.PLEASE HANDLE WITH CARE BRITTLE BOOK FORM University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign University Library Binding and Preservation Division 12 Library CONSERVATION UNIT ( /(j ; This volume cannot be bound or repaired because of brittle paper. Reshelving in the following manner is considered a temporary measure. o EH M W Q u\ 1. Tying and/or^ Vrappin^ and tying. 2. Storage in acid free envelope, document box, etc. .CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING ALTERNATIVES: I 1. Replacement 2. Reprint 3. Withdrawal 4. Photocopying, Microfilm, Microfiche, etc. 5. Storage for futiare preservation if bibliographic research determines it is valuable to our collection. (If transferrd to Storage in Stacks , it must be last oDpy in system. ) Date K] L y GAMMON 10/10/84 1 C' Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates t^ttps://archive.org/details/passagesselectedOOcarl PASSAGES SELECTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. "is - .'t \* PASSAGES SELECTED FROM THE WKITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. THOMAS BALLANTYNE. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1855, LONDON : BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, AVHITEFRIAHS. CONTENTS. « The references at the end of each extract are, in all cases, to the latest editions of the ivories quoted. INTEODUCTOEY PAGf5 1 CEOMWELL. Cromwell’s birthplace 29 COINCIDENCES 30 r^ ^'HIS CONVERSION 30 v^HARLES AND THE PARLIAMENT 32 ■ vJ-A GENTLEMAN FARMER 34 VESTIGES 35 ^ SHIPMONEY 37 THE SHIPMONEY TRIAL 37 ^ BATTLE OP NASEBY 38 ^BRIDGET Cromwell’s wedding 41 V DEATH WARRANT 42 :MR. MILTON 45 cu- ^ THE LEVELLERS— ENGLISH SANSCULOTTISM 46 IRISH WAR 54 ^SCOTCH PURITANISM 57 0 2 VI CONTENTS, PAGE A COVENANTED KING 58 THE BATTLE OF DUNBAR 59 DISMISSAL OP THE RUMP 67 THE BAREEONES PARLIAMENT 70 CONSPIRACIES 71 JAMES NAYLER AND COMPANY 74 THE WEST INDIAN INTEREST . 75 QUARTERMASTER SINDERCOMB, THE ASSASSIN 78 THE FIFTH MONARCHY 80 SEA-KING BLAKE . . . . . . . . . . . 81 INSTALLED AS PROTECTOR 82 SPANISH INVASION PLOT 84 ROYALIST INSURRECTION FAILURE 85 DEATH OF THE PROTECTOR 90 FEENCn EEYOLUTION. THE wcr of lids lower world : to such alone can the epithet of groat bo a])pliod ‘ ith itM true cmph.'isis. There is a congruity in their ])roceedings which one ;< vcH to cont<-mplate : ho who would write henue poems, shoidd make his ^li-tlr lib- a heroic poem.” — Life of Schiller^ j). fifi. f I'll'- fiicH'Uhip Ihctj formed between tutor and ])U]iil continued till tho d. atli of tin- latP-r in 18 -ld. A lusautiful tribute to the imunory of Mr. BuIKt 'I in the “ /'.'./ro/n/arr,” soon after his death, from Mr. (A'lrlyle, who lord f.*rmi-d ri high opinion of what his former jiupil was destiueil to accoiiqilish jii l.::. iK^anient of pauiK-rism, had he lived. INTROEUCTORY. 5 Magazine,'' where the first part of his Life of Schiller " appeared in 1823, and was followed by the second and third portions of that admirable piece of biography in 1824. The list of contributors to the ‘‘ London Maga- zine" at that period was a brilliant one. Among other distinguished names, it included those of Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Allan Cunningham, De Quincey, and Thomas Hood. That of Carlyle, although destined to become much greater than any of these, had not yet acquired much celebrity, nor does he appear to have been enrolled among the regular corps of ‘^eminent hands” whom Mr. John Scott had gathered round him. In 1825, the Life of Schiller," which had been recast and considerably enlarged, was published in a separate form, by Taylor and Hessey, to whom the London Magazine" belonged. It did not excite much attention, but what notice it did receive was highly favourable. The Gentleman' s Magazine," for example, after praising its elegance of style, and acuteness of analytical criticism, speaks of it as, A work far exceeding in execution all that it pretends to or promises, and in a style of elegance and occasional loftiness worthy of its subject; an impe- rishable and original record of the finest genius which Germany has brought forth.” But the most valuable testimony to the intrinsic worth of Mr. Carlyle’s first book was its translation into German, with a laudatory preface by Goethe, to whom he owes so much of his philosophy, and whose favourable verdict he must have prized far beyond that of any living writer. It is interesting to note, as marking the interest which the sage of Weimar had taken in the young literary aspi- rant, that he was at the trouble of getting two drawings taken of the house at Craigenputtoch, in Dumfriesshire, to which Mr. Carlyle removed soon after his marriage in 6 INTRODUCTORY. 1825, and that engravings from these were given in the German translation of the Life of Schiller” The list of illustrations to that volume, in addition to a view of Schiller’s house at Weimar, and one of his garden house at Jena, includes, Thomas Carlyle s Wohnung in der Grafschaft Dumfries, des siidlichen Schottlandf [Thomas Carlyle’s residence in Dumfriesshire in the South of Scotland,] as frontispiece, and a vignette of ‘‘ dieselbe in der Feme,” [the same in the distance]. Those who have been previously familiar with the later writings of Carlyle, in reading the ‘‘ Life of Schiller ” for the first time, can hardly fail to notice the very intimate acquaintance 'which that early production displays of the literary life and character. The opening passage of the second hook, to which we have already adverted, contains the germ of all that he has said on that subject in many a beautiful form, during the last thirty years. His criticism of Schiller’s views regarding the spirit in which history ought to be written, though modestly expressed, shows also that he had even then arrived at a much sounder conclu- sion on tliat subject than the author of the history of ^^The Thirty Years JVar” had done. Schiller, in one of his letters, says, “ It is a poor and little aim to write for one nation ; a 2)liilosophic si)irit cannot tolerate such limits, can- not bound its views to a form of human nature so arbitraiy, lluctuating, accidental. The most powerful nation is but a fragment; and tliinking minds will not grow warm on its account, cxcej)t in so far as this nation or its fortunes liave been inllucntial in the progress of tlio species.” Upon wliieli j\Ir. Carlyle mildly remarks, that “Universal ])bilaiitbro])y forms but a precarious and very ))owerless rule ol'eonduet; and the ‘ progri^ss of the species’ will turn out erpnilly unfitted for de(‘ply exciting the imagina- tion. It is not with freedom we can sympathise, but with INTRODUCTORY. 7 free men. There ought, indeed, to be in history a spirit superior to petty distinctions and vulgar partialities ; our particular affections ought to be enlightened and purified ; but they should not be abandoned, or, such is the condi- tion of humanity, our feelings must evaporate and fade away in that extreme diffusion. Perhaps, in a certain sense, the surest mode of pleasing and instructing all nations is to write for one.” How well he has carried out these views, those who are best acquainted with the writings of Carlyle can bear witness. No one can accuse the author of “ The French Bevolution,'' and editor of ‘‘ GromwelVs Letters and Speeches^ of having aban- doned his particular affections ” while engaged on those histories. In 1824 the translation of ‘‘ Wilhelm Meister ” made its appearance. It was published by Messrs. Oliver and Boyd of Edinburgh, but without the name of Mr. Carlyle, who was then utterly unknown to fame. ‘‘ Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, a novel from the German of Goethe,” was all the information which the title-page contained regarding the origin of the book. The transla- tion was at once recognised as the work of a master-hand. The Monthly Magazine,'' which had long been noted for its attention to German literature, spoke of it as ‘‘ executed in a masterly way. Perhaps a little too much of the German mode of expression has been preserved ; but there is a strength, originality, and raciness about it, wdiich cannot fail to please the reader.” The London Magazine," although it included Mr. Carlyle in its list of contributors at that time, was much less friendly in its notice of the work. A most savage and unjust attack upon Goethe and his translator, from the pen of Mr. De Quincey, was allowed to appear in the columns of that periodical, to the great disgust of many of its readers, 8 INTRODUCTOHY. who were unable to understand why the ‘^English Opium Eater” should make such an onslaught on a brother trans- lator. As there was a deadly feud at that period between the London Magazine'' and Blackwood," and as the latter had previously given a highly favourable notice of the translation, the inference was, that Mr. De Quincey had deemed it his duty to abuse what the Edinburgh magazine had praised. Perhaps there might also be a spice of jealousy at the sudden intrusion of so vigorous a rival uiDon the field of German literature, where Mr. De Quincey had been recognised as a master. The writer in ‘‘ Blackicood," after speaking of the great influence which Goethe had exercised on European literature, referred to the translation of Wilhelm Meister " in the following terms of laudation, which must have been highly flatter- ing to one just entering upon a literary career : — “ Goethe has, for once, no reason to complain of his trans- lator. The version is executed, so far as we have examined it, with perfect fidelity ; and, on the whole, in an easy, and even grace- ful style, very far superior, we must say, to what we have been much accustomed to in English translations from the German. The translator is, we understand, a young gentleman in this city, who now’ for tlie first time appears before the public. AV^e congratulate him on his very promising dehut ; and would fain hope to receive a series of really good translations from his liand. lie has evidently a perfect knowledge of German ; he already w'rites English better than is at all common, even at this time, and wo know’ no exercise more likely to produce efiects of j)crmanent advantage upon a young mind of intel- loetual ambition, to say nothing of the very favournhlo recep- tion which wo are sure translations of such books so executed cannot fail to exercise uj)on the public mind.** *riie Hcrics of really good translations ” here antici- INTRODUCTORY. 9 pated did not go farther than one other work, the Speci- mens of German Romance f now many years out of print. These were published by William Tait of Edinburgh, in 1827, and consisted of four volumes, one of which con- tained ''Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahref a sequel to the Lehrjahre, or Apprenticeship,'' In the new revised edition of “ Wilhelm Meister," published in 1842, the Apprenticeship and Travels are both given. The other three volumes of ‘‘ German Romance " consisted of selec- tions from Eichter, Tieck, Musaeus, and Hoffman. The translation of “ Wilhelm Meister " was made the text of Mr. Jeffrey’s celebrated attack on Goethe, in the ‘‘ Edinburgh Review f in which the same ‘‘ slashing ” style of criticism was applied to the author of ‘‘ Faust," as had been exercised upon Wordsworth and other men of genius. After stating that he had taken this novel as a fair specimen of German literature, because it was generally considered, by the Germans themselves, to be the very greatest work of their very greatest writer, the most original, the most varied and inventive, the most characteristic, in short, of the author and his country,” and having given it " the most deliberate consideration,” Mr. Jeffrey came to the conclusion, that it was ‘‘ eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous, vulgar, and affected ; ” that, in fact, it was ‘‘ almost from beginning to end one flagrant offence against every principle of taste, and every just rule of composition.” To justify the sweeping severity of such censure, the reviewer gave a number of extracts from "Wilhelm Meister," evidently selected for the express pur- pose of making the author ridiculous, according to the approved Edinburgh fashion of 1825. As he read on however, he appears to have had a slight misgiving as to whether he might not have been using the lash a little more severely than was altogether prudent, and he winds 10 INTRODUCTORY. up with the humiliating implied confession in the follow- ing remarkable passage, that he has not done justice to the book, after all his pretended deliberate considera- tion.” But, right or wrong, what he had written must remain without correction, as he had neither space nor time to make amends to the author : — Many of the passages to which we have now alluded are executed with great talent ; and we are very sensible are better worth extracting than most of those we have cited. But it is too late now to change our selections — and we can still less afford to add to them. On the whole, we close the book with some feelings of mollification towards its faults, and a disposition to abate, if possible, some part of the censure we were impelled to bestow on it at the beginning.’* Of the translator, Mr. Jeffrey speaks in very high terms. He is described as ‘‘ one who is proved by his preface to he a person of talents, and by every part of the work to be no ordinary master, at least, of one of the languages with wliich he has to deal.” This was a satisfactory set- off against De Quincey’s flippant attempt in the London Mafjazine ” to prove that Carlyle did not understand Knglisli. Carlyle had now fairly embarked in literature as the business of life. 'Wliatever the liardships or perils of such a career — and no one lias ever painted them in gloomier colours — he had made up his mind to encounter them with a fij-m and r(‘S()lut(' purpose. In 1827, an article on Jean Paul, — the first of that hrilliant s(‘ries of critical and bio- graphical essays, which havii made his mimi‘ so famous, — made its appearamai in the '^Ldinhitn/h J'his was followed up, in tin* succeeding number of that perio- dical, by his celebrated (‘ssay on “ (irriinni Literature,'' which at once entitled the young reviewer to a place among INTRODUCTORY. 11 the first critics of the age. To those who never read that article till it appeared in the ‘^Miscellanies,'' perhaps some twenty years or more after its first publication, the boldness and originality of the views enunciated may not appear so striking as they did to the readers of the review. That numerous class, who had been accustomed to look upon Mr. Jeffrey as an infallible guide in matters of taste, must have been considerably startled by the lofty, fearless tone assumed by the new contributor, who did not scruple to attack the prince of critics” for his shameful abuse of Goethe, and whose manly assertion of the claims of genius must have been deemed flat rebellion by the courtly habitues of Holland House. In defending the Germans from the charge of bad taste brought against them by sundry critics, who had accounted for the assumed fact by ‘‘ the quiet little theory,” that German authors do not move in good society, Mr. Carlyle takes occasion to give his confession of faith regarding the respective merits of mere rank and intrinsic nobleness. The theory in question, that German authors cannot acquire the polish of drawing-rooms, but must live in mean houses, and, therefore, think and write in a mean style,”* is so very melancholy, that he thinks it worthy of close examination. The passage in which he demolishes * Mr. Jeffrey, speaking of German authors, in the article on Wilhelm Meister,"^^ to which reference has been made, says : — ‘‘Their works smell, as it were, of groceries — of brown papers filled with greasy cakes and slices of bacon — and fryings in back parlours. All the interesting recollections of childhood turn on remembered tit-bits, and plundering of savoury store- rooms .’* — Edinhwrgh Review, vol. xlii. p. 417. He then goes on to explain how the German authors are so fond of such topics : — “ The writers as well as the readers of that country, belong almost entirely to the plebeian and vulgar class. Their learned men are almost all wofully poor and dependent ; and the comfortable burghers, who buy entertaining books by the thousand at the Frankfort Fair, probably agree with their authors in nothing so much as the value they set on those homely comforts to which their ambition is mutually limited by their poverty, and enter into no part of them so heartily as those which set forth their paramount and continual importance.” — Edinbii^rgh Review, vol. xlii, p, 418, 1'3 INTRODUCTORY. the quiet little theory ” of the silver-fork school is exquisite. Is it, then, so certain,” he asks, that taste and riches are so indissolubly connected ? That truth of feeling must ever be preceded by weight of purse, and the eyes be dim for universal and eternal Beauty, till they have long rested on gilt walls and costly furniture ? To the great body of mankind that were indeed heavy news ; for, of the thousand, scarcely one is rich, or connected with the rich ; nine hundred and ninety-nine have always been poor, and must always be so. "W^e take the liberty of questioning the truth of the whole postulate. AYe think that for acquiring true poetic taste, riches, or association among the rich, are distinctly among the minor requisites ; that, in fact, they have little, or no concern with the matter. This we shall now endeavour to make probable. “ Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness ; a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence, all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision : above all, kindled into love and generous admiration. Is culture of this sort found exclusively among the higher ranks ? AVe believe it proce(‘ds less from without than within, in every rank. * * * Such is our hypothesis of the case. I low' stands it with the facts ? Are the fineness and truth of sense manifested by the artist found, in most instances, to bo proportionate to his w'caltli and elevation of acquaintance? Are they found to have any perceptible ndation, either with the one or the other? AVo imagine, not. AVMiose taste, in ])ainting for instance, is truer and liner than Claude Lorraine’s ? And w’as not he a ])oor colour-grinder; outwardly, the meanest of menials. W here, again, we might ask, 1/iy IShakspeare’s rent-roll; and INTRODUCTOIIY. 13 what generous peer took him by the hand, and unfolded to him the ^ open secret ’ of the Universe ; teaching him that this was beautiful, and that not so ? Was he not a peasant by birth, and by fortune something lower ; and was it not thought much, even in the height of his reputation, that Southampton allowed him equal patronage with the zanies, jugglers, and bearwards of the time ? Yet, compare his taste, even as it respects the negative side of things; for, in regard to the positive, and far higher side, it admits no comparison with any other mortals — compare it, for instance, with the taste of Beaumont and Bletcher, his contemporaries, men of rank and education, and of fine genius like himself. Tried even by the nice, fastidious, and in great part false, and artificial delicacy of modern times, how stands it with the two parties, with the gay triumphant men of fashion, and the poor vagrant link-boy ? Does the latter sin against, we shall not say taste, but etiquette, as the former do ? Dor one line, for one word, wDich a Chesterfield might wish blotted from the first, are there not in the others whole pages and scenes which, with palpitating heart, he would hurry into deepest night ? This too, observe, respects not their genius, but their culture ; not their appropriation of beauties, but their rejection of defor- mities, by supposition, the grand and peculiar result of high breeding ! Surely, in such instances, even that humble suppo- sition is ill-borne out. ‘‘ The truth of the matter seems to be, that with the culture of a genuine poet, thinker, or other artist, the influence of rank has no exclusive or even special concern. Dor men of action, for senators, public speakers, or political writers, the case may be different ; but of such we speak not at present. Neither do we speak of imitators, and the crowd of mediocre men, to whom fashionable life sometimes gives an external unofiensiveness, often compensated by a frigid malignity of character. We speak of men, who, from amid the perplexed and conflicting elements of their every-day existence, are to form themselves into harmony and wisdom, and show forth the same wisdom to others that exists along with them. To INTRODUCTORY. li such a man, high life, as it is called, will be a province of human life, but nothing more. * * * Is he poor ? So also was Homer and Socrates ; so was Samuel Johnson ; so was John Milton. Shall we reproach .him with his poverty, and infer that, because he is poor, he must likewise he worthless ? God forbid that the time should ever come when he, too, shall esteem riches the sjnonyme of good ! The spirit of Mammon has a wide empire, but it cannot and must not be worshipped in the Holy of Holies. Hay, does not the heart of every genuine disciple of literature, however mean his sphere, instinctively deny this principle, as applicable either to himself or another ? Is it not rather true, as D’Alembert has said, that for every man of letters, who deserves that name, the watchword will be Freedom, Truth, and even this same PoYERTY ; that, if he fear the last, the two first can never be made sure to him.” Such sentiments as these would not attract special attention at the present cla 3 ^ In order to estimate the boldness of the writer, it is necessary to bear in mind that all this appeared in the organ of the aristocratic AVliig party nearly thirty years ago. Let any one suppose, hy way of illustration, that Mr. Macaulay had begun to write in the Kdinhurrjh lleview'' in a similar strain, and then fancy what the result would have been with reference to his i)olitical career. Df ]\lr. Carlyle’s mode of life at this period, we have a ])leasant skctcli in the following extract from one of his letters to (joethe, wbicli is given by the latter, in his ]>reface to the German translation of the “ Li/e of MuUcrr^— OuAioKNi’UTTocH, 2!jth SeptcmhcVy 1828. “ You inquire with sucli warm interest respecting our present n])ode and occnj)ati()nfl, that I am obliged to say a few words about both, while there is still room left. Dumfries is a pleasant town, containing about iifteeii thousand inhabitants, INTRODUCTOUY. 15 and to be considered the center of the trade and judicial system of a district which possesses some importance in the sphere of Scottish activity. Our residence is not in the town itself, but fifteen miles to the north-west of it, among the granite hills and the black morasses which stretch westward through Galloway, almost to the Irish sea. In this wilderness of heath and rock, our estate stands forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly inclosed and planted ground, where corn ripens, and trees afibrd a shade, although surrounded by sea- mews and rough woolled sheep. Here, with no small effort, have we built and furnished a neat, substantial dwelling ; here, in the absence of a professional or other ofiice, we live to cultivate literature according to our strength, and in our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to the rose and flowers of our garden ; we hope for health and peaceful thoughts to further our aims. The roses, indeed, are still in part to be planted, but they blossom already in anticipation. Two ponies, which carry us everywhere, and the mountain air, are the best medicines for weak nerves. This daily exercise, to which I am much devoted, is my only recreation ; for this nook of ours is the loneliest in Britain — six miles removed from any one likely to visit me. Here Bousseau would have been as happy as on his island of Saint Pierre. My town friends, indeed, ascribe my sojourn here to a similar disposition, and forbode me no good result. But I came hither solely with the design to simplify my way of life, and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself. This bit of earth is our own ; here we can live, write, and think, as best pleases ourselves, even though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the monarch of literature. Nor is the solitude of such great importance : for a stage-coach takes ns speedily to Edinburgh, which we look upon as our British Weimar. And have I not, too, at this moment, piled upon the table of my little library, a whole cart-load of French, German, American, and English journals and periodicals — whatever may be their worth ? Of antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack. From some of our heights I can descry. 16 INTRODUCTORY. about a day’s journey to the west, the hill where Agricola and his E-omans left a camp behind them. At the foot of it I was born, and there both father and mother still live to love me. And so one must let time work. But whither am I wandering ? Let me confess to you, I am uncertain about my future literary activity, and would gladly learn your opinion respecting it ; at least pray write to me again, and speedily, that I may ever feel myself united to you. * * The only piece of any importance that I have written since I came here is an ‘ Essay on Burns,^ Perhaps you never heard of him, and yet he is a man of the most decided genius ; but born in the lowest rank of peasant life, and through the entanglements of his peculiar position, was at length mournfully wrecked, so that what he effected is comparatively unimportant. He died in the middle of his career, in the year 1796. We English, especially we Scotch, loved Burns more than any poet that lived for centuries. I have often been struck by the fact that he was born a few months before Schiller, in the year 1759, and that neither of them ever heard the other’s name. They shone like stars in opposite hemispheres, or, if you will, the thick mist of earth intercepted their reciprocal light.” Ill addition to the Essay on Burns,'' which he seems to have considered the “ only piece of any importance ” that he had written in his mountain solitude, that lonely nook “ among tlie granite hills and the black morasses ” was also tlie bii’tli-place of “ Sartor Itcsartiis," and several articles for tlie Fore\ecome flame, and brilliancy of Heaven. Courage ! It is therefore in these years, undated by History, that we must place Oliver’s clear recognition of Calvinistic Christianity ; what he, with unspeakable joy, would name his Conversion — his deliverance from the jaws of Eternal Death. Certainly a grand epoch for a man : properly the one epoch ; the turning- point which guides upwards, or guides downwards, him and his activity for evermore. Wilt thou join with the dragons ; wilt thou join with the Grods ? Of thee too the question is asked ; — whether by a man in Geneva gown, by a man in ‘ Four sur- plices at Allhallow-tide,’ with words very imperfect ; or by no man and no words, but only by the Silences, by the Eternities, by the Life everlasting and the Death everlasting. That the ‘ Sense of difference between Eight and Wrong ’ had filled all Time and all Space for man, and bodied itself forth into a Heaven and Hell for him ; this constitutes the grand feature of those Puritan, Old-Christian Ages ; — this is the element which stamps them as Heroic, and has rendered their works great, manlike, fruitful to all generations. It is by far the memorablest achievement of our Species ; without that element in some form or other, nothing of Heroic had ever been among us. For many centuries Catholic Christianity — a fit embodiment of that divine Sense, had been current more or less, making 32 CROMWELL. the generations noble : and here in England, in the Century- called the Seventeenth, we see the last aspect of it hitherto, — not the last of all, it is to be hoped. Oliver was henceforth a Christian man ; believed in Grod, not on Sundays only, but on all days, in all places, and in all cases. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches^ vol. i., p. 72. CHARLES AND THE PARLIAMENT. , Sir Oliver Cromwell has faded from the Parliamentary scene into the deep Pen-country, but Oliver Cromwell, Esq., appears there as Member for Huntingdon, at "Westminster ^ on Monday the 17th of March,’ 1627-8. This was the Third Parliament of Charles; by much the most notable of all Parliaments till Charles’s Long Parliament met, which proved his last. Having sharply, with swift impetuosity and indignation, dismissed two Parliaments because they would not ‘ supply ’ him without taking ‘ grievances ’ along with them ; and, mean- while and afterwards, having failed in every operation foreign and domestic, at Cadiz, at Ehe, at Pochelle ; and having failed, too, in getting supplies by unparliamentary methods, Charles ‘consulted with Sir Eobert Cotton what was to be done;’ who answered. Summon a Parliament again. So this celebrated Parliament was summoned. It met, as we said, in March, 1628, and continued with one prorogation till March, 1629. The two former Parliaments had sat but a few weeks each, till they wxre indignantly hurled asunder again ; this one continued nearly a year. Wentworth (Strailbrd) was of this Parliament ; Hampden too, Sclden, Pym, Holies, and others known to us: all these had been of former Parliaments as well ; Oliver Oomwell, Member for Huntingdon, sat there forthelirst time. It is very evident. King Charles, baliled in all his enterprises, and reduced really to a kind of crisis, wished much this Par- liumeni sliould succeed; and took what he must have thought incredible pains for that end. The poor King strives visibly ihrouglioui to control himself*, to bo soft and patient ; inwardly CHARLES AND lilS PARLIAMENT. 33 writhing and rnstling with royal rage. Unfortunate King, we see him chafing, stamping, — a very fiery steed, but bridled, check-bitted, by innumerable straps and considerations ; strug- gling much to be composed. Alas! it would not do. This Parliament was more Puritanic, more intent on rigorous Law and divine Grospel, than any other had ever been. As indeed all these Parliaments grow strangely in Puritanism ; more and ever more earnest rises from the hearts of them all, “0 Sacred Majesty, lead us not to Antichrist, to Illegality, to temporal and eternal Perdition ! ” The Nobility and Grentry of England were then a very strange body of men. The English Squire of the Seventeenth Century clearly appears to have believed in God, not as a figure of speech, but as a very fact, very awful to the heart of the English Squire. ' He wore his Bible ‘ doctrine round him,’ says one, ‘ as our Squire wears his shot- ^ belt ; went abroad with it, nothing doubting.’ King Charles was going on his father’s course, only with frightful accelera- tion : he and his respectable Traditions and Notions, clothed in old sheepskin and respectable Church-tippets, were all pulling one way ; England and the Eternal Laws pulling another ; the rent fast widening till no man could heal it. This was the celebrated Parliament which framed the Petition of Bight, and set London all astir with ^ bells and bonfires ’ at the passing thereof ; and did other feats not to be particularised here. Across the murkiest element in wLich any great Entity was ever shown to human creatures, it still rises, after much consideration, to the modern man, in a dim but undeniable manner, as a most brave and noble Parliament. The liker of wLich were worth its weight in diamonds even now ; but has grown very unattainable now, next door to incredible now. We have to say that this Parliament chastised sycophant Priests, Mainwaring, Sibthorp, and other Arminian sycophants, a disgrace to God’s Church ; that it had an eye to other still more elevated Church- sycophants, as the mainspring of all ; but was cautious to give ofience by naming them. That it carefully ^ abstained from naming the Duke of Bucking- ham.’ That it decided on giving ample subsidies, but not till D 34 CROMWELL. there were reasonable discussion of grievances. That in manner it was most gentle, soft-spoken, cautious, reverential ; and in substance most resolute and valiant. Truly with valiant patient energy, in a slow, stedfast English manner, it carried, across infinite confused opposition and discouragement, its Petition of Eight, and what else it had to carry. Pour hundred brave men, — brave men and true, after their sort ! One laments to find such a Parliament smothered under Dryasdust’s shot-rubbish. The memory of it, could any real memory of it rise upon honourable gentlemen and us, might be admonitory, — would be astonishing at least. CroimoelVs Letters and SjpeecJieSj vol. i., p. 82. A GENTLEMAN FARMER. In or soon after 1631, as we laboriously infer from the imbroglio records of poor JSToble, Oliver decided on an enlarged sphere of action as a Farmer; sold his properties in Hunt- ingdon, all or some of them ; rented certain grazing-lands at St. Ives, five miles down the Eiver, eastward of his native place, and removed thither. The Deed of Sale is dated 7th May, 1631 ; tlie properties are specified as in the possession of liimself or his Mother ; the sum tliey yielded was £1800. AVitli tills sum Oliver stocked his Grazing-Farm at St. Ives. The Mother, we infer, continued to reside at Huntingdon, but withdrawn now from active occupation, into the retirement befitting a widow up in years. There is even some gleam of evidence to that ellect: her properties are sold; but Oliver’s cliildreu born to liim at St. Ives are still christened at J I iintingdon, in the Church ho was used to; which may mean also that tlieir good Oraiulmother was still there. l^rojicrly this was no change in Oliver’s old activities; it was an enlargement of the sphere of them. Dis IMothcr still at J 1 lint ingdon, within few miles of him, he could still super- intend and protect her existence there, while managing his new VESTIGES. 