ay
be called, of General Fawcet was now confirmed; and, as
the local position of Wexford made it indefensible against
artillery, the whole body of loyalists, except those whom
insufficient warning had thrown into the rear, now fled
from  the wrath of the rebels to Duncannon.  It is a
shocking illustration (if truly reported) of the thoughtless
ferocity which characterized too many of the Orange troops,
that, along the whole line of this retreat, they continued to
burn the cabins of Roman Catholics, and often to massacre.
in cold blood, the unoffending inhabitants; totally forgetful
of the many hostages whom the insurgents now held in
their power, and careless of the dreadful provocations which
they were thus throwing out to the bloodiest reprisals.
Thus it was, and through mismanagement thus mischievously alert, or through torpor thus unaccountably base,
that actually, on the 30th of May, not having raised their
standard before the 26th, the rebels had already been permitted to possess themselves of the county of Wexford in
its whole southern division -Ross and Duncannon only
excepted; of which the latter was not liable to capture by
coup de main, and the other was saved by the procrastination of the rebels. The northern division of the county
was overrun pretty much in the same hasty style, and
through the same desperate neglect in previous concert of
plans. Upon first turning their views to the north, the rebels
had taken up a position on the Hill of Corrigrua, as a station
from which they could march with advantage upon the town
of Gorey, lying seven miles to the northward. On the 1st
of June, a truly brilliant affair had taken place between a
mere handful of militia and yeomanry from this town of




278           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Gore) and a strong detachment from the rebel camp,
Many persons at the time regarded this as the best fough
action in the whole war. The two parties had met about
two miles from Gorey; and it is pretty certain that, if the
yeoman cavalry could have been prevailed on to charge at
the critical moment, the defeat would have been a most
murderous one to the rebels. As it was, they escaped,
though with considerable loss of honor. Yet even this they
were allowed to retrieve within a few days, in a remarkable
way, and with circumstances of still greater scandal to the
military discretion in high quarters than had attended the
movements of General Fawcet in the south.
On the 4th of June, a little army of 1500 men, under
the command of Major General Loftus, had assembled at
Gorey. The plan was, to march by two different roads
upon the rebel encampment at Corrigrua; and this plan
was adopted. Meantime, on that same night, the rebel
army had put themselves in motion for Gorey; and of this
counter movement full and timely information had been
given by a farmer at the royal head quarters; but such
was the obstinate infatuation, that no officer of rank would
condescend to give him a hearing. The consequences may
be imagined. Colonel Walpole, an Englishman, full of
courage, but presumptuously disdainful of the enemy, led
a division upon one of the two roads, having no scouts, nor
taking any sort of precaution. Suddenly he found his line
of march crossed by the enemy in great strength: he refused to halt or to retire; was shot through the head; and
a great part of the advanced detachment was slaughtered
on the spot, and his artillery captured. General Loftus,
advancing on the parallel road, heard the firing, and detached the grenadier company of the Antrim militia to the
aid of Walpole. These, to the amount of seventy men,
were cut off almost to a man; and when the general, who




FIRST REBELLION.             279
could not cross over to the other road, through the enclo3ures, from the encumbrance of his artillery, had at length
reached the scene of action by a long circuit, he found
Ilimself in the following truly ludicrous position: The
rebels had pursued Colonel Walpole's division to Gorey,
and possessed themselves of that place; the general had
thus lost his head quarters, without having seen the army
whom he had suffered to slip past him in the dark. He
marched back disconsolately to Gorey, took a look at the
rebel posts which now occupied the town in strength, was
saluted with a few rounds from his own cannon, and finally
retreated out of the county.
This movement of General Loftus, and the previous one
of General Fawcet, circumstantially illustrate the puerile
imbecility with which the royal cause was then conducted.
Both movements foundered in an hour, through surprises,
against which each had been amply forewarned. Fortunately for the government, the affairs of the rebels were
managed even worse. Two sole enterprises were undertaken by them after this, previously to the closing battle
of Vinegar Hill; both being of the very utmost importance
to their interests, and both sure of success if they had been
pushed forward in time. The first was the attack upon
Ross, undertaken on the 29th of May, the day after the
capture of Enniscorthy. Had that attack been pressed
forward without delay, there never were two opinions as to
the certainty of its success; and, having succeeded, it
would have laid open to the rebels the important counties
of Waterford and Kilkenny. Being delayed until the 5th
of June, the assault was repulsed with prodigious slaughter,
The other was the attack upon Arklow, in the north. On
the capture of Gorey, on the night of June 4, as the imlnediate consequence of Colonel Walpole's defeat, haJ the reb
els advanced upon Arklow, they would have found it for




280           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
some days totally undefended; the whole garrison having
retreated in panic, early on June 5, to Wicklow. The capture of this important place would have laid open the whole
road to the capital; would probably have caused a rising in
that great city; and, in any event, would have indefinitely
prolonged the war, and multiplied the distractions of government. Merely from sloth and the spirit of procrastination, however, the rebel army halted at Gorey until the 9th,
and then advanced with what seemed the overpowering
force of 27,000 men. It is a striking lesson upon the subject of procrastination, that, precisely on that morning of
June 9, the attempt had first become hopeless.  Until
then, the place had been positively emptied of all inhabitants whatsoever. Exactly on the 9th, the old garrison
had been ordered back from Wicklow, and reinforced by
a crack English regiment, (the Durham Fencibles,) on
whom chiefly at this critical hour had devolved the
defence, which was peculiarly trying, from the vast numbers of the assailants, but brilliant, masterly, and perfectly
successful.
This obstinate and fiercely-contested battle of Arklow
was indeed, by general consent, the hinge on which the
rebellion turned. Nearly 30,000 men, armed every man
of them with pikes, and 5000 with muskets, supported
also by some artillery, sufficiently well served to do considerable execution at a most important point in the line
of defence, could not be defeated without a very trying
struggle. And here, again, it is worthy of record, that
General Needham, who commanded on this day, would
have followed the example of Generals Fawcet and Loftus,
and have ordered a retreat, had he not been determinately
opposed by Colonel Skerret, of the Durham regiment.
Such was the imbecility, and the want of moral courage,
on the part of the military leaders; for it would be unjust




FIRST REBELLION.                281
to impute any defect in animal courage to the feeblest of
these leaders.  General Needham, for example, exposed
his person, without reserve, throughout the whole of this
difficult day. Any amount of cannon shot he could face
cheerfully, but not a trying responsibility.
From the defeat of Arklow, the rebels gradually retired,
between the 9th and the 20th of June, to their main mili.
tary position of Vinegar Hill, which lies immediately above
the town of Enniscorthy, and had fallen into their hands,
concurrently with that place, on the 28th of May. Here
their whole forces, with the exception of perhaps 6000,
who attacked General Moore (ten and a half years later,
the Moore of Corunna) when marching on the 26th
towards Wexford, had been concentrated; and to this
point, therefore, as a focus, had the royal army, 13,000
strong, with a respectable artillery, under the supreme
command of General Lake, converged in four.separate
divisions, about the 19th and 20th of June. The great
blow was to be struck on the 21st; and the plan was, that
the royal forces, moving to the assault of the rebel position
upon four lines at right angles to each other, (as if, for
instance, from the four cardinal points to the same centre,)
should surround their encampment, and shut up every
avenue to escape. On this plan, the field of battle would
have been one vast slaughter house; for quarter was not
granted on either side.* But the quadrille, if it were ever
* " For quarter was not granted on either side." - I repeat, as all
along and necessarily I have repeated, that which orally I was told
at the time, or which subsequently I have read in published accounts.
But the reader is aware by this time of my steadfast conviction,
that more easily might a camel go through the eye of a needle, than
a reporter, fresh from a campaign blazing with partisanship, and
that partisanship representing ancient and hereditary feuds, could by
possibility cleanse himself from the virus of such a prejudice.




282           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
seriously concerted, was entirely defeated by the failure of
General Needham, who did not present himself with his
division until nine o'clock, a full half hour after the battle
was over, and thus earned the sobriquet of the late* General Needham. Whether the failure were really in this
officer, or (as was alleged by his apologists) had been
already preconcerted in the inconsistent orders issued to
him by General Lake, with the covert intention, as many
believe, of mercifully counteracting his own scheme of
wholesale butchery, to this day remains obscure.  The
effect of that delay, in whatever way caused, was for once
such as must win every body's applause. The action had;ommenced at seven o'olock in the morning; by half past
eight, the whole rebel army was in flight; and, naturally
making for the only point left unguarded, it escaped with
no great slaughter (but leaving behind all its artillery, and
a good deal of valuable plunder) through what was facetiously called ever afterwards Needham's Gap.  After
this capital rout of Vinegar Hill, the rebel army day by
day mouldered away.   A large body, however, of the
fiercest and most desperate continued for some time to
make flying marches in all directions, according to the
positions of the king's forces and the momentary favor of
accidents. Once or twice they were brought to action by
Sir James Duff and Sir Charles Asgill; and, ludicrously
enough, once more they were suffered to escape by
the eternal delays of the "late Needham."  At length.
however, after many skirmishes, and all varieties of local
* The same jest was applied to Mr. Pitt's brother. When first
lord of the Admiralty, people calling on him as late as even 10 or 11,
P. M., were told that his lordship was riding in the park. On this account, partly, but more pointedly with a malicious reference to the
contrast between his languor and the fiery activity of his father, the
6rstearl, he was'ocularly called the late Lord Chatham.




FIRST REBELLION.              283
success, they finally dispersed upon a bog in the county
of Dublin. Many desperadoes, however took up their
quarters for a long time in the dwarf woods of Killaughrim,
near Enniscorthy, assuming the trade of marauders, but
ludicrously designating themselves the Babes in the Wood.
It is an inexplicable fact, that many deserters from the
militia regiments, who had behaved well throughout the
campaign, and adhered faithfully to their colors, now re.
sorted to this confederation of the woods; from which it
cost some trouble to dislodge them. Another party, in the
woods and mountains of Wicklow, were found still more
formidable, and continued to infest the adjacent country
through the ensuing winter. These were not finally ejected
from their lairs until after one of their chiefs had been
killed in a night skirmish by a young man defending his
house, and the other chief, weary of his savage life, had
surrendered himself to transportation.
It diffused general satisfaction throughout Ireland, that,
on the very day before the final engagement of Vinegar
Hill, Lord Cornwallis made his entry into Dublin as the
new lord lieutenant.  A  proclamation, issued early in
July, of general amnesty to all who had shed no blood
except on the field of battle, notified to the country the
new spirit of policy which now distinguished the govern.
ment; and, doubtless, that one merciful change worked
marvels in healing the agitations of the land. Still it was
thought necessary that severe justice should take its course
amongst the most conspicuous leaders or agents in the insurrection. Martial law still prevailed; and under that
l.w we know, through a speech of the Duke of Wellingt(n's, how entirely the very elements of justice are depend.
e.it upon individual folly or caprice. Many of those who
had shown the greatest generosity, and with no slight risk
to themselves, were now selected to suffer. Bagenal Har




284            AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKE rCHES.
vey, a Protestant gentleman, who had held the supreme
command of the rebel army for some time with infinite
vexation to himself, and taxed with no one instance of
cruelty or excess, was one of those doomed to execution.
He had possessed an estate of nearly three thousand per
annum; and at the same time with him was executed another gentleman, of more than three times that estate,
Cornelius Grogan. Singular it was, that men of this condition and property, men of feeling and refinement, should
have staked the happiness of their families upon a contest
so forlorn. Some there were, however, and possibly these
gentlemen, who could have explained their motives intelli.
gibly enough: they had been forced by persecution, and
actually baited into the ranks of the rebels. One picturesque difference in the deaths of these two gentlemen was
remarkable, as contrasted with their previous habits. Gro.
gan was constitutionally timid; and yet he faced the scaf
fold and the trying preparations of the executioner with
fortitude. On the other hand, Bagenal Harvey, who had
fought several duels with coolness, exhibited considerable
trepidation in his last moments. Perhaps, in both, the difference might be due entirely to some physical accident
of health or momentary nervous derangement.*
* Perhaps also not. Possibly enough there may be no call for any
such exceptional solution; for, after all, there may be nothing to
solve -no dignus vindice nodus. As regards the sudden interchange
of characters on the scaffold, -the constitutionally brave man all at
rnce becoming timid, and the timid man becoming brave, - it must be
remembered, that the particular sort of courage applicable to duelling, when the danger is much more of a fugitive and momentary
order than that which invests a battle lasting for hours, depends
almost entirely upon a man's confidence in his own luck-a pecu!iarity of mind which exists altogether apart from native resources of
courage, whether moral or physical: usually this mo6e of courage is
but a transformed expression for a sanguine temperament. A man




FIRST REBELLION.                    285
Among the crowd, however, of persons who suffered
death at this disastrous era, there were two that merit a
special commemoration for their virtuous resistance, in disregard of all personal risk, to a horrid fanaticism of cruelty.
One was a butcher, the other a seafaring man-both rebels. But they must have been truly generous, brave, and
who is habitually depressed by a constitutional taint of despondency
may carry into a duel a sublime principle of calm, self-sacrificing
courage, as being possibly utterly without hope -a courage, therefore, which has to fight with internal resistance, to which there may
be nothing corresponding in a cheerful temperament.
But there is another and separate agency through which the
fear of death may happen to act as a disturbing force, and most irregularly as viewed in relation to moral courage and strength of mind.
This anomalous force is the imaginative and shadowy terror with
which different minds recoil from death - not considered as an agony
or torment, but considered as a mystery, and, next after God, as the
most infinite of mysteries. In a brave man this terror may happen
to be strong; in a pusillanimous man, simply through inertness and
original feebleness of imagination, may happen to be scarcely developed. This oscillation of horror, alternating between death as an agony
and death as a mystery, not only exists with a corresponding set of con
sequences accordingly as one or other prevails, but is sometimes consciously contemplated and put into the scales of comparison and counter valuation. For instance, one of the early Caesars reviewed the
case thus: " Emori nolo; me esse mortuum nihil estumo: From death as
the act and process of dying, I revolt; but as to death, viewed as a
permanent state or condition, I don't value it at a straw." What this
particular Caesar detested, and viewed with burning malice, was death
the agony - death the physical torment. As to death the mystery,
want of sensibility to the infinite and the shadowy had disarmed that
of its terrors for hirm. Yet, on the contrary, how many are there
who face the mere physical anguish of dying with stern indifference!
But death the mystery, - death that, not satisfied with changing our
objective, may attack even the roots of our subjective,- there lies the
mute, ineffable, voiceless horror before which all human courage is
abashed, even as all human resistance becomes childish when meastur
ing itself against gravitation.




286           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
noble-minded men. During the occupation of Wexford by
the rebel army, they were repeatedly the sole opponents,
at great personal risk, to the general massacre then meditated by some few Popish bigots. And, finally, when all
resistance seemed likely to be unavailing, they both demanded resolutely from the chief patron of this atrocious
policy that he should fight themselves, armed in whatever
way he might prefer, and, as they expressed it, "prove
himself a man," before he should be at liberty to sport in
this wholesale way with innocent blood.
One painful fact I will state in taking leave of this subiect; and that, I believe, will be quite sufficient to sustain
any thing I have said in disparagement of the government;
by which, however, I mean, in justice, the local administration of Ireland. For, as to the supreme government in
England, that body must be supposed, at the utmost, to
have passively acquiesced in the recommendations of the
Irish cabinet, even when it interfered so far. In particular, the scourgings and flagellations resorted to in Wexford
and Kildare, &c., must have been originally suggested by
minds familiar with the habits of the Irish aristocracy in
the treatment of dependants. Candid Irishmen will admit
that the habit of kicking, or threatening to kick, waiters in
coffee houses or other menial dependants,-a habit which,
in England, would be met instantly by defiance and menaces of action for assault and battery,- is not yet altogether obsolete in Ireland.* Thirty years ago it was still more
prevalent, and presupposed that spirit and temper in the
treatment of menial dependants, out of which, doubtless.
arose the practice of judicial (i. e., tentative) flagellations.
Meantime, that fact with which I propcsed to close my recollections of this great tumult, and which seems to be a
* " Not yet altogether obsolete." - Written in 1833




FIRST REBELLION.              287
sufficient guaranty for the very severest reflections on the
spirit of the government, is expressed significantly in the
terms, used habitually by Roman Catholic gentlemen, in
prudential exculpation of themselves, when threatened with
inquiry for their conduct during these times of agitation.
" I thank my God that no man can charge me justly with
having saved the life of any Protestant, or his house from
pillage, by my intercession with the rebel chiefs."  How!
Did men boast of collusion with violence and the spirit of
massacre! What did that mean? It meant this: Some
Roman Catholics had pleaded, and pleaded truly, as a reason for special indulgence to themselves, that any influence
which might belong to them, on the score of religion or of
private friendship, with the rebel authorities, had been used
by them on behalf of persecuted Protestants, either in delivering them altogether, or in softening their doom. But,
to the surprise of every body, this plea was so far from
being entertained favorably by the courts of inquiry, that, on
the contrary, an argument was built upon it, dangerous in
the last degree to the pleader. "You admit, then," it was
retorted, "having had this very considerable influence
upon the rebel councils; your influence extended to the
saving of lives; in that case we must suppose you to have
been known privately as their friend and supporter."
Thus to nave delivered an innocent man from murder, argued that the deliverer must have been an accomplice of
the murderous party. Readily it may be supposed that
few would be disposed to urge such a vindication, when it
became kncwn in what way it was likely to operate. The
government itself had made it perilous to profess humanity; and every man henceforward gloried publicly in his
callousness and insensibility, as the one best safeguard to
h;mself on a path so closely beset with rocks.




CHAPTER X.
FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND, AND SECOND
REBELLION.
THE decisive battle of Vinegar Hill took place at mid.
summer; and with that battle terminated the First Rebel.
lion. Two months later, a French force, not making fully
a thousand men, under the command of General Humbert,
landed on the west coast of Ireland, and again roused the
Irish peasantry to insurrection. This latter insurrection,
and the invasion which aroused it, naturally had a peculiar
interest for Lord Westport and myself, who, in our present
abode of Westport House, were living in its local centre.
I, in particular, was led, by hearing on every side the
conversation reverting to the dangers and tragic incidents
of the era, separated from us by not quite two years, to
make inquiries of every body who had personally participated in the commotions. Records there were on every
side, and memorials even in our bed rooms, of this French
visit; for, at one time, they had occupied Westport House
in some strength. The largest town in our neighborhood
was Castlebar, distant about eleven Irish miles. To this it
was that the French addressed their very earliest efforts.
Advancing rapidly, and with their usual style of theatrical
confidence, they had obtained at first a degree of success
288




SECOND REBELLION.             289
which was almost surprising to their own insolent vanity,
and which, long afterwards, became a subject of bitter
mortification to our own army. Had there been at this
point any energy at all corresponding to that of the enemy,
or commensurate to the intrinsic superiority of our own
troops in steadiness, the French would have been compelled
to!ay down their arms. The experience of those days,
however, showed how deficient is the finest composition
of an army, unless where its martial qualities have been
developed by practice; and how liable is all courage, when
utterly inexperienced to sudden panics. This gasconading
advance, which would have foundered utterly against a
single battalion of the troops which fought in 1812-13
amongst the Pyrenees, was here for the moment successful.
The bishop of this see, Dr. Stock, with his whole household, and, indeed, his whole pastoral charge, became, on
this occasion, prisoners to the enemy. The republican
head quarters were fixed for a time in the episcopal palace; and there it was that General Humbert and his staff
lived in familiar intercourse with the bishop, who thus
became well qualified to record (which he soon afterwards
did in an anonymous pamphlet) the leading circumstances
of the French incursion, and the consequent insurrection in
Connaught, as well as the most striking features in the
character and deportment of the republican officers. Riding over the scene of these transactions daily for some
months, in company with Dr. Peter Browne, the Dean of
Ferns, (an illegitimate son of the late Lord Altamont, and,
therefore, half brother to the present,) whose sacred character had not prevented him from taking that military part
which seemed, in those difficult moments, a duty of elementary patriotism laid upon all alike, I enjoyed many
opportunities for checking the statements of the bishop.
The small body of French troops which undertook this
19




290           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
remote service had been detached in one half from the
army of the Rhine; the other half had served under Napoleon in his first foreign campaign, viz., the Italian campaign
of 1796, which accomplished the conquest of Northern
Italy. Those from Germany showed, by their looks and
their meagre condition, how much they had suffered; and
some of them, in describing their hardships, told their Irish
acquaintance that, during the seige of Metz, which had
occurred in the previous winter of 1797, they had slept in
holes made four feet below the surface of the snow. One
officer declared solemnly that he had not once undressed,
further than by taking off his coat, for a period of twelve
months. The private soldiers had all the essential qualities
fitting them for a difficult and trying service: " intelligence,
activity, temperance, patience to a surprising degree, together with the exactest discipline." This is the statement of
their candid and upright enemy. "Yet," says the bishop,
" with all these martial qualities, if you except the grenadiers, they had nothing to catch the eye. Their stature,
for the most part, was low, their complexion pale and
yellow, their clothes much the worse for wear: to a super.
ficial observer, they would have appeared incapable of
enduring any hardship. These were the men, however,
of whom it was presently observed, that they could be well
content to live on bread or potatoes, to drink water, to
make the stones of the street their bed, and to sleep in
their clothes, with no covering but the canopy of heaven."
" How vast," says Cicero, " is the revenue of Parsimony!"
and, by a thousand degrees more striking, how celestial is
the strength that descends upon the feeble through Tenm
perance!
It may well be imagined in what terror the families of
Killala heard of a French invasion, and the necessity of
immediately receiving a republican army. As sans culottes




SECOND REBELT ION.                291
these men, all over Europe, had the reputation of pursuing
a ferocious marauding policy; in fact, they were held little
better than sanguinary brigands.  In candor, it must be
admitted that their conduct at Killala belied these reports;
though, on the other hand, an obvious interest obliged them
to a more pacific demeanor in a land which they saluted as
friendly, and designed to raise into extensive insurrection.
The French army, so much dreaded, at length arrived.
The general and his staff entered the palace; and the first
act of one officer, on coming into the dining room, was to
advance to the sideboard, sweep all the plate into a basket,
and deliver it to the bishop's butler, with a charge to carry
it off to a place of security.*
The French officers, with the detachment left under their
orders by the commander-in-chief, staid about one month
at Killala. This period allowed opportunities enough for
observing individual differences of character and the gen.
eral tone of their manners. These opportunities were not
thrown away upon the bishop; he noticed with a critical
eye, and he recorded on the spot, whatever fell within his
own experience. Had he, however, happened to be a
political or courtier bishop, his record would, perhaps,
have been suppressed; and, at any rate, it would have
been colored by prejudice. As it was, I believe it to have
* As this happened to be the truth, the bishop did right to report
it. Otherwise, his lordship does not seem to have had much acquaintance with the French scenical mode of arranging their public acts
for purposes of effect. Cynical people (like myself, when looking
back to this anecdote from the year 1833) were too apt to remark
that this plate and that basket were carefully numbered; that the
episcopal butler (like Pharaoh's) was liable, alas! to be hanged in
case the plate were not forthcoming on a summons from head
quarters; and that the Killala "place of security" was kindly
strengthened, under the maternal anxiety of the French republic, by
doublnig the French sentries.




292           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
been the honest testimony of an honest man; and, considering the minute circumstantiality of its delineations, I
do not believe that, throughout the revolutionary war, any
one document was made public which throws so much
light on the quality and composition of the French republican armies. On this consideration I shall extract a few
passages from the bishop's personal sketches.
The commander-in-chief of the French armament is
thus delineated by the bishop: -
"Humbert, the leader of this singular body of men, was
himself as extraordinary a personage as any in his army.
Of a good height and shape, in the full vigor of life, prompt
to decide, quick in execution, apparently master of his art,
you could not refuse him the praise of a good officer, while
his physiognomy forbade you to like him as a man. His
eye, which was small and sleepy, cast a sidelong glance
of insidiousness and even of cruelty; it was the eye of a
cat preparing to spring upon her prey. His education and
manners were indicative of a person sprung from the lower
orders of society; though he knew how to assume, when
it was convenient, the deportment of a gentleman. For
learning, he had scarcely enough to enable him to write
his name. His passions were furious; and all his be
havior seemed marked with the character of roughness and
insolence. A narrower observation of him, however, seemed
to discover that much of this roughness was the result of
art, being assumed with the view of extorting by terror a
ready compliance with his commands. Of this truth the
bishop himself was one of the first who had occasion to be
made sensible."
The particular occasion here alluded to by the bishop
arose out of the first attempts to effect the disembarkation of
the military stores and equipments from the French shipping, as also to foiward them when landed. The case was




SECOND REBELLION               293
one if extreme urgency; and proportionate allowance
must be made for the French general. Every moment
might bring the British cruisers in sight,-two important
expeditions had already been baffled in that way,- and the
absolute certainty known to all parties alike, that delay,
under these circumstances, was tantamount to ruin; that
upon a difference of ten or fifteen minutes, this way or that,
might happen to hinge the whole issue of the expedition:
such a consciousness gave unavoidably to every demur
at this critical moment the color of treachery. Neither
boats, nor carts, nor horses could be obtained; the owners
most imprudently and selfishly retiring from that service.
Such being the extremity, the French general made the
bishop responsible for the execution of his orders; but the
bishop had really no means to enforce this commission,
and failed. Upon that, General Humbert threatened to
send his lordship, together with his whole family, prisoners
of war to France, and assumed the air of a man violently
provoked. Here came the crisis for determining the bishop's
weight amongst his immediate flock, and his hold upon
their affections. One great bishop, not far off, would, on
such a trial, have been exultingly consigned to his fate:
that I well know; for Lord Westport and I, merely as his
visitors, were attacked in the dusk so fiercely with stones,
that we were obliged to forbear going out unless in broad
daylight. Luckily the Bishop of Killala had shown himself
a Christian pastor, and now he reaped the fruits of his
goodness.  The public selfishness gave way when the
danger of the bishop was made known. The boats, the
carts, the horses were now liberally brought in from their
lurking-places; the artillery and stores were landed; and
the drivers of the carts, &c., were paid in drafts upon the
Irish Directory, which (if it were an aerial coin) served at
least to mark an unwillingness in the enemy to adopt




294           Al TOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
violent modes of hostility, and ultimately became available in
the very character assigned to them by the French general;
not, indeed, as drafts upon the rebel, but as claims upon
the equity of the English government.
The officer left in command at Killala, when the presence of the commander-in-chief was required elsewhere,
bore the name of Charost. He was a lieutenant colonel,
aged forty-five years, the son of a Parisian watchmaker.
Having been sent over at an early age to the unhappy
Island of St. Domingo, with a view to some connections
there by which he hoped to profit, he had been fortunate
enough to marry a young woman who brought him      a
plantation for her dowry, which was reputed to have yielded him a revenue of ~2000 sterling per annum. But this,
of course, all went to wreck in one day, upon that mad
decree of the French convention which proclaimed liberty,
without distinction, without restrictions, and without gradations, to the unprepared and ferocious negroes.* Even his
wife and daughter would have perished simultaneously with
his property but for English protection, which delivered
them from the black sabre, and transferred them to Jamaica.
There, however, though safe, they were, as respected Colonel Charost, unavoidably captives; and " his eyes would
fill," says the bishop, " when he told the family that he had
not seen these dear relatives for six years past, nor even
had tidings of them for the last three years." On his return to France, finding that to have been a watchmak(er's
son was no longer a bar to the honors of the military profession, he had entered the army, and had risen by merit to
* I leave this passage as it was written originally under an impression then universally current. But, from what I have since read
on this subject, I beg to be considered as speaking very doubtfully on
the true causes of the St. Domingo disasters.




SECOND REBELLION.              295:.e rank which he now held. " He had a plain, good understanding. He seemed careless or doubtful of revealed religion, but said that he believed in God; was inclined to
think that there must be a future state; and was very sure
that, while he lived in this world, it was his duty to do all
the good to his fellow-creatures that he could. Yet what
he did not exhibit in his own conduct he appeared to respect
in others; for he took care that no noise or disturbance
should be made in the castle (i. e., the bishop's palace) on
Sundays, while the family, and many Protestants from the
town, were assembled in the library at their devotions.
" Boudet, the next in command, was a captain of foot,
twenty-eight years old. His father, he said, was still living, though sixty-seven years old when he was born. His
height was six feet two inches. In person, complexion, and
gravity, he was no inadequate representation of the Knight
of La Mancha, whose example he followed in a recital of
his own prowess and wonderful exploits, delivered in measured language and an imposing seriousness of aspect."
The bishop represents him as vain and irritable, but distinguished by good feeling and principle. Another officer
was Ponson, described as five feet six inches high, lively
and animated in excess, volatile, noisy, and chattering a
l'outrance. "He was hardy," says the bishop, " and patient to admiration of labor and want of rest." And of
this last quality the following wonderful illustration is
given: "A continued watching of five days and nights
together, when the rebels were growing desperate for prey
and mischief, did not appear to sink his spirits in the
smallest degree."
Contrasting with the known rapacity of the French republican army in all its ranks the severest honesty of these
particular officers, we must come to the conclusion, either
that they had been selected for their tried qualities of




296           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
abstinence and self-control, or else that the perilous tenure
of their footing in Ireland had coerced them into forbearance.
Of this same Ponson, the last described, the bishop declares
that " he was strictly honest, and could not bear the absence
of this quality in others; so that his patience was pretty
well tried by his Irish allies." At the same time, he expressed his contempt for religion in a way which the bishop
saw reason for ascribing to vanity- " the miserable affectation of appearing worse than he really was." One officer
there was, named Truc, whose brutality recalled the impressicn, so disadvantageous to French republicanism, which
else had been partially effaced by the manners and conduct
of his comrades. To him the bishop (and not the bishop
only, but many of my own informants, to whom True had
been familiarly known) ascribes "a front of brass, an
incessant fraudful smile, manners altogether vulgar, and in
his dress and person a neglect of cleanliness, even beyond
the affected negligence of republicans."
True, however, happily, was not leader; and the prin.
ciples or the policy of his superiors prevailed. To them,
not merely in their own conduct, but also in their way of
applying that influence which they held over their most
bigoted allies, the Protestants of Connaught were undei
deep obligations. Speaking merely as to property, the honest bishop renders the following justice to the enemy:
"And here it would be an act of great injustice to the
excellent discipline constantly maintained by these invaders
while they remained in our town, not to remark, that, with
every temptation to plunder, which the time and the number
of valuable articles within their reach presented to them in
the bishop's palace, from a sideboard of plate and glasses,
a hall filled with hats, whips, and greatcoats, as well of the
guests as of the family, not a single parti ular of private
property was found to have been carried away, when the




SECOND REBELLION.             297
owners, after the first fright, came to look for their effects,
which was not for a day or two after the landing."  Even
in matters of delicacy the same forbearance was exhibited:'Beside the entire use of other apartments, during the
stay of the French in Killala, the attic story, containing a
library and three bed chambers, continued sacred to the
bishop and his family. And so scrupulous was the delicacy
of the French not to disturb the female part of the house,
that not one of them was ever seen to go higher than the
middle floor, except on the evening of the success at
Castlebar, when two officers begged leave to carry to the
family the news of the battle; and seemed a little mortified that the news was received with an air of dissatisfaction."  These, however, were not the weightiest instances of that eminent service which the French had it in
their power to render on this occasion. The royal army
behaved ill in every sense. Liable to continual panics in
the field, -panics which, but for the overwhelming force
accumulated, and the discretion of Lord Cornwallis, would
have been fatal to the good cause, - the royal forces erred
as unthinkingly, in the abuse of any momentary triumph.
Forgetting that the rebels held many hostages in their hands,
they once recommenced the old system practised in Wexford and Kildare- of hanging and shooting without trial,
and without a thought of the horrible reprisals that might
be adopted. These reprisals, but for the fortunate influence
of the French commanders, and but for their great energy
in applying that influence according to the exigencies of
time and place, would have been made: it cost the whole
weight of the French power, their influence was stretched
almost to breaking, before they could accomplish their purpose of neutralizing the senseless cruelty of the royalists,
and of saving the trembling Protestants. Dreadful were
the anxieties of these moments; and I myself heard per




298          AUT)BIOGRAPHIC SKETCHESsons, at a distance of nearly two years, declare that their
lives hung at that time by a thread; and that, but for the
hasty approach of the lord lieutenant by forced marches.
that thread would have snapped. " We heard with panic,"
said they, " of the madness which characterized the proceedings of our soi-disant friends; and, for any chance of
safety, unavoidably we looked only to our nominal enemies
-the staff of the French army."
One story was still c irrent, and very frequently repeated,
at the time of my own residence upon the scene of these
transactions. It would not be fair to mention it, without
saying, at the same time, that the bishop, whose discretion
was so much impeached by the affair, had the candor to
blame himself most heavily, and always applauded the
rebel for the lesson he had given him. The case was this:
Day after day the royal forces had been accumulating
upon military posts in the neighborhood of Killala, and
could be descried from elevated stations in that town.
Stories travelled simultaneously to Killala, every hour, of
the atrocities which marked their advance; many, doubtless, being fictions, either of blind hatred, or of that ferocious policy which sought to make the rebels desperate, by
tempting them into the last extremities of guilt, but, unhappily, too much countenanced as to their general outline,
by excesses on the royal part, already proved, and undeniable. The ferment and the anxiety increased every hour
amongst the rebel occupants of Killala. The French had
no power to protect, beyond the moral one of their influence as allies; and, in the very crisis of this alarming
situation, a rebel came to the bishop with the news that
the royal cavalry was at that moment advancing from
Sligo, and could be traced along the country by the line of
blazing houses which accompanied their march.  The
bishop doubted this, and expressed his doubt. " Come with




SECOND REBELLION.             299
me," said the rebel. It was a matter of policy to yield,
and his lordship went.  They ascended together the Needle Tower Hill, from the summit of which the bishop now
discovered that the fierce rebel had spoken but too truly.
A. line of smoke and fire ran over the country in the rear
of a strong patrol detached from the king's forces.  The
moment was critical; the rebel's eye expressed the unsettled state of his feelings; and, at that instant, the im.
prudent bishop utterred a sentiment which, to his dying
day, he could not forget.  " They," said he, meaning the
ruined houses, "are only wretched cabins."  The rebel
mused, and for a few moments seemed in self-conflict - a
dreadful interval to the bishop, who became sensible of his
own extreme imprudence the very moment after the words
had escaped him.  However, the man contented himself
with saying, after a pause, " A poor man's cabin is to him
as dear as a palace." It is probable that this retort was
far from expressing the deep moral indignation at his heart,
though his readiness of mind failed to furnish him with any
other more stinging; and, in such cases, all depends upon
the first movement of vindictive feeling being broken. The
bishop, however, did not forget the lesson he had received;
nor did he fail to blame himself most heavily, not so much
for his imprudence as for his thoughtless adoption of a language expressing an aristocratic hauteur that did not belong to his real character. There was, indeed, at that
moment no need that fresh fuel should be applied to the
irritation of the rebels; they had already declared their
intention of plundering the town; and, as they added, " in
spite of the French," whom they now regarded, and
openly denounced, as " abetters of the Protestants," much
more than as their own allies.
Justice, however, must be done to the rebels as well as tc
their military associates. If they were disposed to plunder,




300           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
they were found generally to shrink from bloodshed and
cruelty, and yet from no want of energy or determination.
" The peasantry never appeared to want animal courage,"
says the bishop, "f tor they flocked together to meet danger
whenever it was expected. Had it pleased Heaven to be
as liberal to them of brains as of hands, it is not easy to
say to what length of mischief they might have proceeded;
but they were all along unprovided with leaders of any
ability." This, I believe, was true; and yet it would be
doing poor justice to the Connaught rebels, nor would it be
drawing the moral truly as respects this aspect of the rebellion, if their abstinence from mischief, in its worst form, were
to be explained out of this defect in their leaders. Nor is
it possible to suppose that the bishop's meaning, though his
words seem to tend that way. For he himself elsewhere
notices the absence of all wanton bloodshed as a feature of
this Connaught rebellion most honorable in itself to the
poor misguided rebels, and as distinguishing it very remarkably from the greater insurrection so recently crushed in
the centre and the east. " It is a circumstance," says he,
" worthy of particular notice, that, during the whole time of
this civil commotion, not a single drop of blood was shed by
the Connaught rebels, except in the field of war. It is true,
the example and influence of the French went a great way
to prevent sanguinary excesses. But it will not be deemed
fair to ascribe to this cause alone the forbearance of which
we were witnesses, when it is considered what a range of
country lay at the mercy of the rebels for several days after
the French power was known to be at an end."
To what, then, are we to ascribe the forbearance of the
Connaught men, so singularly contrasted with the hideous
excesses of their brethren in the east? Solely to the differ.
ent complexion (so, at least, I was told) of the policy pur
sued by government. In Wexford, Kildare, Meath, Dublin




SECOND REBELLION.             i01
&c., it had been judged advisable to adopt, as a sort of
precautionary policy, not for the punishment, but for the discovery of rebellious purposes, measures of the direst severity; not merely free quarterings of the soldiery, with liberty
(or even an express commission) to commit outrages and
insults upon all who were suspected, upon all who refused
to countenance such measures, upon all who presumed to
question their justice, but even, under color of martial
law, to inflict croppings, and pitch cappings, half hangings,
and the torture of " picketings;" to say nothing of houses
burned, and farms laid waste - things which were done daily,
and under military orders; the purpose avowed being either
vengeance for some known act of insurrection, or the deterrination to extort confessions. Too often, however, as
may well be supposed, in such utter disorganization of
society, private malice, either personal or on account of old
family feuds, was the true principle at work. And many
were thus driven, by mere frenzy of just indignation, or,
perhaps, by mere desperation, into acts of rebellion which
else they had not meditated. Now, in Connaught, at this
time, the same barbarous policy was no longer pursued;
and then it was seen, that, unless maddened by ill usage,
the peasantry were capable of great self-control. There
was no repetition of the Enniscorthy massacres; and it was
impossible to explain honestly why there was none, without,
at the same time, reflecting back upon that atrocity some
color of palliation.
These things considered, it must be granted that theie
was a spirit of unjustifiable violence in the royal army on
achieving their triumph. It is shocking, however, to observe
the effect of panic to irritate the instincts of cruelty and
sanguinary violence, even in the gentlest minds. I remember well, on occasion of the memorable tumults in Bristol,
(aultrum  of 1831,) that I, for my part, could not read, wilh



302          AAUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
out horror and indignation, one statement, (made, I believe
officially at that time,) which yet won the cordial approba.
tion of some ladies who had participated in the panic. I
allude to that part of the report which represents several of
the dragoons as having dismounted, resigned the care of
their horses to persons in the street, and pursued the unhappy
fugitives, criminals, undoubtedly, but no longer dangerous,
up stairs and down stairs, to the last nook of their retreat.
The worst criminals could not be known and identified as
siuch; and even in a case where they could, vengeance so
hellish and so unrelenting was not justified by houses burned
or by momentary panics raised. Scenes of the same description were beheld upon the first triumph of the royal
cause in Connaught; and but for Lord Cornwallis, equally
firm before his success and moderate in its exercise, they
would have prevailed more extensively. The poor rebels
were pursued with a needless ferocity on the recapture of
Killala. So hotly, indeed, did some of the conquerors hang
upon the footsteps of the fugitives, that both rushed almost
simultaneously — pursuers and pursued —into the terrorstricken houses of Killala; and, in some instances, the ball
meant for a rebel told with mortal effect upon a royalist.
Here, indeed, as in other cases of this rebellion, in candor
it should be mentioned, that the royal army was composed
chiefly of militia regiments. Not that militia, or regiments
composed chiefly of men who had but just before volunteered for the line, have not often made unexceptionable soldiers; but in this case there was no reasonable proportion
of veterans, or men who had seen any service. The Bishop
of Killala was assured by an intelligent officer of the king's
army that the victors were within a trifle of being beaten.
[ was myself told by a gentlemen who rode as a volunteer
on that day, that, to the best of his belief, it was merely a
mistaken order of the rebel chiefs causing a false application




SECOND REBELLION.             303
of a select reserve at a very critical moment, which had
saved his own party from  a ruinous defeat. It may be
added, upon almost universal testimony, that the recapture
of Killala was abused, not only as respected the defeated
rebels, but also as respected the royalists of that town.
"The regiments that came to their assistance, being all militia, seemed to think that they had a right to take the prop.
erty they had been the means of preserving, and to use it as
their own whenever they stood in need of it. Their rapacity differed in no respect from that of the rebels, except
that they seized upon things with less of ceremony and
excuse, and that his majesty's soldiers were incomparably
superior to the Irish traitors in dexterity at stealing. In
consequence, the town grew very weary of their guests,
and were glad to see them march off to other quarters."
The military operations in this brief campaign were discreditable, in the last degree, to the energy, to the vigilance,
and to the steadiness of the Orange army. Humbert had
been a leader against the royalists of La Vendee, as well
as on the Rhine; consequently he was an ambidextrous
enemy —fitted equally for partisan warfare, and for the
tactics of regular armies. Keenly alive to the necessity,
under his circumstances, of vigor and despatch, after occupying Killala on the evening of the 22d August, (the day
of his disembarkation,) where the small garrison of 50
men (yeomen and fencibles) had made a tolerable resistance, and after other trifling affairs, he had, on the 26th,
marched against Castlebar with about 800 of his own men,
and perhaps 1200 to 1500 of the rebels. Here was the
advanced post of the royal army. General Lake (the Lord
Lake of India) and Major General Hutchinson (the Lord
Hutchinson of Egypt) had assembled upon this point a
respectable force; some say upwards of 4000, others not
nore than 1100. The disgraceful result is well known:




304           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the French, marching all night over mountain roads, and
through one pass which was thought impregnable, if it had
been occupied by a battalion instead of a captain's guard,
surprised Castlebar on the morning of the 27th. Surprised,
I say, for no word short of that can express the circumstances of the case. About two o'clock in the morning, a
courier had brought intelligence of the French advance;
but from some unaccountable obstinacy, at head quarters,
such as had proved fatal more than either once or twice in
the Wexford campaign, his news was disbelieved; yet, if
disbelieved, why therefore neglected? Neglected, however, it was; and at seven, when the news proved to be
true, the royal army was drawn out in hurry and confusion
to meet the enemy. The French, on their part, seeing our
strength, looked for no better result to themselves than
summary surrender; more especially as our artillery was
well served, and soon began to tell upon their ranks.
Better hopes first arose, as they afterwards declared, upon
observing that many of the troops fired in a disorderly way
without waiting for the word of command; upon this they
took new measures: in a few minutes a panic arose;
General Lake ordered a retreat; and then, in spite of all
that could be done by the indignant officers, the flight became irretrievable. The troops reached Tuam, thirty miles
distant, on that same day; and one small party of mounted
men actually pushed on to Athlone, which is above sixty
miles from the field of battle. Fourteen pieces of artillery
were lost on this occasion. However, it ought to be men.
tioned that some serious grounds appeared afterwards for
suspecting treachery; most of those who had been reported
" missing " having been afterwards observed in the ranks
of the enemy, where it is remarkable enough (or perhaps
not so remarkable, as simply implying how little they
were trusted by their new allies, and for that reason how




SECOND REBELLION.             305
naturally they were put forward on the most dangerous services) that these deserters perished to a man. Meantime,
the new lord lieutenant, having his foot constantly in the
stirrup, marched from Dublin without a moment's delay.
By means of the grand canal, he made a forced march of
fifty-six English miles in two days; which brought him
to Kilbeggan on the 27th. Very early on the following
morning, he received the unpleasant news from Castlebar.
Upon this he advanced to Athlone, meeting every indication of a routed and panic-struck army. Lord Lake was
retreating upon that town, and thought himself (it is said)
so little secure, even at this distance from the enemy, that
the road from Tuam was covered with strong patrols. On
the other hand, in ludicrous contrast to these demonstrations
of alarm, (supposing them to be related without exaggeration,) the French had never stirred from Castlebar. On
the 4th of September, Lord Cornwallis was within fourteen
miles of that place. Humbert, however, had previously
dislodged towards the county of Longford. His motive
for this movement was to cooperate with an insurrection
in that quarter, which had just then broken out in strength.
He was now, however, hemmed in by a large army of perhaps 25,000 men, advancing from all points; and a few
moves were all that remained of the game, played with
whatever skill. Colonel Vereker, with about 300 of the
Limerick militia, first came up with him, and skirmished
very creditably (September 6) with part, or (as the colonel
a-ways maintained) with the whole of the French army.
Other affairs of trival importance followed; and at length,
on the 8th of September, General Humbert surrendered with
his whole army, now reduced to 844 men, of whom 96
were officers; having lost since their landing at Killala
exactly 288 men. The rebels were not admitted to any
terms; they were pursued and cut down without mercy.
20




306           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
However, it is pleasant to know, that, from their agility in
escaping, this cruel policy was defeated: not much above
500 perished; and thus were secured to the royal party the
worst results of vengeance the fiercest, and of clemency
the most undistinguishing, without any one advantage of
either. Some districts, as Laggan and Eris, were treated
with martial rigor; the cabins being burned, and their
unhappy tenants driven out into the mountains for the winter. Rigor, therefore, there was; for the most humane
politicians, erroneously, as one must believe, fancied it necessary for the army to leave behind some impressions of
terror amongst the insurgents. It is certain, however, that,
under the counsels of Lord Cornwallis, the standards of
public severity were very much lowered, as compared with
the previous examples in Wexford.
The tardiness and slovenly execution of the whole ser
vice, meantime, was well illustrated in what follows: -
Killala was not delivered from rebel hands until the 23d
of September, notwithstanding the general surrender had
occurred on the 8th; and then only in consequence of an
express from the bishop to General Trench, hastening his
march. The situation of the Protestants was indeed critical. Humbert had left three French officers to protect the
place, but their influence gradually had sunk to a shadow.
And plans of pillage, with all its attendant horrors, were
daily debated. Under these circumstances, the French
officers behaved honorably and courageously.  Yet,"
says the bishop, " the poor commandant had no reason to
be pleased with the treatment he had received immediately
after the action. He had returned to the castle for his
sabre, and advanced with it to the gate, in order to deliver
it up to some English officer, when it was seized and
forced from his hand by a common soldier of Fraser's
He came in, got another sword, which he surrendered to




SECOND REBELLION.                   307
an officer, and turned to reenter the hall. At this moment
a second Highlander burst through the gate, in spite of the
sentinel placed there by the general, and fired at the commandant with an aim that was near proving fatal, for the
ball passed under his arm, piercing a very thick door entirely through, and lodging in the jamb. Had we lost the
worthy man by such an accident, his death would have
spoiled the whole relish of our present enjoyment. He
complained, and received an apology for the soldier's behavior from his officer. Leave was immediately granted
to the three French officers (left behind by Humbert at
Killala) to keep their swords, their effects, and even their
bed chambers in the house."
1    ANote applying generally to this chapter on the Second Irish Rebellion.-Already in 1833, when writing this 10th chapter, I felt a
secret jealously (intermittingly recurring) that possibly I might have
fallen under a false bias at this point of my youthful memorials. I
myself had seen reason to believe - indeed, sometimes I knew for certain - that, in the personalities of Irish politics from Grattan downwards, a spirit of fiery misrepresentation prevailed, which made it
hopeless to seek for any thing resembling truth. If in any quarter
you found candor and liberality, that was because no interest existed
in any thing Irish, and consequently no real information. Find out
any man that could furnish you with information such as presupposed
an interest in Ireland, and inevitably he turned out a bigoted partisan.
There cannot be a stronger proof of this than the ridiculous libels and
literary caricatures current even in England, through one whole generation, against the late Lord Londonderry-a most able and faithful manager of our English foreign interests in times of unparalleled
difficulty. Already in the closing years of the last century, his Irish
policy had been inextricably falsified: subsequently, when he came to
assume a leading p rt in the English Parliament, the efforts to calum
niate him became even more intense; and it is only within the last
five years that a reaction of public opinion on this subject has been
strong enough to reach even those among his enemies who were enlightened men. Liberal journals (such, e. g., as the "North British
Review") now recognize his merits. Naturally it was impossible that




308             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the civil war of 1798 in Ireland, and the persons conspicuously connected with it, should escape this general destiny of Irish politics. I
wrote, therefore, originally under a jealousy that partially I might have
been duped. At present, in reviewing what I had written twenty
years ago, I feel this jealousy much more keenly. I shrink from the
bishop's malicious portraitures of our soldiers, sometimes of their
officers, as composing a licentious army, without discipline, without
humanity, without even steady courage. Has any man a right to ask
our toleration for pictures so romantic as these  Duped perhaps I
was myself; and it was natural that I should be so under the over
whelming influences oppressing any right that I could have at my early age to a free, independent judgment. But I will not any longer
assist in duping the reader; and I will therefore suggest to him two
grounds of vehement suspicion against all the insidious coloringt
given to his statements by the bishop: —
1st. I beg to remind the reader that this army of Mayo, in 1798, so
unsteady and so undisciplined, if we believe the bishop, was in part
the army of Egypt in the year 1801: how would the bishop have answered that?
2dly. The bishop allows great weight in treating any allegations
whatever against the English army or the English government, to the
moderation, equity, and self-control claimed for the Irish peasanty
as notorious elements in their character. Meantime he forgets this
doctrine most conspicuously at times; and represents the safety of
the Protestants against pillage, or even against a spirit of massacre,
as entirely dependent on the influence of the French. Whether for
property or life, it was to the French that the Irish Protestants looked
for protection: not I it is, but the bishop, on whom that representation
will be found to rest




CHAPTER XI.
TRAVELLING.
IT was late in October, or early in November, that I
quitted Connaught with Lord Westport; and very slowly,
making mary leisurely deviations from the direct route,
travelled back to Dublin. Thence, after some little stay,
we recrossed St. George's Channel, landed at Holyhead,
and then, by exactly the same route as we had pursued in
early June, we posted through Bangor, Conway, Llanrwst,
Llangollen, until once again we found ourselves in England, and, as a matter of course, making for Birmingham.
But why making for Birmingham? Simply because Birmingham, under the old dynasty of stage coaches and post
chaises, was the-centre of our travelling system, and hed
in England something of that rank which the golden mile.
stone of Rome held in the Italian peninsula.
At Birmingham it was (which I, like myriads beside,
had traversed a score of times without ever yet having
visited it as a terminus ad quem) that I parted with my
friend Lord Westport. His route lay through Oxford;
and stopping, therefore, no longer than was necessary to
harness fresh horses,- an operation, however, which was
seldom accomplished in less than half an hour at that era.
-he went on directly to Stratford. My own destination
309




310           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
was yet doubtful. I had been directed, in Dublin, to inquire at the Birmingham post office for a letter which
would guide my motions. There, accordingly, upon sending for it, lay the expected letter from my mother; from
which I learned that my sister was visiting at Laxton, in
Northamptonshire, the seat of an old friend, to which I
also had an invitation. My route to this lay through Stamford. Thither I could not go by a stage coach until the
following day; and of necessity I prepared to make the
most of my present day in gloomy, noisy, and, at that
time, dirty Birmingham.
Be not offended, compatriot of Birmingham, that I salute
your natal town with these disparaging epithets. It is not
my habit to indulge rash impulses of contempt towards
any man or body of men, wheresoever collected, far less
towards a race of high-minded and most intelligent citizens, such as Birmingham has exhibited to the admiration
of all Europe. But as to the noise and the gloom which
I ascribe to you, those features of your town will illustrate
what the Germans mean by a one-sided * (ein-seitiger)
judgment. There are, I can well believe, thousands to
whom Birmingham is another name for domestic peace,
and for a reasonable share of sunshine. But in my case,
who have passed through Birmingham a hundred times, it
always happened to rain, except once; and that once the
Shrewsbury mail carried me so rapidly away, that I had
not time to examine the sunshine, or see whether it might
not be some gilt Birmingham counterfeit; for you know,
men of Birmingham, that you can counterfeit-such is
* It marks the rapidity with which new phrases float themselves
into currency under our present omnipresence of the press, that this
word, now (viz., in 1853) familiarly used in every newspaper T:. 
in 1833) required a sort of apology to warrant its introd. 




TRAVELLING.                     311
your cleverness-all things in heaven and earth, frona
Jove's thunderbolts down to a tailor's bodkin. Therefore,
the gloom is to be charged to my bad luck. Then, as to
the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and
Chickens,* to which usually my destiny brought me, but I
* A well-known hotel, and also a coach inn, which we English in those
days thought colossal. It was in fact, according to the spirit of Dr,johnson', witty reply to Miss Knight, big enough for an island. But
our transatlantic brothers, dwelling upon so mighty a continent, nave
gradually enlarged their scale of inns as of other objects into a size of
commensurate grandeur. In two separate New York journals, which,
by the kindness of American friends, are at this moment (April 26)
lying before me, I read astounding illustrations of this. For instance:
(1.) In " Putnam's Monthly" for April, 1853, the opening article, a
very amusing one, entitled "New York daguerreotyped," estimates
the hotel population of that vast city as " not much short of ten thousand;" and one individual hotel, apparently far from being the most
conspicuous, viz., the Metropolitan, reputed to have " more than twelve
miles of water and gas pipe, and two hundred and fifty servants,"
offers "accommodations for one thousand guests." (2.) Yet even this
Titanic structure dwindles by comparison with The Mount Vernon
Hotel at Cape May, N. J., (meant, I suppose, for New Jersey,) which
advertises itself in the " New York Herald," of April 12, 1853, under
the authority of Mr. J. Taber, its aspiring landlord, as offering accommodations, from the 20th of next June, to the romantic number of
three thousand five hundred guests. The Birmingham Hen and Chickens
undoubtedly had slight pretensions by the side of these behemoths
and mammoths. And yet, as a street in a very little town may happen to be quite as noisy as a street in London, I can testify that any
single gallery in this Birmingham hotel, if measured in importance
by the elements of discomfort which it could develop, was entitled to
an American rating. But alas! Fuit Ilium; I have not seen the
ruins of this ancient hotel; but an instinct tells me that the railroad
has run right through it; that the hen has ceased to lay golden eggs,
and that her chickens are dispersed. (3.) As another illustration, I
may mention that, in the middle of March, 1853, I received, as a present from New York, the following newspaper. Each page contained
eleven columns, whereas our London " Times " contains only six. It




312             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
had reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather
her vagrant flock to roost at less variable hours. Till two
or three, I was kept waking by those who were retiring,
and about three commenced the morning functions of the
porter, or of " boots," or of" underboots," who began their
rounds for collecting the several freights for the Highflyer,
or the Tally-ho, or the Bang-up, to all points of the compass, and too often (as must happen in such immense es.
tablishments) blundered into my room with that appalling,
"Now, sir, the horses are coming out." So that rarely,
indeed, have I happened to sleep in Birmingham. But the
dirt! -that sticks a little with you, friend of Birmingham.
How do I explain away that? Know, then, reader, that
at the time I speak of, and in the way I speak of, viz., in
streets and inns, all England was dirty.
Being left therefore alone for the whole of a rainy day
in Birmingham, and Birmingham being as yet the centre
of our travelling system, I cannot do better than spend my
Birmingham day in reviewing the most lively of its reminiscences.
The revolution in the whole apparatus, means, machinery,
was entitled " The New York Journal of Commerce," and was able to
proclaim itself with truth the largest journal in the world. For 25^
years it had existed in a smaller size, but even in this infant stage had
so far outrun alother journals in size (measuring, from the first, 816
square inches) as to have earned the name of " the blanket sheet' but
this thriving baby had continued to grow, until at last, on March 1,
1853, it came out in a sheet "comprising an area of 20574 square
inches, or 162 square feet." This was the monster sent over the Atlantic to myself; and I really felt it as some relief to my terror, when
I found the editor protesting that the monster should not be allowed
to grow any more. I presume that it was meant to keep the hotels in
countenance; for a journal on the old scale could not expect to make
itself visible in an edifice that offered accommodations to an army




TRAVELLING.                313
and dependences of that system - a revolution begun,
carried through, and perfected within the period of my own
personal experience - merits a word or two of illustration
in the most cursory memoirs that profess any attention at
all to the shifting scenery and moving forces of the age,
whether manifested in great effects or in little. And these
particular effects, though little, when regarded in their
separate details, are not little in their final amount. On the
contrary, I have always maintained, that under a representative government, where the great cities of the empire
must naturally have the power, each in its proportion, of
reacting upon the capital and the councils of the nation in
so conspicuous a way, there is a result waiting on the final
improvements of the arts of travelling, and of transmitting
intelligence with velocity, such as cannot be properly appreciated in the absence of all historical experience. Conceive a state of communication between the centre and the
extremities of a great people, kept up with a uniformity of
reciprocation so exquisite as to imitate the flowing and
ebbing of the sea, or the systole and diastole of the human
heart; day and night, waking and sleeping, not succeeding
to each other with more absolute certainty than the acts of
the metropolis and the controlling notice of the provinces,
whether in the way of support or of resistance. Action
and reaction from every point of the compass being thus
perfect and instantaneous, we should then first begin to understand, in a practical sense, what is meant by the unity of
a political body, and we should approach to a more adequate appreciation of the powers which are latent in organization. For it must be considered that hitherto, under the
most complex organization, and that which has best attained its purposes, the national will has never been able to
express itself upon one in a thousand of the public acts,
simply because the national voice was lost in the distance,




314           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
and could not collect itself through the time and the space
rapidly enough to connect itself immediately with the
evanescent measure of the moment. But, as the system
of intercourse is gradually expanding, these bars of space
and time are in the same degree contracting, until finally
we may expect them altogether to vanish; and then every
part of the empire will react upon the whole with the power,
life, and effect of immediate conference amongst parties
brought face to face. Then first will be seen a political
system truly organic - i. e., in which each acts upon all,
and all react upon each; and a new earth will arise from
the indirect agency of this merely physical revolution.
Already, in this paragraph, written twenty years ago, a
prefiguring instinct spoke within me of some great secret
yet to come in the art of distant communication. At present I am content to regard the electric telegraph as the
oracular response to that prefiguration. But I still look for
some higher and transcendent response.
The reader whose, birth attaches him to this present generation, having known only macadamized roads, cannot
easily bring before his imagination the antique and almost
aboriginal state of things which marked our travelling system down to the end of the eighteenth century, and nearly
through the first decennium of the present. A very few
lines will suffice for some broad notices of our condition, in
this respect, through the last two centnries. In the Parliament war, (1642-6,) it is an interesting fact, but at the
same time calculated to mislead the incautious reader, that
some officers of distinction, on both sides, brought close
carriages to head quarters; and sometimes they went even
upon the field of battle in these carriages, not mounting on
horseback until the preparations were beginning for some
important manceuvre, or for a general movement. The
same thing had been done throughout the Thirty Years




TRAVELLING.                 315
wai, both by the Bavarian, imperial, and afterwards by
the Swedish officers of rank.  And it marks the great
diffusion of these luxuries about this era, that, on occasion
of the reinstalment of two princes of Mecklenburg, who
had been violently dispossessed by Wallenstein, upwards of
eighty coaches mustered at a short notice, partly from the
territorial nobility, partly from the camp. Preclsely, however, at military head quarters, and on the route of an
army, carriages of this description were an available and a
most useful means of transport. Cumbrous and unwieldy
they were, as we know by pictures; and they could noi
have been otherwise, for they were built to meet the roads.
Carriages of our present light and reedy (almost, one might
say, corky) construction would, on the roads of Germany
or of England, in that age, have foundered within the firsi
two hours. To our ancestors, such carriages would have
seemed playthings for children.  Cumbrous as the carriages of that day were, they could not be more so than artilery or baggage wagons: where these could go, coaches
could go. So that, in the march of an army, there was a
perpetual guaranty to those who had coaches for the possibility of their transit. And hence, and not because the
roads were at all better than they have been generally
described in those days, we are to explain the fact, that
both in the royal camp, in Lord Manchester's, and after.
wards in General Fairfax's and Cromwell's, coaches were
an ordinary part of the camp  equipage.  The roads
meantime, were as they have been described, viz., ditches
morasses, and sometimes channels for the course of small
brooks. Nor did they improve, except for short reaches
and under peculiar local advantages, throughout that cen.
tury. Spite of the roads, however, public carriages be.
gan to pierce England, in various lines, from the era of
1660. Circumstantial notices of these mav he found ir




316          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Lord Auckland's (Sir Frederic Eden's) large work on the
poor laws. That to York, for example, (two hundred
miles,) took a fortnight in the journey, or about fourteen
miles a day.  But Chamberlayne, who had a personal
knowledge of these public carriages, says enough to show
that, if slow, they were cheap; half a crown being the
usual rate for fifteen miles, (i. e., 2d. a mile.) Public conveyances, multiplying rapidly, could not but diffuse a general call for improved roads; improved both in dimensions
and also in the art of construction.  For it is observable,
that, so early as Queen Elizabeth's days, England, the
most equestrian of nations, already presented to its inhabitants a general system of decent bridle roads. Even at
this day, it is doubtful whether any man, taking all hinderances into account, and having laid no previous relays
of horses, could much exceed the exploit of Carey, (afterwards Lord Monmouth,) a younger son of the first Lord
Hunsden, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth. Yet we must not
forget that the particular road concerned in this exploit
was the Great North Road, (as it is still called by way of
distinction,) lying through Doncaster and York, between
the northern and southern capitals of the island. But
roads less frequented were tolerable as bridle roads; whilst
all alike, having been originally laid down with no view to
the broad and ample coaches, from 1570 to 1700, scratched
the panels on each side as they crept along. Even in the
nineteenth century, I have known a case in the sequestered
district of Egremont, in Cumberland,.where a post chaise,
of the common narrow dimensions, was obliged to retrace
its route of fourteen miles, on coming to a bridge built in
some remote age, when as yet post chaises were neither
known ior anticipated, and, unfortunately, too narrow by
three or four inches. In all the provinces of England
when the soil was deep and adhesive, a worse evil beset the




TRAVELLING.                 31'
tlatel) equipage. An Italian of rank, who has left a record
of his perilous adventure, visited, or attempted to visit,
Petworth, near London, (then a seat of the Percys, now of
Lord Egremont,) about the year 1685. I forget how many
times he was overturned within one particular stretch of
five miles; but I remember that it was a subject of gratitude (and, upon meditating a return by the same route, a
subject of pleasing hope) to dwell upon the soft lying which
was to be found in that good-natured morass. Yet this was,
doubtless, a pet road, (sinful punister! dream not that I
glance at Petworth,) and an improved road. Such as this,
I have good reason to think, were most of the roads in
England, unless upon the rocky strata which stretch northwards from Derbyshire to Cumberland and Northumberland.
The public carriages were the first harbingers of a change
for the better; as these grew and prospered, slender lines
of improvement began to vein and streak the map. And
Parliament began to show their zeal, though not always a
corresponding knowledge, by legislating backwards and
forwards on the breadth of wagon wheel tires, &c. But
not until our cotton system began to put forth blossoms, not
until our trade and our steam engines began to stimulate
the coal mines, which in their turn stimulated them, did any
great energy apply itself to our roads. In my childhood,
standing with one or two of my brothers and sisters at the
front windows of my mother's carriage, I remember one
unvarying set of images before us. The postilion (for so
were all carriages then driven) was employed, not by
fits and starts, but always and eternally, in quartering * —
i. e., in crossing from side to side - according to the casual.
ties of the ground. Before you stretched a wintry length
* Elsewhere I have suggested, as the origin of this term, the Frencb
word cartt,-r, to manoeuvre so as to evade the ruts.




318           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
of lane, with ruts deep enough to fracture the leg of a
horse, filled to the brim with standing pools of rain water;
and the collateral chambers of these ruts kept from becoming confluent by thin ridges, such as the Romans called
lirac, to maintain the footing upon which lira, so as not to
swerve, (or, as the Romans would say, delirare,) was a trial
of some skill both for the horses and their postilion. It
was, indeed, next to impossible for any horse, on such a
narrow crust of separation, not to grow delirious in the
Roman metaphor; and the nervous anxiety, which haunted
me when a child, was much fed by this very image so often
before my eye, and the sympathy with which I followed
the motion of the docile creature's legs. Go to sleep at
the beginning of a stage, and the last thing you saw - wake
up, and the first thing you saw -was the line of wintry
pools, the poor off-horse planting his steps with care, and the
cautious postilion gently applying his spur, whilst manceuvring across this system of grooves with some sort of science
that looked like a gypsy's palmistry; so equally unintelligible
to me were his motions, in what he sought and in what he
avoided.
Whilst reverting to these remembrances of my childhood,
I may add, by way of illustration, and at the risk of gossiping, which, after all, is not the worst of things, a brief notice
of my very first journey. I might be then seven years
old. A young gentleman, the son of a wealthy banker,
had to return home for the Christmas holidays to a town in
Lincolnshire, distant from the public school where he was
pursuing his education about a hundred miles. The school
was in the neighborhood of Greenhay, my father's house.
There were at that time no coaches in that direction; now
(1833) there are many every day. The young gentleman
advertised for a person to share the expense of a post
chaise. By accident, I had an invitation of some standing




TRAVELLING.                 319
bo the same torvn, where I happened to have some female
relatives of mature age, besides some youthful cousins.
The two travellers elect soon heard of each other, and
the arrangement was easily completed.  It was my earliest migration from the paterna roof; and the anxieties
of pleasure, too tumultuous, with some slight sense of
undefined fears, combined to agitate my childish feelings.
I had a vague, slight apprehension of my fellow-traveller,
whom I had never seen, and whom my nursery maid, when
dressing me, had described in no very amiable colors.
But a good deal more I thought of Sherwood Forest, (the
forest of Robin Hood,) which, as I had been told, we should
cross after the night set in. At six o'clock I descended,
and not, as usual, to the children's room, but, on this special morning of my life, to a room called the breakfast room; where I found a blazing fire, candles lighted,
and the whole breakfast equipage, as if for my mother,
set out, to my astonishment, for no greater personage
than myself. The scene being in England, and on a December morning, I need scarcely say that it rained: the
rain beat violently against the windows, the wind raved;
and an aged servant, who did the honors of the breakfast
table, pressed me urgently to eat. I need not say that I
had no appetite: the fulness of my heart, both from busy
anticipation, and from the parting which was at hand, had
made me incapable of any other thought or attention but
such as pointed to the coming journey. All circumstances
in travelling, all scenes and situations of a representative
and recurring character, are indescribably affecting, connected, as they have been, in so many myriads of minds,
more especially in a land which is sending off forever its
flowers and blossoms to a clime so remote as that of India,
with heart-rending separations, and with farewells never tc
be repeated. But, amongst them all, none cleaves to my




320           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
own feelings more indelibly, from having repeatedly keen
concerned, either as witness or as a principal party in its
little drama, than the early breakfast on a wintry morning
long before the darkness has given way, when the golden
blaze of the hearth, and the bright glitter of candles, with
female ministrations of gentleness more touching than on
common occasions, all conspire to rekindle, as it were for
a farewell gleam, the holy memorials of household affections. And many have, doubtless, had my feelings; for, I
believe, few readers will ever forget the beautiful manner
in which Mrs. Inchbald has treated such a scene in winding
up the first part of her " Simple Story," and the power
with which she has invested it.
Years, that seem innumerable, have passed since that
December morning in my own life to which I am now
recurring; and yet, even to this moment, I recollect the
audible throbbing of heart, the leap and rushing of blood,
which suddenly surprised me during a deep lull of the wind,
when the aged attendant said, without hurry or agitation,
but with something of a solemn tone, "That is the sound
of wheels. I hear the chaise. Mr. H   - will be here
directly." The road ran, for some distance, by a course
pretty nearly equidistant from the house, so that the groaning of the wheels continued to catch the ear, as it swelled
upon the wind, for some time without much alteration. At
length a right-angled turn brought the road continually and
rapidly nearer to the gates of the grounds, which had purposely been thrown open. At this point, however, a long
career of raving arose; all other sounds were lost; and,
for some time, I began to think we had been mistaken, when
suddenly the loud trampling of horses' feet, as they whirled
up the sweep below the windows, followed by a peal long
and loud upon the bell, announced, beyond question, the
summons for my departure. The door being thrown open,




TRAVELLING.                321
steps were heard loud and fast; and in the next moment
ushered by a servant, stalked forward, booted and fully
equipped, my travelling -companion- if such a word can
at all express the relation between the arrogant young
blood, just fresh from  assuming the toga virilis, and a
modest child of profound sensibilities, but shy and reserved
beyond even English reserve.  The aged servant, with
apparently constrained civility, presented my mother's compliments to him, with a request that he would take breakfast
This he hastily and rather peremptorily declined. Me,
however, he condescended to notice with an approving nod,
slightly inquiring if I were the young gentleman who shared
his post chaise. But, without allowing time for an answer,
and striking his boot impatiently with a riding whip, he
hoped I was ready. "Not until he has gone up to my
mistress," replied my old protectress, in a tone of some
asperity. Thither I ascended. What counsels and directions I might happen to receive at the maternal toilet,
naturally I have forgotten. The most memorable circumBtance to me was, that I, who had never till that time
possessed the least or most contemptible coin, received, in
a network purse, six glittering guineas, with instructions
to put three immediately into Mr. H-'s hands, and the
others when he should call for them.
The rest of my mother's counsels, if deep, were not
long; she, who had always something of a Roman firmness,
shed more milk of roses, I believe, upon my cheeks than
tears; and why not?  What should there be to her corresponding to an ignorant child's sense of pathos, in a little
iourney of about a hundred miles? Outside her door, however, there awaited me some silly creatures, women of
course, old and young, from the nursery and the kitchen,
who gave, and who received, those fervent kisses which
wvait only upon love without awe and without disguise.
21




3'22          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
Heavens! what rosaries might be strung for the memory
of sweet female kisses, given without check or art, before
one is of an age to value them! And again, how sweet
is the touch of female hands as they array one for a
journey! If any thing needs fastening, whether by pinning
tying, or any other contrivance, how perfect is one's confidence in female skill; as if, by mere virtue of her sex and
feminine instinct, a woman could not possibly fail to know
the best and readiest way of adjusting every case that could
arise in dress. Mine was hastily completed amongst them:
each had a pin to draw from her bosom, in order to put
something to rights about my throat or hands; and a chorus
of " God bless hims!" was arising, when, from below,
young Mephistopheles murmured an impatient groan, and
perhaps the horses snorted. I found myself lifted into the
chaise; counsels about the night and the cold flowing in
upon me, to which Mephistopheles listened with derision or
astonishment. I and he had each our separate corner; and,
except to request that I would draw up one of the glasses,
[ do not think he condescended to address one word to
me until dusk, when we found ourselves rattling into Chesterfield, having barely accomplished four stages, or forty or
forty-two miles, in about nine hours. This, except on the
Bath or great north roads, may be taken as a standard
amount of performance, in 1794, (the year I am recording,)
and even ten years later.* In these present hurrying and
tumultuous days, whether time is really of more value,I
cannot say; but all people on the establishment of inns are
required to suppose it of the most awful value. Nowadays,
* It apDears, however, from the Life of Hume, by my distinguishcd
friend Mr. Hill Burton, that already. in the middle of the last century,
the historian accomplished without difficulty six miles an hour with
only a pair of horses. But this. it should be observed, was on the
great North Road.




TRAVELLING.                323
(1533,) no sooner have the horses stopped at the gateway
of a posting house than a summons is passed down to the
stables; and in less than one minute, upon a great road, the
horses next in rotation, always ready harnessed when expecting to come on duty, are heard trotting down the yard. " Putting to " and transferring the luggage, (supposing your conveyance a common post chaise,) once a work of at least
thirty minutes, is now easily accomplished in three. And
scarcely have you paid the ex-postilion before his successor
is mounted; the hostler is standing ready with the steps in
his hands to receive his invariable sixpence; the door is
closed; the representative waiter bows his acknowledgment
for the house, and you are off at a pace never less than ten
miles an hour; the total detention at each stage not averaging
above four minutes. Then, (i. e., at the latter end of the
eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century,) half
an hour was the minimum of time spent at each change of
horses. Your arrival produced a great bustle of unloading
and unharnessing; as a matter of course, you alighted and
went into the inn; if you sallied out to report progress, after waiting twenty minutes, no signs appeared of any stir
about the stables. The most choleric person could not much
expedite preparations, which loitered not so much from any
indolence in the attendants, as from faulty arrangements and
total defect of forecasting. The pace was such as the roads
of that day allowed; never so much as six miles an hour,
except upon a very great road, and then only by extra payment to the driver. Yet, even under this comparatively miserable system, how superior was England, as a land for the
traveller, to all the rest of the world, Sweden only excepted!
Bad as were the roads, and defective as were all the arrangements, still you had these advantages: no town so insignifi.
cant, no posting house so solitary, but that at all seasons
except a contested election, it could furnish horses withoul




324           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
delay, and without license to distress the neighboring farmers. On the worst road, and on a winter's day, ivith no more
than a single pair of horses, you generally made out sixty
miles; even if it were necessary to travel through the night
you could continue to make way, although more slowly; and
finally, if you were of a temper to brook delay, and did not exact from all persons the haste or energy of Hotspurs, the whole
system in those days was full of respectability and luxurious
ease, and well fitted to renew the image of the home you
had left, if not in its elegances, yet in all its substantial
comforts. What cosy old parlors in those days! low roofed,
glowing with ample fires, and fenced from the blasts of
doors by screens, whose foldings were, or seemed to be, infinite. What motherly landladies! won, how readily, to
kindness the most lavish, by the mere attractions of simplicity and youthful innocence, and finding so much interest in the bare circumstance of being a traveller at a childish age. Then what blooming young handmaidens! how
different from the knowing and worldly demireps of modern
high roads! And sometimes gray-headed, faithful waiters,
how sincere and how attentive, by comparison with their
flippant successors, the eternal " coming, sir, coming," of
our improved generation!
Such an honest, old, butler-looking servant waited on us
during dinner at Chesterfield, carving for me, and urging
me to eat. Even Mephistopheles found his pride relax
under the influence of wine; and when loosened from this
restraint, his kindness was not deficient. To me he showed
it in pressing wine upon me, without stint or measure. The
elegances which he had observed in such parts of my
mother's establishment as could be supposed to meet his
eye on so hasty a visit, had impressed him perhaps favorably towards myself; and could I have a little altered my
ale, or dismissed my excessive reserve, I doubt not that he




TRAVELLING.                325
would have admitted me, in default of a more suitable
comrade, to his entire confidence for the rest of the road.
Dinner finished, and myself at least, for the first time in
my childish life, somewhat perhaps overcharged with wine,
the bill was called for, the waiter paid in the lavish style
of antique England, and we heard our chaise drawing up
under the gateway,-the invariable custom of those days,
- by which you were spared the trouble of going into the
street; stepping from the hall of the inn right into your
carriage. I had been kept back for a minute or so by the
landlady and her attendant nymphs, to be dressed and
kissed; and, on seating myself in the chaise, which was
well lighted with lamps, I found my lordly young principal
in conversation with the landlord, first upon the price of
oats, - which youthful horsemen always affect to inquire
after with interest, -but, secondly, upon a topic more immediately at his heart —viz., the reputation of the road.
At that time of day, when gold had not yet disappeared
from the circulation, no traveller carried any other sort of
money about him; and there was consequently a rich encouragement to highwaymen, which vanished almost entirely
with Mr. Pitt's act of 1797 for restricting cash payments.
Property which could be identified and traced was a perilous
sort of plunder; and from that time the free trade of the
road almost perished as a regular occupation. At this
period it did certainly maintain a languishing existence;
here and there it might have a casual run of success; and,
as these local ebbs and flows were continually shifting,
perhaps, after all, the trade might lie amongst a small number of hands. Universally, however, the landlords showed
some shrewdness, or even sagacity, in qualifying, according
to the circumstances of the inquirer, the sort of credit which
they allowed to the exaggerated ill fame of the roads.
Returning on this very road, some months after, with a




326          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
timid female relative, who put her questions with undisguised and distressing alarm, the very same people, one
and all, assured her that the danger was next to nothing.
Not so at present: rightly presuming that a haughty cavalier
of eighteen, flushed with wine and youthful blood, would
listen with disgust to a picture too amiable and pacific of
the roads before him, Mr. Spread Eagle replied with the
air of one who knew more than he altogether liked to tell;
and looking suspiciously amongst the strange faces lit up by
the light of the carriage lamps -" Why, sir, there have
been ugly stories afloat; I cannot deny it; and sometimes,
you know, sir," -winking sagaciously, to which a knowing
nod of assent was returned, -" it may not be quite safe
to tell all one knows. But you can understand me. The
forest, you are well aware, sir, is the forest: it never was
much to be trusted, by all accounts, in my father's time,
and I suppose will not be better in mine. But you must
keep a sharp lookout; and, Tom," speaking to the postilion, " mind, when you pass the third gate, to go pretty
smartly by the thicket." Tom replied in a tone of importance to this professional appeal.  General valedictions
were exchanged, the landlord bowed, and we moved off for
the forest. Mephistopheles had his travelling case of pistols.
These he began now to examine; for sometimes, said he,
I have known such a trick as drawing the charge whilst one
happened to be taking a glass of wine. Wine had unlocked
his heart,-the prospect of the forest and the advancing
night excited him,- and even of such a child as myself
he was now disposed to make a confidant.  "Did you
observe," said he, " that ill-looking fellow, as big as a camel,
who stood on the landlord's left hand? " Was it the man,
I asked timidly, who seemed by his dress to be a farmer?
" Farmer, you call him! Ah! my young friend, that shows
your little knowledge of the world. He is a scoundrel,




TRAVELLING.                327
the bloodiest of scoundrels. And so I trust to convince
him before many hours are gone over our heads." Whilst
saying this, he employed himself in priming his pistols;
then, after a pause, he went on thus: " No, my young
friend, this alone shows his base purposes - his calling
himself a farmer. Farmer he is not, but a desperate highwayman, of which I have full proof.   I watched his
malicious glances whilst the landlord was talking; and I
could swear to his traitorous intentions." So speaking, he
threw anxious glances on each side as we continued to advance: we were both somewhat excited; he by the spirit
of adventure, I by sympathy with him - and both by wine.
The wine, however, soon applied a remedy to its own
delusions; six miles from the town we had left, both of us
were in a bad condition for resisting highwaymen with
effect -being fast asleep. Suddenly a most abrupt halt
awoke us, - Mephistopheles felt for his pistols, - the door
flew open, and the lights of the assembled group announced
to us that we had reached Mansfield. That night we went
on to Newark, at which place about forty miles of our
iourney remained. This distance we performed, of course,
on the following day, between breakfast and dinner. But it
serves strikingly to illustrate the state of roads in England,
whenever your affairs led you into districts a little retired
from the capital routes of the public travelling, that, for
one twenty-mile stage,-viz., from Newark to Sleaford, —
they refused to take us forward with less than four horses.
This was neither a fraud, as our eyes soon convinced us,
(for even four horses could scarcely extricate the chaise
from the deep sloughs which occasionally seamed the road
through tracts of two or three miles in succession,) nor was
it an accident of the weather. In all seasons the same
demand was enforced, as my female protectress found in
conducting me back at a fine season of the year, and had




328           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
always found in traversing the same route. The England
of that date (1794) exhibited many similar cases.  At
present I know of but one stage in all England where a
traveller, without regard to weight, is called upon to take
four horses; and that is at Ambleside, in going by the direct
road to Carlisle. The first stage to Patterdale lies over the
mountain of Kirkstone, and the ascent is not only toilsome,
(continuing for above three miles, with occasional intermissions,) but at times is carried over summits too steep for
a road by all the rules of engineering, and yet too little
frequented to offer any means of repaying the cost of
smoothing the difficulties.
It was not until after the year 1815 that the main improvement took place in the English travelling system, so
far as regarded speed. It is, in reality, to Mr. Macadam
that we owe it. All the roads in England, within a few
years, were remodelled, and upon principles of Roman
science. From mere beds of torrents and systems of ruts,
they were raised universally to the condition and appearance of gravel walks in private parks or shrubberies.
The average rate of velocity was, in consequence, exactly
doubled - ten miles an hour being now generally accomplished, instead of five. And at the moment when all
further improvement upon this system had become hopeless,
a new prospect was suddenly opened to us by railroads;
which again, considering how much they have already exceeded the maximum of possibility, as laid down by all
engineers during the progress of the Manchester and Liverpool line, may soon give way to new modes of locomo.
lion still more astonishing to our preconceptions.
One point of refinement, as regards the comfort of travellers, remains to be mentioned, in which the improvement
began a good deal earlier, perhaps by ten years, than in the
construction of the roads. Luxurious as was the system




TRAVELLING.                 329
o( English travelling at all periods, after the general establishment of post chaises, it must be granted that, in the
circumstance of cleanliness, there was far from being that
attention, or that provision for the traveller's comfort, which
might have been anticipated from the general habits of the
country. I, at all periods of my life a great traveller, was
witness to the first steps and the whole struggle of this revolution. Marechal Saxe professed always to look under
his bed, applying his caution chiefly to the attempts of robbers. Now, if at the greatest inns of England you had,
in the days I speak of, adopted this marechal's policy of
reconnoitring, what would you have seen?   Beyond a
doubt, you would have seen what, upon all principles of
seniority, was entitled to your veneration, viz., a dense accumulation of dust far older than yourself. A foreign
author made some experiments upon the deposition of dust,
and the rate of its accumulation, in a room left wholly undisturbed. If I recollect, a century would produce a stratum about half an inch in depth. Upon this principle, I
conjecture that much dust which I have seen in inns, during the first four or five years of the present century, must
have belonged to the reign of George II. It was, however
upon travellers by coaches that the full oppression of the
old vicious system operated. The elder Scaliger mentions,
as a characteristic of the English in his day, (about 1530,)
a horror of cold water; in which, however, there must
have been some mistake.* Nowhere could he and his
* "Some mistake." -The mistake was possibly this: what little
water for ablution, and what little rags called towels, a foreigner ever
sees at home will at least be always within reach, from the continental
practice of using the bed room for the sitting room. But in England
our plentiful means of ablution are kept in the background. Scaliger
should have asked for a bed room: the surprise was, possibly, not at
his wanting water, but at his wanting it in a dining room.




S30           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
foreign companions obtain the luxury of cold water for wasting their hands either before or after dinner. One day he
and his party dined with the lord chancellor; and now
thougnt he, for very shame they will allow us some means
of purification. Not at all; the chancellor viewed this
outlandish novelty with the same jealousy as others. However, on the earnest petition of Scaliger, he made an order
that a basin or other vessel of cold water should be produced. His household bowed to this judgment, and a slop
basin was cautiously introduced. " What! " said Scaliger,
"s only one, and we so many? "  Even that one contained
but a teacup full of water: but the great scholar soon
found that he must be thankful for what he had got. It
had cost the whole strength of the English chancery to produce that single cup of water; and, for that day, no
man in his senses could look for a second. Pretty much
the same struggle, and for the same cheap reform, cornm
menced about the year 1805-6.   Post-chaise traveller3
could, of course, have what they liked; and generally they
asked for a bed room. It is of coach travellers I speak,
And the particular innovation in question commenced, as
was natural, with the mail coach, which, from the much
highe: scale of its fares, commanded a much more select,class of company. I was a party to the very earliest attempts at breaking ground in this alarming revolution.
Well do I remember the astonishment of some waiters, the
indignation of others, the sympathetic uproars which spread
to the bar, to the kitchen, and even to the stables, at the
first opening of our extravagant demands.  Sometimes
even the landlady thought the case worthy of her interference, and came forward to remonstrate with us upon our
unheard-of conduct. But gradually we made way. Like
Scaliger, at first we got but one basin amongst us, and that
the was brought into the breakfast room; but scarcely had




TRAVELLING.                 331
two years revolved before we began to see four, and all
appurtenances, arranged duly in correspondence to the number of inside passengers by the mail; and, as outside travelling was continually gaining ground amongst the wealthier classes, more comprehensive arrangements were often
made; though, even to this day, so much influence survives, from the original aristocratic principle upon which
public carriages were constructed, that on the mail coaches
there still prevails the most scandalous inattention to the
comfort, and even to the security, of the outside passengers:
a slippery glazed roof frequently makes the sitting a matter
of effort and anxiety, whilst the little iron side rail of four
inches in height serves no one purpose but that of bruising
the thigh. Concurrently with these reforms in the system
of personal cleanliness, others were silently making way
through all departments of the household economy. Dust,
from the reign of George II., became scarcer; gradually it
came to bear an antiquarian value: basins lost their grim
appearance, and looked as clean as in gentlemen's houses.
And at length the whole system was so thoroughly ventilated
and purified, that all good inns, nay, generally speaking,
even second-rate inns, at this day, reflect the best features.
as to cleanliness and neatness, of well-managed private
establishments




CHAPTER Xll.
MY BROTHER.
THE reader who may have accompanied me in these
wandering memorials of my own life and casual experiences, will be aware, that'in many cases the neglect ot
chronological order is not merely permitted, but is in fact
to some degree inevitable: there are cases, for instance,
which, as a whole, connect themselves with my own life at
so many different eras, that, upon any chronological principle of position, it would have been difficult to assign them
a proper place; backwards or forwards they must have
leaped, in whatever place they had been introduced; and
in their entire compass, from first to last, never could have
been represented as properly belonging to any one present
time, whensoever that had been selected: belonging to
every place alike, they would belong, according to the
proverb, to no place at all; or, (reversing that proverb,)
belonging to no place by preferable right, they would, in
fact, belong to every place, and therefore to this place.
The incidents I am now going to relate come under this
rule; for they form part of a story which fell in with my
own life at many different points. It is a story taken from
the life of my own brother; and I dwell on it with the
more willingness, because it furnishes an indirect lesson
332




MY BROTHER.                 333
upon a great principle of social life, now and for many
years back struggling for its just supremacy - the principle
that all corporal punishments whatsoever, and upon whomsoever inflicted, are hateful, and an indignity to our common
nature, which (with or without our consent) is enshrined in
the person of the sufferer. Degrading him, they degrade
us. I will not here add one word upon the general thesis,
but go on to the facts of this case; which, if all its incidents
could be now recovered, was perhaps as romantic as any
that ever yet has tried the spirit of fortitude and patience
in a child. But its moral interest depends upon this - that,
simply out of one brutal chastisement, arose naturally the
entire series of events which so very nearly made shipwreck of all hope for one individual, and did in fact poison,he tranquillity of a whole family for seven years.
My next brother, younger by about four years than myself, (he, in fact, that caused so much affliction to the Sultan
Amurath,) was a boy of exquisite and delicate beauty - delicate, that is, in respect to its feminine elegance and bloom;
for else (as regards constitution) he turned out remarkably
robust. In such excess did his beauty flourish during childhood, that those who remember him and myself at the public school at Bath will also remember the ludicrous molestation in the streets (for to him it was molestation) which it
entailed upon him- ladies stopping continually to kiss him.
On first coming up to Bath from Greenhay, my mother occupied the very apartments on the North Parade just quitted
by Edmund Burke, then in a decaying condition, though he
did not die (I believe) till 1797. That state of Burke's health,
connected with the expectation of finding him still there,
brought for some weeks crowds of inquirers, many of whom
saw the childish Adonis, then scarcely seven years old,
and inflicted upon him what he viewed as the martyrdom
of their caresses. Thus began a persecution which con




334           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
tinued as long as his years allowed it. The most brilliant
complexion that could be imagined, the features of an An.
tinous, and perfect symmetry of figure at that period of his
life, (afterwards he lost it,) made him the subject of nevei.
ending admiration to the whole female population, gentle
and simple, Echo passed him in the streets. In after days,
he had the grace to regret his own perverse and scornful
coyness. But, at that time, so foolishly insensible was he
to the honor, that he used to kick and struggle with all his
might to liberate himself from the gentle violence which
was continually offered; and he renewed the scene (so elaborately painted by Shakspeare) of the conflicts between
Venus and Adonis. For two years this continued a subject
of irritation the keenest on the one side, and of laughter on
the other, between my brother and his plainer school.
fellows. Not that we had the slightest jealousy on the subject - far from it; it struck us all (as it generally does
strike boys) in the light of an attaint upon the dignity of a
male, that he should be subjected to the caresses of women,
without leave asked; this was felt to be a badge of childhood, and a proof that the object of such caressing tenderness, so public and avowed, must be regarded in the light
of a baby - not to mention that the very foundation of all
this distinction, a beautiful face, is as a male distinction regarded in a very questionable light by multitudes, and often
by those most who are the possessors of that distinction.
Certainly that was the fact in my brother's case. Not one
of us could feel so pointedly as himself the ridicule of his
situation; nor did he cease, when increasing years had liberated him from that female expression of delight in his
beauty, to regard the beauty itself as a degradation; nor
could he bear to be flattered upon it; though, in reality, it
did him service in after distresses, when no other endowment whatsoever would have been availing. Often, in fact,




1Y BROTHER.                 335
do men's natures sternly contradict the promise of their
features; for no person would have believed that, under the
blooming loveliness of a Narcissus, lay shrouded a most
heroic nature; not merely an adventurous courage, but with
a capacity of patient submission to hardship, and of wrestling with calamity, such as is rarely found amongst the endowments of youth. I have reason, also, to think that the
state of degradation in which he believed himself to have
passed his childish years, from the sort of public petting
which I have described, and his strong recoil from it as an
insult, went much deeper than was supposed, and had much
to do in his subsequent conduct, and in nerving him to the
strong resolutions he adopted. He seemed to resent, as an
original insult of nature, the having given him a false index
of character in his feminine beauty, and to take a pleasure
in contradicting it. Had it been in his power, he would
have spoiled it. Certain it is, that, from the time he reached
his eleventh birthday, he had begun already to withdraw
himself from the society of all other boys, -to fall into long
fits of abstraction,- and to throw himself upon his own resources in a way neither usual nor necessary. Schoolfellows of his own age and standing-those, even, who were
the most amiable- he shunned; and, many years after his
disappearance, I found, in his handwriting, a collection of
fragments, couched in a sort of wild lyrical verses, presenting, unquestionably, the most extraordinary evidences of a
proud, self-sustained mind, consciously concentrating his
own hopes in himself, and abjuring the rest of the world,
that can ever have emanated from so young a person; since,
upon the largest allowance, and supposing them to have been
written on the eve of his quitting England, they must have
been written at the age of twelve. I have often speculated
on the subject of these mysterious compositions; they were
of a nature to have proceeded rather from some mystical




336           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
quietist, such as Madame Guyon, if with this rapt devotion
one can suppose the union of a rebellious and murmuring
ambition. Passionate apostrophes there were to nature and
the powers of nature; and what seemed strangest of all
was, that, in style, not only were they free from all tumor
and inflation which might have been looked for in so young
a writer, but were even wilfully childish and colloquial in a
pathetic degree - in fact, in point of tone, allowing for the
difference between a narrative poem and a lyrical, they
somewhat resemble that beautiful poem * of George Herbert, entitled LOVE UNKNOWN, in which he describes symbolically to a friend, under the form of treacherous ill
visage he had experienced, the religious processes by which
his soul had been weaned from the world. The most obvious solution of the mystery would be, to suppose these fragments to have been copied from some obscure author; but,
besides that no author could have remained obscure in this
age of elaborate research, who had been capable of sighs
(for such I may call them) drawn up from such well-like
depths of feeling, and expressed with such fervor and simplicity of language, there was another testimony to their
being the productions of him who owned the penmanship;
which was, that some of the papers exhibited the whole
process of creation and growth, such as erasures, substitutions, doubts expressed as to this and that form of expression,
together with references backwards and forwards. Now,
that the handwriting was my brother's, admitted of no doubt
whatsoever. I go on with his story. In 1800, my visit to
Ireland, and visits to other places subsequently, separated
me from him for above a year. In 1801, we were at very
* This poem, from great admiration of its mother English, and to
illustrate some ideas upon style, Mr. Coleridge republished in his
"Biographia Literaria."




MY BROTHER.                 337
different schools —I in the highest class of a great public
school, he at a very sequestered parsonage on a wild moor
(Horwich Moor) in Lancashire. This situation, probably,
fed and cherished his melancholy habits; for he had no
society except that of a younger brother, who would give
him no disturbance at all. The development of our national
resources had not yet gone so far as absolutely to exterminate from the map of England every thing like a heath, a
breezy down, (such as gave so peculiar a character to the
counties of Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, &c.,) or even a village
common. Heaths were yet to be found in England, not so
spacious, indeed, as the landes of prance, but equally wild
and romantic. In such a situation my brother lived, and
under the tuition of a clergyman, retired in his habits, and
even ascetic, but gentle in his manners. To that I can speak
myself; for in the winter of 1801 I dined with him, and
found that his yoke was, indeed, a mild one; since, even
to my youngest brother H.3, a headstrong child of seven, he
used no stronger remonstrance, in urging him to some essential point of duty, than "Do be persuaded, sir."  On another occasion I, accompanied by a friend, slept at Mr. J.'s:
we were accidentally detained there through the greater
part of the following day by snow; and, to the inexpressible
surprise of my companion, a mercantile man from Manchester, for a considerable time after breakfast the reverend
gentleman persisted in pursuing my brother from room to
room, and at last from the ground floor up to the attics, holding a book open, (which turned out to be a Latin grammar;)
each of them (pursuer and pursued) moving at a tolerably
slow pace, my brother H. silent; but Mr. J., with a voice
of adjuration, solemn and even sad, yet kind and conciliatory, singing out at intervals, " Do be persuaded, sir!"
" It is your welfare I seek! "  " Let your own interest, sir,
plead in this matter between us!"  And so the chase
22




338           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
continued, ascending and descending, up to the very garrets
down to the very cellars, then steadily revolving from front
to rear of the house; but finally with no result at all. The
spectacle reminded me of a groom attempting to catch a
coy pony by holding out a sieve containing, or pretending
to contain, a bribe of oats. Mrs. J., the reverend gentleman's wife, assured us that the same process went on
at intervals throughout the week; and in any case it was
clearly good as a mode of exercise. Now, such a master,
though little adapted for the headstrong H., was the very
person for the thoughtful and too sensitive R.4 Search the
island through, there could not have been found another situation so suitable to my brother's wayward and haughty
nature. The clergyman was learned, quiet, absorbed in
his studies; humble and modest beyond the proprieties of
his situation, and treating my brother in all points as a
companion; whilst, on the other hand, my brother was not
the person to forget the respect due, by a triple title, to a
clergyman, a scholar, and his own preceptor-one, besides,
who so little thought of exacting it. How happy might all
parties have been - what suffering, what danger, what years
of miserable anxiety might have been spared to all who
were interested - had the guardians and executors of my
father's will thought fit to " let well alone "! But, "per star
meglio," * they chose to remove my brother from this gentle
recluse to an active, bustling man of the world, the very anti.
pole in character. What might be the pretensions of this
gentleman to scholarship, I never had any means ofjudging;
and, considering that he must now, (if living at all,) at a Ais.
tance of thirty-six years, be gray headed, I shall respect his
* From the well-known Italian epitaph -  Stava bene; ma, per star
meglio, sto qui "- I was well; but, because I would be better thai
well, I am -where you see.




MY BROTHER.                 339
age so far as to suppress his name. He was of a class now an
nually declining (and I hope rapidly) to extinction. Thanks
be to God, in this point at least, for the dignity of human
nature, that, amongst the many, many cases of reform destined eventually to turn out chimerical, this one, at least,
never can be defeated, injured, or eclipsed. As man grows
more intellectual, the power of managing him by his intellect and his moral nature, in utter contempt of all appeals
to his mere animal instincts of pain, must go on pari passu.
And, if a "Te Deum," or an "O, Jubilate! " were to be
celebrated by all nations and languages for any one advance
and absolute conquest over wrong and error won by human
nature in our times, -yes, not excepting
" The blocdy writing by all nations torn "the abolition of the commerce in slaves, - to my thinking,
that festival should be for the mighty progress made towards
the suppression of brutal, bestial modes of punishment.
Nay, I may call them worse than bestial; for a man of any
goodness of nature does not willingly or needlessly resort
to the spur or the lash with his horse or with his hound.
But, with respect to man, if he will not be moved or won
over by conciliatory means, -by means that presuppose
him a reasonable creature, -then let him die, confounded
in his own vileness; but let not me, let not the man (that
is to say) who has him in his power, dishonor himself by
inflicting punishments, violating that grandeur of human
nature which, not in any vague rhetorical sense, but upon
a religious principle of duty, (viz., the scriptural doctrine
that the human person is " the temple of the Holy Ghost,")
ought to be a consecrated thing in the eyes of all good men
and of this we may be assured, - this is more sure than day
or night, - that, in proportion as man is honored, exalted,




340           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
trusted, in that proportion will he become more worthy of
honor, of exaltation, of trust.
This schoolmaster had very different views of man and
his nature. He not only thought that physical coercion
was the one sole engine by which man could be managed,
but -on the principle of that common maxim which declares that, when two schoolboys meet, with powers at all
near to a balance, no peace can be expected between them
until it is fairly settled which is the master-on that same
principle he fancied that no pupil could adequately or proportionably reverence his master until he had settled the
precise proportion of superiority in animal powers by which
his master was in advance of himself. Strength of blows
only could ascertain that; and, as he was not very nice
about creating his opportunities, as he plunged at once
" in medias res," and more especially when he saw or suspected any rebellious tendencies, he soon picked a quarrel
with my unfortunate brother. Not, be it observed, that he
much cared for a well-looking or respectable quarrel. No.
I have been assured that, even when the most fawning obsequiousness had appealed to his clemency, in the person
of some timorous new-comer, appalled by the reports he
had heard, even in such cases, (deeming it wise to impress, from the beginning, a salutary awe of his Jovian
thunders) he made a practice of doing thus: He would
speak loud, utter some order, not very clearly, perhaps, as
respected the sound, but with perfect perplexity as regarded
the sense, to the timid, sensitive boy upon whom he intended
to fix a charge of disobedience. "Sir, if you please, what
was it that you said?" " What was it that I said? What!
playing upon my words? Chopping logic? Strip, sir;
strip this instant." Thenceforward this timid boy became
a serviceable instrument in his equipage. Not only was
he a proof, even without cooperation on the master's part,




MY BROTHER.                  341;hai extreme cases of submission could not insure mercy
but also he, this boy, in his own person, breathed forth, at
intervals, a dim sense of awe and worship - the religion
of fear- towards the grim Moloch of the scene.  Hence,
as by electrical conductors, was conveyed throughout every
region of the establishment a tremulous sensibility that
vibrated towards the centre. Different, O Rowland Hill!
are the laws of thy establishment; far other are the echoes
heard amid the ancient halls of Bruce.* There it is possible for the timid child to be happy - for the child destined
to an early grave to reap his brief harvest in peace. Wherefore were there no such asylums in those days?   Man
flourished then, as now, in beauty and in power. Wherefore did he not put forth his power upon establishments that
might cultivate happiness as well as knowledge?  Wherefore did no man cry aloud, in the spirit of Wordsworth, -
" Ah, what avails heroic deed?
What liberty? if no defence
Be won for feeble innocence.
Father of all! though wilful manhood read
His punishment in soul distress,
Grant to the morn of life its natural blessedness "?
Meantime, my brother R., in an evil hour, having been removed from that most quiet of human sanctuaries, having
forfeited that peace which possibly he was never to retrieve,
fell (as I have said) into the power of this Moloch. And
this Moloch upon him illustrated the laws of his establish* This was not meant assuredly as any advertisement of an estab
lishment, which could not by all reports need any man's praise, but
was written under a very natural impulse derived from a recent visit
to the place, and under an unaffected sympathy with the spirit of free.
iom and enjoyment that seemed to reign amongst the young people




342           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
ment; him also, the gentle, the beautiful, but also the
proud, the haughty, he beat, kicked, trampled on!
In two hours from that time, my brother was on the road
to Liverpool. Painfully he made out his way, having not
much money, and with a sense of total abandonment which
made him feel that all he might have would prove little
enough for his purposes.
My brother went to an inn, after his long, long journey
to Liverpool, footsore - (for he had walked through four
days, and, from ignorance of the world, combined with excessive shyness, - 0, how shy do people become from
pride! -had not profited by those well-known incidents
upon English high roads- return post chaises, stage
coaches, led horses, or wagons) -footsore, and eager for
sleep. Sleep, supper, breakfast in the morning, -all these
he had; so far his slender finances reached; and for these.
he paid the treacherous landlord; who then proposed to
him that they should take a walk out together, by way of
looking at the public buildings and the docks. It seems
the man had noticed my brother's beauty, some circumstances about his dress inconsistent with his mode of travelling, and also his style of conversation. Accordingly, he
wiled him along from street to street, until they reached
the Town Hall. " Here seems to be a fine building," said
this jesuitical guide, - as if it had been some new Pompeii,
some Luxor or Palmyra, that he had unexpectedly lit upon
amongst the undiscovered parts of Liverpool, -" here seems
to be a fine building; shall we go in and ask leave to look
at it?"  My brother, thinking less of the spectacle than
the spectator, whom, in a wilderness of man, naturally he,ished to make his friend, consented readily. In they
went; and, by the merest accident, Mr. Mayor and the town
council were then sitting. To them the insidious landlord
communicated privately an account of his suspicions. He




MY BROTHER.                 3 13
himself conducted my brother, under pretence of discovering the best station fot picturesque purposes, to the particular box for prisoners at the bar. This was not suspected
by the poor boy, not even when Mr. Mayor began to question him. He still thought it an accident though doubtless
he blushed excessively on being questioned, and questioned
so impertinently, in public. The object of the mayor and
of other Liverpool gentlemen then present was, to ascertain
my brother's real rank and family; for he persisted in representing himself as a poor wandering boy. Various means
were vainly tried to elicit this information; until at length
- like the wily Ulysses, who mixed with his peddler's budget of female ornaments and attire a few arms, by way of
tempting Achilles to a self-detection in the court of Lycomedes- one gentleman counselled the mayor to send
for a Greek Testament. This was done; the Testament
was presented open at St. John's Gospel to my brother, and
he was requested to say whether he knew in what language
that book was written; or whether, perhaps, he could furnish
them with a translation from the page before him. R., in
his confusion, did not read the meaning of this appeal, and
fell into the snare; construed a few verses; and immediately was consigned to the care of a gentleman, who won
from him by kindness what he had refused to importunities
or menaces. His family he confessed at once, but not his
school. An express was therefore forwarded from Liverpool to our nearest male relative - a military man, then by
accident on leave of absence from India. He came over.
took my brother back, (looking upon the whole as a boyish
frolic of no permanent importance,) made some stipulations
in his behalf for indemnity from punishment, and immediately returned home. Left to himself; the grim tyrant of
the school easily evaded the stipulations, and repeated his
brutalities more fiercely than before - now acting in the
double spirit of tyranny and revenge.




344           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
In a few heuirs, my brother was again on the road to
Liverpool. But not on this occasion did he resort to any
inn, or visit any treacherous hunter of the picturesque. He
offered himself to no temptations now, nor to any risks.
Rlight onwards he went to the docks, addressed himself to
a grave, elderly master of a trading vessel, bound upon
a distant voyage, and instantly procured an engagement.
The skipper was a good and sensible man, and (as it
turned out) a sailor accomplished in all parts of his profession. The ship which he commanded was a South Sea
whaler, belonging to Lord Grenville - whether lying at
Liverpool or in the Thames at that moment, I am not sure,
However, they soon afterwards sailed.
For somewhat less than three years my brother continued
under the care of this good man, who was interested by his
appearance, and by some resemblance which he fancied in
his features to a son whom he had lost. Fortunate, in
deed, for the poor boy was this interval of fatherly superintendence; for, under this captain, he was not only
preserved from the perils which afterwards beseiged him,
until his years had made him more capable of confronting
them, but also he had thus an opportunity, which he
improved to the utmost, of making himself acquainted with
the two separate branches of his profession - navigation
and seamanship, qualifications which are not very often
united.
After the death of this captain, my brother ran through
many wild adventures; until at length, after a severe
action, fought off the coast of Peru, the armed merchantman in which he then served was captured by pirates.
Most of the crew were massacred. My brother, on account
of tne important services he could render, was spared; and
with these pirates, cruising under a black flag, and perpetrating unnumbered atrocities, he was obliged to sail foi




MY BROTHER.                 345
ihe next two years; nor could he, in all that period, find
an) opportunity for effecting his escape.
During this long expatriation, let any thoughtful reader
imagine the perils of every sort which beseiged one so
young, so inexperienced, so sensitive, and so haughty;
perils to his life; (but these it was the very expression of
his unhappy situation, were the perils least to be mourned
for;) perils to his good name, going the length of absolute
infamy - since, if the piratical ship had been captured by
a British man-of-war, he might have found it impossible to
clear himself of a voluntary participation in the bloody
actions of his shipmates; and, on the other hand, (a case
equally probable in the regions which they frequented,)
supposing him to have been captured by a Spanish guarda
costa, he would scarcely have been able, from his ignorance of the Spanish language, to draw even a momentary
attention to the special circumstances of his own situation;
he would have been involved in the general presumptions
of the case, and would have been executed in a summary
way, upon the prima Jacie evidence against him, that he
did not appear to be in the condition of a prisoner; and, if
his name had ever again reached his country, it would
have been in some sad list of ruffians, murderers, traitors
to their country; and even these titles, as if not enough in
themselves, aggravated by the name of pirate, which at
once includes them all, and surpasses them all. These
were perils sufficiently distressing at any rate; but last of
all came others even more appalling - the perils of moral
contamination, in that excess which might be looked for
from such associates; not, be it recollected, a few wild
notions or lawless principles adopted into his creed of
practical ethics, but that brutal transfiguration of the entire
character, which occurs, for instance, in the case of the
young gypsy son of Effie Deans; a change making it




31t6          AUrOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
impossible to rely upon the very holiest instincts of the
moral nature, and consigning its victim to hopeless reprobation. Murder itself might have lost its horrors to one
who must have been but too familiar with the spectacle
of massacre by wholesale upon unresisting crews, upon
passengers enfeebled by sickness, or upon sequestered villagers, roused from their slumbers by the glare of confla.
gration, reflected from gleaming cutlasses and from the
faces of demons. This fear it was - a fear like this, as I
have often thought - which must, amidst her other woes,
have been the Aaron woe that swallowed up all the rest to
the unhappy Marie Antoinette. This must have been the
sting of death to her maternal heart, the grief paramount
the " crowning" grief —the prospect, namely, that her
royal boy would not be dismissed from the horrors of
royalty to peace and humble innocence; but that his fair
cheek would be ravaged by vice as well as sorrow; that
he would be tempted into brutal orgies, and every mode of
moral pollution; until, like poor Constance with her young
Arthur, but for a sadder reason, even if it were possible
that the royal mother should see her son in " the courts of
heaven," she would not know again one so fearfully transfigured. This prospect for the royal Constance of revolutionary France was but too painfully fulfilled, as we are
taught to guess even from the faithful records of the
Duchesse d'Angouleme. The young dauphin, (it has been
said, 1837,) to the infamy of his keepers, was so trained
as to become loathsome for coarse brutality, as well as for
habits of uncleanliness, to all who approached him - one
purpose of his guilty tutors being to render royalty and
august descent contemptible in his person. And, in fact,
they were so far likely to succeed in this purpose, for the
noment, and to the extent of an individual case, that, upon
that account alone, but still more for the sake of the poor




SMY BROTHER.                    347
zhild, the most welcome news with respect to him - hint
whose birth * had drawn anthems of exultation from twenty-five millions of men - was the news of his death. And
what else can well be expected for children suddenly with* To those who are open to the impression of omens, there is a most
striking one on record with re spect to the birth of this ill-fated prince,
not less so than the falling off of the head from the cane of Charles I.
at his trial, or the same king's striking a medal, bearing an oak tree,
(prefiguring the oak of Boscobel,) with this prophetic inscription, "Seris
nepotibus umbram." At the very moment when (according to immemorial usage) the birth of a child was in the act of annunciation to
the great officers of state assembled in the queen's bed chamber, and
when a private signal from a lady had made known the glad tidings
that it was a dauphin, (the first child having been a princess, to the
signal disappointment of the nation; and the second, who was a boy,
having died,) the whole frame of carved woodwork at the back of
the queen's bed, representing the crown and other regalia of France,
with the Bourbon lilies, came rattling down in ruins.  There is
another and more direct ill omen connected, apparently, with the
birth of this prince; in fact, a distinct prophecy of his ruin, - a prophecy that he should survive his father, and yet not reign,- which is so
obscurely told, that one knows not in what light to view it; and
especially since Louis XVIII., who is the original authority for it,
obviously confounds the first dauphin, who died before the calamities
of his family commenced, with the second. As to this second, who is
of course the prince concerned in the references of the text, a new
and most extraordinary interest has begun to invest his tragical story
in this very month of April, 1853; at least, it is now first brought
before universal Christendom. In the monthly journal of Putnam,
(published in New York,) the No. for April contains a most interesting
memoir upon the subject, signed T. H. Hanson. Naturally, it indisposed most readers to put faith in any fresh pretensions of this nature,
that at least one false dauphin had been pronounced such by so undeniable a judge as the Duchesse d'Angoulbme. Meantime, it is made
probable enough by Mr. Hansor. that the true dauphin did not die in
the year 1795 at the Temple, bur was personated by a boy unknown;
that two separate parties had an equal interest in sustaining this fraud,
and did sustain it; but one would hesitate to believe whether at the
price of murdering a celebrated physician; that they had the prince




348             AUTOBIOGR APHIC SKETCHES.
drawn from parental tenderness, and thrown upon their
owl guardianship at such an age as nine or ten, and under
the wilful misleading of perfidious guides? But, in my
brother's case, all the adverse chances, overwhelming as
conveyed secretly to an Indian settlement in Lower Canada, as a
situation in which French, being the prevailing language, would
attract no attention, as it must have done in most other parts of North
America; that the boy was educated and trained as a missionary clergyman; and finally, that he is now acting in that capacity under the
name of Eleazar Williams - perfectly aware of the royal pretensions
put forward on;s behalf, but equally, through age (being about 69)
and through absorption in spiritual views, indifferent to these pretensions. It is admitted on all hands that the Prince de Joinville had an
interview with Eleazar Williams a dozen years since - the prince
alleges through mere accident; but this seems improbable; and Mr
Hanson is likely to be right in supposing this visit to have been a preconcerted one, growing out of some anxiety to test the reports current,
so far as they were gounded upon resemblances in Mr. Williams's features to those of the Bourbon and Austrian families. The most
pathetic fact is that of the idiocy common to the dauphin and Mr.
Eleazar Williams. It is clear from all the most authentic accounts
of the young prince that idiocy was in reality stealing over him -
due, doubtless, to the stunning nature of the calamities that overwhelmed
his family; to the removal from him by tragical deaths, in so rapid a
succession, of the Princesse de Lamballe, of his aunt,'of his father,
of his mother, and others whom most he had loved; to his cruel separation from his sister; and to the astounding (for him naturally
incomprehensible) change that had come over the demeanor and the
language of nearly all the people placed about the persons of himself
and his family. An idiocy resulting from what must have seemed a
causeless and demoniac conspiracy would be more likely to melt away
under the sudden transfer to kindness and the gayety of forest life
than any idiocy belonging to original organic imbecility. Mr. Williams
describes his own confusion of mind as continuing up to his fourteenth year, and all things which had happened in earlier years as
gleaming through clouds of oblivion, and as painfully perplexing; but
otherwise he shows no desire to strengthen the pretensions made for
nimself by any reminiscences piercing these clouds that could poin
specially to Fr ince or to royal experiences.