35 operations at St. Ives. He continued here till the summer or spring of 1636. A studious imagination may sufficiently construct the figure of his equable life in those years. Diligent grass-farming ; mowing, milking, cattle-marketing : add ‘‘ hypo- chondria,” fits of the blackness of darkness, with glances of the brightness of very Heaven ; prayer, religious reading and meditation ; household epochs, joys and cares : — we have a solid, substantial inoffensive Farmer of St. Ives, hoping to walk with integrity and humble devout diligence through this world ; and, by his Maker’s infinite mercy, to escape destruc- tion, and find eternal salvation in wider Divine Worlds. This latter, this is the grand clause in his Life, which dwarfs all other clauses. Much wider destinies than he anticipated were appointed him on Earth; but that, in comparison to the alternative of Heaven or Hell to all Eternity, was a mighty small matter. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 97. VESTIGES. Oliver, as we observed, has left hardly any memorial of himself at St. Ives. The ground he farmed is still partly capable of being specified, certain records or leases being still in existence. It lies at the lower or South-east end of the Town; a stagnant flat tract of land, extending between the houses or rather kitchen-gardens of St. Ives in that quarter, and the banks of the Diver, which, very tortuous always, has made a new bend here. If well drained, this land looks as if it would produce abundant grass, but naturally it must be little other than a bog. Tall bushy ranges of willow-trees and the like, at present, divide it into fields ; the Diver, not visible till you are close on it, bounding them all to the South. At the top of the fields next to the Town is an ancient massive Barn, still used as such ; the people call it ^ Cromwell’s Barn : ’ — and nobody can prove that it was not his ! It was evidently some ancient man’s or series of ancient men’s. 36 CEOMWELL. Quitting St. Ives Fen- ward or Eastward, the last house of al], which stands on your right hand among gardens, seemingly the best house in the place, and called Slepe Hall, is con- fidently pointed out as ‘ Oliver’s House.’ It is indisputably Slepe-Hall House, and Oliver’s Farm was rented from the estate of Slepe Hall. It is at present used for a Boarding- school : the worthy inhabitants believe it to be Oliver’s ; and even point out his ‘Chapel’ or secret Puritan Sermon-room in the lower story of the house : no Sermon-room, as you may well discern, but to appearance some sort of scullery or wash- house or bake-house. “ It was here he used to preach,” say they. Courtesy forbids you to answer, “Hever!” But in fact there is no likelihood that this was Oliver’s House at all : in its present state it does not seem to be a century old ; and originally, as is like, it must have served as residence to the Proprietors of Slepe-Hall estate, not to the Farmer of a part thereof. Tradition makes a sad blur of Oliver’s memory in his native country ! We know, and shall know, only this, for certain here, that Oliver farmed part or whole of these Slepe- Hall Lands, over which the human feet can still walk with assurance ; past which the Biver Ouse still slumberously rolls towards Earith Bulwark and the Fen-country. Here of a certainty Oliver did walk and look about him habitually during those five years from IG3I to IG36 ; a man studious of many temporal and many eternal things. His cattle grazed here, his ploughs tilled here, the heavenly skies and infernal abysses overarched and underarchcd him here. * * * JIow lie lived at St. Ives: how he saluted men on the streets ; read Bibles ; sold cattle ; and walked, with heavy foot- fall and many thoughts, through the Market Green or old narrow lanes in St. Ives, by the shore of the black Ouse Jtiver, — shall be left to the reader’s imagination. There is in this man talent for farming; there are thoughts enough, thouglits bounded by the Ouse Itiver, thoughts that go beyond J'kernity, — and a gnait black sea of things that he has never yet been able to think. Cromwell's Letters and ^pecches^ vul. i., pp. 125, 131. THE SHIPMONEY TPIAL. 37 SHIPMOKEY. On the very day while Oliver Cromwell was writing this Letter at St. Ives, two obscure individuals, ‘ Peter Aldridge and Thomas Lane, Assessors of Shipmoney,’ over in Buck- inghamshire, had assembled a Parish Meeting in the Church of Great Kimble, to assess and rate the Shipmoney of the said Parish : there, in the cold weather, at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, HI January, 1635,’ the Parish did attend, Hohn Hampden, Esquire,’ at the head of them, and by a Beturn still extant, refused to pay the same or any portion thereof, — witness the above ^ Assessors,’ witness also two ‘ Parish Constables ’ whom we remit from such unexpected celebrity. John Hampden’s share for this Parish is thirty-one shillings and sixpence: for another Parish it is twenty shillings; on which latter sum, not on the former, John Hampden was tried. CroniwelVs Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 132. THE SHIPMONEY TRIAL. In the end of that same year [1637] there had risen all over England huge rumours concerning the Shipmoney Trial at London. On the 6th of November, 1637, this important Process of Mr. Hampden’s began. Learned Mr. St. John, a dark tough man, of the toughness of leather, spake with irre- fragable law- eloquence, law-logic, for three days running, on Mr. Hampden’s side ; and learned Mr. Holborn for three other days ; — preserved yet by Bushworth in acres of typography, unreadable now to all mortals. Eor other learned gentlemen, tough as leather, spoke on the opposite side ; and learned judges animadverted; at endless length, amid the expectancy of men. With brief pauses, the Trial lasted for three weeks and three days. Mr. Hampden became the most famous man in England, — by accident partly. The sentence was not delivered 38 CEOMWELL. till April, 1638 ; and then it went against Mr. Hampden : judgment in Exchequer ran to this effect, ‘ Consideratum est per eosdem Barones quod prcedictus Johannes Hampden de iisdem viginti solidis oneretur^ — He must pay the Twenty shillings, — ‘ et inde satisfaciatd No hope in Law-Courts, then ; Petition of Eight and Tallagio non concedendo have become an old song. CromweWs Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 137. BATTLE OF NASEBY. The old Hamlet of Naseby stands yet, on its old hill-top, very much as it did in Saxon days, on the Northwestern border of Northamptonshire, some seven or eight miles from Market- Harborough in Leicestershire, nearly on a line, and nearly midway, between that Town and Daventry. A peaceable old Hamlet, of some eight-hundred souls ; clay cottages for labourers, but neatly thatched and swept ; smith’s shop, saddler’s shop, beer-shop, all in order ; forming a kind of square, which leads off Southwards into two long streets : the old Church, with its graves, stands in the centre, the truncated spire finisliing itself with a strange old Ball, held up by rods ; a ‘ hollow copper Ball, which came from Boulogne in Henry the Eighth’s time,’ — which has, like Hudibras’s breeches, ‘ been at the Siege of ilullen.’ The ground is upland, moorland, though now growing corn ; was not enclosed till the last generation, and is still somewhat bare of wood. It stands nearly in the lieart of England: gentle Hulness, taking a turn at etymology, sometimes derives it from Navel; ‘Navesby, quasi Navel shy, from being,’ &c. : Avon AVell, the distinct source of Shakspeare’s Avon, is on the Western slope of the high grounds ; Nen and Welland, streams leading towards (’romwcll’s Fen-country, begin to gather themselves from boggy j>laces on the I'iastern side. d1io grounds, as we say, lie high ; and are still, in their new subilivisions, known by the name of Mlills,’ ‘Eutput Hill,’ ‘Hill Hill,’ ‘Dust Hill,’ and the BATTLE OF NASEBY. 39 like, precisely as in Eushworth’s time : but they are not pro- perly bills at all ; they are broad blunt clayey masses, swelling towards and from each other, like indolent waves of a sea, sometimes of miles in extent. It was on this high moor-ground, in the centre of England, that King Charles, on the 14th of June, 1645, fought his last Battle ; dashed fiercely against the Kew-Model Army, which he had despised till then ; and saw himself shivered utterly to ruin thereby. ‘ Prince Eupert, on the King’s right wing, charged the hill, and carried all before him ; ’ but Lieutenant- General Cromwell charged down hill on the other wing, likewise carrying all before him, — and did not gallop off the field to plunder. He, Cromwell, ordered thither by the Par- liament, had arrived from the Association two days before, ‘ amid shouts from the whole Army : ’ he had the ordering of the Horse this morning. Prince Eupert, on returning from his plunder : finds the King’s Infantry a ruin ; prepares to charge again with the rallied Cavalry ; but the Cavalry, too, when it came to the point, ^ broke all asunder,’ never to reassemble more. The chase went through Harborough, where the King had already been that morning, when in an evil hour he turned back, to revenge some ‘ surprise of an outpost at Kaseby the night before,’ and give the Eoundheads battle. Ample details of this Battle, and of the movements prior and posterior to it, are to be found in Sprigge, or copied with some abridgment into Eushworth ; who has also copied a strange old Plan of the Battle ; half-plan, half-picture, which the Sale- Catalogues are very chary of, in the case of Sprigge. By assiduous attention, aided by this Plan, as the old names yet stick to their localities, the narrative can still be, and has lately been, pretty accurately verified, and the Pigure of the old Battle dimly brought back again. The reader shall imagine it, for the present. On the crown of Kaseby Height stands a modern Battle-monument ; but, by an unlucky over- sight, it is above a mile to the east of where the Battle really was. There are, likewise, two modern Books about Naseby and its Battle, both of them without value. 40 CEOMWELL. The Parliamentary Army stood ranged on the height still partly called ‘ Mill Hill,’ as, in Hushworth’s time, a mile and half from l^aseby ; the King’s Army, on a parallel ‘ Hill,’ its back to Harborough, with the wide table of upland now named Broad Moor between them, where indeed the main brunt of the action still clearly enough shows itself to have been. There are hollow spots, of a rank vegetation, scattered over that Broad Moor, which are understood to have once been burial mounds^ some of which, one to my knowledge, have been, with more or less of sacrilege, verified as such. A friend of mine has in his cabinet two ancient grinder-teeth, dug lately from that ground, and waits for an opportunity to rebury them there. — Sound, effectual grinders, one of them very large ; which ate their break- fast on the fourteenth morning of June two hundred years ago, and, except to be clenched once in grim battle, had never work to do more in this world ! ^ A stack of dead bodies, perhaps about a hundred, had been buried in this Trench, piled, as in a wall, a man’s length thick : the skeletons lay in courses, the heads of one course to the heels of the next ; one figure, by the strange position of the bones, gave us the hideous notion of its having been thrown in before death. We did not proceed far ; — per- haps some half-dozen skeletons. The bones were treated with all piety, watched rigorously over Sunday, till they could be covered in again.’ Sweet friends, for Jesus’ sake forbear ! At this Battle, Mr. John Hush worth our Historical Hush- worth, had, unexpectedly, for some instants, sight of a very famous ])erson. hlr. John is Secretary to Fairfax, and they liave placed him to-day among the Baggage- wagons, near Naseby Hamlet, above a mile from the fighting, where he waits in an anxious manner. It is known how Prince Hiipert broke our left wing while Cromwell was breaking their left. ‘A gentleman of public employment, in the late service near A a8c])y,* writes next day, ‘ J larboroiigh, 15th .1 line, 2 in the morning,’ a rough graphic Jjctter in the Newspapers, wherein is this sentence : — * ♦ * “ A party of theirs that broke through the left wing of liorsi?, came quite behind the rear to our Train, the BRIDGET CROMWELL^S WEDDING. 41 Leader of them being a person somewhat in habit like the Gene- ral, in a redmontero, as the General had. He came as a friend; our commander of the guard of the Train went with his hat in his hand, and asked him. How the day went ? thinking it had been the General : the Cavalier, who we since heard was Eupert, asked him and the rest. If they would have quarter ? They cried No; gave fire, and instantly beat them off. It was a happy deliverance,” — without doubt. There were taken here a good few ‘ ladies of quality in car- riages,’ — and above a hundred Irish ladies not of quality, tattery camp-followers, ‘with long skean-knives about afoot in length,’ which they well knew how to use, upon whom, I fear, the Ordinance against Papists pressed hard this day. The King’s Carriage was also taken, with a Cabinet and many Eoyal Auto- graphs in it, which, when printed, made a sad impression against his Majesty, — gave, in fact, a most melancholy view of the veracity of his Majesty. “ On the word of a King,” all was lost ! CromiveWs Letter's and Speeches^ vol. i., p. 278. BRIDGET CROMWELL’S WEDDING. And now, dated on the Monday before, at Holton, a country Parish in those parts, there is this still legible in the old ChurchEegister, — intimately interesting to some friends of ours ! “ HENEYIEETON, Commissary- General to Sir Thomas Fair- fax, and BEIHGET, Daughter to Oliver Cromwell, Lieutenant- General of the Horse, to the said Sir Thomas Fairfax, were married, by Mr. Dell, in the Lady Whorwood her house in Holton, June I5th, 1646. — ALBAN EALES, Eector.” Ireton, we are to remark, was one of Fairfax’s Commissioners on the Treaty for surrendering Oxford, and busy under the walls there at present. Holton is some five miles east of the City ; Holton House, we guess, by various indications, to have been Fairfax’s own quarter. Dell, already and afterwards well known, was the General’s Chaplain at this date. Of ‘ the Lady 4 ^ CROMWELL. Whorwood ’ I have traces, rather in the Eoyalist direction ; her strong moated House, very useful to [Fairfax in those weeks, still stands conspicuous in that region, though now under new figure and ownership ; drawbridge become fixed, deep ditch now dry, moated island changed into a flower-garden ; — ‘ rebuilt in 1807.’ [Fairfax’s lines, we observe, extended ‘ from Heading- ton Hill to Marston,’ several miles in advance of Holton House, then ‘ from Marston across the Cherwell, and over from that to the Isis on the Horth side of the City ; ’ southward, and else- where, the besieged, ‘ by a dam at St. Clement’s Bridge, had laid the country all under water : ’ in such scenes, with the treaty just ending, and general peace like to follow, did Ireton welcome his bride, — a brave young damsel of twenty-one, escorted, doubtless, by her [Father, among others, to the Lord General’s house, and there, by the Eev. Mr. Dell, solemnly handed over to new destinies ! CromweWs Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 317. DEATH WARRANT. The Trial of Charles Stuart falls not to be described in this place ; the deep meanings that lie in it cannot be so much as glanced at here. Oliver Cromwell attends in the High Court of Justice at every session except one ; Bairfax sits only in the first. Ludlow, Whalley, Walton, names known to us, are also constant attendants in that High Court, during that long- meinorable Month of »lanuary, 1019. The King is thrice brouglit to the Bar; refuses to plead, comports himself witli royal dignity, with royal liaughtincss, strong in his divine right; ‘smiles’ contemptuously, ‘looks with an austere count(‘nanco ;’ does not seem, till the very last, to have fairly believed that they would dare to sentence him. But they were men sulliciently provided with daring; men, we are bound to see, who sat tluTo as in the Frcsence of the IMaker of all men, as executing the judgments of Heaven above, and had DEATH WARRANT. 43 not the fear of any man or thing on the Earth below. Brad- shaw said to the King, Sir, you are not permitted to issue out in these discoursings. This Court is satisfied of its authority. Ko Court will bear to hear its authority ques- tioned in that manner.” — “ Clerk, read the Sentence 1 ” And so, under date, Monday, 29th January, 1648-9, there is this stern Document to be introduced; not specifically of Oliver’s composition ; but expressing in every letter of it the conviction of Oliver’s heart, in this, one of his most important appearances on the stage of earthly life. To Colonel Francis Hacker^ Colonel Hunclcs, and Lieutenant- Colonel Fliayr, and to every one of them. At the High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of Charles Stuart, King of England, 29th January, 1648. Whereas Charles Stuart, King of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes ; and Sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court, To be put to death by the severing of his head from his body ; of which Sentence execution yet remaineth to be done : These are therefore to will and require you to see the said Sentence executed, in the open street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the Thirtieth day of this instant month of J anuary, between the hours of Ten in the morning and Five in the afternoon, with full effect. And for so doing, this shall be your warrant. And these are to require all OfScers and Soldiers, and others the good People of this Nation of England, to be assisting unto you in this service. Given under our hands and seals. John Bradshaw, Thomas Grey, ‘ Lord Groby,’ Oliyer Cromwell. And Eifty-six others.’) Tetrad helluce^ ac ^nolossis suis ferociores. Hideous monsters. 44 CKOMWELL. more ferocious than their own mastiffs!” shrieks Saumaise; shrieks all the world, in unmelodious soul-confusing diapason of distraction, — happily at length grown very faint in our day. The truth is, no modern reader can conceive the then atrocity, ferocity, unspeakability of this fact. Tirst, after long reading in the old dead Pamphlets does one see the magnitude of it. To be equalled, nay to be preferred think some, in point of horror, to ‘ the Crucifixion of Christ.’ Alas, in these irreverent times of ours, if all the Kings of Europe were cut in pieces at one swoop, and fiung in heaps in St. Margaret’s Churchyard on the same day, the emotion would, in strict arithmetical truth, be small in comparison 1 We know it not, this atrocity of the English Kegicides ; shall never know it. I reckon it perhaps the most daring action any Body of Men to be met with in History ever, with clear consciousness, deliberately set themselves to do. Dread Phantoms, glaring supernal on you, — wdien once they are quelled and their light snuffed out, none knows the terror of the Phantom 1 The Phantom is a poor paper-lantern with a candle- end in it, whicli any whipster dare now beard. A certain Queen in some South-Sea Island, I have read in Missionary Books, had been converted to Christianity ; did not any longer believe in the old gods. She assembled her people ; said to them, “ My faithful People, the gods do not dwell in tliat burning mountain in tlie centre of our Isle. That is not God; no, that is a common burning-mountain, — mere culinary fire burning under peculiar circumstances. See, I will walk before you to that burning-mountain; will empty my Avash- bowl into it, cast my slipper over it, defy it to the uttermost ; and stand the consequences 1 ” She walked accordingly, this South-Sea Heroine, nerved to the sticking-place ; her people following in pale horror and expectancy : she did her experi- ment ; — and, I am told, they have truer notions of the gods in that island ever since I Experiment which it is now very easy to rtpaot, and very needless. Honour to tlio Bravo who deliver us from Ifiiantom-dynasties, in South-Sea Islands and in ^‘orth I Tliis actioJi of the Jhiglish Begicides did in cllcct strike a MU. MILTON. 45 damp like death through the heart of riunkejism universal] j in this world. Whereof Flunkejism, Cant, Cloth-worship, or whatever ugly name it have, has gone about incurably sick ever since ; and is now at length, in these generations, very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be needed for a thousand years again. IMeeded, alas — not till a new genuine Hero-worship has arisen, has perfected itself ; and had time to generate into a Tlunkeyism and Cloth- worship again ! Which I take to be a very long date indeed. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches, vol. ii., p. 116. ME. MILTON. On which same evening, [March 13, 1648] furthermore, one discerns in a faint but an authentic manner, certain dim gentlemen of the highest authority, young Sir Harry Vane to appearance one of them, repairing to the lodging of one Mr. Milton, ^ a small house in Holborn, which opens back- ‘ wards into Lincoln’s Inn Fields ; to put an official question ‘ to him there.’ Hot a doubt of it they saw Mr. John this evening. In the official Book this yet stands legible : ^ Die Martis^ 13° Martii, 1648.’ ‘ That it is referred to the ‘ same Committee,’ Whitlocke, Vane, Lord Lisle, Earl of Den- bigh, Harry Marten, Mr. Lisle, ‘ or any two of them, to speak ^ with Mr. Milton, to know. Whether he will be employed as ^ Secretary for the Foreign Languages ? and to report to the ‘ Council.’ I have authority to say that Mr. Milton, thus unexpectedly applied to, consents ; is formally appointed on Thursday next ; makes his proof-shot, ‘ to the Senate of Ham- burgh,’ about a week hence ; — and gives, and continues to give, great satisfaction to that Council, to me, and to the whole Hation now, and to all Nations ! Such romance lies in the State-Paper Office. CromweUs Letters and Speeches, vol. ii., p. 138. 43 CUOMWELL. THE LEVELLERS— ENGLISH SANSCULOTTISM. While Miss Dorothy Mayor is choosing her wedding-dresses, and Eichard Cromwell is looking forward to a life of Arcadian felicity now near at hand, there has turned up for Eichard’ s Father and other parties interested, on the public side of things, a matter of very different complexion, requiring to be instantly dealt with in the interim. The matter of the class called Levellers ; concerning which we must now say a few words. In 1647 there were Army Adjutators ; and among some of them wild notions afloat, as to the swift attainability of Perfect Freedom civil and religious, and a practical Millennium on this Earth ; notions which required, in the Eendezvous at Corkbushfield, ‘ Eendezvous of Ware’ as they oftenest call it, to be very resolutely trodden out. Eleven chief mutineers were ordered from the ranks in that Eendezvous ; were con- demned by swift Court-Martial to die ; and Trooper Arnald, one of them, was accordingly shot there and then ; which extinguished the mutiny for that time. War since, and Justice on Delinquents, England made a Free Common- wealth, and such like, have kept the Army busy : but a deep republican leaven, working all along among these men, breaks now again into very formidable development. As the following brief glimpses and excerpts may satisfy an attentive reader who will spread them out, to the due expansion, in his mind. Take first tliis glimpse into the civil province ; and dis- cern, witli amazement, a wliole submarine world of Calvinistic Sansculottism, Five-point Cliarter and the Eiglits of Man, tlireateiiinc: to cmcr^xe almost two centuries before its time. ‘ I'hc Council of State,’ says AVhitlocke, just while Air. Bar- ton is boggling about the JIursley Marriage-settlements, ^ lias ‘ iiitelligeiico of certain Levellers appearing at St. INIargnrct’s ‘ Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, and at St. George’s Jlill,’ in the same (juarter : ‘that they were digging the ground, and sowing ‘ it with roots and beans. One Everard, once of the Army, who THE LEVELLERS ENGLISH SANSCULOTTISM. 47 ‘ terms himself a Prophet, is the chief of them:’ one Winstanlej is another chief. ‘ Thej were Thirty men, and said that they ‘ should be shortly Pour-thousand. They invited all to come ‘ in and help them; and promised them meat, drink, and clothes. ‘ They threatened to pull down Park-pales, and to lay all open ; ‘ and threaten the neighbours that they will shortly make them ‘ all come up to the hills and w’ork.’ These infatuated persons, beginning a new era in this headlong manner on the chalk hills of Surrey, are laid hold of by certain Justices, ‘ by the country people,’ and also by ‘ two troops of horse ; ’ and complain loudly of such treatment ; appealing to all men whether it be fair. This is the account they give of themselves when brought before the General some days afterwards : ^ April 1649. Everard and "Winstanley, the chief of ‘those that digged at St. George’s Hill in Surrey, came to the ‘ General and made a large declaration, to justify their proceed- ‘ ings. Everard said. He was of the race of the Jews,’ as most men called Saxon and other, properly are ; ‘ That all the ‘ Liberties of the People were lost by the coming in of William ‘ the Conqueror ; and that, ever since, the People of God had ‘ lived under tyranny and oppression worse than that of our ‘ Porefathers under the Egyptians. But now the time of ‘ deliverance was at hand ; and God would bring His People ‘ out of this slavery, and restore them to their freedom in ‘ enjoying the fruits and benefits of the Earth. And that there ‘ had lately appeared to him, Everard, a vision; which bade him, ‘ Arise and dig and plough the Earth, and receive the fruits ‘ thereof. That their intent is to restore the Creation to its ‘former condition. That as God had promised to make the ‘ barren land fruitful, so now what they did, was to restore the ‘ ancient Community of enjoying the Emits of the Earth, and ‘ to distribute the benefit thereof to the poor and needy, and to ‘ feed the hungry and clothe the naked. That they intend not ‘ to meddle with any man’s property, nor to break down any ‘ pales or enclosures,’ in spite of reports to the contrary ; ‘ but ‘ only to meddle with what is common and untilled, and to make ‘ it fruitful for the use of man. That the time will suddenly be, 48 CROMWELL. ^ when all men shall willingly come in and give up their lands ^ and estates, and submit to this Community of Groods.’ These are the principles of Everard, Winstanley, and the poor Brotherhood, seemingly Saxon, but properly of the race of the Jews, who were found dibbling beans on St. George’s Hill, under the clear April skies in 1649, and hastily, bringing in a new era in that manner. ‘ And for all such as will come ‘ in and work with them, they shall have meat, drink, and clothes, ^ which is all that is necessary to the life of man : and as for ‘ money, there is not any need of it ; nor of clothes more than ‘ to cover nakedness.’ Eor the rest, ‘ That they will not defend ‘ themselves by arms, but will submit unto authority, and wait ‘ till the promised opportunity be offered, which they conceive ‘ to be at hand. And that as their forefathers lived in tents, ‘ so it would be suitable to their condition, now to live in the ^ same. ‘ While they were before the General, they stood with their ‘hats on; and being demanded the reason thereof, they said, ‘ Because he was but their fellow-creature. Being asked the ‘ meaning of that phrase. Give honour to whom honour is due, — ‘ they said. Your mouths shall be stopped that ask such a ‘ question.’ Dull Bulstrode hath ‘ set down this the more largely because it was the beginning of the appearance ’ of an extensive levelling doctrine, much to be ‘ avoided ’ by judicious persons, seeing it is ‘ a weak persuasion.’ The germ of Quakerism, and much else, is curiously visible here. But let us look now at tlie military pliasis of the matter ; where ‘ a weak persuasion,’ mounted on cavalry horses, with sabres and fire-arms in its liand, may become a very periloiis one. Friday, 2{)th April, 1619. The Lieutenant-General has consented to go to Ireland; the Cit}" also will lend money; and now this l^'riday the Council of the Army meets at AVhitehall to decide what regiments shall go on that ser- vice. ‘AfUu’ a solemn seeking of God by j)rayer,’ they agree that it shall bo by lot: iickels are put into a hat, a cliihl draws them: the regiments, fourteen of foot and THE LEVELLEHS — ENGLISH SANSCULOTTISM. 49 fourteen of horse, are decided on in this manner. ‘ The ‘ officers on whom the lot fell, in all the twenty-eight regiments, ‘expressed much cheerfulness at the decision.’ The officers did ; — but the common men are by no means all of that humour. The common men, blown upon by Lilburn, and his five small Beagles, have notions about England’s new Chains, about the Hunting of Boxes from Triploe Heath, and in fact ideas concerning the capability that lies in man, and in a free Commonwealth, which are of the most alarming description. Thursday^ 2Qtli April, This night at the Bull in Bishops- gate there has an alarming mutiny broken out in a troop of Whalley’s regiment there. Whalley’s men are not allotted for Ireland : but they refuse to quit London, as they are ordered ; they want this and that first ; they seize their colours from the Cornet, who is lodged at the Bull there : — the General and the Lieutenant-General have to hasten thither ; quell them, pack them forth on their march ; seizing fifteen of them first, to be tried by Court-Martial. Tried by instant Court-Martial, five of them are found guilty, doomed to die, but pardoned ; and one of them, Trooper Lockyer, is doomed and not pardoned. Trooper Lockyer is shot, in Paul’s Church- yard, on the morrow. A very brave young man, they say ; though but three-and-twenty, ‘ he has served seven years in these Wars,’ ever since the Wars began, ‘Religious,’ too, ‘of excellent parts and much beloved ; ’ — but with hot notions as to human Ereedom, and the rate at which the millenniums are attainable, poor Lockyer ! He falls shot in Paul’s Church- yard on Eriday, amid the tears of men and w^omen. Paul’s Cathedral, we remark, is now a Horseguard ; horses stamp in the Cauons* stalls there : and Paul’s Cross itself, as smacking of Popery, where in fact Alablaster once preached flat Popery, is swept altogether away, and its leaden roof melted into bullets, or mixed with tin for culinary pewter. Lockyer’ s corpse is watched and wept over, not without prayer, in the eastern regions of the City, till a new week come ; and on Monday, this is wffiat we see advancing westward by way of funeral to him. E 50 CEOMWELL. ‘ About one hundred went before the Corpse, five or six in ‘ a file ; the Corpse was then brought, with six trumpets ‘ sounding a soldier’s knell ; then the Trooper’s Horse came, ‘ clothed all over in mourniDg, and led by a footman. The ‘ Corpse was adorned with bundles of Rosemary, one half ‘ stained in blood ; and the Sword of the deceased along with ‘ them. Some thousands followed in rank and file : all had sea- ^ green-and-black ribbons tied on their hats, and to their breasts : ‘ and the women brought up the rear. At the new Church- ‘yard in AYestminster, some thousands more of the better sort ‘ met them, who thought not fit to march through the City. ‘ Many looked upon this funeral as an affront to the Parliament ‘ and Army ; others called these people Levellers ; ” but they ‘ took no notice of any one’s sayings.’ That was the end of Trooper Lockyer : six trumpets wailing stern music through London streets ; Rosemaries and Sword half- dipped in blood ; funeral of many thousands in seagreen Ribbons and black : — testimony of a weak persuasion, now looking somewhat perilous. Lieutenant- Colonel Lilburn, and his five small Beagles, now in a kind of loose arrest under the Lieutenant of the Tower, make haste to profit by the general emotion ; publish on the 1st of May their ‘ Agreement of the People,’ — their Bentham-Sieyes Constitution: Annual very exquisite Parliament, and other Lilburn apparatus ; whereby tlie Perfection of Human Nature will with a maximum of rapidity be secured, and a millennium straightway arrive, sings the Lilburn Oracle. May dth. ]^iehard Cromwell is safe wedded; Richard’s ]Ailher is reviewing troops in Hyde Park, ‘ seagreen colours in some of their hats.’ The Lieiiteiiant- General speaks earnestly lo tliein. Jlas not the Parliament been diligent, doing its l)(-*st? Jt has ])unished J)eliiiquents ; it has voted in these very days, resolutions for dissolving itself and assembling liitiirc J^irlianumts. Jt has protected trade; got a good Navy alloat. ^’ou soldiers, there is exact payment provided for you. Alartial I^aw? Death, or other piinisluuent ot* mutineers? A\’ell ! Whoever camiot stand iMartial J^aw is ;iot fit to be a THE LEVELLERS — ENGLISH SANSCULOTTISM. 