MY BROTHER.                 349
they seemed, were turned aside by some good angel; all
had failed to harm him; and from the fiery furnace he
came out unsinged.
I have said that he would not have appeared to any
capturing ship as standing in the situation of prisoner
amongst the pirates, nor was he such in the sense of being
confined. He moved about, when on board ship, in freedom; but he was watched, never trusted on shore, unless
under very peculiar circumstances; and tolerated at all
only because one accomplishment made him indispensable
to the prosperity of the ship. Amongst the various parts
of nautical skill communicated to my brother by his first
fatherly captain, was the management of chronometers..
Several had been captured, some of the highest value, in
the many prizes, European or American.   My brother
happened to be perfect in the skill of managing them;
and, fortunately for him, no other person amongst them
had that skill, even in its lowest degree. To this one
qualification, therefore, (and ultimately to this only,) he
was indebted for both safety and freedom; since, though
he might have been spared in the first moments of carnage from other considerations, there is little doubt that,
in some one of the innumerable brawls which followed
through the years of his captivity, he would have fallen
a sacrifice to hasty impulses of anger or wantonness, had
not his safety been made an object of interest and vigilance
to those in command, and to all who assumed any care for
the general welfare. Much, therefore, it was that he owed
to this accomplishment. Still, there is no good thing without its alloy; and this great blessing brought along with it
sor ething worse than a dull duty-the necessity, in fact,
of facing fears and trials to which the sailor's heart is pre.
eminently sensible. All sailors, it is notorious, are superstitious; partly, I suppose, from looking out so much upon




350           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the wilderness of waves, empty of all human life, for
mighty solitudes are generally fear-haunted and fearpeopled; such, for instance, as the solitudes of forests,
where, in the absence of human forms and ordinary human
sounds, are discerned forms more dusky and vague, not
referred by the eye to any known type, and sounds imperfectly intelligible. And, therefore, are all German coal
burners, woodcutters, &c., superstitious.  Now, the sea is
often peopled, amidst its ravings, with what seem innumerable human voices-such voices, or as ominous, as what
were heard by Kubla Khan -" ancestral voices prophesying war;" oftentimes laughter mixes, from a distance
(seeming to come also from distant times, as well as distant places,) with the uproar of waters; and doubtless
shapes of fear, or shapes of beauty not less awful, are a
times seen upon the waves by the diseased eye of the
sailor, in other cases besides the somewhat rare one of
calenture. This vast solitude of the sea being taken,
therefore, as one condition of the superstitious fear found
so commonly among sailors, a second may be the perilous
insecurity of their own lives, or (if the lives of sailors,
ufter all, by means of large immunities fiom danger in
other shapes are not so insecure as is supposed, though,
by the way, it is enough for this result that to themselves
they seem so) yet, at all events, the insecurity of the ships
in which they sail. In such a case, in the case of battle,
ani in others where the empire of chance seems absolute,
there the temptation is greatest to dally with supernatural
oracles and supernatural means of consulting them. Finally, the interruption habitually of all ordinary avenues
to information about the fate of their dearest relatives; the
consequent agitation which must often possess those who
are reentering upon home waters; and the sudden burst,
upon stepping ashore, of heart-shaking news in long accu.




MY BROTHER.                 351
mulated arrears, -these are circumstances which dispose
the mind to look out for relief towards signs and omens as
one way of breaking the shock by dim anticipations. Rats
leaving a vessel destined to sink, although the political
application of it as a name of reproach is purely mcdern,
must be ranked among the oldest of omens; and perhaps
the most sober-minded of men might have leave to be
moved with any augury of an ancient traditional order,
such as had won faith for centuries, applied to a fate so
interesting as that of the ship to which he was on the point
of committing himself. Other causes might be assigned,
causative of nautical superstition, and tending to feed it.
But enough. It is well known that the whole family of
sailors is superstitious. My brother, poor Pink, (this was
an old household name which he retained amongst us from
an incident of his childhood,) was so in an immoderate degree. Being a great reader, (in fact, he had read every
thing'n his mother tongue that was of general interest,)
he was pretty well aware how general was the ridicule
attached in our times to the subject of ghosts. But this -
nor the reverence he yielded otherwise to some of those
writers who had joined in that ridicule-any more had
unsettled his faith in their existence than the submission
of a sailor in a religious sense to his spiritual counsellor
upon the false and fraudulent pleasures of luxury can ever
disturb his remembrance of the virtues lodged in rum or
tobacco. His own unconquerable, unanswerable experi.
ence, the blank realities of pleasure and pain, put to flight
all arguments whatsoever that anchor only in his under.
standing  Pink used, in arguing the case with me, to admit that ghosts might be questionable realities in our
hemisphere; but " it's a different thing to the suthard of
the line." And then he would go on to tell me of his own
fearful experience; in particular of one many times re.




352           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
newed, and investigated to no purpose by parties of men
communicating from a distance upon a system of concerted
signals, in one of the Gallapagos Islands. These islands,
wnich were visited, and I think described, by Dampier,
and therefore must have been an asylum to the buccaneers
and flibustiers * in the latter part of the seventeenth century, were so still to their more desperate successors, the
pirates, at the beginning of the nineteenth; and for the
same reason - the facilities they offer (rare in those seas)
for procuring wood and water. Hither, then, the black flag
often resorted; and here, amidst these romantic solitudes,islands untenanted by man,- oftentimes it lay furled up for
weeks together; rapine and murder had rest for a season
and the bloody cutlass slept within its scabbard. When
this happened, and when it became known beforehand tha
it would happen, a tent was pitched on shore for my brother,
and the chronometers were transported thither for the period
of their stay.
The island selected for this purpose, amongst the many
equally open to their choice, might, according to circumstances, be that which offered the best anchorage, or that
from which the reembarkation was easiest, or that which
allowed the readiest access to wood and water. But for
some, or all these advantages, the particular island most
generally honored by the piratical custom and " good will"
was one known to American navigators as "The Woodcutter's Island."  There was some old tradition-and I
* "Flibustiers." -This word, which is just now revolving upon us
in connection with the attempts on Cuba, &c., is constantly spelt by
our own and the American journals as fillibustiers and fillibusteros.
But the true word of nearly two centuries back amongst the old original
race of sea robbers (French and English) that made irregular war
upon the Spanish shipping and maritime towns was that which T
have here retained.




MY BROTHER.                 353
know not but it was a tradition dating from the times of
Dampier - that a Spaniard or an Indian settler in this
island (relying, perhaps, too entirely upon the protection of
perfect solitude) had been murdered in pure wantonness
by some of the lawless rovers who frequented this solitary
archipelago. Whether it were from some peculiar atrocity
of bad faith in the act, or from the sanctity of the man, or
the deep solitude of the island, or with a view to the peculiar
edification of mariners in these semi-Christian seas, so,
however, it was, and attested by generations of sea vagabonds, (for most of the armed roamers in these ocean Zaaras
at one time were of a suspicious order,) that every night,
duly as the sun went down and the twilight began to prevail,
a sound arose - audible to other islands, and to every ship
lying quietly at anchor in that neighborhood - of a woodcutter's axe. Sturdy were the blows, and steady the succession in which they followed: some even fancied they
could hear that sort of groaning respiration which is made
by men who use an axe, or by those who in towns ply the
"three-man beetle" of Falstaff, as paviers; echoes they
certainly heard of every blow, from the profound woods
and the sylvan precipices on the margin of the shores;
which, however, should rather indicate that the sounds were
not supernatural, since, if a visual object, falling under
hyper-physical or cata-physical laws, loses its shadow, by
parity of argument, an audible object, in the same circumstances, should lose its echo. But this was the story; and
amongst sailors there is as little variety of versions in telling
any true sea story as there is in a log book, cr in " The
Flying Dutchman: " literatim fidelity is, with a sailor, a
point at once of religious C-ith and worldly honor. The
close of the story was - that after, suppose, ten or twelve
minutes of hacking and hewing, a horrid crash was heard
announcing that the tree, if tree it were, that never yet was
23




:354          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
made visible to daylight search, had yielded tG the old
woodman's persecution. It was exactly the crash, so familiar
to many ears on board the neighboring vessels, which expresses the harsh tearing asunder of the fibres, caused by
the weight of the trunk in falling; beginning slowly, increasing rapidly, and terminating in one rush of rending.
This over, —one tree felled " towards his winter store,"there was an interval; man must have rest; and the old
woodman, after working for more than a century, must want
repose. Time enough to begin again after a quarter of an
hour's relaxation. Sure enough, in that space of time,
again began, in the words of Comus, " the wonted roar
amid the woods." Again the blows became quicker, as the
catastrophe drew nearer; again the final crash resounded;
and again the mighty echoes travelled through the solitary
forests, and were taken up by all the islands near and far,
like Joanna's laugh amongst the Westmoreland hills, to the
astonishment of the silent ocean. Yet, wherefore should
the ocean be astonished? - he that had heard this nightly
tumult, by all accounts, for more than a century. My
brother, however, poor Pink, was astonished, in good earnest, being, in that respect, of the genus attonitorum; and
as often as the gentlemen pirates steered their course for
the Gallapagos, he would sink in spirit before the trials he
might be summoned to face. No second person was ever
put on shore with Pink, lest poor Pink and he might become
jovial over the liquor, and the chronometers be broken or
neglected; for a considerable quantity of spirits was necessarily landed, as well as of provisions, because sometimes a sudden change of weather, or the sudden appearance of a suspicious sail, might draw the ship off the
island for a fortnight. My brother could have pleaded his
fiars without shame; but he had a character to maintain
with the sailors: he was respected equally for his seaman.




MY BROTHER.                     355
ship and his shipmanship.*   By the way, when it is considered that one half of a sailor's professional science refers
him to the stars, (though it is true the other half refers him
to the sails and shrouds of a ship,) just as, in geodesical
operations, one part is referred to heaven and one to earth,
when this is considered, another argument arises for the
superstition of sailors, so far as it is astrological. They
who know (but know the ort without knowning the Sta it)
that the stars have much to do in guiding their own movements, which are yet so far from the stars, and, to all
appearance, so little connected with them, may be excused
for supposing that the stars are connected astrologically
with human destinies. But this by the way. The sailors,
looking to Pink's double skill, and to his experience on shore,
(more astonishing than all beside, being experience gathered amongst ghosts,) expressed an admiration which, to
one who was also a sailor, had too genial a sound to be
sacrificed, if it could be maintained at any price. Therefore it was that Pink still clung, in spite of his terrors, to
his shore appointment. But hard was his trial; and many
a time has he described to me one effect of it, when too
" " Seamanship and shipmanship." - These are;-vo functions of a
sailor seldom separated in the mind of a landsman. The conducting
a ship (causing her to choose a right path) through the ocean; that
is one thing. Then there is the management of the ship within herself, the trimming of her sails, &c., (causing her to keep the line
chosen;) that is another thing. The first is called seamanship; the
second might be called shipmanship, but is, I believe, called navigation. They are perfectly distinct; one man rarely has both in perfection. Both may be illustrated from the rudder. The question is,
suppose at the Cape of Good Hope, to steer for India: trust the
rudder to him, as a seaman, who knows the passage whether within
or without Madagascar.  The question is to avoid a sunk rock:
trust the rudder to him, as a navigator, who understands the art of
steering to a nicety.




356           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
long continued, or combined with darkness too intense  1'e
woodcutter would begin his operations soon after the sun
had set; but uniformly, at that time, his noise was less.
Three hours after sunset it had increased; and generally
at midnight it was greatest, but not always. Sometimes
the case varied thus far: that it greatly increased towards
three or four o'clock in the morning; and, as the sound
grew louder, and thereby seemed to draw nearer, poor Pink's
ghostly panic grew insupportable; and he absolutely crepi
from his pavilion, and its luxurious comforts, to a point ot
rock - a promontory - about half a mile off, from whiclhe could see the ship. The mere sight of a human abode,
though an abode of ruffians, comforted his panic. With
the approach of daylight, the mysterious sounds ceased.
Cockcrow there happened to be none, in those islands of
the Gallapagos, or none in that particular island; though
many cocks are heard crowing in the woods of America,
and these, perhaps, might be caught by spiritual senses;
or the woodcutter may be supposed, upon Hamlet's principle, either scenting the morning air, or catching the
sounds of Christian matin bells, from some dim convent, in
the depth of American forests. However, so it was; the
woodcutter's axe began to intermit about the earliest approach of dawn; and, as light strengthened, it ceased
entirely. At nine, ten, or eleven o'clock in the forenoon
the whole appeared to have been a delusion; but towards
sunset it revived in credit; during twilight it strengthened;
and, very soon afterwards, superstitious panic was again
seated on her throne. Such were the fluctuations of the
case. Meantime, Pink, sitting on his promontory in early
dawn, and consoling his terrors by looking away from the
mighty woods to the tranquil ship, on board of which (in
spite of her secret black flag) the whole crew, murderers
and all, were sleeping peacefully - he, a beautiful English




MY BROTHER.                 35'
boy, chased away to the antipodes from one early home
by his sense of wounded honor,.and from his immediate
home by superstitious fear, recalled to my mind an image
and a situation that had been beautifully sketched by Miss
Bannerman in "Basil," one of the striking (though, to
rapid readers, somewhat unintelligible) metrical tales published early in this century, entitled " Tales of Superstition and Chivalry." Basil is a " rude sea boy," desolate
and neglected from infancy, but with feelings profound
from nature, and fed by solitude. He dwells alone in a
rocky cave; but, in consequence of some supernatural
terrors connected with a murder, arising in some way (not
very clearly made out) to trouble the repose of his home,
he leaves it in horror, and rushes in the gray dawn to the
seaside rocks; seated on which, he draws a sort of consolation for his terrors, or of sympathy with his wounded
heart, from that mimicry of life which goes on forever
amongst the raving waves.
From the Gallapagos, Pink went often to Juan (or, as he
chose to call it, after Dampier and others, John) Fernandez. Very lately, (December, 1837,) the newspapers of
America informed us, and the story was current for full
nine days, that this fair island had been swallowed up by
an earthquake; or, at least; that in some way or other it had
disappeared. Had that story proved true, one pleasant
bower would have perished, raised by Pink as a memorial
expression of his youthful feelings either towards De Foe,
or his visionary creature, Robinson Crusoe-but rather,
perhaps, towards the substantial Alexander Selkirk; for it
was raised on some spot known or reputed by tradition to
have been one of those most occupied as a home by Selkirk
1 say, "rather towards Alexander Selkirk;" for there is
a difficulty to the judgment in associating Robinson Crusoe with this lovely island of the Pacific, and a difficulty




358           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
even to the fancy.  Why, it is hard to guess, or through
what perverse contradiction to the facts, De Foe chose to
place the shipwreck of Robinson Crusoe upon the eastern
side of the American continent. Now, not only was this
in direct opposition to the realities of the case upon which
he built, as first reported (I believe) by Woodes Rogers,
from the log book of the Duke and Duchess,- (a privateer
fitted out, to the best of my remembrance, by the Bristol
merchants, two or three years before the peace of Utrecht,)
ac.d so far the mind of any man acquainted with these
circumstances was staggered, in attempting to associate
this eastern wreck of Crusoe with this western island, - but
a worse obstacle than that, because a moral one, is this,
that, by thus perversely transferring the scene from the
Pacific to the Atlantic, De Foe has transferred it from a
quiet and sequestered to a populous and troubled sea, - the
Fleet Street or Cheapside of the navigating world, the
great throughfare of nations, - and thus has prejudiced the
moral sense and the fancy against his fiction still more
inevitably than his judgment, and in a way that was perfecly
needless; for the change brought along with it no shadow
of compensation.
My brother's wild adventures amongst these desperate
sea rovers were afterwards communicated in long letters to
a female relative; and, even as letters, apart from the fear.
ful burden of their contents, I can bear witness that they
had very extraordinary merit. This, in fact, was the happy
result of writing from his heart; feeling profoundly whal
he communicated, and anticipating the profoundest sympathy with all that he uttered from her whom he addressed.
A tian of business, who opened some of these letters, in
his character of agent for my brother's five guardians, and
who had not any special interest in the affair, assured me
that, throughout the whole course of his life, he had never




MY BROTHER.                359
real any thing so affecting, from the facts they contained,
and from the sentiments which they expressed; above all,
the yearning for that England which he remembered as
the land of his youthful pleasures, bat also of his youthful
degradations. Three of the guardians were present at the
reading of these letters, and were all affected to tears, notwithstanding they had been irritated to the uttermost by the
course which both myself and my brother had pursued -a
course which seemed to argue some defect of judgment, o0
of reasonable kindness, in themselves. These letters, I
hope, are still preserved, though they have been long removed from my control. Thinking of them, and their extraordinary merit, I have often been led to believe that every
post town (and many times in the course of a month)
carries out numbers of beautifully-written letters, and more
from women than from men; not that men are to be supposed less capable of writing good letters,-and, in fact,
amongst all the celebrated letter writers of past or present
times, a large overbalance happens to have been men, - but
that more frequently women write from their hearts; and
the very same cause operates to make female letters good
which operated at one period to make the diction of Roman
ladies more pure than that of orators or professional culti.
vators of the Roman language-and which, at another
period, inl the Byzantine court, operated to preserve the
purity of the mother idiom within the nurseries and the
female drawing rooms of the palace, whilst it was corrupted in the forensic standards and the academic- in the
standards of the pulpit and the throne.
With respect to Pink's yearning for England, that had
been partially gratified in some part of his long exile:
twice, as we learned long afterwards, he had landed in
England, but such was his haughty adherence to his purpose, and such his consequent terror of being discovered




360           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
and reclaimed by his guardians, that he never attempted tu
communicate with any of Ihs brothers or sisters. There
he was wrong; me they should have cut to pieces before I
would have betrayed him. I, like him, had been an obstinate recusant to what I viewed as unjust pretensions of
authority; and, having been the first to raise the standard
of revolt, had been taxed by my guardians with having
seduced Pink by my example. But that was untrue; Pink
acted for himself. However, he could know little of all
this; and he traversed England twice, without making
an overture towards any communication with his friends.
Two circumstances of these journeys he used to mention;
both were from the port of London (for he never contemplated London but as a port) to Liverpool; or, thus far I
may be wrong, that one of the two might be (in the return
order) from Liverpool to London. On the first of these
journeys, his route lay through Coventry; on the other
through Oxford and Birmingham. In neither case had he
started with much money; and he was going to have retired
from the coach at the place of supping on the first night,
(the journey then occupying two entire days and two
entire nights,) when the passengers insisted on paying for
him: that was a tribute to his beauty - not yet extinct.
He mentioned this part of his adventures somewhat shyly,
whilst going over them with a sailor's literal accuracy'
though, as a record belonging to what he viewed as childish years, he had ceased to care about it. On the othei
journey his experience was different, but equally testified
to the spirit of kindness that is every where abroad. He
had no money, on this occasion, that could purchase even
a momentary lift by a stage coach: as a pedestrian, he haa
travelled down to Oxford, occupying two days in the fiftyfour or fifty-six miles which then measured the road from
London, and sleeping in a farmer's barn, without leave




MY BROTHER..361
asked  Wearied and depressed in spirits, he had reached
Oxford, hopeless of any aid, and with a deadly shame at
the thought of asking it. But, somewhere in the High
Street,-and, according to his very accurate sailor's description of that noble street, it must have been about the
entrance of All Souls' College, - he met a gentleman, a
gownsman, who (at the very moment of turning into the
college gate) looked at Pink earnestly, and then gave h.m
a guinea, saying at the time, " I know what it is to be in
your situation. You are a schoolboy, and you have run
away from your school. Well, I was once in your situation, and I pity you." The kind gownsman, who wore a
velvet cap with a silk gown, and must, therefore, have
been what in Oxford is called a gentleman commoner, gave
him an address at some college or other, (Magdalen, he
fancied, in after years,) where he instructed him to call
before he quitted Oxford. Had Pink done this, and had he
frankly communicated his whole story, very probably he
would have received, not assistance merely, but the best
advice for guiding his future motions. His reason for not
keeping the appointment was simply that he was nervously
shy, and, above all things, jealous of being entrapped by
insidious kindness into revelations that might prove dangerously circumstantial. Oxford had a mayor; Oxford had a
corporation; Oxford had Greek Testaments past all counting; and so, remembering past experiences, Pink held it
to be the wisest counsel that he should pursue his route on
foot to Liverpool. That guinea, however, he used to say,
saved him from despair.
One circumstance affected me in this part of Pink's
story. I was a student in Oxford at that time. By comparing dates, there was no doubt whatever that I, who held
my guardians in abhorrence, and, above all things, admired
my brother for his conduct, might have rescued him at this




362           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
point of his youthfil trials, four years before the fortunate
catastrophe of his case, from the calamities which awaited
him. This is felt generally to be the most distressing form
of human blindness - the case when accident brings two
fraternal hearts, yearning for reunion, into almost touching
neighborhood, and then, in a moment after, by the differenze, perhaps, of three inches in space, or three seconds in
time, will separate them again, unconscious of their brief
neighborhood, perhaps forever. In the present case, however, it may be doubted whether this unconscious rencontre
and unconscious parting in Oxford ought to be viewed as
a misfortune. Pink, it is true, endured years of suffering,
four, at least, that might have been saved by this seasonable
rencontre; but, on the other hand, by travelling through his
misfortunes with unabated spirit, and to their natural end,
he won experience and distinctions that else he would have
missed. His further history was briefly this: -
Somewhere in the River of Plate he had effected his
escape from the pirates; and a long time after, in 1807, 1
believe, (I write without books to consult,) he joined the
storming party of the English at Monte Video. Here he
happened fortunately to fall under the eye of Sir Home
Popham; and Sir Home forthwith rated my brother as a
midshipman on board his own ship, which was at that time,
I think, a fifty-gun ship - the Diadem. Thus, by merits
of the most appropriate kind, and without one particle of
interest, my brother passed into the royal navy. His
nautical accomplishments were now of the utmost importance to him; and, as often as he shifted his ship, which
(to say the truth) was far too often, —for his temper was
fickle and delighting in change,- so often these accomplishments were made the basis of very earnest eulogy. 1
have read a vast heap of certificates vouching for Pink's
qualifications as a sailor in the highest terms, and from




MY BROTHER.                 363
several of the most distinguished officers in the service.
Early in his career as a midshipman, he suffered a mortifying interruption of the active life which had long since
become essential to his comfort. He had contrived to get
appointed on board a fire ship, the Prometheus, (chiefly
with a wish to enlarge his experience by this variety of
naval warfare,) at the time of the last Copenhagen expedition and he obtained his wish; for the Prometheus had a
very distinguished station assigned her on the great night
of bombardment, and from her decks, I believe, was made
almost the first effectual trial of the Congreve rockets.
Soon after the Danish capital had fallen, and whilst the
Prometheus was still cruising in the Baltic, Pink, in company with the purser of his ship, landed on the coast of
Jutland, for the purpose of a morning's sporting. It seems
strange that this should have been allowed upon a hostile
shore; and perhaps it was not allowed, but might have
been a thoughtless abuse of some other mission shorewards. So it was, unfortunately; and one at least of the
two sailors had reason to rue the sporting of that day for
eighteen long months of captivity. They were perfectly
unacquainted with the localities, but conceived themselves
able at any time to make good their retreat to the boat, by
means of fleet heels, and arms sufficient to deal with any
opposition of the sort they apprehended. Venturing, however, too far into the country, they became suddenly aware
of certain sentinels, posted expressly for the benefit of
chance English visitors. These men did not pursue, but
they did worse, for they fired signal shots; and, by the
time our two thoughtless Jack tars had reached the shore,
they saw a detachment of Danish cavalry trotting their
horses pretty coolly down in a direction for the boat.
Feeling confident of their power to keep ahead of the
pt rsuit, the sailbrs amused themselves with various sallies




364           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
of nautical wit; and Pink, in particular, was just telling
them to present his dutiful respects to the crown prince,
and assure him that, but for this lubberly interruption, he
trusted to have improved his royal dinner by a brace of
birds, when - 0 sight of blank confusion! -all at once
they became aware that between themselves and their
boat lay a perfect network of streams, deep watery holes,
requiring both time and local knowledge to unravel. The
purser hit upon a course which enabled him to regain the
boat; but I am not sure whether he also was not captured.
Poor Pink was, at all events; and, through seventeen or
eighteen months, bewailed this boyish imprudence. At
the end of that time there was an exchange of prisoners,
and he was again serving on board various and splendid
frigates. Wyborg, in Jutland, was the seat of his Danish
captivity; and such was the amiableness of the Danish
character, that, except for the loss of his time, to one who
was aspiring to distinction and professional honor, none
of the prisoners who were on parole could have had much
reason for complaint. The street mob, excusably irritated
with England at that time, (for, without entering on the
question of right or of expedience as regarded that war,
it is notorious that such arguments as we had for our
unannounced hostilities could not be pleaded openly by the
English cabinet, for fear of compromising our private
friend and informant, the Kiiig of Sweden,) the mob, there.
fore, were rough in their treatment of the British prisoners:
at night, they would pelt them with stones; and here and
there some honest burgher, who might have suffered griev.
ously in his property, or in the person of his nearest
friends, by the ruin inflicted upon the Danish commercial
shipping, or by the dreadful havoc made in Zealand, would
show something of the same bitter spirit. But the great
body of the richer and more educated inhabitants showed




MY BROTHER.                    36M
the most hospitable attention to all who justified that sort.f notice by their conduct.  And their remembrance of
these English friendships was not fugitive; for, through
long years after my brother's death, I used to receive let.
ters, written in the Danish, (a language which I had attained in the course of my studies, and which I have since
endeavored to turn to account in a public journal, for some
useful purposes of research,) from young men as well as
women in Jutland - letters couched in the most friendly
terms, and recalling to his remembrance scenes and inci.
dents which sufficiently proved the terms of fraternal
affection upon which he had lived amongst these public
enemies; and some of them I have preserved to this day,
as memorials that do honor, on different considerations, to
both parties alike.*
* For this little parenthetical record of my brother's early history,
the exact chronology of the several items in the case may possible be
now irrecoverable; but any error must be of trivial importance. His
two pedestrian journeys between London and Liverpool occurred, I
believe, in the same year - viz., after the death of the friendly captain,
and during the last visit of his ship to England. The capture of Pink
vb the pirates took place after the ship's return to the Pacific




CHAPTER XIII.
PREMATURE MANHOOD.
MY last two chapters, very slenderly connected with
Birmingham, are yet made to rise out of it; the one out
of Birmingham's own relation to the topic concerned, e viz.,
Travelling,) and the other (viz., My Brother) out of
its relation to all possible times in my earlier life, and,
therefore, why not to all possible places? Any where introduced, the chapter was partially out of its place; as
well then to introduce it in Birmingham as elsewhere.
Somewhat arbitrary episodes, therefore, are these two
last chapters; yet still endurable as occurring in a work
confessedly rambling, and whose very duty lies in the
pleasant paths of vagrancy. Pretending only to amuse my
reader, or pretending chiefly to that, however much I may
have sought, or shall seek, to interest him occasionally
through his profounder affections, I enjoy a privilege of
neglecting harsher logic, and connecting the separate sections of these sketches, not by ropes and cables, but by
threads of aerial gossamer.
This present chapter, it may seem, promises something
of the same episodical or parenthetic character. But in
reality it does not. I am now returning into the main current of my narrative, although I may need to linger for a
366




FREMATURE MANHOOD.             3t;.
aiomelut upon a past anecdote. I have mentioned already.
that, on inquiring at the Birmingham post office for a letter
addressed to myself, I found one directing me to join my
sister Mary at Laxton, a seat of Lord Carbery's in North
amptonshire, and giving me to understand, that, during my
residence at this place, some fixed resolution would be
taken and announced to me in regard to the future disposal
of my time, during the two or three years before I should
be old enough on the English system for matriculating at
Oxford or Cambridge. In the poor countries of Europe,
where they cannot afford double sets of scholastic establishments,- having, therefore, no splendid schools, such as
are, in fact, peculiar to England, - they are compelled to
throw the duties of such schools upon their universities;
and consequently you see boys of thirteen and fourteen, or
even younger, crowding such institutions, which, in fact,
they ruin for all higher functions. But England, whose
regal establishments of both classes emancipate her from
this dependency, sends her young men to college not until
they have ceased to be boys -not earlier, therefore, than
eighteen.
But when, by what test, by what indication, does manhood commence? Physically by one criterion, legally by
another, morally by a third, intellectually by a fourth 
and all indefinite. Equator, absolute equator, there is
none. Between the two spheres of youth and age, perfect
and imperfect manhood, as in all analogous cases, there is
no strict line of bisection. The change is a large process,
accomplished within a large and corresponding space;
having, perhaps, some central or equatorial line, but lying,
like that of our earth, between certain tropics, or limitn
videly separated. This intertropical region may, and
generally does, cover a number of years; and, therefore, it
s hard to say, even for an assigned case, by any tolerable




368           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
approximation at what precise era it would be reasonable
to describe the individual as having ceased to be a boy,
and as having attained his inauguration as a man. Physically, we know that there is a very large latitude of differ.
ences, in the periods of human maturity, not merely
between individual and individual, but also between nation
and nation; differences so great, that, in some southern
regions of Asia, we hear of matrons at the age of twelve.
And though, as Mr. Sadler rightly insists, a romance oG
exaggeration has been built upon the facts, enough remains
behind of real marvel to irritate the curiosity of the physiologist as to its efficient, and, perhaps, of the philosopher
as to its final cause. Legally and politically, that is, conventionally, the differences are even greater on a comparison of nations and eras. In England we have seen senators
of mark and authority, nay, even a prime minister, the
haughtiest,* the most despotic, and the most irresponsible
of his times, at an age which, in many states, both ancient
and modern, would have operated as a ground of absolute
challenge to the candidate for offices the meanest. Intellectually speaking, again, a very large proportion of men
never attain maturity. Nonage is their final destiny; and
manhood, in this respect, is for them a pure idea. Finally,
as regards the moral development, - by which I mean the
whole system and economy of their love and hatred, of
their admirations and contempts, the total organization of
their pleasures and their pains, - hardly any of our species
ever attain manhood. It would be unphilosophic to say
that intellects of the highest order were, or could be, devel
* " The haughtiest." - Which, however, is very doubtful. Such,
certainly, was the popular impression. But people whc knew Mi.
Pitt intimately have always ascribed to him a nature the most amiable
and social, under an unfortunate reserve of manner. Whilst, on the
contrary, Mr. Fox, ultra democratic in his principles and frank in his
address, was repulsively aristocratic in his temper and sympathies.




PREMATURE MANHOOD.             369
uped fully without a corresponding development of the
whole nature. But of such intellects there do not appear
above two or three in a thousand years. It is a fact, forced
upon one by the whole experience of life, that almost all
men are children, more or less, in their tastes and admirations. Were it not for man's latent tendencies, - were it
not for that imperishable grandeur which exists by way of
germ and ultimate possibility in his nature, hidden though
it is, and often all but effaced, - how unlimited would be
the contempt amongst all the wise for his species! and
misanthropy would, but for the angelic ideal buried and
imbruted in man's sordid race, become amongst the noble
fixed, absolute, and deliberately cherished.
But, to resume my question, how, under so variable a
standard, both natural and conventional, of every thing
almost that can be received for a test or a presumption of
manhood, shall we seize upon any characteristic feature,
sufficiently universal to serve a practical use, as a criterion
of the transition from the childish mind to the dignity (relative dignity at least) of that mind which belongs to conscious
maturity? One such criterion, and one only, as I believe,
there is - all others are variable and uncertain. It lies
in the reverential feeling, sometimes suddenly developed,
towards woman, and the idea of woman. From that moment when women cease to be regarded with carelessness,
and when the ideal of womanhood, in its total pomp of
loveliness and purity, dawns like some vast aurora upon
the mind, boyhood has ended; childish thoughts and incli.
nations have passed away forever; and the gravity of
manhood, with the self-respecting views of manhood, have
commenced.
"Mentemque priorem
Expulit, atque hominem toto sibi cedere jussit
Pectore." - Lucan.
24




37)0         AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
These feelings, no doubt, depend for their development in
part upon physical causes; but they are also determined
by the many retarding or accelerating forces enveloped in
circumstances of position, and sometimes in pure accident.
For myself, I remember most distinctly the very day -the
scene and its accidents- when that mysterious awe fell
upon me which belongs to woman in her ideal portrait;,nd from that hour a profounder gravity colored all my
uloughts, and a " beauty still more beauteous" was lit up
tbr me in this agitating world. Lord Westport and mysell had been on a visit to a noble family about fifty miles
from Dublin; and we were returning from Tullamore by a
public passage boat, on the splendid canal which connects
that place with the metropolis. To avoid attracting an
unpleasant attention to ourselves in public situations, I observed a rule of never addressing Lord Westport by his
title: but it so happened that the canal carried us along the
margin of an estate belonging to the Earl (now Marquis)
of Westmeath; and, on turning an angle, we came suddenly
in view of this nobemnan taking his morning lounge in the
sun. Somewhat loth;y he reconnoitred the miscellaneous
party of clean and unciean beasts, crowded on the deck of
our ark, ourselves amongst the number, whom he challenged gayly as young acquaintances from Dublin; and
my friend he saluted more than once as " My lord." This
accident made known to the assembled mob of our fellow.
travellers Lord Westport's rank, and led to a scene rather
too broadly exposing the spirit of this world.  Herded
together on the deck (or roof of that den denominated the
"state cabin") stood a party of young ladies, headed by
their governess. In the cabin below was mamma, who as
yet had not condescended to illuminate our circle, for she
was an awful personage -a wit, a bluestocking, (I call
her by the name then current,) and a leader of ton in Dub



PREMATURE MANHOOD.             371
tin and Belfast. The fact, however, that a young lord, and
onI of great expectations, was on board, brought her up.
A short cross examination of Lord Westport's French
valet had confirmed the flying report, and at the same
time (I suppose) put her in possession of my defect in all
those advantages of title, fortune, and expectation which so
brilliantly distinguished my friend.  Her admiration of
him, and her contempt for myself, were equally undisguised. And in the ring which she soon cleared out for
public exhibition, she made us both fully sensible of the
very equitable stations which she assigned to us in her
regard. She was neither very brilliant, nor altogether a
pretender, but might be described as a showy woman, of
slight but popular accomplishments. Any woman, however, has the advantage of possessing the ear of any company; and a woman of forty, with such tact and experience as she will naturally have gathered in a talking
practice of such duration, can find little difficulty in mortifying a boy, or sometimes, perhaps, in tempting him to
unfortunate sallies of irritation. Me it was clear that she
viewed in the light of a humble friend, or what is known
in fashionable life by the humiliating name of a " toadeater." Lord Westport, full of generosity in what regarded
his own pretensions, and who never had violated the per.
fect equality which reigned in our deportment to each
other, colored with as much confusion as myself at her
coarse insinuations. And, in reality, our ages scarcely
allowed of that relation which she supposed to exist between us.  Possibly, she did not suppose it; but it is
essential to the wit and the display of some people that it
should have a foundation in malice. A victim and a
sacrifice are indispensable conditions in every exhibition.
In such a case, my natural sense of justice would generally
have armed me a hundred fold for retaliation; but at




372          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
present, chiefly, perhaps, because I had no effectual ally, and
could count upon no sympathy in my audience, I was mortified beyond the power of retort, and became a passive
butt to the lady's stinging contumely and the arrowy sleet
of her gay rhetoric. The narrow bounds of our deck
made it not easy to get beyond talking range; and thus it
happened, that for two hours I stood the worst of this
bright lady's feud. At length the tables turned.  Two
ladies appeared slowly ascending from the cabin, both in
deepest mourning, but else as different in aspect as summer and winter. The elder was the Countess of Errol,
then mourning an affliction which had laid her life desolate,
and admitted of no human consolation. Heavier grief —
grief more self-occupied and deaf to all voice of sympathy-I have not happened to witness.   She seemed
scarcely aware of our presence, except it were by placing
herself as far as was possible from the annoyance of our
odious conversation. The circumstances of her loss are
now forgotten; at that time they were known to a large
circle in Bath and London, and I violate no confidence in
reviewing them. Lord Errol had been privately intrusted
by Mr. Pitt with an official secret, viz., the outline and
principal details of a foreign expedition; in which, according to Mr. Pitt's original purpose, his lordship was to have
held a high command. In a moment of intoxication, the
earl confided this secret to some false friend, who published
the communication and its author. Upon this, the unhappy
nobleman, under too keen a sense of wounded honor, and
perhaps with an exaggerated notion of the evils attached
to his indiscretion, destroyed himself. Months had passed
since that calamity when we met his widow; but time
appeared to have done iothing in mitigating her sorrow.
The youngei lady, on the other hand, who was Lady
Errol's sister, —Heavens! what a spirit of joy and




PREMATTRE MANHOOD.                   373
tfstal pleasure radiated from her eyes, her step, her voice,
her manner! She was Irish, and the veiy impersonation
of innocent gayety, such as we find oftener, perhaps,
amongst Irish women than those of any other country.
Mourning, I have said, she wore; from    sisterly consideration, the deepest mourning; that sole expression there was
about her of gloom or solemn feeling, -
"But all things else about her drawn
From May time and the cheerful dawn."
Odious bluestocking * of Belfast and Dublin! as some
* I have sometimes had occasion to remark, as a noticeable phenomenon of our present times, that the order of ladies called bluestockings,
by way of reproach, has become totally extinct amongst us, except
only here and there with superannuated clingers to obsolete remembrances. The reason of this change is interesting; and I do not
scruple to call it honorable to our intellectual progress. In the last
(but still more in the penultimate) generation, any tincture of literature, of liberal curiosity about science, or of ennobling interest in
books, carried with it an air of something unsexual, mannish, and
(as it was treated by the sycophantish satirists that for ever humor
the prevailing folly) of something ludicrous. This mode of treatment
was possible so long as the literary class of ladies formed a feeble
minority. But now, when two vast peoples, English and American,
counting between them forty-nine millions, when the leaders of transcendent civilization (to say nothing of Germany and France) behold
their entire educated class, male and female alike, calling out, not for
Panem et circenses, (Give us this day our daily bread and our games
of the circus,) but for Panem et lteras, (Give us this day our daily
bread and literature,) the universality of the call has swept away the
very name of bluestocking; the very possibility of the ridicule has
been undermined by stern realities; and the verbal expression of the
reproach is fast becoming, not simply obsolete, but even unintelligible
to our juniors. By the way, the origin of this term bluestocking has
never been satisfactorily accounted for, unless the reader should incline to think my account satisfactory. I incline to that opinion myself. Dr. Bisset (in his Life of Burke) traces it idly to a sobriquet




374             AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
would call you, how I hated you up to that moment! half
an hour after, how grateful I felt for the hostility which had
procured me such an alliance! One minute sufficed to put
the quick-witted young Irish woman in possession of our
imposed by Mrs. Montagu, and the literary ladies of her circle, upon
a certain obscure Dr. Stillingfleet, who was the sole masculine assistant at their literary sittings in Portman Square, and chose, upon some
inexplicable craze, to wear blue stockings. The translation, however,
of this name from the doctor's legs to the ladies' legs is still unsolved.
That great hiatus needs filling up. I, therefore, whether erroneously
or not, in reviewing a German historical work of some pretensions,
where this problem emerges, rejected the Portman Square doctor
altogether, and traced the term to an old Oxford statute —one of the
many which meddle with dress, and which charges it as a point of
conscience upon loyal scholastic students that they shall wear cerulean socks. Such socks, therefore, indicated scholasticism: worn by
females, they would indicate a self-dedication to what for them would
be regarded as pedantic studies. But, says an objector, no rational
female would wear cerulean socks. Perhaps not, female taste being
too good. But as such socks would symbolize such a profession of
pedantry, so, inversely, any profession of pedantry, by whatever signs
expressed, would be symbolized reproachfully by the imputation of
wearing cerulean socks. It classed a woman, in effect, as a scholastic
pedant. Now, however, when the vast diffusion of literature as a
sort of daily bread has made all ridicule of female literary culture not
less ridiculous than would be the attempt to ridicule that same daily
bread, the whole phenomenon, thing and word, substance and shadow,
is melting away from amongst us. Something of the same kind has
happened in the history of silver forks. Forks of any kind, as is well
known, were first introduced into Italy; thence by a fantastic (but,
in this instance, judicious) English traveller immediately (and not
mediately through France) were introduced into England. This elegant
revolution occurred about 240 years ago; and never since that day
have there been wanting English protesters against the infamy of eating without forks; and for the last 160 years, at least, against the
paganism of using steel forks; or, 2dly, two-pronged forks; or, 3dly, of
nutting the knife into the mouth. At least 120 years ago, the Duchess
of Queensberry, (Gay's duchess,) that leonine woman, used to shriek




PREMATURE MANHOOD.                   375
little drama and the several parts we were playing. To
look was to understand, to wish was to execute, with this
ardent child of nature.   Like Spenser's Bradamant, with
martial scorn she couched her lance on the side of the party
suffering wrong. Her rank, as sister-in-law to the constable
of Scotland, gave her some advantage for winning a favorable audience; and throwing hei aegis over me, she extended
that benefit to myself. Road was now made perforce for
me also; my replies were no longer stifled in noise and
laughter. Personalities were banished; literature was extensively discussed; and that is a subject which, offering
little room to argument, offers the widest to eloquent disout, on seeing a hyperborean squire conveying peas to his abominable
mouth on the point of a knife, " 0, stop him, stop him! that man's
going to commit suicide." This anecdote argues silver forks as existing much more than a century back, else the squire had a good defence.
Since then, in fact, about the time of the French revolution, silver
forks have been recognized as not less indispensable appendages to any
elegant dinner table than silver spoons; and, along with silver forks,
came in the explosion of that anti-Queensberry brutalism which forks
first superseded - viz., the fiendish practice of introducing the knife
between the lips. But, in defiance of all these facts, certain select hacks
of the daily press, who never had an opportunity of seeing a civilized
dinner, and fancying that their own obscene modes of feeding prevailed every where, got up the name of the Silver-fork School, (which
should have indicated the school of decency,) as representing some
ideal school of fantastic or ultra refinement. At length, however,
when cheap counterfeits of silver have made the decent four-pronged
fork cheaper than the two-pronged steel barbarism, what has followed?
Why, this - that the universality of the diffusion has made it hopeless
any longer to banter it. There is, therefore, this strict analogy between " the silver fork " reproach and "the bluestocking" reproach
- that in both cases alike a recognition, gradually becoming universal,
of the thing itself, as a social necessity, has put down forever all idle
attempts to throw ridicule upon it - upon literature, in the one ca e,
as a most appropriate female ornament; and upon silvel forks, or
the other, as an element of social decorum.




376-          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
play. I had immense reading; vast command of words,
which somewhat diminished as ideas and doubts multiplied;
and, speaking no longer to a deaf audience, but to a gener.
ous and indulgent protectress, I threw out, as from a cornucopiae, my illustrative details and recollections; trivial
enough, perhaps, as I might now think, but the more intelligible to my present circle. It might seem too much the
case of a storm in a slop basin, if I were to spend any
words upon the revolution which ensued. Suffice it, that I
remained the lion of that company which had previously
been most insultingly facetious at my expense; and the
intellectual lady finally declared the air of the deck unpleasant.
Never, until this hour, had I thought of women a3 objects
of a possible interest or of a reverential love. I had known
them either in their infirmities and their unamiable aspects,
or else in those sterner relations which made them objects
of ungenial and uncompanionable feelings. Now first it
struck me that life might owe half its attractions and all its
graces to female companionship. Gazing, perhaps, with
too earnest an admiration at this generous and spirited young
daughter of Ireland, and in that way making her those acknowledgments for her goodness which I could not properly
clothe in words, I was aroused to a sense of my indecorum
by seeing her suddenly blush. I believe that Miss Blinterpreted my admiration rightly; for she was not offended,
but, on the contrary, for the rest of the day, when not at[ending to her sister, conversed almost exclusively, and in
a confidential way, with Lord Westport and myself. The
whole, in fact, of this conversation must have convinced
ner that I, mere boy as I was, (viz., about fifteen,) could not
have presumed to direct my admiration to her, a fine young
woman of twenty, in any other character than that of a generous champion, and a very adroit mistress in the dazzling




PREMATURE MANHOOD.              377
fence of colloquial skirmish. My admiration had, in reality,
been addressed to her moral qualities, her enthusiasm, her
spirit, and her generosity. Yet that blush, evanescent as it
was, —the mere possibility that I, so very a child, should
have called up the most transitory sense of bashfulness or
confusion upon any female cheek, first, -and suddenly, as
with a flash of lightning, penetrating some utter darkness,
illuminated to my own startled consciousness, never again
to be obscured, the pure and powerful ideal of womanhood
and womanly excellence. This was, in a proper sense, a
revelation; it fixed a great era of change in my life; and
this new-born idea, being agreeable to the uniform tendencies of my own nature, -that is, lofty and aspiring,- it
governed my life with great power, and with most salutary
effects. Ever after, throughout the period of youth, I was
jealous of my own demeanor, reserved and awe-struck, in
the presence of women; reverencing, often, not so much
them as my own ideal of woman latent in them. For I
carried about with me the idea, to which often I seemed to
see an approximation, of
" A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, to command."
And from this day I was an altered creature, never again
relapsing into the careless, irreflective mind of childhood.
At the same time I do not wish, in paying my homage to
the other sex, and in glorifying its possible power over ours,
to be confounded with those thoughtless and trivial rhetoricians who flatter woman with a false lip worship; and,
like Lord Byron's buccaneers, hold out to them a picture
of their own empire, built only upon sensual or upon shadowy excellences. We find continually a false enthusiasm,
a mere bacchanalian inebriation, on behalf of woman, put
forth by modern verse writers, expressly at the expense of




378           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
the other sex, as though woman could be of porcelain, whilst
man was of common earthern ware. Even the testimonies of
Ledyard and Park are partly false (though amiable) tributes
to female excellence; at least they are merely one-sided
truths —aspects of one phasis, and under a peculiar angle.
For, though the sexes differ characteristically, yet they
never fail to reflect each other; nor can they differ as to
the general amount of development; never yet was woman
in one stage of elevation, and man (of the same community) in another. Thou, therefore, daughter of God and
man, all-potent woman! reverence thy own ideal; and in
the wildest of the homage which is paid to thee, as also in
the most real aspects of thy wide dominion, read no trophy
of idle vanity, but a silent indication of the possible grandeur enshrined in thy nature; which realize to the extent
of thy power,"And show us how divine a thing
A woman may become."
For what purpose have I repeated this story?  The
reader may, perhaps, suppose it introductory to some tale
of boyish romantic passion for some female idol clothed
with imaginary perfections. But in that case he will be
mistaken. Nothing of the kind was possible to me. 1
was preoccupied by other passions. Under the disease -
for disease it was - which at that time mastered me, one
solitary desire, one frenzy, one demoniac fascination,
stronger than the fascinations of calenture, brooded over
me as the moon over the tides - forcing me day and night
into speculations upon great intellectual problems, many
times beyond my strength, as indeed often beyon4 all
human strength, but not the less provoking me to pursue them. As a prophet in days of old had no power to
resist the voice which, from hidden worlds, called him to a




PREMATURE MANHOOD.              379
mission, sometimes, perhaps, revolting to his human sensibilities, as he must deliver, was under a coercion to deliver the burning word that spoke within his heart, —or as
a ship on the Indian Ocean cannot seek rest by anchoring,
but must run before the wrath of the monsoon, -such in its
fury, such in its unrelentingness, was the persecution that
overmastered me. School tasks under these circumstances,
it ma) well be supposed, had become a torment to me.
For a long time they had lost even that slight power of
stimulation which belongs to the irritation of difficulty.
Easy and simple they had now become as the elementary
lessons of childhood. Not that it is possible for Greek
studies, if pursued with unflinching sincerity, ever to fall.
so far into the rear as a palcestra for exercising both strength
and skill; but, in a school where the exercises are pursued
in common by large classes, the burden must be adapted
to the powers of the weakest, and not of the strongest.
And, apart from that objection, at this period, the hasty
unfolding of far different intellectual interests than such
as belong to mere literature had, for a time, dimmed in
my eyes the lustre of classical studies, pursued at whatsoever depth and on whatsoever scale. For more than a
year, every thing connected with schools and the business
of schools had been growing more and more hateful to me.
At first, however, my disgust had been merely the disgust
of weariness and pride. But now, at this crisis, (for crisis
it was virtuaUy to me,) when a premature development of
my whole mind was rushing in like a cataract, forcing
channels for itself and for the new tastes which it introduced, my disgust was no longer simply intellectual, but
had deepened into a moral sense as of some inner dignity
continually violated. Once the petty round of school tasks
had been felt as a molestation; but now, at last, as a
degradation. Constant conversation with grown-up men




3SO           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
for the last half year, and upon topics oftentimes of the
gravest order, - the responsibility that had always in some
slight degree settled upon myself since I had become the
eldest surviving son of my family, but of late much more
so when circumstances had thrown me as an English stranger upon the society of distinguished Irishmen, -more,
however, than all beside, the inevitable rebound and counter.
growth of internal dignity from the everlasting commerce
with lofty speculations, these agencies in constant operation had imbittered my school disgust, until it was travelling fast into a mania. Precisely at this culminating point
of my self-conflict did that scene occur which I have described with Miss B1 —. In that hour another element,
which assuredly was not wanted, fell into the seething
caldron of new-born impulses, that, like the magic caldron
of Medea, was now transforming me into a new creature.
Then first and suddenly I brought powerfully before myself the change which was worked in the aspects of society
by the presence of woman -woman, pure, thoughtful,
noble, coming before me as a Pandora crowned with perfections. Right over against this ennobling spectacle, with
equal suddenness, I placed the odious spectacle of schoolboy society -no matter in what region of the earth;
schoolboy society, so frivolous in the matter of its disputes,
often so brutal in the manner; so childish, and yet so
remote from simplicity; so foolishly careless, and yet so
revoltingly selfish; dedicated ostensibly to learning, and
yet beyond any section of human beings so conspicuously
ignorant. Was it indeed that heavenly which I was soon
to exchange for this earthly? It seemed to me, when contemplating the possibility that I could yet have nearly
three years to pass in such society as this, that I heard
some irresistible voice saying, Lay aside thy fleshly robes
of humanity, and enter for a season into some brutal inCarnation




PREMATURE MANHOOD.              381
But what cdnnection had this painful prospect with Laxton? Why should it press upon my anxieties in approaching that mansion, more than it had done at Westport?
Naturally enough, in part, because every day brought me
nearer to the horror from which I recoiled: my return to
England would recall the attention of my guardians to the
question, which as yet had slumbered; and the knowledge
that I had reached Northamptonshire would precipitate
their decision. Obscurely, besides, through a hint which
had reached me, I guessed what this decision was likely to
be, and it took the very worst shape it could have taken.
All this increased my agitation from hour to hour. But all
this was quickened and barbed by the certainty of so immediately meeting Lady Carbery. To her it was, and to
her only, that I could look for any useful advice or any
effectual aid. She over my mother, as in turn my mother
over her, exercised considerable influence; whilst my
mother's power was very seldom disturbed by the other
guardians.  The mistress of Laxton it was, therefore,
whose opinion upon the case would virtually be decisive;
since, if she saw no reasonable encouragement to any contest with my guardians, I felt too surely that my own uncountenanced and unaided energies drooped too much for
such an effort. Who Lady Carbery was, I will explain in
my next chapter, entitled Laxton. Meantime, to me, indi.
vidually, she was the one sole friend that ever I could
regard as entirely fulfilling the offices of an honorable
friendship.  She had known me from infancy: when I
was in my first year of life, she, an orphan and a great
heiress, was in her tenth or eleventh; and on her occa[* The reader of the " Confessions of an English Opium Eater " will
at once recall the name of Lady Carbery in connection with the loan
sought by De Quincey from a lady of rank, when he was about to
elope, as he terms it, from school at Manchester ]




382           AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
sional visits to " the Farm," (a rustic old house then occupied by my father,) I, a household pet, suffering under an
ague, which lasted from my first year to my third, naturally fell into her hands as a sort of superior toy, a toy
that could breathe and talk. Every year our intimacy had.
been renewed, until her marriage interrupted it.  But,
after no very long interval, when my mother had transferred her household to Bath, in that city we frequently
met again; Lord Carbery liking Bath for itself, as well as
for its easy connection with London, whilst Lady Carbery's
health was supposed to benefit by the waters. Her understanding was justly reputed a fine one; but, in general, it
was calculated to win respect rather than love, for it was
masculine and austere, with very little toleration for senti
ment or romance. But to myself she had always been
indulgently kind; I was protected in her regard, beyond
any body's power to dislodge me, by her childish remembrances; and of late years she had begun to entertain the
highest opinion of my intellectual promises. Whatever
could be done to assist my views, I most certainly might
count upon her doing; that is to say, within the limits of
her conscientious judgment upon the propriety of my own
plans. Having, besides, so much more knowledge of the
world than myself, she might see cause to dissent widely
from my own view of what was expedient as well as what
was right; in which case I was well assured that, in the
midst of kindness and unaffected sympathy, she would
firmly adhere to the views of my guardians. In any circumstances she would have done so. But at present a
new element had begun to mix with the ordinary influences
which governed her estimates of things: she had, as 1
knew from my sister's report, become religious; and her
new opinions were of a gloomy cast, Calvinistic, in fact,
and tending to what is now technically known in England




PREMATURE MANHOOD.             383
as "Low Church," or " Evangelical Christianity."  Thes6
views, being adopted in a great measure from my mother,
were naturally the same as my mother's; so that I could
form some guess as to the general spirit, if not the exact
direction, in which her counsels would flow. It is singular
that, until this time, I had never regarded Lady Carbery
under any relation whatever to female intellectual society.
My early childish knowledge of her had shut out that
mode of viewing her. But now, suddenly, under the new
born sympathies awakened by the scene with Miss BI —,
I became aware of the distinguished place she was qualified
to fill in such society. In that Eden - for such it had now
consciously become to me - I had no necessity to cultivate
an interest or solicit an admission; already, through Lady
Carbery's too flattering estimate of my own pretensions,
and through old, childish memories, I held the most distinguished place. This Eden, she it was that lighted up suddenly to my new-born powers of appreciation in all its
dreadful points of contrast with the killing society of
schoolboys. She it was, fitted to be the glory of such an
Eden, who probably would assist in banishing me for the
present to the wilderness outside. My distress of mind
was inexpressible. And, in the midst of glittering saloons,
at times also in the midst of society the most fascinating,
I - contemplating the idea of that gloomy academic dungeon to which for three long years I anticipated too certainly a sentence of exile -felt very much as in the
middle ages must have felt some victim of evil destiny,
inheritor of a false, fleeting prosperity, that suddenly, in a
moment of time, by signs blazing out past all concealment
on his forehead, was detected as a leper; and in that
character, as a public nuisance and universal horror, was
summoned instantly to withdraw from society; prince or
peasant, was indulged with no time for preparation or




384          AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
evasion; and, from the midst of any society, the sweetest
or the most dazzling, was driven violently to take up his
abode amidst the sorrow-haunted chambers of a lazar
house.