51 soldier : Jiis best plan will be to lay down his arms ; he shall have his ticket, and get his arrears as w’'e others do, — we that still mean to fight against the enemies of England and this Cause. — One trooper shewed signs of insolence ; the Lieutenant- Greneral suppressed him by rigour and by cle- mency : the seagreen ribbons were torn from such hats as had them. The humour of the men is not the most perfect. This Eeview was on Wednesday : Lilburn and his five small Beagles are, on Saturday, committed close Prisoners to the Tower, each rigorously to a cell of his own. It is high time. Eor now the flame has caught the ranks of the Army itself, in Oxfordshire, in Grloucestershire, at Salis- bury, where head-quarters are ; and rapidly there is, on all hands, a dangerous conflagration blazing out. In Oxfordshire, one Captain Thompson, not known to us before, has burst from his quarters at Banbury, with a Party of Two-hundred, in these same days ; has sent forth his JEngland' s Standard Advanced ; insisting passionately on the New Chains we are fettered with ; indignantly demanding swift perfection of Human Ereedom, justice on the murderers of Lockyer and Arnald ; — threatening that if a hair of Lilburn and the five small Beagles be hurt, he will avenge it ‘ seventy-and-seven fold.’ This Thompson’s Party, swiftly attacked by his Colonel, is broken within the week ; he himself escapes with a few, and still roves up and down. To join whom, or to communicate with Gloucestershire where help lies, there has, in the interim, open mutiny, ‘ above a Thousand strong,’ with subalterns, with a Cornet Thompson brother of the Captain, but without any leader of mark, broken out at Salisbury : the General and Lieutenant-General, with what force can be raised, are hasten- ing thitherward in all speed. Now were the time for Lieutenant- Colonel Lilburn ; now or never might noisy John do some considerable injury to the Cause he has at heart : but he sits, in these critical hours, fast within stone walls ! Monday, \4^th May. All Sunday the General and Lieutenant- General marched in full speed, by Alton, by Andover, towards Salisbury ; the mutineers, hearing of them, start northward E 2 52 CHOMWELL. for Buckinghamshire, then for Berkshire ; tlie General and Lieutenant-General turning also northward after them in hot chase. The mutineers arrive at Wantage; make for Oxford- shire by Newbridge ; find the Bridge already seized ; cross higher up by swimming; get to Burford, very weary, and ‘ turn out their horses to grass ; ’ Bairfax and Cromwell still following in hot speed, ‘ a march of near fifty miles ’ that Monday. What boots it, there is no leader, noisy John is sitting fast within stone walls ! The mutineers lie asleep in Burford, their horses out at grass ; the Lieutenant-General, having rested at a safe distance since dark, bursts into Burford as the clocks are striking midnight. He has beset some hundreds of the mutineers, ^ who could only fire some shots out of windows ; ’ — has dissipated the mutiny, trodden down the Levelling Principle out of English affairs once more. Here is the last scene of the business ; the rigorous Court-Martial having now sat ; the decimated doomed Mutineers being placed on the leads of the Church to see. Thursday^ 17 th May , — ‘ This day in Burford Churchyard, ‘ Cornet Thompson, brother to Thompson the chief leader, was ‘ brought to the place of execution ; and expressed himself to ‘ this purpose. That it was just what did befall him ; that God ‘ did not own the ways he w'ent ; that he had offended the ‘ General : he desired the prayers of tlie people ; and told the ‘ soldiers who were appointed to shoot liim, that when he held ' out his hands, tliey should do their duty. And accordingly ‘ he was immediately, after the sign given, shot to death. ‘ Next after liiui was a corporal, brought to the same place of ‘ execution ; wlierc, looking upon his fellow-mutineers, he set his * back against tlie wall ; and bade them who were appointed to ‘ shoot, ‘‘ kShoot ! ” and died desperately. The third, being also ^ a corporal, was brought to the same place ; and without the ‘ least acknowledgment of error, or show of fear, ho pulled ofi‘ ‘ Ills doublet, standing a pretty distance from tlio wall ; and bade tlie soldiers do their duty ; looking them in the face till ‘ they gave fire, not showing the least kind of terror or fearful- ‘ neaa of spirit.’ JSo die the Leveller Corporals ; strong they THE LEVELLERS ENGLISH SANSCULOTTISM. 53 after their sort, for the Liberties of England ; resolute to the very death. Misguided Corporals ! But History, which has wept for a misguided Charles Stuart, and blubbered, in the most copious helpless manner, near two centuries now, whole floods of brine, enough to salt the Herring fishery, — will not refuse these poor Corporals also her tributary sigh. With Arnald of the Rendezvous at Ware, with Lockyer of the Bull in Bishopsgate, and other misguided martyrs to the Liberties of England then and since, may they sleep well ! Cornet Dean who now came forward, as the next to be shot, expressed penitence ; got pardon from the General : and there was no more shooting. Lieutenant-General Cromwell went into the Church, called down the Decimated of the Mutineers ; rebuked, admonished; said, the General in his mercy had forgiven them. Misguided men, would you ruin this Cause, which marvellous Providences have so confirmed to us to be the Cause of God ? Go, repent, and rebel no more, lest a worse thing befall you ! ‘ They wept,’ says the old Newspaper ; they retired to the Devizes for a time ; were then restored to their regiments, and marched cheerfully for Ireland. Captain Thompson, the Cornet’s brother, the first of all the Mutineers, he too, a few days afterwards, was fallen in with in Northamp- tonshire, still mutinous : his men took quarter ; he himself ‘ fled to a wood,’ fired and fenced there, and again desperately fired, declared he would never yield alive ; — whereupon ‘ a Corporal with seven bullets in his carbine’ ended Captain Thompson too ; and this formidable conflagration, to the last glimmer of it, was extinct. Sansculottism, as we said above, has to lie submerged for almost two centuries yet. Levelling, in the practical civil or military provinces of English things is forbidden to be. In the spiritual provinces it cannot be forbidden ; for there it everywhere already is. It ceases dibbling beans on St. George’s Hill near Cobham ; ceases galloping in mutiny across the Isis to Burford ; takes into Quakerisms, and kingdoms which are not of this world. My poor friend Dryasdust lamen- tably tears his hair over the intolerance of that old Time to 54 CROMWELL. Quakerism and such like ; if Dryasdust had seen the dibbling on St. George’s Hill, the threatened fall of ‘ Park-pales,’ and the gallop to Burford, he would reflect that conviction in an earnest age means, not lengthy Spouting in Exeter-hall, but rapid silent Practice on the face of the Earth ; and would perhaps leave his poor hair alone. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches^ vol. ii., p. 153. IRISH WAR. One could pity this poor Irish people ; their case is pitiable enough! The claim they started with, in 1641, was for religious freedom. Their claim, we can now all see, was just : essentially just, though full of intricacy ; difflcult to render clear and concessible; — nay, at that date of the World’s History, it was hardly recognisable to any Protestant man, for just ; and these frightful massacrings and sanguinary bluster- ings have rendered it, for the present, entirely unrecognisable. A just, though very intricate claim: but entered upon, and prosecuted, by such methods as were never yet available for asserting any claim in this world 1 Treachery and massacre : what would come of it ? Eight years of cruel fighting, of desperate violence and misery, have left matters worse a tliousand-fold tlian they were at first. No want of daring, or of patriotism so-called ; but a great want of other things 1 Numerous large masses of armed men have been on foot; full of fiery vehemence and audacity, but without worth as Armies : savage hordes rather ; full of hatred and mutual hatred, of disobedience, falsity and noise. IJndrilled, unpaid, — driving luu’ds of ])lundercd cattle before them for subsistence; rushing down from hillsides, from ambuscadoes, passes in the moun- tains ; taking shelter always ‘in bogs whither the cavMry <*annot follow them.’ Unveracious, violent, disobedient men, J'’als(.‘ in speech ; — alas, false in thought, first of all : who have never 1<4 the Fact tell its own harsh story to them ; who liave said always to the harsh Fact, “ Thou art not that way, thou IRTSH WAR. 55 art this way ! ” The Tact, of course, asserts that it is that way : the Irish Projects end in perpetual discomfiture ; have to take shelter in bogs whither cavalry cannot follow ! There has been no scene seen under the sun like Ireland, for these eight years. Murder, pillage, conflagration, excommunication ; wide-flowing blood, and bluster high as Heaven and St. Peter ; — as if wolves or rabid dogs were in fight here ; as if demons from the Pit had mounted up, to deface this fair green piece of God’s Creation, with their talkings and workings ! It is, and shall remain, very dark to us. Conceive Ireland wasted, torn in pieces ; black Controversy as of demons and rabid wolves rushing over the face of it so long ; incurable, and very dim to us : till here at last, as in the torrent of Heaven’s lightning descending liquid on it, we have clear and terrible views of its affairs for a time ! Oliver’s proceedings here have been the theme of much loud criticism and sibylline execration ; into which it is not our plan to enter at present. We shall give' these Irish Letters of his in their own natural figure, and without any commentary whatever. To those who think that a land over- run with sanguinary Quacks can be healed by sprinkling it with rose-water, these Letters must be very horrible. Ter- rible Surgery this : but is it Surgery and Judgment, or atrocious Murder merely ? That is a question which should be asked ; and answered. Oliver Cromwell did believe in God’s Judg- ments ; and did not believe in the rose-water plan of Surgery ; — which, in fact, is this Editor’s case too ! Every idle lie and piece of empty bluster this Editor hears, he too, like Oliver, has to shudder at it ; has to think ; ‘‘ Thou, idle bluster, not true, thou also art shutting men’s minds against the God’s Tact ; thou wilt issue as a cleft crown to some poor man some day ; thou also wilt have to take shelter in bogs whither cavalry cannot follow 1 ” — But in Oliver’s time, as I say, there was still belief in the Judgments of God; in Oliver’s time, there was yet no distracted jargon of ‘ abolishing Capital Punishments,’ of Jean- Jacques Philanthropy, and universal rose-water in this world, still so full of sin. Men’s notion 56 CROMWELL. was, not for abolishing punishments, but for making laws just : God the Maker’s Laws, they considered, had not yet got the Punishment abolished from them! Men had a notion, that the difference between Good and Evil was still considerable ; — equal to the difference between Heaven and Hell. It was a true notion. Which all men yet saw and felt in all fibres of their existence, to be true. Only in late decadent generations, fast hastening towards radical change or final perdition, can such indiscriminate mashing-up of Good and Evil into one universal patent-treacle, and most unmedical electuary, of Eousseau Sentimentalism, universal Pardon and Benevolence, with dinner and drink and one cheer more, take effect in our Earth. Electuary very poisonous, as sweet as it is, and very nauseous ; of which Oliver, happier than we, had not yet heard the slightest intimation, even in dreams. The reader of these Letters, who has swept all that very ominous twaddle out of his head and heart, and still looks with a recognising eye on the ways of the Supreme Powers with this world, will find here, in the rude practical state, a Phenomenon which he will account noteworthy. An armed Soldier, solemnly conscious to himself, that he is the Soldier of God the Just, — a consciousness which it well beseems all soldiers and all men to have always ; — armed Soldier, terrible as Deatli, relentless as Doom ; doing God’s Judgments on the Enemies of God 1 It is a Phenomenon not of joyful nature ; no, but of awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe. Not a Plienomenon wliich you are called to recognise with bright smiles, and fall in love with at sight : — thou, art thou worthy to love such a thing ; worthy to do other than hate it, and shriek over it? Darest thou wed the Heaven’s lightning, then ; and say to it. Godlike One ? Is thy own life beautiful and terrible to thee ; stec'ped in the eternal depths, in the eternal splendours ? I’hou also, art thou in thy sphere the miiUMter of (lod’s Justice ; feeling that thou art hero to do it, and to see it done, at thy soul’s peril ? Thou wilt then judge Oliver with inen'asing eh'arness ; otherwise with increasing darkness, misjudge him. Croviwcll'a Letters and ^^peccheSy vol. ii., p. 1S5. SCOTCH PUillTANISM. 57 SCOTCH PURITANISM. The faults or misfortunes of the Scotch People, in their Puritan business, are many ; but, properly their grand fault is this, That they have produced for it no sufficiently heroic man among them. No man that has an eye to see beyond the letter and the rubric ; to discern, across many consecrated rubrics of the Past, the inarticulate divineness too of the Present and the Puture, and dare all perils in the faith of that ! "With Oliver Cromwell born a Scotchman, with a Hero King and a unanimous Hero Nation at his back, it might have been far otherwise. With Oliver born Scotch, one sees not but the whole world might have become Puritan ; might have struggled, yet a long while, to fashion itself according to that divine Hebrew Gospel, — to the exclusion of other Gospels not Hebrew, which also are divine, and will have their share of fulfilment here ! — But of such issue there is no danger. Instead of inspired Olivers, glowing with direct insight and noble daring, we have Argyles, Loudens, and narrow, more or less opaque persons of the Pedant species. Committees of Estates, Committees of Kirks, much tied-up in formulas, both of them : a bigoted Theocracy loitTiout the Inspi- ration; which is a very hopeless phenomenon indeed. The Scotch People are all willing, eager of heart ; asking. Whither- ward ? But the Leaders stand aghast at the new forms of danger, and in a vehement discrepant manner some calling. Halt ! others calling, Backward ! others, Forward ! — huge con- fusion ensues. Confusion which will need an Oliver to repress it ; to bind it up in tight manacles, if not otherwise ; and say. There, sit there and consider thyself a little ! ’’ The meaning of the Scotch Covenant was. That God’s divine Law of the Bible should be put in practice in these Nations; verily and not the Pour Surplices at Allhallo w-tide, or any Formula of cloth or sheepskin here or elsewhere which merely pretended to be it : but then the Covenant says expressly, there is to be a Stuart King in the business : we cannot do without our Stuart King ! Given a divine Law of the Bible on one hand, and 58 CROMWELL. a Stuart King, Charles Pirst or Charles Second, on the other : alas, did History ever present a more irreducible case of equations in this world ? I pity the poor Scotch Pedant Governors, still more the poor Scotch People, who had no other to follow ! Nay, as for that, the People did get through in the end, such was their indomitable pious constancy, and other worth and fortune : and Presbytery became a Pact among them, to the whole length possible for it ; not without endless results. But for the poor Governors this irreducible case proved, as it were, fatal ! They have never since, if we will look narrowly at it, governed Scotland, or even well known that they wnre there to attempt govern- ing it. Once they lay on Dunse Hill, ‘ each Earl with his Kegiment of Tenants round him,’ For Chrisfs Grown and Cove- nant ; and never since had they any noble National act, which it was given them to do. Growing desperate of Christ’s Crown and Covenant, they, in the next generation when our Annus JSLirahilis arrived, hurried up to Court, looking out for other Crowns and Covenants ; deserted Scotland and her Cause, somewdiat basely ; took to booing and booing for Causes of their own, unhappy mortals : — and Scotland and all Causes that were Scotland’s have had to go on very much without them ever since ! CromioeWs Letters and Speeches^ vol. iii., p. 3. A COVENANTED KING. The poor Scotch Governors, wn remark, in that old crisis of theirs, have come upon tlic desperate expedient of getting Charles i I. to adopt the Covenant the best he can. Whereby our parchment formula is indeed saved ; but the diviue fact has gone terribly to the wall ! Tlie Scotch Governors liope other- wise. By trt‘aties at Jersey, treaties at Breda, they and the hard J^aw ol* Want together liave constrained tiiis poor young Stuart to tlieir detested Covenant ; as the PreJichmaii said, they have ‘ conipclled liiin to adopt it voluntarily.’ A learlul crime, Ihiiikb Oliver, and thiuk w e. ilow dare you enact such mummery THE BATTLE OF DUNBAll. 59 under High Heaven ! exclaims he. You will prosecute Malig- nants ; and, with the aid of some poor varnish, transparent even to yourselves, you adopt into your bosom the Chief Malignant ? My soul come not into your secret ; mine honour be not united unto you ! — In fact, his new Sacred Majesty is actually under way for the Scotch court ; will become a Covenanted King there. Of him- self a likely enough young man ; — very unfortunate, he too. Satisfactorily descended from the Steward of Scotland and Elizabeth Muir of Caldwell (whom some have called an improper female) ; satisfactory in this respect, but in others most unsatis- factory. A somewhat loose young man ; has Buckingham, "Wilmot and Company, at one hand of him, and painful Mr. Livingston and Presbyterian ruling-elders at the other; is hastening now, as a Covenanted King, towards such a Theo- cracy as we described. Perhaps the most anomalous phe- nomenon ever produced by Nature and Art working together in this World ! He had sent Montrose before him, poor young man, to try if war and force could effect nothing ; whom instantly the Scotch Nation took, and tragically hanged. They now, winking hard at that transaction, proffer the poor young man their Covenant ; compel him to sign it voluntarily, and be Covenanted King over them. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches^ vol. iii., p. 5. THE BATTLE OF DUNBAB. The small Town of Dunbar stands, high and windy, looking down over its herring-boats, over its grim old Castle now much honeycombed, — on one of those projecting rock promontories with wLich that shore of the Erith of Eorth is niched and van- dyked, as far as the eye can reach. A beautiful sea; good land too, now that the plougher understands his trade ; a grim niched barrier of whinstone sheltering it from the chafings and tumblings of the big blue German Ocean. Seaward, St. Abb’s Head, of whinstone, bounds your horizon to the east, not very 60 CROMWELL. far off ; west, close by, is the deep bay, and fishy little village of Belhaven : the gloomy Bass and other rock-islets, and farther the Hills of Fife, and foreshadows of the Highlands, are visible as you look seaward. From the bottom of Belhaven Bay to that of the next sea-bight, St. Abb’s ward, the Town and its environs form a peninsula. Along the base of which peninsula, ‘ not much above a mile and a half from sea to sea,’ Oliver Cromwell’s Army, on Monday, the 2nd of September, 1650, stands ranked, with its tents and Town behind it, — in very forlorn circumstances. This now is all the ground that Oliver is lord of in Scotland. His Ships lie in the ofSng, with biscuit and transport for him ; but visible elsewhere in the Earth no help. Landward, as you look from the Town of Dunbar there rises, some short mile off, a dusky continent of barren heath Hills ; the Lammermoor, where only mountain-sheep can be at home. The crossing of which, by any of its boggy passes, and brawling stream-courses, no Army, hardly a solitary Scotch Packman could attempt, in such weather. To the edge of these Lammer- moor Heights, David Lesley has betaken himself; lies now along the outmost spur of them, — a long Hill of considerable height, which the Dunbar people call the Dun, Doon, or some- times for fashion’s sake the Down, adding to it the Teutonic Hill likewise, though Dun itself in old Celtic signifies Hill. On this Doon Hill lies David Lesley, witli the victorious Scotch Army, upwards of Twenty thousand strong ; with the Committees of Kirk and Estates, the chief Dignitaries of the Country, and in fact tlie flower of what the pure Covenant in til is the Twelfth year of its existence can still bring forth. Tlicre lies he, since Sunday night, on the top and slope of this Doon Hill, with the impassable heath continents behind him : cndiraces, as w'itliin outspread tiger-claws, the base-line of Oliver’s Dunbar Peninsula; waiting what Oliver will do. Cockburnsjiatli with its ravines has been seized on Oliver’s left, and made impassable; behind Oliver is the sea; in front of him Lesley, Doon Hill, and tho heath-continent of Lammer- moor. JiCah'y’s force is of Threc-and-twenty thousand, in THE BATTLE OE DUNBAR. 61 spirits as of men chasing: Oliver’s about half as many, in spirits as of men chased. What is to become of Oliver ? ^ ^ * The base of Oliver’s Dunbar Peninsula, as we have called it (or Dunbar Pinfold, where he is now hemmed in, upon ‘ an entanglement very difficult ’), extends from Belhaven Bay on his right, to Brocksmouth House on his left ; ‘ about a mile and a half from sea to sea : ’ Brocksmouth House, the Earl (now Duke) of Eoxburgh’s mansion, which still stands there, his soldiers now occupy as their extreme post on the left. As its name indicates, it is the mouth or issue of a small Eivulet, or IBurn called Broclc^ BrocTcshurn ; which, springing from the Lammermoor, and skirting David Lesley’s Doon Hill, finds its egress here, into the sea. The reader who would form an image to himself of the great Tuesday, 3rd of September, 1650, at Dunbar, must note well this little Burn. It runs in a deep grassy glen, which the South-country Officers in those old Pamphlets describe as a ‘ deep ditch, forty feet in depth, and about as many in width,’ — ditch dug out by the little Brook itself, and carpeted with greensward, in the course of long thou- sands of years. It runs pretty close by the foot of Doon Hill ; forms, from this point to the sea, the boundary of Oliver’s position : his force is arranged in battle-order along the left bank of this Brocksburn, and its grassy glen ; he is busied all Monday, he and his Officers, in ranking them there. ‘ Before sunrise on Monday ’ Lesley sent down his horse from the Hill- top, to occupy the other side of this Brook ; ‘ about four in the afternoon,’ his train came down, his whole Army gradually came down ; and they now are ranking themselves on the opposite side of Brocksburn, — on rather narrow ground ; cornfields, but swiftly sloping upwards to the steep of Doon Hill. This goes on, in the wild showers and winds of Monday, 2nd September, 1650, on both sides of the Eivulet of Brock, Whoever will begin the attack, must get across this Brook and its glen first ; a thing of much disadvantage. Behind Oliver’s ranks, between him and Dunbar, stand his tents ; sprinkled up and down, by battalions, over the face of this ‘ Peninsula ; ’ which is a low though very uneven tract of 62 CROMWELL. ground; now in our time all yellow with wheat and barley in the autumn season, hut at that date only partially tilled, — describable by Yorkshire Hodgson as a place of plashes and rough bent-grass ; terribly beaten by showery winds that day, so that your tent will hardly stand. There was then but one Tarm-house on this tract, where now are not a few: thither were Oliver’s Cannon sent this morning; they had at first been lodged ‘ in the Church,’ an edifice standing then as now somewhat apart, at the south end of Dunbar. ^ And now farther, on the great scale, we are to remark very specially that there is just one other ‘pass’ across the Brocks- burn ; and this is precisely where the London road now crosses it ; about a mile east from the former pass, and perhaps two gunshots west from Brocksmouth House. There the great road then as now crosses the Burn of Brock ; the steep grassy glen, or ‘ broad ditch forty feet deep,’ flattening itself out here once more into a passable slope : passable, but still steep on the southern or Lesley side, still mounting up there, with con- siderable acclivity, into a high table-ground, out of which the Boon Hill, as outskirt of the Lammermoor, a short mile to your right, gradually gathers itself. There, at this ‘ pass,’ on and above the present London road, as you discover after long dreary dim examining, took place the brunt or essential agony cf the Battle of Dunbar long ago. Bead in the extinct old Pamphlets, and ever again obstinately read, till some light arise in them, look even with un military eyes at the ground as it now^ is, you do at least obtain small glimmerings of distinct features liere and there, — which gradually coalesce into a kind of image for you ; and some spectrum of the Pact becomes visible ; rises veritable, fa'^e to face on you, grim and sad in the depths of the old dead Time. Yes, my travelling friends, vehiculating in gigs or otherwise over that piece of London road, you may say to yourselves. Here without monument is the grave of a valiant thing which was done under the Sun; the footprint of a Jlero, not yob quite undistinguishable, is lien* ! ‘ The JiOrd General about four o’clock,’ say the old Pamphlets, THE BATTLE OF DUNBAB. 63 ^ went into the Town to take some refreshment,’ a hasty late dinner, or early sapper, whichever we may call it; ^ and very soon returned back,’ — having written Sir Arthur’s Letter, I think, in the interim. Coursing about the field, with enough of things to order ; walking at last with Lambert in the Park or Garden of Brocksmouth House, he discerns that Lesley is astir on the Hill- side; altering his position somewhat. That Lesley in fact is coming wholly down to the basis of the Hill, where his horse had been since sunrise : coming wholly down to the edge of the Brook and glen, among the sloping harvest- fields there ; and also is bringing up his left wing of horse, most part of it, towards his right ; edging himself, ‘ shogging/ as Oliver calls it, his whole line more and more to the right ! His meaning is, to get hold of Brocksmouth House and the pass of the Brook there ; after which it will be free to him to attack us when he will ! Lesley in fact considered, or at least the Committee of Estates and Kirk consider, that Oliver is lost ; that, on the whole, he must not be left to retreat, but must be attacked and annihilated here. A vague story, due to Bishop Burnet, the, watery source of many such, still circulates about the world. That it was the Kirk Committee who forced Lesley down against his will; that Oliver, at sight of it, exclaimed, ‘‘ The Lord hath delivered,” &c. : which nobody is in the least bound to believe. It appears, from other quarters, that Lesley was advised or sanctioned in this attempt by the Committee of Estates and Kirk, but also that he w^as by no means hard to advise ; that, in fact, lying on the top of Boon Hill, shelterless in such weather, was no operation to spin out beyond necessity ; and that if anybody pressed too much upon him with advice to come down and fight, it was likeliest to be Eoyalist Civil Dignitaries, who had plagued him with their cavillings at his cunctations, at his ‘ secret fellow-feeling for the Sectarians and Kegicides,’ ever since this War began. The poor Scotch Clergy have enough of their own to answer for in this business ; let every back bear the burden that belongs to it. In a word, Lesley d ^scends, has been descending all day, and ^ shogs ’ himself to the right, urged, I behave, by manifold 64 CHOMWELL. counsel, and hj the nature of the case ; and, whafc is equally important for us, Oliver sees him, and sees through him, in this movement of his. At sight of this movement, Oliver suggests to Lambert standing by him, Does it not give us an advantage, if we, instead of him, like to begin the attack ? Here is the Enemy’s right wing coming out to tlie open space, free to be attacked on any side ; and the main -battle hampered in narrow sloping ground, between Doon Hill and the Brook, has no room to manoeuvre or assist : beat this right wing where it now stands ; take it in flank and front wnth an overpowering force, — it is driven upon its own main-battle, the whole Army is beaten ? Lambert eagerly assents, “had meant to say the same thing.” Monk, who comes up at the moment, likewise assents ; as the other OflScers do, when the case is set before them. It is the plan resolved upon for battle. The attack shall begin to- morrow before dawn. And so the soldiers stand to their arms, or lie within instant reach of their arms, all night ; being upon an engagement very difficult indeed. The night is wild and wet ; — 2d of September means 12th by our calendar: the Harvest Moon w^ades deep among clouds of sleet and hail. AVhoever has a heart for prayer, let him pray now, for the wTCstle of death is at hand. Pray, — and witlial keep his powder dry ! And be ready for extremities, and quit himself like a man ! Thus they pass the night ; making that Dunbar Peninsula and Brock Phnilet long memorable to me. A\^e English have some tents ; the Scots liave none. The lioarse se.i moans boduful, swinging low and heavy against these w'hinstone bays ; the sea and the tempests are abroad, all else asleep but w'c, — and there is One that rides on the wings of tlie wind. 'J'owards tlireo in tlie morning, the Scotcli foot, by order of a Major-General, say some, extinguish their matches, all but two ill a company ; cower inider the corn-shocks, seeking some imperfect bhelter and sleej). Be wakeful, ye English ; watch, and jiray, and kec}) your jiowder dry. About four o’clock comes order to my pudding-headed Yorkshire friend, that his THE BATTLE OE DUNBAE. 65 regiment must mount and march straightway ; his and various other regiments march, pouring swiftly to the left to Brocks- mouth House, to the Pass over the Brock. With overpowering force let us storm the Scots right wing there ; beat that, and all is beaten. Major Hodgson, riding along, heard, he says, ‘ a Cornet praying in the night ; ’ a company of poor men, I think, making worship there, under the void Heaven, before battle joined : Major Hodgson, giving his charge to a brother Officer, turned aside to listen for a minute, and worship and pray along with them ; haply his last prayer on this Earth, as it might prove to be. But no : this Cornet prayed with such effusion as was wonderful ; and imparted strength to my Yorkshire friend, who strengthened his men by telling them of it. And the Heavens, in their mercy, I think, have opened us a way of deliverance ! — The Moon gleams out, hard and blue, riding among hail-clouds ; and over St. Abb’s Head, a streak of dawn is rising. And now is the hour when the attack should be, and no Lambert is yet here, he is ordering the line far to the right yet ; and Oliver occasionally, in Hodgson’s hearing, is impa- tient for him. The Scots too, on this wing, are awake ; thinking to surprise us ; there is their trumpet sounding, we heard it once ; and Lambert, who was to lead the attack, is not here. The Lord General is impatient ; — behold Lambert at last ! The trumpets peal, shattering with fierce clangour Night’s silence ; the cannons awaken along all the line : “ The Lord of Hosts ! The Lord of Hosts ! ” On, my brave ones, on ! The dispute ‘ on this right wing, was hot and stiff for three- ^ quarters of an hour.’ Plenty of fire, from field-pieces, snap- hances, matchlocks, entertained the Scotch main-battle across the Brock ; — poor stiffened men, roused from the corn-shocks with their matches all out ! But here on the right, their horse ‘ with lancers in the front rank,’ charge desperately ; drive us back across the hollow of the Eivulet ; back a little ; but the Lord gives us courage, and we storm home again^ horse and foot, upon them, with a shock like tornado tempests ; F 66 CROMWELL. break them, beat them, drive them all adrift. ‘Some fled towards Copperspath, but most across their own foot.’ Their own poor foot, whose matches were hardly well alight yet ! Poor men, it was a terrible awakening for them ; fleld-pieces and charge of foot across the Brocksburn : and now here is their own horse in mad panic, trampling them to death. Above Three-thousand killed upon the place: ‘I never saw such a charge of foot and horse,’ says one ; nor did I. Oliver was still near to Yorkshire Hodgson, when the shock succeeded. Hodgson heard him say : “ They run ! I profess they run ! ” And over St. Abb’s Head, and the German Ocean, just then, burst the flrst gleam of the level sun upon us, ‘and I heard Hoi say, in the words of the Psalmist, “Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,” ’ — or in Eous’s metre. Let God arise, and scattered Let all liis enemies be ; And let all those that do him hate Before his presence flee ! Even so. The Scotch Army is shivered to utter ruin ; ruslies in tumultuous wreck, hither, thither ; to Belhaven, or, in their distraction, even to Dunbar ; the chase goes as far as Haddington ; led by Hacker. ‘ The Lord General made a lialt,’ says Hodgson, ‘ and sang the Hundred-and-seventeenth Psalm,’ till our horse could gather for the chase. Hundred- and-seventeenth Psalm, at the foot of the Doon Hill ; there we uplift it, to tlie tune of Bangor, or some still higher score, and roll it strong and great against the sky: 0 give yc praise unto the Lord, All nati-ons that be ; Likewise yc people all accord His name to magnify ! For gi*eat to-iis-ward ever arc His loving kindnesses ; His trutli endures forevermore : Tlio Lord, O do ye bless ! And now to the chase again. Tlic prisoncra arc Ten-thousand, — all the foot in a mass. DISMISSAL OF THE EUMP. 67 * * * Such is Dunbar Battle ; which might almost be called Dunbar Drove, for it was a frightful rout. Brought on by miscalculation ; misunderstanding of the difference between substances and semblances; — ^by mismanagement and the chance of war. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches, vol. iii., pp. 38, 41, 44 — 49. DISMISSAL OF THE RUMP. Wednesday, 20tTi April, — My Lord Greneral is in his recep- tion-room this morning, in plain black clothes and grey worsted stockings ; he, with many Ofidcers : but few Members have yet come, though punctual Bulstrode and certain others are there. Some waiting there is ; some impatience that the Members would come. The Members do not come : instead of Members, comes a notice that they are busy getting on with their Bill [for Parliamentary Eeform] in the House, hurrying it double quick through all the stages. Possible, New message that it will be Law in a little while, if no interposition take place ! Bulstrode hastens off to the House : my Lord General, at first incredulous, does now also hasten off, — nay orders that a com- pany of Musketeers of his own regiment attend liim. Hastens off, with a very high expression of countenance, I think ; say- ing or feeling : Who would have believed it of them ? It is not honest ; yea it is contrary to common honesty ! ” — My Lord General, the big hour is come ! Young Colonel Sidney, the celebrated Algernon, sat in the House this morning ; a House of some Pifty-three. Algernon has left distinct note of the afiair ; less distinct we have from Bulstrode, who was also there, who seems in some points to be even wilfully wrong. Solid Ludlow was far ofi* in Ireland, but gathered many details in after-years ; and faithfully wrote them down, in the unappeasable indignation of his heart. Combining these three originals, we have, after various perusals and collations and considerations, obtained the following authentic, moderately conceivable account : F 2 68 CROMWELL. ‘ The Parliament sitting as usual, and being in debate upon ‘ the Bill, with the amendments, which it was thought would ‘ have been passed that day, the Lord General Cromwell came ‘ into the House, clad in plain black clothes and grey worsted- ‘ stockings, and sat down, as he used to do, in an ordinary ‘ place.’ Por some time he listens to this interesting debate on the Bill ; beckoning once to Harrison, who came over to him, and answered dubitatingly. Whereupon the Lord General sat still, for about a quarter of an hour longer. But now the ques- tion being to be put. That this Bill do now pass, he beckons again to Harrison, says, “This is the time I must do it!” — and so ‘ rose up, put off his hat, and spake. At the first, ‘ and for a good while, he spake to the commendation of the ‘ Parliament for their pains and care of the public good ; but ‘ afterwards he changed his style, told them of their injustice, ^ delays of justice, self-interest, and other faults,’ — rising higher and higher, into a very aggravated style indeed. An honourable Member, Sir Peter Wentworth by name, not known to my readers, and by me better known than trusted, rises to order, as we phrase it ; says, “ It is a strange language this ; unusual within the walls of Parliament this ! And from a trusted servant too ; and one whom we have so highly honoured; and one ” “Come, come!” exclaims my Lord General, in a very high key. “ We have had enough of this,” — and in fact my Lord General now blazing all up into clear conflagration, exclaims, “ I will put an end to your prating,” and steps forth into tlie floor of the House, and ‘ clapping on his hat,’ and occasionally ‘ stamping the floor with his feet,’ begins a discourse which no man can report ! He says— Heavens ! he is heard saying: “It is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately. Y"ou shall now give ])lace to l^etter men ! — Call them in ! ” adds he briefly, to .Harrison, in word of command : and ‘some twenty or thirty ’ grim musketeers entcT, with bullets in their snaphances ; grimly prompt for oiaUu’s ; and stand in some attitude of Carry-arms there. Veteran men : men of might and men of DISMISSAL OF THE RUMP. 69 war, their faces are as the faces of lions, and their feet are swift as the roes upon the mountains; — not beautiful to honourable gentlemen at this moment. ‘‘You call yourselves a Parliament,” continues mj Lord General, in clear blaze of conflagration : “You are no Par- liament ; I say, you are no Parliament ! some of you are drunkards,” and his eye flashes on poor Mr. Chaloner, an ofiScial man of some value, addicted to the bottle ; “ some of you are ” and he glares into Harry Marten, and the poor Sir Peter, who rose to order, lewd livers both ; “ living in open contempt of God’s Commandments. Pollowing your own greedy appetites, and the Devil’s Commandments. ‘ Corrupt, unjust persons.’ ” ‘ And here, I think, he glanced at Sir ‘ Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the Commissioners of the Great ‘ Seal, giving him and others very sharp language, though he ‘ named them not : ’ “ Corrupt, unjust persons ; scandalous to the profession of the Gospel : how can you be a Parliament for God’s People ? Depart, I say ; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, — go ! ” The House is of course all on its feet, — uncertain almost whether, not on its head : such a scene as was never seen before in any House of Commons. History reports with a shudder that my Lord General, lifting the sacred Mace itself, said, “ What shall we do with this bauble ? Take it away ! ” — and gave it to a musketeer. And now, “ Fetch him down !” says he to Harrison, flashing op. the Speaker. Speaker Lenthall, more an ancient Koman than anything else, declares, He will not come till forced. “Sir,” said Harrison, “I will lend you a hand ; ’’ on which Speaker Lenthall came down, and gloomily vanished. They all vanished ; flooding gloomily, clamorously out, to their ulterior business, and respective places of abode : the Long Parliament is dissolved ! ‘ “ It’s you, ‘that have forced me to this,” exclaims my Lord General: “‘I have sought the Lord night and day, that He would rather ‘ slay me than put me upon the doing of this work.” At their ‘ going out, some say, the Lord General said to young Sir ‘ Harry Vane, calling him by his name, that he might have 70 CJROMWELL. ‘ prevented this ; but that he was a juggler, and had not com- ‘ mon honesty/ “ O, Sir Harry Vane, thou with thy subtle casuistries, and abstruse hair-splittings, thou art other than a good one, I think ! The Lord deliver thee from me. Sir Harry Vane ! ’’ ‘ All being gone out, the door of the House ‘ was locked, and the Key with the Mace, as I heard, was carried ‘ away by Colonel Otley ; ’ — and it is all over, and the unspeak- able Catastrophe has come, and remains. CromwelVs Letters and B^eeches^ vol. iii., p. 252, THE BAEEBONES PARLIAMENT. Concerning this Puritan Convention of the Notables, which in English History is called the Little ^Parliaments and deri- sively Barehones* s Barliaments we have not much more to say. They are, if by no means the remarkablest Assembly, yet the Assembly for the remarkablest purpose who have ever met in the Modern World. The business is. No less than introducing of the Christian Eeligion into real practice in the Social Affairs of this Nation. Christian Eeligion, Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments : such, for many hundred years, has been the universal solemnly recognised Theory of all men’s Affairs ; Tlieory sent down out of Heaven itself : but the question is now that of reducing it to Practice in said Affairs ; — a most noble, surely, and most necessary attempt ; which sliould not have been put off so long in this Nation ! We have conquered the Enemies of Christ ; let us now, in real practical earnest, set about doing tlie Commandments of Christ, now that there is free room for us ! Such was tlie purpose of this Ihiritaji Assembly of tlie Notables, which History calls the Little Parliaments or derisively Barehones' s Parliament. It is well known they failed: to us, alas! it is too evident they could not but fail. Eearful impediments lay against that effort of tluiirs : the sluggishness, the slavish half-aiid-halfness, th(? greediness, the cowardice, and general opacity and falsity of some ten luillion men against it ; alas, the whole world, and CONSPIUACIES. 71 what we call the Devil and all his angels, against it ! Consi- derable angels, human and other : most extensive arrangements, investments to be sold off at a tremendous sacrifice ; in general the entire set of luggage-traps and very extensive stock of merchant-goods and real and floating property, amassed by that assiduous Entity above-mentioned, for a thousand years or more ! Eor these, and also for other obstructions, it could not take efiect at that time ; and the Little Farlicment be- came a Barelones's Larliament, and had to go its ways again. CromweWs Letters and Speeches, vol. iii., p. 300. CONSPIRACIES. To see a little what kind of England it was, and what kind of incipient Protectorate it was, take, as usual, the following small and few fractions of Authenticity, of various complexion, fished from the doubtful slumber-lakes, and dust vortexes, and hang them out at their places in the void night of things. They are not very luminous ; but if they were well let alone, and the positively tenebrific were well forgotten, they might assist our imaginations in some slight measure. Sunday, IStJi December, 1653. A certain loud-tongued, loud- minded Mr. Peak, of Anabaptist-Leveller persuasion, with a Colleague seemingly Welsh, named Powel, have a Preaching- Establishment, this good while past in Blackfriars ; a Preach- ing-Establishment every Sunday, which on Monday Evening becomes a National- Charter Convention as we should now call it : there Peak, Powel and Company are in the habit of vomit- ing forth from their own inner-man, into other inner-men greedy of such pabulum, a very flamy fuliginous set of doc- trines, — such as the human mind, superadding Anabaptistry to Sansculottism, can make some attempt to conceive. Sunday the 18th, which is two days after the Lord Protector’s Instal- lation, this Peak-Powel Meeting was unusally large ; the Peak- Powel inner-man unusually charged. Elements of soot and fire really copious ; fuliginous flamy in a very high degree ! 72 CROMWELL. At a time, too, when all Doctrine does not satisfy itself with spouting, but longs to become instant Action. ‘ Go and tell your Protector,’ said the Anabaptist Prophet, ‘That he has deceived the Lord’s People ; that he is a perjured villain,’ — ‘ will not reign long,’ or I am deceived ; ‘ will end worse than the last Protector did,’ Protector Somerset who died on the scaffold, or the tyrant Crooked Diehard himself ! Say I said it ! A very foul chimney indeed, here got on fire. And ‘ Major-General Harrison, the most eminent man of the ‘ Anabaptist Party, being consulted whether he would own ‘ the new Protect oral Government, answered frankly, Ho ; ’ was thereupon ordered to retire home to St^affordshire, and keep quiet. Does the reader bethink him of those old Leveller Corporals at Burford, and Diggers at St. George’s Hill five years ago ; of Quakerisms, Calvinistic Sansculottisms, and one of the strangest Spiritual Developments ever seen in any country ? The reader sees here one foul chimney on fire, the Peak-Powel chimney in Black friars ; and must consider for himself what masses of combustible materials, noble fuel and base soot and smoky explosive fire-damp, in the general English Household it communicates with ! Eepublicans Proper, of the Long Par- liament ; Eepublican Eifth-Monarchists of the Little Parlia- ment ; the solid Ludlows, the fervent Harrisons : from Harry Vane down to Christopher Peak, all manner of Depublicans find Cromwell unforgivable. To the Harrison-and-Eeak species Kingship in every sort, and government of man by man, is carnal, expressly contrary to various Gospel Scriptures. Very horrible for a man to think of governing men ; wdiether he ought even to govern cattle, and drive them to field and to iie(3drul pen fold, ‘ except in the way of love and persuasion,’ seems doubtful to me ! But fancy a reign of Christ and his Saints; Christ and his Saints just about to come, — had not Oliver Cromwell stopt in and prevented it! The reader dis- cerns combustibilities enough ; conllngrations, plots, stubborn disaUcctions and confusions, on the Dopublican and Dopublican- jAiiabaptist side of things. Jt is the first Plot-department CONSPIEACIES. 73 whicli my Lord Protector will have to deal with all his life long. This he must wisely damp down, as he may. Wisely : for he knows what is noble in the matter, and what is base in it ; and would not sweep the fuel and the soot both out of doors at once. Tuesday, 14^^ February, 1653-4. ^ At the Ship-Tavern in the Old Bailey, kept by Mr. Thomas Amps,’ we come upon the second life-long Plot- department : Eleven truculent, rather threadbare persons, sitting over small drink there, on the Tuesday night, considering how the Protector might be assas- sinated. Poor broken Boyalist men ; pay less old Captains, most of them, or such like ; with their steeple-hats worn very brown, and jack-boots slit, — and projects that cannot be executed. Mr. Amps knows nothing of them, except that they came to him to drink ; nor do we. Probe them with questions ; clap them in the Tower for a while : Guilty, poor knaves ; but not worth hanging : — disappear again into the general mass of Eoyalist Plotting, and ferment there. The E/oyalists have lain quiet ever since Worcester, waiting what issue matters would take. Dangerous to meddle with a Bump Parliament ; or other steadily regimented thing ; safer if you can find it fallen out of rank ; hopefullest of all when it collects itself into a Single Head. The Boy alists judge^ with some reason, that if they could kill Oliver Protector, this Commonwealth were much endangered. In these Easter weeks, too, or Whitsun weeks, there comes ^ from our Court,’ (Charles Stuart’s Court,) ‘ at Paris,’ great encouragement to all men of spirit in straitened circumstances, A Boyal Pro- clamation “By the King,” drawn up, say some, by Secretary Clarendon ; setting forth that ‘ Whereas a certain base, * mechanic fellow, by name Oliver Cromwell, has usurped our ‘ throne,’ much to our and other people’s inconvenience, who- soever will kill the said mechanic fellow ‘ by sword, pistol, or ‘poison,’ shall have £500 a-year settled upon him, with colonelcies in our Army, and other rewards suitable, and be a made man, — ‘ on the word and faith of a Christian King.’ A Proclamation which cannot be circulated except in secret ; but 74 CROMWELL. is well worth reading by all loyal men. And so Eoyalist Plots also succeed one another, thick and three-fold through Oliver’s whole life ; — but cannot take effect. Vain for a Christian King and his cunningest Chancellors to summon all the Sinners of the Earth, and whatever of necessitous Truculent-Elunkeyism there may be, and to bid, in the name of Heaven and of another place, for the Head of Oliver Cromwell : once for all, they cannot have it, that Head of Cromwell; — not till he has entirely done with it, and can make them welcome to their benefit from it. CromwdVs Letters and Speeches^ vol. iii., p. 318. JAMES NAYLER AND COMPANY. ‘ In the month of October, 1655,’ there was seen a strange sight at Bristol in the West. A Procession of Eight Persons; one, a man on horseback, riding single ; the others, men and women, partly riding double, partly on foot, in the muddiest highway, in the wettest weather ; singing, all but the single rider, at whose bridle splash and walk two women: ^‘Hosannah! Holy, holy! Lord God of Sabaoth!” and other things, 4n a buzzing tone,’ which the impartial hearer could not make out. The single-rider is a rawboned male figure, ‘ with lank hair reacliing below his cheeks ;’ hat drawn close over his brows; ‘nose rising slightly in the middle;’ of abstruse ‘ dowm look,’ and large dangerous jaws strictly closed : he sings not ; sits there covered ; and is sung to by the others bare. Amid pouring deluges, and mud knee-deep : ‘ so that the rain ran in at their necks, and tliey vented it at their hose and breeches : ’ a spectacle to tlio AVest of England and Posterity! Singing as above ; answering no question except in song. From Bed- ininster to Ihitclifre Gate, along the streets to tlie High Cross of Bristol: at the High Cross tliey are laid hold of by the Authorities; — turn out to bo .James Naylor and Comjiany. .lames Naylor, ‘from Amlersloo’ or Ardsley ‘in Yorkshire,’ heretofore a 'rroo[)er under Jiambert; now a Quaker and THE WEST INDIAN INTEREST. 75 something more. Infatuated Nayler and Company ; given up to Enthusiam, — to Animal- Magnetism, to Chaos and Bedlam in one shape or other ! Who will need to he coerced by the Major-Grenerals, I think; — to be forwarded to London, and there sifted and cross-questioned. Is not the Spiritualism of England developing itself in strange forms ? The Hydra, royalist and sansculottic, has many heads. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches^ vol. iv., p. 85. THE WEST INDIAN INTEREST. The G-rand Sea- Armament which sailed from Portsmouth at Christmas 1654, proved unsuccessful. It went westward; opened its Sealed Instructions at a certain latitude ; found that they were instructions to attack Hispaniola, to attack the Spanish Power in the West Indies : it did attack Hispaniola, and lamentably failed; attacked the Spanish Power in the West Indies, and has hitherto realised almost nothing, — a mere waste Island of Jamaica, to all appearance little worth the keeping at such cost. It is hitherto the unsuccessfulest enterprise Oliver Cromwell ever had concern with. Desborow fitted it out at Portsmouth, while the Lord Protector was busy with his Eirst refractory Pedant Parliament ; there are faults imputed to Desborow : but the grand fault the Lord Protector imputes to himself. That he chose, or sanctioned the choice of. Generals improper to command it. Sea- General Penn, Land- General Venables, they were unfortunate, they were incom- petent ; fell into disagreements, into distempers of the bowels ; had critical Civil Commissioners with them, too, who did not mend the matter. Venables lay ‘ six weeks in bed,’ very ill of sad West-In dia maladies ; for the rest, a covetous lazy dog, who cared nothing for the business, but wanted to be home at his Irish Government again. Penn is Father of Penn the Penn- sylvanian Quaker ; a man somewhat quick of temper, ‘ like to break his heart’ when affairs went wrong; unfit to right them again. The two Generals came voluntarily home, in the end of 76 CROMWELL. last August, [1655] leaving the wreck of their forces in Jamaica ; and were straightway lodged in the Tower for quitting their post. A great Armament of Thirty, nay of Sixty ships ; of Tour- thousand soldiers, two regiments of whom were veterans, the rest a somewhat sad miscellany of broken ^Royalists, unruly Levellers, and the like, who would volunteer, — whom Venables augmented at Barbadoes, with a still more unruly set to IN’ine-thousand : this great Armament the Lord Protector has strenuously hurled, as a sudden fiery bolt, into the dark Dom- daniel of Spanish Iniquity in the far West ; and it has exploded there, almost without effect. The Armament saw Hispaniola, and Hispaniola with fear and wonder saw it, on the 14th of April, 1655 : but the Armament, a sad miscellany of distem- pered unruly persons, durst not land ‘ where Drake had landed,’ and at once take the Town and Island : the Armament hovered hither and thither ; and at last agreed to land some sixty miles ofi*; marched therefrom through thick- tangled woods, under tropical heats, till it was nearly dead with mere marching; was then set upon by ambuscadoes ; fought miserably ill, the unruly persons of it, or would not fight at all ; fled back to its ships a mass of miserable disorganic ruin ; and ‘ dying there at the rate of two-hundred a day,’ made for Jamaica. Jamaica, a poor unpopulous Island, was quickly taken, as rich Hispaniola might have been, and the Spaniards were driven away : but to men in biliary liumour it seemed hardly worth the taking or the keeping. ‘ Immense droves of wild cattle : cows and horses, run about Jamaica dusky Spaniards dwell in hatos, in unswept shealings : ‘ 80,000 hogs are killed every year for the sake of their lard, which is sold under the name of hof/s-butter at Carthagena : ’ but what can we do with all that! The poor Armament continuing to die as if by murrain, and all things looking worse and worse to poor biliary (lenorals. Sea-General Penn set sail for liomo, whom Jiaiul-General Venables swiftly followed: leaving Vice-Admiral Goodson, ‘ JNIajor- General Poricseue,* or almost wliosoever liked, to manage in their absence, and tlieir ruined moribund THE WEST INDIAN INTEEEST. 77 forces to die as they could ; — and are now lodged in the Tower, as they deserved to he. The Lord Protector, and virtually England with him, had hoped to see the dark empire of bloody Antichristian Spain a little shaken in the West ; some repara- tion got for its inhuman massacrings and long-continued tyrannies, — massacrings, exterminations of us, ‘ at St. Kitts in 1629, at Tortuga in 1637, at Santa Cruz in 3650 : ’ so, in the name of England, had this Lord Protector hoped ; and he has now to take his disappointment. The ulterior history of these Western Affairs, of this new Jamaica under Cromwell, lies far dislocated, drowned deep, in the Slumber-Lakes of Thurloe and Company ; in a most dark, stupified, and altogether dismal condition. A history, indeed, which, as you painfully fish it up and by degrees rewaken it to life, is in itself sufficiently dismal. Not much to be inter- meddled with here. The English left in Jamaica, the English successively sent thither, prosper as ill as need be ; still die, soldiers and settlers of them, at a frightful rate per day ; languish, for most part, astonished in their sultry strange new element ; and cannot be brought to front with right manhood the deadly inextricable jungle of tropical confusions, outer and inner, in which they find themselves. Brave Grovernors, Eortescue, Sedgwick, Brayne, one after the other, die rapidly, of the climate and of broken heart; their life-fire all spent there, in that dark chaos, and as yet no result visible. It is painful to read what misbehaviour there is, what difficulties there are. Almost the one steady light-point in the business is the Protector’s own spirit of determination. If England have now a ^ West-India Interest,’ and Jamaica be an Island worth some- thing, it is to this Protector mainly that we owe it. Here too, as in former darknesses, ‘ Hope shines in him, like a pillar of fire, when it has gone out in all the others.’ Having put his hand to this work, he will not for any discouragement turn back. Jamaica shall yet be a colony ; Spain and its dark Dom- daniel shall yet be smitten to the heart, — the enemies of God and His Gospel, by the soldiers and servants of God. It must, and it shall. We have failed in the West, but not wholly; 78 CROMWELL. in the West and in the East, bj sea and by land, as occasion shall be ministered, we will try it again and again. * * * * Reinforcement went on the back of reinforcement, during this Protector’s lifetime: ‘a Thousand Irish Girls’ went; not to speak of the rogue-and-vagabond species from Scotland, — ‘ we can help you ’ at any time ‘ to two or three hundred of these.’ And so at length a West-In dia Interest did take root; and bears spices and poisons, and other produce, to this day. CromweUs Letters and Speeches, vol. iv., pp. 38, 53. QUARTERMASTER SINDERCOMB, THE ASSASSIN. Miles Sindercomb, now a cashiered Quartermaster living about Town, was once a zealous Deptford lad, who enlisted to fight for Liberty, at the beginning of these Wars. He fought strongly on the side of Liberty, being an earnest fierce young fellow ; — then gradually got astray into Levelling courses, and wandered ever deeper there, tiU daylight forsook him, and it became quite dark. He was one of the desperate misguided Corporals, or Quartermasters, doomed to be shot at Burford, seven years ago : but he escaped over night, and was not shot there ; took service in Scotland ; got again to be Quarter- master ; was in the Overton Plot, for seizing Monk and marching into England, lately: whereupon Monk cashiered liiin : and he came to Town ; lodged himself here, in a sulky thread-bare manner, — in Alsatia or elsewhere. A gloomy man and Ex-Quartermaster ; has become one of Sexby’s people, * on the faitli of a Cliristian King ; ’ nothing now left of him but tlic fierceness, groping some path for itself in tlie utter (lurk. Henry Toope, one of his Jligliness’s Ijifeguard: gives us, or will give us, an inkling of Sindercomb; and wo know Hoincthing of liis courses and inventions, which are many. He rode in Hyde J\*irk among Ins Highness’s escort, witli Sexby ; but the (Iced could not then be done. Heave me the IGOOZ., said lie; and 1 will find a way to do it. Sexby left it him and went abroad. QUARTEUMASTER SINDERCOMB^ THE ASSASSIN. 79 Inventive Sindercomb then took a House in Hammer- smith ; Garden-House, I think, ^ which had a banque ting-room looking into the road ; ’ road very narrow at that part ; — road from Whitehall to Hampton Court on Saturday afternoons. Inventive Sindercomb here set about providing blunderbusses of the due explosive force, — ancient ‘ infernal machines,’ in fact, — with these he will blow his Highness’s Coach and Highness’s self into small pieces, if it please Heaven. It did not please Heaven, — probably not Henry Toope of his High- ness’s Lifeguard. This first scheme proved a failure. Inventive Sindercomb, to justify his 1600Z., had to try some- thing. He decided to fire Whitehall by night, and have a stroke at his Highness in the tumult. He has ‘a hundred swift horses, two in a stable, up and down:’ — set a hundred stout ruffians on the back of these, in the nocturnal fire ; and try Thursday, 8th January, 1656-7 ; that is to be the Night. On the dusk of Thursday, January 8th, he with old-trooper Cecil, his second in the business, attends Public Worship in Whitehall Chapel ; is seen loitering there afterwards, ‘ near the Lord Lambert’s seat.’ Nothing more is seen of him : but about half-past eleven at night, the sentinel on guard catches a smell of fire ; — finds holed wainscots, picked locks ; a basket of the most virulent wildfire, ‘ fit almost to burn through stones,’ with lit match slowly creeping towards it, computed to reach it in some half-hour hence, about the stroke of midnight ! — His Highness is summoned, the Council is summoned; — alas, Toope of the Lifeguard is examined, and Sindercomb’ s lodging is known. Just when the wildfire should have blazed, two Guardsmen wait upon Sindercomb ; seize him, not without hard defence on his part, ‘ wherein his nose was nearly cut off ; ’ bring him to his Highness. Toope testifies ; Cecil peaches : — inventive Sindercomb has failed for the last time. To the Tower with him, to a jury of his country with him ! — The emotion in the Parliament and in the Public, next morning, was great. It had been proposed to ring an alarm at the moment of discovery, and summon the Trainbands; but his Highness would not hear of it. 80 CROMWELL. This Parliament, really intent on settling the Nation, could not want for emotions in regard to such a matter ! Parliament adjourns for a week, till the roots of the Plot are investigated somewhat. Parliament, on reassembling, appoints a day of Thanksgiving for the Nation ; Friday, come four weeks, which is February 20th, that shall be the general Thanksgiving Day : and in the meantime we decide to go over in a body, and congra- tul ite his Highness. A mark of great respect to him. * * * On Monday 9th February, Sindercomb was tried by a jury in the Upper Bench ; and doomed to suffer as a traitor and assassin, on the Saturday following. The night before Saturday his poor Sister, though narrowly watched, smuggled him some poison : he went to bed, saying, ‘‘ Well, this is the last time I shall go to bed the attendants heard him snore heavily, and then cease ; they looked, and he lay dead. ^ He was of that wretched sect called Soul- Sleepers, who believe that the soul falls asleep at death ; ’ a gloomy, far-misguided man. They buried him on Tower-hill with due ignominy, and there he rests ; with none but frantic Anabaptist Sexby, or Deceptive Presbyterian Titus, to sing his praise. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches, vol. iv., pp. 159, 167. THE FIFTH-MONARCHY. At this point [1657] there occurs an extraneous Phenome- non which unexpectedly delays us for a day or two : a rising of tlie Fifth-Monarchy, namely. The Fifth-Monarchy, while men are meditating earthly Kingship, and Official Persons are about appointing an earthly tyrannous and traitorous King, thinks it oiiglit to bestir itself, now or never ; — explodes accordingly, thougli in a small way ; testilyiiig to us how electric this element of Ihiglaiid now is. Thursday, \)th April, Tlio Fifth-Monarchy, headed mainly l)y one A'ciukt, a Wine-Cooper, and otlier civic individuals of the old Feak-and-l^owel species, whom we have transiently been emitting soot and lire before now, has for a long Avhile SEA-KING BLAKE. 8i been concocting under ground ; and Thurloe and liis Highness have had eye on it. The Tifth-Monarchj has decided that it will rise this Thursday ; expel carnal sovereignties ; and call on the Christian population to introduce a Eeign of Christ, — which it is thought, if a beginning were once made, they will be very forward to do. Let us rendezvous on Mile-End Green this day, with sword and musket, and assured heart : perhaps General Harrison, Colonel Okey, one knows not who, will join us, — perhaps a miracle will be wrought, such as Heaven might work in such a case, and the Eeign of Christ actually take effect. Alas ! Heaven wrought no miracle : Heaven and his High- ness sent a troop of Horse into the Mile-End region, early in the morning; seized Venner, and some Twenty Eingleaders, just coming for the rendezvous ; seized chests of arms, many copies of a flaming Pamphlet or War-manifesto with title A Standard set up ; seized also a War-flag with Lion Couchant painted on it. Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and this motto, ‘‘ Who shall rouse him up O Eeader, these are not Actions, these were once altogether solid facts in this brick London of ours ; ancient resolute individuals, busy with wine-cooperage and otherwise, had entertained them as very practicable things ! — But in two days’ time, these ancient individuals, and they are all lodged in the Tower ; Harrison, hardly connected with the thing, except as a well-wisher, he and others are likewise made secure ; and the Fifth-Monarchy is put under lock and key. Nobody was tried for it: Cooper Venner died on the scaffold, for a similar attempt under Charles the Second, some two years hence. Cromwell" s Letters and Speeches, vol. iy., p. 194. SEA-KING BLAKE. In those very minutes [20th April, 1657] there goes on far off, on the Atlantic brine, under shadow of the Peak of Teneriffe, one of the fieriest actions ever fought by land or water; this action of the Sea-King Blake, at the Port of Santa Cruz. The case G 82 CEOMWELL. was this. Blake cruising on the coast of Spain, watching as usual for Plate Fleets, heard for certain that there was a Fleet actually coming, actually come as far as the Canary Isles, and now lying in the Bay of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe there. Blake makes instant sail thither; arrives there still in time this Monday morning early ; finds the Fleet fast moored in Santa Cruz Bay ; rich silver-ships, strong war-ships, sixteen as we count them ; stronger almost than himself, — and moored here under defences unassailable apparently by any mortal. Santa Cruz Bay is shaped as a horse-shoe ; at the entrance are Castles, in the inner circuit are other Castles, Eight of them in all, bristling with great guns ; war-ships moored at the entrance, war-frigates moored all round the beach, and men and gunners at command: one great magazine of sleeping thunder and destruction : to appearance, if you wish for sure suicide to run into, this must be it. Blake, taking measure of the business, runs into it, defying its loud thunder: much outthunders it, — mere whirlwinds of fire and iron hail, the old Peak never heard the like ; — silences the Castles, sinks or burns every sail in the Harbour ; annihilates the Spanish Fleet ; and then, the wind veering round in his favour, sails out again, leaving Santa Cruz Bay much astonished at him. It is the last action of the brave Blake ; who, worn out with toil and sickness and a cruise of three years, makes homeward shortly after ; dies within sight of Plymouth. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches, vol. iv., p. 244. INSTALLED AS PROTECTOR. Land-Concral ]^eynolds lias gone to the French Netherlands, with Six-thousand men, to join Turenno in fighting the Spaniards tluTo ; and Sea-General Montague, is about lioisting his flag to coiipcr.'if e with liim from tlie other element. J^y sea and land an* many things passing ; — and here in London is the loudest thing of all : not yet to be entirely omitted by us. INSTALLED AS PROTECTOR. 