CHAPTER XIV.
THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
I. VISIT TO LAXTON.
MY route, after parting from Lord Westport at Birmingham, lay, as I mentioned in the last chapter of these
Sketches, through Stamford to Laxton, the Northamptonshire seat of Lord Carbery. From Stamford, which
I had reached by some intolerable old coach, such as in
those days too commonly abused the patience and longsuffering of Young England, I took a post-chaise to Laxton. The distance was but nine miles, and the postilion
drove well, so that I could not really have been long
upon the road; and yet, from gloomy rumination upon
the unhappy destination which I believed myself
approaching within three or four months, never had
I weathered a journey that seemed to me so long
and dreary. As I alighted on the steps at Laxton,
the first dinner-bell rang; and I was hurrying to my
toilet, when my sister Mary, who had met me in the
portico, begged me first of all to come into Lady
Carbery's dressing-room, her ladyship having something special to communicate, which related (as I un.
derstood her) to one Simon. "What Simon? Simon
25




386           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
Peter? "-0, no, you irreverend boy, no Simon at
all with an S, but Cymon with a C, - Dryden's Cy(noIl. -
" That whistled as he went for want of thought."'
This one indication was a key to the whole explanation that followed. The sole visitors, it seemed, at
that time to Laxton, beside my sister and myself,
were Lord and Lady Massey.    They were understood to be domesticated at Laxton for a very long
stay.  In reality, my own private construction of
the case (though unauthorized by anything ever
hinted to me by Lady Carbery) was, that Lord Massey might probably be under some cloud of pecuniary embarrassments, such as suggested prudentially an absence from Ireland. Meantime, what was
it that made him an object of peculiar interest to
Lady Carbery? It was the singular revolution which,
in one whom all his friends looked upon as sold to
constitutional torpor, suddenly, and beyond all hope,
had kindled a new and nobler life. Occupied originally by no shadow of any earthly interest, killed by
ennui, all at once Lord Massey had fallen passionately
in love with a fair young countrywoman, well connected, but bringing him no fortune (I report only
from hearsay), and endowing him simply with the
priceless blessing of her own womanly charms, her
delightful society, and her sweet, Irish style of innocent gayety. No transformation that ever legends
or romances had reported was more memorable.
Lapse of time (for Lord Massey had now been married three or four years), and deep seclusion from




VISIT TO LAXTON.                387
general society, had done nothing, apparently, to
lower the tone of his happiness.   The expression of
this happiness was noiseless and unobtrusive; no
marks were there of vulgar uxoriousness —nothing
that could provoke the sneer of the worldling; but
not the less so entirely had the society of his young
wife created a new principle of life within him, and
evoked some nature hitherto slumbering, and which,
no doubt, would else have continued to slumber till
his death, that, at moments when he believed himself unobserved, he still wore the aspect of an impassioned lover.
"He beheld
A vision, and adored the thing he saw.
Arabian fiction never filled the world
With half the wonders that were wrought for hzm.
Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring -
Her chamber window did surpass in glory
The portals of the dawn."
And in no case was it more literally realized, as
daily almost I witnessed, that
" All Paradise
Could, by the simple opening of a door,
Let itself in upon him." *
For never did the drawing-room door open, and sud.
denly disclose the beautiful figure of Lady Massey,
than a mighty cloud seemed to roll away from the
young Irishman's brow. At this time it happened,
and indeed it often happened, that Lord Carbery was
* Wordsworth's " Vandracour and Julia."




388           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
absent in Ireland. It was probable, therefore, that
during the long couple of hours through which the
custom of those times bound a man to the dinnertable after the disappearance of the ladies, his time
would hang heavily on his hands. To me, therefore,
Lady Carbery looked, having first put me in possession of the case, for assistance to her hospitality,
under the difficulties I have stated. She thoroughly
loved Lady Massey, as, indeed, nobody could help
doing; and for her sake, had there been no separate
interest surrounding the young lord, it would have
been most painful to her that through Lord Carbery's
absence a periodic tedium should oppress her guest
at that precise season of the day which traditionally
dedicated itself to genial enjoyment.  Glad, therefore, was she that an ally had come at last to Laxton, who might arm her purposes of hospitality with
some powers of self-fulfilment.  And yet, for a service of that nature, could she reasonably rely upon
me?   Odious is the hobble-de-hoy to the mature
young man. Generally speaking, that cannot be
denied. But in me, though naturally the shyest of
human beings, intense commerce with men of every
rank, from the highest to the lowest, had availed to
dissipate all arrears of mauvaise honte; I could talk
upon innumerable subjects; and, as the readiest
means of entering immediately upon business, I was
fresh from Ireland, knew multitudes of those whom
Lord Massey either knew or felt an interest in, and,
at that happy period of life, found it easy, with three
or four glasses of wine, to call back the golden spirits which were now so often deserting me. Reno



VISIT TO LAXTON.           389
vated, meantime, by a hot bath, I was ready at the
second summons of the dinner-bell, and descended a
new creature to the drawing-room. Here I was presented to the noble lord and his wife. Lord Massey
was in figure shortish, but broad and stout, and wore
an amiable expression of face.  That I could execute Lady Carbery's commission, I felt satisfied at
once. And, accordingly, when the ladies had retired from the dining-room, I found an easy opening,
in various circumstances connected with the Laxton
stables, for introducing naturally a picturesque and
contrasting sketch of the stud and the stables at
Westport.  The stables and everything connected
with the stables at Laxton were magnificent; in
fact, far out of symmetry with the house, which, at
that time, was elegant and comfortable, but not
splendid.  As usual in English establishments, all
the appointments were complete, and carried to the
same point of exquisite finish. The stud of hunters
was first-rate and extensive; and the whole scene,
at closing the stables for the night, was so splendidly arranged and illuminated, that Lady Carbery
would take all her visitors once or twice a week to
admire it.  On the other hand, at Westport you
might fancy yourself overlooking the establishment
of some Albanian Pacha. Crowds of irregular helpers and grooms, many of them totally unrecognized
by Lord Altamont, some half countenanced by this
or that upper servant, some doubtfully tolerated,
some not tolerated, but nevertheless slipping in by
postcrn doors when the enemy had withdrawn, made
up a strange mob as regarded the human element in




390           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
this establishment.  And Dean Browne regularly
asserted that five out of six amongst these helpers
he himself could swear to as active boys from Vinegar Hill.  Trivial enough, meantime, in our eyes,
was any little matter of rebellion that they might
have upon their consciences. High treason we willingly winked at. But what we could not wink at
was the systematic treason which they committed
against our comfort, namely, by teaching our horses
all imaginable tricks, and training them up in the
way along which they should not go, so that when
they were old they were very little likely to depart
from it. Such a set of restive, hard-mouthed wretches
as Lord Westport and I daily had to bestride, no
tongue could describe. There was a cousin of Lord
Westport's, subsequently created Lord Oranmore,
distinguished for his horsemanship, and always
splendidly mounted from his father's stables at Castle M'Garret, to whom our stormy contests with
ruined tempers and vicious habits yielded a regular
comedy of fun; and, in order to improve it, he would
sometimes bribe Lord Westport's treacherous groom
into misleading us, when floundering amongst bogs,
into the interior labyrinths of these morasses. Deep,
however, as the morass, was this man's remorse
when, on leaving Westport, I gave him the heavy
golden perquisite, which my mother (unaware of
the tricks he had practised upon me) had by let.
ter instructed me to give. He was a mere savago
boy from the central bogs of Connaught, and, to the
great amusement of Lord Westport, he persisted in
calling me " your majesty" for the rest of that day ~




USIT TO LAXTON.            391
and by all other means open to him lie expressed his
penitence.  But the dean insisted that, no matter
for his penitence in the matter of the bogs, he had
certainly carried a pike at Vinegar Hill; and probably had stolen a pair of boots at Fumes, when he
kindly made a call at the Deanery, in passing through
that pla.ge to the field of battle. It is always a pleasure to see the engineer of mischief" hoist with his
own petard; "* and it happened that the horses
assigned to draw a post-chariot carrying Lord Westport, myself, and the dean, on our return journey to
Dublin, were a pair utterly ruined by a certain underpostilion, named Moran. This particular ruin did
Mr. Moran boast to have contributed as his separate
contribution to the general ruinations of the stables.
And the particular object was, that his horses, and
consequently himself, might be left in genial laziness.
Butas Nemesis would have it, Mr. Moran was the
charioteer specially appointed to this particular service. We were to return by easy journeys of twentyfive miles a day, or even less; since every such
interval brought us to the house of some hospitable
family, connected by friendship or by blood with
Lord Altamont.   Fervently had Lord Westport
pleaded with his father for an allowance of four
horses; not at all with any foolish view to fleeting
aristocratic splendor, but simply to the luxury of
rapid motion.  But Lord Altamont was firm in resisting this petition at that time. The remote consequence was, that by way of redressing the violated
* c Hamlet," but also " Ovid: "- " Lex nec justior ulla est,
Quam necis artifices arte perire sui."




392          THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
equilibrium to our feelings, we subscribed throughout
Wales to extort six horses from the astofished innkeepers, most of whom declined the requisition, and
would furnish only four, on the plea that the leaders
would only embarrass the other horses; but one at
Bangor, from whom we coolly requested eight, re
coiled from our demand as from a sort of miniature
treason. How so? Because in this island he had
always understood eight horses to be consecrated to
royal use. Not at all, we assured him; Pickford, the
great carrier, always horsed his wagons with eight.
And the law knew of no distinction between wagon
and post-chaise, coach-horse or cart-horse. However, we could not compass this point of the eight
horses, the double quadriga, in one single instance;
but the true reason we surmised to be, not the pretended puritanism of loyalty to the house of Guelph,
but the running short of the innkeeper's funds. If
he had to meet a daily average call for twenty-four
horses, then it might well happen that our draft upon
him for eight horses at one pull would bankrupt him
for a whole day.
But I am anticipating. Returning to Ireland and
Mr. Moran, the vicious driver of vicious horses, the
immediate consequence to him of this unexpected
limitation to a pair of horses was, that all his
knavery in one hour recoiled upon himself. The
horses whom he had himself trained to vice and
restiveness, in the hope that thus his own services
and theirs might be less in request, now became the
very curse of his life. Every morning, duly as an
attempt was made to put them in motion, they began
to back, and no arts, gentle or harsh, would for a




VISIT TO LAXTON.          393
moment avail to coax or to coirce them into the
countei direction. Could retrogression by any metaphysics have been translated into progress, we excelled in that; it was our forte; we could have
backed to the North Pole. That might be the wa:
to glory, or at least to distinction - sic itur ad astra;
unfortunately, it was not the way to Dublin. Consequently, on every day of our journey -and the days
were ten - not once, but always, we had the same
deadly conflict to repeat; and this being always
unavailing, found its solution uniformly in the following ultimate resource. Two large-boned horses,
usually taken from the plough, were harnessed on as
leaders.  By main force they hauled our wicked
wheelers into the right direction, and forced them,
by pure physical superiority, into working. We
furnished a joyous and comic spectacle to every
town and village through which we passed. The
whole community, men and children, came out to
assist at our departure; and all alike were diverted,
but not the less irritated, by the demoniac obstinacy
of the brutes, who seemed under the immediate inspiration of the fiend. Everybody was anxious to
share in the scourging which was administered to
them right and left; and once propelled into a gallop (or such a gallop as our Brobdignagian leaders
could accomplish), they were forced into keeping it
up. But, without rehearsing all the details of the
case, it may be readily conceived that the amount of
trouble distributed amongst our whole party was
enormous.  Once or twice the friends at whose
nouses we slept were able to assist us. But generally they either had no horses, or none of the




394          THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
commanding power demanded. Often, again, it happened, as our route was very circuitous, that no inns
lay in our neighborhood; or, if there were inns, the
horses proved to be of too slight a build. At Ballinasloe, and again at Athlone, half the town came
out to help us; and, having no suitable horses,
thirty or forty men, with shouts of laughter, pulled
at ropes fastened to our pole and splinter-bar, and
compelled the snorting demons into a flying gallop.
But, naturally, a couple of miles saw this resouree
exhausted. Then came the necessity of "drawing
the covers," as the dean called it; that is, hunting
amongst the adjacent farmers for powerful cattle.
This labor (0, Jupiter, thanks be for thatl) fell upon
Mr. Moran. And sometimes it would happen that
the horses, which it had cost him three or four hours
to find, could be spared only for four or five miles.
Such a journey can rarely have been accomplished.
Our zigzag course had prolonged it into from two
hundred and thirty to two hundred and fifty miles;
and it is literally true that, of this entire distance
from Westport House to Sackville-street, Dublin,
not one furlong had been performed under the spontaneous impulse of our own horses. Their diabolic
resistance continued to the last. And one may venture to hope that the sense of final subjugation to
man must have proved penally bitter to the horses.
But, meantime, it vexes one that such wretches
should be fed with good old hay and oats; as well
littered down also in their stalls as a prebendary;
and by many a stranger, ignorant of their true character, should have been patted and caressed. Let us
hope that a fate, to which more than once they were




VISIT TO LAXTON.           395
nearly forcing us, namely, regress uver a precipice,
may ultimately have been their own. Once I saw
such another case dramatically carried through to
its natural crisis in the Liverpool Mail. It was on
the stage leading into Lichfield; there was no conspiracy, as in our Irish case; one horse only out of
the four was the criminal; and, according to the
queen's bench (Denman, C. J.), there is no conspiracy competent to one agent; but he was even
more signally under a demoniac possession of mu
tinous resistance to man. The case was really a
memorable one. If ever there was a distinct proclamation of rebellion against man, it was made by that
brutal horse; and I, therefore, being a passenger on
the box, took a note of the case; and on a proper
occasion I may be induced to publish it, unless some
Houynhm should whinny against me a chancery
injunction.
From these wild, Tartar-like stables of Connaught,
how vast was the transition to that perfection of elegance, and of adaptation between means and ends,
that reigned from centre to circumference through
the stables at Laxton! I, as it happened, could report to Lord Massey their earlier condition; he to
me could report their immediate changes. I won him
easily to an interest in my own Irish experiences, so
fresh, and in parts so grotesque, wilder also by much
in Connaught than in Lord Massey's county of Limerick; whilst he (without affecting any delight in
the hunting systems of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire) yet took pleasure in explaining to me those
characteristic features of the English midland hunting as centralized at Melton, which even then gave




396                THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
to it the supreme rank for brilliancy and unity of
effect amongst all varieties of the chase.*
Horses had formed the natural and introductory
topic of conversation between us. What we severally knew of Ireland, though in different quarters,
- what we both knew of Laxton, the barbaric splendor, and the. civilized splendor, -had naturally an
interest for us both in their contrasts (at one time
so picturesque, at another so grotesque), which illuminated our separate recollections. But my quick
instinct soon made me aware that a jealousy was
gathering    in Lord   Massey's mind       around   such   a
topic, as though too ostentatiously levelled to his
particular knowledge, or to his animal condition of
* If mere names were allowed to dazzle the judgment, how magnificent to a gallant young Englishman of twenty seems at first the
tiger-hunting of India, which yet (when examined searchingly) turns
out the meanest and most cowardly mode of hunting known to human
experience. Buffalo-hunting is much more dignified as regards the
courageous exposure of the hunter; but, from all accounts, its excitement is too momentary and evanescent; one rifle-shot, and the
crisis is past. Besides that, the generous and honest character of
the buffalo disturbs the cordiality of the sport. The very opposite
reason disturbs the interest of lion-hunting, especially at the Cape.
The lion is everywhere a cowardly wretch, unless when sublimed
into courage by famine; but, in southern Africa, he is the most
currish of enemies. Those who fancied so much adventurousness in
the lion conflicts of Mr. Gordon Cumming appear never to have read
the missionary travels of Mr. Moffat. The poor missionary, without
any arms whatever, came to think lightly of half a dozen lions seen
drinking through the twilight at the very same pond or river as
himself. Nobody can have any wish to undervalue the adventurous
gallantry of Mr. G. Cumming. But, in the single case of the Cape lion,
there is an unintentional advantage taken from the traditional name
uf lion, as though the Cape lion were such as that which ranges the
torrid zone.




VISIT TO LAXTON.           397
taste. But easily I slipped off into another key. At
Laxton, it happened that the library was excellent.
Founded by whom, I never heard; but certainly, when
used by a systematic reader, it showed itself to have
been systematically collected; it stretched pretty
equably through two centuries,-namely, from about
1600 to 1800,-and might, perhaps, amount to seventeen thousand volumes. Lord Massey was far from
illiterate; and his interest in books was unaffected,
if limited, and too often interrupted, by defective
knowledge. The library was dispersed through six
or seven small rooms, lying between the drawingroom in one wing, and the dining-room in the
opposite wing. This dispersion, however, already
furnished the ground of a rude classification. In
some one of these rooms was Lord Massey always
to be found, from the forenoon to the evening. And
was it any fault of his that his daughter, little
Grace, about two years old, pursued him down from
her nursery every morning, and insisted upon seeing
innumerable pictures, lurking (as she had discovered) in many different recesses of the library?
More and more from this quarter it was that we
drew the materials of our daily after-dinner conversation. One great discouragement arises commonly
to the student, where the particular library in which
he reads has been so disordinately collected that he
cannot pursue a subject once started. Now, at Lax,
ton, the books had been so judiciously brought
together, so many hooks and eyes connected them,
that the whole library formed what one might call a
series of strata, naturally allied, through which you
might quarry your way consecutively for many




398             TrTE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
months. On rainy days, and often enough one bad
occasion to say through rainy weeks, what a delightful resource did this library prove to both of us 
And one day it occurred to us, that, whereas the
stables and the library were both jewels of attraction, the latter had been by much the least costly.
Pretty often I have found, when any opening has
existed for making the computation, that, in a library
containing a fair proportion of books illustrated with
plates, about ten shillings a volume might be taken
as expressing, upon a sufficiently large number of
volumes, small and great, the fair average cost of
the whole. On this basis, the library at Laxton
would have cost less than nine thousand pounds.
On the other hand, thirty-five horses (hunters, racers,
roadsters, carriage-horses, etc.) might have cost
about eight thousand pounds, or a little more. But
the library entailed no permanent cost beyond the
annual loss of interest; the books did not eat, and required no aid from veterinary* surgeons; whereas,
for the horses, not only such ministrations were
intermittingly required, but a costly permanent establishment of grooms and helpers.   Lord Carbery,
who had received an elaborate Etonian education,
was even more earnestly a student than his friend
Lord Massey, who had probably been educated at
home under a private tutor. He read everything
* " Veterinary."-By the way, whence comes this odd-looking
word? The word veterana I have met with in monkish writers, to
express domesticated quadrupeds; and evidently from that word must
have originated the word veterinary. But the question is still but
one step removed; for, how came veterana by that acceptation in
rural economy?




VISIT TO LAXTON.           399
connected with general politics (meaning by general
nrot personal politics) and with social philosophy.
At Laxton, indeed, it was that I first saw Godwin's
" Political Justice; " not the second and emasculated
edition in octavo, but the original quarto edition,
with all its virus as yet undiluted of raw anti-social
Jacobinism.
At Laxton it was that I first saw the entire aggregate labors, brigaded, as it were, and paraded as if
for martial review, of tha+ most industrious benefactor to the early stages of our English historical
literature, Tholmas Hearne. Three hundred guineas,
I believe, had been the price paid cheerfully at one
time for a complete set of Hearne. At Laxton, also,
it was that first I saw the total array of works edited
by Dr. Birch. It was a complete armilustrium, a
recognitio, or mustering, as it were, not of pompous
Praetorian cohorts, or unique guardsmen, but of the
yeomanry, the militia, or what, under the old form
of expression, you might regard as the trained bands
of our literature -the fund from which ultimately,
or in the last resort, students look for the materials
of our vast and myriad-faced literature. A French
author of eminence, fifty years back, having occasion to speak of our English literature collectively,
in reference to the one point of its variety, being
also a man of honor, and disdaining that sort of
patriotism which sacrifices the truth to nationality,
speaks of our pretensions in these words: Les
Anglois qui ont une litterature infiniment plus variee
que la notre. This fact is a feature in our national
pretensions that could ever have been regarded
doubtfully merely through insufficient knowledge.




400           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
Dr. Johnson, indeed, made it the distinguishing
merit of the French, that they "have a book upon
every subject."  But Dr. Johnson was not only
capricious as regards temper and variable humors,
but as regards the inequality of his knowledge. Incoherent and unsystematic was Dr. Johnson's information in most cases. Hence his extravagant misappraisement of Knolles, the Turkish historian,
which is exposed so severely by Spittler, the Ger.
man, who, again, is himself miserably superficial in
his analysis of English history. Hence the feeble
credulity which Dr. Johnson showed with respect to
the forgery of De Foe (under the masque of Captain
Carleton) upon the Catalonian campaign of Lord
Peterborough. But it is singular that a literature,
so unrivalled as ours in its compass and variety,
should not have produced any, even the shallowest,
manual of itself. And thus it happens, for example,
that writers so laborious and serviceable as Birch
are in any popular sense scarcely known. I showed
to Lord Massey, among others of his works, that
which relates to Lord Worcester's (that is, Lord
Glamorgan's) negotiations with the Papal nuncio in
Ireland, about the year 1644, &c. Connected with
these negotiations were many names amongst Lord
Massey's own ancestors; so that here he suddenly
alighted upon a fund of archaeologic memorabilia,
connecting what interested him as an Irishman in
general with what most interested him as the head
of a particular family. It is remarkable, also, as an
indication of the general nobility and elevation which
had accompanied the revolution in his life, that concurrently with the constitutional torpor previously




VISIT TO LAXTON.          401
besetting him, had melted away the intellectual
torpor under which he had found books until recently
cf little practical value. Lady Carbery had herself
told me that the two revolutions went on simultaneously. He began to take an interest in literature
when life itself unfolded a new interest, under the
companionship of his youthful wife. And here, by
the way, as subsequently in scores of other instances,
I saw broad evidences of the credulity with which
we have adopted into our grave political faith the
rash and malicious sketches of our novelists. With
Fielding commenced the practice of systematically
traducing our order of country gentlemen.  His
picture of Squire Western is not only a malicious,
but also an incongruous libel. The squire's ordinary
language is impossible, being alternately bookish
and absurdly rustic. In reality, the conventional
dialect ascribed to the rustic order in general -to
peasants even more than to gentlemen —in our
English plays and novels, is a childish and fantastic
babble, belonging to no form of real breathing life;
nowhere intelligible; not in any province; whilst,
at the same time, all provinces - Somersetshire,
Devonshire, Hampshire - are confounded with our
midland counties; and positively the diction of Parricombe and Charricombe from Exmoor Forest is
mixed up with the pure Icelandic forms of the English lakes, of North Yorkshire, and of Northumberland. In Scotland, it needs but a slight intercourse
with the peasantry to distinguish various dialectsthe Aberdonian and Fifeshire, for instance, how
easily distinguished, even by an English alien, from
the western dialects of Ayrshire, &c. I And I have
26




402           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
heard it said, by Scottish purists in this matter, tlat
even Sir Walter Scott is chargeable with considerable licentiousness in the management of his colloquial Scotch. Yet, generally speaking, it bears the
strongest impress of truthfulness. But, on the other
hand, how false and powerless does this same Sir
Walter become, when the necessities of his tale
oblige him at any time to come amongst the English
peasantry I  His magic wand is instantaneously
broken; and he moves along by a babble of impossible forms, as fantastic as any that our London
theatres have traditionally ascribed to English rustics, to English sailors, and to Irislhmen universally.
Fielding is open to the same stern criticism, as a
deliberate falsehood-mnonger; and from the same
cause- want of energy to face the difficulty of
mastering a real living idiom. This defect in language, however, I cite only as one feature in the
complex falsehood which disfigures Fielding's portrait of the English country gentleman. Meantime
the question arises, Did he mean his Squire Western
for a representative portrait?  Possibly not. IIe
might design it expressly as a sketch of an individual, and by no means of a class. And the fault ma3
be, after all, not in him, the writer, but in us, the
falsely interpreting readers. But, be that as it may,
and figure to ourselves as we may the rustic squire
of a hundred to a hundred and fifty years back
(though manifestly at utter war, in the portraitures
of our novelists, with the realities handed down to
us by our Parliamentary annals), on that arena we
are dealing with objects of pure speculative curiosity.
Far different is the same question, when practically




VISIT TO LAXTON.           403
treated for purposes of present legislation or philosophic inference. One hundred years ago, such was
the difficulty of social intercourse, simply from the
difficulty of locomotion (though even then this difficulty was much lowered to the English, as beyond
comparison the most equestrian of nations), that it
is possible to imagine a shade of difference as still
distinguishing the town-bred man from the rustic;
though, considering the multiplied distribution of
our assize towns, our cathedral towns, our sea-ports,
and our universities, all so many recurring centres
of civility, it is not very easy to imagine such a thing
in an island no larger than ours. But can any
human indulgence be extended to the credulity
which assumes the same possibility as existing for
us in the very middle of the nineteenth century?
At a time when every week sees the town banker
drawn from our rural gentry; railway directors in
every quarter transferring themselves indifferently
from town to country, from country to town; lawyers,
clergymen, medical men, magistrates, local judges,
&c., all shifting in and out between town and
country; rural families all intermarrying on terms
of the widest freedom with town families; all again,
in the persons of their children, meeting for study
at the same schools, colleges, military academies,
&c.; by what furious forgetfulness of the realities
belonging to the case, has it been possible for writers
in public journals to persist in arguing national questions upon the assumption of a bisection in our population —a double current, on the one side steeped
to the lips in town prejudices, on the other side
traditionally sold to rustic views and doctrines?




404           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
Such double currents, like the Rhone flowing through
the Lake of Geneva, and yet refusing to intermingle,
probably did exist, and had an important significance
in the Low Countries of the fifteenth century, or
between the privileged cities and the unprivileged
country of Germany down to the Thirty Years4 War;
but, for us, they are in the last degree fabulous
distinctions, pure fairy tales; and the social economist or the historian who builds on such phantoms
as that of a rustic aristocracy still retaining ally
substantial grounds of distinction from the town
aristocracies, proclaims the hollowness of any and
all his doctrines that depend upon such assumptions.
Lord Carbery was a thorough fox-hunter. The foxhunting of the adjacent county of Leicestershire was
not then what it is now. The state of the land was
radically different for the foot of the horse, the
nature and distribution of the fences was different;
so that a class of horses thoroughly different was
then required. But then, as now, it offered the
finest exhibition of the fox-chase that is known in
Europe; and then, as now, this is the best adapted
among all known varieties of hunting to the exhibition of adventurous and skilful riding, and generally,
perhaps, to the development of manly and athletic
qualities. Lord Carbery, during the season, might be
immoderately addicted to this mode of sporting, having naturally a pleasurable feeling connected with his
own reputation as a skilful and fearless horseman.
But, though the chases were in those days longer
than they are at present, small was the amount of
time really abstracted from that which he had disposable for general purposes; amongst which purposes




VISIT TO LAXTON.           405
ranked foremost his literary pursuits. And, however
much he transcended the prevailing conception of
his order, as sketched by satiric and often ignorant
novelists, he might be regarded, in all that concerned
the liberalization of his views, as pretty fairly representing that order. Thus, through every real experience, the crazy notion of a rural aristocracy flowing
apart from the urban aristocracy, and standing on a
different level of culture as to intellect, of polish as to
manners, and of interests as to social objects, a notion at all times false as a fact, now at length became
with all thoughtful men monstrous as a possibility.
Meantime Lord Massey was reached by reports,
both through Lady Carbery and myself, of something
which interested him more profoundly than all earthly
records of horsemanship, or any conceivable questions connected with books. Lady Carbery, with a
view to the amusement of Lady Massey and my sister, for both of whom youth and previous seclusion
had created a natural interest in all such scenes,
accepted two or three times.n every week dinner
invitations to all the families (,n her visiting list, and
lying within her winter circle, which was measured,
by a radius of about seventeen miles. For, dreadful
as were the rods in those days, when the Bath, the
Bristol, or the Dover mail was equally perplexed
oftentimes to accomplish Mr. Palmer's rate of seven
miles an hour, a distance of seventeen was yet easily
accomplished in one hundred minutes by the powerful Laxton horses.  Magnificent was the Laxton
turn-out; and in the roomy travelling coach of Lady
Carbery, made large enough to receive upon occasion even a bed, it would have been an idle scruple




406           THE 3RPHAN HEIRESS.
to fear the crowding a party which mustered only
three besides myself. For Lord Massey uniformly
declined joining us; in which I believe that he was
right. A schoolboy like myself had fortunately no
dignity to lose. But Lord Massey, a needy Irish
peer (or, strictly speaking, since the Union no peer
at all, though still an hereditary lord), was bound to
be trebly vigilant over his surviving honors. This
he owed to his country as well as to his family. He
recoiled from what he figured to himself (but too
often falsely figured) as the haughty and disdainful
English nobility -all so rich, all so polished in manner, all so punctiliously correct in the ritual of bienseance. Lord Carbery might face them gayly and
boldly: for he was rich, and, although possessing
Irish estates and an Irish mansion, was a thorough
Englishman by education and early association.
"But I," said Lord Massey, "had a careless Irish
education, and am never quite sure that I may not
be trespassing on some mysterious law of English
good-breeding."  In vain I suggested to him that
most of what passed amongst foreigners and amongst
Irishmen for English hauteur was pure reserve, which,
among all people that were bound over by the inevitable restraints of their rank (imposing, it must be
remembered, jealous duties as well as privileges),
was sure to become the operative feeling. I contended that in the English situation there was no
escaping this English reserve, except by great impudence and defective sensibility; and that, if examined, reserve was the truest expression of respect
towards those who were its objects.  In vain did
Lady Carbery back me in this representation. He




VISIT TO LAXTON.         407
stood firm, and never once accompanied us to any
dinner-party. Northamptonshire, I know not why,
is (or then was) more thickly sown with aristocratic
families than any in the kingdom. Many elegant
and pretty women there naturally were in these parties; but undoubtedly our two Laxton baronesses
shone advantageously amongst them. A boy like
myself could lay no restraint upon the after-dinner
feelings of the gentlemen; and almost uniformly I
heard such verdicts passed upon the personal attractions of both, but especially Lady Massey, as tended
greatly to soothe the feelings of Lord Massey. It is
singular that Lady Massey universally carried off the
palm of unlimited homage. Lady Carbery was a
regular beauty, and publicly known for such; both
were fine figures, and apparently not older than
twenty-six; but in her Irish friend people felt something more thoroughly artless and feminine —for
the masculine understanding of Lady Carbery in
some way communicated its commanding expression
to her deportment. I reported to Lord Massey, in
terms of unexceptionable decorum, those flattering
expressions of homage, which sometimes from the
lips of young men, partially under the influence of
wine, had taken a form somewhat too enthusiastic
for a literal repetition to a chivalrous and adoring
husband.
Meantime, the reader has been kept long enough
at Laxton to warrant me in presuming some curiosity
or interest to have gathered within his mind about
the mistress of the mansion. Who was Lady Car



408               THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
bery? what was her present position, and what had
been her original position, in society? All readers
of Bishop Jeremy Taylor * must be aware of that
religious Lady Carbery, who was the munificent (and,
for her kindness, one might say the filial) patroness
of the all-eloquent and subtle divine. She died before the Restoration, and, consequently, before her
spiritual director could have ascended the Episcopal
* The Life of Jeremy Taylor, by Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, is most elaborately incorrect. From want of research, and a
chronology in some places thoroughly erroneous, various important
facts are utterly misstated; and what is most to be regretted, in a
matter deeply affecting the bishop's candor and Christian charity,
namely, a controversial correspondence with a Somersetshire Dissenting clergyman,the wildest misconception has vitiated the entire result.
That fractional and splintered condition, into which some person had
cut up the controversy with a view to his own more convenient study
of its chief elements, Heber had misconceived as the actual form in
which these parts had been originally exchanged between the disputants - a blunder of the worst consequence, and having the effect of
translating general expressions (such as recorded a moral indignation against ancient fallacies or evasions connected with the dispute)
into direct ebullitions of scorn or displeasure personally against his
immediate antagonist. And the charge of intolerance and defective
charity becomes thus very much stronger against the poor bishop,
because it takes the shape of a confession extorted by mere force of
truth from an else reluctant apologist, that would most gladly have
denied everything that he could deny. The Life needs more than
ever to be accurately written, since it has been thus chaotically misnarrated by a prelate of so much undeniable talent. I once began a
very elaborate life myself, and in these words: "Jeremy Taylor, the
most eloquent and the subtlest of Christian philosophers, was the son
of a barber, and the son-in-law of a king," - alluding to the tradition (imperfectly verified, I believe) that he married an illegitimate
daughter of Charles I. But this sketch was begun more than thirty
years ago; and I retired from the labor as too overwhelmingly exacting in all that related to the philosophy and theology of that man
uo " myriad-minded," and of that century so anarchical.




VISIT TO LAXTON.           409
throne. The title of Carbery was at that time an
earldom; the earl married again, and his second
countess was also a devout patroness of Taylor.
Having no peerage at hand, I do not know by what
mode of derivation the modern title of the nineteenth
century had descended from the old one of the seventeenth. I presume that some collateral branch of
the original family had succeeded to the barony when
the limitations of the original settlement had extinguished the earldom. But to me, who saw revived
another religious Lady Carbery, distinguished for her
beauty and accomplishments, it was interesting to
read of the two successive ladies who had borne that
title one hundred and sixty years before, and whom
no reader of Jeremy Taylor is ever allowed to forget,
since almost all his books are dedicated to one or
other of the pious family that had protected him.
Once more there was a religious Lady Carbery, supporting locally the Church of England, patronizing
schools, diffusing the most extensive relief to every
mode of indigence or distress. A century and a half
ago such a Lady Carbery was in South Wales, at the
" Golden Grove;" now such another Lady Carbery
was in central England, at Laxton. The two cases,
divided by six generations, interchanged a reciprocal interest, since in both cases it was young ladies,
under the age of thirty, that originated the movement, and in both cases these ladies bore the same
title; and I will therefore retrace rapidly the outline
of that contemporary case so familiarly known to
myself.
Colonel Watson and General Smith had been
amongst the earliest friends of my mother's family.




410           THTE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
Both served for many years in India: the first in the
Company's army, the other upon the staff of the
king's forces in that country. Each, about the same
time, made a visit to England, and each of them, I
believe, with the same principal purpose of providing
for the education of his daughter; for each happened
to have one sole child, which child, in each case, was
a girl of singular beauty; and both of these little
ladies were entitled to very large fortunes.  The
colonel and the general, being on brotherly terms of
intimacy, resolved to combine their plans for the
welfare of their daughters. What they wanted was,
not a lady that could teach them any special arts or
accomplishments -all these could be purchased; —
but the two qualifications indispensable for the difficult situation of lady-superintendent over two children so singularly separated from all relatives whatever, were, in the first place, knowledge of the world,
and integrity for keeping at a distance all showy
adventurers that might else offer themselves, with
unusual advantages, as suitors for the favor of two
great heiresses; and, secondly, manners exquisitely
polished. Looking to that last requisition, it seems
romantic to mention, that the lady selected for the
post, with the fullest approbation of both officers,
was one who began life as the daughter of a little
Lincolnshire farmer. What her maiden name had
been, I do not at this moment remember; but this
name was of very little importance, being soon
merged in that of Harvey, bestowed on her at the
altar by a country gentleman. The squire-not very
rich, I believe, but rich enough to rank as a matiimonial prize in the lottery of a country girl, whom




VISIT TO LAXTON.           411
one single step of descent in life might have brought
within sight of menial service- had been captivated
by the young woman's beauty; and this, at that
period, when accompanied by the advantages of
youth, must have been resplendent. I, who had
known her all my life, down to my sixteenth year
(during which year she died), and who naturally,
therefore, referred her origin back to some remote
ancestral generation, nevertheless, in her sole case,
was made to feel that there might be some justification for the Church of England discountenancing in
her Liturgy, " marriage with your great-grandmother;
neither shalt thou marry thy great-grandfather's
widow." She, poor thing! at that time was thinking little of marriage; for even then, though known
only to herself and herfemme de chambre, that dreadful organic malady (cancer) was raising its adder's
crest, under which finally she died. But, in spite of
languor interchanging continually with disfiguring
anguish, she still impressed one as a regal beauty.
Her person, indeed, and figure, would have tended
towards such a standard; but all was counteracted,
and thrown back into the mould of sweet natural
womanhood, by the cherubic beauty of her features.
These it was - these features, so purely childlike -
that reconciled me in a moment of time to greatgrandmotherhood. The stories about Ninon de l'Enclos are French fables - speaking plainly, are falsehoods; and sorry I am that a nation so amiable as
the French should habitually disregard truth, when
coming into collision with their love for the extravagant. But, if anything could reconcile me to these
monstrous old fibs about Ninon at ninety, it would be




412           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
the remembrance of this English enchantress on the
high-road to seventy. Guess, reader, what she must
have been at twenty-eight to thirty-two, when she
became the widow of the Gerenian horseman, Harvey.
How bewitching she must have looked in her widow's
caps! So had once thought Colonel Watson, who
happened to be in England at that period; and to
the charming widow this man of war propounded his
hand in marriage. This hand, this martial hand, for
reason inexplicable to me, Mrs. Harvey declined;
and the colonel bounced off in a rage to Bengal.
There were others who saw young Mrs. Harvey, as
well as Colonel Watson. And amongst them was
an ancient German gentleman, to what century belonging I do not know, who had every possible bad
quality known to European experience, and a solitary
good one, namely, eight hundred thousand pounds
sterling. The man's name was Schreiber. Schreiber
was an aggregate resulting from the conflux of all
conceivable bad qualities. That was the elementary
base of Schreiber; and the superstructure, or Corinthian decoration of his frontispiece, was, that
Schreiber cultivated one sole science, namely, the
science of taking snuff. Here were two separate
objects for contemplation: one, bright as Aurora -
that radiant Koh-i-noor, or mountain of light - the
eight hundred thousand pounds; the other, sad,
fuscous, begrired with the snuff of ages, namely, the
most ancient Schreiber. Ah! if they could have been
divided - these twin yoke-fellows - and that ladies
might have the privilege of choosing between them I
For the moment there was no prudent course open
to Mrs. Harvey, but that of marrying Schreiler




VISIT TO LAXTON.           413
(which she did, and survived); and, subsequently,
when the state of the market became favorable to
such "conversions " of stock, then the new Mrs.
Schreiber parted from Schreiber, and disposed of her
interest in Schreiber at a settled rate in three per
cent. consols and terminable annuities; for every
coupon of Schreiber receiving a bonus of so many
thousand pounds, paid down according to the rate
agreed on by the lawyers of the two parties; or,
strictly speaking, quarrelled on between the adverse
factions; for agreement it was hard to effect upon
any point. The deadly fear which had been breathed
into him by Mrs. Schreiber's scale of expenditure in
a Park Lane house proved her most salutary ally.
Coerced by this horrid vision, Schreiber consented
(which else he never would have done) to grant her
an allowance, for life, of about two thousand per
annum. Could that be reckoned an anodyne for the
torment connected with a course of Schreiber? I
pretend to no opinion.
Such were the facts: and exactly at this point in
her career had Mrs. Schreiber arrived, when, once
more, Colonel Watson and General Smith were visiting England, and for the last time, on the errand of
settling permanently some suitable establishment for
their two infant daughters. The superintendence of
this they desired to devolve upon some lady, qualified by her manners and her connections for introducing the young ladies, when old enough, into
general society. Mrs. Schreiber was the very person required. Intellectually she had no great pretensions; but these she did not need: her character
was irreproachable, her manners were polished, and




414           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
her own income placed her far above all mercenai)
temptations. She had not thought fit to accept the
station of Colonel Watson's wife, but some unavowed
feeling prompted her to undertake, with enthusiasm,
the duties of a mother to the colonel's daughter.
Chiefly on Miss Watson's account it was at first that
she extended her maternal cares to General Smith's
daughter; but very soon so sweet and winning was
the disposition of Miss Smith that Mrs. Schreiber
apparently loved her the best.
Both, however, appeared under a combination of
circumstances too singularly romantic to fail of
creating an interest that was universal. Both were
solitary children, unchallenged by any relatives.
Neither had ever known what it was to taste of love,
paternal or maternal. Their mothers had been long
dead -not consciously seen by either; and their
fathers, not surviving their last departure from home
long enough to see them again, died before returning
from India. What a world of desolation seemed to
exist for them! How silent was every hall into
which, by natural right, they should have bAld
entrance! Several people, kind, cordial people, men
and women, were scattered over England, that, during their days of infancy, would have delighted to
receive them; but, by some fatality, when they
reached their fifteenth year, and might have been
deemed old enough to undertake visits, all of these
paternal friends, except two, had died; nor had they,
by that time, any relatives at all that remained alive,
or were eligible as associates. Strange, indeed, was
the contrast between the silent past of their lives
and that populous future to which their large fortunes




VISIT TO LAXTON.          415
would probably introduce them. Throw open a door
in the rear that should lay bare the long vista of
chambers through which their childhood might symbolically be represented as having travelled- what
silence  what solemn solitude  Open a door in
advance that should do the same figurative office for
the future - suddenly what a jubilation! what a
tumult of festal greetings I
But the succeeding stages of life did not, perhaps,
in either case fully correspond to the early promise.
Rank and station the two young ladies attained; but
rank and station do not always throw people upon
prominent stages of action or display. Many a family, possessing both rank and wealth, and not undistinguished possibly by natural endowments of an
order fitted for brilliant popularity, never emerge
from obscurity, or not into any splendor that can be
called national; sometimes, perhaps, from a temper
unfitted for worthy struggles in the head of the
house; possibly from a haughty, possibly a dignified
disdain of popular arts, hatred of petty rhetoric,
petty sycophantic courtships, petty canvassing
tricks; or again, in many cases, because accidents
of ill-luck have intercepted the fair proportion of success due to the merits of the person; whence, oftentimes, a hasty self-surrender to impulses of permanent
disgust. But, more frequently than any other cause,
I fancy that impatierce of the long struggle required
for any distinguished success interferes to thin the
ranks of competitors for the prizes of public ambition.
Perseverance is soon refrigerated in those who fall
back under any result, defeated or not defeated, upon
splendid mansions and luxuries of every kind, already




416           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
far beyond their needs or their wishes. The soldier
described by the Roman satirist as one who had lost
his purse, was likely enough, under the desperation
of his misfortune, to see nothing formidable in any
obstacle that crossed his path towards another supplementary purse; whilst the very same obstacle
might reasonably alarm one who, in retreating, fell
back under the battlements of twenty thousand per
annum. In the present case, there was nothing at
all to move wonder in the final result under so continual a siege of temptation from the seductions of
voluptuous ease; the only wonder is, that one of the
young ladies, namely, Miss Watson, whose mind
was masculine, and in some directions aspiring,
should so readily have acquiesced in a result which
she might have anticipated from the beginning.
Happy was the childhood, happy the early dawn
of womanhood, which these two young ladies passed
under the guardianship of Mrs. Schreiber. Education in those days was not the austere old lady that
she is now. At least, in the case of young ladies,
her exactions were merciful and considerate. If Miss
Smith sang pretty well, and Miss Watson very well,
and with the power of singing difficult part music at
sight, they did so for the same reason that the lark
sings, and chiefly under the same gentle tuition -
that of nature, glad almighty nature, breathing inspiration from her Delphic tripod of happiness, and
health, and hope. Mrs. Schreiber pretended to no
intellectual gifts whatever; and yet, practically, she
was wiser than many who have the greatest. First
of all other tasks which she imposed upon her wards,
was that of daily exercise, and exercise carried to




VISIT TO LAXTON.             417
excess. She insisted upon four hours' exercise daily;
and, as young ladies walk fast, that would have
yielded, at the rate of three and a half miles per
hour, thirteen plus one third miles. But only two
and a half hours were given to walking; the other
one and a half to riding. No day was a day of rest;
absolutely none. Days so stormy that they "kept
the raven to her nest," snow the heaviest, winds the
most frantic, were never listened to as any ground
of reprieve from the ordinary exaction. I once knew
(that is, not personally, for I never saw her, but
through the reports of her many friends) an intrepid
lady,* living in the city of London (that is, technically
the city, as opposed to Westminster, etc., Mary-lebone, etc.), who made a point of turning out her newborn infants for a pretty long airing, even on the day
of their birth. It made no difference to her whether
the month were July or January; good, undeniable
air is to be had in either month. Once only she was
baffled, and most indignant it made her, because the
little thing chose to be born at half-past nine P. M.;
so that, by the time its toilet was finished, bonnet
and cloak all properly adjusted, the watchman was
calling "Past eleven, and a cloudy night;" upon
which, most reluctantly, she was obliged to countermand the orders for that day's exercise, and considered herself, like the Emperor Titus, to have lost a
day. But what came of the London lady's or of
* If I remember rightly, some account is given of this palaestric
lady and her stern Peedo-gymnastics, in a clever book on household
medicine and surgery under circumstances of inevitable seclusion from
professional aid, written about the year 1820-22, by Mr. Haden, a
surgeon of London.
27




418             THE ORPHAN HEIRESS
Mrs. Schreiber's Spartan discipline? Did the little
blind kittens of Gracechurch-street, who were ordered
by their penthesilean mamma, on the very day of
their nativity, to face the most cruel winds- did
they, or did Mrs. Schreiber's wards, justify, in after
life, this fierce discipline, by commensurate results of
hardiness?   In words written beyond all doubt by
Shakspeare, though not generally recognized as his,
it might have been said to any one of this Amazonian
brood, -
"Now mild may be thy life;
For a more blust'rous birth had never babe.
Quiet and gentle be thy temperature;
For thou'rt the rudeliest welcomed to this world
That e'er was woman's child. Happy be the sequel!
Thou hast as chiding a nativity
As fire, air, water, earth, and heaven, can make,
To herald thee from darkness! " —Pericles, Act III.
As to the city kittens, I heard that the treatment
prospered; but the man who reported this added,
that by original constitution they were as strong as
Meux's dray-horses; and thus, after all, they may
simply illustrate the old logical dictum ascribed to
some medical man, that the reason why London children of the wealthier classes are noticeable even to
a proverb for their robustness and bloom, is because
none but those who are already vigorous to excess,
and who start with advantages of health far beyond
the average scale, have much chance of surviving
that most searching quarantine, which, in such * an
* For myself, meantime, I am far from assenting to all the romantie abuse applied to the sewerage and the church-yards of London,
and even more violently to the river Thames. As a tidal river, even




VISIT TO LAXTON.                   419
atmosphere, they are summoned to weather at starting.   Coming, however, to the special case of Mrs
Schreiber's household, I am bound to report that in
no instance have I known young ladies so thoroughly
steeled against all the ordinary host of petty maladies which, by way of antithesis to the capital warfare of dangerous complaints, might be be called the
guerilla nosology; influenza, for instance, in milder
forms, catarrh, headache, toothache, dyspepsia in
transitory shapes, etc.      Always the spirits of the
two girls were exuberant; the enjoyment of life
seemed to be intense, and never did I know either
of them to suffer from ennui. My conscious knowl
edge of them commenced when I was about tw(
years old, they being from ten to twelve years older
beyond the metropolitan bridges, the Thames undoubtedly does
much towards cleansing the atmosphere, whatever may be the condition of its waters. And one most erroneous postulate there is from
which the Times starts in all its arguments, namely, this, that
supposing the Thames to be even a vast sewer, in short, the cloaca
maxima of London, there is in that arrangement of things any special
reproach applying to our mighty English capital. On the contrary,
all great cities that ever were founded have sought out, as their first
and elementary condition, the adjacency of some great cleansing
river. In the long process of development through which cities pass,
commerce and other functions of civilization come to usurp upon the
earlier functions of such rivers, and sometimes (through increasing
efforts of luxurious refinement) may come entirely to absorb them
But, in the infancy of every great city, the chief function for which
she looks to her river is that of purification. Be thou my huge cloaca, says infant Babylon to the Euphrates, says infant Nineveh to
the Tigris, says infant Rome to the Tiber. So far is that reproach
from having any special application to London. Smoke is not unwholesome; in many circumstances it is salubrious, as a counteragent to worse influences. Even sewerage is chiefly insalubrious from
it., moistrre, and not, in any degree yet demonstrated, from its odor.




420             THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
Mrs. Schreiber had been amongst my mother's earliest friends as Mrs. Harvey, and in days when my
mother had opportunities of doing her seasonable services. And as there were three special advantages
which adorned my mother, and which ranked in Mrs.
Schreiber's estimate as the highest which earth
could show, namely: 1~, that she spoke and wrote
English with singular elegance; 2~, that her manners were eminently polished; and 3~, that, even in
that early stage of my mother's life, a certain tone
of religiosity, and even of ascetic devotion, was
already diffused as a luminous mist that served to
exalt the coloring of her morality. To this extent
Mrs. Schreiber approved of religion; but nothing of
a sectarian cast could she have tolerated; nor had
she anything of that nature to apprehend from my
mother. Viewing my mother, therefore, as a pure
model of an English matron, and feeling for her,
besides, a deeper sentiment of friendship and affection than for anybody else on her visiting list, it was
natural enough that she should come with her wards
on an annual visit to " The Farm " (a pretty, rustic
dwelling occupied by my father in the neighborhood
of Manchester), and subsequently (when that arose)
to Greenhay.*     As my father always retained a
*" Greenhay." - As this name might, under a false interpretation,
seem absurd as including incongruous elements, I ought, in justification of my mother, who devised the name, to have mentioned that.hay was meant for the old English word (derived from the old French
word haie) indicating a rural enclosure. Conventionally, a hay or haie
was understood to mean a country-house within a verdant ring-fence,
narrower than a park: which word park, in Scotch use, means any
enclosure whatever, though not twelve feet square; but in English
use (witness Captain Burt's wages about Culloden parks) means an




VISIT TO LAXTON.                  421
town-house in Manchester (somewhere in Fountainstreet), and, though a plain, unpretending man, was
literary to the extent of having written a book, all
things were so arranged that there was no possibility of any commercial mementos ever penetrating
to the rural retreat of his family; such mementos, I
mean, as, by reviving painful recollections of that
ancient Schreiber, who was or ought to be by this
time extinct, would naturally be odious and distressing. Here, therefore, liberated from all jealousy of
overlooking eyes, such as haunted persons of their
expectations at Brighton, Weymouth, Sidmouth, or
Bath, Miss Smith and Miss Watson used to surrender themselves without restraint to their glad
animal impulses of girlish gayety, like the fawns of
antelopes when suddenly transferred from tigerhaunted thickets to the serene preserves of secluded
rajahs. On these visits it was, that I, as a young
pet whom they carried about like a doll from my
second to my eighth or ninth year, learned to know
enclosure measured by square miles, and usually accounted to want
its appropriate furniture, unless tenanted by deer. By the way, it
is a singular illustration of a fact illustrated in one way or other
every hour, namely, of the imperfect knowledge which England possesses of England, that, within these last eight or nine months, I
saw in the Illustrated London News an article assuming that the
red deer was unknown in England. Whereas, if the writer had ever
been at the English lakes during the hunting season, he might have
seen it actually hunted over Martindale forest and its purlieus.
Or, again, in Devonshire and Cornwall, over Dartmoor, etc., and, I
believe, in many other regions, though naturally narrowing as civilization widens. The writer is equally wrong in supposing the prevailing deer of our parks to be the roe deer, which are very little
known. It is the fallow deer that chiefly people our parks. Red
deer were also found at Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, when it was visited
by Dr. Johnson, as may be seen in "Boswell."




422           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
them, so as to take a fraternal interest in the succeeding periods of their lives. Their fathers I certainly had not seen; nor had they, consciously.
These two fathers must both have died in India,
before my inquiries had begun to travel in that
direction. But, as old acquaintances of my mother's, both had visited The Farm before I was born;
and about General Smith, in particular, there had
survived amongst the servants a remembrance which
seemed to us (that is to them and to myself) ludicrously awful, though, at that time, the practice was
common throughout our Indian possessions.  He
had a Hindoo servant with him; and this servant
every night stretched himself along the "sill " or
outer threshold of the door; so that he might have
been trodden on by the general when retiring to rest;
and from this it was but a moderate step in advance
to say that he was trodden on. Upon which basis
many other wonders were naturally reared.  Miss
Smith's father, therefore, furnished matter for a not
very amiable tradition; but Miss Smith herself was
the sweetest-tempered and the loveliest of girls, and
the most thoroughly English in the style of her
beauty. Far different every way was Miss Watson.
In person she was a finished beauty of the very highest pretensions, and generally recognized as such;
that is to say, her figure was fine and queenly; her
features were exquisitely cut, as regarded their forms
and the correspondences of their parts; and usually
by artists her face was said to be Grecian. Perhaps
the nostrils, mouth, and forehead, might be so; but
nothing could be less Grecian, or more eccentric in
form and position, than the eyes. They were placed




VISIT TO LAXTON.                  423
obliquely, in a way that I do not remember to have
seen repeated in any other face whatever.          Large
they were, and particularly long, tending to an
almond-shape; equally strange, in fact, as to color,
shape, and position: but the remarkable position of
these eyes would have absorbed your gaze to the
obliteration of all other features or peculiarities in
the face, were it not for one other even more remarkable distinction affecting her complexion: this
lay in a suffusion that mantled upon her cheeks, of
a color amounting almost to carmine.         Perhaps it
might be no more than what Pindar meant by the
7oegv8eoov cWs egaWos, which Gray has falsely* translated as " the bloom of young desire, and PURPLE light
of love." It was not unpleasing, and gave a lustre
to the eyes, but it added to the eccentricity of the
face; and by all strangers it was presumed to be an
artificial color, resulting from some mode of applying
* Falsely, because noot(p7Qoc, rarely, perhaps, means in the Greek
use what we mean properly by purple, and could not mean it in the
Pindaric passage; much oftener it denotes some shade of crimson, or
else of puniceus, or blood-red. Gibbon was never more mistaken than
when he argued tlat all the endless disputing about the purpureus of
the ancients might have been evaded by attending to its Greek
designation, namely, porphyry-colored: since, said he, porphyry is
always of the same color. Not at all. Porphyry, I have heard,
runs through as large a gamut of hues as marble; but, if this should
be an exaggeration, at all events porphyry is far from being so
monochromatic as Gibbon's argument would presume. The truth
is, colors were as loosely and latitudinarially distinguished by the
Greeks and Romans as degrees of affinity and consanguinity are
everywhere. My son-in-law, says a woman, and she means my step.
son. My cousin, she says, and she means any mode of relationship in
the wide, wide world. Nos neveux, says a French writer, and means
not.our nephews, but our grandchildren, or more generally our descendants,




424           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
a preparation more brilliant than rouge. But to us
children, so constantly admitted to her toilet, it was
well known to be entirely natural. Generally speaking, it is not likely to assist the effect of a young
woman's charms, that she presents any such variety
in her style of countenance as could naturally be
called odd.  But Miss Watson, by the somewhat
scenical effect resulting from the harmony between
her fine figure and her fine countenance, triumphed
o er all that might else have been thought a blemish;
and when she was presented at court on occasion of
her marriage, the king himself pronounced her, to
friends ot Mrs. Schreiber, the most splendid of all
the brides that had yet given lustre to his reign.
In such cases the judgments of rustic, undisciplined
tastes, though marked by narrowness, and often by
involuntary obedience to vulgar ideals (which, for
instance, makes them insensible to all the deep sanctities of beauty that sleep amongst the Italian varieties of the Madonna face), is not without its appropriate truth.  Servants and rustics all thrilled in
sympaimy with the sweet English loveliness of Miss
Smith; but all alike acknowledged, with spontaneous
looks cf homage, the fine presence and finished
beauty of Miss Watson. Naturally, from the splendor with which they were surrounded, and the notoriety of their great expectations,- so much to dazzle
in one direction, and, on the other hand, something
for as tender a sentiment as pity, in the fact of both
from so early an age having been united in the calamity of orphanage,- go where they might, these young
women drew all eyes upon themselves; and from
thn audible comparisons sometimes made between




VISIT TO LAXTON.           425
them, it might be imagined that if ever there were a
situation fitted to nourish rivalship and jealousy, between two girls, here it might be anticipated in daily
operation. But, left to themselves, the yearnings of
the female heart tend naturally towards what is
noble; and, unless where it has been tried too
heavily by artificial incitements applied to the pride,
I do not believe that women generally are disposed to
any unfriendly jealousy of each other. Why should
they? Almost every woman, when strengthened in
those charms which nature has given to her by such
as she can in many ways give to herself, must feel
that she has her own separate domain of empire unaffected by the most sovereign beauty upon earth.
Every man that ever existed has probably his own
peculiar talent (if only it were detected), in which
he would be found to excel all the rest of his race.
And in every female face possessing any attractions
at all, no matter what may be her general inferiority,
there lurks some secret peculiarity of expression -
some mesmeric individuality - which is valid within
its narrower range-limited superiority over the
supreme of beauties within a narrow circle.'It is
unintelligibly but mesmerically potent, this secret
fascination attached to features oftentimes that are
absolutely plain; and as one of many cases within
my own range of positive experience, I remember in
confirmation, at this moment, that in a clergyman's
family, counting three daughters, all on a visit to
my mother, the youngest, Miss F-  P, who
was strikingly and memorably plain, never walked
out on the Clifton Downs unattended, but she was
followed home by a crowd of admiring men, anxious




426           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
to learn her rank and abode; whilst the middle
sister, eminently handsome, levied no such visible
tribute of admiration on the public.
I mention this fact, one of a thousand similar facts,
simply by way of reminding the reader of what he
must himself have often witnessed; namely, that no
woman is condemned by nature to any ignoble
necessity of repining against the power of other
women; her own may be far more confined, but
within its own circle may possibly, measured against
that of the haughtiest beauty, be the profounder.
However, waiving the question thus generally put
here, and as it specially affected these two young
women that virtually were sisters, any question of
precedency in power or display, when brought into
collision with sisterly affection, had not a momentary
existence. Each had soon redundant proofs of her
own power to attract suitors without end; and, for
the more or the less, that was felt to be a matter of
accident. Never, on this earth, I am satisfied, did
that pure sisterly love breathe a more steady inspiration than now into the hearts and through the acts
of these two generous girls; neither was there any
sacrifice which either would have refused to or for
the other. The period, however, was now rapidly
shortening during which they would have any opportunity for testifying this reciprocal love. Suitors
were flocking around them, as rank as cormorants in
a storm. The grim old chancellor (one, if not both,
of the young ladies having been a ward in Chancery)
had all his legal jealousies awakened on their behalf.
The worshipful order of adventurers and fortunehunters, at that time chiefly imported from Ireland,




VISIT TO LAXTON.          427
as in times more recent from Germany, and other
inoustachoed parts of the continent, could not live
under the raking fire of Mrs. Schreiber, on the one
side, with her female tact and her knowledge of life,
and of the chancellor, with his huge discretional
power, on the other. That particular chancellor,
whom the chronology of the case brought chiefly
into connection with Miss Watson's interests, was
(if my childish remembrances do not greatly mislead
me) the iracund Lord Thurlow. Lovers and wooers
this grim lawyer regarded as the most impertinent
order of animals in universal zoology; and of these,
in Miss Watson's case, he had a whole menagerie to
tend. Penelope, according to some school-boy remembrance of mine, had one hundred and eighteen
suitors. These young ladies had almost as many.
Heavens! what a crew of Comus to follow or to
lead! And what a suitable person was this truculent
old lord on tl._ woolsack to enact the part of shepherd-Corydon, suppose, or Alphesibseus —to this
goodly set of lambs! How he must have admired
the hero of the " Odyssey," who in one way or other
accounted for all the wooers that "sorned" upon
his house, and had a receipt for their bodies from the
grave-diggeI of Ithaca! But even this wily descendant of Sisyphus would have found it no such easy
matter to deal with the English suitors, who were
not the feeble voluptuaries of the Ionian Islands,
that suffered themselves to be butchered as unresistingly as sheep in the shambles,- actually standing at
one end of a banqueting-room to be shot at with
bows and arrows, not having pluck enough to make
a rush,- but were game men; all young, strong, rich,




428           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
and in most cases technically "noble;" all, besides,
contending for one or other of two prizes a thousand
times better fitted to inspire romantic ardor than the
poor, withered Penelope.
One, by the way, amongst these suitors (I speak
of those who addressed Miss Watson), merits a
separate commemoration, as having drawn from
Sheridan his very happiest impromnvtu- and an
impromptu that was really such- (the rarest of all
things from Sheridan). This was Lord Belgrave,
eldest son of Lord Grosvenor-then an earl, but at
some period, long subsequent to this, raiPed to the
Marquisate of Westminster, a title naturally suggesting in itself a connection with the vast Grosv enor
property, sweeping across the whole area of that
most aristocratic region in the metropolis now called
Belgravia, which was then a name unknown; and this
Hesperian region had as yet no architectural value,
and consequently no ground-rent value, simply
because the world of fashion and distinction had as
yet not expanded itself in that direction. In those
days the territorial importance of this great house
rested exclusively upon its connection with the
county of Chester. In this connection it was that
the young Viscount Belgrave had been introduced,
by his family interest, into the House of Commons;
he had delivered his maiden speech with some effect;
and had been heard favorably on various subsequent
occasions; on one of which it was that, to the extreme surprise of the house, he terminated his speech
with a passage from Demosthenes -not presented
in English, but in sounding Attic Greek. Latin is a
privileged dialect in parliament. But Greek! It




VISIT TO LAXTON.           429
would not have been at all more startling to the
usages of the house, had his lordship quoted Persic
or Telinga. Still, though felt as something verging
on the ridiculous, there was an indulgent feeling to
a young man fresh from academic bowers, which
would not have protected a mature man of the world.
Everybody bit his lips, and as yet did not laugh.
But the final issue stood on the edge of a razor.
A gas, an inflammable atmosphere, was trembling
sympathetically through the whole excited audience;
all depended on a match being applied to this gas
whilst yet in the very act of escaping. Deepest
silence still prevailed; and, had any commonplace
member risen to address the house in an ordinary
business key, all would have blown over. Unhappily
for Lord Belgrave, in that critical moment up rose
the one solitary man, to wit, Sheridan, whose look,
whose voice, whose traditional character, formed a
prologue to what was coming. Here let the reader
understand that, throughout the " Iliad," all speeches
or commands, questions or answers, are introduced
by Homer under some peculiar formula. For instan e,
replies are usually introduced thus:
" But him answering thus addressed the sovereign Agamemnon;"
or, in sonorous Greek:
" Ton d' apameibomenos prosephe krei6n Agamemnon;"
or, again, according to the circumstances:
"But him sternly surveying saluted the swift-footed Achilles;"
"Ton d' al,' upodra idon, prosephe podas okus Achilleus."