83 thougli now it has fallen very silent in comparison. Inaugura- tion of the Lord Protector ; second and more solemn Installa- tion of him, now that he is fully recognised by Parliament itself. He cannot yet, as it proves, be crowned King ; but he shall be installed in his Protectorship with all solemnity befitting such an occasion. Friday, 2&t}i June, 1657. The Parliament and all the world are busy with this grand affair; the labours of the Session being now complete, the last finish being now given to our new Instrument of Grovernment, to our elaborate Petition and Advice, we will add this topstone to the work, and so, amid the shoutings of mankind, disperse for the recess. Priday at two o’clock, ‘ in a place prepared,’ duly prepared, with all manner of ‘platforms,’ ‘cloths of state,’ and ‘seats raised one above the other,’ ‘ at the upper end of Westminster Hall.’ Palace- yard, and London generally, is all a-tiptoe, out of doors. Within doors. Speaker Widdrington and the Master of the Ceremonies have done their best : the Judges, the Aldermen, the Parliament, the Council, the foreign Ambassadors, and domestic Dignitaries without end; chairs of state, cloths of state, trumpet-peals, and acclamations of the people — Let the reader conceive it ; or read in old Pamphlets the ‘ exact rela- tion ’ of it with all the speeches and phenomena, worthier than such things usually are of being read. ‘ His Highness standing under the Cloth of State,’ says Bulstrode, whose fine feelings are evidently touched by it, ‘ the ‘ Speaker, in the name of the Parliament, presented to him : ‘ First, a Bole of purple velvet ; which the Speaker, assisted by ‘ Whitlocke and others, put upon his Highness. ‘ Then he,’ the Speaker, ‘delivered to him the Bible richly gilt and bossed,’ an affecting symbolic Gift : ‘ After that, the Speaker girt the ‘ Sword about his Highness ; and delivered into his hand the ‘ Sceptre of massy gold. And then, this done, he made a Speech ‘ to him on these several things presented ; ’ eloquent melli- fluous Speech, setting forth the high and true significance of these several Symbols, Speech still worth reading ; to which his Highness answered in silence by dignified gesture only. S4 CROMWELL. ‘ Then Mr. Speaker gave him the Oath ; ’ and so ended really in a solemn manner. ‘ And Mr. Manton, by prayer, recom- ‘ mended his Highness, the Parliament, the Council, thePorces ‘ by land and sea, and the whole Government and People of the ‘ Three Nations, to the blessing and protection of God.’ — And then ‘ the people gave several great shouts and ‘ the trumpets ‘ sounded ; and the Protector sat in his chair of state, holding ‘ the Sceptre in his hand ; ’ a remarkable sight to see. ^ On ‘ his right sat the Ambassador of Prance,’ on his left some other Ambassador ; and all round, standing or sitting, were Dignitaries of the highest quality ; ^ and near the Earl of ‘ Warwick, stood the Lord Viscount Lisle, stood General ‘ Montague and Whitlocke, each of them having a drawn ‘ sword in his hand,’ — a sublime sight to some of us ! And so this Solemnity transacts itself ; — which, at the moment, was solemn enough ; and is not yet, at this or any hollowest moment of Human History, intrinsically altogether other. A really dignified and veritable piece of Symbolism ; perhaps the last we hitherto, in these quack-ridden histrionic ages, have been privileged to see on such an occasion. CroimvelVs Letters and Speeches, vol. iv., p. 301. SPANISH INVASION PLOT. One of these days, [January, 1058] tliere came a man riding jogtrot tlirougli Stratford-at-the-Bow, with ‘ a green glazed cover over his hat,’ a ^ nightcap under it,’ and ‘ his valise behind him; ’ a rustic-looking man : recognisable to tts, amid the vanislied po- pulations wlio take no notice of liim as ho jogs along there, — for the Duke of Ormond, Charles Stuart’s head man ! He sat up, at Colchester, the niglit before, ‘playing shufileboard with some ‘ farmers, and drinking hot ale.’ lie is fresh Irom Planders, and ilie J^]x-King; has arrived hero to organise the Spanish (’harlcjH-Stnart Invasion, and sec what Jh)yalist Insurrection, or othnr (loiiK'st ic mischief there may bo liopes ot. liodgcs now, ‘ with dyed hair,’ in a much disguised manner, ‘ at the house of HOYALIST INSURRECTION FAILURE. 85 ^ a Papist Chirurgeon in Drury Lane ; ’ communicating with the ringleaders here. The Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasion is again on foot, and no fable. He has Pour English-Irish Eegiments ; the low- minded Dutch, we understand, have hired him Two-and-twenty ships, which hope to escape our frigates some dark night ; and Don John has promised a Spanish Army of Six-thousand or Ten-thousand, if the domestic Royalists will bestir themselves. Like the waves of the sea, that cannot rest ; that have to go on, throwing up mire and dirt ! Prantic- Anabaptists too are awakening ; the general English Hydra is rallying itself again, as if to try it one other last time. Poreign Affairs also look altogether questionable to a Pro- testant man. Swede and Dane in open war; inextricable quarrels bewildering the King of Sweden, King of Denmark, Elector of Brandenburg, all manner of Poreign Protestants, whom Oliver never yet could reconcile ; and the Dutch playing false ; and the Spaniards, the Austrians, the Pope and Papists, too well united! — Keed enough that this Parliament he unanimous. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches^ vol. iv., p. 833. ROYALIST INSURRECTION FAILURE. His Highness, before this Monday’s sun sets [Peb. 4, 1658], has begun to lodge the Anarchic Ringleaders, Royalist, Pifth- Monarchist, in the Tower ; his Highness is bent once more with all his faculty, the Talking- Apparatus being gone, to front this Hydra, and trample it down once again. On Saturday he sum- mons his Officers, his Acting- Apparatus, to Whitehall round him ; explains to them ‘ in a Speech two hours long ’ what kind of Hydra it is ; asks. Shall it conquer us, involve us in blood and confusion? They answer from their hearts, Ho, it shall not 1 “We will stand and fall with your Highness, we will live and “ die with you 1 ” — It is the last duel this Oliver has with any Hydra fomented into life by a Talking- Apparatus ; and he 86 CROMWELL. again conquers it, invincibly compresses it, as be has heretofore done. One day, in the early days of March next, his Highness said to Lord Broghil: An old friend of yours is in Town, the Duke of Ormond, now lodged in Drury Lane, at the Papist Surgeon’s there : you had better tell him to be gone ! Whereat his Lordship stared ; found it a fact however ; and his Grace of Ormond did go with exemplary speed, and got again to Bruges and the Sacred Majesty, with report That Cromwell had many enemies, but that the rise of the Koyalists was moonshine. And on the 12th of the month his Highness had the Mayor and Common Council with him in a body at Whitehall ; and ‘ in a Speech at large ’ explained to them that his Grace of Ormood was gone only ‘ on Tuesday last ; ’ that there were Spanish Invasions, Eoyalist Insurrections and Frantic- Anabaptist Insurrections rapidly ripening; — that it would well beseem the City of London to have its Militia in good order. To which the Mayor and Common Council, ‘ being very sensible thereof,’ made zealous response by speech and by act. In a word, the Talking- Apparatus being gone, and an Oliver Protector now at the head of the Acting- Appa- ratus, no Insurrection, in the eyes of reasonable persons, had any chance. The leading Boyalists shrank close into their privacies again, — considerable numbers of them had to shrink into durance in the Tower. Among which latter class his Highness, justly incensed, and ‘ considering,’ as Thurloe says, ‘ that it was not lit there should be a Plot of this kind ‘ every winter,’ had determined that a High Court of Justice sliould take cognisance of some. High Court of Justice is accordingly nominated as the Act of Parliament prescribes : among tlie ])arties marked for trial by it are Sir Henry Slingsby, long since prisoner for Peiiruddock’s business, and the Jtev. Dr. Jlewit, a man of much forwardness in Eoyalism. Sir Henry, prisoner in Hull and acquainted with the Chiel Ollicers there, has been treating with them for betrayal of the ])laee to his Majesty ; has even, to that end, given one ol them a Majesty’s Commissioji j for whose Spanish Invasion such a ROYALIST INSURRECTION FAILURE. 87 Haven and Fortress would have been extremely convenient. Eeverend Dr. Hewit, preaching by sufferance, according to the old ritual, ‘in St. Grregory’s Church near Paul’s,’ to a select disaffected audience, has farther seen good to distinguish him- self very much by secular zeal in this business of the loyalist Insurrection and Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasion ; — which has now come to nothing, and left poor Dr. Hewit in a most questionable position. Of these two, and of others, a High Court of Justice shall take cognisance. The Insurrection having no chance in the eyes of reasonable Royalists, and they in consequence refusing to lead it, the large body of treasonable Royalists now in London City or gather- ing thither decide, with indignation. That they will try it on their own score, and lead it themselves. Hands to work, then, ye unreasonable Royalists ; pipe. All hands ! Saturday the 15th of May, that is the night appointed: To rise that Saturday Night ; beat drums for ‘ Royalist Apprentices,’ ‘ lire houses at the Tower,’ slay this man, slay that, and bring matters to a good issue. Alas, on the very edge of the appointed hour, as usual, we are all seized ; the ringleaders of us are all seized, ‘ at the Mermaid in Cheapside,’ — for Thurloe and his Highness have long known what we were upon ! Barkstead, Governor of the Tower, ‘ marches into the City with five drakes,’ at the rattle of which every Royalist Apprentice, and party implicated, shakes in his shoes : — and this also has gone to vapour, leaving only for result certain new individuals of the Civic class to give account of it to the High Court of Justice. Tuesday^ 26th May, 1658, the High Court of Justice sat; a formidable Sanhedrim of above a Hundred- and- thirty heads; consisting of ‘ all the Judges,’ chief Law Ofiicials, and others named in the Writ, according to Act of Parliament ; — sat ‘ in ‘ Westminster Hall, at nine in the morning, for the Trial of ‘ Sir Henry Slingsby, Knight, John Hewit, Doctor of Divinity,’ and three others whom we may forget. Sat day after day till all were judged. Poor Sir Henry, on the first day, was con- demned ; he pleaded what he could, poor gentleman, a very constant Royalist all along; but the Hull business was too 88 CEOMWELL. palpable ; he was condemned to die. Eeverend Dr. Hewit, whose proceedings also had become very palpable, refused to plead at all ; refused even ‘ to take off his hat,’ says Carrion Heath, ^till the officer was coming to do it for him;’ had a ‘ Paper of Demurrers prepared by the learned Mr. Prynne,’ who is now again doing business this Avay ; ‘ conducted himself ‘ not very wisely,’ says Bulstrode. He likewise received sentence of death. The others, by narrow missing, escaped ; by good luck, or the Protector’s mercy, suffered nothing. As to Slingsby and Hewit, the Protector was inexorable. Hewit has already taken a very high line : let him persevere in it ! Slingsby was the Lord Pauconberg’s uncle, married to his Aunt Bellasis ; but that could not stead him, — perhaps that was but a new monition to be strict with him. The Common- wealth of England and its Peace are not nothing ! These Loyalist Plots every winter, deliveries of garrisons to Charles Stuart, and reckless ‘usherings of us into blood,’ shall end! Hewit and Slingsby suffered on Tower Hill, on Monday 8th June ; amid the manifold rumour and emotion of men. Of the City insurrectionists six w^ere condemned ; three of whom were executed, three pardoned. And so the Higli Court of Justice dissolved itself; and at this and not at more expense of blood, the huge Insurrectionary movement ended, and lay silent within its caves again. AVhether in any future year it would have tried another rising against such a Lord Protector, one does not know, — one guesses nitlier in the negative. The Loyalist Cause, after so many failures, after such a sort of enterprises ‘ on the word of a ‘ Ciiristiaii King,’ had naturally sunk very low. Some twelve- month hence, with a Commoinvealth not now under Cromwell, but only under tlie impulse of Cronuvell, a Christian King hastening down to the Treaty of the Pyrenees, where Prance and Spain w'ore making Peace, found one of the coldest recej)tions. Cardinal Mazarin ‘sent his coaches and guards a ‘ day’s jonrmy to meet Lockhart the Commoinvealth Ambas- ‘ sador ; * hut refused to meet the Christian King at all; w'ould not even meet Ormond exce[)t as if by accident, ‘oil the EOYALIST INSUEEECTION PAILUEE. 89 ^ public road,’ to say that there was no hope. The Spanish Minister, Don Louis de Haro, was civiller in manner ; but as to Spanish Charles- Stuart Invasions or the like, he also decisively shook his head. The Eoyalist cause was as good as desperate in England ; a melancholy Eeminiscence, fast fading away into the realm of shadows. Hot till Puritanism sank of its own accord, could Eoyalism rise again. But Puritanism, the King of it once away, fell loose very naturally in every fibre, — fell into Kinglessness, what we call Anarchy ; crumbled down, ever faster, for Sixteen Months, in mad suicide, and universal clashing and collision; proved, by trial after trial, that there lay not in it either Government or so much as Self- government any more; that a Government of England by it was henceforth an impossibility. Amid the general wreck of things, all Government threatening now to be impossible, the Eeminiscence of Eoyalty rose again, Let us take refuge in the Past, the Euture is not possible!” and Major-General Monk crossed the Tweed at Coldstream, with results which are well known. Eesults which we will not quarrel with, very mournful as they have been 1 If it please Heaven, these Two Hundred Tears of universal Cant in Speech, with so much of Cotton- spinning, Coal-boring, Commercing, and other valuable Sincerity of Work going on the while, shall not be quite lost to us! Our Cant will vanish, our whole baleful cunningly- comp acted Universe of Cant, as does a heavy Hightmare Dream. We shall awaken ; and find ourselves in a world greatly widened . — Why Puritanism could not continue ? My friend, Puritanism was not the Complete Theory of this immense Universe ; no, only a part thereof ! To me it seems, in my hours of hope, as if the Destinies meant something grander with England than even Oliver Protector did ! W e will not quarrel with the Destinies ; we will work as we can towards fulfilment of them. CromwelVs Letters and Speeches^ vol. iv., p. 370. 90 CROMWELL. DEATH OF THE PROTECTOR. Oliver’s look was jet strong ; and young for his years, which were Fifty-nine last April [1658]. The ‘ Three-score and ten ‘ years,’ the Psalmist’s limit, which probably was often in Oliver’s thoughts and in those of others there, might have been antici- pated for him : Ten Tears more of Life ; — which, we may compute, would have given another History to all the Centuries of England. But it was not to be so, it was to be otherwise. Oliver’s health, as ve might observe, was but uncertain in late times; often ‘indisposed’ the spring before last. His course of life had not been favourable to health ! “ A burden “ too heavy for man!” as he himself, with a sigh, would some- times say. Incessant toil ; inconceivable labour, of head and heart and hand; toil, peril, and sorrow manifold, continued for near Twenty years now, had done their part ; those robust life- energies, it afterward appeared, had been gradually eaten out. Like a Tower strong to the eye, but with its foundations undermined ; which has not long to stand ; the fall of which, on any shock, may be sudden. The Manzinis and Dues de Crequi, Avith their splendours, and congratulations about Dunkirk, interesting to the street populations and general public, had not yet withdrawn, when at Hampton Court there had begun a private scene, of much deeper and quite opposite interest there. The Lady Claypole, Oliver’s favourite Daughter, a favourite of all the world, had fallen sick we know not when ; lay sick now, — to death, as it proved. Her disease Avas of internal female nature ; the painfullest and most harassing to mind and sense, it is under- stood, that falls to the lot of a human creature. IJainpton Court we can fancy once more, in those July days, a house of sorrow ; j)ale Death knocking there, as at the door of the meanest hut. ‘She had great sullerings, griait exercises of spirit!’ Yes: — and in tlie depths of the old Centuries, we see a pale anxious Mother, anxious Husband, anxious Aveeping Sisters, a poor young Frances Aveeping anew in her weeds. ‘ For the last DEATH OF THE PROTECTOR. 91 ‘ fourteen days’ liis Higliness has been by her bedside at Hampton Court, unable to attend to any public business what- ever. Be still, my Child ; trust thou yet in God : in the waves of the Dark Eiver, there too is He a God of help ! — On the 6th day of August she lay dead ; at rest forever. My young, my beautiful, my brave ! She is taken from me ; I am left bereaved of her. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away ; blessed be the Name of the Lord ! * In the same dark days occurred George Box’s third and last interview with Oliver. * * * George dates nothing ; and his facts everywhere lie round him like the leather-parings of his old shop ; but we judge it may have been about the time when the Manzinis and Dues de Crequi were parading in their gilt coaches, That George and two Briends ‘ going out of Town,’ on a summer day, ‘ two of Hacker’s men’ had met them, — taken them, brought them to the Mews. ‘ Prisoners there ‘ a while ;’ — but the Lord’s power was over Hacker’s men ; they had to let us go. Whereupon : ‘ The same day, taking boat I went down’ {up) ‘to Kingston, and from thence to Hampton Court, to speak with the Pro- ‘ tector about the Sufferings of Briends. I met him riding into ‘ Hampton- Court Park ; and before I came to him, as he rode at ‘ the head of his Lifeguard, I saw and felt a waft ’ {whiff) ‘ of ‘ death go forth against him.’ Or in favour of him, George ? His life, if thou knew it, has not been a merry thing for this man, now or heretofore ! I fancy he has been looking, this long while, to give it up, whenever the Commander-in-chief required. To quit his laborious sentry-post; honourably lay up his arms, and be gone to his rest : — all Eternity to rest in, O George ! Was thy own life merry, for example, in the hollow of the tree ; clad permanently in leather ? And does kingly purple, and governing refractory worlds instead of stitching coarse shoes, make it merrier ? The waft of death is not against him I think, — perhaps against thee, and me, and others, O George, when the Nell-Gwyn Defender and Two Centuries of all-victorious Cant have come in upon us ! My unfortunate George, ‘ a waft of death go forth against him ; 92 CllOMWELL. ‘ and when I came to him, he looked like a dead man. After I ^ had laid the Sufferings of Friends before him, and had warned ‘ him accordingly as I was moved to speak to him, he bade me ‘ come to his house. So I returned to Kingston ; and, the next ‘ day, went up to Hampton Court to speak farther ^with him. ‘ But when I came, Harvey, who was one that waited on him, ‘ told me the Doctors were not willing that I should speak with ‘ him. So I passed away, and never saw him more.’ Friday, the 20th of August, 1658, this was probably the day on which George Fox saw Oliver riding into Hampton Park with his Guards for the last time. That Friday, as we find, his Highness seemed much better : but on the morrow a sad change had taken place ; feverish symptoms, for which the Doctors vigorously prescribed quiet. Saturday to Tuesday the symptoms continued ever worsening : a kind of tertian ague, ‘ bastard tertian ’ as the old Doctors name it ; for which it was ordered that his Highness should return to Whitehall, as to a more favourable air in that complaint. On Tuesday accordingly he quitted Hampton Court ; — never to see it more. ‘ His time was come,’ says Harvey, ‘ and neither prayers nor ‘ tears could prevail with God to lengthen out his life, and con- ‘ tinue him longer to us. Prayers abundantly and incessantly ‘ poured out on his behalf, both publicly and privately, as was ‘ observed, in a more than ordinary way. Besides many a secret ‘ sigh, — secret and unheard by men, yet like the cry of Moses, ‘ more loud, and strongly laying hold on God, than many • spoken supplications. All which, — the hearts of God’s People ‘ being thus mightily stirred up, — did seem to beget confidence ‘ in some, and hopes in all ; yea some thoughts in himself, that ‘ (jod would restore him.’ ‘ Prayers })ublic and private : ’ they are worth imagining to ourselves. Meetings of Preachers, Chaplains, and Godly JVthoiis ; ‘Owen, Goodwin, Sterry, with a company of others, in an adjoining room;’ in AVMiitehall, and elsewhere over religious London and England, fervent outpourings of many a loyal heart, h'or there were hearts to whom the nobleness of this man was known ; and his worth to the Puritan Cause DEATH OF THE PROTECTOR. 93 was evident. Prayers, — strange enough to us ; in a dialect fallen obsolete,, forgotten now. Authentic wrestlings of ancient Human Souls, — who were alive then, with their affec- tions, awe-struck pieties ; with their Human Wishes, risen to be transcendent, hoping to prevail with the Inexorable. All swallowed now in the depths of dark Time ; which is full of such, since the beginning ! Truly it is a great scene of W orld- History, this in old Whitehall : Oliver Cromwell draw- ing nigh to his end. The exit of Oliver Cromwell, and of English Puritanism ; a great Light, one of our few authentic Solar Luminaries, going down now amid the clouds of Death, Like the setting of a great victorious summer Sun — its course now finished. ‘ So stirht ein Held^ says Schiller ; ‘ So dies a Hero 1 Sight worthy to be worshipped ! ’ He died, this Hero Oliver, in Designation to God, as the Brave have all done. ‘ We could not be more desirous he should abide,’ says the pious Harvey, ‘ than he was content and willing to be gone.’ The struggle lasted, amid hope and fear, for ten days. * * * On Monday, August 30th, there roared and howled all day a mighty storm of wind. Ludlow, coming up to Town from Essex, could not start in the morning for wind ; tried it in the afternoon ; still could not get along, in his coach, for head- wind ; had to stop at Epping. On the morrow, Eleetwood came to him in the Protector’s name, to ask. What he wanted here ? — Nothing of public concernment, only to see my mother- in-law ! answered the solid man. Eor indeed he did not know that Oliver was dying ; that the glorious hour of Disenthral- ment, and immortal ‘ Liberty ’ to plunge over precipices with one’s self and one’s Cause, was so nigh ! — It came ; and he took the precipices, like a strongboned resolute blind ginhorse, rejoicing in the breakage of its halter, in a very gallant con- stitutional manner. Adieu, my solid friend ; if I go to Vevay, I will read thy Monument there, perhaps not without emotion, after all !— It was on this stormy Monday, while rocking-winds, heard in the sickroom and everywhere, were piping aloud, that Thurloe and an Official person entered to inquire, Who, in 94 CROMWELL. case of the worst, was to be his Highness’s Successor ? The Successor is named in a sealed Paper already drawn up, above a year ago, at Hampton Court ; now lying in such and such a place. The Paper was sent for, searched for ; it could never be found. Eichard’s is the name understood to have been written in that Paper : not a good name ; but in fact one does not know. In ten years’ time, had ten years more been granted, Eichard might have become a fitter man ; might have been cancelled, if palpably unfit. Or perhaps it was Fleet- wood’s name, — and the Paper by certain parties was stolen ? None knows. On the Thursday night following, ‘ and not till then,’ his Highness is understood to have formally named “Eichard!” — or perhaps it might only be some heavy-laden “Yes, yes!” spoken out of the thick death-slumbers, in answer to Thurloe’s question “Eichard?” The thing is a little uncertain. It was, once more, a matter of much mo- ment ; — giving colour probably to all the subsequent Centuries of England, this answer ! * * * Thursday night the writer of our old Pamphlet was himself in attendance on his Highness ; and has preserved a trait or two ; with which let us hasten to conclude. To-morrow is September Third, always kept as a Thanksgiving-day, since the Victories of Dunbar and Worcester. The wearied one, ‘that ‘ very night before the Lord took him to his everlasting rest,’ was heard thus, with oppressed voice, speaking : ‘ “ Truly God is good ; indeed. He is ; He will not ” ’ then his speecli failed him, but, as I apprehended, it was, “ He ‘ will not leave me.” This saying, “ God is good,” he fre- ‘ quently used all along ; and would speak it with much cheer- ‘ fulness, and fervour of spirit, in the midst of his pains. — Again ‘ lie said : “ I would be willing to live to be fiirther serviceable ‘ to God and 1 1 is People : but my work is done. Yet God will ‘be with Jlis People.” ‘He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often ‘ to himself. And there being something to drink ofiered liim, ‘ he was d(.‘sired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep. — ‘ Unto which he answered: “ It is not my desire to drink or DEATH OF THE PROTECTOR. 95 ‘ sleep ; but my design is, to make what haste I can to be ‘ gone.” ‘ Afterwards, towards morning, he used divers holy expres- ^ sions, implying much inward consolation and peace ; among ‘ the rest he spake some exceeding self-debasing words, anniJii- lating and judging himself. And truly it was observed, that ‘ a public spirit to God’s Cause did breathe in him, — as in his ^ lifetime, so now to his very last.’ "When the morrow’s sun rose, Oliver was speechless ; between three and four in the afternoon, he lay dead. Friday, 3rd September, 1658. ‘‘ The consternation and astonishment of all 'people,” writes Fauconberg, are inexpressible ; their hearts ‘ seem as if sunk within them. My poor Wife, — I know not ‘ what on earth to do with her. When seemingly quieted, she ' bursts out again into a passion that tears her very heart to ‘ pieces.” Husht, poor weeping Mary ! Here is a Life-battle right nobly done. Seest thou not. The storm is changed into a calm, At His command and will ; So that the waves which raged before. Now quiet are and still ! Then are they glad, — because at rest And quiet now they be : So to the haven He them brings Which they desired to see. ^ Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord ; ’ blessed are the valiant that have lived in the Lord. ‘ Amen, saith the Spirit,’ Amen. ^ They do rest from their labours, and their works follow them.’ ' Their works follow them.’ As, I think, this Oliver Cromwell’s works have done, and are still doing ? We have had our ^ Be volutions of Eighty-eight,’ officially called ' glo- rious;’ and other Eevolutions not yet called glorious, and somewhat has been gained for poor Mankind. Men’s ears are not now slit off by rash Officiality ; Officiality will, for long henceforth, be more cautious about men’s ears. The tyran- nous Star-chambers, branding-irons, chimerical Kings and 96 CROMWELL. Surplices at All-hallowtide, they are gone, or with immense velocity going, Oliver’s works do follow him ! — The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities, remains for ever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things ; and no owl’s voice, this way or that, in the least avails in the matter. But we have to end here. Oliver is gone ; and with him England’s Puritanism, labo- riously built together by this man, and made a thitig far- shining miraculous to its own Century, and memorable to all the Centuries, soon goes. Puritanism, without its King, is hingless, anarchic ; falls into dislocation, self-collision ; stag- gers, plunges into ever deeper anarchy ; King, Defender of the Puritan Eaith there can none now be found ; — and nothing is left but to recall the old disowned Defender with the remnants of his Pour Surplices, and Two Centuries of Hypo- crisis (or Play-acting not so-called), and put-up with all that, the best we may. The Genius of England no longer soars Sunward, world-defiant like an Eagle through the storms, ‘mewing her mighty youth,’ as John Milton saw her do: the Genius of England, much liker a greedy Ostrich intent on provender and a whole skin mainly, stands with its other extremity Sunward; with its Ostrich-head stuck into the readiest bush of old Church-tippets, King-cloaks, or what other ‘ sheltering Eallacy ’ there may be, and so awaits the issue. The issue has been slow ; but it is now seen to have been inevitable. Ko Ostrich, intent on gross terrene pro- vender, and sticking its head into Fallacies, but will be awakened one day, — in a terrible a posteriori manner, if not otherwise! Awake before it come to tliat ; gods and men bid us awake ! The Voices of our Fatliers, with tliousand-fold stern monition to one and all, bid us awake. CrovLwdCs LeltcrH and ^pecchesy vol. iv., pp. 300, 393, 394, 398, 401. FRENCH REVOLUTION. FEENCH EEVOLETION. THE (EIL-DE-B(EUF FEELS MELANCHOLY. To govern Trance were such a problem; and now it has grown well-nigh too hard to govern even the QEil-de-Boeuf. Tor if a distressed People has its crj, so likewise, and more audibly, has a bereaved Court. To the GEil-de-Boeuf it remains inconceivable how, in a Trance of such resources, the Horn of Plenty should run dry : did it not use to flow ? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of parsimony, has ‘ suppressed above six hundred places,’ before the Courtiers could oust him ; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was. Again, a military pedant, Saint- Grermain, with his Prussian manoeuvres ; wdth his Prussian notions, as if merit and not coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disafiected military men ; the Mousquetaires, with much else are suppressed : for he too was one of your suppressors ; and unsettling and oversetting, did mere mischief — to the (Eil-de-Boeuf. Complaints abound; scarcity, anxiety : it is a changed QEil-de-Boeuf. Besenval says, already in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy (such a tristesse') about Court, compared with former days, as made it quite dispiriting to look upon. No wonder that the (Eil-de-Boeuf feels melancholy, when you are suppressing its places! Not a place can be suppressed, but some purse is the lighter for it ; and more than one heart the heavier ; for did it not employ the working classes too, — manufacturers, male and female, of laces, essences ; of Pleasure generally, whosoever could manufacture Pleasure ? Miserable H 2 100 PUENCH REVOLUTION. economics ; never felt over Twentj-five Millions ! So, however, it goes on : and is not yet ended. Eew years more and the Wolf-hounds shall fall suppressed, the Bear-hounds, the Balconry ; places shall fall, thick as autumnal leaves. Duke de Polignac demonstrates, to the complete silencing of minis- terial logic, that his place cannot be abolished : then, gallantly turning to the Queen, surrenders it, since her Majesty so wishes. Less chivalrous was Duke de Coigny, and yet not luckier : ‘‘We got into a real quarrel, Coigny and I,’’ said King Louis, “but if he had even struck me, I could not have blamed him.” In regard to such matters there can be but one opinion. Baron Besenval, with that frankness of speech which stamps the independent man, plainly assures her Majesty that it is frightful (affreux) : “ you go to bed, and are not sure but you shall rise impoverished on the morrow ; one might as well be in Turkey.” It is indeed a dog’s life. French Revolution, vol. i., p. 79. NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY. Be it want of fiscal genius, or some far other want, there is the palpablest discrepancy between Eevenue and Expenditure ; a Deficit of the Eevenue : you must ‘ choke (comhler) the De- ficit,’ or else it will swallow you ! This is the stern problem ; hopeless seemingly as squaring of the circle. Controller Joly de Fleury, who succeeded Necker, could do nothing with it; nothing but propose loans, which were tardily filled up ; impose new taxes, unproductive of money, productive of clamour and discontent. As little could Controller d’Orinesson do, or even l(*ss ; for if Joly maintained liimself beyond year and day, J)’Orinc8son reckons only by months : till ‘ the King purchased Ramboiiillet without consulting liim,’ wliich lie took as a hint to withdraw. And so, towards tho end of 1783, matters threaten to como to a still-stand. A^aiii seems human ingenuity. In vain has our newly-devised ‘Council of Finances’ struggled, our Intendants of Finance, Controller- General of ELECTION OF THE STATES-GENERAL. 101 Finances : there are unhappily no Finances to control. Fatal paralysis invades the social movement ; clouds, of blindness or of blackness, envelope us : are we breaking down, then, into the black horrors of National Bankruptcy ? Great is Bankruptcy : the great bottomless gulf into which all Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing ; whither, from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature’s Eeality, and be presented there for payment, — with the answer. No effects. Pity only that it often had so long a circulation, that the original forger were so seldom he who bore the final smart of it ! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring, are passed on ; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank ; and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, who with spade and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in contact with reality and can pass the cheat no further. French Revolution^ vol. i., p. 80. ELECTION OF THE STATES-GENERAL. Up, then, and be doing ! The royal signal- word flies through France, as through vast forests the rushing of a mighty wind. At Parish Churches, in Townhalls, and every House of Convo- cation ; by Bailliages, by Seneschalsies, in whatsoever form men convene ; there, with confusion enough, are Primary Assemblies forming. To elect your Electors ; such is the form prescribed : then to draw up your ‘ Writ of Plaints and Grievances {Cdhier de ffaintes et doleances)^ of which latter there is no lack. With such virtue works this Boyal January Edict ; as it rolls rapidly in its leathern mails, along these frost-bound highways, towards all the four winds. Like some fiat, or magic spell-word; — which such things do resemble! For always, as it sounds out ‘ at the market-cross,’ accompanied 102 FRENCH REVOLUTION. with trumpet-blast ; presided bj Bailli Seneschal, or other minor Eunctionarj, with beef-eaters ; or, in country churches, is droned forth after sermon, ‘ au prone des messes paroissales d and is registered, posted and let fly over all the world, — you behold how this multitudinous French People, so long simmer- ing and buzzing in eager expectancy, begins heaping and shaping itself into organic groups. Which organic groups, again, hold smaller organic grouplets : the inarticulate buzzing becomes articulate speaking and acting. By Primary Assembly, and then by Secondary ; by ‘ successive elections,’ and infinite elaboration and scrutiny, according to prescribed process, — shall the genuine ‘ Plaints and Grievances ’ be at length got to paper ; shall the fit National Eepresentative be at length laid hold of. How the whole People shakes itself, as if it had one life ; and, in thousand-voiced rumour, announces that it is awake, suddenly out of long death-sleep, and will thenceforth sleep no more ! The long-looked- for has come at last ; wondrous news, of Victory, Deliverance, Enfranchisement, sounds magical through every heart. To the proud strong man it has come ; whose strong hands shall no more be gyved ; to whom bound- less unconquered continents lie disclosed. The weary day- drudge has heard of it ; the beggar with his crust moistened in tears. AVhat ! To us also has hope reached ; down even to us ? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal ? The bread we extorted from tlie rugged glebe, and, with the toil of our sinews, reaped and ground, and kneaded into loaves, was not wliolly for anotlier, then ; but we also shall eat of it, and be filled ? Glorious news (answer the prudent elders), but all-too unlikely ! — Thus, at any rate, may the lower people, who })ay no money taxes and have no right to vote, assiduously crowd round those that do; and most Halls of Assembly, within doors and without, seem animated enougli. J’aris, alone of Towns, is to have Bepresentativcs ; the number of them twenty. Paris is divided into Sixty Districts; laeh of which (assembled in some cliurch, or the like) is choobingtwo Electors. Ollicial dej)iitations pass from District PROCESSION OE THE STATES-GENERAL. 103 to District, for all is inexperience as yet, and there is endless consulting. The streets swarm strangely with busy crowds, pacific yet restless and loquacious ; at intervals, is seen the gleam of military muskets ; especially about the Palais, where the Parliament, once more on duty, sits querulous, almost tremulous. Busy is the French world ! In those great days, what poorest speculative craftsman but will leave his workshop ; if not to vote, yet to assist in voting ? On all highways is a rustling and bustling. Over the wide surface of France, ever and anon, through the spring months, as the Sower casts his corn abroad upon the furrows, sounds of congregating and dispersing ; of crowds in deliberation, acclamation, voting by ballot and by voice, — rise discrepant towards the ear of Heaven. To which political phenomena add this economical one, that Trade is stagnant, and also Bread getting dear ; for before the rigorous winter there was, as we said, a rigorous summer, with drought, and on the 13th of July with destructive hail. What a fearful day 1 all cried while that tempest fell. Alas, the next anniversary of it will be worse. Under such aspects is France electing National Eepresentatives. French Revolution^ vol. i., p. 147. PROCESSION OF THE STATES-GENERAL. The Sun, on Monday the 4th of May, has risen ; — uncon- cerned, as if it were no special day. And yet, as his first rays could strike music from the Memnon’s Statue on the Nile, what tones were these, so thrilling, tremulous, of pre- paration and foreboding, which he awoke in every bosom at Versailles! Huge Paris, in all conceivable and inconceivable vehicles, is pouring itself forth ; from each Town and Village come subsidiary rills : Versailles is a very sea of men. But above all, from the Church of St. Louis to the Church of Notre-Dame : one vast suspended-billow of Life, — with spray scattered even to the chimney-tops ! For on chimney-tops too. FJIENCH EEVOLUTIOX. 101 as over the roofs, and up thlther-wards on every lamp-iron, signpost, breakneck coign of vantage, sits patriotic Courage ; and every window bursts with patriotic Beauty : for the Deputies are gathering at St. Louis Church ; to march in procession to Notre-Dame, and hear sermon. Tes, friends, ye may sit and look : bodily or in thought, all France, and all Europe, may sit and look ; for it is a day like few others. Oh, one might weep like Xerxes*. — So many serried rows sit perched there ; like winged creatures, alighted out of Heaven : all these, and so many more that follow them, shall have wholly fled aloft again, vanishing into the blue Deep ; and the memory of this day still be fresh. It is the baptism day of Democracy ; sick Time has given it birth, the numbered months being run. The extreme-unction day of Feudalism ! A superannuated System of Society, decrepit with toils (for has it not done much ; produced you^ and what ye have and know!) — and with thefts and brawls, named glorious-victories; and with profligacies, sensualities, and on the whole with dotage and senility, — is now to die : and so, with death- throes and birth-throes, a new one is to be born. What a work, O Earth and Heavens, what a work ! Battles and blood-shed, Septem- ber Massacres, Bridges of Lodi, retreats of Moscow, Waterloos, Peterloos, Tenpound Franchises, Tarbarrels and Guillotines; — and from this present date, if one might prophesy, some two centuries of it still to fight 1 Two centuries ; hardly less ; before Democracy go through its due, most baleful, stages of Quac/rocracy ; and a pestilential World be burnt up, and have begun to grow green and young again. Bejoice nevertheless, ye Versailles multitudes ; to you, from whom all tliis is hid, the glorious end of it is visible. This day, sentence of deatli is pronounced on Shams ; judgment of resuscitation, were it but afar olf, is pronounced on Ilealities. 'fiiis day, it is declared aloud, as witli a Doom-trumpet, that a Lie is unhdkvahlc. Believe that, stand by tliat, if more there be not ; and l(‘t what tiling or things soever will follow, it follow. * Ve can no other ; God be your helj) 1 ' So sjiake a greater than any of you; opening his Chapter of World-History. PROCESSION OF THE STATES -GENERAL. 105 Behold, however ! ^ The doors of St. Louis Church flung wide ; and the Procession of Processions advancing towards Notre-Dame ! Shouts rend the air ; one shout, at which Grecian birds might drop dead. It is indeed a stately, solemn sight. The Elected of Prance, and then the Court of Prance ; they are marshalled and march there, all in prescribed place and costume. Our Commons ‘in plain black mantle and white cravat ; ’ Noblesse, in gold- worked, bright-dyed cloaks of velvet, resplendent, rustling with laces, waving with plumes ; the Clergy, in rochet, alb, or other best pontijlcalihus ; lastly comes the King himself, and King’s Household, also in their brightest blaze of pomp, — their brightest and final one. Some Pourteen Hundred Men blown together from all winds, on the deepest errand. Yes, in that silent marching mass there lies Puturity enough. No symbolic Ark, like the old Hebrews, do these men bear : yet with them, too, is a Covenant ; they too preside at a new Era in the History of Man. The whole Puture is there, and Destiny dim-brooding over it; in the hearts and unshaped thoughts of these men, it lies illegible, inevitable. Singular to think : they have it in them ; yet not they, not mortal, only the Eye above can read it, — as it shall unfold itself, in fire and thunder, of siege, and field-artillery ; in the rustling of battle-banners, the tramp of hosts, in the glow of burning cities, the shriek of strangled nations ! Such things lie hidden, safe- wrapt in this Pourth day of May ; — say rather, had lain in some other unknown day, of which this latter is the public fruit and outcome. As indeed what wonders lie in every Day, — had we the sight, as happily we have not, to decipher it : for is not every meanest Day ‘ the conflux of two Eternities ! ’ Meanwhile, suppose we, too, good Eeader, should, as now without miracle Muse Clio enables us, — take our station also on some coign of vantage ; and glance momentarily over this Pro- cession, and this Life-sea ; with far other eyes than the rest do, — namely with prophetic? We can mount, and stand there, without fear of falling. 106 PUENCH REVOLUTION. As for tlie Life-sea, or onlooking unm4.mbered Multitude, it is unfortunately all too dim. Yet as we gaze fixedly do not nameless Figures not a few, wliich shall not always be nameless, disclose tliemselves ; visible or presumable there ! Young Baroness de Stael — she evidently looks from a window ; among older honourable women. Her father is minister, and one of the gala personages ; to his own eyes the chief one. Young spiritual Amazon, thy rest is not there ; nor thy loved Father’s; ‘ as Malebranche saw all things in God, so M. JSTecker sees all things in Yecker,’ — a theorem that will not hold. But where is the brown-locked, light-behaved, fire-hearted Demoiselle Theroigne ? Brown eloquent Beauty ; who, with thy winged words and glances, shalt thrill rough bosoms, whole steel battalions, and persuade an Austrian Kaiser, — pike and helm lie provided for thee in due season ; and, alas, also strait- waistcoat and long lodging in the Salpetriere ! Better hadst thou stayed in native Luxemburg, and been the mother of some brave man’s children : but it was not thy task, it was not thy lot. Of the rougher sex how, without tongue, or hundred tongues, of iron, enumerate tlie notabilities ! Has not Marquis Valadi hastily quitted his Quaker broadbrim ; his Pythagorean Greek in AV^apping, and the City of Glasgow De Morande from his Courrier de V Europe ; Linguet from his Annales, they looked eager through tlie London fog, and became Ex -Editors, — that they might feed the guillotine and have their due. Does Jiouvet (of Eauhlas) stand a-tiptoe ? And Brissot, hight De AFarville, friend of the Blacks? He, with Marquis Condorcet, and Claviere the Genevese ‘ have created the Moniteur News- paper,’ or are about creating it. Able Editors must give account of such a day. Or seest thou with any distinctness, low down jirobably, not ill ])hiccs of honour, a Stanislas IMaillard, riding-tipstalf (Jiuis- itiar d chcval) of the Chatelet ; one of the shil’tiest of men? A (’aptaiii lliilin of (L*n(‘va, (hiptaiii Elio of the Queen’s Bcgiinciit ; both with an air of hali-pay ? .lourdan, with tile- coloured whiskers, not yet with tile-beard ; an unjust dealer PIIOCESSION OF THE STATES -GENERAL. 107 in mules ? He shall be, in few months, Jourdan the Heads- man, and have other work. Surely also, in some place not of honour, stands or sprawls up querulous, that he too, though short, may see, — one squa- lidest bleared mortal, redolent of soot and horse-drugs : Jean Paul Marat of Xeuchatel 1 O Marat, Eenovator of Human Science, Lecturer on Optics ; 0 thouremarkablest Horseleech, once in D’ Artois’s Stables, — as thy bleared soul looks forth, through thy bleared, dull-acrid, wo-stricken face, what sees it in all this ? Any faintest light of hope ; like dayspring after Nova-Zembla night ? Or is it but Hue sulphur-light, and spectres ; wo, suspicion, revenge without end ? Of Draper Lecointre, how he shut his cloth-shop hard by, and stepped forth, one need hardly speak. Nor of Santerre, the sonorous Brewer from the Paubourg St. Antoine. Two other figures, and only two, we signalise there. The huge, brawny Pigure ; through whose black brows, and rude flat- tened face (^figure ecrasee)^ there looks a waste energy as of Hercules not yet furibund, — he is an esurient, unprovided Advocate ; Danton by name : him mark. Then that other, his slight-built comrade, and craft-brother ; he with the long curling locks ; with the face of dingy blackguardism, won- drously irradiated wdth genius, as if a naphtha-lamp burnt within it : that figure is Camille Desmoulins. A fellow of infinite shrewdness, wit, nay humour ; one of the sprightliest clearest souls in all these millions. Thou poor Camille, say of thee what they may, it were but falsehood to pretend one did not almost love thee, thou headlong lightly sparkling man ! But the brawny, not yet furibund Pigure, we say, is Jacques Danton ; a name that shall be ‘ tolerably known in the Eevolu- ‘ tion ! ’ He is President of the electoral Cordeliers District at Paris, or about to be it ; and shall open his lungs of brass. We dwell no longer on the mixed shouting multitude : for now, behold, the Commons Deputies are at hand ! Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate Prance, might one guess would become their King ? Por a King or leader they. 108 FRENCH REVOLUTION. as all bodies of men, must have : be their work what it may, there is one man there, who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it ; that man, as future not yet elected king, walks there among the rest. He, with the thick black locks, will it be ? With the Tiure^ as himself calls is, or black loar' s-Jiead^ fit to be ‘ shaken’ as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows, and rough-hewn, seamed, car- buncled face, there look natural ugliness, small-pox, incon- tinence, bankruptcy, — and burning fire of genius; like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through murkiest confusions ? It is Gabriel Honore Riquetti de Miraheaa, the world-compeller ; man-ruling Deputy of Aix 1 According to the Baroness de Stael, he steps proudly along, though looked at askance here ; and shakes his black chevelure, or lion’s-mane ; as if prophetic of great deeds. Yes, Header, that is the Type-Erenchman of this epoch ; as Voltaire was of the last. He is Drench in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices ; perhaps more Drench than any other man ; — and intrinsically such a mass of man- hood too. Mark him well. The IN’ational Assembly were all different without that one ; nay, he might say with the old Despot: “ The National Assembly ? I am that.” * * * ^ * In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the slouch-hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but would fill all Drance witli smoke. And now it has got air ; it will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all Drance with flame. Strange lot! Dorty years of that smouldering, with foul fire-damp and vapour enough ; then victory over tliat ; and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high ; and for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame and molten fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Wonder — sign of an amazed Europe ; — and tlien lies hollow, cold for ever! Puss on, thou questionable (labriel Honore, tlio greatest of them all : in tlio whole National J)oputies, in the whole Nation, there is none like and none second to thee. But now if ^Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six PROCESSION OP THE STATES -GENERAL. 109 Hundred may be the meanest ? Shall we say, that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles ; his eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful ; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future time ; complexion of a multi- plex utribiliar colour, the final shade of which may be the pale sea-green ? That greenish- coloured (verddtre) individual is an advocate of Arras ; his name is Maximilien Mobes^ierre, The son of an Advocate ; his father founded mason-lodges under Charles Edward, the English Prince, or Pretender. Maximilien the first-born was thriftly educated ; he had brisk Camille Des- moulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis le Grand, at Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace- Cardinal, Bohan, the patron, to let him depart thence, and reign in favour of a younger brother. The strict-minded Max departed ; home to paternal Arras ; and even had a Law-case there and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, in favour of the first Eranklin thunder-rod ! With a strict painful mind, an understanding small but clear and ready, he grew in favour with official persons, who could foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints him Judge of his diocese ; and he faithfully does justice to the people : till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime merits hanging ; and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die. A strict-minded, strait-laced man ! A man unfit for Bevolutions ! Whose small soul, transparent wholesome-look- ing as small-ale — could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar^ — the mother of ever new alegar ; till all Erance were grown acetous virulent! We shall see. In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of Letters ; three hundred and seventy-four Lawyers ; and at least one Clergyman: the Ahhe Sieges, Him also Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light thin man ; cold, but elastic, wiry ; instinct with the pride of Logic ; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which, in its independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared into transcen- 110 ^IlE^XH REVOLUTION. dentalism ; and to sit there with a kind of god-like indif- ference, and look down on passion ! He is the man, and wisdom shall die with him. This is the Sieyes who shall be System-builder, Constifcution-builder Greneral ; and build Con- stitutions (as many as wanted) skyhigh, — which shall all unfortunately fall before he get the scaffolding away. ‘‘ La Lolitique^"* said he to Dumont, “ Polity is a science I think I have completed (aclievee).'^^ What things, O Sieyes, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou to see ! But were it not curious to know how Sieyes, now in these days (for he is said to be still alive [a.d. 1834]) looks out on all that Constitution masonry, through the rheumy soberness of extreme age ? Might we hope, still with the old irrefragable transcendentalism ? The victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished one pleased Sieyes (victa Catoni), Thus, however, amid sky rending vivats, and blessings from every heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by. French Revolution, vol. i., pp. 160, 170, 174. TO ARMS ! The twelfth July morning is Sunday: the streets are all placarded with an enormous-sized Be ^ar le Boi, ‘ inviting ‘ peaceable citizens to remain within doors,’ to feel no alarm, to gather in no crowd. AVliy so ? A7hat mean these ‘ placards ‘of enormous size?’ Above all, what means this clatter of military ; dragoons, liussars, rattling in from all points of the com])ass towards the Place Louis Quinze ; with a staid gravity of face, tliough saluted with mere nicknames, hootings and even missiles ? Besenval is with them, Swiss Guards of his are already in the Champs J'llysees, with four pieces of artillery. JIavo the d(‘stroyers descended on us, then? Prom the Bridge of Sevres to utmost A^iiicennes, from Saint-Denis to the Cliainp-de-Mars, we arc begirt! Alarm, of the vague TO AEMS ! Ill unknown, is in every heart. The Palais Eoyal has become a place of awestruck interjections, silent shakings of the head : one can fancy with what dolorous stound the noontide cannon (which the Sun fires at crossing of his meridian) went off there ; bodeful, like an inarticulate voice of doom. Are these troops verily come out ‘ against Brigands ? ’ Where are the Brigands ? What mystery is in the wind ? — Hark ! a human voice reporting articulately the Job’s-news ; Neclcer, People’s jMinister^ Savioitr of France, is dismissed. Impossible ; in- credible ! Treasonous to the public peace ! Such a voice ought to be choked in the water-works ; had not the news- bringer quickly fied. Nevertheless, friends, make of it what ye will, the news is true. Necker is gone. Necker hies northward incessantly, in obedient secrecy, since yesternight. We have a new ministry; Broglie the War-god; Aristocrat Breteuil ; Poulon who said the people might eat grass ! Eumour, therefore, shall arise ; in the Palais Eoyal, and in broad Prance. Paleness sits on every face ; confused tremor and fremescence; waxing into thunder-peals, of Pury stirred on by Pear. But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Cafe de Poy, rushing out, sibylline in face ; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol ! He springs to a table : the Police satellites are eyeing him ; alive they shall not take him, not they alive him alive. This time, he speaks without stammering: — Priends ! shall we die like hunted hares ? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold ; bleating for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife ? The hour is come ; the supreme hour of Prenchman and Man ; when Oppressors are to try conclusions with Oppressed ; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance for ever. Let such hour be well-Qome ! tJs, meseems, one cry only befits ; To Arms ! Let universal Paris, universal Prance, as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only : To arms ! — “ To Arms ! yell responsive the innumerable voices ; like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air ; for all faces wax fire- eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In such, or fitter words, does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this great 112 FRENCH REVOLUTION. moment. — Friends, continues Camille, some rally ing-sign ! Cockades ; green ones ; — the colour of Hope ! — As with the flight of locusts, these green tree-leaves ; green ribands from the neighbouring shops; all green things are snatched, and made cockades of. Camille descends from his table ; ‘ stifled ‘ with embraces, wetted with tears ; ’ has a bit of green riband handed him ; sticks it in his hat. And now to Curtius’s Image-shop there ; to the Boulevards ; to the four winds, and rest not till France be on fire ! France so long shaken and wind-parched, is probably at the right inflammable point. — As for poor Curtius, who, one grieves to think, might be but imperfectly paid,— he cannot make two words about his Images. The Wax-bust of Necker ; the Wax-bust of D’ Orleans, helpers of France: these, covered with crape, as in funeral procession, or after the manner of suppliants appealing to Heaven, to Earth, and Tartarus itself, a mixed multitude bears ofif. For a sign! As indeed man, with his singular imaginative faculties, can do little or nothing without signs; thus Turks look to their Prophet’s Banner; also Osier Mannikins have been burnt, and Necker’s Portrait has ere while figured, aloft on its perch. In this manner march they, a mixed, continually increasing multitude ; armed with axes, staves and miscellanea ; grim, many-sounding, through the streets. Be all Theatres shut ; let all dancing, on planked floor, or on the natural greensward, cease ! Instead of a Christian Sabbath, and feast of guingiiette tabernacles, it shall be a Sorcerer’s Sabbath ; and Paris, gone rabid, dance, — with the Fiend for piper 1 French Revolution^ vol. i., p. 211. THE RIGHTS OF MAN. Witli endless debating, we get the Ifights of Man written down and promulgated : true paper basis of all paper Con- stitutioiiH. Neglecting, cry the opponents, to declare the lluties of Man 1 Forgetting, answer we, to ascertain the THE GENERAL OVERTURN. 113 Mights of Man ; — one of the fatallest omissions ! — l^ay, some- times, as on the Eourth of August, our National Assem- bly, fired suddenly by an almost preternatural enthusiasm, will get through whole masses of work in one night. A memorable night, this ^Fourth of August : Dignitaries tem- poral and spiritual ; Peers, Archbishops, Parlement- Presidents, each outdoing the other in patriotic devotedness, come suc- cessively to throw their now untenable possessions on the ‘ altar of the fatherland.’ With louder and louder vivats — for indeed it is ‘ after dinner ’ too — they abolish Tithes, Seignorial Dues, Gabelle, excessive Preservation of Game ; nay Privilege, Immunity, Feudalism root and branch ; then appoint a Te Deum for it ; and so, finally, disperse about three in the morning, striking the stars with their sublime heads. Such night, unforeseen but for ever memorable, was this of the Fourth of August, 1789. Miraculous or semi-miraculous, some seem to think it. A new Night of Pentecost, shall we say, shaped according to the new Time, and new Church of Jean Jacques Eousseau ? It had its causes ; also its effects. French Revolution, vol i., p. 264. THE GENERAL OVERTURN. Over France, there goes on the indisputablest ^ destruction of formulas; ’ transaction of realities that follow therefrom. So many millions of persons, all gyved, and nigh strangled, with formulas ; whose Life nevertheless, at least the digestion and hunger of it, was real enough! Heaven has at length sent an abundant harvest : but what profits it the poor man, when Earth with her formulas interposes ? Industry, in these times of insurrection, must needs lie dormant ; Capital, as usual, not circulating, but stagnating timorously in nooks. The poor man is short of work, is therefore short of money ; nay even had he money, bread is not to be bought for it. Were it plotting of Aristocrats, plotting of D’ Orleans ; were it 114 FRENCH REVOLUTION. Brigands, preternatural terror, and the clang of Phoebus Apollo’s silver bow, — enough, the markets are scarce of grain, plentiful only in tumult. Farmers seem lazy to thresh ; — being either ‘ bribed ; ’ or needing no bribe, with prices ever rising, with perhaps rent itself no longer so pressing. Neither, what is singular, do municipal enactments, ‘ That along with ‘ so many measures of wheat you shall sell so many of rye,’ and other the like, much mend the matter. Dragoons with drawn swords stand ranked among the corn-sacks, often more dragoons than sacks. Meal-mobs abound ; growing into mobs of a still darker quality. Starvation has been known among the French Commonalty before this ; known and familiar. Did we not see them, in the year 1775, presenting, in sallow faces, in wretchedness and raggedness, their Petition of Grievances ; and, for answer getting a brand-new Gallows forty feet high ? Hunger and Darkness, through long years ! For look back on that earlier Paris riot, when a Great Personage, worn out by debauchery, was believed to be in want of Blood-baths ; and Mothers, in worn raiment, yet with living hearts under it, ‘ filled the public places ’ with their wild Bachel-cries, — stilled also by the Gallows. Twenty years ago, the Friend of Men (preaching to the deaf) described the Limousin Peasants as wearing a pain-stricken {soujpre-douleur) look, a look past complaint, ‘as ‘ if the oppression of the great were like the hail and the ‘ thunder, a thing irremediable, the ordinance of Nature.’ And now if in some great hour, the shock of a falling Bastille sliould awaken you ; and it were found to be the ordinance of Art merely ; and remediable, reversible ! Or lias the Header forgotten that ‘ flood of savages,’ which, in sight of the same Friend of Men, descended from the mountains at Mont d’Or? Lank-haired haggard laces; Hhaj)C8 rawboned, in higli sabots; in woollen jupes, with l('aili(*r girdles studded with copper-nails ! 'Diey rocked from foot to foot, and beat time with their elbows too, as the quarrel and battl(*, which was not long in beginning, went on; shouting fiercely; the lank faces distorted into the similitude THE GENERAL OVERTURN. 115 of a cruel laugli. For they were darkened and hardened : long had they been the prey of excise-men and tax-men ; of ‘ clerks with the cold spurt of their pen.* It was the fixed prophecy of our old Marquis, which no man would listen to, that ‘ such Government by Blind-man’s-buft’, stumbling along ‘ too far, would end by the General Overturn, the Culhute ^ Generale ! * No man would listen, each went his thoughtless way ; — and Time and Destiny also travelled on. The Government by Blind-man’s-buff, stumbling along, has reached the precipice inevitable for it. Dull Drudgery driven on, by clerks with the cold dastard spurt of their pen, has been driven into a Com- munion of Drudges ! For now, moreover, there have come the strangest confused tidings; by Paris Journals with their paper wings ; or still more portentous, where no Journals are, by rumour and conjecture : Oppression not inevitable ; a Bastille prostrate, and the Constitution fast getting ready ! Which Constitution, if it be something and not nothing, what can it be but bread to eat ? The Traveller, ‘ walking up hill bridle in hand,’ overtakes ‘ a poor woman ; ’ the image, as such commonly are, of drudgery and scarcity ; ‘ looking sixty years of age, though she is not ‘ yet twenty-eight.’ They have seven children, her poor drudge and she: a farm, with one cow, which helps to make the children soup ; also one little horse, or garron. They have rents and quit-rents. Hens to pay to this Seigneur, Oat- sacks to that; King’s-taxes, Statute-labour, Church- taxes, taxes enough ; and think the times inexpressible. She has heard that somewhere, in some manner, something is to be done for the poor ; “ God send it soon ; for the dues and taxes ‘ crush us down (nous ecrasent') ! ” Fair prophecies are spoken, but they are not fulfilled. There have been Notables, Assemblages, turnings out and comings in. Intriguing and manoeuvring ; Parliamentary eloquence and arguing, Greek meeting Greek in high places, has long gone on; yet still bread comes not. The harvest is reaped and garnered ; yet still we have no bread. Urged by despair I 2 116 PllENCH REVOLUTION. and by hope, wbat can Drudgery do, but rise, as predicted, and produce tbe General Overturn ? Dancy, then, some Dive full-grown Millions of sucb gaunt figures, with their haggard faces (^figures haves) ; in woollen jupes, with copper-studded leather girths, and high sabots, — starting up to ask, as in forest-roarings, their washed Upper- Classes, after long unreviewed centuries, virtually this ques- tion : How have you treated us ; how have ye taught us, fed us, and led us, while we toiled for you ? The answer can be read in flames, over the nightly summer-sky. This is the feeding and leading we have had of you: Emptiness, — of pocket, of stomach, of head and of heart. Behold there is nothing in us; nothing but what Nature gives her wild children of the desert : Derocity and Appetite ; Strength grounded on Hunger. Did ye mark among your Bights of Man, that man was not to die of starvation, while there was bread reaped by him ? It is among the Mights of Man. Seventy-two Chateaux have flamed aloft in the Maconnais and Beaujolais alone : this seems the centre of the conflagra- tion ; but it has spread over Dauphin^ Alsace, the Lyonnais ; the whole South-East is in a blaze. All over the North, from Bouen to Metz, disorder is abroad: smugglers of salt go openly in armed bands : the barriers of towns are burnt ; toll- gatherers, tax-gatherers, official persons put to flight. ‘ It was thought,’ says Young, ‘ the people, from hunger, would revolt ; ’ and Tve see they have done it. Desperate Lackalls, long prowling aimless, now finding hope in desperation itself, everywhere form a nucleus. They ring the Church-bell by way of tocsin : and the Parish turns out to the work, l^'erocity, atrocity ; hunger and revenge : such work as we can imagine ! Ill stands it now with the Seigneur, wlio, for example, Gias ‘ walled up the only Domitain of the Townshij) who has ridden high on his charticr parchments; who has preserved Game not wis(dy hut too well. Churches also, and Canonrics, are sacked, without mercy; which have shorn ihe flock too close, forgetting to fe(*d it. Wo to the land over which Sansculot- THE GENERAL OVERTURN. 