430           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
This being premised, and that every one of the
audience, though pretending to no Greek, yet, from
his school-boy remembrances, was as well acquainted
with theseformulce as with the scriptural formula of
Verily, verily, I say unto you, &c., Sheridan, without
needing to break its force by explanations, solemnly
opened thus:
" Ton d' apameibomenos prosephe Sheridanios heros."
Simply to have commenced his answer in Greek
would have sufficiently met the comic expectation
then thrilling the house; but, when it happened
that this Greek (so suitable to the occasion) was also
the one sole morsel of Greek that everybody in that
assembly understood, the effect, as may be supposed,
was overwhelming, and wrapt the whole house in
what might be called a fiery explosion of laughter.
Meantime, as prizes in the matrimonial lottery,
and prizes in all senses, both young ladies were soon
carried off. Miss Smith, whose expectations I never
happened to hear estimated, married a great West
India proprietor; and Miss Watson, who (according
to the popular report) would succeed to six thousand
a year on her twenty-first birthday, married Lord
Carbery.  Miss Watson inherited also from her
father something which would not generally be rated
very highly, namely, a chancery lawsuit, with the
East India Company for defendant. However, if the
company is a potent antagonist, thus far it is an
eligible one, that, in the event of losing the suit, the
honorable company is solvent; and such an event,
after some nine or ten years' delay, did really befall
the company. The question at issue respected some




VISIT TO LAXTON.          431
docks which Colonel Watson had built for the company in some Indian port. And in the end this lawsuit, though so many years doubtful in its issue,
proved very valuable to Miss Watson; I have heard
(but cannot vouch for it) not less valuable than
that large part of her property which had been paid
over without demur upon her twenty-first birth-day.
Both young ladies married happily; but in marriage
they found their separation, and in that separation a
shock to their daily comfort which was never replaced
to either. As to Miss Smith's husband, I did not
know him; but Lord Carbery was every way an
estimable man; in some things worthy of admiration; and his wife never ceased to esteem and
admire him. But she yearned for the society of her
early friend; and this being placed out of her reach
by the accidents of life, she fell early into a sort of
disgust with her own advantages of wealth and
station, which, promising so much, were found able
to perform nothing at all in this first and last desire
of her heart. A portrait of her friend hung in the
drawing-room.; but Lady Carbery did not willingly
answer the questions that were sometimes prompted
by its extraordinary loveliness. There are women
to whom a female friendship is indispensable, and
cannot be supplied by any companion of the other
sex. That blessing, therefore, of her golden youth,
turned eventually into a curse for her after-life; for
I believe that, through one accident or another, they
never met again after they became married women.
To me, as one of those who had known and loved
Miss Smith, Lady Carbery always turned the more
Funny side of her nature; but to the world generally




432           TIIE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
she presented a chilling and somewhat severe aspect
-as to a vast illusion that rested upon pillars of
mockery and frauds. Honors, beauty of the first
order, wealth, and the power which follows wealth
as its shadow -what could these do? what had
they done? In proportion as they had settled heavily upon herself, she had found them to entail a load
of responsibility; and those claims upon her she had
labored to fulfil conscientiously; but else they had
only precipitated the rupture of such ties as had
given sweetness to her life.
From the first, therefore, I had been aware, on this
visit to Laxton, that Lady Carbery had changed, and
was changing. She had become religious; so much
[ knew from my sister's letters. And, in fact, this
change had been due to her intercourse with my
mother. But, in reality, her premature disgust with
the world would, at any rate, have made her such;
and, had any mode of monastic life existed for Protestants, I believe that she would before this have
entered it, supposing Lord Carbery to have consented. People generally would have stated the
case most erroneously; they would have said that
she was sinking into gloom under religious influences; whereas the very contrary was the truth;
namely, that, having sunk into gloomy discontent
with life, and its miserable performances as contrasted with its promises, she sought relief and
support to her wounded feelings from religion.
But the change brought with it a difficult trial to
myself. She recoiled, by natural temperament and
by refinement of taste, from all modes of religious
enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a large word, and in




VISIT TO LAXTON.          433
many cases I could not go along with her; but
canting of all descriptions was odious to both of us
alike. To cultivate religious knowledge in an intellectual way, she very well understood that she must
study divinity. And she relied upon me for assisting her. Not that she made the mistake of ascribing
to me any knowledge on that subject; but I could
learn; and, whatsoever I had learned, she knew, by
experience, that I could make abundantly plain to
her understanding. Wherever I did not understand,
I was far too sincere to dissemble that fact. Where
I did understand, I could enable her to understand.
On the subject of theology, it was not easy indeed
for anybody, man or boy, to be more ignorant than
myself. My studies in that field had been none at
all. Nor was this any subject for wonder, or (considering my age) for blame. In reality, to make
theology into a captivating study for the young, it
must be translated into controversial theology. And
in what way could such a polemic interest be evoked
except through political partisanship?  But such
partisanship connects itself naturally with the irritability of sectarianism, and but little with the majestic
repose of a church such as the Romish or the Anglican, founded upon the broad basis of national
majorities, and sheltered from danger, or the sense
of danger, by state protection. Dissenters stand
upon another footing. The Dissenter from the national church, whether in England or in France, is
reminded by his own distinguishing religious opinions of the historic struggles through which those
opinions have travelled. The doctrines which give
28




434           TIRE ORPHAN HEIRESS
to his own sect a peculiar denomination are aisc
those which record its honorable political conflicts;
so that his own connection, through his religious
brotherhood, with the civil history of his country,
furnishes a standing motive of pride for some acquaintance more or less with divinity; since it is by
deviating painfully, conscientiously, and at some
periods dangerously, from the established divinity,
that his fathers have achieved their station in the
great drama of the national evolution.
But, whilst I was ignorant of theology, as a direct
and separate branch of study, the points are so many
at which theology inosculates with philosophy, and
with endless casual and random suggestions of the
self-prompted reason, that inevitably from that same
moment in which I began to find a motive for directing my thoughts to this new subject, I wanted not
something to say that might have perplexed an antagonist, or (in default of such a vicious associate)
that might have amused a friend, more especially a
friend so predisposed to a high estimate of myself
as Lady Carbery. Sometimes I did more than amuse
her; I startled her, and I even startled myself, with
distinctions that to this hour strike me as profoundly
just, and as undeniably novel. Two out of many I
will here repeat; and with the more confidence, that
in, these two I can be sure of repeating the exact
thoughts; whereas, in very many other cases, it
would not be so certain that they might not have
been insensibly modified by cross-lights or disturbing shadows from intervening speculations.
1. Lady Carbery one day told me that she could
not see any reasonable ground for what is said of




VISIT TO LAXTON.          435
Christ, and elsewhere of John the Baptist, that he
opened his mission by preaching "repentance."
Why " repentance "? Why then, more than at any
other time? Her reason for addressing this remark
to me was, that she fancied there might be some
error in the translation of the Greek expression. I
replied that, in my opinion, there was; and that I
had myself always been irritated by the entire irrelevance of the English word, and by something very
like cant, on which the whole burden of the passage
is thrown. Iow was it any natural preparation for
a vast spiritual revolution, that men should first of
all acknowledge any special duty of repentance?
The repentance, if any movement of that nature
could intelligibly be supposed called for, should
more naturally follow this great revolution - which,
as yet, both in its principle and in its purpose, was
altogether mysterious- than herald it, or ground it.
In my opinion, the Greek word metanoia concealed a
most profound meaning -a meaning of prodigious
compass -which bore no allusion to any ideas
whatever of repentance. The meta carried with it
an emphatic expression of its original idea - the
idea of transfer, of translation, of transformation;
or, if we prefer a Grecian to a Roman apparelling,
the idea of a metamorphosis. And this idea, to what
is it applied? Upon what object is this idea of
spiritual transfiguration made to bear? Simply upon
the noetic or intellectual faculty-the faculty of
shaping and conceiving things under their true rela.
tions. The holy herald of Christ, and Christ himself
the finisher of prophecy, made proclamation alike of
the same mysterious summons, as a baptism or rite




436           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
of initiation, namely, METravoec.  Henceforth transfigure your theory of moral truth; the old theory
is laid aside as infinitely insufficient; a new and
spiritual revelation is established. Metanoeite - contemplate moral truth as radiating from a new centre;
apprehend it under transfigured relations.
John the Baptist, like other earlier prophets, delivered a message which, probably enough, he did not
himself more than dimly understand, and never in its
full compass of meaning. Christ occupied another
station. Not only was he the original Interpreter,
but he was himself the Author -Founder, at once,
and Finisher - of that great transfiguration applied
to ethics, which he and the Baptist alike announced
as forming the code for the new and revolutionary
era now opening its endless career. The human race
was summoned to bring a transfiguring sense and
spirit of interpretation (metanoia) to a transfigured
ethics -an altered organ to an altered object. This
is by far the grandest miracle recorded in Scripture.
No exhibition of blank power -not the arresting of
the earth's motion -not the calling back of the dead
unto life, can approach in grandeur to this miracle
which we all daily behold; namely, the inconceivable mystery of having written and sculptured upon
the tablets of man's heart a new code of moral
distinctions, all modifying-many reversing-the
old ones. What would have been thought of any
prophet, if he should have promised to transfigure
the celestial mechanics; if he had said, I will create
a new pole-star, a new zodiac, and new laws of
gravitation; briefly, I will make new earth and new
heal ens? And yet a thousand times more awful it




VISIT TO LAXTON.           437
was to undertake the writing of new laws upon the
spiritual conscience of man. Metanoeite (was the
cry from the wilderness), wheel into a new centre
your moral system; geocentric has that system been
up to this hour —that is, having earth and the
earthly for its starting-point; henceforward make it
heliocentric (that is, with the sun, or the heavenly for
its principle of motion).
2. A second remark of mine was, perhaps, not
more important, but it was, on the whole, better calculated to startle the prevailing preconceptions; for,
as to the new system of morals introduced by Christ,
generally speaking, it is too dimly apprehended in
its great differential features to allow of its miraculous character being adequately appreciated; one
flagrant illustration of which is furnished by our
experience in Affghanistan, where some officers,
wishing to impress Akhbar Khan with the beauty of
Christianity, very judiciously repeated to him the
Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount, by
both of which the Khan was profoundly affected, and
often recurred to them; but others, under the notion
of conveying to him a more comprehensive view of
the Scriptural ethics, repeated to him the Ten Commandments; although, with the sole exception of
the two first, forbidding idolatry and Polytheism,
there is no word in these which could have displeased or surprised a Pagan, and therefore nothing
characteristic of Christianity. Meantime my second
remark was substantially this which follows: What
is a religion? To Christians it means, over and
above a mode of worship, a dogmatic (that is, a doctrinal) system; a great body of doctrinal truths,




438           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
moral and spiritual. But to the ancients (to the
Greeks and Romans, for instance), it meant nothing of the kind. A religion was simply a cultus, a
Ograzea, a mode of ritual worship, in which there
might be two differences, namely: 1. As to the
particular deity who furnished the motive to the
worship; 2. As to the ceremonial; or mode of conducting the worship. But in no case was there so
much as a pretence of communicating any religious
truths, far less any moral truths.  The obstinate
error rooted in modern minds is, that, doubtless, the
moral instruction was bad, as being heathen; but
that still it was as good as heathen opportunities
allowed it to be. No mistake can be greater. Moral
instruction had no existence even in the plan or intention of the religious service. The Pagan priest or
flamen never dreamed of any function like that of
teaching as in any way connected with his office.
He no more undertook to teach morals than to teach
geography or cookery. He taught nothing. What
he undertook was, simply to do: namely, to present
authoritatively (that is, authorized and supported by
some civil community, Corinth, or Athens, or Rome,
which he represented) the homage and gratitude of
that community to the particular deity adored. As
to morals or just opinions upon the relations to man
of the several divinities, all this was resigned to the
teaching of nature; and for any polemic functions
the teaching was resigned to the professional philosophers - academic, peripatetic, stoic, etc. By
religion it was utterly ignored.
The reader must do me the favor to fix his attention upon the real question at issue. What I say



VISIT TO LAXTO..           439
what then I said to Lady Carbery -is this: that,
by failing to.notice as a differential feature of Christianity this involution of a doctrinal part, we elevate
Paganism to a dignity which it never dreamed of.
Thus, for instance, in the Eleusinian mysteries, what
was the main business transacted? I, for my part,
in harmony with my universal theory on this subject,
-namely, that there could be no doctrinal truth
delivered in a Pagan religion, -have always maintained that the only end and purpose of the mysteries was a more solemn and impressive worship of a
particular goddess. Warburton, on the other hand,
would insist upon it that some great affirmative doctrines, interesting to man, such as the immortality
of the soul, a futurity of retribution, &c., might be
here commemorated. And now, nearly a hundred
years after Warburton, what is the opinion of scholars upon this point? Two of the latest and profoundest I will cite:- 1. Lobeck, in his "Aglaophamus," expressly repels all such notions; 2.
Otfried Mueller, in the twelfth chapter, twentyfourth section, of his "Introduction to a System of
Mythology," says: "I have here gone on the assumption which I consider unavoidable, that there
was no regular instruction, no dogmatical communication, connected with the Grecian worship in general. There could be nothing of the kind introduced
into the public service from the way in which it was
conducted, for the priest did not address the people
at all."  These opinions, which exactly tallied with
my own assertion to Lady Carbery, that all religion
amongst the Pagans resolved itself into a mere system of ceremonial worship, a pompous and elaborate




440          THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
cultus, were not brought forward in Germany until
about ten or twelve years ago; whereas, my doctrine was expressly insisted on in 1800; that is,
forty years earlier than any of these German writers
had turned their thoughts in that direction.
Had I, then, really all that originality on this subject which for many years I secretly claimed? Substantially I had, because this great distinction between the modern (or Christian) idea of " a religion"
and the ancient (or Pagan) idea of "a religion," I
had nowhere openly seen expressed in words. To
myself exclusively I was indebted for it. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that this conception must have
been long ago germinating in the world, and perhaps
oearing fruit. This is past all denial, since, about
thirteen or fourteen years ago, I read in some journal (a French journal, I think) this statement:
namely, that some oriental people-Turks, according to my present impression, but it might have been
Arabs- make an old traditional distinction (so said
the French journal) between what they call "religions of the book" and all other religions. The
religions of the book, according to them, are three,
all equally founded upon written and producible documents, namely: first, the Judaic system, resting
upon the Pentateuch, or more truly, I should imagine, upon the Law and the Prophets; secondly, the
Christian system, resting upon the Old and New
Testaments; thirdly, the Mahometan system, resting confessedly upon the Koraa. The very meaning, therefore, of styling these systems, by way of
honorable distinction, religions of the book, is, not
that accidentally they had written vouchers for their




VISIT TO LAXTON.           441
creed, whereas the others had only oral vouchers,
but that they severally offer to men's acceptance a
large body of philosophic truth, such as requires and
presupposes a book. Whereas the various religions
contradistinguished from these three-namely, the
whole body of Pagan idolatries -are mere forms of
adoration addressed to many different divinities;
and the brief reason why they are essentially opposed to religions of the book is, not that they have
not, but logically that they cannot have, books or
documents, inasmuch as they have no truths to
deliver. They do not profess to teach anything
whatsoever. What they profess, as their justifying
distinction, is, to adore a certain deity, or a certain
collective Pantheon, according to certain old authorized forms —authorized, that is to say, by fixed,
ancient, and oftentimes local traditions.
What was the great practical inference from the
new distinction which I offered? It was this: that
Christianity (which included Judaism as its own
germinal principle, and Islamism as its own adautation to a barbarous and imperfect civilization) carried along with itself its own authentication; since,
whilst other religions introduced men simply to ceremonies and usages, which could furnish no aliment
or material for their intellect, Christianity provided
an eternal palcestra or place of exercise for the human
understanding vitalized by human affections: for
every problem whatever, interesting to the human
intellect, provided only that it bears a moral aspect,
immediately passes into the field of religious speculation. Religion had thus become the great organ
of human culture. Lady Carbery advanced half-way




442           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
to meet me in these new views, finding my creden.
tials as a theologian in my earnestness and my
sincerity. She herself was painfully and sorrowfully
in earnest. She had come at this early age of seven
or eight and twenty, to the most bitter sense of hollowness, and (in a philosophic sense) of treachery
as under-lying all things that stood round her; and
she sought escape, if escape there were, through
religion. Religion was to be sought in the Bible.
But was the Bible intelligible at the first glance?
Far from it. Search the Scriptures, was the cry in
Protestant lands amongst all people, however much
at war with each other. But I often told her that
this was a vain pretence, without some knowledge
of Greek. Or perhaps not always and absolutely a
pretence; because, undoubtedly, it is true that
oftentimes mere ignorant simplicity may, by bringing into direct collision passages that are reciprocally illustrative, restrain an error or illuminate a
truth. And a reason, which I have since given in
print (a reason additional to Bentley's), for neglecting the thirty thousand various readings collected
by the diligence of the New Testament collators,
applied also to this case, namely: That, first, the
transcendent nature, and, secondly, the recurrent
nature, of Scriptural truths cause them to surmount
verbal disturbances. A doctrine, for instance, which
is sowed broadcast over the Scriptures, and recurs,
on an average, three times in every chapter, cannot
be affected by the casual inaccuracy of a phrase,
since the phrase is continually varied. And, therefore, I would not deny the possibility of an effectual
searching by very unlearned persons. Our author,




VISIT TO LAXTON.          443
ized translators of the Bible in the Shakspearian age
were not in any exquisite sense learned men; they
were very able men, and in a better sense able than
if they had been philologically profound scholars,
which at that time, from the imperfect culture of
philology, they could not easily have been; men
they were whom religious feeling guided correctly
in choosing their expressions, and with whom the
state of the language in some respects cooperated,
by furnishing a diction more homely, fervent, and
pathetic, than would now be available. For their
apostolic functions English was the language most
in demand. But in polemic or controversial cases
Greek is indispensable. And of this Lady Carbery
was sufficiently convinced by my own demur on the
word metanota. If I were right, how profoundly
wrong must those have been whom my new explanation superseded. She resolved, therefore, immediately on my suggesting it, that she would learn
Greek; or, at least, that limited form of Greek which
was required for the New Testament. In the language of Terence, dictum factum- no sooner said
than done. On the very next morning we all rode
in to Stamford, our nearest town for such a purpose,
and astounded the bookseller's apprentice by ordering four copies of the Clarendon Press Greek Testament, three copies of Parkhurst's Greek and English
Lexicon, and three copies of some grammar, but
what I have now forgotten. The books were to come
down by the mail-coach without delay.  Consequently, we were soon at work. Lady Massey and
my sister, not being sustained by the same interest
as Lady Carbery, eventually relaxed in their atten



444              THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
tion. But Lady Carbery was quite in earnest, and
verysoon became expert in the original language of
the New Testament.
I wished much that she should have gone on to
the study of Herodotus. And I described to her
the situation of the vivacious and mercurial Athenian, in the early period of Pericles, as repeating in
its main features, for the great advantage of that
Grecian Froissart, the situation of Adam during his
earliest hours in Paradise, himself being the describer to the affable archangel. The same genial
climate there was; the same luxuriation of nature in
her early prime; the same ignorance of his own
origin in the tenant of this lovely scenery; and the
same eager desire to learn it.* The very truth, and
mere facts of history, reaching Herodotus through
such a haze of remote abstraction, and suffering a
sort of refraction at each translation from atmosphere
\o atmosphere, whilst continually the uninteresting
parts dropped away as the whole moved onwards,
* " About me round I saw
Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains,
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these
Creatures that lived and moved, and walked or flew;
Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled;
With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflowed.
Myself I then perused, and limb by limb
Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran
With supple joints, as lively vigor led;
But who I was or where, or from what cause,
Knew not." - Paradise Lost, Book viii.
The who, the where (in any extended sense, that is, as regarded
the external relations of his own country), and the from what cause -
all these were precisely what the Grecian did not know, and first
Icarned from Herodotus.




VISIT TO LAXTON.           445
anavoidably assumed the attractions of romance.
And thus it has happened that the air of marvellousness, which seems connected with the choice and
preferences of Herodotus, is in reality the natural
gift of his position. Culling from a field of many
nations and many generations, reasonably he preferred such narratives as, though possible enough,
wore the coloring of romance. Without any violation of the truth, the mere extent of his field as to
space and time gave him great advantages for the wild
and the marvellous. Meantime, this purpose of ours
with regard to Herodotus was defeated. Whilst we
were making preparations for it, suddenly one morning from his Limerick estate of Carass returned Lord
Carbery.  And, by accident, his welcome was a
rough one; for, happening to find Lady Carbery in
the breakfast-room, and naturally throwing his arm
about her neck to kiss her, " Ruffian," a monster of
a Newfoundland dog, singularly beautiful in his coloring, and almost as powerful as a leopard, flew at
aim vindictively as at a stranger committing an
assault, and his mistress had great difficulty in calling him off. Lord Carbery smiled a little at our
Greek studies; and, in turn, made us smile, who
knew the original object of these studies, when he
suggested mildly that three or four books of the
"Iliad" would have been as easily mastered, and
might have more fully rewarded our trouble. I contented myself with replying (for I knew how little
Lady Carbery would have liked to plead the religious
motive to her husband), that Parkhurst (and there
~vas at that time no other Greek-English Lexicon)
would not have been available for Homer; neither,




446          THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
it is true, would he have been available for ierodo.
tus. But, considering-the simplicity and uniformity
of style in both these authors, I had formed a plan
(not very hard of execution) for interleaving Parkhurst with such additional words as might have
been easily mustered from the special dictionaries
(Graeco-Latin) dedicated separately to the service
of the historian and of the poet. I do not believe
that more than fifteen hundred extra words would
have been required; and these, entered at the rate
of twenty per hour, would have occupied only ten
days, for seven and a half hours each. However,
from one cause or other, this plan was never brought
to bear. The preliminary labor upon the lexicon
always enforced a delay; and any delay, in such:ase, makes an opening for the irruption of a thousand unforeseen hindrances, that finally cause the
whole plan to droop insensibly. The time came at
last for leaving Laxton, and I did not see Lady Carbery again for nearly an entire year.
In passing through the park-gates of Laxton, on
my departure northward, powerfully, and as if " with
the might of waters," my mind turned round to contemplate that strange enlargement of my experience
which had happened to me within the last three
months. I had seen, and become familiarly acquainted with, a young man, who had in a manner
died to every object around him, had died an intellectual death, and suddenly had been called back to life
and real happiness -had been, in effect, raised from
the dead -by the accident of meeting a congenial
female companion. But, secondly, that very lady
from whose lips I first heard this remarkable case or




VISIT TO LAXTON.          447
blight and restoration, had herself passed through
an equal though not a similar blight, and was now
seeking earnestly, though with what success I could
never estimate, some similar restoration to some
new mode of hopeful existence, through intercourse
with religious philosophy. What vast revolutions
(vast for the individual) within how narrow a circle I
What blindness to approaching catastrophes, in the
midst of what nearness to the light! And for myself, whom accident had made the silent observer of
these changes, was it not likely enough that I also
was rushing forward to court and woo some frantic
mode of evading an endurance that by patience
might have been borne, or by thoughtfulness might
have been disarmed? Misgivingly I went forwards,
feeling forever that, through clouds of thick darkness, I was continually nearing a danger, or was
myself perhaps wilfully provoking a trial, before
which my constitutional despondency would cause
me to lie down without a struggle.




448           THE ORPHAN mEIRESS.
II. THE PRIORY.
To teach is to learn: according to an old experi.
ence, it is the very best mode of learning - the surest,
and the shortest. And hence, perhaps, it may be,
that in the middle ages by the monkish word scholaris
was meant indifferently he that learned and he that
taught. Never in any equal number of months had
my understanding so much expanded as during this
visit to Laxton. The incessant demand made upon
me by Lady Carbery for solutions of the many difficulties besetting the study of divinity and the Greek
Testament, or for such approximations to solutions
as my resources would furnish, forced me into a preternatural tension of all the faculties applicable to
that purpose. Lady Carbery insisted upon calling
me her "Admirable Crichton;" and it was in vain
that I demurred to this honorary title upon two
grounds: first, as being one towards which I had no
natural aptitudes or predisposing advantages; secondly (which made her stare), as carrying with it
no real or enviable distinction. The splendor supposed to be connected with the attainments of CricAton I protested against, as altogether imaginary.
How far that person really had the accomplishments
ascribed to him, I waived as a question not worth




THE PRIORY.              449
investigating. My objection commenced at an earlier
point: real or not real, the accomplishments were,
as I insisted, vulgar and trivial. Vulgar, that is,
when put forward as exponents or adequate expressions of intellectual grandeur. The whole rested on
a misconception; the limitary idea of knowledge was
confounded with the infinite idea of power. To have
a quickness in copying or mimicking other men, and
in learning to do dexterously what they did clumsily,
- ostentatiously to keep glittering before men's eyes
a thaumaturgic versatility such as that of a ropedancer, or of an Indian juggler, in petty accomplishments, - was a mode of the very vulgarest ambition:
one effort of productive power,- a little book, for
instance, which should impress or should agitate
several successive generations of men, even though
far below the higher efforts of human creative art 
as, for example, the "De Imitatione Christi," or
"The Pilgrim's Progress," or "Robinson Crusoe,"
or "The Vicar of Wakefield," - was worth any conceivable amount of attainments when rated as an
evidence of anything that could justly denominate a
man "admirable."  One felicitous ballad of forty
lines might have enthroned Crichton as really admir
able, whilst the pretensions actually put forward on
his behalf simply install him as a cleverish or dexterous ape. However, as Lady Carbery did not
forego her purpose of causing me to shine under
every angle, it would have been ungrateful in me to
refuse my cooperation with her plans, however little
they might wear a face of promise. Accordingly I
surrendered myself for two hours daily to the lessons
in horsemanship of a principal groom who ranked as
29




450          THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
a first-rate rough-rider; and I gathered manifold
experiences amongst the horses - so different from
the wild, hard-mouthed horses at Westport, that were
often vicious, and sometimes trained to vice. Here,
though spirited, the horses were pretty generally
gentle, and all had been regularly broke. My education was not entirely neglected even as regarded
sportsmanship; that great branch of philosophy being
confided to one of the keepers, who was very attentive to me, in deference to the interest in myself
expressed by his idolized mistress, but otherwise
regarded me probably as an object of mysterious
curiosity rather than of sublunary hope.
Equally, in fact, as regarded my physics and my
metaphysics,- in short, upon all lines of advance that
interested my ambition, - I was going rapidly ahead.
And, speaking seriously, in what regarded my intellectual expansion, never before or since had I been
so distinctly made aware of it. No longer did it
seem to move upon the hour-hand, whose advance,
though certain, is yet a pure matter of inference, but
upon the seconds'-hand, which visibly comes on at a
trotting pace. Everything prospered, except my
own present happiness, and the possibility of any
happiness for some years to come. About two
months after leaving Laxton, my fate in the worst
shape I had anticipated was solemnly and definitively
settled. My guardians agreed that the most prudent
course, with a view to my pecuniary interests, was
to place me at the Manchester Grammar School; not
with a view to further improvement in my classical
knowledge, though the head-master was a sound
scholar, but simply with a view to one of the school




THE PRIORY.                    451
exhibitions.* Amongst the countless establishments,
scattered all over England by the noble munificence
of English men and English women in past generations, for connecting the provincial towns with the
two royal universities of the land, this Manchester
school was one; in addition to other great local advantages (namely, inter alia, a fine old library and an
ecclesiastical foundation, which in this present generation has furnished the materials for a bishopric of
Manchester, with its deanery and chapter), this noble
foundation secured a number of exhibitions at Brasenose College, Oxford, to those pupils of the school who
should   study at Manchester for three consecutive
years. The pecuniary amount of these exhibitions has
since then increased considerably through the accumulation of funds, which the commercial character of
that great city had caused to be neglected. At that
time, I believe each exhibition yielded about forty
* "Exhibitions. "- This is the technical name in many cases, corresponding to the bursae or bursaries of the continent; from which
word bursae is derived, I believe, the German term Bursch,- that is, a
bursarius, or student, who lives at college upon the salary allowed by
such a bursary. Some years ago the editor of a Glasgow daily paper
called upon Oxford and Cambridge, with a patronizing flourish, to
imitate some one or more of the Scottish universities in founding such
systems of aliment for poor students otherwise excluded from academic advantages. Evidently he was unaware that they had existed
for centuries before the state of civilization in Scotland had allowed
any opening for the foundation of colleges or academic life. Scottish
bursaries, or exhibitions (a term which Shakspeare uses, very near the
close of the first act in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," as the technical expression in England), were few, and not generally, I believe,
exceeding ten pounds a-year. The English were many, and of more
ancient standing, and running from forty pounds to one hundred
pounds a-year. Such was the simple difference between the two
countries: otherwise they agreed altogether.




452           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
guineas a-year, and was legally tenable for seven successive years. Now, to me this would have offered a
most seasonable advantage, had it been resorted to
some two years earlier. My small patrimonial inheritance gave to me, as it did to each of my four brothers,
exactly one hundred and fifty pounds a-year: and to
each of my sisters exactly one hundred pounds a-year.
The Manchester exhibition of forty guineas a-year
would have raised this income for seven years to a sum
close upon two hundred pounds a-year. But at present I was half-way on the road to the completion of
my sixteenth year. Commencing my period of pupilage from that time, I should not have finished it until I
had travelled half-way through my nineteenth year.
And the specific evil that already weighed upon me
with a sickening oppression was the premature expansion of my mind; and, as a foremost consequence, intolerance of boyish society. I ought to have entered
upon my triennium of school-boy servitude at the age
of thirteen. As things were,- a delay with which I
had nothing to do myself,- this and the native character of my mind had thrown the whole arrangement
awry. For the better half of the three years I endured it patiently. But it had at length begun to
eat more corrosively into my peace of mind than ever
I had anticipated. The head-master was substantially superannuated for the duties of his place. Not
that intellectually he showed any symptoms of decay:
but in the spirits and physical energies requisite for his
duties he did: not so much age, as disease, it was
that incapacitated him. In the course of a long day,
beginning at seven A. M. and stretching down to five
P. M., he succeeded in reaching the further end of his




THE PRIORY.             453
duties. But how? Simply by consolidating pretty
nearly into one continuous scene of labor the entire
ten hours. The full hour of relaxation which the
traditions of this ancient school and the by-laws had
consecrated to breakfast was narrowed into ten, or
even seven minutes. The two hours' interval, in
like manner prescribed by the old usages from twelve
to two P. M., was pared down to forty minutes, or
less. In this way he walked conscientiously through
the services of the day, fulfilling to the letter every
section the minutest of the traditional rubric. But
he purchased this consummation at the price of all
comfort to himself: and, having done that, he felt
himself the more entitled to neglect the comfort of
others. The case was singular: he neither showed
any indulgence to himself more than to others (which,
however, could do nothing towards indemnifying
others for the severe confinement which his physical
decay inflicted upon them- a point wholly forgotten
by him); nor, secondly, in thus tenaciously holding
on to his place did he (I am satisfied) govern himself by any mercenary thought or wish, but simply
by an austere sense of duty. tHe discharged his
public functions with constant fidelity, and with
superfluity of learning; and felt, perhaps not unreasonably, that possibly the same learning united with
the same zeal might not revolve as a matter of course
in the event of his resigning the place. I hide from
myself no part of the honorable motives which might
(and probably did) exclusively govern him in adhering to the place. But not by one atom the less did
the grievous results of his inability to grapple with
his duties weigh upon all within his sphere, and upon




454           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
myself, by cutting up the time available for exercise
most ruinously.
Precisely at the worst crisis of this intolerable
darkness (for such, without exaggeration, it was it
its effects upon my spirits) arose, and for five or sih
months steadily continued, a consolation of that
nature which hardly in dreams I could have anticipated. For even in dreams would it have seemed
reasonable, or natural, that Laxton, with its entire
society, should transfer itself to Manchester? Some
mighty caliph, or lamp-bearing Aladdin, might have
worked such marvels: but else who, or by what
machinery? Nevertheless, without either caliph or
Aladdin, and by the most natural of mere human
agencies, this change was suddenly accomplished.
Mr. White, whom I have already had occasion to
mention elsewhere, was in those days the most eminent surgeon by much in the north of England. He
had by one whole generation run before the phrenologists and craniologists, - having already measured
innumerable skulls amongst the omnigenous seafaring population of Liverpool, illustrating all the races
of men, - and was in society a most urbane and pleasant companion. On my mother's suggestion, he had
been summoned to Laxton, in the hope that he might
mitigate the torments of Mrs. Schreiber's malady.
If I am right in supposing that to have been cancer,
I presume that he could not have added much to the
prescriptions of the local doctor. And yet, on the
other hand, it is a fact - so slowly did new views
travel in those days, when scientific journals were
few, and roads were heavy - that ten years later than
this period I knew a case, namely, the case of a




THE PRIORY.              405
butcher's wife in Somersetshire, who had never
enjoyed the benefit of hemlock in relieving the pangs
of a cancerous complaint, until an accident brought
Mr. Hey, son to the celebrated Hey of Leeds, into
the poor woman's neighborhood.
What might be the quality or the extent of that
relief with which Mr. White was able to crown the
expectations of poor Mrs. Schreiber, I do not know;
but that the relief could not have been imaginary
is certain, for he was earnestly invited to repeat
his visits, costly as unavoidably they were. Mrs.
Schreiber did not reside at Laxton. Tenderly as
she loved Lady Carbery, it did not seem consistent
with her dignity that she should take a station that
might have been grossly misinterpreted; and accordingly she bought or hired a miniature kind of villa,
called Tixover, distant about four miles from Laxton.
A residence in such a house, so sad and silent at this
period of affliction for its mistress, would have offered
too cheerless a life to Mr. White. He took up his
abode, therefore, at Laxton during his earliest visit;
and this happened to coincide with that particular
visit of my own during which I was initiating Lady
Carbery into the mysteries of New Testament Greek.
Already as an infant I had known Mr. White; but
now, when daily riding over to Tixover in company,
and daily meeting at breakfast and dinner, we became intimate. Greatly I profited by this intimacy;
and some part of my pleasure in the Laxton plan of
migration to Manchester was drawn from the prospect of renewing it. Such a migration was suggested by Mr. White himself; and fortunately he
coMld suggest it without even the appearance of any




456           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
mercenary views. His interest lay the other way.
The large special retainer, which it was felt but
reasonable to pay him under circumstances so peculiar, naturally disturbed Mr. White; whilst the
benefits of visits so discontinuous became more and
more doubtful. He proposed it, therefore, as a measure of prudence, that Mrs. Schreiber should take
up her abode in Manchester. This counsel was
adopted; and the entire Laxton party in one week
struck their Northamptonshire tents, dived, as it
were, into momentary darkness, by a loitering journey of stages, short and few, out of consideration
for the invalid, and rose again in the gloomy streets
of Manchester.
Gloomy they were at that time-mud below,
smoke above -for no torch of improvement had yet
explored the ancient habitations of this Lancashire
capital. Elsewhere I have expressed the inexhaustible admiration which I cherish for the moral qualities, the unrivalled energy and perseverance, of that
native Lancashire population, as yet not much alloyed with Celtic adulteration. My feelings towards
them are the same as were eloquently and impressively avowed by the late eminent Dr. Cooke Taylor,
after an official inquiry into their situation. But in
those days the Manchester people realized the aspiration of the noble Scythian; not the place it was
that glorified them, but they that glorified the place.
No great city (which technically it then was not,
but simply a town or large village) could present so
repulsive an exterior as the Manchester of that day.
Lodgings of any sort could with difficulty be obtaiiied, and at last only by breaking up the party.




THE PRIORY.              457
The poor suffering lady, with her two friends, Lady
C(arbery and my mother, hired one house, Lord and
Lady Massey another, and two others were occupied
by attendants -all the servants, except one lady'smaid, being every night separated by a quarter of a
mile from their mistresses. To me, however, all
these discomforts were scarcely apparent in the prodigious revolution for the better which was now
impressed upon the tenor of my daily life. I lived
in the house of the head-master; but every night I
had leave to adjourn for four or five hours to the
drawing-room of Lady Carbery. Her anxiety about
Mrs. Schreiber would not allow of her going abroad
into society, unless upon the rarest occasions. And
I, on my part, was too happy in her conversation -
so bold, so novel, and so earnest -voluntarily to
have missed any one hour of it.
Here, by the way, let me mention that on this
occasion arose a case of pretended "tuft-hunting,"
which I, who stood by a silent observer, could not
but feel to involve a malicious calumny. Naturally
it happened that coroneted carriages, superb horses,
and numerous servants, in a town so unostentatious
and homely as the Manchester of that day, drew the
public gaze, and effectually advertised the visit of
the Laxton ladies. Respect for the motive which
nad prompted this visit cooperated with admiration
for the distinguished personal qualities of Lady Carbery, to draw upon her from several leading families
in the town such little services and attentions as
pass naturally, under a spontaneous law of courtesy,
between those who are at home and those who suffer
under the disadvantages of strangership. The Man



458           THFE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
chester people, who made friendly advances to LaJy
Carbery, did so, I am persuaded, with no ulterior
objects whatsoever of pressing into the circle of an
aristocratic person; neither did Lady Carbery herself
interpret their attentions in any such ungenerous
spirit, but accepted them cordially, as those expressions of disinterested goodness which I am persuad.
ed that in reality they were. Amongst the families
that were thus attentive to her, in throwing open foi
her use various local advantages of baths, libraries,
picture-galleries, etc., were the wife and daughters
of Mr. White himself. Now, one of these daughters
was herself the wife of a baronet, Sir Richard Clayton, who had honorably distinguished himself in lit.
erature by translating and improving the work of
Tenhove the Dutchman (or Belgian?) upon the
house of the De' Medici - a work which Mr. Roscoe
considered " the most engaging work that has, perhaps, ever appeared on a subject of literary history."
Introduced as Lady Clayton had been amongst the
elite of our aristocracy, it could not be supposed that
she would be at all solicitous about an introduction
to the wife of an Irish nobleman, simply as such, and
apart from her personal endowments. Those endowments, it is true, -namely, the beauty and the talents
of Lady Carbery, made known in Manchester through
Mr. White's report of them, and combined with the
knowledge of her generous devotion to her dying
friend, secluding her steadily from all society through
a period of very many months, - did, and reasonably
might, interest many Manchester people on her behalf. In all this there was nothing to be ashamed
of; and, judging from what personally I witnessed.




THE PRIORY.              459
this seems to Lave been the true nature and extent
of the " tuft-hunting; " and I have noticed it at all
simply because there is a habit almost national
growing up amongst us of imputing to each other
some mode of unmanly prostration before the aristocracy, but with as little foundation for the charge
generally, I believe, as I am satisfied there was in
this particular instance.
Mr. White possessed a museum-formed chiefly by
himself, and originally, perhaps, directed simply to
professional objects, such as would have little chance
for engaging the attention of females. But surgeons
and speculative physicians, beyond all other classes
of intellectual men, cultivate the most enlarged
and liberal curiosity; so that Mr. White's museum
furnished attractions to an unusually large variety of
tastes. I had myself already seen it; and it struck
me that Mr. White would be gratified if Lady Carbery would herself ask to see it; which accordingly
she did; and thus at once removed the painful feeling that he might be extorting from her an expression
of interest in his collection which she did not really
feel.
Amongst the objects which gave a scientific interest to the collection, naturally I have forgotten one
and all —first, midst, and last; for this is one of the
cases in which we all felicitate ourselves upon the
art and gift of forgetting; that art which the great
Athenian* noticed as amongst the desiderata of
human life - that gift which, if in some rare cases it
belongs only to the regal prerogatives of the grave,
* " The great Athenian."-Themistocles.




460           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
fortunately in many thousands of other cases is
accorded by the treachery of a human brain. Heavens! what a curse it were, if every chaos, which is
stamped upon the mind by fairs such as that London
fair of St. Bartholomew in years long past, or by the
records of battles and skirmishes through the monotonous pages of history, or by the catalogues of libraries stretching over a dozen measured miles, could
not be erased, but arrayed itself in endless files incapable of obliteration, as often as the eyes of our
human memory happened to throw back their gaze
in that direction I Heaven be praised, I have forgotten everything; all the earthly trophies of skill
or curious research; even the aerolithes, that might
possibly not be earthly, but presents from some
superior planet. Nothing survives, except the humanities of the collection; and amongst these, two
)nly I will molest the reader by noticing. One of
the two was a mummy; the other was a skeleton. I,
that had previously seen the museum, warned Lady
Carbery of both; but much it mortified us that only
the skeleton was shown. Perhaps the mummy was
too closely connected with the personal history of
Mr. White for exhibition to strangers; it was that
of a lady who had been attended medically for some
years by Mr. White, and had owed much alleviation
of her sufferings to his inventive skill. She had,
therefore, felt herself called upon to memorialize her
gratitude by a very large bequest-not less (I have
heard) than twenty-five thousand pounds; but with
this condition annexed to the gift- that she should
be embalmed as perfectly as the resources in that art
of London and Paris could accomplish, and that once




THE PRIORY.             461
a year Mr. White. accompanied by two witnesses of
credit, should withdraw the veil from her face. The
lady was placed in a common English clock-case,
having the usual glass face; but a veil of white
velvet obscured from all profane eyes the silent
features behind. The clock I had myself seen, when
a child, and had gazed upon it with inexpressible
awe. But, naturally, on my report of the case, the
whole of our party were devoured by a curiosity to
see the departed fair one. Had Mr. White, indeed,
furnished us with the key of the museum, leaving us
to our own discretion, but restricting us only (like
a cruel Bluebeard) from looking into any ante-room,
great is my fear that the perfidious question would
have arisen amongst us-what o'clock it was? and
all possible ante-rooms would have given way to the
just fiury of our passions. I submitted to Lady Carbery, as a liberty which might be excused by the
torrid extremity of our thirst after knowledge, that
she (as our leader) should throw out some angling
question moving in the line of our desires; upon
which hint Mr. White, if he had any touch of indulgence to human infirmity-unless Mount Caucasus
were his mother, and a she-wolf his nurse —would
surely relent, and act as his conscience must suggest. But Lady Carbery reminded me of the three
Calendars in the "Arabian Nights," and argued
that, as the ladies of Bagdad were justified in calling
upon a body of porters to kick those gentlemen into
the street, being people who had abused the indulgences of hospitality, much more might Mr. White
do so with us; for the Calendars were the children
of kings (Shahzades), which we were not; and had




462           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
found theii curiosity far more furiously irritated.; in
fact, Zobeide had no right to trifle with any man's
curiosity in that ferocious extent; and a counter
right arose, as any chancery of human nature would
have ruled, to demand a solution of what had been
so maliciously arranged towards an anguish of insupportable temptation. Thus, however, it happened
that the mummy, who left such valuable legacies,
and founded such bilious fevers of curiosity, was not
seen by us; nor even the miserable clock-case.
The mummy, therefore, was not seen; but the
skeleton was. Who was he? It is not every day
that one makes the acquaintance of a skeleton; and
with regard to such a thing - thing, shall one say,
or person? - there is a favorable presumption from
beforehand; which is this: As he is of no use,
neither profitable nor ornamental to any person
whatever, absolutely de trop in good society, what
but distinguished merit of some kind or other could
induce any man to interfere with that gravitating
tendency that by an eternal nisus is pulling him
below ground? Lodgings are dear in England.
True it is that, according to the vile usage on the
continent, one room serves a skeleton for bed-room
and sitting-room; neither is his expense heavy, as
regards wax-lights, fire, or "bif-steck."  But still,
even a skeleton is chargeable; and, if any dispute
should arise about his maintenance, the parish will
do nothing. Mr. White's skeleton, therefore, being
costly, was presumably meritorious, before we had
seen him or heard a word in his behalf. It was, in
fact, the skeleton of an eminent robber, or perhaps
of a murderer. But I, for my part, reserved a faint




THE PRIORY.             463
right of suspense. And as to the profession of robber in those days exercised on the roads of England,
it was a liberal profession, which required more accomplishments than either the bar or the pulp t:
from the beginning it presumed a most bountiful endowment of heroic qualifications - strength, health,
agility, and exquisite horsemanship, intrepidity of
ths first order, presence of mind, courtesy, and a
general ambidexterity of powers for facing all accidents, and for turning to a good account all unlookedfor contingencies. The finest men in England, physically speaking, throughout the eighteenth century,
the very noblest specimens of man considered as an
animal, were beyond a doubt the mounted robbers
who cultivated their profession on the great leading
roads, namely, on the road from London to York
(technically known as "the great north road");
on the road west to Bath, and thence to Exeter and
Plymouth; north-westwards from London to Oxford,
and thence to Chester; eastwards to Tunbridge;
southwards by east to Dover; then inclining westwards to Portsmouth; more so still, through Salisbury to Dorsetshire and Wilts. These great roads
were farmed out as so many Roman provinces
amongst pro-consuls. Yes, but with a difference,
you will say, in respect of moral principles. Certainly with a difference; for the English highwayman
had a sort of conscience for gala-days, which could
not often be said of the Roman governor or procurator. At this moment we see that the opening for
the forger of bank-notes is brilliant; but practically
it languishes, as being too brilliant; it demands an
array of talent for engraving, tc., which, wherever




4G4           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
it exists, is sufficient to carry a man forward upon
principles reputed honorable. Why, then, should he
court danger and disreputability? But in that century the special talents which led to distinction upon
the high road had oftentimes no career open to them
elsewhere. The mounted robber on the highways of
England, in an age when all gentlemen travelled
with fire-arms, lived in an element of danger and
adventurous gallantry; which, even from those who
could least allow him any portion of their esteem,
extorted sometimes a good deal of their unwilling
admiration.  By the necessities of the case, he
brought into his perilous profession some brilliant
qualities-intrepidity, address, promptitude of decision; and, if to these he added courtesy, and a
spirit (native or adopted) of forbearing generosity,
he seemed almost a man that merited public encouragement; since very plausibly it might be argued
that his profession was sure to exist; that, if he
were removed, a successor would inevitably arise,
and that successor might or might not carry the
same liberal and humanizing temper into his practice.  The man whose skeleton was now before
us had ranked amongst the most chivalrous of his
order, and was regarded by some people as vindicating the national honor in a point where not very
long before it had suffered a transient eclipse. In
the preceding generation, it had been felt as throwing a shade of disgrace over the public honor, that
the championship of England upon the high road fell
for a time into French hands; upon French prowess
rested the burden of English honor, or, in Gallic
phrase, of English glory. Claude Duval, a French



THE PRIORY.              465
mnan of undeniable courage, handsome, and noted fot
his chivalrous devotion to women, had been honored, on his condemnation to the gallows, by the
tears of many ladies who attended his trial, and by
their sympathizing visits during his imprisonment,
But the robber represented by the skeleton in Mr.
White's museum (whom let us call X, since his true
Lam3 has perished) added to the same heroic qualities a person far more superb. Still it was a dreadful drawback from his pretensions, if he had really
practised as a murderer. Upon what ground did
that suspicion arise? In candor (for candor is due
even to a skeleton) it ought to be mentioned that the
charge, if it amounted to so much, arose with a lady
from some part of Cheshire -the district of Knutsford, I believe; — but, wherever it was, in the same
district, during the latter part of his career, had resided our X. At first he was not suspected even as
a robber -as yet not so much as suspected of being
suspicious; in a simple rustic neighborhood, amongst
good-natured peasants, for a long time he was regarded with simple curiosity, rather than suspicion;
and even the curiosity pointed to his horse more
than to himself. The robber had made'himself popular amongst the kind-hearted rustics by his general
courtesy. Courtesy and the spirit of neighborliness
go a great way amongst country people; and the
worst construction of the case was, that he might be
an embarrassed gentleman from Manchester or Liverpool, hiding himself from his creditors, who are
notoriously a very immoral class of people. At
length, however, a violent suspicion broke loose
against him; for it was ascertained that on certain
30




466           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
nights, when, perhaps, he had extra motives for
concealing the fact of having been abroad, he drew
woollen stockings over his horse's feet, with the
purpose of deadening the sound in riding up a brickpaved entry, common to his own stable and that of a
respectable neighbor. Thus far there was a reasonable foundation laid for suspicion; but suspicion of
what? Because a man attends to the darning of his
horse's stockings, why must he be meditating murder? The fact is - and known from the very first
to a select party of amateurs —that X, our superblooking skeleton, did, about three o'clock on a rainy
Wednesday morning, in the dead of winter, ride silently out of Knutsford; and about forty-eight hours
afterwards, on a rainy Friday, silently and softly did
that same superb blood-horse, carrying that same
blood-man, namely, our friend the superb skeleton,
pace up the quiet brick entry, in a neat pair of socks,
on his return.
During that interval of forty-eight hours, an atrocious murder was committed in the ancient city of
Bristol. By whom? That question is to this day
unanswered. The scene of it was a house on the
west side of the College Green, which is in fact that
same quadrangle planted with trees, and having on
its southern side the Bristol Cathedral, up and down
which, early in the reign of George III., Chatterton
walked in jubilant spirits with fair young women of
Bristol; up and down which, some thirty years later,
Robert Southey and S. T. C. walked with young
Bristol belles from a later generation. The subjects
of the murder were an elderly lady bearing some
such name as Rusborough, and her female servant.