117 tism, in its day of vengeance, tramps rough-shod, — shod in sabots ! Highbred Seigneurs, with their delicate women, and little ones, had to ‘ fly half-naked,’ under cloud of night : glad to escape the flames, and even worse. You meet them at the tahles-d^fiote of inns ; making wise reflexions or foolish that ‘ rank is destroyed ; ’ uncertain whither they shall now wend. The metayer will find it convenient to be slack in paying rent. As for the Tax-gatherer, he, long hunting as a biped of prey, may now find himself hunted as one ; his Majesty’s Exchequer will not ‘ fill up the Deficit,’ this season : it is the notion of many that a Patriot Majesty being the Eestorer of French Liberty, has abolished most taxes, though, for their private ends, some men make a secret of it. Where this will end ? In the Abyss, one may prophesy ; whither all delusions are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time ; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, in Heaven’s Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour ; ‘ The ‘ sign of a Grand Seigneur being landlord,’ says the vehement plain-spoken Arthur Young, ‘ are wastes, landes, deserts, ling : ‘ go to his residence, you will find it in the middle of a forest, ^ peopled with deer, wild boars and wolves. The fields are ‘ scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are of misery. ‘ To see so many millions of hands, that would be industrious, ‘ all idle and starving : Oh, if I were legislator of France for ‘ one day, I would make these great lords skip again 1 ’ O Arthur, thou now actually beholdest them ship wilt thou grow to grumble at that too ? For long years and generations it lasted ; but the time came. Featherbrain, whom no reasoning and no pleading could touch, the glare of the firebrand had to illuminate : there remained but that method. Consider it, look at it ! The widow is gathering nettles for her children’s dinner; a perfumed Seigneur, delicately lounging in the GEil-de-Boeuf, 118 FRENCH REVOLUTION. has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle, and name it Eent and Law: such an arrangement must end. Ought it not ? But, O most fearful is such an ending ! Let those, to whom God, in his great mercy, has granted time and space, prepare another and milder one. French Revolution, vol. i., p. 270. THE ORATOR OF THE HUMAN RACE. It occurred to the mind of Anacharsis Clootz, that while so much was embodying itself into Club or Committee, and perorating applauded, there yet remained a greater and greatest; of which, if it also took body and perorated, what might not the elFect be : Humankind namely, le Genre Humain itself ! In what rapt creative moment the Thought rose in Ana- charsis’ s soul ; all his throes, while he went about giving shape and birth to it ; how he was sneered at by cold worldlings ; but did sneer again, being a man of polished sarcasm ; and moved to and fro persuasive in coffeehouse and soiree, and dived down assiduous-obscure in the great deep of Paris, making his Thought a Pact : of all this the spiritual biographies of that period say nothing. Enough that on the 19th evening of June, 1790, the sun’s slant rays lighted a spectacle such as our foolish little Planet has not often had to show : Anacharsis Clootz entering the august Salle de Manege, with the Human Species at his heels. Swedes, Spaniards, Polacks ; Turks, Chaldeans, Greeks, dwellers in Mesopotamia; behold them all; they have come to claim place in the grand Pederation, having an undoubted interest in it. Our A mbassador titles,” said the fervid Clootz, “are not “ written on parednnent, but on the living hearts of all men.” Tliese whiskor(‘d ]k)laek8, long-flowing turbaned Ishmaelites, aHtrologiciil Chaldeans, who stand so mute here, let them plead with you, august Senators, more eloquently than elo- (juenre could. Tht?y arc the mute representatives of their tongue-tied, ladettered, heavy-laden Nations; who from out THE MILITAEY GRIEVANCES. 119 of that dark bewilderment gaze wistful, amazed, with half- incredulous hope, towards you, and this your bright light of a French Federation: bright particular daystar, the herald of universal day. We claim to stand there, as mute monuments, pathetically adumbrative of much. — From bench and gaUery comes ‘ repeated applause ; ’ for what august Senator but is flattered even by the very shadow of Human Species depending on him ? From President Sieyes, who presides this remarkable fortnight, in spite of his small voice, there comes eloquent though shriU reply, Anacharsis and the ‘Foreigners’ Com- mittee’ shall have place at the Federation; on condition of telling their respective Peoples what they see there. In the meantime, we invite them to the ‘ honours of the sitting, Jion- neur de la seance,^ A long-flowing Turk, for rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity, and utters articulate sounds : but owing to his imperfect Knowledge of the French dialect, his words are like spilt water ; the thought he had in him remains conjectural to this day. French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 60. THE MILITARY GRIEVANCES. Over and above the general quarrel which all sons of Adam maintain with their lot here below, the grievances of the French soldiery reduce themselves to two. First, that their Officers are Aristocrats ; secondly, that they cheat them of their Pay. Two grievances ; or rather we might say one, capable of becoming a hundred ; for in that single first pro- position, that the Officers are Aristocrats, what a multitude of corollaries lie ready ! It is a bottomless ever-flowing foun- tain of grievances this ; what you may call a general raw- material of grievance, wherefrom individual grievance after grievance will daily body itself forth. Kay there will even be a kind of comfort in getting it, from time to time, so embodied. Peculation of one’s Pay! It is embodied; made tangible, made denounceable ; exhalable, if only in angry words. 120 FRENCH REVOLUTION. Tor unluckily that grand fountain of grievances does exist : Aristocrats almost all our Officers necessarily are ; they have it in the blood and bone. By the law of the case, no man can pretend to be the pitifullest lieutenant of militia till he have first verified, to the satisfaction of the Lion-King, a Mobility of four generations. Not nobility only, but four generations of it : this latter is the improvement hit upon, in comparatively late years, by a certain War- Minister much pressed for commissions. An improvement which did relieve the overpressed War-minister, but which split Brance still further into yawning contrasts of Commonalty and Nobility, nay of new Nobility and old ; as if already with your new and old, and then with your old, older and oldest, there were not contrasts and discrepancies enough ; — the general clash whereof men now see and hear, and in the singular whirlpool, all contrasts gone together to the bottom ! Gone to the bottom or going ; with uproar, without return ; going every- where save in the Military section of things ; and there, it may be asked, can they hope to continue always at the top ? Apparently, not. It is true, in a time of external Peace, when there is no fighting, but only drilling, this question, How you rise from the ranks, may seem theoretical rather. But in reference to the Eights of Man it is continually j)ractical. The soldier has sworn to be faithful not to the King only, but to the Law and the Na- tion. Do our commanders love the Eevolution ? ask all soldiers. Unhappily no, they hate it, and love the Counter-Eevolution. Young epauletted men, with quality-blood in them, poisoned with quality-pride, do sniff openly, with indignation struggling to be- come contempt, at our Eiglits of Man, as at some new-fangled cobweb, which shall be brushed down again. * * * * Ask Captain Dampmartiu ; an authentic, iugenious literary officer of Jiorse ; who loves the Eeign of Liberty, after a sort : yet lias had his heart grieved to the (piick many times, in the hot Soiitli- Western region and elsewhere; and has seen riot, civil battle by daylight and by torchlight, and anarchy liate- fuller than death. How insubordinate Troopers, with drink in THE MILITARY GRIEVANCES. 121 their heads, meet Captain Dampmartin and another on the ramparts, where there is no escape or side-path ; and make military salute punctually, for we look calm on them ; yet make it in a snappish, almost insulting manner : how one morning they ‘ leave all their chamois shirts,’ and superfluous buffs, which they are tired of, laid in piles at the captain’s doors ; whereat ‘ we laugh,’ as the ass does eating thistles : nay how they ‘ knot two forage-cords together,’ with universal noisy cursing, with evident intent to hang the Quartermaster : — all this the worthy Captain, looking on it through the ruddy-and-sable of fond regretful memory, has flowingly wTitten down. Men growl in vague discontent ; officers fling up their commissions, and emi- grate in disgust. Or let us ask another literary Officer ; not yet Captain ; Sub-lieutenant only, in the Artillery Eegirnent La Lere: a young man of twenty-one, not unentitled to speak ; the name of him is Napoleon Buonaparte, To such height of Sublieu- tenancy has he now got promoted, from Brienne School, five years ago ; ^ being found qualified in mathematics by La Place.’ He is lying at Auxonne, in the West, in these months; not sumptuously lodged — ‘ in the house of a Barber, to whose wife he did not pay the customary degree of respect ; or even over at the Pavilion, in a chamber with bare walls ; the only furni- ture an indifferent ‘ bed without curtains, two chairs, and in ‘ the recess of a window a table covered with books and papers : ‘ his Brother Louis sleeps on a coarse mattress in an adjoining ‘ room.’ However, he is doing something great : writing his first Book or Pamphlet, — eloquent vehement Letter to M. Matteo Buttafuoco, our Corsican Deputy, who is not a Patriot, but an Aristocrat, wwthy of Deputyship. Joly of Dole is Publisher. The literary Sublieutenant corrects the proofs; ‘ sets out on foot from Auxonne, every morning at four o’clock, ‘ for Dole : after looking over the proofs, he partakes of an ^ extremely frugal breakfast with Joly, and immediately pre- ‘ pares for returning to his garrison ; where he arrives before ‘ noon, having thus walked above twenty miles in the course of / the morning! ’ 122 PRENCH REVOLUTION. This Sublieutenant can remark that, in drawing-rooms, on streets, on highways, at inns, everywhere men’s minds are ready to kindle into a flame. That a Patriot, if he appear in the drawing-room, or amid a group of officers, is liable enough to be discouraged, so great is the majority against him : but no sooner does he get into the street, or among the soldiers, than he feels again as if the whole Nation were with him. That after the famous oath, To the King, to the Nation, and Law, there was a great change ; that before this, if ordered to fire on the people, he for one would have done it in the King’s name ; but that after this, in the Nation’s name, he would not have done it. Likewise that the Patriot Officers, more numerous too in the Artillery and Engineers than elsewhere, were few in number ; yet that having the soldiers on their side, they ruled the regiment ; and did often deliver the Aristocrat brother officer out of peril and strait. One day, for example, ‘ a mem- ‘ her of our own mess roused the mob, by singing from the ‘ windows of our dining-room, O Kichard, O my King ; and I ‘ had to snatch him from their fury.’ All which let the reader multiply by ten thousand ; and spread it, with slight variations, over all the camps and garri- sons of Prance. The French army seems on the verge of uni- versal mutiny. French Revolution, vol. ii., pp. 88 — 90. THE DEATH OF MIRABEAU. The fierce wear and tear of such an existence has wasted out the giant oaken strengtli of Mirabcau. A fret and fever that keeps lieart and brain on fire ; excess of efibrt, of excite- ment ; excess of all kinds : labour incessant, almost beyond credibility! ‘If I had not lived with him,’ says Dumont, ‘ I ‘ never sliould have known what a man can make of one day ; ‘ what things maybe placed within the interval of twelve hours. ‘ A (lay for this man was more than a week or a month is for * others : the mass of things he guided on together was pro- THE DEATH OE MIRABEAU. 123 ' digious ; from the scheming to the executing not a moment ‘ lost.’ — ‘‘Monsieur le Comte,” said his Secretary to him once, “ what you require is impossible.” — “ Impossible ! ” answered he, starting from his chair, “ Ne me dites jamais ce hete de mot, Never name to me that blockhead of a word.” And then the social repasts ; the dinner which he gives as Commandant of National G-uards, which ‘cost five hundred pounds alas, and ‘the Syrens of the Opera;’ and all the ginger that is hot in the mouth : — down what a course is this man hurled ! Cannot Mirabeau stop; cannot he fly, and save himself alive? No! There is a Nessus’ Shirt on this Hercules ; he must storm and burn there, without rest, till he be consumed. Human strength, never so Herculean, has its measure. Herald shadows flit pale across the fire-brain of Mirabeau ; heralds of the pale repose. While he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of ambition and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for him the issue of it will be swift death. In January last, you might see him as President of the Assembly ; ‘ his neck wrapt in linen cloths, at the evening session ; ’ there was sick heat of the blood, alternate darken- ing and flashing in the eyesight ; he had to apply leeches, after the morning labour, and preside bandaged. ‘ At parting he embraced me,’ says Dumont, ‘ with an emotion I had never ‘ seen in him : “I am dying, my friend ; dying as by slow ‘ fire ; we shall perhaps not meet again. When I am gone ‘ they will know what the value of me was. The miseries ‘ I have held back will burst from all sides on Prance.” ’ Sickness gives louder warning; but cannot be listened to. On the 27th day of March, proceeding towards the Assembly, he had to seek rest and help in Priend de Lamarck’s, by the road ; and lay there, for an hour, half-fainted, stretched on a sofa. To the Assembly nevertheless he went, as if in spite of Destiny itself ; spoke, loud and eager, five several times ; then quitted the Tribune — for ever. He steps out, utterly exhausted, into the Tuileries Gardens ; many people press round him, as usual, with applications, memorials ; he says to the Priend who was with him : “Take me out of this !” 124 FRENCH REVOLUTION. And so, on the last day of March, 1791, endless anxious multitudes beset the E/ue de la Chaussee d’Antin ; incessantly inquiring ; within doors there, in that House numbered, in our time 42, the overwearied giant has fallen down, to die. Crowds of all parties and kinds ; of all ranks from the King to the meanest man ! The King sends publicly twice a-day to inquire ; privately besides : from the world at large there is no end of inquiring. ‘ A written bulletin is handed out every three hours,’ is copied and circulated ; in the end, it is printed. The People spontaneously keep silence ; no carriage shall enter vith its noise : there is crowding pressure ; but the Sister of Mirabeau is reverently recognised, and has free way made for her. The People stand mute, heart-stricken ; to all it seems as if a great calamity were nigh : as if the last man of Prance, who could have swayed these coming troubles, lay there at hand-grips with the unearthly Power. The silence of a whole People, the wakeful toil of Cabanis, Priend and Physician, skills not : on Saturday the second day of April, Mirabeau feels that the last of the Days has risen for him ; that on this day he has to depart and be no more. His death is Titanic, as his life has been ! Lit up, for the last time, in the glare of coming dissolution, the mind of the man is all glowing and burning ; utters itself in sayings such as men long remember. He longs to live, yet acquiesces in death, argues not with the inexorable. His speech is wild and won- drous : unearthly Phantasms dancing now their torch-dance round his soul ; the soul itself looking out, fire-radiant, motionless, girt together for that great hour ! At times comes a beam of light from him on the world he is quitting. ‘‘ I carry in my heart the death-dirge of the Prench Monarchy ; the dead remains of it will now be tlie spoil of the factious.” Or again, when ho lieard the cannon fire, wliat is characteristic too : Have we the Acliillos’ Puneral already ?” 8o likewise, while some friend is 8Uj)porting him : Yes, support that lH*ad ; would 1 could be(|ueath it thee !” For the man dies as he has lived; self-conscious, conscious of a world looking on. lie gazes forth on the Yoinig fSpring, which for him will never THE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT A HEAD. 125 be Summer. The Sun has risen ; he says, “ Si ce ii'est pas la Dieu, c'est dumoins son cousin germain^ Death has mastered the outworks ; power of speech is gone ; the citadel of the heart still holding out : the moribund giant, passionately, by sign, demands paper and pen ; writes his passionate demand for opium, to end these agonies. The sorrowful Doctor shakes his head : Dormir^ ‘ To sleep,’ writes the other, passionately pointing at it ! So dies a gigantic Heathen and Titan ; stumbling blindly, undismayed, down to his rest. At half- past eight in the morning, Doctor Petit, standing at the foot of the bed, says, “ II ne souffre plus^ His suffering and his working are now ended. French Revolutiony vol. ii., p. 166. THE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT A HEAD. Extremely rheumatic Constitutions have been known to march and keep on their feet, though in a staggering sprawl- ing manner, for long periods, in virtue of one thing only : that the Head were healthy. But this Head of the Erench Con- stitution ! "What King Louis is and cannot help being, Headers already know. A King who cannot take the Consti- tution, nor reject the Constitution, nor any thing at all, but miserably ask. What shall I do ? A King environed with endless confusions ; in whose own mind is no germ of order. Haughty implacable remnants of Koblesse struggling with humiliated repentant Barnave-Lameths ; struggling in that obscure element of fetchers and carriers, of Half-pay braggarts from the Cafe Valois, of Chambermaids, whisperers, and subaltern officious persons ; fierce Patriotism looking on all the while, more and more suspicious, from without : what, in such struggle, can they do ? At best, cancel one another, and produce zero. Poor King! Barnave and your Senatorial Jaucourts speak earnestly into this ear ; Bertrand-Moleville, and Messengers from Coblentz, speak earnestly into that ; the poor Eoyal head turns to the one side and to the other side ; 126 TRENCH REVOLUTION. can turn itself fixedly to no side. Let Decency drop a veil over it : sorrier misery was seldom enacted in the world. This one small fact, does it not throw the saddest light on much ? The Queen is lamenting to Madame Campan : “ What am I to do ? When they, these Barnaves, get us advised to any step which the Noblesse do not like, then I am pouted at; nobody comes to my card-table ; the King’s Couchee is soli- tary.” In such a case of dubiety, what is one to do ? Go inevitably to the ground ! The King has accepted this Constitution, knowing before- hand that it will not serve : he studies it, and executes it in the hope mainly that it will be found inexecutable. King’s ships lie rotting in harbour, their officers gone ; the armies disorganised ; robbers scour the Highways, which wear down unrepaired ; all Public Service lies slack and waste : the Exe- cutive makes no efibrt, or an effort only to throw the blame on the Constitution. Shamming death, ‘faisant la mort I ’ What Constitution, use it in this manner, can march ? ‘ Grow to disgust the Nation,’ it will truly, — unless you first grow to disgust the Nation! It is Bertrand de Moleville’s plan, and his Majesty’s ; the best they can form. French Revolution^ vol. ii., p. 265. THE EMIGRANTS AT COBLENTZ. So many thousands ranking tliere, in bitter hate and menace : King’s Brotliers, all Princes of the Blood except wicked D’ Orleans ; your duelling De Castries, your eloquent Cazales ; Imll-lieaded Malseigiies, a war-god Broglie; Distaft‘ Seigneurs, insulted Officers, all tliat liave ridden across the JIhine-stream ; — I)’ Artois, welcoming Abbe Maury witli a Kiss, and clasping him j)ubliely to his own royal heart! Emigration flowing over the Fronti(*rs, now in drops, now in streams, in various liumoiirs of fear, of petulance, rage and liopo, ever since those first ]3as- tillc days when D’Artois went ‘ to shame the citizens of Paris,’ THE EMIGRANTS AT COB LENTZ. 127 — has swollen to the size of a PhenomenonYor the world. Cob- lentz is become a small extra-national Versailles ; a Versailles in partibus : briguing, intriguing, favouritism, strumpetocracy itself, thej say, goes on there ; all the old activities, on a small scale, quickened by hungry Eevenge. Enthusiasm, of loyalty, of hatred and hope, has risen to a high pitch ; as, in any Coblentz tavern you may hear, in speech and in singing. Maury assists in the interior Council ; much is decided on : for one thing, they keep lists of the dates of your emigrating ; a month sooner, or a month later, determines your greater or your less right to the coming Division of the Spoil. Cazales himself, because he had occa- sionally spoken with a Constitutional tone, was looked on coldly at first : so pure are our principles. And arms are a- hammering at Liege ; ‘ three thousand horses ’ ambling hitherward from the Pairs of Germany : Cavalry enrolling ; likewise Poot-soldiers, ‘in blue coat, red waistcoat, and nankeen trousers.’ They have their secret domestic correspon- dences, as their open foreign : with disaffected Crypto- Aristo- crats, with contumacious Priests, with Austrian Committee in the Tuileries. Deserters are spirited over by assiduous crimps ; Eoyal-Allemand is gone almost wholly. Their route of march, towards Prance and the Division of the Spoil, is marked out, were the Kaiser once ready. “ It is said, they mean to poison the sources ; but,” adds Patriotism making report of it, “ they will not poison the source of Liberty ; ” whereat ‘ on applaudit^ we cannot but applaud. Also they have manufactories of Palse Assignats ; and men that circulate in the interior, distributing and disbursing the same ; one of these we denounce now to Legislative Patriotism : ‘ a man Lebrun by name ; about thirty years of age, with blonde hair and in quantity ; has,’ only for the time being surely, ‘ a black-eye, odil poche ; ’ goes in a wislci with a black horse, — always keeping his Gig ! Dnhappy Emigrants, it was their lot, and the lot of Prance ! They are ignorant of much that they should know : of them- selves, of what is around them. A Political Party that knows 128 FRENCH 'REVOLUTION. not when it is heafeUy may become one of the fatallest of things, to itself, and to all. Nothing will convince these men, that they cannot scatter the French Eevolution at the first blast of their war-trumpet ; that the French Eevolution is other than a blustering Efiervescence, of brawlers and spouters, which at the flash of chivalrous broadswords, at the rustle of gallows-ropes, will burrow itself, in dens the deeper the welcomer. Eut, alas, what man does know and measure himself, and the things that are around him ; — else where were the need of physical fighting at all ? Never, till they are cleft asunder, can these heads believe that a sansculottic arm has any vigour in it : cleft asunder, it will be too late to believe. One may say, Vithout spleen against his poor erring brothers of any side, that above all other mischiefs, this of the Emigrant Nobles acted fatally on France. Could they have known, could they have understood! In the beginning of 1789, a splendour and a terror still surrounded them : the Conflagration of their Chateaux, kindled by moiiths of obstinacy, went out after the Fourth of August ; and might have continued out, had they at all known what to defend, what to relinquish as indefensible. They were still a graduated Hierarchy of Authorities, or the accredited similitude of such : they sat there, uniting King with Commonalty ; transmitting and translating gradually, from degree to degree, the command of the one into the obedience of the other ; rendering command and obedience still possible. Had they understood their place, and what to do in it, this French Eevolution, which went forth explosively in years and in months, might have spread itself over genera- tions; and not a torture-death but a quiet euthanasia have been provided for many things. But they were proud and high, these men ; they were not wise to consider. They spurned all from them in disdainful Imte, they drew tho sword and flung away the scabbard. J-'nince lias not only no 1 1 ierarchy of Authorities, to translate command into obedience; its J I ierarchy of Authorities has fled to the enemies of France ; calls loudly on tho enemies of France to interfere armed, wlio want but a pretext to do that. OLD FRANCE RUSHING DOWN. 129 Jealous Kings and Kaisers miglit have looked on long, medi- tating interference, yet afraid and ashamed to interfere : but now do not the King’s Brothers, and all French nobles. Dignitaries and Authorities that are free to speak, which the King himself is not, — passionately invite us, in the name of Eight and of Might ? Eanked at Coblentz, from Fifteen to Twenty thousand stand now brandishing their weapons, with the cry : On, on ! Yes, Messieurs, you shall on ; — and divide the spoil according to your dates of emigrating. French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 273. OLD FRANCE RUSHING DOWN. In the Months of February and March [1792], it is recorded, the terror, especially of rural France, had risen even to the trans- cendental pitch : not far from madness. In Town and Hamlet is rumour, of war, massacre : that Austrians, Aristocrats, above all, that The Brigands are close by. Men quit their houses and huts ; rush fugitive, shrieking, with wife and child, they know not whither. Such a terror, the eye-witnesses say, never fell on a Nation ; nor shall again fall, even in Eeigns of Terror expressly so-called. The Countries of the Loire, all the Central and Southeast regions, start up distracted, ‘ simul- taneously as by an electric shock for indeed grain too gets scarcer and scarcer. ^ The people barricade the entrances of ‘ Towns, pile stones in the upper stories, the women prepare ‘ boiling water ; from moment to moment expecting the attack. ‘ In the Country, the alarm-bell rings incessant ; troops of ‘ peasants, gathered by it, scour the highways, seeking an ‘ imaginary enemy. They are armed mostly with scythes stuck ‘ in wood ; and, arriving in wild troops at the barricaded Towns, ^ are themselves sometimes taken for Brigands.’ So rushes old France : old France is rushing down. What the end will be is known to no mortal ; that the end is near all mortals may know. French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 280. K 180 FRENCH REVOLUTION. THE JACOBIN CLUB. Great is the Mother-Society : she has had the honour to be denounced by Austrian Kaunitz ; and is all the dearer to Patriotism. By fortune and valour she has extinguished Peuillantism itself, at least the Peuillant Club. This latter, high as it once carried its head, she, on the 18th of Pebruary, has the satisfaction to see shut, extinct ; Patriots having gone thither with tumult, to hiss it out of pain. The Mother- Society has enlarged her locality, stretches now over the whole nave of the Church. Let us glance in, with the worthy Tou- longeon, our old Ex- Constituent Priend, who happily has eyes to see. ‘ The nave of the Jacobins church,’ says he, ‘ is ‘ changed into a vast Circus, the seats of which mount up ^ circularly like an amphitheatre to the very groin of the domed ^ roof. A high Pyramid of black marble, built against one of ‘ the walls, which was formerly a funeral monument, has alone ^ been left standing : it serves now as back to the Office-bearers’ ‘ Bureau. Here on an elevated Platform sit President and Se- ‘ cretaries, behind and above them the white busts of Mirabeau, ‘ of Pranklin, and various others, nay finally of Marat. Pacing ‘ this is the Tribune, raised till it is midway between floor and groin of the dome, so that the speaker’s voice may be in the centre. Prom that point thunder the voices which shake all Europe : down below in silence, are forging the thunderbolts and the firebrands. Penetrating into this huge circuit, wdiere all is out of measure, gigantic, the mind cannot repress some movement of terror and wonder ; the imagination recalls those dread temples which Poetry, of old, had consecrated to the Avcimiim Deities.’ o o Scenes too are in tliis Jacobin Amphitheatre, — had History time for them. Plags of tlio ‘Three Preo Peoples of the Lniverse,’ trinal brotlierly flags of England, America, Prance, liave be(‘n waved liere in concert ; by London Deputation, of ■Wh igM or iriyliH and their Chib, on this hand, and by young J Veiich Citoyeiines on that j beautiful sweet-tongued Pemale THE JACOBIN CLUB. 131 Citizens, who solemnly send over salutation and brotherhood, also tricolor stitched by their own needle, and finally Ears of Wheat ; while the dome rebellows with Vivent les trois jpeuples lihres ! from all throats : — a most dramatic scene. Demoiselle Theroigne recites, from that Tribune in mid air, her persecu- tions in Austria ; comes leaning on the arm of J oseph Chenier, Poet Chenier, to demand Liberty for the hapless Swiss of Chateau-Vieux. Be of hope, ye forty Swiss ; tugging there, in the Brest waters ; not forgotten ! Deputy Brissot perorates from that Tribune ; Desmoulins, our wicked Camille, interjecting audibly from below, “ Coquin ” Here, though oftener in the Cordeliers, reverberates the lion- voice of Danton ; grim Billaud-Varennes is here; Collot d’Herbois, pleading for the Forty Swiss ; tearing a passion to rags. Apophthegmatic Manuel winds up in this pithy way : ‘‘A Minister must perish!” — to which the Amphitheatre responds : “ Tons, Tous^ All, All 1 ” But the Chief Priest and speaker of this place, as we said, is Bobespierre, the long- winded incorruptible man. What spirit of Patriotism dwelt in men in those times, this one fact, it seems to us, will evince : that fifteen hundred human creatures, not bound to it, sat quiet under the oratory of Bobespierre ; nay, listened nightly, hour after hour, applausive ; and gaped as for the word of life. More insupportable individual, one would say, seldom opened his mouth in any Tribune. Acrid, implacable-impotent ; dull- drawling, barren as the Harmattan-wind. He pleads, in endless earnest-shallow speech, against immediate War, against Woollen Caps or bonnets Rouges, against many things ; and is the Trismegistus and Dalai-Lama of Patriot men. Whom nevertheless a shrill-voiced little man, yet with fine eyes, and a broad beautifully sloping brow, rises respectfully to controvert ; he is, say the IN^ewspaper Beporters, ^ M. Louvet, author of the charming Bomance of Fauhlas.'^ Steady, ye Patriots 1 Pull not yet two ways ; with a France rushing panic-stricken in the rural districts, and a Cimmerian Europe storming in on you 1 French Revolution, vol. ii., p, 289. 132 rilENCH REVOLUTION, THE IMPROVISED COMMUNE. As for the Spontaneous Commune, one may say that there never was on Earth a stranger Town- Council. Administra- tion, not of a great City, but of a great Kingdom, in a state of revolt and phrenzy, this is the task that has fallen to it. Enrolling, provisioning, judging; devising, deciding, doing, endeavouring to do : one wonders the human brain did not give way under all this, and reel. But happily human brains have such a talent of taking up simply what they can carry, and ignoring all the rest ; leaving all the rest, as if it were not there ! Whereby somewhat is verily shifted for ; and much shifts for itself. This Improvised Commune walks along, nothing doubting: promptly making front, without fear or flurry, at what moment soever, to the wants of the moment. Were the world on fire, one improvised tricolor Municipal has but one life to lose. They are the elixir and chosen men of Sansculottic Patriotism ; promoted to the forlorn-hope ; un- speakable victory or a high gallows, this is their meed. They sit there, in the Townhall, these astonishing tricolor Muni- cipals ; in Council General ; in Committee of Watchfulness {de Surveillance, which will even become de Salut JBuhlic, of Public Salvation), or what other Committees and Sub- Committees are needful ; — managing infinite Correspondence ; ])assing infinite Decrees : one hears of a Decree being ‘ the ninety-eighth of the day.’ Beady ! is the word. They carry loaded pistols in their pocket ; also some improvised luncheon by way of meal. Or indeed, by and by, traiteurs contract for the supply of repasts, to be eaten on tlie spot, — too lavislily, as it was afterwards grumbled. Tlius they : girt in their tricolor sashes; Municipal note-paper in the one hand, fire-arms in the otlier. They have their Agents out all over France; speaking in lo\^n houses, market-places, highways and byways; agitating, urging to arm; all lu'arts tingling to hear, (ireat is the fire ol’ A nti-A ristocrat el()(|ueiico ; nay some, as Bibliopolic Moinoro, fccem to hint afar off at sometliing which smells of Agrarian THE KISING IN LA VENDEE. 