THE PRIORY.              467
Mystery there was none as to the motive of the
murder-manifestly it was a hoard of money that
had attracted the assassin; but there was great perplexity as to the agent or agents concerned in the
atrocious act, and as to the mode by which an entrance, under the known precautions of the lady,
could have been effected. Because a thorough-bred
horse could easily have accomplished the distance to
and fro (say three hundred miles) within the fortyeight hours, and because the two extreme dates of
this forty-eight hours' absence tallied with the requisitions of the Bristol tragedy, it did not follow that X
must have had a hand in it. And yet, had these coincidences then been observed, they would certainly
-now that strong suspicions had been directed to
the man from the extraordinary character of his
nocturnal precautions -not have passed without
investigation. But the remoteness of Bristol, and
the rarity of newspapers in those days, caused these
indications to pass unnoticed. Bristol knew of no
such Knutsford highwayman - Knutsford knew of
no such Bristol murder. It is singular enough that
these earlier grounds of suspicion against X were
not viewed as such by anybody, until they came to
be combined with another and final ground. Then
the presumptions seemed conclusive. But, by that
time, X himself had been executed for a robbery; had
been manufactured into a skeleton by the famous
surgeon, Cruickshank, assisted by Mr. White and
other pupils. All interest in the case had subsided
in Knutsford, that could now have cleared up the
case satisfactorily; and thus it happened that to this
day the riddle, which was read pretty decisively in a




468           TTIE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
northern county, still remains a riddle in the south
When I saw the College Green house in 1809-10, it
was apparently empty, and, as I was told, had
always been empty since the murder: forty years
had not cicatrized the bloody remembrance; and, to
this day, perhaps, it remains amongst the gloomy
traditions of Bristol.
But whether the Bristol house has or has not
shaken off that odor of blood which offended the nostrils of tenants, it is, I believe, certain that the city
annals have not shaken off the mystery: which yet
to certain people in Knutsford, as I have said, and to
us the spectators of the skeleton, immediately upon
hearing one damning fact from the lips of Mr. White,
seemed to melt away and evaporate as convincingly
as if we had heard the explanation issuing in the
terms of a confession from the mouth of the skeleton
itself. What, then, was the fact?  With pain, and
reluctantly, we felt its force, as we looked at the
royal skeleton, and reflected on the many evidences
which he had given of courage, and perhaps of other
noble qualities. The ugly fact was this: In a few
weeks after the College Green tragedy, Knutsford,
and the whole neighborhood as far as Warrington
(the half-way town between Liverpool and Manchester), were deluged with gold and silver coins, moidores, and dollars, from the Spanish mint of Mexico,
&c. These, during the frequent scarcities of English silver currency, were notoriously current in
England. Now, it is an unhappy fact, and subsequently became known to the Bristol and London
police, that a considerable part of poor Mrs. Rus




THE PRIORY.             4G9
borough's treasure lay in such coins, gold and silver,
from the Spanish colonial mints.
Lady Carbery at this period made an effort to
teach me Hebrew, by way of repaying in kind my
pains in teaching Greek to her. Where, and upon
what motive, she had herself begun to learn Hebrew,
I forget: but in Manchester she had resumed this
study with energy on a casual impulse derived from
a certain Dr. Bailey, a clergyman of this city, who
had published a Hebrew Grammar. The doctor was
the most unworldly and guileless of men. Amongst
his orthodox brethren he was reputed a "Methodist;" and not without reason; for some of his LowChurch views he pushed into practical extravagances
that looked like fanaticism, or even like insanity.
Lady Carbery wished naturally to testify her gratitude for his services by various splendid presents:
but nothing would the good doctor accept, unless it
assumed a shape that might be available for the service of the paupers amongst his congregation. The
Hebrew studies, however, notwithstanding the personal assistance which we drew from the kindness of
Dr. Bailey, languished. For this there were several
reasons; but it was enough that the systematic
vagueness in the pronunciation of this, as of the
other Oriental languages, disgusted both of us. A
word which could not be pronounced with any certainty, was not in a true sense possessed. Let it be
understood, however, that it was not the correct and
original pronunciation that we cared for —that has
perished probably beyond recall, even in the case of
Greek, in spite of the Asiatic and the Insular Greeks
-- what we demanded in vain was any pronunciation




470           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
whatever that should be articulate, apprehensible,
and intercommunicable, such as might differentiate
the words: whereas a system of mere vowels too
inadequately strengthened by consonants, seemed to
leave all words pretty nearly alike. One day, in a
pause of languor amongst these arid Hebrew studies,
I read to her, with a beating heart, "The Ancient
Mariner." It had been first published in 1798; and,
about this time (1801), was re-published in the first
two-volume edition of " The Lyrical Ballads." Well
I knew Lady Carbery's constitutional inaptitude for
poetry; and not for the world would I have sought
sympathy from her or from anybody else upon that
part of the L. B. which b6longed to Wordsworth.
But I fancied that the wildness of this tale, and the
triple majesties of Solitude, of Mist, and of the
Ancient Unknown Sea, might have won her into
relenting; and, in fact, she listened with gravity and
deep attention. But, on reviewing afterwards in
conversation such passages as she happened to remember, she laughed at the finest parts, and shocked
me by calling the mariner himself " an old quiz;"
protesting that the latter part of his homily to the
wedding guest clearly pointed him out as the very
man meant by Providence for a stipendiary curate to
the good Dr. Bailey in his over-crowded church.*
With an albatross perched on his shoulder, and who
might be introduced to the congregation as the immediate organ of his conversion, and supported by
the droning of a bassoon, she represented the mariner lecturing to advantage in English; the doctor
* St. James', according to my present recollection.




THE PRIORY.              471
overhead in the pulpit enforcing it in Hebrew. Angry I was, though forced to laugh. But of what use
is anger or argument in a duel with female criticism?
Our ponderous masculine wits are no match for the
mercurial fancy of women. Once, however, I had a
triumph: to my great surprise, one day, she suddenly repeated by heart, to Dr. Bailey, the beautiful
passage
" It ceased, yet still the sails made on," &c.asking what he thought of that? As it happened,
the simple, childlike doctor had more sensibility than
herself; for, though he had never in his whole
homely life read more of poetry than he had drunk
of Tokay or Constantia, -in fact, had scarcely heard
tell of any poetry but Watts' Hymns, -he seemed
petrified: and at last, with a deep sigh, as if recovering from the spasms of a new birth, said, " I never
heard anything so beautiful in my whole life."
During the long stay of the Laxton party in Man
chester, occurred a Christmas; and at Christmas -
that is, at the approach of this great Christian festival, so properly substituted in England for the Pagan festival of January and the New Year-there
was, according to ancient usage, on the breaking up
for the holidays, at the Grammar School, a solemn
celebration of the season by public speeches. Among
the six speakers, I, of course (as one of the three
boys who composed the head class), held a distin.
guished place; and it followed, also, as a matter of
course, that all my friends congregated on this occasion to do me honor. What I had to recite was a
copy of Latin verses (Alcaics) on the recent conquest




472           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
of Malta. Melite Britannis Subacta —this was the
title of my worshipful nonsense. The whole strength
of the Laxton party had mustered on this occasion.
Lady Carbery made a point of bringing in her party
every creature whom she could influence. And,
probably, there were in that crowded audience many
old Manchester friends of my father, loving his memory, and thinking to honor it by kindness to his son.
Furious, at any rate, was the applause which greeted
me: furious was my own disgust. Frantic were the
clamors as I concluded my nonsense. Frantic was
my inner sense of shame at the childish exhibition to
which, unavoidably, I was making myself a party.
Lady Carbery had, at first, directed towards me
occasional glances, expressing a comic sympathy
with the thoughts which she supposed to be occupying my mind. But these glances ceased; and I was
recalled by the gloomy sadness in her altered countenance to some sense of my own extravagant and
disproportionate frenzy on this occasion: from the
indulgent kindness with which she honored me, her
countenance on this occasion became a mirror to my
own. At night she assured me, when talking over
the case, that she had never witnessed an expression
of such settled misery, and also (so she fancied) of
misanthropy, as that which darkened my counte
nance in those moments of apparent public triumph,
no matter how trivial the occasion, and amidst an
uproar of friendly felicitation. I look back to that
state of mind as almost a criminal reproach to myself, if it were not for the facts of the case. But, in
excuse for myself, this fact, above all others, ought
to be mentioned —that, over and above the killing




THE PRIORY.              473
oppression to my too sensitive system of the monotonous school tasks, and the ruinous want of exercise, I had fallen under medical advice the most
misleading that it is possible to imagine. The physician and the surgeon of my family were men too
eminent, it seemed to me, and, consequently, with
time too notoriously bearing a high pecuniary value,
for any school-boy to detain them with complaints.
Under these circumstances, I threw myself for aid, in
a case so simple that any clever boy in a druggist's
shop would have known how to treat it, upon the advice of an old, old apothecary, who had full authority
from my guardians to run up a most furious account
against me for medicine. This being the regular
mode of payment, inevitably, and unconsciously, he
was biased to a mode of treatment; namely, by
drastic medicines varied without end, which fearfully
exasperated the complaint. This complaint, as I
now know, was the simplest possible derangement
of the liver, a torpor in its action that might have
been put to rights in three days. In fact, one
week's pedestrian travelling amongst the Caernarvonshire mountains effected a revolution in my
health such as left me nothing to complain of.
An odd thing happened by the merest accident.
I, when my Alcaics had run down their foolish larum,
instead of resuming my official place as one of the
trinity who composed the head class, took a seat by
the side of Lady Carbery. On the other side of her
was seated a stranger: and this stranger, whom
mere chance had thrown next to her, was Lord Belgrave, her old and at one time (as some people fancied) favored suitor. In this there was nothing at




474           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
all extraordinary. Lord Grey de Wilton, an oIl
alumnus of this Manchester Grammar School, and an
alumnus during the early reign of this same Archididascalus, made a point of showing honor to his
ancient tutor, especially now when reputed to be
decaying; and with the same view he brought Lord
Belgrave, who had become his son-in-law after his
rejection by Lady Carbery. The whole was a very
natural accident. But Lady Carbery was not sufficiently bronzed by worldly habits to treat this accident with nonchalance. She did not to the public eye
betray any embarrassment; but afterwards she told
me that no incident could have been more distressing
to her.
Some months after this, the Laxton party quitted
Manchester, having no further motive for staying.
Mrs. Schreiber was now confessedly dying: medical
skill could do no more for her; and this being so,
there was no reason why she should continue to
exchange her own quiet little Rutlandshire cottage
for the discomforts of smoky lodgings. Lady Carbery
retired like some golden pageant amongst the clouds;
thick darkness succeeded; the ancient torpor reestablished itself; and my health grew distressingly
worse. Then it was, after dreadful self-conflicts, that
I took the unhappy resolution of which the results
are recorded in the "Opium Confessions."  At this
point, the reader must understand, comes in that
chapter of my life; and for all which concerns that
delirious period I refer him to those " Confessions."
Some anxiety I had, on leaving Manchester, lest my
mother should suffer too much from this rash step 
and on that impulse I altered the direction ef,yl




THE PRIORY.              475
wanderings; not going (as I had originally planned)
to the English Lakes, but making first of all for St.
John's Priory, Chester, at that time my mother's
residence. There I found my maternal uncle, Captain Penson, of the Bengal establishment, just recently come home on a two years' leave of absence 
and there I had an interview with my mother. By atemporary arrangement I received a weekly allow
ance, which would have enabled me to live in an3
district of Wales, either North or South; for Wales
both North and South, is (or at any rate was) a land
of exemplary cheapness. For instance, at Talyllyn,
in Merionethshire, or anywhere off the line of tourists,
I and a lieutenant in our English navy paid sixpence
uniformly for a handsome dinner; sixpence, I mean,
apiece. But two months later came a golden blockhead, who instructed the people that it was " sinful "
to charge less than three shillings. In Wales, meantime, I suffered grievously from want of books; and
fancying, in my profound ignorance of the world,
that I could borrow money upon my own expectations, or, at least, that I could do so with the joint
security of Lord Westport (now Earl of Altamont,
upon his father's elevation to the Marquisate of
Sligo), or (failing that) with the security of his
amiable and friendly cousin,,the Earl of Desart, I had
the unpardonable folly to quit the deep tranquillities
of North Wales for the uproars, and perils, and the
certain miseries, of London. I had borrowed ten
guineas from Lady Carbery; and at that time, when
my purpose was known to nobody, I might have
borrowed any sum I pleased. But I could never
again avail myself of that resource, because I must




476           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS
have given some address, in order to insure the
receipt of Lady Carbery's answer; and in that case,
so sternly conscientious was she, that, under the
notion of saving me from ruin, my address would
have been immediately communicated to my guardians, and by them would have been confided to the
unrivalled detective talents, in those days, of Townsend, or some other Bow-street officer.
That episode, or impassioned parenthesis in my
life, which is comprehended in "The Confessions of
the Opium Eater," had finished; suppose it over and
gone, and once more, after the storms of London,
suppose me resting from my dreadful remembrances,
in the deep monastic tranquillity, of St. John's Priory;
and just then, by accident, with no associates except
my mother and my uncle. What was the Priory
like? Was it young or old, handsome or plain?
What was my uncle the captain like? Young or
old, handsome or plain? Wait a little, my reader;
give me time, and I will tell you all. My uncle's
leave of absence from India had not expired; in fact,
it had nine or ten months still to run; and this qccident furnished us all with an opportunity of witnessing his preternatural activity. One morning early
in April of the year 1803, a gentleman called at the
Priory, and mentioned, as the news of the morning
brought down by the London mail, that there had
been a very hot and very sudden "press " along the
Thames, and simultaneously at the outports. Indeed,
before this the spiteful tone of Sebastiani's Report,
together with the arrogant comment in the Moniteur on the supposed inability of Great Britain to




THE PRIORY.             477
contend " single-handed" with France; and, finally,
the public brutality to our ambassador, had prepared
us all for war. But, then, might not all this blow
over? No; apart from any choice or preference of
war on the part of Napoleon, his very existence
depended upon war. He lived by and through the
army. Without a succession of wars and martial
glories in reserve for the army, what interest had
they in Napoleon? This was obscurely acknowledged
by everybody. More or less consciously perceived,
a feeling deep and strong ran through the nation
that it was vain to seek expedients or delays; a
mighty strife had to be fought out, which could not
be evaded. Thence it was that the volunteer system
was so rapidly and earnestly developed. As a first
stage in the process of national enthusiasm, this was
invaluable. The first impulse drew out the material.
Next, as might have been foreseen, came an experience which taught us seasonably that these redundant materials, crude and miscellaneous, required a
winnowing and sifting, which very soon we had; and
the result was, an incomparable militia.  Chester
shone conspicuously in this noble competition. But
here, as elsewhere, at first there was no cavalry.
Upon that arose a knot of gentlemen, chiefly those
who hunted, and in a very few hours laid the
foundation of a small cavalry force. Three troops
were raised in the city of Chester, one of the three
being given to my uncle. The whole were under the
command of Colonel Dod, who had a landed estate in
the county, and who (like my uncle) had been in
India. But Colonel Dod and the captains of the two
other troops gave comparatively little aid.  The




478           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
whole working activities of the system rested with
my uncle. Then first I saw energy: then first I
knew what it meant. All the officers of the three
troops exchanged dinner-parties with each other;
and consequently they dined at the Priory often
enough to make us acquainted with their characteristic qualities. That period had not yet passed
away, though it was already passing, when gentlemen did not willingly leave the dinner-table in a state
of absolute sobriety. Colonel Dod and my uncle had
learned in Bengal, under the coercion of the climate,
habits of temperance. But the others (though few,
perhaps, might be systematic drinkers) were careless
in this respect, and drank under social excitement
quite enough to lay bare the ruling tendencies of
their several characters. Being English, naturally
the majority were energetic, and beyond all things
despised dreaming faineans (such, for instance, as
we find the politicians, or even the conspirators, of
Italy, Spain, and Germany, whose whole power of
action evaporates in talking, and histrionically gesticulating). Yet still the best of them seemed inert
by comparison with my uncle, and to regard his
standard of action and exertion as trespassing to a
needless degree upon ordinary human comfort.
Commonplace, meantime, my uncle was in the
character of his intellect; there he fell a thousand
leagues below my mother, to whom he looked up with
affectionate astonishment. But, as a man of action,
he ran so far ahead of men generally, that he ceased
to impress one as commonplace. He, if any man
ever did, realized the Roman poet's description of
being natus rebus agendis -sent into this world not




THE PRIORY.              479
for talking, but for doing; not for counsel, but for
execution. On that field he was a portentous man,
a monster; and, viewing him as such, I am disposed
to concede a few words to what modern slang denominates his "antecedents."
Two brothers and one sister (namely, my mother)
composed the household choir of children gathering
round the hearth of my maternal grand-parents, whose
name was Penson. My grandfather at one time held
an office under the king; how named, I once heard,
but have forgotten; only this I remember, that it
was an office which conferred the title of Esquire;
so that upon each and all of his several coffins, lead,
oak, mahogany, he was entitled to proclaim himself
an Armiger; which, observe, is the newest, oldest,
most classic mode of saying that one is privileged to
bear arms in a sense intelligible only to the Herald's
College. This Armiger, this undeniable Squire, was
doubly distinguished: first, by his iron constitution
and impregnable health; which were of such quality,
and like the sword of Michael, the warrior-angel
("Paradise Lost," B. vi.), had "from the armory of
God been given him tempered so," that no insurance
office, trafficking in life-annuities, would have ventured
to look him in the face. People thought him good,
like a cat, for eight or nine generations; nor did any
man perceive at what avenue death could find, or
disease could force, a practicable breach; and yet,
such anchorage have all human hopes, in the very
midst of these windy anticipations, this same granite
grandpapa of mine, not yet very far ahead of sixty,
being in fact three-score years and none, suddenly
struck his flag, and found himself, in his privileged




480           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
character of Armiger, needing those door (coffindoor) plates, which all reasonable people had supposed to be reserved for the manufacturing hands
of some remote century. " Armiger, pack up your
traps"-" Collige sarcinas"-" Squire, you're
wanted:" these dreadful citations were inevitable;
come they must; but surely, as everybody thought,
not in the eighteenth, or, perhaps, even the nineteenth century. Diis aliter visum. My grandfather,
built for an lEonian duration, did not come within
hail of myself; whilst his gentle partner, my grandmother, who made no show of extra longevity, lived
down into my period, and had the benefit of my
acquaintance through half a dozen years. If she
turned this piece of good fortune to no great practical account, that (you know) was no fault of mine.
Doubtless, I was ready with my advice, freely and
gratuitously, if she had condescended to ask for it.
Returning to my grandfather: the other distinguishing endowment, by which he was so favorably
known and remembered amongst his friends, was
the magical versatility of his talents, and his power
of self accommodation to all humors, tempers, and
ages.
" Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res."
And in allusion to this line from Horace it was, that
amongst his literary friends he was known familiarly
by the name of Aristippus. His sons, Edward and
Thomas, resembled him, by all accounts, in nothing;
neither physically, nor in moral versatility. These
two sons of the Squire, Edward and Thomas, through
some traditional Prejudice in the family, had always




THE PRIORY.             481
directed their views to the military profession. In
such a case, the king's army is naturally that to
which a young man's expectations turn. But to
wait, and after all by possibility to wait in vain, did
not suit my fiery grandfather. The interest which
he could put into motion was considerable; but it
was more applicable to the service of the East India
Company than to any branch of the home service.
This interest was so exerted that in one day he
obtained a lieutenantcy in the Company's service for
each of his sons. About 1780 or 1781, both young
men, aged severally sixteen and seventeen years,
went out to join their regiments, both regiments
being on the Bengal establishment. Very different
were their fates; yet their qualifications ought to
have been the same, or differing only as sixteen
differs from seventeen; and also as sixteen overflowing with levity differs from seventeen prematurely thoughtful. Edward Penson was early noticed
for his high principle, for his benignity, and for a
thoughtfulness somewhat sorrowful, that seemed to
have caught in childhood some fugitive glimpse of
his own too brief career. At noonday, in some part
of Bengal, he went out of doors bareheaded, and died
in a few hours.
In 1800-1801, my mother had become dissatisfied
with Bath as a residence; and, being free from all
ties connecting her with any one county of England
rather than another, she resolved to traverse the
most attractive parts of the island, and, upon personal inspection, to select a home; not a ready-built
nome, but the ground on which she might herself
create one; for it happened that amongst the few
31




482           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
infirmities besetting my mother's habits and constitution of mind, was the costly one of seeking her
chief intellectual excitement in architectural creations. She individually might be said to have built
Greenhay; since to her views of domestic elegance
and propriety my father had resigned almost everything. This was her coup-d'essai; secondly, she
built the complement to the Priory in Cheshire, which
cost about one thousand pounds; thirdly, Westhay,
in Somersetshire, about twelve miles from Bristol,
which, including the land attached to the house, cost
twelve thousand five hundred pounds, not including
subsequent additions; but this was built at the cost
of my uncle; finally, Weston Lea, close to Bath,
which being designed simply for herself in old age,
with a moderate establishment of four servants (and
some reasonable provision of accommodations for a
few visitors), cost originally, I believe, not more
than one thousand pounds -excluding, however,
the cost of all after alterations.
It may serve to show how inevitably an amateur
architect, without professional aid and counsel, will be
defrauded, that the first of these houses, which cost
six thousand pounds, sold for no more than twentyfive hundred pounds, and the third for no more than
five thousand pounds. The person who superintended the workmen, and had the whole practical
management of one amongst these four houses, was
a common builder, without capital or education, and
the greatest knave that personally I have known.
It may illustrate the way in which lady architects.
without professional aid, are and ever will be
defrauded, that, after all was finished, and the entire




THE PRIORY.             183
wood-work was to be measured and valued, each
party, of course, needing to be represented by a professional agent, naturally the knavish builder was
ready at earliest dawn with his agent; but, as
regarded my mother's interest, the task of engaging
such an agent had been confided to a neighboring
clergyman,-" evangelical," of course, and a humble
sycophant of Hannah More, but otherwise the most
helpless of human beings, baptized or infidel. lie
contented himself with instructing a young gentleman, aged about fifteen, to take his pony and ride
over to a distant cathedral town, which was honored
by the abode of a virtuous though drunken surveyor.
This respectable drunkard he was to engage, and
also with obvious discretion to fee beforehand. All
which was done: the drunken surveyor had a sort
of fits, it was understood, that always towards sunset
inclined him to assume the horizontal posture. Fortunately, however, for that part of mankind whom
circumstances had brought under the necessity of
communicating with him, these fits were intermitting;
so that, for instance, in the present case, upon a
severe call arising for his pocketing the fee of ten
guineas, he astonished his whole household by suddenly standing bolt upright as stiff as a poker; his
sister remarking to the yolng gentleman that he
(the visitor) was in luck that evening: it was n't
everybody that could get that length in dealing with
Mr. X. O. However, it is distressing to relate that
the fits immediately returned; and, with that degree
of exasperation which made it dangerous to suggest
the idea of a receipt; since that must have required
the vertical attitude. Whether that attitude ever




484           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
was recovered by the unfortunate gentleman, I do
not know. Forty-and-four years have passed since
then. Almost everybody connected with the case
has had time to assume permanently the horizontal
posture,- namely, that knave of a builder, whose
knaveries (gilded by that morning sun of June) were
controlled by nobody; that sycophantish parson;
that young gentleman of fifteen (now, alas! fiftynine), who must long since have sown his wild oats;
that unhappy pony of eighteen (now, alas! sixty-two,
if living; ah I venerable pony, that must (or mustest)
now require thy oats to be boiled); in short, one and
all of these venerabilities - knaves, ponies, drunkards, receipts - have descended, I believe, to chaos
or to Hades, with hardly one exception. Chancery
itself; though somewhat of an Indian juggler, could
not play with such aerial balls as these.
On what ground it was that my mother quarrelled
with the advantages of Bath, so many and so conspicuous, I cannot guess. At that time, namely, the
opening of the nineteenth century, the old traditionary custom of the place had established for young
and old the luxury of sedan-chairs. Nine tenths, at
least, of the colds and catarrhs, those initial stages
of all pulmonary complaints (the capital scourge of
England), are caught in the transit between the door
of a carriage and the genial atmosphere of the drawing-room. By a sedan-chair all this danger was
evaded: your two chairmen marched right into the
hall: the hall-door was closed; and not until then
was the roof and the door of your chair opened: the
translation was - from one room to another. Tc my
mother, and many in her situation, the sedan-cnair




THE PRIORY.              485
recommended itself also by advantages of another
class. Immediately on coming to Bath her carriage
was "laid up in ordinary."  The trifling rent of a
coach-house, some slight annual repairs, and the tax.
composed the whole annual cost. At that time, and
throughout the war, the usual estimate for the cost
of a close carriage in London was three hundred and
twenty pounds; since, in order to have the certain
services of two horses, it was indispensable to keep
three. Add to this the coachman, the wear-and-tear
of harness, and the duty; and, even in Bath, a
cheaper place than London, you could not accomplish
the total service under two hundred and seventy
pounds. Now, except the duty, all this expense was
at once superseded by the sedan-chair - rarely costing you above ten shillings a week, that is, twentyfive guineas a year, and liberating you from all care
or anxiety. The duty on four wheels, it is true,
was suddenly exalted by Mr. Pitt's triple assessment
from twelve guineas to thirty-six; but what a trifle
by comparison with the cost of horses and coachman! And, then, no demands for money were evei
met so cheerfully by my mother as those which went
to support Mr. Pitt's policy against Jacobinism and
Regicide.  At present, after five years' sinecure
existence, unless on the rare summons of a journey,
this dormant carriage was suddenly undocked, and
put into commission. Taking with her two servants,
and one of my sisters, my mother now entered upon
a periplus, or systematic circumnavigation of all
England; and in England only -through the admirable machinery matured for such a purpose, namely,
inns, innkeepers, servants, horses, all first-rate of




486           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
their class - it was possible to pursue such a scheme
in the midst of domestic comfort. My mother's resolution was - to see all England with her own eyes,
and to judge for herself upon the qualifications of
each county, each town (not being a bustling seat
of commerce), and each village (having any advantages of scenery), for contributing the main elements
towards a home that might justify her in building a
house. The qualifications insisted on were these
five: good medical advice somewhere in the neighborhood; first-rate means of education; elegant (or,
what most people might think, aristocratic) society;
agreeable scenery: and so far the difficulty was not
insuperable in the way of finding all the four advantages concentrated. But my mother insisted on a
fifth, which in those days insured the instant shipwreck of the entire scheme; this was a church of
England parish clergyman, who was to be strictly
orthodox, faithful to the articles of our English
church, yet to these articles as interpreted by Evangelical divinity. My mother's views were precisely
those of her friend Mrs. Hannah More, of Wilberforce, of Henry Thornton, of Zachary Macaulay
(father of the historian), and generally of those who
were then known amongst sneerers as "the Clapham
saints." This one requisition it was on which the
scheme foundered. And the fact merits recording as
an exposition.of the broad religious difference between the England of that day and of this. At pres
ent, no difficulty would be found as to this fifth
requisition.  "Evangelical " clergymen are now
sown broad-cast; at that period, there were not, on




THE PRIORY.              487
an average, above six or eight in each of the fifty-two
counties.
The conditions, as a whole, were in fact incapable
of being realized; where two or three were attained,
three or two failed. It was too much to exact so
many advantages from any one place, unless London;
or really, if any other place could be looked to with
hope in such a chase, that place was Bath -the very
city my mother was preparing to leave. Yet, had
this been otherwise, and the prospect of success
more promising, I have not a doubt that the pretty
gem, which suddenly was offered at a price unintelligibly low, in the ancient city of Chester, would have
availed (as instantly it did avail, and, perhaps, ought
to have availed) in obscuring those five conditions
of which else each separately for itself had seemed a
conditio sine qua non. This gem was an ancient
house, on a miniature scale, called the Priory; and,
until the dissolution of religious houses in the earlier
half of the sixteenth century, had formed part of the
Priory attached to the ancient church (still flourishing) of St. John's. Towards the end of the sixteenth
and through the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, this Priory had been in the occupation of Sir
Robert Cotton, the antiquary, the friend of Ben Jonson, of Coke, of Selden, etc., and advantageously
known as one of those who applied his legal and
historical knowledge to the bending back into constitutional moulds of those despotic twists which
new interests and false counsels had developed in
the Tudor and Stuart dynasties. It was an exceedingly pretty place; and the kitchen, upon the ground
story, which had a noble groined ceiling of stone.




488(             THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
indicated, by its disproportionate scale, the magni.
tude of the establishment to which         once it had
ministered. Attached to this splendid kitchen were
tributary  offices, etc.  On the    upper story    were
exactly five rooms: namely, a servants' dormitory,
meant in Sir Robert's day for two beds * at the least;
and a servants' sitting-room. These were shut off
into a separate section, with a little staircase (like a
ship's companion-ladder) and a little lobby of its own.
But the principal section on this upper story had
been dedicated to the use of Sir Robert, and consisted of a pretty old hall, lighted by an old monasticpainted window in the door of entrance; secondly,
a rather elegant dining-room; thirdly, a bed-room.
The glory of the house internally lay in the monastic
kitchen; and, secondly, in what a Frenchman would
have called, properly, Sir Robert's own apartment t
of three rooms; but, thirdly and chiefly, in a pile of
ruined archways, most picturesque so far as they
went, but so small that Drury Lane could easily
have found room      for them   on its stage.     These
* The contrivance amongst our ancestors, even at haughty Cambridge and haughtier Oxford, was, that one bed rising six inches from
the floor ran (in the day-time) under a loftier bed; it ran upon
castors or little wheels. The learned word for a little wheel is trochlea; from which Grecian and Latin term comes the English word
truckle-bed.
t Apartment. - Our English use of the word " apartment" is absurd,
since it leads to total misconceptions. We read in French memoirs
innumerable of the king's apartment, of the queen's apartment, etc., and
for us English the question arises, How? had the king, had her
majesty, only one room? But, my friend, they might have a thousand
rooms, and yet have only one apartment. An apartment means, in
the continental use, a seclion or compartment of an edifice.




THE PRIORY.              489
stood in the miniature pleasure-ground, and were
constantly resorted to by artists for specimens of
architectural decays, or of nature working for the
concealment of such decays by her ordinary processes of gorgeous floral vegetation. Ten rooms
there may have been in the Priory, as offered to my
mother for less than five hundred pounds. A drawing-room, bed-rooms, dressing-rooms, etc., making
about ten more, were added by my mother for a sum
under one thousand pounds. The same miniature
scale was observed in all these additions. And, as
the Priory was not within the walls of the city,
whilst the river Dee, flowing immediately below,
secured it from annoyance on one side, and the
church, with its adjacent church-yard, insulated it
from the tumults of life on all the other sides, an
atmosphere of conventual stillness and tranquillity
brooded over it and all around it forever.
Such was the house, such was the society, in
which I now found myself; and upon the whole I
might describe myself as being, according to the
modern phrase, "in a false position."  I had, for
instance, a vast superiority, as was to have been expected, in bookish attainments, and in adroitness of
logic; whilst, on the other hand, I was ridiculously
short-sighted or blind in all fields of ordinary human
experience. It must not be supposed that I regarded
my own particular points of superiority, or that 1
used them, with any vanity or view to present advantages. On the contrary, I sickened over them,
and labored to defeat them. But in vain I sowed
errors in my premises, or planted absurdities in my
assumptions. Vainly I tried such blunders as put




490          THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
ting four terms into a syllogism, which, as all the
world knows, ought to run on three; a tripod it ought
to be, by all rules known to man, and, behold, I forced
it to become a quadruped. Upon my uncle's military haste, and tumultuous energy in pressing his
opinions, all such delicate refinements were absolutely thrown away. With disgust I saw, with disgust he saw, that too apparently the advantage lay
with me in the result; and, whilst I worked like a
dragon to place myself in the wrong, some fiend
apparently so counterworked me, that eternally I
was reminded of the Manx half-pennies, which lately
I had continually seen current in North Wales, bearing for their heraldic distinction three human legs in
armor, but so placed in relation to each other that
always one leg is vertical and mounting guard on
behalf of the other two, which, therefore, are enabled to sprawl aloft in the air —in fact, to be as
absurdly negligent as they choose, relying upon
their vigilant brother below, and upon the written
legend or motto, STABIT QUOCUNQUE JECERIS (Stand it
will upright, though you should fling it in any conceivable direction). What gave another feature of
distraction and incoherency to my position was, that
I still occupied the position of a reputed boy, nay, a
child, in the estimate of my audience, and of a child
in disgrace. Time enough had not passed since my
elopement from school to win for me, in minds so
fresh from that remembrance, a station of purification and assoilment. Oxford might avail to assoil
me, and to throw into a distant retrospect my boyish
trespasses; but as yet Oxford had not arrived. I
committed, besides, a great fault in taking often a




THE PRIORY.             491
tone of mock seriousness, when the detection of the
playful extravagance was left to the discernment Dr
quick sympathy of the hearer; and I was blind to
the fact, that neither my mother nor my uncle was
distinguished by any natural liveliness of vision for
the comic, or any toleration for the extravagant.
My mother, for example, had an awful sense of conscientious fidelity in the payment of taxes. Many a
respectable family I have known that would privately
have encouraged a smuggler, and, in consequence,
were beset continually by mock smugglers, offering,
with airs of affected mystery, home commodities
liable to no custom-house objections whatsoever,
only at a hyperbolical price. I remember even the
case of a duke, who bought in Piccadilly, under
laughable circumstances of complex disguise, some
silk handkerchiefs, falsely pretending to be foreign,
and was so incensed at finding himself to have been
committing no breach of law whatever, but simply to
have been paying double the ordinary shop price,
that he pulled up the soi-disant smuggler to Bowstreet, even at the certain price of exposure to himself. The charge he alleged against the man was the
untenable one of not being a smuggler. My mother,
on the contrary, pronounced all such attempts at
cheating the king, or, as I less harshly termed it,
cheating the tax-gatherer, as being equal in guilt to
a fraud upon one's neighbor, or to direct appropria,
tion of another man's purse. I, on my part, held
that government, having often defrauded me through
its agent and creature the post-office, by monstrous
over-charges on letters, had thus created in my
bthalf a right of retaliation. And dreadfully it an



492           THE ORPHAN HEIRESSE
noyed my mother, that I, stating this right in a very
plausible rule-of-three form —namely, As is the income of the said fraudulent government to my poor
patrimonial income of one hundred and fifty pounds
per annum, so is any one special fraud (as, for
instance, that of yesterday morning, amounting to
thirteen pence upon a single letter) to that equitable
penalty which I am entitled to recover upon the
goods and chattels (wherever found) of the illadvised Britannic government. During the war with
Napoleon, the income of this government ran, to all
amounts, between fifty and seventy millions pounds
sterling. Awful, therefore, seemed the inheritance
of retaliation, inexhaustible the fund of reprisals,
into which I stepped. Since, even a single case of
robbery, such as I could plead by dozens, in the
course of a few years, though no more than thirteen
pence, yet multiplied into seventy million times two
hundred and forty pence, minus one hundred and
fifty pounds, made a very comfortable property. The
right was clear; and the sole difficulty lay in asserting it; in fact, that same difficulty which beset the
philosopher of old, in arguing with the Emperor
Hadrian; namely, the want of thirty legions for the
purpose of clearly pointing out to Caesar where it
was that the truth lay; the secret truth; that rarest
of all "nuggets."
This counter-challenge of government, as the first
mover in a system of frauds, annoyed, but also perplexed my mother exceedingly. For an argument
that shaped itself into a rule-of-three illustration
seemed really to wear too candid an aspect for sum.
mlary and absolute rejection.




THE PRIORI.              493
Such discussions wore to me a comic shape. But
altogether serious were the disputes upon INDIA - a
topic on separate grounds equally interesting to us
all, as the mightiest of English colonies, and the
superbest monument of demoniac English energy,
revealing itself in such men as Clive, Hastings, and
soon after in the two Wellesleys. To my mother, as
the grave of one brother, as the home of another,
and as a new contre from which Christianity (she
hoped) would mount like an eagle; for just about
that time the Bible Society was preparing its initial
movements; whilst to my uncle India appeared as
the arena upon which his activities were yet to find
their adequate career. With respect to the Christianization of India, my uncle assumed a hope which
he did not really feel; and in another point, more
trying to himself personally, he had soon an opportunity for showing the sincerity of this deference to
his spiritual-minded sister. For, very soon after his
return to India, he received a cisil appointment
(Superintendent of Military Buildings in Bengal),
highly lucrative, and the more so as it could be held
conjointly with his military rank; but a good deal of
its pecuniary advantages was said to lie in fees, or
perquisites, privately offered, but perfectly regular
and official, which my mother (misunderstanding the
Indian system) chose to call "bribes." A very ugly
word was that; but I argued that even at home, even
in the courts at Westminster, in the very fountains
of justice, private fees constituted one part of the
salaries - a fair and official part, so long as Parliament had not made such fees illegal by commuting
them for known and fixed equivalents.




494           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
It was mere ignorance of India, as I dutifully
insisted against "Mamma," that could confound
these regular oriental "nuzzers" with the clandestine wages of corruption. The pot-de-vin of French
tradition, the pair of gloves (though at one time very
costly gloves) to an English judge of assize on certain occasions, never was offered nor received in the
light of a bribe. And (until regularly abolished by
the legislature) I insisted-but vainly insisted —
that these and similar honoraria ought to be accepted,
because else you were lowering the prescriptive
rights and value of the office, which you -a mere
locumn tenens for some coming successor - had no
right to do upon a solitary scruple or crotchet, arising
probably from dyspepsia.  Better men, no doubt,
than ever stood in your stockings, had pocketed
thankfully the gifts of ancient, time-honored custom.
My uncle, however, though not with the carnal recusancy which besieged the spiritual efforts of poor
Cuthbert Headrigg, that incorrigible worldling, yet
still with intermitting doubts, followed my mother's
earnest entreaties, and the more meritoriously (I conceive), as he yielded, in a point deeply affecting his
interest, to a system of arguments very imperfectly
convincing to his understanding. He held the office
in question for as much (I believe) as eighteen or
nineteen years; and, by knowing old bilious Indians,
who laughed immoderately at my uncle and my
mother, as the proper growth of a priory or some
such monastic establishment, I have been assured
tnat nothing short of two hundred thousand pounds
ought, under the long tenure of office, to have been
remitted to England. But, then, said one of these




THE PRIORY.             495
gentlemen, if your uncle lived (as I have heard that
he did) in Calcutta and Meer-ut, at the rate of four
thousand pounds a year, that would account for a
considerable share of a mine which else would seem
to have been worked in vain. Unquestionably, my
uncle's system of living was under no circumstances
a self-denying one. To enjoy, and to make others
enjoy - that was his law of action. Indeed, a more
liberal creature, or one of more princely munificence,
never lived.
It might seem useless to call back any fragment
of conversations relating to India which passed more
than fifty years ago, were it not for two reasons:
one of which is this, -that the errors (natural at
that time) which I vehemently opposed, not from any
greater knowledge that I had, but from closer reflection, are even now the prevailing errors of the English people.  My mother, for instance, uniformly
spoke of the English as the subverters of ancient
thrones. I, on the contrary, insisted that nothing
political was ancient in India.  Our own original
opponents, the Rajahs of Oude and Bengal, had been
all upstarts: in the Mysore, again, our more recent
opponents, Hyder, and his son Tippoo, were new
men altogether, whose grandfathers were quite unknown. Why was it that my mother, why is it that
the English public at this day, connect so false an
image - that of high, cloudy antiquity - with the
thrones of India? It is simply from an old habit of
associating the spirit of change and rapid revolution
with the activities of Europe; so that, by a natural
reiction of thought, the Orient is figured as the home
of motionless monotony.  In things religious, in




496           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
habits, in costume, it is so. But so far otherwise in
things political, that no instance can be alleged of
any dynasty or system of government that has endured beyond a century or two in the East. Taking
India in particular, the Mogul dynasty, established
by Baber, the great-grandson of Timour, did not subsist in any vigor for two centuries; and yet this was
by far the most durable of all established princely
houses. Another argument against England urged
by my mother (but equally urged by the English
people at this day) was, that she had in no eminent
sense been a benefactress to India; or, expressing
it in words of later date, that the only memorials of
our rule, supposing us suddenly ejected from India,
would be vast heaps of champagne-bottles.  I, on
the other hand, alleged that our benefits, like all
truly great and lasting benefits (religious benefits,
for instance), must not be sought in external memorials of stone and masonry. Higher by far than the
Mogul gifts of mile-stones, or travelling stations, or
even roads and tanks, were the gifts of security, of
peace, of law, and settled order.  These blessings
were travelling as fast as our rule advanced. I could
not then appeal to the cases of Thuggee extirpated,
of the Pindanees (full fifteen thousand bloody murderers) forever exterminated, or of the Marhattas
bridled forever —a robber nation that previously
had descended at intervals with a force of sometimes
one hundred and fifty thousand troopers upon the
afflicted province of Bengal, and Oude its neighbor;
because these were events as yet unborn. But they
were the natural extensions of that beneficent system
on which I rested my argument. The two terrors of




THF PRIORY.              497
India at that particular time were Iolkar and Scindiah (pronounced Sindy), who were soon cut short in
their career by the hostilities which they provoked
with us, but would else have proved, in combination,
a deadlier scourge to India than either Hyder or his
ferocious son. My mother, in fact, a great reader
of the poet Cowper, drew from him her notions of
Anglo-Indian policy and its effects.  Cowper, in his
"Task," puts the question,Is India free? and does she wear her plumed
And jewelled turban with a smile of peace,
Or do we grind her still?"
Pretty much the same authority it is which the British public of this day has for its craze upon the subject of English oppression amongst the iindoos.
My uncle, meantime, who from his Indian experience should reasonably have known so much better,
was disposed, from the mere passive habits of hearing and reading unresistingly so many assaults of
this tone against our Indian policy, to go along with
my mother. But he was too just, when forced into
reflection upon the subject, not to bend at times to
my way of stating the case for England. Suddenly,
however, our Indian discussions were brought to a
close by the following incident.  My uncle had
brought with him to England some Arabian horses,
and amongst them a beautiful young Persian mare,
called Sumroo, the gentlest of her race. Sumroo it
was that he happened to be riding, upon a frosty
day. Unused to ice, she came down with him, and
broke his right leg. This accident laid him up for a
month, during which my mother and I reat to hire
32




498           THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.
by turns. One book, which one day fell to my share
by accident, was De Foe's " Memoirs of a Cavalier."
This book attempts to give a picture of the Parliamentary war; but in some places an unfair, and
everywhere a most superficial account. I said so;
and my uncle, who had an old craze in behalf of the
book, opposed me with asperity; and, in the course
of what he said, under some movement of ill-temper,
he asked me, in a way which I felt to be taunting,
how I could consent to waste my time as I did.
Without any answering warmth, I explained that
my guardians, having quarrelled with me, would not
grant for my use anything beyond my school allowance of one hundred pounds per annum. But was it
not possible that even this sum might by economy
be made to meet the necessities of the case? I re
plied that, from what I had heard, very probably it
was. Would I undertake an Oxford life upon such
terms? Most gladly, I said.  Upon that opening
he spoke to my mothbr; and the result was, that,
within seven days from the above conversation, I
found myself entering that time-honored university.




CHAPTER XV.
OXFORD.
I.
IT was in winter, and in the wintry weather of the
year 1803, that I first entered Oxford with a view to
its vast means of education, or rather with a view to
its vast advantages for study. A ludicrous story is
told of a young candidate for clerical orders - that,
being asked by the bishop's chaplain if he had ever
"been to Oxford," as a colloquial expression for
having had an academic education, he replied, "No:
but he had twice been to Abingdon:" Abingdon
being only seven miles distant. In the same sense
I might say that once before I had been at Oxford:
but that was as a transient visitor with Lord W —
when we were both children. Now, on the contrary,
I approached these venerable towers in the character
of a student, and with the purpose of a long connection; personally interested in the constitution of the
university, and obscurely anticipating that in this
city, or at least during the period of my nominal
attachment to this academic body, the remoter parts
of my future life would unfold before me. All hearts
were at this time occupied with the public interests
of the country. The "sorrow of the time" was
ripening to a second harvest. Napoleon had commenced his Vandal, or rather Hunnish war with




500                OXFORD.
Britain, in the spring of this year, about eight months
before; and profound public interest it was, into
which the very coldest hearts entered, that a little
divided with me the else monopolizing awe attached
to the solemn act of launching myself upon the
world. That expression may seem too strong as
applied to one who had already been for many
months a houseless wanderer in Wales, and a solitary roamer in the streets of London.  But in
those situations, it must be remembered, I was an
unknown, unacknowledged vagrant; and without
money I could hardly run much risk, except of
breaking my neck. The perils, the pains, the pleasures, or the obligations, of the world, scarcely exist
in a proper sense for him who has no funds. Perfect
weakness is often secure: it is by imperfect power,
turned against its master, that men are snared and
decoyed. Here in Oxford I should be called upon to
commence a sort of establishment upon the splendid
English scale; here I should share in many duties
and responsibilities, and should become henceforth
an object of notice to a large society. Now first
becoming separately and individually answerable for
my conduct, and no longer absorbed into the general unit of a family, I felt myself, for the first time,
burthened with the anxieties of a man, and a member of the world.
Oxford, ancient mother  hoary with ancestral
honors, time-honored, and, haply, it may be, timeshattered power- I owe thee nothing I Of thy vast
riches I took not a shilling, though living amongst
multitudes who owed to thee their daily bread. Not
the less I owe thee justice; for that is a universal




OXFORD.                501
debt. And at this moment, when I see thee called
to thy audit by unjust and malicious accusers -men
with the hearts of inquisitors and the purposes of
robbers - I feel towards thee something of filial reverence and duty. However, I mean not to speak as
an advocate, but as a conscientious witness in the
simplicity of truth; feeling neither hope nor fear of
a personal nature, without fee, and without favor.
I have been assured from many quarters that the
great body of the public are quite in the dark about
the whole manner of living in our English universities; and that a considerable portion of that public,
misle by the totally different constitution of universities in Scotland, Ireland, and generally on the continent, as well as by the different arrangements of
collegiate life in those institutions, are in a state
worse than ignorant (that is, more unfavorable to
the truth) - starting, in fact, from prejudices, and
absolute errors of fact, which operate most uncharitably upon their construction of those insulated
statements, which are continually put forward by
designing men.  Hence, I can well believe that it
will be an acceptable service, at this particular moment, when the very constitution of the two English
universities is under the unfriendly revision of Parliament, when some roving commission may be annually looked for, under a contingency which I will
not utter in words (for I reverence the doctrine of
fucq~vutuyo), far worse than Cromwellian, that is,
merely personal, and to winnow the existing corporation from disaffection to the state - a Henry the
Eighth commission of sequestration, and levelled at
the very integrity of the institution -under such




502                OXFORD.
prospects, I can well believe that a true account of
Oxford as it is (which will be valid also for Cambridge) must be welcome both to friend and foe.
And instead of giving this account didactically, or
according to a logical classification of the various
items in the survey, I will give it historically, or
according to the order in which the most important
facts of the case opened themselves before myself,
under the accidents of my own personal inquiry.
No situation could be better adapted than my own
for eliciting information; for, whereas most young
men come to the university under circumstances of
absolute determination as to the choice of their particular college, and have, therefore, no cause for
search or inquiry, I, on the contrary, came thither
in solitary self-dependence, and in the loosest state
of indetermination.
Though neither giving nor accepting invitations
for the first two years of my residence, never but
once had I reason to complain of a sneer, or indeed
any allusion whatever to habits which might be
understood to express poverty. Perhaps even then
I had no reason to complain, for my own conduct in
that instance was unwise; and the allusion, though
a personality, and so far ill-bred, might be meant in
real kindness. The case was this: I neglected my
dress in one point habitually; that is, I wore clothes
until they were threadbare- partly in the belief that
my gown would conceal their main defects, but
much more from carelessness and indispositioi to
spend upon a tailor what I had destined for a bookseller. At length, an official person, of some weight
in the college, sent me a message on the subject




OXFORD.                503
through a friend. It was couched in these terms:
That, let a man possess what talents or accomplishments he might, it was not possible for him to maintain his proper station, in the public respect, amongst
so many servants and people, servile to external impressions, without some regard to the elegance of his
dress.
A reproof so courteously prefaced I could not
take offence at; and at that time I resolved to spend
some cost upon decorating my person. But always
it happened that some book, or set of books, - that
passion being absolutely endless, and inexorable as
the grave,- stepped between me and my intentions;
until one day, upon arranging my toilet hastily before dinner, I suddenly made the discovery that I
had no waistcoat (or vest, as it is now called, through
conceit or provincialism), which was not torn or otherwise dilapidated; whereupon, buttoning up my
coat to the throat, and drawing my gown as close
about me as possible, I went into the public "-hall"
(so is called in Oxford the public eating-room) with
no misgiving. However, I was detected; for a
grave man, with a superlatively grave countenance,
who happened on that day to sit next me, but whom
I did not personally know, addressing his friend sitting opposite, begged to know if he had seen the
last Gazette, because he understood that it contained
an order in council laying an interdict upon the
future use of waistcoats. His friend replied, with the
same perfect gravity, that it was a great satisfaction
to his mind that his majesty's government should
have issued so sensible an order; which he trusted
would be soon followed up by an interdict on




504                 OXFORD.
breeches, they being still more disagreeable to pay
for. This said, without the movement on either side
of a single muscle, the two gentlemen passed to
other subjects; and I inferred, upon the whole, that,
having detected my manoeuvre, they wished to put
me on my guard in the only way open to them. At
any rate, this was the sole personality, or equivocal
allusion of any sort, which ever met my ear during
the years that I asserted my right to be as poor as I
chose. And, certainly, my censors were right, whatever were the temper in which they spoke, kind or unkind; for a little extra care in the use of clothes will
always, under almost any extremity of poverty, pay
for so much extra cost as is essential to neatness and
decorum, if not even to elegance. They were right,
and I was wrong, in a point which cannot be neglected with impunity.
But, to enter upon my own history, and my sketch
of Oxford life. - Late on a winter's night, in the
latter half of December, 1803, when a snow-storm,
and a heavy one, was already gathering in the air, a
lazy Birmingham coach, moving at four and a half
miles an hour, brought me through the long northern suburb of Oxford, to a shabby coach-inn, situated in the Corn Market. Business was out of the
question at that hour. But the next day I assembled all the acquaintances I had in the university,
or had to my own knowledge; and to them, in
council assembled, propounded my first question:
What college would they, in their superior state of
information, recommend to my choice? This question leads to the first great characteristic of Oxford,
as distinguished from most other universities. Bo



OXFORD.                505
fore me at this moment lie several newspapers, reporting, at length, the installation in office (as Chancellor) of the Duke of Wellington. The original
Oxford report, having occasion to mention the particular college from which the official procession moved,
had said, no doubt, that the gates of University, the
halls of University, &c., were at such a point of time
thrown open. But most of the provincial editors,
not at all comprehending that the reference was to
an individual college, known by the name of University College, one of twenty-five such establishments
in Oxford, had regularly corrected it into " gates of
the University," &c. Here is the first misconception
of all strangers. And this feature of Oxford it is
which has drawn such exclamations of astonishment
from foreigners.  Lipsius, for example, protested
with fervor, on first seeing this vast establishment
of Oxford, that one college of this university was
greater in its power and splendor, that it glorified
and illustrated the honors of literature more conspicuously by the pomps with which it invested the
ministers and machinery of education, than any entire
university of the continent.
What is a university almost everywhere else? It
announces little more, as respects the academic
buildings, than that here is to be found the place of
rendezvous- the exchange, as it were, or, under a
different figure, the palcestra of the various parties
connected with the prosecution of liberal studies.
This is their " House of Call," their general place of
muster and parade. Here it is that the professors
and the students converge, with the certainty of
meeting each other. Here, in short, are the lecture



50 6                OXFORD.
rooms in all the faculties. Well: thus far we see an
arrangement of convenience - that is, of convenience
for one of the parties, namely, the professors. To
them it spares the disagreeable circumstances connected with a private reception of their students at
their own rooms. But to the students it is a pure
matter of indifference. In all this there is certainly
no service done to the cause of good learning, which
merits a state sanction, or the aid of national funds.
Next, however, comes an academic library, sometimes a good one; and here commences a real use in
giving a national station to such institutions, because
their durable and monumental existence, liable to no
flux or decay from individual caprice, or accidents
of life, and their authentic station, as expressions of
the national grandeur, point them out to the bequests
of patriotic citizens. They fall also under the benefit
of another principle —the conservative feeling of
amateurship. Several great collections have been
bequeathed to the British Museum, for instancenot chiefly as a national institution, and under feelings of nationality, but because, being such, it was
also permanent; and thus the painful labors of collecting were guaranteed from perishing. Independ
ently of all this, I, for my part, willingly behold the
surplus of national funds dedicated to the consecration, as it were, of learning, by raising temples to
its honor, even where they answer no purpose of
direct use. Next, after the service of religion, I
would have the service of learning externally embellished, recommended to the affections of men, and
hallowed by the votive sculptures, as I may say, of
that affection, gathering in amount from age to age




OXFORD.                507
Maynificabo apostolatum meum is a language almost
as becoming to the missionaries and ministers of
knowledge, as to the ambassadors of religion. It is
fit that by pompous architectural monuments, that a
voice may forever be sounding audibly in human
ears of homage to these powers, and that even alien
feelings may be compelled into secret submission to
their influence. Therefore, amongst the number of
those who value such things, upon the scale of direct proximate utility, rank not me: that arithmetica
officina is in my years abominable. But still I affirm
that, in our analysis of an ordinary university, or
" college," as it is provincially called, we have not
yet arrived at any element of service rendered to
knowledge or education, large enough to call for
very extensive national aid. Honor has thus far
been rendered to the good cause by a public attestation, and that is well: but no direct promotion has
been given to that cause, no impulse communicated
to its progress, such that it can be held out as a
result commensurate to the name and pretensions of
a university. As yet there is nothing accomplished
which is beyond the strength of any little commercial town.  And as to the library in particular,
besides that in all essential departments it might be
bought, to order, by one day's common subscriptiop
of Liverpool or Glasgow merchants, students very
rarely indeed have admission to its free use.
What other functions remain to a university?
For those which I have mentioned of furnishing a
point of rendezvous to the great body of professors
and students, and a point of concentration to the
different establishments of implements and machinery




5U8                 OXFORD.
for elaborate researches [as, for instance, of books
and MSS., in the first place; secondly, of maps,
charts, and globes; and, thirdly, perhaps of the
costly apparatus required for such studies as Sideral
astronomy, galvanic chemistry or physiology, &c.];
all these are uses which cannot be regarded in a
higher light than as conveniences merely incidental
and collateral to the main views of the founders.
There are, then, two much loftier and more commanding ends met by the idea and constitution of
such institutions, and which first rise to a rank of
dignity sufficient to occupy the views of a legislator,
or to warrant a national interest. These ends are
involved: 1st, in the practice of conferring degrees,
that is, formal attestations and guarantees of competence to give advice, instruction, or aid, in the
three great branches of liberal knowledge applicable
to human life; 2d, in that appropriation of fixed
funds to fixed professorships, by means of which
the uninterrupted succession of public and authorized teachers is sustained in all the higher
branches of knowledge, from generation to generation, and from century to century. By the latter
result it is secured that the great well-heads of
liberal knowledge and of severe science shall never
grow dry. By the former it is secured that this
unfailing fountain shall be continually applied to the
production and to the tasting of fresh labors in endless succession for the public service, and thus, in
effect, that the great national fountain shall not be a
stagnant reservoir, but, by an endless derivation (to
speak in a Roman metaphor!), applied to a system
of national irrigation. These are the two great funo




OXFORD.                509
tions and qualifications of a collegiate incorporation:
one providing to each separate generation its own
separate rights of heirship to all the knowledge accumulated by its predecessors, and converting a mere
casual life-annuity into an estate of inheritance - a
mere fleeting ciywvoata into a XTMWr ~5 caet; the other
securing for this eternal dowry as wide a distribution
as possible: the one function regarding the dimension of length in the endless series of ages through
which it propagates its gifts; the other regarding
the dimension of breadth in the large application
throughout any one generation of these gifts to the
public service. Here are grand functions, high purposes; but neither one nor the other demands any
edifices of stone and marble; neither one nor the
other presupposes any edifice at all built with human
hands. A collegiate incorporation, the church militant of knowledge, in its everlasting struggle with
darkness and error, is, in this respect, like the church
of Christ- that is, it is always and essentially invisible to the fleshly eye. The pillars of this church
are human champions; its weapons are great truths
so shaped as to meet the shifting forms of error; its
armories are piled and marshalled in human memories; its cohesion lies in human zeal, in discipline,
in childlike docility; and all its triumphs, its pomps,
and glories, must forever depend upon talent, upon
the energies of the will, and upon the harmonious
cooperation of its several divisions. Thus far, I say,
there is no call made out for any intervention of the
architect.
Let me apply all this to Oxford. Among the four
functions commonly recognized by the founders of




510                OXFORD.
universities, which are- 1st, to find a set of halls or
places of meeting; 2d, to find the implements and
accessaries of study; 3d, to secure the succession
of teachers and learners; 4th, to secure the profit.
able application of their attainments to the public
service. Of these four, the two highest need no
buildings; and the other two, which are mere collateral functions of convenience, need only a small
one. Wherefore, then, and to what end, are the
vast systems of building, the palaces and towers of
Oxford? These are either altogether superfluous,
mere badges of ostentation and luxurious wealth, or
they point to some fifth function not so much as contemplated by other universities, and, at present,
absolutely and chimerically beyond their means of
attainment. Formerly we used to hear attacks upon
the Oxford discipline as fitted to the true intellectual
purposes of a modern education. Those attacks,
weak and most uninstructed in facts, false as to all
that they challenged, and puerile as to what implicitly they propounded for homage, are silent.
But, of late, the battery has been pointed against
the Oxford discipline in its moral aspects, as fitted
for the government and restraint of young men, or
even as at all contemplating any such control. The
Beverleys would have us suppose, not only that the
great body of the students are a licentious crew
acknowledging no discipline or restraints, but that
the grave elders of the university, and those who
wield the nominal authority of the place, passively
resign the very shows of power, and connive at
general excesses, even when they do not absolutely
authorize them in their personal examples. Now,




OXFORD.                511
when such representations are made, to what standard of a just discipline is it that these writers would
be understood as appealing? Is it to some ideal, or
to some existing and known reality?  Would they
have England suppose that they are here comparing
the actual Oxford with some possible hypothetic or
imaginable Oxford, -with some ideal case, that is
to say, about which great discussions would arise as
to its feasibility, -or that they are comparing it
with some known standard of discipline actually
realized and sustained for generations, in Leipsic,
suppose, or Edinburgh, or Leyden, or Salamanca?
This is the question of questions, to which we may
demand an answer; and, according to that answer,
observe the dilemma into which these furciferous
knaves must drop. If they are comparing Oxford
simply with some ideal and better Oxford, in some
ideal and better world, in that case all they have
said-waiving its falsehoods of fact-is no more
than a flourish of rhetoric, and the whole discussion
may be referred to the shadowy combats of scholastic declamation-mongers- those mock gladiators,
and umbratiles doctores. But if, on the other hand,
they pretend to take their station upon the known
basis of some existing institution, -if they will pretend that, in this impeachment of Oxford, they are
proceeding upon a silent comparison with Edinburgh,
Glasgow, Jena, Leipsic, Padua, &c., - then are they
self-exposed, as men not only without truth, but
without shame. For now comes in, as a sudden
revelation, and as a sort of deus ex machina, for the
vindication of the truth, the simple answer to that
question proposed above, Wherefore, and to what




512                OXFORD.
end, are the vast edifices of Oxford? A university,
as universities are in general, needs not, I have
shown, to be a visible body - a building raised with
hands. Wherefore, then, is the visible Oxford? To
what fifth end, refining upon the ordinary ends of
such institutions, is the far-stretching system of
Oxford hospitia, or monastic hotels, directed by their
founders, or applied by their present possessors?
Hearken, reader, to the answer:
These vast piles are applied to an end, absolutely
indispensable to any even tolerable system of discipline, and yet absolutely unattainable upon any
commensurate scale in any other university of
Europe. They are applied to the personal settlement and domestication of the students within the
gates and walls of that college to whose discipline
they are amenable. Everywhere else the young men
live where they please and as they please; necessarily distributed amongst the towns-people; in any
case, therefore, liable to no control or supervision
whatever; and in those cases where the university
forms but a small part of a vast capital city, as it
does in Paris, Edinburgh, Madrid, Vienna, Berlin,
and Petersburg, liable to every mode of positive
temptation and distraction, which besiege human
life in high-viced and luxurious communities. Here,
therefore, it is a mockery to talk of discipline; of a
nonentity there can be no qualities; and we need
not ask for the description of the discipline in situations where discipline there can be none. One slight
anomaly I have heard of as varying pro tanto the
uniform features of this picture. In Glasgow I have
heard of an arrangement by which young acade.




OXFORD.                513
miciins are placed in the family of a professor
Here, as members of a private household, and that
household under the presiding eye of a conscientious, paternal, and judicious scholar, doubtless they
would enjoy as absolute a shelter from peril and
worldly contagion as parents could wish; but not
more absolute, I affirm, than belongs, unavoidably,
to the monastic seclusion of an Oxford college - the
gates of which open to no egress after nine o'clock
at night, nor after eleven to any ingress which is not
regularly reported to a proper officer of the establishment. The two forms of restraint are, as respects
the effectual amount of control, equal; and were
they equally diffused, Glasgow and Oxford would, in
this point, stand upon the same level of discipline.
But it happens that the Glasgow case was a personal
accident; personal, both as regarded him who volunteered the exercise of this control, and those who
volunteered to appropriate its benefits; whereas the
Oxford case belongs to the very system, is coixtensive with the body of undergraduates, and, from the
very arrangement of Oxford life, is liable to no decay
or intermission.
Here, then, the reader apprehends the first great
characteristic distinction of Oxford- that distinction
which extorted the rapturous admiration of Lipsius
as an exponent of enormous wealth, but which I
now mention as applying, with ruinous effect, to the
late calumnies upon Oxford, as an inseparable exponent of her meritorious discipline. She, most truly
and severely an "Alma Mater," gathers all the juvenile part of her flock within her own fold, and
Leneath her own vigilant supervision. In Cambridge
33




514                OXFORD.
there is, sc far, a laxer administration of this rulel
that, when any college overflows, undergraduates
are allowed to lodge at large in the town. But ill
Oxford this increase of peril and discretionary power
is thrown by preference upon the senior graduates,
who are seldom below the age of twenty-two or
twenty-three; and the college accommodations are
reserved, in almost their whole extent, for the most
youthful part of the society. This extent is prodigious. Even in my time, upwards of two thousand
persons were lodged within the colleges; none having fewer than two rooms, very many having three,
and men of rank, or luxurious habits, having often
large suites of rooms. But that was a time of war,
which Oxford experience has shown to have operated most disproportionably as a drain upon the
numbers disposable for liberal studies; and the total
capacity of the university was far from being exhausted. There are now, I believe, between five and
six thousand names upon the Oxford books; and
more than four thousand, I understand, of constant
residents. So that Oxford is well able to lodge, and
on a very sumptuous scale, a small army of men;
which expression of her great splendor I now mention (as I repeat) purely as applying to the question
of her machinery for enforcing discipline. This part
of her machinery, it will be seen, is unique, and absolutely peculiar to herself. Other universities, boasting no such enormous wealth, cannot be expected to
act upon her system of seclusion. Certainly, I make
it no reproach to other universities, that, not possessing the means of sequestering their young men
from worldly communion, they must abide by the




OXFORD.               515
evils of a laxer discipline. It is their misfortune,
and not their criminal neglect, which consents to so
dismal a relaxation of academic habits. But let
them not urge this misfortune in excuse at one time,
and at another virtually disavow it. Never let them
take up a stone to throw at Oxford, upon this element of a wise education; since in them, through
that original vice in their constitution, the defect
of all means for secluding and insulating their society, discipline is abolished by anticipation - being,
in fact, an impossible thing; for the walls of the college are subservient to no purpose of life, but only
to a purpose of convenience; they converge the
students for the hour or two of what is called lecture; which over, each undergraduate again becomes
sui juris, is again absorbed into the crowds of the
world, resorts to whatsoever haunts he chooses, and
finally closes his day at  -  if, in any sense, at
home -at a home which is not merely removed from
the supervision and control, but altogether from the
bare knowledge, of his academic superiors. How far
this discipline is well administered in other points at
Oxford, will appear from the rest of my account.
But, thus far, at least, it must be conceded, that
Oxford, by and through this one unexampled distinction - her vast disposable fund of accommodations for junior members within her own private
cloisters-possesses an advantage which she could
not forfeit, if she would, towards an effectual knowledge of each man's daily habits, and a control over
him which is all but absolute.
This knowledge and this control is much assisted
and concentrated by the division of the university




516                  OXFORD.
into separate colleges. Here comes another feature
of the Oxford system. Elsewhere the university is
a single college; and this college is the university.
But in Oxford the university expresses, as it were,
the army, and the colleges express the several brigades, or regiments.
To resume, therefore, my own thread of personal
narration. On the next morning after my arrival in
Oxford, I assembled a small council of friends to
assist me in determining at which of the various
separate societies I should enter, and whether as
a "commoner," or as a " gentleman commoner."
Under the first question was couched the following
latitude of choice: I give the names of the colleges,
and the numerical account of their numbers, as it
stood in January, 1832; for this will express, as well
as the list of that day, (which I do not accurately
know), the proportions of importance amongst
them.
Mem.
1. University College.............  207
2. Balliol  ".............       257
3. Merton   "............. 124
4. Exeter   "............. 299
5. Oriel    ".............       293
6. Queen's............. 351
7. New.............. 157
8. Lincoln  "............. 141
9. All Souls'  ".............       98
10. Magdalene  "............. 165
11. Brazennose "..............418
12. Corpus Christi"............ 127
13. Christ Church"............. 949
14. Trinity  "............. 259
15. St. John's  ".............   218
16. Jesus    "............ 16




OXFORD.                 517
Mem.
17. Wadham College............. 217
18. Pembroke  "..............      189
19. Worcester ".............. 231
Then, besides these colleges, five Halls, as they
are technically called, (the term  Hall implying
chiefly that they are societies not endowed, or not
endowed with fellowships as the colleges are),
namely:
Mem.
1. St. Mary Hall.............    83
2. Magdalen ".............. 178
3. New Inn  ".............. 10
4. St. Alban "...............  41
5. St. Edmund "..............    96
Such being the names, and general proportions on
the scale of local importance, attached to the different communities, next comes the very natural question, What are the chief determining motives for
guiding the selection amongst them? These I shall
state. First of all, a man not otherwise interested
in the several advantages of the colleges has, however, in all probability, some choice between a small
society and a large one; and thus far a mere ocular
inspection of the list will serve to fix his preference.
For my part, supposing other things equal, I greatly
preferred the most populous college, as being that in
which any single member, who might have reasons
for standing aloof from the general habits of expense,
of intervisiting, etc., would have the best chance of
escaping a jealous notice. However, amongst those
" other things " which I presumed equal, one held a
high place in my estimation, which a little inquiry




518                OXFORD.
showed to be very far from equal. All the colleges
have chapels, but all have not organs; nor, amongst
those which have, is the same large use made of the
organ. Some preserve the full cathedral service;
others do not. Christ Church, meantime, fulfilled all
conditions: for the chapel here happens to be the
cathedral of the diocese; the service, therefore, is
full and ceremonial; the college, also, is far the most
splendid, both in numbers, rank, wealth, and influence. Hither I resolved to go; and immediately I
prepared to call on the head.
The "head," as he is called generically, of an
Oxford college (his specific appellation varies almost
with every college -principal, provost, master,
rector, warden, etc.), is a greater man than the uninitiated suppose. His situation is generally felt as
conferring a degree of rank not much less than episcopal; and, in fact, the head of Brazennose at that
time, who happened to be the Bishop of Bangor, was
not held to rank much above his brothers in office.
Such being the rank of heads generally, a fortiori,
that of Christ Church was to be had in reverence;
and this I knew. He is always, ex officio, dean of
the diocese; and, in his quality of college head, he
only, of all deans that ever were heard of, is uniformly considered a greater man than his own diocesan. But it happened that the present dean had
even higher titles to consideration. Dr. Cyril Jackson had been tutor to the Prince of Wales (George
IV.); he had repeatedly refused a bishopric; and
that, perhaps, is entitled to place a man one degree
above him who has accepted one. He was also supposed to have made a bishop, and afterwards, at




OXFORD.                519
least, it is certain that he made his own brother a
bishop.  All things weighed, Dr. Cyril Jackson
seemed so very great a personage that I now felt
the value of my long intercourse with great Dons in
giving me confidence to face a lion of this magnitude.
Those who know Oxford are aware of the peculiar
feelings which have gathered about the name and
pretensions of Christ Church; feelings of superiority
and leadership in the members of that college, and
often enough of defiance and jealousy on the part of
other colleges. Hence it happens that you rarely
find yourself in a shop, or other place of public resort,
with a Christ-Church man, but he takes occasion, if
young and frivolous, to talk loudly of the Dean, as
an indirect expression of his own connection with this
splendid college; the title of Dean being exclusively
attached to the headship of Christ Church. The
Dean, as may be supposed, partakes in this superior
dignity of his " House;" he is officially brought into
connection with all orders of the British aristocracy
- often with royal personages; and with the younger
branches of the aristocracy his office places him in a
relation of authority and guardianship - exercised,
however, through inferior ministry, and seldom by
direct personal interference. The reader must understand that, with rare exceptions, all the princes and
nobles of Great Britain, who choose to benefit by an
academic education, resort either to Christ Church
College in Oxford, or to Trinity College in Cambridge;
these are the alternatives. Naturally enough, my
young friends were somewhat startled at my determination to call upon so great a man; a letter, they
fancied, would be a better mode of application. 1,




520                OXFORD.
however, who did not adopt the doctrine that no
man is a hero to his valet, was of opinion that very
few men indeed are heroes to themselves. The cloud
of external pomp, which invests them to the eyes of
the attoniti, cannot exist to their own; they do not,
like Kehama, entering the eight gates of Padalon at
once, meet and contemplate their own grandeurs;
but, more or less, are conscious of acting a part. I
did not, therefore, feel the tremor which was expected
of a novice, on being ushered into so solemn a presence.




OXFORD.                5'1
II
THE Dean was sitting in a spacious library or study,
elegantly, if not luxuriously furnished. Footmen,
stationed as repeaters, as if at some fashionable rout,
gave a momentary importance to my unimportant
self, by the thundering tone of their annunciations.
All the machinery of aristocratic life seemed indeed
to intrench this great Don's approaches; and I was
really surprised that so very great a man should condescend to rise on my entrance. But I soon found
that, if the Dean's station and relation to the higher
orders had made him lofty, those same relations had
given a peculiar suavity to his manners. Here,
indeed, as on other occasions, I noticed the essential
misconception, as to the demeanor of men of rank,
which prevails amongst those who have no personal
access to their presence. In the fabulous pictures
of novels (such novels as once abounded), and in
newspaper reports of conversations, real or pretended,
between the king and inferior persons, we often find
the writer expressing his sense of aristocratic assumption, by making the king address people without
their titles. The Duke of Wellington, for instance,
or Lord Liverpool, figures usually, in such scenes, as
" Wellington," or "Arthur," and as "Liverpool."




522                 OXFORD.
Now, as to the private talk of George IV. in such
cases, I do not pretend to depose; but, speaking
generally, I may say that the practice of the highest
classes takes the very opposite course. Nowhere is
a man so sure of his titles or official distinctions as
amongst them; for, it is upon giving to every mall
the very extreme punctilio of his known or supposed
claims, that they rely for the due observance of their
own. Neglecting no form of courtesy suited to the
case, they seek, in this way, to remind men unceasingly of what they expect; and the result is what I
represent - that people in the highest stations, and
such as bring them continually into contact with inferiors, are, of all people, the least addicted to insolence or defect of courtesy.  Uniform suavity of
manner is indeed rarely found, except in men of high
rank. Doubtless this may arise upon a motive of
self-interest, jealous of giving the least opening or
invitation to the retorts of ill-temper or low breeding.
But, whatever be its origin, such I believe to be the
fact. In a very long conversation of a general
nature upon the course of my studies, and the present direction of my reading, Dr. Cyril Jackson treated
me just as he would have done his equal in station
and in age. Coming, at length, to the particular purpose of my visit at this time to himself, he assumed
a little more of his official stateliness. He condescended to say that it would have given him pleasure
to reckon me amongst his flock; " But, sir," he said,
in a tone of some sharpness, " your guardians have
acted improperly. It was their duty to have given
me at least one year's notice of their intention to
place you at Christ Church. At present I have not




OXFORD.               523
a dog-kennel in my college untenanted." Upon this,
I observed that nothing remained for me to do but
to apologize for having occupied so much of his
time; that, for myself, I now first heard of this preliminary application; and that, as to my guardians,
I was bound to acquit them of all oversight in this
instance, they being no parties to my present scheme.
The Dean expressed his astonishment at this statement. I, on my part, was just then making my
parting bows, and had reached the door, when a gesture of the Dean's, courteously waving me back to
the sofa I had quitted, invited me to resume my
explanations; and I had a conviction at the moment
that the interview would have terminated in the
Dean's suspending his standing rule in my favor.
But, just at that moment, the thundering heralds of
the Dean's hall announced some man of high rank:
the sovereign of Christ Church seemed distressed for
a moment; but then recollecting himself, bowed in
a way to indicate that I was dismissed. And thus
it happened that I did not become a member of Christ
Church.
A few days passed in thoughtless indecision. At
the end of that time, a trivial difficulty arose to settle
my determination. I had brought about fifty guineas
to Oxford; but the expenses of an Oxford inn, with
almost daily entertainments to young friends, had
made such inroads upon this sum, that, after allowing for the contingencies incident to a college initiation, enough would not remain to meet the usual
demand for what is called " caution money."  This
is a small sum, properly enough demanded of every
student, wher matriculated, as a pledge for meeting




524                OXFORD.
any loss from unsettled arrears, such as his sulden
death or his unannounced departure might else continually be inflicting upon his college. By releasing
the college, therefore, from all necessity for degrading
vigilance or persecution, this demand does, in effect,
operate beneficially to the feelings of all parties. In
most colleges it amounts to twenty-five pounds: in
one only it was considerably less. And this trifling
consideration it was, concurring with a reputation at
that time for relaxed discipline, which finally determined me in preferring W s College to all others.
This college had the capital disadvantage, in my eyes,
that its chapel possessed no organ, and no musical
service. But any other choice would have driven
me to an instant call for more money - a measure
which, as too flagrantly in contradiction to the whole
terms on which I had volunteered to undertake an
Oxford life, I could not find nerves to face.
At W — College, therefore, I entered: and here
arises the proper occasion for stating the true costs
of an Oxford education. First comes the question of
lodging. This item varies, as may be supposed; but
my own case will place on record the two extremes
of cost in one particular college, nowadays differing,
I believe, from the general standard.  The first
rooms assigned me, being small and ill-lighted, as
part of an old Gothic building, were charged at four
guineas a year. These I soon exchanged for others
a little better, and for them I paid six guineas. Finally,
by privilege of seniority, I obtained a handsome set
of well-proportioned rooms, in a modern section of'the college, charged at ten guineas a year. This set
was composed of three rooms; namely, an airy bed



OXFORD.                525
room, a study, and a spacious room for receiving
visitors. This range of accommodation is pretty
general in Oxford, and, upon the whole, may be
taken perhaps as representing the average amount
of luxury in this respect, and at the average amount
of cost. The furniture and the fittings up of these
rooms cost me about twenty-five guineas; f6r the
Oxford rule is, that if you take the rooms (which is
at your own option), in that case, you third the furniture and the embellishments -that is, you succeed
to the total cost diminished by one third. You pay,
therefore, two guineas out of each three to your immediate predecessor. But, as he also may have succeeded to the furniture upon the same terms, whenever there happens to have been a rapid succession
of occupants, the original cost to a remote predecessor is sometimes brought down, by this process of
diminution, to a mere fraction of the true value; and
yet no individual occupant can complain of any
heavy loss. Whilst upon this subject, I may observe
that, in the seventeenth century, in Milton's time,
for example (about 1624), and for more than sixty
years after that era, the practice of chumship prevailed: every set of chambers was possessed by two
cooccupants; they had generally the same bed-room,
and a common study; and they were called chums.
This practice, once all but universal, is now entirely
extinct; and the extinction serves to mark the
advance of the country, not so much in luxury as
in refinement.
The next item which I shall notice is that which
in college bills is expressed by the word Tutorage.
This is the same in all colleges, I believe, namely,




526                 OXFORD.
ten guineas per annum. And this head suggests an
explanation which is most important to the reputation of Oxford, and fitted to clear up a very extensive
delusion. Some years ago, a most elaborate statement was circulated of the number and costly endowment of the Oxford professorships. Some thirty or
more there were, it was alleged, and five or six only
which were not held as absolute sinecures. Now,
this is a charge which I am not here meaning to
discuss. Whether defensible or not, I do not now
inquire. It is the practical interpretation and construction of this charge which I here wish to rectify.
In most universities, except those of England, the
professors are the body on whom devolves the whole
duty and burthen of teaching; they compose the
sole fountains of instruction; and if these fountains
fail, the fair inference is, that the one great purpose
of the institution is defeated.  But this inference,
valid for all other places, is not so for Oxford and
Cambridge.   And here, again, the difference arises
out of the peculiar distribution of these bodies into
separate and independent colleges.  Each college
takes upon itself the regular instruction of its separate inmates - of these and of no others; and for this
office it appoints, after careful selection, trial, and
probation, the best qualified amongst those of its senior members who choose to undertake a trust of such
heavy responsibility. These officers are called Tutors;
and they are connected by duties and by accountability, not with the university at all, but with their
own private colleges. The professors, on the other
hand, are public functionaries, not connected (as
respects the exercise of their duties) with any col



OXFORD.                527
lege whatsoever - not even with their own —but
altogether and exclusively with the whole university.
Besides the public tutors appointed in each college,
on the scale of one to each dozen or score of students,
there are also tutors strictly private, who attend any
students in search of special and extraordinary aid,
on terms settled privately by themselves. Of these
persons, or their existence, the college takes no cognizance; but between the two classes of tutors, the
most studious young men -those who would be
most likely to avail themselves of the lectures read
by the professors - have their whole time pretty
severely occupied: and the inference from all this
is, not only that the course of Oxford education
would suffer little if no professors at all existed, but
also that, if the existing professors were ex abundanti
to volunteer the most exemplary spirit of exertion,
however much this spectacle of conscientious dealing
might edify the university, it would contribute but
little to the promotion of academic purposes. The
establishment of professors is, in fact, a thing of
ornament and pomp. Elsewhere, they are the working servants; but, in Oxford, the ministers corresponding to them bear another name,-they are
called Tutors. These are the working agents in the
Oxford system; and the professors, with salaries in
many cases merely nominal, are persons sequestered,
and properly sequestered, to the solitary cultivation
and advancement of knowledge, which a different
order of men is appointed to communicate.
Here let us pause for one moment, to notice
another peculiarity in the Oxford system, upon the
tendency of which I shall confidently make my ap



528                 OXFORD.
peal to the good sense of all unprejudiced readers.
I have said that the tutors of Oxford correspond to
the professors of other universities. But this corres
pondence, which is absolute and unquestionable as
regards the point then at issue, - namely, where we
are to look for that limb of the establishment on
which rests the main teaching agency, - is liable to
considerable qualification, when we examine the
mode of their teaching. In both cases, this is conveyed by what is termed "lecturing; "-but what
is the meaning of a lecture in Oxford and elsewhere?
Elsewhere, it means a solemn dissertation, read, or
sometimes histrionically declaimed, by the professor.
In Oxford, it means ai exercise performed orally by
the students, occasionally assisted by the tutor, and
subject, in its whole course, to his corrections, and
what may be called his scholia, or collateral suggestions and improvements. Now, differ as men may
as to other features of the Oxford, compared with
the hostile system, here I conceive that there is no
room for doubt or demur.  An Oxford lecture imposes a real, bona fide task upon the student; it will
not suffer him to fall asleep, either literally or in the
energies of his understanding; it is a real drill,
under the excitement, perhaps, of personal competition, and under the review of a superior scholar.
But, in Germany, under the declamations of the pro.
fessor, the young men are often literally sleeping;
nor is it easy to see how the attention can be kept
from wandering, on this plan, which subjects the
auditor to no risk of sudden question or personal
appeal. As to the prizes given for essays, etc., by
the professors, these have the effect of drawing forth




OXFORD.                529
latent talent, but they can yield no criterion of the
attention paid to the professor; not to say that the
competition for these prizes is a matter of choice.
Sometimes it is true that examinations take place;
but the Oxford lecture is a daily examination; and,
waiving that, what chance is there (I would ask) for
searching examinations, for examinations conducted
with the requisite auctoritas (or weight of influence
derived from personal qualities), if —which may
Heaven prevent! - the German tenure of professorships were substituted for our British one: that is,
if for independent and liberal teachers were substituted poor mercenary haberdashers of knowledge 
cap in hand to opulent students -servile to their
caprices - and, at one blow, degrading the science
they profess, the teacher, and the pupil? Yet I hear
that such advice was given to a Royal Commission,
sent to investigate one or more of the Scottish universities.  In the German universities, every professor holds his situation, not in his good behavior,
but on the capricious pleasure of the young men who
resort to his market. He opens a shop, in fact:
others, without limit, generally men of no credit or
known respectability, are allowed to open rival
shops; and the result is, sometimes, that the whole
kennel of scoundrel professors ruin one another;
each standing with his mouth open, to leap at any
bone thrown amongst them, from the table of the
"Burschen;" all hating, fighting, calumniating each
other, until the land is sick of its base knowledgemongers, and would vomit the loathsome crew, were
any natural channel open to their instincts of abhorrence. The most important of the Scottish profess34




530                OXFORD.
orships —those which are fundamentally morticed
to the moral institutions of the land - are upon the
footing of Oxford tutorships, as regards emoluments;
that is, they are not suffered to keep up a precarious
mendicant existence, upon the alms of the students,
or upon their fickle admirations. It is made imperative upon a candidate for admission into the ministry
of the Scottish Kirk, that he shall show a certificate
of attendance through a given number of seasons at
given lectures.
The next item in the quarterly (or, technically, the
term) bills of Oxford is for servants.  This, in my
college, and, I believe, in all others, amounted, nominally, to two guineas a year. That sum, however,
was paid to a principal servant, whom, perhaps, you
seldom or never saw; the actual attendance upon
yourself being performed by one of his deputies; and
to this deputy-who is, in effect, a factotum, combining in his single person all the functions of chamhermaid, valet, waiter at meals, and porter or errandboy -by the custom of the place and your own sense
of propriety, you cannot but give something or other
in the shape of perquisites. I was told, on entering,
that half a guinea a quarter was the customary allowance, -the same sum, in fact, as was levied by the
college for his principal; but I gave mine a guinea
a quarter, thinking that little enough for the many
services he performed; and others, who were richer
than myself, I dare say, often gave much more. Yet,
sometimes, it struck me, from the gratitude which
his looks testified, on my punctual payment of this
guinea, -for it was the only bill with regard to
which I troubled myself to practise any severe




OXFORD.                 b31
punctuality, - that perhaps some thoughtless young
man might give him less, or might even forget to
give anything; and, at all events, I have reason to
believe that half that sum would have contented him.
These minutiae I record purposely; my immediate
object being to give a rigorous statement of the real
expenses incident to an English university education,
partly as a guide to the calculations of parents, and
partly as an answer to the somewhat libellous exaggerations which are current on this subject, in times
like these, when even the truth itself, and received in
a spirit of candor the most indulgent, may be all too
little to defend these venerable seats of learning from
the ruin which seems brooding over them. Yet, no!
Abominable is the language of despair even in a desperate situation.  And, therefore, Oxford, ancient
mother! and thou, Cambridge, twin-light of England I be vigilant and erect, for the enemy stands at
all your gates! Two centuries almost have passed
since the boar was within your vineyards, laying
waste and desolating your heritage. Yet that storm
was not final, nor that eclipse total.  May this also
prove but a trial and a shadow of affliction! which
affliction, may it prove to you, mighty incorporations, what, sometimes, it is to us, poor, frail homunculi- a process of purification, a solemn and oracular warning!  And, when that cloud is overpast,
then, rise, ancient powers, wiser and better- ready,
like the uunt7rSryioeo of old, to enter upon a second
stadium, and to transmit the sacred torch through a
second period of twice * five hundred years. So
Oxford may confessedly claim a duration of that extent; and
the pretensions of Cambridge, in that respect, if less aspiring, are,
however, as I believe, less accurately determined.




532                OXFORD.
prays a loyal alumnus, whose presumption, if any be,
in taking upon himself a monitory tone, is privileged
by zeal and filial anxiety.
To return, however, into the track from which I
have digressed. The reader will understand that any
student is at liberty to have private servants of his
own, as many and of what denomination he pleases.
This point, as many others of a merely personal bearing, when they happen to stand in no relation to
public discipline, neither the university nor the particular college of the student feels summoned or
even authorized to deal with. Neither, in fact, does
any other university in Europe; and why, then,
notice the case? Simply thus: if the Oxford discipline, in this particular chapter, has nothing special
or peculiar about it, yet the case to which it applies
has, and is almost exclusively found in our universities.  On the continent it happens most rarely that
a student has any funds disposable for luxuries so
eminently such as grooms or footmen; but at Oxford and Cambridge the case occurs often enough to
attract notice from the least vigilant eye.  And
thus we find set down to the credit account of other
universities the non-existence of luxury in this or
other modes, whilst, meantime, it is well known to
the fair inquirer that each or all are indulgences,
not at all or so much as in idea proscribed by the
sumptuary edicts of those universities; but, simply,
by the lower scale of their general revenues. And
this lower scale, it will be said - how do you account
for that?  I answer, not so much by the general
inferiority of continental Europe to Great Britain in
diffusive wealth (though that argument goes for




OXFORD.                533
bomething, it being notorious that, whilst immoderate wealth, concentrated in a small number of hands,
exists in various continental states upon a larger
scale than with us, moderately large estates, on the
other hand, are, with them, as one to two hundred, or
even two hundred and fifty, in comparison of ours),
but chiefly upon this fact, which is too much overlooked, that the foreign universities are not peopled
from the wealthiest classes, which are the class either
already noble, or wishing to become such. And
why is that? Purely from the vicious constitution
of society on the continent, where all the fountains
of honor lie in the military profession or in the diplomatic. We English, haters and revilers of ourselves
beyond all precedent, disparagers of our own eminent advantages beyond all sufferance of honor or
good sense, and daily playing into the hands of
foreign enemies, who hate us out of mere envy or
shame, have amongst us some hundreds of writers
who will die or suffer martyrdom upon this proposition — that aristocracy, and the spirit and prejudices
of aristocracy, are more operative (more effectually
and more extensively operative) amongst ourselves,
than in any other known society of men. Now, I,
who believe all errors to arise in some narrow, partial, or angular view of truth, am seldom disposed
to meet any sincere affirmation by a blank, unmodified denial.  Knowing, therefore, that some acute
observers do really believe this doctrine as to the
aristocratic forces, and the way in which they mould
English society, I cannot but suppose that some
symptoms do really exist of such a phenomenon;
and the only remark I shall here make on the case is




534                 OXFORD
this, that, very often, where any force or influence
reposes upon deep realities, and upon undisturbed
foundations, there will be the least heard of loquacious and noisy expressions of its power; which
expressions arise most, not where the current is most
violent, but where (being possibly the weakest) it is
most fretted with resistance.
In England, the very reason why the aristocratic
feeling makes itself so sensibly felt and so distinctly
an object of notice to the censorious observer is,
because it maintains a troubled existence amongst
counter and adverse influences, so many and so potent. This might be illustrated abundantly. But,
as respects the particular question before me, it will
be sufficient to say this: With us the profession and
exercise of knowledge, as a means of livelihood, is
honorable; on the continent it is not so.  The
knowledge, for instance, which is embodied in the
three learned professions, does, with us, lead to distinction and civil importance; no man can pretend
to deny this; nor, by consequence, that the professors personally take rank with the highest order of
gentlemen.   Are they not, I demand, everywhere
with us on the same footing, in point of rank and
consideration, as those who bear the king's commission in the army and navy? Can this be affirmed of
the continent, either generally, or, indeed, partially?
I say, no. Let us take Germany, as an illustration.
Many towns (for anything I know, all) present us
with a regular bisection of the resident notables, or
wealthier class, into two distinct (often hostile) coteries: one being composed of those who are " noble; "
the other, of families equally well educated and




OXFORD.                535
accomplished, but not, in the continental sense,
"noble."  The meaning and value of the word is so
entirely misapprehended by the best English writers,
being, in fact, derived from our own way of applying
it, that it becomes important to ascertain its true
value. A " nobility," which is numerous enough to
fill a separate ball-room in every sixth-rate town,
it needs no argument to show, cannot be a nobility
in any English sense. In fact, an edelmann or nobleman, in the German sense, is strictly what we mean
by a born gentleman; with this one only difference,
that, whereas, with us, the rank which denominates
a man such passes off by shades so insensible, and
almost infinite, into the ranks below, that it becomes
impossible to assign it any strict demarkation or
lines of separation; on the contrary, the continenta1
noble points to certain fixed barriers, in the shape
of privileges, which divide him, per saltur, from
those who are below his own order. But were it
not for this one legal benefit of accurate circumscription and slight favor, the continental noble, whether
Baron of Germany, Count of France, or Prince of
Sicily and of Russia, is simply on a level with the
common landed esquire of Britain, and not on a level
in very numerous cases.
Such being the case, how paramount must be the
spirit of aristocracy in continental society  Our
haute noblesse —our genuine nobility, who are such
in the general feeling of their compatriots - will do
that which the phantom of nobility of the continent
will not: the spurious nobles of Germany will not
mix, on equal terms, with their untitled fellow-citizens, living in the same city and in the same style




5an 6                   OXFORD.
as themselves; they will not meet them in the same
ball or concert-room. Our great territorial nobility,
though sometimes forming exclusive circles (but not,
however, upon any principle of high birth), do so
daily. They mix as equal partakers in the same
amusements of races, balls, musical assemblies, with
the baronets (or elite of the gentry); with the landed
esquires (or middle gentry); with the superior order
of tradesmen (who, in Germany, are absolute ciphers,
for political weight, or social consideration, but, with
us, constitute the lower and broader stratum of the
nobilitas,* or gentry). The obscure baronage of
Germany, it is undeniable, insist upon having "an
atmosphere of their own;" whilst the Howards, the
Stanleys, the Talbots, of England; the Hamiltons,
the Douglases, the Gordons, of Scotland, are content
to acknowledge a sympathy with the liberal part of
their untitled countrymen, in that point which most
searchingly tries the principle of aristocratic pride,
namely, in their pleasures.    To have the same pursuits of business with another, may be a result of
accident or position; to have the same pleasures,
* It may be necessary to inform some readers that the word noble,
by which so large a system of imposition and fraud, as to the composition of foreign society, has long been practised upon the credulity
of the British, corresponds to our word gentlemanly (or, rather, to
the vulgar word genteel, if that word were ever used legally, or extra
gradum), not merely upon the argument of its virtual and operative
value in the general estimate of men (that is, upon the argument
that a count, baron, &c., does not, qua such, command any deeper
feeling of respect or homage than a British esquire), but also upon
the fact, that, originally, in all English registers. as, for instance, in
the Oxford matriculation registers, all the upper gentry (knights,
esquires, &c.) are technically designated by the word nobiles. -F a
u,lrlberlayne, i&c.




OXFORD.                537
Leing a matter of choice, argues a community of
nature in the moral sensibilities, in that part of our
constitution which differences one man from another
in the capacities of greatness and elevation. As
with their amusements, so with their graver employments; the same mutual repulsion continues to
divide the two orders through life.
The nobles either live in gloomy seclusion upon
their private funds, wherever the privilege of primogeniture has enabled them to do so; or, having no
funds at all (the case of ninety-nine in one hundred),
they go into the army; that profession, the profession
of arms, being regarded as the only one compatible
with an edelmann's pretensions. Such was once the
feeling in England; such is still the feeling on the
continent. It is a prejudice naturally clinging to a
semi-barbarous (because growing out of a barbarous) state, and, in its degree, clinging to every stage
of imperfect civilization; and, were there no other
argument, this would be a sufficient one, that England, under free institutions, has outrun the continent, in real civilization, by a century; a fact which
is concealed by the forms of luxurious refinement in
a few exclusive classes, too often usurping the name
and honors of radical civilization.
From the super-appreciation of the military profession arises a corresponding contempt of all other
professions whatsoever paid by fellow-citizens, and not
by the king or the state. The clerical profession is
in the most abject degradation throughout Southern
Germany; and the reason why this forces itself less
imperiously upon the public notice is, that, in rural
situations, from the absence of a resident gentry




538                   OXFORD.
(speaking generally), the pastor is brought into rare
collision with those who style themselves noble;
whilst, in towns, the clergy find people enough to
countenance those who, being in the same circumstances as to comfort and liberal education, are also
under the same ban of rejection from the "nobility,"
or born gentry. The legal profession is equally degraded; even a barrister or advocate holds a place in
the public esteem little differing from that of an Old
Bailey attorney of the worst class. And this result
is the less liable to modification from personal qualities, inasmuch as there is no great theatre (as with
us) for individual display. Forensic eloquence is
unknown in Germany, as it is too generally on the
continent, from the defect of all popular or open
judicatures. A similar defect of deliberative assemblies -such, at least, as represent any popular influences and debate with open doors-intercepts the
very possibility of senatorial eloquence.* That of the
pulpit only remains. But even of this - whether it be
from want of the excitement and contagious emulation from the other fields of oratory, or from the
peculiar genius of Lutheranism- no models have yet
arisen that could, for one moment, sustain a comparison with those of England or France. The highest
names in this department would not, to a foreign
* The subject is amusingly illustrated by an anecdote of Goethe,
recorded by himself in his autobiography. Some physiognomist, or
phrenologist, had found out, in Goethe's structure of head, the sure
promise of a great orator. " Strange infatuation of nature!" observes Goethe, on this assurance, " to endow me so richly and liberally for that particular destination which only the institutions of my
country render impossible. Music for the deaf! Eloquence without
an audience!'




OXFORD.                r539
ear, carry with them  any of that significance ol
promise which surrounds the names of Jeremy
Taylor or Barrow, Bossuet or Bourdaloue, to those
even who have no personal acquaintance with their
works. This absence of all fields for gathering public distinctions cooperates, in a very powerful way,
with the contempt of the born gentry, to degrade
these professions; and this double agency is, a third
time, reinforced by those political arrangements
which deny every form of state honor or conspicuous
promotion to the very highest description of excellence, whether of the bar, the pulpit, or the civic
council. Not " the fluent Murray," or the accomplished Erskine, from the English bar- not Pericles
or Demosthenes, from the fierce democracies of Greece
not Paul preaching at Athens- could snatch a
wreath from public homage, nor a distinction from
the state, nor found an influence, nor leave behind
them an operative model, in Germany, as now constituted. Other walks of emolument are still more
despised. Alfieri, a continental "noble," that is, a
born gentleman, speaks of bankers as we in England
should of a Jewish usurer, or tricking money-changer.
The liberal trades, such as those which minister to
literature or the fine arts, which, with us, confer the
station of gentleman upon those who exercise them,
are, in the estimate of a continental " noble," fitted
to assign a certain rank or place in the train and
equipage of a gentleman, but not to entitle their
most eminent professors to sit down, except by
unfferance, in his presence. And, upon this point,
let not the reader derive his notions from the German
books: the vast majority of German authors are not




540                 OXFORD
t"noble;" and, of those who are, nine tenths are
liberal in this respect, and speak the language of
liberality, not by sympathy with their own order, or
as representing their feelings, but in virtue of democratic or revolutionary politics.
Such as the rank is, and the public estimation of
the leading professions, such is the natural condition
of the universities which rear them. The " nobles "
going generally into the army, or leading lives of
indolence, the majority by far of those who resort to
universities do so as a means of future livelihood.
Few seek an academic life in Germany who have
either money to throw away on superfluities and
external show, or who have such a rank to support
as might stimulate their pride to expenses beyond
their means.  Parsimony is, therefore, in these
places, the governing law; and pleasure, not less
fervently wooed than at Oxford or at Cambridge,
putting off her robes of elegance and ceremony,
descends to grossness, and not seldom Lo abject
brutality.
The sum of my argument is -that, because, in
comparison of the army, no other civil profession is,
in itself, held of sufficient dignity; and not less, perhaps, because, under governments essentially unpopular, none of these professions has been so
dignified artificially by the state, or so attached to
any ulterior promotion, either through the state or in
the state, as to meet the demands of aristocratic
pride —none of them is cultivated as a means of
distinction, but originally as a means of livelihood;
that the universities, as the nurseries of these
unhonored professions, share naturally in their degra



OXFORD.                541
dation;.and that, from this double depreciation of
the place and its final objects, few or none resort
thither who can be supposed to bring any extra
funds for supporting a system of luxury; that the
general temperance, or sobriety of demeanor, is far
enough, however, from keeping pace with the absence of costly show; and that, for this absence
even, we are to thank their poverty rather than their
will. It is to the great honor, in my opinion, of our
own country, that those often resort to her fountains
who have no motive but that of disinterested reverence for knowledge; seeking, as all men perceive,
neither emolument directly from university funds, nor
knowledge as the means of emolument. Doubtless,
it is neither dishonorable, nor, on a large scale,
possible to be otherwise, that students should pursue
their academic career chiefly as ministerial to their
capital object of a future livelihood. But still I
contend that it is for the interest of science and good
letters that a considerable body of volunteers should
gather about their banners, without pay or hopes of
preferment. This takes place on a larger scale at
Oxford and Cambridge than elsewhere; and it is
but a trivial concession in return, on the part of the
university, that she should allow, even if she had the
right to withhold, the privilege of living within her
walls as they would have lived at their fathers' seats;
with one only reserve, applied to all modes of expense
that are, in themselves, immoral excesses, or occasions of scandal, or of a nature to interfere too much
with the natural hours of study, or specially fitted
to tempt others of narrower means to ruinous em.u
lation.




542                OXFORD.
Upon these principles, as it seems to me, the dis.
cipline of the university is founded. The keeping
of hunters, for example, is unstatutable. Yet, on
the other hand, it is felt to be inevitable that young
men of high spirit, familiar with this amusement, will
find means to pursue it in defiance of all the powers,
however exerted, that can properly be lodged in the
hands of academic officers. The range of the proctor's jurisdiction is limited by positive law; and
what should hinder a young man, bent upon his
pleasure, from fixing the station of his hunter a few
miles out of Oxford, and riding to cover on a hack,
unamenable to any censure? For, surely, in this
age, no man could propose so absurd a thing as a
general interdiction of riding. How, in fact, does the
university proceed? She discountenances the practice; and, if forced upon her notice, she visits it with
censure, and that sort of punishment which lies
within her means. But she takes no pains to search
out a trespass, which, by the mere act of seeking
to evade public display in the streets of the university, already tends to limit itself; and which, besides,
from its costliness, can never become a prominent
nuisance  This I mention as illustrating the spirit
of her legislation; and, even in this case, the reader
must carry along with him the peculiar distinction
which I have pressed with regard to English universities, in the existence of a large volunteer order of
students seeking only the liberalization, and not the
profits, of academic life. In arguing upon their case,
it is not the fair logic to say: These pursuits taint
the decorum of the studious character; it is not fair
to calculate how much is lost to the man of letters




OXFORD.                543
by such addiction to fox-hunting; but, on the contrary, what is gained to the fox-hunter, who would,
at any rate, be such, by so considerable a homage
paid to letters, and so inevitable a commerce with
men of learning. Anything whatsoever attained in
this direction, is probably so much more than would
have been attained under a system of less toleration.
Lucro ponamus, we say, of the very least success in
such a case. But, in speaking of toleration as applied to acts or habits positively against the statutes, I limit my meaning to those which, in their
own nature, are morally indifferent, and are discountenanced simply as indirectly injurious, or as peculiarly open to excess. Because, on graver offences
(as gambling, &c.), the malicious impeachers of Oxford must well have known that no toleration whatsoever is practised or thought of. Once brought
under the eye of the university in a clear case and
on clear evidence, it would be punished in the most
exemplary way open to a limited authority; by rustication, at least-that is, banishment for a certain
number of terms, and consequent loss of these terms
- supposing the utmost palliation of circumstances;
and, in an aggravated case, or in a second offence,
most certainly by final expulsion.
But it is no part of duty to serve the cause even
of good morals by impure means; and it is as difficult beforehand to prevent the existence of vicious
practices so long as men have, and ought to have,
the means of seclusion liable to no violation, as it is
afterwards difficult, without breach of honor, to obtain proof of their existence. Gambling has been
known to exist in some dissenting institutions; and,




544                OXFORD.
in my opinion, with no blame to the presiding awthorities. As to Oxford in particular, no such habit
was generally prevalent in my time; it is not an English vice; nor did I ever hear of any great losses
sustained in this way. But, were it otherwise, I
must hold, that, considering the numbers, rank, and
great opulence, of the students, such a habit would
impeach the spirit and temper of the age rather than
the vigilance or magisterial fidelity of the Oxford
authorities.  They are limited, like other magistrates, by honor and circumstances, in a thousand
ways; and if a knot of students will choose to meet
for purposes of gaming, they must always have it in
their power to baffle every honorable or becoming
attempt at detecting them. But upon this subject I
shall make two statements, which may have some
effect in moderating the uncharitable judgments
upon Oxford discipline. The first respects the age
of those who are the objects of this discipline; on
which point a very grave error prevails. In the last
Parliament, not once, but many times over, Lord
Brougham and others assumed that the students of
Oxford were chiefly boys; and this, not idly or casually, but pointedly, and with a view to an ulterior argument; for instance, by way of proving how little
they were entitled to judge of those thirty-nine articles to which their assent was demanded. Now, this
argued a very extraordinary ignorance; and the origin of the error showed the levity in which their legislation was conducted. These noble lords had drawn
their ideas of a university exclusively from Glasgow.
Here, it is well known, and I mention it neither for
praise nor blame, that students are in the habit of




OXFORD.                      545
coming at the early age of fourteen. These may
allowably be styled boys. But, with regard to Oxford, eighteen is about the earliest age at which
young men begin their residence: twenty and up
wards is, therefore, the age of the majority; that is,
twenty is the minimum of age for the vast majority;
as there must always be more men of three years'
standing, than of two or of one. Apply this fact to
the question of discipline: young men beyond twenty, generally,- that is to say, of the age which qual.
ifies men for seats in the national council, - can
hardly, with decency, either be called or treated as
boys; and many things become impossible as applied
to them, which might be of easy imposition upon an
assemblage really childish. In mere justice, therefore,
when speculating upon this whole subject of Oxford
discipline, the reader must carry along with him, at
every step, the recollection of that signal difference
as to age, which I have now stated, between Oxonians and those students whom the hostile party contemplate in their arguments.* Meantime, to show
* Whilst I am writing, a debate of the present Parliament, reported
on Saturday, March 7, 1835, presents us with a determinate repetition of the error which I have been exposing; and, again, as in the
last Parliament, this error is not inert, but is used for a hostile (apparently a malicious) purpose; nay, which is remarkable, it is the
sole basis upon which the following argument reposes. Lord Radnor
again assumes that the students of Oxford are " boys;" he is again
supported in this misrepresentation by Lord Brougham; and again
the misrepresentation is applied to a purpose of assault upon the
English universities, but especially upon Oxford. And the nature of
the assault does not allow any latitude in construing the word boys,
nor any room for evasion as respects the total charge, except what
goes the length of a total retraction. The charge is, that, in a requi.
sition made at the very threshold of academic life, upon the under
35




546                       OXFORD.
that, even under every obstacle presented by this
difference of age, the Oxford authorities do, nevertheless, administer their discipline with fidelity, with
intrepidity, and with indifference as respects the high
and the low, I shall select from a crowd of similar
recollections two anecdotes, which are but trifles in
themselves, and yet are not such to him who recognizes them as expressions of a uniform system of
dealing.
A great whig lord (Earl C -        ) happened (it may
be ten years ago) to present himself one day at
Trinity (the leading college of Cambridge), for the
purpose of introducing Lord F        -   ch, his son, as a
future member of that splendid society. Possibly it
mortified his aristocratic feelings to hear the head of
the college, even whilst welcoming the young nobleman in courteous terms, yet suggesting, with some
standing and the honor of the students, the university burdens their
consciences to an extent, which, in after life, when reflection has enlightened them to the meaning of their engagements, proves either a
snare to those who trifle with their engagements, or an insupportable
burden to those who do not. For the inculpation of the party imposing such oaths, it is essential that the party taking them should
be in a childish condition of the moral sense, and the sense of responsibility; whereas, amongst the Oxonian under-graduates, I will ven.
ture to say that the number is larger of those who rise above than
of those who fall below twenty; and, as to sixteen (assumed as the
representative age by Lord Radnor), in my time, I heard of only one
student, amongst, perhaps, sixteen hundred, who was so young. I
grieve to see that the learned prelate, who replied to the assailants,
was so much taken by surprise; the defence might have been made
triumphant. With regard to oaths incompatible with the spirit of
modern manners, and yet formally unrepealed - that is a case of neg.
lect and indolent oversight. But the gravamen of that reproach does
not press exclusively upon Oxford; all the ancient institutions of
Europe are tainted in the same way, more especially the monastic
orders of the Romish church.




OXFORD.                547
solemnity, that, before taking any final resolution in
the matter, his lordship would do well to consider
whether he were fully prepared to submit himself to
college discipline; for that, otherwise, it became his
own duty frankly to declare that the college would
not look upon his accession to their society as any
advantage. This language arose out of some recent
experience of refractory and turbulent conduct upon
the part of various young men of rank; but it is very
possible that the noble earl, in his surprise at a salutation so uncourtly, might regard it, in a tory mouth,
as having some lurking reference to his own whig
politics. If so, he must have been still more surprised to hear of another case, which would meet
him before he left Cambridge, and which involved
some frank dealing as well as frank speaking, when
a privilege of exception might have been presumed,
if tory politics, or services the most memorable,
could ever create such a privilege. The Duke of
W — had two sons at Oxford. The affair is now
long past; and it cannot injure either of them to say,
that one of the brothers trespassed against the college discipline, in some way, which compelled (or
was thought to compel) the presiding authorities
into a solemn notice of his conduct. Expulsion appeared to be the appropriate penalty of his offences:
but, at this point, a just hesitation arose. Not in
any servile spirit, but under a proper feeling of consideration for so eminent a public benefactor as this
young nobleman's father, the rulers paused -and at
length signified to him that he was at liberty to
withdraw himself privately from the college, but
aIlo, and at the same time, from the university. He




548                 OXFORD.
did so; and his brother, conceiving him to have been
harshly treated, withdrew also; and both transferred
themselves to Cambridge. That could not be prevented: but there they were received with marked
reserve. One was not received, I believe, in a technical sense; and the other was received conditionally; and such restrictions were imposed upon his
future conduct as served most amply, and in a case
of great notoriety, to vindicate the claims of discipline, and, in an extreme case, a case so eminently
an extreme one that none like it is ever likely to
recur, to proclaim the footing upon which the very
highest rank is received at the English universities.
Is that footing peculiar to them? I willingly believe
that it is not; and, with respect to Edinburgh and
Glasgow, I am persuaded that their weight of dignity is quite sufficient, and would be exerted to
secure the same subordination from men of rank, if
circumstances should ever bring as large a number
of that class within their gates, and if their discipline
were equally applicable to the habits of students not
domiciled within their walls. But, as to the smaller
institutions for education within the pale of dissent,
I feel warranted in asserting, from the spirit of the
anecdotes which have reached me, that they have
not the auctoritas requisite for adequately maintaining their dignity.
So much for the aristocracy of our English universities: their glory is, and the happiest application
of their vast influence, that they have the power to
be republican, as respects their internal condition.
Literature, by substituting a different standard of
rank, tends to republican equality; and, as ore in



OXFORD.                  549
stance of this, properly belonging to the chapter of
servants, which originally led to this discussion, it
ought to be known that the class of " servitors,"
once a large body in Oxford, have gradually become
practically extinct under the growing liberality of
the age. They carried in their academic dress a
mark of their inferiority; they waited at dinner on
those of higher rank, and performed other menial
services, humiliating to themselves, and latterly felt
as no less humiliating to the general name and interests of learning. The better taste, or rather the
relaxing pressure of aristocratic prejudice, arising
from the vast diffusion of trade and the higher
branches of mechanic art, have gradually caused
these functions of the order (even where the law
would not permit the extinction of the order) to become obsolete. In my time, I was acquainted with
two servitors: but one of them was rapidly pushed
forward into a higher station; and the other complained of no degradation, beyond the grievous one
of exposing himself to the notice of young women in
the streets, with an untasselled cap; but this he
contrived to evade, by generally going abroad without his academic dress. The servitors of Oxford are
the sizars of Cambridge; and I believe the same
changes * have taken place in both.
One only account with the college remains to be
noticed; but this is the main one. It is expressed
* These changes have been accomplished, according to my imperfect knowledge of the case, in two ways: first, by dispensing with
the services whenever that could be done; and, secondly, by a wise
discontinuance of the order itself in those colleges which were left tc
their own choice in this matter.




550                 OXFORD.
in the bills by the word battels, derived from the old
monkish word patella (or batella), a plate; and it
comprehends whatsoever is furnished for dinner and
for supper, including malt liquor, but not wine, as
well as the materials for breakfast, or for any casual refreshment to country visitors, excepting only
groceries. These, together with coals and fagots,
candles, wine, fruit, and other more trifling extras,
which are matters of personal choice, form so many
private accounts against your name, and are usually
furnished by tradesmen living near to the college,
and sending their servants daily to receive orders.
Supper, as a meal not universally taken, in many
colleges is served privately in the student's own
room; though some colleges still retain the ancient
custom of a public supper. But dinner is, in all
colleges, a public meal, taken in the refectory or
"hall" of the society; which, with the chapel and
library, compose the essential public suite belonging
to every college alike. No absence is allowed, except to the sick, or to those who have formally
applied for permission to give a dinner-party. A
fine is imposed on all other cases of absence. Wine
is not generally allowed in the public hall, except
to the " high table," that is, the table at which the
fellows and some other privileged persons are entitled to dine. The head of the college rarely dines
in public. The other tables, and, after dinner, the
high table, usually adjourn to their wine, either upon
invitations to private parties, or to what are called
the " common rooms " of the several orders - graduates and undergraduates, &c.  The dinners are
always plain, and without pretensions -those, I
mean, in the public hall; indeed, nothing can be




OXFORD.                 551
plainer in most colleges -a simple choice between
two or three sorts of animal food, and the common
vegetables. No fish, even as a regular part of the
fare; no soups, no game; nor, except on some very
rare festivity, did I ever see a variation from this
plain fare at Oxford. This, indeed, is proved sufficiently by the average amount of the battels. Many
men "battel " at the rate of a guinea a week: I did
so for years: that is, at the rate of three shillings a
day for everything connected with meals, excepting
only tea, sugar, milk, and wine.  It is true that
wealthier men, more expensive men, and more careless men, often "battelled" much higher; but, if
they persisted in this excess, they incurred censures,
more and more urgent, from the head of the college.
Now, let us sum up; premising that the extreme
duration of residence in any college at Oxford
amounts to something under thirty weeks. It is
possible to keep " short terms," as the phrase is, by
a residence of thirteen weeks, or ninety-one days;
but, as this abridged residence is not allowed, except
in here and there a college, I shall assume —as
something beyond the strict maximum of residence
-thirty weeks as my basis. The account will then
stand thus:
1. Rooms,..~............~10 10 0
2. Tutorage,................    10 10 0
3. Servants (subject to the explanations made above),
say.....................  6  50
4. Battels (allowing one shilling a day beyond what I
and others spent in much dearer times; that is;
allowing twenty-eight shillings weekly), for thirty weeks,.................. 40 4 0
~f6 9 0




552                OXFORD
This will be a liberal calculation for the college
bill. What remains? 1. Candles, which the reader
will best calculate upon the standard of his own general usage in this particular. 2. Coals, which are
remarkably dear at Oxford —dearer, perhaps, than
anywhere else in the island; say, three times as dear
as at Edinburgh. 3. Groceries. 4. Wine. 5. Washing. This last article was, in my time, regulated by
the college, as there were certain privileged washerwomen, between whom and the students it was but
fair that some proper authority should interfere to
prevent extortion, in return for the monopoly granted. Six guineas was the regulated sum; but this
paid for everything, - table-linen, &c., as well as for
wearing apparel; and it was understood to cover
the whole twenty-eight or thirty weeks.  However, it was open to every man to make his own
arrangements, by insisting on a separate charge for
each separate article. All other expenses of a merely
personal nature, such as postage, public amusements, books, clothes, &c., as they have no special
connection with Oxford, but would, probably, be
balanced by corresponding, if not the very same, expenses in any other place or situation, I do not calculate. What I have specified are the expenses
which would accrue to a student in consequence of
leaving his father's house. The rest would, in these
days, be the same, perhaps, everywhere.  How
much, then, shall we assume as the total charge on
account of Oxford? Candles, considering the quantity of long days amongst the thirty weeks, may be
had for one shilling and sixpence a week; for few
students - niess they have lived in India, after




OXFORD.                553
which a physical change occurs in the sensibility of
the nostrils - are finical enough to burn wax-lights.
This will amount to two pounds, five shillings.
Coals, say sixpence a day; for threepence a day
will amply feed one grate in Edinburgh; and there
are many weeks in the thirty which will demand no
fire at all. Groceries and wine, which are all that
remain, I cannot calculate. But suppose we allow
for the first a shilling a day, which will be exactly
ten guineas for thirty weeks; and for the second,
nothing at all. Then the extras, in addition to the
college bills, will stand thus:
Washing for thirty weeks, at the privileged rate,..  ~6 6 0
Candles,....................       2  5  0
Fire,..................... 55 0
Groceries,....................10 10 0
Total,...  ~24  6  0
The college bills, therefore, will be sixty-six
pounds, nine shillings; the extras, not furnished by
the college, will be about twenty-four pounds, six
shillings, - making a total amount of ninety pounds,
fifteen shillings. And for this sum, annually, a man
may defray every expense incident to an Oxford life,
through a period of weeks (namely, thirty) something
more than he will be permitted to reside. It is true,
that, for the first year, there will be, in addition to
this, his outfit: and for every year there will be his
journeys. There will also be twenty-two weeks
uncovered by this estimate; but for these it is not
my business to provide, who deal only with Oxford.
That this estimate is true, I know too feelingly.
Would that it were not! would that it were false I
Were it so, I might the better justify to myself that




554                OXFORD.
commerce with fraudulent Jews which led me so
early to commence the dilapidation of my small fortune. It is true; and true for a period (1804-8) far
dearer than this. And to any man who questions
its accuracy I address this particular request - that
he will lay his hand upon the special item which he
disputes. I anticipate that he will answer thus:
"I dispute none: it is not by positive things that
your estimate errs, but by negations. It is the absence of all allowance for indispensable items that
vitiates the calculation." Very well: but to this, as
to other things, we may apply the words of Dr. Johnson - " Sir, the reason I drink no wine, is because
I can practise abstinence, but not temperance."
Yes: in all things, abstinence is easier than temperance; for a little enjoyment has invariably the effect
of awaking the sense of enjoyment, irritating it, and
setting it on edge. I, therefore, recollecting my
own case, have allowed for no wine-parties. Let our
friend, the abstraction we are speaking of, give
breakfast-parties, if he chooses to give any; and certainly to give none at all, unless he were dedicated
to study, would seem very churlish. Nobody can
be less a friend than myself to monkish and ascetic
seclusion, unless it were for twenty-three hours out
of the twenty-four.
But, however this be settled, let no mistake be
made; nor let that be charged against the system
which is due to the habits of individuals. Early in
the last century, Dr. Newton, the head of a college
in Oxford, wrote a large book against the Oxford
system, as ruinously expensive. But then, as now,
the real expense was due to no cause over M hich the




OXFORD.                555
colleges could exercise any effectual control. It is
due exclusively to the habits of social intercourse
amongst the young men; from which he may abstain
who chooses. But, for any academic authorities to
interfere by sumptuary laws with the private expenditure of grown men, many of them, in a legal sense,
of age, and all near it, must appear romantic and extravagant, for this (or, indeed, any) stage of society.
A tutor being required, about 1810, to fix the amount
of allowance for a young man of small fortune, nearly
related to myself, pronounced three hundred and
twenty pounds little enough. He had this allowance,
and was ruined in consequence of the credit which
it procured for him, and the society it connected
him with. The majority have two hundred pounds
a year: but my estimate stands good, for all that.
Having stated, generally, the expenses of the Oxford system, I am bound, in candor, to mention one
variety in the mode of carrying this system into
effect, open to every man's adoption, which confers
certain privileges, but, at the same time (by what
exact mode, I know not), considerably increases the
cost, and in that degree disturbs my calculation.
The great body of undergraduates, or students, are
divided into two classes - Commoners, and Gentlemen Commoners. Perhaps nineteen out of twenty
belong to the former class; and it is for that class,
as having been my own, that I have made mykestimate. The other class of Gentlemen Commoners
(who, at Cambridge, bear the name of Fellow Commoners) wear a peculiar dress, and have some privileges which naturally imply some corresponding
increase of cost; but why this increase should go to




556                 OXFORD.
the extent of doubling the total expense, as it is generally thought to do, or how it can go to that extent,
I am unable to explain.  The differences which
attach to the rank of " Gentlemen Commoners " are
these: At his entrance he pays double "caution
money;" that is, whilst Commoners in general pay
about twenty-five guineas, he pays fifty; but this
can occur only once; and, besides, in strict point of
right, this sum is only a deposit, and is liable to be
withdrawn on leaving the university, though it is
commonly enough finally presented to the college in
the shape of plate. The next difference is, that, by
comparison with the Commoner, he wears a much
more costly dress. The Commoner's gown is made
of what is called prince's stuff; and, together with the
cap, costs about five guineas. But the Gentleman
Commoner has two gowns -an undress for the
morning, and a full dress-gown for the evening;
both are made of silk, and the latter is very elaborately ornamented. The cap also is more costly,
being covered with velvet instead of cloth. At Cambridge, again, the tassel is made of gold fringe or
bullion, which, in Oxford, is peculiar to the caps of
noblemen; and there are many other varieties in
that university, where the dress for "pensioners"
(that is, the Oxford "Commoners") is specially varied
in almost every college; the object being, perhaps,
to give a ready means to the academic officers for
ascertaining, at a glance, not merely the general fact
that such or such a delinquent is a gownsman
(which is all that can be ascertained at Oxford), but
also the particular college to which he belongs. Allowance being made for these two items of " dress "




OXFORD.                557
anl " caution-money," both of which apply only to
the original outfit, I know of no others in which the
expenditure of a Gentleman Commoner ought to exceed, or could with propriety exceed, those of a
Commoner. He has, indeed, a privilege as regards
the choice of rooms; he chooses first, and probably
chooses those rooms which, being best, are dearest;
that is, they are on a level with the best; but usually there are many sets almost equally good; and of
these the majority will be occupied by Commoners.
So far, there is little opening for a difference. More
often, again, it will happen that a man of this aristocratic class keeps a private servant; yet this happens also to Commoners, and is, besides, no properly
college expense. Tutorage is charged double to a
Gentleman Commoner- namely, twenty guineas a
year: this is done upon a fiction (as it sometimes
turns out) of separate attention, or aid given in a
private way to his scholastic pursuits.  Finally,
there arises naturally another and peculiar source of
expense to the " Gentleman Commoner,' from a fact
implied in his Cambridge designation of " Fellow
Commoner," commensalis-namely, that he associates at meals with the "fellows " and other authorities of the college. Yet this again expresses rather
the particular shape which his expenditure assumes
than any absolute increase in its amount. He subscribes to a regular mess, and pays, therefore,
whether present or not; but so, in a partial sense,
does the Commoner, by his forfeits for "absent commons." He subscribes also to a regular fund for
wine; and, therefore, he does r-ot enjoy that immunity from wine-drinking which is open to the Com



5I58                OXFORD.
moner.  Yet, again, as the Commoner does but
rarely avail himself of this immunity, as he drinks no
less wine than the Gentleman Commoner, and, generally speaking, wine not worse in quality, it is difficult to see any ground for a regular assumption of
higher expenditure in the one class than the other.
However, the universal impression favors that assumption. All people believe that the rank of Gentleman Commoner imposes an expensive burden,
though few people ever ask why. As a matter of
fact, I believe it to be true that Gentlemen Commoners spend more by a third, or a half, than any
equal number of Commoners, taken without selection. And the reason is obvious: those who become
Gentlemen Commoners are usually determined to
that course by the accident of having very large
funds; they are eldest sons, or only sons, or men
already in possession of estates, or else (which is as
common a case as all the rest put together) they are
the heirs of newly-acquired wealth - sons of the
nouveaux riches - a class which often requires a
generation or two to rub off the insolence of a too
conscious superiority. I have called them an "aristocratic" class; but, in strictness, they are not
such; they form a privileged class, indeed, but their
privileges are few and trifling, not to add that these
very privileges are connected with one or two burdens, more than outweighing them in the estimate
of many; and, upon the whole, the chief distinction
they enjoy is that of advertising themselves to the
public as men of great wealth, or great expectations;
and, therefore, as subjects peculiarly adapted to
fraudulent attempts. Accordingly, it is not found




OXFORD.                559
that the sons of the nobility are much inclined to
enter this order: these, if they happen to be the
eldest sons of earls, or of any peers above the rank
of viscount, so as to enjoy a title themselves by the
courtesy of England, have special privileges in both
universities as to length of residence, degrees, &c.;
and their rank is ascertained by a special dress.
These privileges it is not usual to forego; though
sometimes that happens, as, in my time, in the instance of Lord George Grenville (now Lord Nugent); he neither entered at the aristocratic college
(Christ Church), nor wore the dress of a nobleman.
Generally, however, an elder son appears in his true
character of nobleman; but the younger sons rarely
enter the class of Gentlemen Commoners. They
enter either as "Commoners," or under some of
those various designations (" scholars," "dem2es,"
" students," "junior fellows ") which imply that they
stand upon the foundation of the college to which
they belong, and are aspirants for academic emoluments.
Upon the whole, I am disposed to regard this order
of Gentlemen Commoners as a standing temptation
held out by authority to expensive habits, and a very
unbecoming proclamation of honor paid to the aristocracy of wealth. And I know that many thoughtful men regard it in the same light with myself, and
regret deeply that any such distribution of ranks
should be authorized, as a stain upon the simplicity
and general manliness of the English academic laws.
It is an open profession of homage and indulgence
to wealth, as wealth - to wealth disconnected from
everything that might ally it to the ancestral honors




560                 OXFORD.
and heraldries of the land. It is also an invitation,
or rather a challenge, to profuse expenditure. Regularly, and by law, a Gentleman Commoner is liable
to little heavier burdens than a Commoner; but, to
meet the expectations of those around him, and to
act up to the part he has assumed, he must spend
more, and he must be more careless in controlling
his expenditure, than a moderate and prudent Commoner. In every light, therefore, I condemn the
institution, and give it up to the censures of the
judicious. So much in candor I concede. But, tc
show equal candor on the other side, it must be remembered that this institution descends to us from
ancient times, when wealth was not so often divided
from territorial or civic honors, conferring a real pre.
cedency.




OXFORD.                561
III.
TAERE was one reason why I sought solitude at
that early age, and sought it in a morbid excess,
which must naturally have conferred upon my character some degree of that interest which belongs to
all extremes. My eye had been couched into a
secondary power of vision, by misery, by solitude,
by sympathy with life in all its modes, by experience
too early won, and by the sense of danger critically
escaped. Suppose the case of a man suspended by
some colossal arm over an unfathomed abyss, - suspended, but finally and slowly withdrawn, -it is
probable that he would not smile for years. That
was my case: for I have not mentioned, in the
" Opium Confessions," a thousandth part of the sufferings I underwent in London and in Wales; partly
because the misery was too monotonous, and, in
that respect, unfitted for description; but, still more,
because there is a mysterious sensibility connected
with real suffering which recoils from circumstantial
rehearsal or delineation, as from violation offered to
something sacred, and which is, or should be, dedicated to privacy. Grief does not parade its pangs,
nor the anguish of despairing hunger willingly count
again its groans or its humiliations. Hence it was
that Ledyard, the traveller, speaking of his Russian
36




562                 OXFORD.
experiences, used to say that some of his miseries
were such, that he never would reveal them. Besides all which, I really was not at liberty to speak,
without many reserves, on this chapter of my life,
at a period (1821) not twenty years removed from
the actual occurrences, unless I desired to court the
risk of crossing at every step the existing law of
libel, so full of snares and man-traps, to the careless
equally with the conscientious writer. This is a
consideration which some of my critics have lost
sight of in a degree which surprises me. One, for
example, puts it to his readers whether any house
such as I describe as the abode of my money-lending
friend could exist "in Oxford-street;" and, at the
same time, he states, as circumstances drawn from
my description, but, in fact, pure coinages of his
own, certain romantic impossibilities, which, doubtless, could as little attach to a house in Oxford-street
as they could to a house in any other quarter of
London. Meantime, I had sufficiently indicated that,
whatsoever street was concerned in that affair, Oxford-street was not: and it is remarkable enough, as
illustrating this amiable reviewer's veracity, that no
one street in London was absolutely excluded but
one; and that one, Oxford-street. For I happened to
mention that, on such a day (my birth-day), I had
turned aside from Oxford-street to look at the house
in question. I will now add that this house was in
Greek-street: so much it may be safe to say. But
every candid reader will see that both prudential
restraints, and also disinterested regard to the feelings of possibly amiable descendants from a vicious
man, would operate with any thoughtful writer, in




OXFORD.                563
suiCh a case, to impose reserve upon his pen. Had
my guardians, had my money-lending friend of
Jewry, and others concerned in my memoirs, been
so many shadows, bodiless abstractions, and without
earthly connections, I might readily have given my
own names to my own creations, and have treated
them as unceremoniously as I pleased. Not so under
the real circumstances of the case. My chief guardian, for instance, though obstinate to a degree which
risked the happiness and the life of his ward, was
an upright man otherwise; and his children are
entitled to value his memory.
Again, my Greek-street ganS1i*ts, the "foenerator
Alpheus," who delighted to reap where he had not
sown, and too often (I fear) allowed himself in practices which not impossibly have long since been
found to qualify him for distant climates and "Botanic " regions, -even he, though I might truly
describe him as a mere highwayman, whenever he
happened to be aware that I had received a friendly
loan, yet, like other highwaymen of repute, and " gentle thieves," was not inexorable to the petitions of
his victim: he would sometimes toss back what was
required for some instant necessity of the road; and
at his breakfast-table it was, after all, as elsewhere
recorded, that I contrived to support life; barely,
indeed, and most slenderly, but still with the final
result of escaping absolute starvation.  With that
recollection before me, I could not allow myself to
probe his frailties too severely, had it even been
certainly safe to do so. But enough; the reader
will understand that a year spent either in the val.
levs of Wales, or upon the streets of London, a wan



564                OXFORD.
derer, too often houseless in both situations, might
naturally have peopled the mind of one constitutionally disposed to solemn contemplations with memorials of human sorrow and strife too profound to
pass away for years.
Thus, then, it was —past experience of a very
peculiar kind, the agitations of many lives crowded
into the compass of a year or two, in combination
with a peculiar structure of mind -offered one explanation of the very remarkable and unsocial habits
which I adopted at college; but there was another
not less powerful, and not less unusual. In stating
this, I shall seem, to some persons, covertly designing an affront to Oxford. But that is far from my
intention.  It is noways peculiar to Oxford, but
will, doubtless, be found in every university throughout the world, that the younger part of the members
-the undergraduates, I mean, generally, whose
chief business must have lain amongst the great writers of Greece and Rome - cannot have found leisure to cultivate extensively their own domestic literature. Not so much that time will have been wanting; but that the whole energy of the mind, and the
main course of the subsidiary studies and researches,
will naturally have been directed to those difficult
languages amongst which lie their daily tasks. I
make it no subject of complaint or scorn, therefore,
but simply state it as a fact, that few or none of the
Oxford undergraduates, with whom parity of standing threw me into collision at my first outset, knew
anything at all of English literature.  The Spectator
seemed to me the only English book of a classical
rank which they had re d; and even this less for its




OXFORD.                565
inimitable delicacy, humor, and refined pleasantry in
dealing with manners and characters, than for its
insipid and meagre essays, ethical or critical. This
was no fault of theirs: they had been sent to the
book chiefly as a subject for Latin translations, or of
other exercises; and, in such a view, the vague generalities of superficial morality were more useful and
more manageable than sketches of manner or character, steeped in national peculiarities. To translate
the terms of whig politics into classical Latin, would
be as difficult as it might be for a whig himself to
give a consistent account of those politics from the
year 1688. Natural, however, and excusable, as this
ignorance might be, to myself it was intolerable and
incomprehensible. Already, at fifteen, I had made
myself familiar with the great English poets. About
sixteen, or not long after, my interest in the story of
Chatterton had carried me over the whole ground of
the Rowley controversy; and that controversy, by a
necessary consequence, had so familiarized me with
the " Black Letter," that I had begun to find an
unaffected pleasure in the ancient English metrical
romances; and in Chaucer, though acquainted as
yet only with part of his works, I had perceived and
had felt profoundly those divine qualities, which,
even at this day, are so languidly acknowledged by
his unjust countrymen. With this knowledge, and
this enthusiastic knowledge of the elder poets - of
those most remote from easy access -I could not
well be a stranger in other walks of our literature,
more on a level with the general taste, and nearer to
modern diction, and, therefore, more extensively
multiplied by the press.




56G                 OXFORD.
Yet, after all - as one proof how much more corn
manding is that part of a literature which speaks to
the elementary affections of men, than that which is
founded on the mutable aspects of manners - it is a
fact that, even in our elaborate system of society,
where an undue value is unavoidably given to the
whole science of social intercourse, and a continual
irritation applied to the sensibilities which point in
that direction; still, under all these advantages,
Popehimself is less read, less quoted, less thought
of, than the elder and graver section of our literature.
It is a great calamity for an author such as Pope,
that, generally speaking, it requires so much experience of life to enjoy his peculiar felicities as must
argue an age likely to have impaired the general
capacity for enjoyment. For my part, I had myself
a very slender acquaintance with this chapter of our
literature; and what little I had was generally, at
that period of my life, as, with most men, it continues
to be to the end of life, a reflex knowledge, acquired
through those pleasant miscellanies, half gossip, half
criticism-such as Warton's Essay on Pope, Bosvwell's Johnson, Mathias' Pursuits of Literature, and
many scores beside of the same indeterminate class;
a class, however, which do a real service to literature,
by diffusing an indirect knowledge of fine writers in
their most effective passages, where else, in a direct
shape, it would often never extend.
In some parts, then, having even a profound
knowledge of our literature, in all parts having some.
I felt it to be impossible that I should familiarly associate with those who had none at all; not so much
as a mere historical knowledge of the literature in its




OXFORD.               567
capital names and their chronological succession.
Do I mention this in disparagement of Oxford? By
no means.  Among the undergraduates of highel
standing, and occasionally, perhaps, of my own, I
have since learned that many might have been found
eminently accomplished in this particular.  But
seniors do not seek after juniors; they must be
sought; and, with my previous bias to solitude, a
bias equally composed of impulses and motives, I
had no disposition to take trouble in seeking any man
for any purpose.
But, on this subject, a fact still remains to be told,
of which I am justly proud; and it will serve, beyond
anything else that I can say, to measure the degree
of my intellectual development. On coming to Oxford, I had taken up one position in advance of my
age by full thirty years: that appreciation of Wordsworth, which it has taken full thirty years to establish
amongst the public, I had already made, and had
made operative to my own intellectual culture in the
same year when I clandestinely quitted school.
Already, in 1802, I had addressed a letter of fervent
admiration to Mr. Wordsworth. I did not send it
until the spring of 1803; and, from misdirection, it
did not come into his hands for some months. But
I had an answer from Mr. Wordsworth before I was
eighteen; and that my letter was thought to express
the homage of an enlightened admirer, may be inferred from the fact that his answer was long and full.
On this anecdote I do not mean to dwell; but I
cannot allow the reader to overlook the circumstances
of the case. At this day, it is true, no journal can
be taken up which does not habitually speak of Mr,




568                OXFORD.
Wordsworth as of a great if not the great poet of t he
age. Mr. Bulwer, living in the intensest pressure
of the world, and, though recoiling continually from
the judgments of the world, yet never in any violent
degree, ascribes to Mr. Wordsworth (in his England
and the English, p. 308) "an influence of a more
noble and purely intellectual character, than any
writer of our age or nation has exercised." Such is
the opinion held of this great poet in 1835; but
what were those of 1805-15, - nay, of 1825? For
twenty years after the date of that letter to Mr.
Wordsworth   above referred  to, language was
exhausted, ingenuity was put on the rack, in the
search after images and expressions vile enough -
insolent enough-to convey the unutterable contempt avowed for all that he had written, by the
fashionable critics. One critic - who still, I believe,
edits a rather popular journal, and who belongs to
that class, feeble, fluttering, ingenious, who make it
their highest ambition not to lead, but, with a slave's
adulation, to obey and to follow all the caprices of
the public mind - described Mr. Wordsworth as
resembling in the quality of his mind, an old nurse
babbling in her paralytic dotage to sucking babies.
If this insult was peculiarly felt by Mr. Wordsworth.
it was on a consideration of the unusual imbecility
of him who offered it, and not because in itself it
was baser or more insolent than the language held
by the majority of journalists who then echoed the
public voice.  Blackwood's Magazine (1817) first
accustomed the public ear to the language of admiration coupled with the name of Wordsworth. This
began with Professor Wilson; and well I remember




OXFORD.               569
-nay, the proofs are still easy to hunt up- that, for
eight or ten years, this singularity of opinion, having
no countenance from other journals, was treated as a
whim, a paradox, a bold extravagance, of the Blackwood critics. Mr. Wordsworth's neighbors in Westmoreland, who had (generally speaking) a profound
contempt for him, used to rebut the testimony of
Blackwood by one constant reply - "Ay, Blackwood
praises Wordsworth, but who else praises him?"
In short, up to 1820, the name of Wordsworth was
trampled under foot; from 1820 to 1830, it was militant; from 1830 to 1835, it has been triumphant. In
1803, when I entered at Oxford, that name was absolutely unknown; and the finger of scorn, pointed at
it in 1802 by the first or second number of the Edinburgh Review, failed to reach its mark from absolute
defect of knowledge in the public mind. Some fifty
beside myself knew who was meant by " that poet
who had cautioned his friend against growing double,"
etc.; to all others it was a profound secret.
These things must be known and understood properly to value the prophetic eye and the intrepidity
of two persons, like Professor Wilson and myself,
who, in 1802-3, attached themselves to a banner not
yet raised and planted; who outran, in fact, their
contemporaries by one entire generation; and did
that about 1802 which the rest of the world are doing
in chorus about 1832.
Professor Wilson's period at Oxford exactly coincided with my own; yet, in that large world, we
never met. I know, therefore, but little of his policy
in regard to such opinions or feelings as tended to
dissociate him from the mass of his coevals. This




570                OXFORD.
only I know, that he lived as it were in public; and
must, therefore, I presume, have practised a studied
reserve as to his deepest admirations; and, perhaps,
at that day (1803-8) the occasions would be rare in
which much dissimulation would be needed. Until
Lord Byron had begun to pilfer from Wordsworth
and to abuse him, allusions to Wordsworth were not
frequent in conversation; and it was chiefly on occasion of some question arising about poetry in general,
or about the poets of the day, that it became difficult
to dissemble. For my part, hating the necessity for
dissimulation as much as the dissimulation itself, I
drew from this peculiarity also of my own mind a
fresh reinforcement of my other motives for sequestering myself; and, for the first two years of my
residence in Oxfbrd, I compute that I did not utter
one hundred words.
I remember distinctly the first (which happened
also to be the last) conversation that I ever held
with my tutor. It consisted of three sentences, two
of which fell to his share, one to mine. On a fine
morning, he met me in the Quadrangle, and, having
then no guess of the nature of my pretensions, he
determined (I suppose) to probe them. Accordingly,
he asked me, " What I had been lately reading? "
Now, the fact was, that I, at that time immersed in
metaphysics, had really been reading and studying
very closely the Parmenides, of which obscure work
some Oxford men, early in the last century, published
a separate edition. Yet, so profound was the benignity of my nature, that, in those days, I could not
bear to witness, far less to cause, the least pain ox
mortification to any human being. I recoiled, indeed,




OXFORD.                571
from the society of most men, but not with any feelings of dislike. On the contrary, in order that I
might like all men, I wished to associate with none.
Now, then, to have mentioned the Parmenides to
one who, fifty thousand to one, was a perfect stranger
to its whole drift and purpose, looked too mechant,
too like a trick of malice, in an age when such reading was so very unusual. I felt that it would be
taken for an express stratagem for stopping my
tutor's mouth. All this passing rapidly through my
mind, I replied, without hesitation, that I had been
reading Paley. My tutor's rejoinder I have never
forgotten: "Ah! an excellent author; excellent for
his matter; only you must be on your guard as to
hia style; he is very vicious there." Such was the
colloquy; we bowed, parted, and never more (I
apprehend) exchanged one word. Now, trivial and
trite as this comment on Paley may appear to the
reader, it struck me forcibly that more falsehood, or
more absolute falsehood, or more direct inversion of
the truth, could not, by any artifice of ingenuity,
have been crowded into one short sentence. Paley,
as a philosopher, is a jest, the disgrace of the age 
and, as regards the two universities, and the enormous
responsibility they undertake for the books which
they sanction by their official examinations for
degrees, the name of Paley is their great opprobrium.
But, on the other hand, for style, Paley is a master.
Homely, racy, vernacular English, the rustic vigor
of a style which intentionally foregoes the graces of
polish on the one hand, and of scholastic precision
on the other- that quality of merit has never been
attained in a degree so eminent. This first inter




572                 OXFORD.
change of thought upon a topic of literature did not
tend to slacken my previous disposition to retreat
into solitude; a solitude, however, which at no time
was tainted with either the moroseness or the pride
of a cynic.
Neither must the reader suppose that, even in that
day, I belonged to the party who disparage the classical writers, or the classical training of the great
English schools. The Greek drama I loved and
revered. But, to deal frankly, because it is a subject which I shall hereafter bring before the public,
I made great distinctions. I was not that indiscriminate admirer of Greek and Roman literature, which
those too generally are who admire it at all. This
protesting spirit, against a false and blind idolatry,
was with me, at that time, a matter of enthusiasm -
almost of bigotry. I was a bigot against bigots.
Let us take the Greek oratory, for example:- What
section of the Greek literature is more fanatically
exalted, and studiously in depreciation of our own?
Let us judge of the sincerity at the base of these
hollow affectations, by the downright facts and the
producible records. To admire, in any sense which
can give weight and value to your admiration, presupposes, I presume, some acquaintance with its
object. As the earliest title to an opinion, one way
or other, of the Greek eloquence, we ought to have
studied some of its most distinguished artists; or,
say one, at least; and this one, we may be sure, will
be, as it ought to be, Demosthenes. Now, it is a
fact, that all the copies of Demosthenes sold within
the last hundred years would not meet the demand
of one considerable town, were that orator a subject




OXFORD.                573
of study amongst even classical scholars. I doubt
whether, at this day, there exist twenty men in
Europe who can be said to have even once read Demosthenes; and, therefore, it was that, when Mr.
Mitford, in his "IIistory of Greece," took a new
view of this orator's political administration - a view
which lowered his character for integrity -he found
an unresisting acceder to his doctrines in a public
having no previous opinion upon the subject, and,
therefore, open to any casual impression of malice or
rash judgment. Had there been any acquaintance
with the large remains which we still possess of this
famous orator, no such wrong could have been done.
I, from my childhood, had been a reader, nay, a student of Demosthenes; and, simply, for this reason,
that, having meditated profoundly on the true laws
and philosophy of diction, and of what is vaguely
denominated style, and finding nothing of any value
in modern writers upon this subject, and not much
as regards the grounds and ultimate principles even
in the ancient rhetoricians, I have been reduced to
collect my opinions from the great artists and practitioners, rather than from the theorists; and, among
those artists, in the most plastic of languages, I hold
Demosthenes to have been the greatest.
The Greek is, beyond comparison, the most plastic
of languages. It was a material which bent to the
purposes of him who used it beyond the material of
other languages; it was an instrument for a larger
compass of modulations; and it happens that the
peculiar theme of an orator imposes the very largest
which is consistent with a prose diction. One step
further in passion, and the orator would become a




574                OXFORD.
poet. An orator can exhaust the capacities of a language - an historian, never. Moreover, the age of
Demosthenes was, in my judgment, the age of highest development for arts dependent upon social
refinement. That generation had fixed and ascertained the use of words; whereas, the previous generation of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, &c., was a
transitional period: the language was still moving,
and tending to a meridian not yet attained; and the
public eye had been directed consciously upon language, as in and for itself an organ of intellectual
delight, for too short a time, to have mastered the
whole art of managing its resources. All these were
reasons for studying Demosthenes, as the one great
model and standard of Attic prose; and, studied him
I had, more than any other prose writer whatever.
Paripassu, I had become sensible that others had not
studied him. One monotonous song of applause 1
found raised on every side; something about being
"like a torrent, that carries everything before it."
This original image is all we get in the shape of criticism; and never any attempt even at illustrating
what is greatest in him, or characterizing what is
most peculiar. The same persons who discovered
that Lord Brougham was the modern Bacon have
also complimented him with the title of the English
Demosthenes. Upon this hint, Lord Brougham, in
his address to the Glasgow students, has deluged the
great Athenian with wordy admiration. There is an
obvious prudence in lodging your praise upon an
object from which you count upon a rebound to
yourself. But here, as everywhere else, you look in
vain for any marks or indications of a personal and




OXFORD.                575
di,,ct acquainranre with the original orations. The
praise is built rather upon the popular idea of Demosthenes, than upon the real Demosthenes. And
not only so, but even upon style itself, and upon the
art of composition in abstracto, Lord Brougham does
not seem to have formed any clear conceptionsprinciples he has none. Now, it is useless to judge
of an artist until you have some principles on the art.
The two capital secrets in the art of prose composition are these: 1st, The philosophy of transition
and connection, or the art by which one step in an
evolution of thought is made to arise out of another:
all fluent and effective composition depends on the
connections;- 2dly, The way in which sentences
are made to modify each other; for, the most powerful effects in written eloquence arise out of this reverberation, as it were, from each other in a rapid
succession of sentences; and, because some limitation is necessary to the length and complexity of
sentences, in order to make this interdependency
felt, hence it is that the Germans have no eloquence.
The construction of German prose tends to such immoderate length of sentences, that no effect of intermodification can ever be apparent. Each sentence,
stuffed with innumerable clauses of restriction, and
other parenthetical circumstances, becomes a separate section -an independent whole. But, without
insisting on Lord Brougham's oversights, or errors
of defect, I will digress a moment to one positive
caution of his, which will measure the value of his
philosophy on this subject. He lays it down for a
rule of indefinite application, that the Saxon part of
our English idiom is to be favored at the exper se of




576                 OXFORD.
that part which has so happily coalesced with the
language from the Latin or Greek. This fancy, often
patronized by other writers, and even acted upon,
resembles that restraint which some metrical writers
have imposed upon themselves - of writing a long
copy of verses, from which some particular letter, or
from each line of which some different letter, should
be carefully excluded. What followed? Was the
reader sensible, in the practical effect upon his ear,
of any beauty attained? By no means; all the difference, sensibly perceived, lay in the occasional
constraints and affectations to which the writer had
been driven by his self-imposed necessities. The
same chimera exists in Germany; and so much further is it carried, that one great puritan in this heresy (Wolf) has published a vast dictionary, the rival
of Adelung's, for the purpose of expelling every
word of foreign origin and composition out of the
language, by assigning some equivalent term spun
out from pure native Teutonic materials. Bayonet,
for example, is patriotically rejected, because a word
may be readily compounded tantamount to musketd'rk; and this sort of composition thrives showily in
the German, as a language running into composition
with a fusibility only surpassed by the Greek.
But what good purpose is attained by such caprices? In three sentences the sum of the philosophy
may be stated. It has been computed (see Duclos)
that the Italian opera has not above six hundred
words in its whole vocabulary: so narrow is the
range of its emotions, and so little are these emotions
disposed to expand themselves into any variety of
thinking  The same remark applies to that class of




OXFORD.                577
simple, household, homely passion, which belongs
to the early ballad poetry. Their passion is of a
quality more venerable, it is true, and deeper than
that of the opera, because more permanent and coextensive with human life; but it is not much wider
in its sphere, nor more apt to coalesce with contemplative or philosophic thinking. Pass from these
narrow fields of the intellect, where the relations of
the objects are so few and simple, and the whole
prospect so bounded, to the immeasurable and sea
like arena upon which Shakspeare careers - co-infin
ite with life itself —yes, and with something more
than life. Here is the other pole, the opposite extreme. And what is the choice of diction? What
is the lexis? Is it Saxon exclusively, or is it Saxon
by preference? So far from that, the Latinity is
intense -not, indeed, in his construction, but in his
choice of words; and so continually are these Latin
words used, with a critical respect to their earliest
(and, where that happens to have existed, to their
unfigurative) meaning, that, upon this one argument
I would rely for upsetting the else impregnable thesis
of Dr. Farmer as to Shakspeare's learning. Nay, I
will affirm that, out of this regard to the Latin acceptation of Latin words, may be absolutely explained
the Shakspearian meaning of certain words, which
has hitherto baffled all his critics. For instance, the
word modern, of which Dr. Johnson professes himself unable to explain the rationale or principle regulating its Shakspearian use, though he felt its value,
it is to be deduced thus: First of all, change the
pronunciation a little, by substituting for the short o,
as we pronounce it in modern, the long o, as heard
37




578                 OXFORD
in modish, and you will then, perhaps, perceive the
process of analogy by which it passed into the
Shakspearian use. The matter or substance of a
thing is, usually, so much more important than its
fashion or manner, that we have hence adopted, as
one way for expressing what is important as opposed
to what is trivial, the word material. Now, by
parity of reason, we are entitled to invert this order,
and to express what is unimportant by some word
indicating the mere fashion or external manner of an
object as opposed to its substance. This is effected
by the word modal or modern, as the adjective from
modus, a fashion or manner; and in that sense
Shakspeare employs the word. Thus, Cleopatra,
undervaluing to Caesar's agent the bijouterie which
she has kept back from inventory, and which her
treacherous steward had betrayed, describes them as
mere trifles"Such gifts as we greet modern friends withal;"
where all commentators have felt that modern must
form the position, mean, slight, and inconsiderable,
though perplexed to say how it came by such a
meaning. A modern friend is, in the Shakspearian
sense, with relation to a real and serviceable friend,
that which the fashion of a thing is, by comparison
with its substance. But a still better illustration
may be taken from a common line, quoted every day,
and ludicrously misinterpreted. In the famous picture of life - " All the world's a stage "- the justice of the piece is described as
" Full of wise saws and modern instances;"
which (horrendum dictul) has been explained, and




OXFORD.                       579
I verily believe, is generally understood to mean, full
of wise sayings and modern illustrations. The true
meaning is-full of proverbial maxims of conduct
and of trivial arguments; that is, of petty distinctions, or verbal.disputes, such as never touch the
point at issue. The word modern I have already
deduced; the word instances is equally Latin, and
equally used by Shakspeare in its Latin sense. It is
originally the word instantia, which, by the monkish
and scholastic writers, is uniformly used in the sense
of an argument, and originally of an argument urged
in objection to some previous argument.*
I affirm, therefore, that Lord Brougham's counsel
to the Glasgow students is not only bad counsel, -
and bad counsel for the result, as well as for the
grounds, which are either capricious or nugatory, -
* I cannot for a moment believe that the original and most eloquent critic in Blackwood is himself the dupe of an argument, which
he has alleged against this passage, under too open a hatred of Shakspeare, as though it involved a contradiction to common sense, by
representing all human beings of such an age as school-boys, all of
such another age as soldiers, of such another as magistrates, &c.
Evidently the logic of the famous passage is this - that whereas every
age has its peculiar and appropriate temper, that profession or employment is selected for the exemplification which seems best fitted,
in each case, to embody the characteristic or predominating quality.
Thus, because impetuosity, self-esteem, and animal or irreflective
courage, are qualities most intense in youth, next it is considered in
what profession those qualities find their most unlimited range; and
because that is obviously the military profession, therefore it is that
the soldier is selected as the representative of young men. For the
same reason, as best embodying the peculiar temper of garrulous old
age, the magistrate comes forward as supporting the part of that age.
Not that old men are not also soldiers; but that the military profes.
sion, so far from strengthening, moderates and tempers the charao.
teristic temper of old age.




580                 OXFORD.
but also that, in the exact proportion in which the
range of thought expands, it is an impossible counsel, an impracticable counsel —a counsel having for
its purpose to embarrass and lay the mind in fetters,
where even its utmost freedom and its largest resources will be found all too little for the growing
necessities of the intellect. " Long-tailed words in
osity and ation! " What does that describe? Exactly
the Latin part of our language. Now, those very
terminations speak for themselves: - All high abstractions end in ation; that is, they are Latin; and,
just in proportion as the abstracting power extends
and widens, do the circles of thought widen, and the
horizon or boundary (contradicting its own Grecian
name) melts into the infinite. On this account it was
that Coleridge (Biographia Literaria) remarks on
Wordsworth's philosophical poetry, that, in proportion as it goes into the profound of passion and of
thought, do the words increase which are vulgarly
called " dictionary words." Now, these words, these
" dictionary" words, what are they? Simply words
of Latin or Greek origin: no other words, no Saxon
words, are ever called by illiterate persons dictionary words. And these dictionary words are indispensable to a writer, not only in the proportion by
which he transcends other writers as to extent and
as to subtility of thinking, but also as to elevation
and sublimity. Milton was not an extensive or discursive thinker, as Shakspeare was; for the motions
of his mind were slow, solemn, sequacious, like those
of the planets; not agile and assimilative; not attracting all things within its own sphere; not multi.
form: repulsion was the law of his intellect, —h




OXFORD.                       581
moved in solitary grandeur. Yet, merely from this
quality of grandeur, unapproachable grandeur, his
intellect demanded a larger infusion of Latinity into
his diction.
For the same reason (and, without such aids, he
would have had no proper element in which to move
his wings) he enriched his diction with         iellenisms
and with Iebraisms; * but never, as could be easy to
* The diction of Milton is a case absolutely unique in literature:
of many writers it has been said, but of him only with truth, that he
created a peculiar language. The value must be tried by the result,
not by inferences from d priori principles; such inferences might lead
us to anticipate an unfortunate result; whereas, in fact, the diction
of Milton is such that no other could have supported his majestic
style of thinking. The final result is a transcendant answer to all
adverse criticism; but still it is to be lamented that no man properly
qualified has undertaken the examination of the Miltonic diction as
a separate problem. Listen to a popular author of this day (Mr.
Bulwer). He, speaking on this subject, asserts (England and the
English, p. 329), that, " There is scarcely an English idiom which Milton
has not violated, or a foreign one which he has not borrowed." Now, in
answer to this extravagant assertion, I will venture to say that the
two following are the sole cases of questionable idiom throughout
Milton: - 1st, " Yet virgin of Proserpine from Jove;" and, in this
case, the same thing might be urged in apology which Aristotle urges
in another argument, namely, that avwnvpov To nufo~, the case is
unprovided with any suitable expression. How would it be possible
to convey in good English the circumstances here indicated - namely,
that Ceres was yet in those days of maiden innocence, when she had
borne no daughter to Jove? Second, I will cite a case which, so far
as I remember, has been noticed by no commentator; and, probably,
because they have failed to understand it. The case occurs in the
"Paradise Regained;" but where I do not at this moment remember.
"Will they transact with God?" This is the passage; and a most
flagrant instance it offers of pure Latinism.  Transigere, in the lan.guage of the civil law, means to make a compromise; and the word
transact is here used in that sense- a sense utterly unknown to the
English language. This is the worst ease in Milton; and I do not




582                     OXFORD.
show, without a full justification in the result. Two
things may be asserted of all his exotic idioms -1st,
That they express what could        not have been expressed by any native idiom; 2d, That they harmonize with the English language, and give a coloring
of the antique, but not any sense of strangeness to
the diction.   Thus, in the double negative, "Nor
did they not perceive," &c., which is classed as a
Hebraism -if any man fancy that it expresses no
more than the simple affirmative, he shows that he
does not understand its force; and, at the same time,
it is a form of thought so natural and universal, that
I have heard English people, under corresponding
circumstances, spontaneously fall into it. In short,
whether a man differ from others by greater profundity or by greater sublimity, and whether he write
as a poet or as a philosopher, in any case, he feels,
in due proportion to the necessities of his intellect,
an increasing dependence upon the Latin section of
the English language; and the true reason why Lord
Brougham failed to perceive this, or found the Saxon
equal to his wants, is one which I shall not scruple
know that it has been ever noticed. Yet even here it may be doubted
whether Milton is not defensible; asking if they proposed to terminate
their difference with God after the fashion in use amongst courts of
law, he points properly enough to these worldly settlements by the
technical term which designated them. Thus, might a divine say:
Will he arrest the judgments of God by a demurrer? Thus, again,
Hamlet apostrophizes the lawer's skull by the technical terms used in
actions for assault, &c. Besides, what proper term is there in English
for expressing a compromise? Edmund Burke, and other much older
authors, express the idea by the word temperament; but that word
though a good one, was at one time considered an exotic termequally a Gallicism and a Latinism.




OXFORD                 583
to assign, inasmuch as it does not reflect personally
on Lord Brougham, or, at least, on him exclusively,
but on the whole body to which he belongs. That
thing which he and they call by the pompous name
of statesmanship, but which is, in fact, statescraftthe art of political intrigue - deals (like the opera)
with ideas so few in number, and so little adapted to
associate themselves with other ideas, that, possibly,
in the one case equally as in the other, six hundred
words are sufficient to meet all their demands.
I have used my privilege of discursiveness to step
aside from Demosthenes to another subject, no otherwise connected with the Attic orator than, first, by
the common reference of both subjects to rhetoric;
but, secondly, by the accident of having been jointly
discussed by Lord Brougham in a paper, which
(though now forgotten) obtained, at the moment,
most undue celebrity. For it is one of the infirmities
of the public mind with us, that whatever is said
or done by a public man, any opinion given by a
member of Parliament, however much out of his own
proper jurisdiction and range of inquiry, commands
an attention not conceded even to those who speak
under the known privilege of professional knowledge.
Thus, Cowper was not discovered to be a poet
worthy of any general notice, until Charles Fox, a
most slender critic, had vouchsafed to quote a few
lines, and that, not so much with a view to the
poetry, as to its party application. But now, returning to Demosthenes, I affirm that his case is the case
of nearly all the classical writers,- at least, of all the
prose writers. It is, I admit, an extreme one; that
is, it is the general case in a more intense degree.




584                OXFORD.
Raised almost to divine honors, never mentioned but
with affected rapture, the classics of Greece and
Rome are seldom read, most of them never; are they,
indeed, the closet companions of any man? Surely
it is time that these follies were at an end; that our
practice were made to square a little better with our
professions; and that our pleasures were sincerely
drawn from those sources in which we pretend that
they lie.
The Greek language, mastered in any eminent
degree, is the very rarest'of all accomplishments,
and precisely because it is unspeakably the most
difficult. Let not the reader dupe himself by popular
cant. To be an accomplished Grecian, demands a
very peculiar quality of talent; and it is almost
inevitable that one who is such should be vain of a
distinction which represents so much labor and difficulty overcome. For myself, having, as a school-boy,
attained to a very unusual mastery over this language, and (though as yet little familiar with the
elaborate science of Greek metre) moving through
all the obstacles and resistances of a Greek book
with the same celerity and ease as through those
of the French and Latin, I had, in vanquishing the
difficulties of the language, lost the main stimulus
to its cultivation. Still, I read Greek daily; but any
slight vanity which I might connect with a power so
rarely attained, and which, under ordinary circumstances, so readily transmutes itself into a disproportionate admiration of the author, in me was absolutely
swallowed up in the tremendous hold taken of my
entire sensibilities at this time by our own literature.
With what fury would I often exclaim: IIe who




OXFORD.               585
ioveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shlal
he love God whom he hath not seen? You, Mr. A,
L, M, 0, you who care not for Milton, and value not
the dark sublimities which rest ultimately (as we
all feel) upon dread realities, how can you seriously
thrill in sympathy with the spurious and fanciful
sublimities of the classical poetry-with the nod of
the Olympian Jove, or the seven-league strides of
Neptune? Flying Childers had the most prodigious
stride of any horse on record; and at Newmarket
that is justly held to be a great merit; but it is
hardly a qualification for a Pantheon. The parting of
Hector and Andromache —that is tender, doubtless;
but how many passages of far deeper, far diviner
tenderness, are to be found in Chaucer! Yet in
these cases we give our antagonist the benefit of an
appeal to what is really best and most effective in
the ancient literature.  For, if we should go to
Pindar, and some other great names, what a revelation of hypocrisy as respects thefade enthusiasts for
the Greek poetry I
Still, in the Greek tragedy, however otherwise
embittered against ancient literature by the dismal
affectations current in the scenical poetry, at least I
felt the presence of a great and original power. It
might be a power inferior, upon the whole, to that
which presides in the English tragedy; I believed
that it was; but it was equally genuine, and appealed
equally to real and deep sensibilities in our nature.
Yet, also, I felt that the two powers at work in the
two forms of the drama were essentially different;
and without having read a line of German at that
time, or knowing of any such controversy, I began




586                 OXFORD.
to meditate on the elementary grounds of differeice
between the Pagan and the Christian forms of poetry.
The dispute has since been carried on extensively in
France, not less than in Germany, as between the
classical and the romantic. But I will venture to
assert that not one step in advance has been made,
up to this day. The shape into which I threw the
question it may be well to state; because I am persuaded that out of that one idea, properly pursued,
might be evolved the whole separate characteristics
of the Christian and the antique: Why is it, I asked,
that the Christian idea of sin is an idea utterly unknown to the Pagan mind? The Greeks and Romans had a clear conception of a moral ideal, as we
have; but this they estimated by a reference to the
will; and they called it virtue, and the antithesis
they called vice. The lachete or relaxed energy of
the will, by which it yielded to the seductions of
sensual pleasure, that was vice; and the braced-up
tone by which it resisted these seductions was
virtue. But the idea of holiness, and the antithetic
idea of sin, as a violation of this awful and unimaginable sanctity, was so utterly undeveloped in the
Pagan mind, that no word exists in classical Greek
or classical Latin which approaches either pole of
this synthesis; neither the idea of holiness, nor of its
correlate, sin, could be so expressed in Latin as
at once to satisfy Cicero and a scientific Christian.
Again (but this was some years after), I found
Schiller and Goethe applauding the better taste of
the ancients, in symbolizing the idea of death by a
beautiful youth, with a torch inverted, &c., as compared with the Christian types of a skeleton and




OXFORD.               587
hour-glasses, &c. And much surprised I was to
hear Mr. Coleridge approving of this German sentiment.  Yet, here again I felt the peculiar genius of
Christianity was covertly at work moving upon a
different road, and under opposite ideas, to a just
result, in which the harsh and austere expression
yet pointed to a dark reality, whilst the beautiful
Greek adumbration was, in fact, a veil and a disguise. The corruptions and the other "dishonors"
of the grave, and whatsoever composes the sting of
death in the Christian view, is traced up to sin as its
ultimate cause. Hence, besides the expression of
Christian humility, in thus nakedly exhibiting the
wrecks and ruins made by sin, there is also a latent
profession indicated of Christian hope.  For the
Christian contemplates steadfastly, though with
trembling awe, the lowest point of his descent;
since, for him, that point, the last of his fall, is also
the first of his reiscent, and serves, besides, as an
exponent of its infinity; the infinite depth becoming,
in the rebound, a measure of the infinite reiscent.
Whereas, on the contrary, with the gloomy uncertainties of a Pagan on the question of his final restoration, and also (which must not be overlooked) with
his utter perplexity as to the nature of his restoration, if any were by accident in reserve, whether in
a condition tending downwards or upwards, it was
the natural resource to consult the general feeling of
anxiety and distrust, by throwing a thick curtain and
a veil of beauty over the whole too painful subject.
To place the horrors in high relief, could here have
answered no purpose but that of wanton cruelty;
whereas, with the Christian hopes, the very saddest




588                OXFORD.
memorials of the havocs made by death are antag
onist prefigurations of great victories in the rear.
These speculations, at that time, I pursued ear.
nestly; and I then believed myself, as I yet do, to
have ascertained the two great and opposite laws
under which the Grecian and the English tragedy has
each separately developed itself. Whether wrong
or right in that belief, sure I am that those in Germany who have treated the case of classical and
romantic are not entitled to credit for any discovery
at all. The Schlegels, who were the hollowest of
men, the windiest and wordiest (at least, Frederic
was so), pointed to the distinction; barely indicated
it; and that was already some service done, because
a presumption arose that the antique and the modern
literatures, having clearly some essential differences,
might, perhaps, rest on foundations originally distinct, and obey different laws.  And hence it occurred that many disputes, as about the unities, etc.
might originate in a confusion of these laws. This
checks the presumption of the shallow criticism, and
points to deeper investigations. Beyond this, neither
the German nor the French disputers on the subject
have talked to any profitable purpose.
I have mentioned Paley as accidentally connected
with my debut in literary conversation; and I have
taken occasion to say how much I admired his style
and its unstudied graces, how profoundly I despised
his philosophy. I shall here say a word or two more
on that subject.  As respects his style, though secretly despising the opinion avowed by my tutor
(which was, however, a natural opinion for a stiff
lover of the artificial and the pompous), I would just




OXFORD.                589
as unwillingly be supposed to adopt the extravagant
opinions, in the other extreme, of Dr. Parr and Mr.
Coleridge. These two gentlemen, who privately
hated Paley, and, perhaps, traduced him, have hung
like bees over one particular paragraph in his Evidences, as though it were a flower transplanted from
Hymettus. Dr. Parr pronounced it the finest sentence in the English language. It is a period (that
is, a cluster of sentences) moderately well, but not
too well constructed, as the German nurses are accustomed to say. Its felicity depends on a trick easily
imitated - on a balance happily placed (namely, " in
which the wisest of mankind would reoice to find an
answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries").
As a bravura, or tour de force, in the dazzling fence
of rhetoric, it is surpassed by many hundreds of passages which might be produced from rhetoricians;
or, to confine myself to Paley's contemporaries, it is
very far surpassed by a particular passage in Burke's
letter upon the Duke of Bedford's base attack upon
him in the House of Lords; which passage I shall
elsewhere produce, because I happen to know, on
the authority of Burke's executors, that Burke himself considered it the finest period which he had ever
written.  At present, I will only make one remark,
namely, that it is always injudicious, in the highest
degree, to cite for admiration that which is not a
representative specimen of the author's manner. In
reading Lucian, I once stumbled on a passage of
German pathos, and of German effect.  Would it
have been wise, or would it have been intellectually
just, to quote this as the text of an eulogium on Lu.
cian? What false criticism it would have suggested




590                OXFORD.
to every reader 1 what false anticipations I To quote
a formal and periodic pile of sentences, was to give
the feeling that Paley was what the regular rhetorical artists designate as a periodic writer, when, in
fact, no one conceivable character of style more
pointedly contradicted the true description of his
merits.
But, leaving the style of Paley, I must confess that
I agree with Mr. Bulwer (England and the English)
in thinking it shocking and almost damnatory to an
English university, the great well-heads of creeds,
moral and evangelical, that authors such in respect
of doctrine as Paley and Locke should hold that
high and influential station as teachers, or rather oracles of truth, which has been conceded to them. As
to Locke, I, when a boy, had made a discovery of
one blunder full of laughter and of fun, which, had it
been published and explained in Locke's lifetime,
would have tainted his whole philosophy with suspicion. It relates to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism, which Locke undertook to ridicule. Now, a
flaw, a hideous flaw, in the soi-disant detecter of
flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the ridiculous —
that is fatal; and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote
a folio against Locke in his lifetime, and other examiners, should have failed in detecting this.  I shall
expose it elsewhere; and, perhaps, one or two other
exposures of the same kind will give an impetus to
the descent of this falling philosophy. With respect
to Paley, and the naked prudentialism of his system, it is true that in a longish note Paley disclaims
that consequence.  But to this we may reply, with
Cicero, Non quero quid neget Epicurus, sed quid con



OXFORD.                591
gruenter neget. Meantime, waiving all this as too
notorious, and too frequently denounced, I wish to
recur to this trite subject, by way of stating an objection made to the Paleyan morality in my seventeenth
year, and which I have never since seen reason to
withdraw.  It is this: - I affirm that the whole
work, from first to last, proceeds upon that sort of
error which the logicians call ignoratio elenchi, that
is, ignorance of the very question concerned —of
the point at issue. For, mark, in the very vestibule
of ethics, two questions arise —two different and
disconnected questions, A and B; and Paley has
answered the wrong one.  Thinking that he was
answering A, and meaning to answer A, he has, in
fact, answered B. One question arises thus: Justice is a virtue; temperance is a virtue; and so
forth. Now, what is the common principle which
ranks these several species under the same genus?
What; in the language of logicians, is the common
differential principle which determines these various
aspects of moral obligation to a common genius?
Another question, and a more interesting question to
men in general, is this, - What is the motive to
virtue? By what impulse, law, or motive, am I impelled to be virtuous rather than vicious? Whence
is the motive derived which should impel me to one
line of conduct in preference to the other? This,
which is a practical question, and, therefore, more
interesting than the other, which is a pure question
of speculation, was that which Paley believed himself to be answering.  And his answer was, - That
utility, a perception of the resulting benefit, was the
true determining motive.  Meantime, it was ob



59 2                OXFORP.
jected that often the most obvious results from a
virtuous action were far otherwise than beneficial.
Upon which, Paley, in the long note referred to above,
distinguished thus: That whereas actions have many
results, some proximate, some remote, just as a stone
thrown into the water produces many concentric
circles, be it known that he, Dr. Paley, in what he
says of utility, contemplates only the final result,
the very outermost circle; inasmuch as he acknowledges a possibility that the first, second, third, including the penultimate circle, may all happen to
clash with utility; but then, says he, the outermost
circle of all will never fail to coincide with the absolute maximum of utility. Hence, in the first place,
it appears that you cannot apply this test of utility
in a practical sense; you cannot say, This is useful,
ergo, it is virtuous; but, in the inverse order, you
must say, This is virtuous, ergo, it is useful. You
do not rely on its usefulness to satisfy yourself of its
being virtuous; but, on the contrary, you rely on its
virtuousness, previously ascertained, in order to
satisfy yourself of its usefulness.  And thus the
whole practical value of this test disappears, though
in that view it was first introduced; and a vicious
circle arises in the argument; as you must have
ascertained the virtuousness of an act, in order to
apply the test of its being virtuous. But, secondly,
it now comes out that Paley was answering a very
different question from that which he supposed himself answering. Not any practical question as to the
motive or impelling force in being virtuous, rather
than vicious, -that is, to the sanctions of virtue,but a purely speculative question, as to the issue of




OXFORD.                593
virtue, or the common vinculum amongst the several
modes or species of virtue (justice, temperance,
etc.) —this was the real question which he was answering.  I have often remarked that the largest
and most subtle source of error in philosophic speculations has been the confounding of the two great
principles so much insisted on by the Leibnitzians,
namely, the ratio cognoscendi and the ratio essendi.
Paley believed himself to be assigning -it was his
full purpose to assign -the ratio cognoscendi; but,
instead of that, unconsciously and surreptitiously,
he has actually assigned the ratio essendi; and, after
all, a false and imaginary ratio essendi
38








NOTES.
NOTE 1. Page 27.
[The first chapter of the Autobiographic Sketches is a reprint, with
slight changes by the author of a section of " Suspiria de Profundis."
When arranging his works for the Edinburgh edition, De Quincey
made this the initial chapter of his Autobiographic Sketches. It is
given in this edition in both places, as connected on one side with his
dreams, on another with his reminiscences.]
NoTE 2. Page 156.
[" Mr. Clowes."  For a fuller account of this gentleman, see the
first chapter of Literary Reminiscences.]
NOTE 3. Page 337.
["H."   Horace.]
NOTE 4. Page 338.
L"R."   Richard.]
NOTE 5. Page 524.
["W —."   Worcester College.  For further reference to De
Quincey's life at Oxford, see the Introduction to the present volume.]