133 Law, and a surgery of the overswoln dropsical strongbox itself ; — whereat indeed the bold Bookseller runs risk of being hanged, and Ex-Constituent Buzot has to smuggle him oif. French Revohition, vol. iii., p. 9. THE RISING IN LA VENDEE. While the Prussian batteries were playing their briskest at Longwi in the North-east, and our dastardly Lavergne saw nothing for it but surrender, — south-westward, in remote, patriarchal La Vendfe, that sour ferment about Nonjuring Priests, after long working, is ripe, and explodes: at the wrong moment for us 1 And so we have eight thousand Peasants at Chatillon-sur-Sevre who will not be balloted for soldiers ; will not have their Curates molested. To whom Bonchamps, Larochejaquelins, and Seigneurs enough of a Royalist turn, will join themselves ; with Stofflets and Charettes ; with Heroes and Chouan Smugglers ; and the loyal warmth of a simple people, blown into flame and fury by theological and seignorial bellows ! So that there shall be fighting from behind ditches, death-volleys bursting out of thickets and ravines of rivers ; huts burning, feet of the pitiful women hurrying to refuge with their children on their back ; seedfields fallow, whitened with human bones ; — ‘ eighty thousand, of all ages, ranks, sexes, flying at once across ‘ the Loire,* with wail borne far on the winds : and in brief, for years coming, such a suite of scenes as glorious war has not offered in these late ages, not since our Albigenses and Cru- sadings were over, — save indeed some chance Palatinate, or so, we might have to ^ burn, by way of exception.’ The ‘ eight- thousand at Chatillon * will be got dispelled for the moment ; the fire scattered, not extinguished. To the dints and bruises of outward battle there is to be added henceforth a deadlier internal gangrene. This rising in La Vendee reports itself at Paris on ’Wednes- day the 29th of August; — ^just as we had got our Electors 134 niENCH EEVOLUTION. elected ; and, in spite of Brunswick and Longwi, were hoping still to have a JS’ational Convention, if it pleased Heaven, But indeed otherwise this Wednesday is to be regarded as one of the notablest Paris had yet seen : gloomy tidings come succes- sively, like Job’s messengers ; are met by gloomy answers. Of Sardinia rising to invade the South-east, and Spain threatening the South, we do not speak. But are not the Prussians masters of Longwi (treacherously yielded, one would say) ; and preparing to besiege Verdun ? Clairfait and his Austrians are encompassing Thionville; darkening the North. Not Met] and now, but the Clermontais is getting harried : flying hulans and hussars have been seen on the Chalons Eoad, almost as far as Sainte-Menehould. Heart, ye Patriots ; if ye lose heart, ye lose all ! It is not without a dramatic emotion that one reads in the Parliamentary Debates of this Wednesday evening ^past seven o’clock,’ the scene with the military fugitives from Longwi. Wayworn, dusty, disheartened, these poor men enter the Legislative, about sunset or after ; give the most pathetic detail of the frightful pass they were in : Prussians billowing round by the myriad, volcanically spouting fire for fifteen hours : we, scattered sparse on the ramparts, hardly a cannoneer to two guns ; our dastard Commandant Lavergne nowhere showing face ; the priming would not catch ; there was no powder in the bombs, — what could we do ? Ilourir^ Die! ” answer prompt voices ; and the dusty fugitives must shriuk elsewhither for comfort. — Tes, Moitrir, that is now the word. ]le Longwi a proverb and a hissing among French strong- ])laces: let it (says the Legislative) be obliterated rather, from the shamed face of the Earth ; — and so there has gone forth Decree, that Longwi shall, were the Prussians once out of it, ‘ be rased,’ and exist only as ploughed ground. French Revolution^ vol. iii., p. 15. SENTENCE OF DEATH. 185 SENTENCE OF DEATH. Is Louis Capet guilty of conspiring against Liberty ? Shall our Sentence be itself final, or need ratifying by Appeal to the People ? If guilty, what Punishment ? This is the form agreed to, after uproar and several hours of tumultuous indecision : these are the Three successive Questions, whereon the Convention shall now pronounce. Paris fioods round their Hall ; multitudinous, many-sounding Europe, and all Nations listen for their answer. Deputy after Deputy shall answer to his name : Gruilty or not Guilty ? As to the Guilt, there is, as above hinted, no doubt in the mind of Patriot men. Overwhelming majority pronounces Guilt ; the unanimous Convention votes for Guilt ; only some feeble twenty-eight voting not Innocence, but refusing to vote at all. Neither does the Second Question prove doubtful, whatever the Girondins might calculate. Would not Appeal to the People be another name for civil war ? Majority of two to one answers that there shall be no Appeal: this also is settled. Loud Patriotism, now at ten o’clock, may hush itself for the night ; and retire to its bed not without hope. Tuesday has gone well. On the morrow comes. What Punishment? On the morrow is the tug of war. Consider therefore if, on this Wednesday morning, there is an affluence of Patriotism ; if Paris stands a-tiptoe, and all Deputies are at their post! Seven-hundred and Forty-nine honourable Deputies ; only some twenty absent on mission, Duchatel and some seven others absent by sickness. Mean- while expectant Patriotism and Paris standing a-tiptoe, have need of patience. For this Wednesday again passes in debate and effervescence ; Girondins proposing that a majority of three-fourths shall be required ; Patriots fiercely resisting them. Danton, who has just got back from mission in the Netherlands, does obtain ‘ order of the day ’ on this Girondin proposal ; nay he obtains further that we decide sans desemparer, in Permanent- session, till we have done. 136 FTIENCH REVOLUTION. And so, finally, at eight in the evening this Third stupendous Voting, by roll-call , or ajp'pel nominal, does begin. What Punishment ? Girondins undecided, Patriots decided, men afraid of Eoyalty, men afraid of Anarchy, must answer here and now. Infinite Patriotism, dusky in the lamp-light, floods all corridors, crowds all galleries ; sternly waiting to hear. Shrill-sounding Ushers summon you by JS'ame and Depart- ment ; you must rise to the Tribune, and say. Eye-witnesses have represented this scene of the Third Y oting, and of the votings that grew out of it ; a scene pro- tracted, like to be endless, lasting, with few brief intervals, from W ednesday till Sunday morning ; as one of the strangest seen in the Eevolution. Long night wears itself into day ; morning’s paleness is spread over all faces ; and again the wintry shadows sink, and the dim lamps are lit : but through day and night and the vicissitudes of hours. Member after Member is mounting continually those Tribune-steps ; pausing aloft there, in the clearer upper light, to speak his Pate-word ; then diving down into the dusk and throng again. Like Phantoms in the hour of midnight ; most spectral, pandemonial ! Kever did President Vergniaud, or any terrestrial President, superintend the like. A King’s Life, and so much else that depends thereon, hangs trembling in the balance. Man after man mounts ; the buzz hushes itself till he have spoken : Death ; Banishment ; Imprisonment till the Peace. Many say. Death ; with what cautious well-studied phrases and para- graphs tliey could devise, of explanation, of enforcement, of faint recommendation to mercy. Many too say. Banishment ; something sliort of Death. The balance trembles, none can yet guess wliitlierward. Whereat anxious Patriotism bellows ; iiT(*pressible by Ushers. Tlui poor Gimndijis, many of tliem, under such fierce bellowing of Patriotism, say Death; justifying, that most miserable word of theirs, by some brief casuistry and jesuitry. Vergniaud liiinself says, Deatli ; justifying by j(‘suitry. Bich Ja'pthetier ISaint-J'argeau bad been of the Noblesse, and tlieii of tlio Patriot Left Side, in the Con- SENTENCE OE DEATH. 137 stituent ; and had argued and reported, there and elsewhere, not a little, against Capital Punishment : nevertheless he now says. Death; a word which may cost him dear. Manuel did surely rank with the Decided in August last ; but he has been sinking and backsliding ever since September and the scenes of September. In this Convention, above all, no word he could speak would find favour; he says now, Banishment; and in mute wrath quits the place for ever — much hustled in the corridors. Philippe Egalite votes, in his soul and conscience. Death ; at the sound of which and of whom even Patriotism shakes its head ; and there runs a groan and shudder through this Hall of Doom. Eobespierre’s vote cannot be doubtful ; his speech is long. Men see the figure of shrill Sieyes ascend ; hardly pausing, passing merely, this figure says ^^La Mort sans phrase. Death without phrases;” and fares onward and downward. Most spectral, pandemonial ! And yet if the Header fancy it of a funereal, sorrowful, or even grave character, he is far mistaken : ‘ the Ushers in the Mountain quarter,’ says Mercier, ‘ had become as Box-keepers at the Opera ; ’ opening and shutting of galleries for privileged persons, for ‘ D’ Orleans Egalite’s mistresses,’ or other high- dizened women of condition, rustling with laces and tricolor. Gallant Deputies pass, and repass thitherward, treating them with ices, refreshments, and small-talk ; the high-dizened heads beck responsive ; some have their card and pin, pricking down the Ayes and Noes, as at a game of Mouge-et-Noir. Eurther aloft reigns Mere D uchesse, with her unrouged Amazons ; she cannot be prevented making long Hahas, when the vote is not La Mort. In these Galleries there is refection, drinking of wine and brandy ‘as in open tavern, en pleine tabagie.'" Betting goes on in all coffeehouses of the neighbourhood. But within doors, fatigue, impatience, uttermost weariness sits now on all visages ; lighted up only from time to time by turns of the game. Members have fallen asleep ; Ushers come and awaken them to vote: other Members calculate whether they shall not have time to run and dine. Eigures rise, like phantoms, pale in the dusky lamp-light ; utter, from this Tribune, only one word : 138 TRENCH REVOLUTION. Death. ^ Tout est optique,^ says Mercier, ^ the world is all an optical shadow.’ Deep in the Thursday night, when the Voting is done, and Secretaries are summing it up, sick Duchatel, more spectral than another, comes borne on a chair, wrapt in blankets, ‘ in nightgown and nightcap,’ to vote for Mercy : one vote it is thought may turn the scale. Ah, no ! In profoundest silence. President Yergniaud, with a voice full of sorrow, has to say : “ I declare, in the name of the Convention, that the punishment it pronounces on Louis Capet is that of Death.” Death by a small majority of Pifty- three. Nay, if we deduct from the one side, and add to the other, a certain Twenty-six, who said Death, but coupled some faintest ineffectual surmise of mercy with it, the majority will be but One, French Revolution, vol. iii., p. 121. PLACE DE LA REVOLUTION. King Louis slept sound, till five in the morning, when Clery, as he had been ordered, awoke him. Clery dressed his hair : while this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept trying it on liis finger ; it was his wedding-ring, which he is now to return to the Queen as a mute farewell. At half- past six, he took tlie Sacrament ; and continued in devotion, and conference with Abbe Edgeworth. He will not see his Eamily : it were too hard to bear. At eiglit, tlie Municipals enter : tlie King gives them his AVull and messages and effects ; which they, at first, brutally refuse to take charge of: lie gives tliem a roll of gold pieces, a hundred and twenty-five louis ; these are to be returned to jMalesherbes, who had lent them. At niuc, Santerre says the hour is come, d'he King begs yet to retire for three minutes. At the end of tliree minutes, Sanferro agjiin says the hour is come. ‘Slamping on the ground with his right-foot, Louis answers: J^nrlonn, lad us go.” -I low the rolling of those drums comes in through the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on PLACE DE LA REVOLUTION. 139 the heart of a queenlj wife ; soon to be a widow ! He is gone, then, and has not seen us ? A Queen weeps bitterly ; a King’s Sister and Children. Over all these Tour does Death also hover : all shall perish miserably save one ; she, as Duchesse d’Angouleine, will live, — not happily. At the Temple Gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of pitiful women, “ Grace, Grace ! ’ ’ Through the rest of the streets there is silence as of the grave. ISTo man not armed is allowed to be there : the armed, did any even pity, dare not express it, each man overawed by all his neighbours. All windows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are shut. N o wheel- carriage rolls this morning in these streets but one only. Eighty-thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed statues of men ; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning, but no word or movement : it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone ; one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of the Dying ; clatter of this death- march falls sharp on the ear, in the great silence ; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and forget the Earth. As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Devolution, once Place de Louis Qiiinze : the Guillotine, mounted near the old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Ear round, all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in the rear; D’Orleans Egalite there in cabriolet. Swift messengers, hoquetons, speed to the Townhall, every three minutes : near by is the Convention sitting, — vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his Prayers of the Dying ; not till five minutes yet has he finished ; then the Carriage opens : What temper is he in ? Ten different wit- nesses will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all tempers ; arrived now at the black Mahlstrom and descent of Death : in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned. “ Take care of M. Edgeworth,” he straightly charges the Lieutenant who is sitting with them ; then they two descend. The drums are beating: Taisez-vous, Silence!” he cries 140 FRENCH REVOLUTION. ‘ in a terrible voice, di'une voix terrible.^ He mounts the scaffold, not vdtbout delay; be is in puce coat, breeches of gray, white stockings. He strips off his coat ; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him : he spurns, resists ; Abbe Edgeworth has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare ; the fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the scaffold, ‘ his face very red,’ and says : ‘‘ Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the scaffold and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies ; I desire that Prance ” A General on horseback, Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand : Tambours P The drums drown the voice. “ Executioners, do your duty ! ” The Exe- cutioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed Hanks will strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis : six of them desperate, him single desperate, struggling there ; and bind him to their plank. Abbe Edge- worth, stooping, bespeaks him : Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven.” The Axe clanks down ; a King’s Life is shorn away. It is Monday the 2 1st of January, 1793. He was aged Thirty-eiglit years four months and twenty-eight days. French Revolution^ vol. iii., p. 130. DECLARATION OF WAR. At home this Killing of a King has divided all friends ; and abroad it lias united all enemies. Praternity of Peoples, Kuvolutionary Propagandism, A theism, Hegicide ; total destruc- tion of social order in this world ! All Kings, and lovers ot Kings, and haters of Anarchy, rank in coalition; as in a war fur life. Jhiglaiid sigiiilies to Citizen Cluiuveliii, the Ambassador or rather A mbassador’s-Cloak, tliat lie must (juit the country in eight days. A mbassador’s-Cloak and Ambassador, Chau- vcliij and Talleyrand, depart accordingly. Talleyrand, implicated THE GIRONDIN FORMULA. 141 in that Iron Press of the Tuileries, thinks it safest to make for America. England has cast out the Embassy : England declares war, — being shocked principally, it would seem, at the condition of the Eiver Scheldt. Spain declares war ; being shocked prin- cipally at some other thing; which doubtless the Manifesto indicates. Nay we find it was not England that declared war first, or Spain first ; but that Erance herself declared war first on both of them a point of immense Parliamentary and Journalistic interest in. those days, but which has become of no interest whatever in these. They all declare war. The sword is drawn, the scabbard thrown away. It is even as Danton said, in one of his all-too gigantic figures : The coalised Kings threaten us ; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the Head of a King.” French Revolution, vol. iii., p. 134. THE GIRONDIN FORMULA. As for the Girondin Eormula, of a respectable Eepublic for the Middle Classes, all manner of Aristocracies being now sufiiciently demolished, there seems little reason to expect that the business will stop there. Liberty, Llquality, Fraternity, these are the words ; enunciative and prophetic. Eepublic for the respectable washed Middle Classes, how can that be the fulfilment thereof? Hunger and nakedness, and nightmare oppression lying heavy on Twenty-five million hearts ; this, not the wounded vanities or contradicted philosophies of philoso- phical Advocates, rich Shopkeepers, rural Noblesse, was the prime mover in the Erench Eevolution ; as the like will be in all such Ee volutions, in all countries. Eeudal Eleur-de-lys had become an insupportably bad marching-banner, and needed to be torn and trampled : but Moneybag of Mammon (for that, in these times, is what the respectable Eepublic for the Middle Classes will signify) is a still worse, while it lasts. Properly, indeed, it is the worst and basest of all banners, and symbols U2 FRENCH REVOLUTION. of dominion among men ; and indeed is possible only in a time of general Atheism, and Unbelief in anything save in brute force and Sensualism ; pride of birth, pride of office, any Known Kind of pride being a degree better than purse-pride. Kreedom, Equality, Brotherhood : not in the Moneybag, but far elsewhere, will Sansculottism seek these things. French Revolution^ voL iii., p. 140. THE SOUL OF THE REVOLUTION. Here is the miracle. Out of that putrescent rubbish of Scepticism, Sensualism, Sentimentalism, hollow Machiavelism, such a Faith has verily risen ; flaming in the heart of a People. A whole People, awakening as it were to consciousness in deep misery, believes that it is within reach of a Fraternal Heaven-on-Earth. With longing arms, it struggles to embrace the Unspeakable ; cannot embrace it, owing to certain causes. — Seldom do we find that a whole People can be said to have any Faith at all; except in things which it can eat and handle. AVhensqever it gets any Faith, its history becomes spirit- stirring, noteworthy. But since the time when steel Europe shook itself simultaneously at the word of Hermit Peter, and rushed towards the Sepulchre where God had lain, there was no universal impulse of Faith that one could note. Since Protestantism went silent, no Luther’s voice, no Zisca’s drum any longer proclaiming that God’s Truth was not the Devil’s Lie ; and the last of the Cameronians (Eenwick was the name of him ; honour to the name of the brave !) sank, shot, on the Castle-hill of Edinburgli, there was no partial impulse of Faith among Nations. Till now, behold, once more this French nation believes ! ]Ieroin, we say, in that astonishing Faith of theirs, lies the miracle. It is a I'kiith undoubtedly of the more prodigious sort, even among Faiths ; and will embody itself in prodigies. It is the soul of that world-prodigy named French Jtcvolutiou ; whereat the world still gazes and shudders. French Revolution^ vol. iii., p. 145. THE GIllONDINS AND THE MOUNTAIN. 143 THE eiRONDINS AND THE MOUNTAIN. The weapons of the Girondins are Political Philosophy, Eespectability and Eloquence. Eloquence, or call it rhetoric, really of a superior order ; Vergniaud, for instance, turns a period as sweetly as any man of that generation. The weapons of the Mountain are those of mere Nature; Audacity and Impetuosity which may become Ferocity, as of men complete in their determination, in their conviction ; nay of men, in some cases, who as Septemberers must either prevail or perish. The ground to be fought for is Popularity : further you may either seek Popularity with the friends of Freedom and Order, or with the friends of Freedom Simple ; to seek it with both has unhappily become impossible. With the former sort, and generally with the Authorities of the Departments, and such as read Parliamentary Debates, and are of Eespectability, and of a peace-loving monied nature, the Girondins carry it. With the extreme Patriot again, with the indigent Millions, espe- cially with the Population of Paris who do not read so much as hear and see, the Girondins altogether lose it, the Mountain carries it. Egoism, nor meanness of mind, is not wanting on either side : Surely not on the Girondin side ; where in fact the instinct of self-preservation, too prominently unfolded by circumstances, cuts almost a sorry figure ; where also a certain finesse, to the length even of shufiling and shamming, now and then shews itself. They are men skilful in Advocate-fence. They have been called the Jesuits of the Eevolution ; but that is too hard a name. It must be owned likewise that this rude blustering Mountain has a sense in it of what the Eevolution means ; which these eloquent Girondins are totally void of. Was the Eevolution made and fought for, against the world, these four weary years that a Formula might be substantiated ; that Society might become methodic^ demonstrable by logic ; and the old Noblesse with their pretensions vanish ? Or ought it not withal to bring some glimmering of light and 144 rHENCH REVOLUTION. alleviation to tlie twenty-five Millions, who sat in .darkness, heavy-laden, till they rose with pikes in their hands ? At least and lowest, one would think it should bring them a proportion of bread to live on ? There is in the Mountain here and there ; in Marat People’ s-friend ; in the incorruptible Seagreen himself, though otherwise so lean and formulary, a heartfelt knowledge of this latter fact; — without which knowledge all other knowledge here is naught, and the choicest forensic eloquence is as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Most cold, on the other hand, most patronising, unsubstantial is the tone of the Girondins towards ‘ our poor brethren;’ — those brethren whom one often hears of under the collective name of ‘ the masses,’ as if they w^ere not persons at all, but mounds of combustible explosive material, for blow- ing down Bastilles with! In very truth, a Eevolutionist of this Kind, is he not a Solecism ? Disowned by Nature and Art ; deserving only to be erased, and disappear 1 Surely, to our poorer brethren of Paris all this Girondin patronage sounds deadening and killing ; if fine-spoken and incontro- vertible in logic, then all the falser, all the hatefuller in fact. Nay doubtless, pleading for Popularity, here among our poorer brethren of Paris, the Girondin has a hard game to play. If he gain the ear of the Kespectable at a distance, it is by insisting on September and such like ; it is at the expense of this Paris where he dwells and perorates. Hard to perorate in such ail auditory 1 AVherefore the question arises : Could we not get ourselves out of this Paris ? Twice *or oftener such an attempt is made. If not we ourselves, thinks Gaudet, then at least our Supplcans might do it. Por every Deputy has his Hupplcant^ or substitute, who will take his place if need be ; might not these assemble, say at Bourgcs, which is a quiet episcopal Town, in quiet Berri, fort^ good leagues off? In that case, wliat profit were it for the Paris ISaiisculottery to insult us ; our Hitpplvam sitting (piict in Bourges, to whom wo could run ? Nay, even the Primary electoral Assemblies, tliinks (iaudet, miglit bo reconvoked, and a New Convention got, with new orders from tlie Sovereign People; and right PRETERNATURAL SUSPICION. 145 / glad were Lyons, were Bourdeaux, Eouen, Marseilles, as yet Provincial Towns, to welcome us in their turn, and become a sort of Capital Towns ; and teach these Parisians reason. Fond schemes; which all misgo! If decreed, in heat of eloquent logic, to-day, they are repealed, by clamour and pas- sionate wider considerations, on the morrow. Will you, 0 Girondins, parcel us into separate Eepublics, then; like the Swiss, like your Americans ; so that there be no Metropolis or indivisible French Nation any more? Tour Departmental Guard seemed to point that way ! Federal Eepublic ? Fede- ralist ? Men and Knitting- women repeat Federaliste, with or without much Dictionary-meaning ; but go on repeating it, as is usual in such cases, till the meaning of it becomes almost magical, fit to designate all mystery of Iniquity ; and Federaliste has grown a word of Exorcism and Ap age- Sat anas. But fur- thermore, consider what ‘ poisoning of public opinion ’ in the Departments, by these Brissot, Gorsas, Caritat-Condorcet Newspapers ! And then also what counter-poisoning, still feller in quality, by a Fere Duchesne of Hebert, brutallest Newspaper yet published on Earth ; by a Fougiff of Gufiroy ; by the ‘ incendiary leaves of Marat ! ’ More than once, on complaint given and effervescence rising, it is decreed that a man cannot both be Legislator and Editor; that he shall choose between the one function and the other. But this too, which indeed could help little, is revoked or eluded ; remains a pious wish mainly. French Revolution, vol. iii., p. 148. PRETERNATUEAL SUSPICION. Imagine, we say, O Eeader, that the Millennium were struggling on the threshold, and yet not so much as groceries could be had, — owing to traitors. With what impetus would a man strike traitors, in that case ! Ah, thou canst not imagine it ; thou hast thy groceries safe in the shops, and little or no hope of a Millennium ever coming ! — But, indeed, as to the L 146 TEENCH EEVOLUTION. temper there was in men and women, does not this one fact saj enough : the height suspicion had risen to ? Pre- ternatural we often called it ; seemingly in the language of exaggeration : but listen to the cold depositions of witnesses. Not a musical Patriot can blow himself a snatch of melody from the Prench horn, sitting mildly pensive on the house-top, but Mercier will recognise it to be a signal which one Plotting Committee is making to another. Distraction has possessed Harmony herself ; lurks in the sound of Marseillaise and Ca- ira. Louvet, who can see as deep into a millstone as the most, discerns that we shall be invited back to our old Hall of the Manege, by a Deputation ; and then the Anarchists will mas- sacre Twenty-two of us, as we walk over. It is Pitt and Cobourg ; the gold of Pitt. — Poor Pitt ! They little know what work he has with his own Priends of the People ; getting them bespied, beheaded, their habeas-corpuses suspended, and his own Social Order and strong-boxes kept tight, — to fancy him raising mobs among his neighbours ! ’But the strangest fact connected with Prench, or, indeed, with human Suspicion, is perhaps this of Camille Desmoulins. Camille’s head, one of the clearest in Prance, has got itself so saturated through every fibre with Preternaturalism of Sus- picion, that, looking back on that Twelfth of July, 1789, when the thousands rose round him, yelling responsive at his word in the Palais-Eoyal Garden, and took cockades, he finds it explicable only on this hypothesis. That they were all hired to do it, and set on by the Poreign and other Plotters. “ It was not for notliing,” says Camille, with insight, that this multitude burst up round me when I spoke ! ” No, not for notliing. Behind, around, before, it is one huge Preternatural Puppet-play of Plots ; Pitt pulling the wires. Almost I con- jecture that I, Camille myself, am a Plot, and wooden with wires. Tlie force of insight could no further go. French Revolution^ vol. iii., p. 185. CHAELOTTE COEDAY. 147 CHAELOTTE COEDAY. Amid the dim ferment of Caen and the World, History specially notices one thing : in the lobby of the Mansion de V Intendance ^ where busy Deputies are coming and going, a young Lady, with an aged valet, taking grave graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She is of stately Herman figure ; in her twenty-fifth year ; of beautiful still countenance ; her name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled D’ Armans, while Nobility still was. Barbaroux has given her a note to Deputy Duperret, — him who once drew his sword in the efiervescence. Apparently she will to Paris on some errand. ^ She was a ‘ Eepublican before the Eevolution, and never wanted energy.’ A completeness, a decision, is in this fair female Figure : ‘ by ‘ energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice ‘ himself for his country.’ What if she, this fair young Char- lotte, had emerged from her secluded stillness, suddenly like a Star ; cruel-lovely, with half-angelic, half-demonic splendour ; to gleam for a moment, and in a moment be extinguished : to be held in memory, so bright complete was she, through long centuries ! — Quitting Cimmerian Coalitions without, and the dim-simmering Twenty-five millions within. History will look fixedly at this one fair Apparition of a Charlotte Corday ; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the little Life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes, swallowed of the Night. With Barbaroux’s Note of Introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday the ninth of July seated in the Caen Diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her good journey : her Father will find a line left, signifying that she is gone to England, that he must pardon her, and forget her. The drowsy Diligence lum- bers along ; amid drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of the Mountain ; in which she mingles not : all night, all day, and again all night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly ; here is Paris, with her thousand black domes — the goal and purpose of thy journey ! Arrived l2 148 FRENCH REVOLUTION. at the Inn de la Providence, in the Eue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room ; hastens to bed ; sleeps all after- noon and night, till the morrow morning. On the morrow morning she delivers her IN’ote to Duperret. Ifc relates to certain Pamily Papers, which are in the Minister of the Interior’s hands, which a Nun, at Caen, an old Convent- friend of Charlotte’s, has need of; which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this, then, was Charlotte’s errand to Paris. She has finished this, in the course of Friday ; — yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several tilings. The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen ; what the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see ; he is sick at present, and confined to home. About eight on the Saturday morning she purchases a large sheath-knife in the Palais-Eoyal ; then straightway, in the Place des Victoires, takes a hackney-coach : “ To the Eue de I’Ecole de Medecine, No. 44.” It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat 1 — The Citoyen Marat is ill, and cannot be seen, which seems to disappoint her much. Her business is with IMarat, then ? Hapless beautiful Charlotte ; hapless squalid Marat ! From Caen, in the utmost West, from Neuchatel in the utmost East, they two are drawing nigh each other ; — they two have, very strangely, business together. — Charlotte, return- ing to her Inn, despatches a short note to Marat ; signifying that she is from Caen, the seat of rebellion; that she desires earnestly to see him, and ‘ will put it in his power to do France a great service.’ No answer. Charlotte writes another note still more pressing ; sets out with it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself. Tired day-labourers have again finished their Week; huge Paris is circling and simmering, manifold, according to its vague wont : this one fair Figure has decision in it ; drives straight, — towards a purpose. It is yellow July evening, wo say, the thirteenth of the month ; eve of the Pastille day, — when ‘ M. IMarat,’ four years ago, in the cn)wd of the Pont Neuf, shrewdly recpiired of that Jh‘H(‘nval llussar-party, which had such friendly dispositions, ‘‘ to dismount, and give up their arms, then,” and became CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 149 notable among Patriot men. Pour years : wbat a road he has travelled ; — and sits now, about half-past seven of the clock, stewing in slipper-bath ; sore afflicted ; ill of Eevolution Pever, — of what other malady, this History had rather not name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man ; with precisely eleven- pence-halfpenny of ready money, in paper ; with slipper-bath ; strong three-footed stool for writing on, the while ; and a squalid — Washerwoman, one may call her ; that is his civic esta- blishment, in Medical-School Street ; thither and not else- whither has his road led him. Not to the reign of Brotherhood and Perfect Pelicity ; yet surely on the way towards that ? — Hark! a rap again 1 A musical woman’s voice, refusing to be rejected : it is the CXtoyenne who would do Prance a service. Marat, recognising from within, cries. Admit her. Charlotte Corday is admitted. “ Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen, the seat oi rebellion, and wished to speak with you.” “ Be seated, mon enfant. Now what are the Traitors doing at Caen ? What Deputies are at Caen ? ” — Charlotte names some Deputies. ‘‘ Their heads shall fall within a fortnight,” croaks the eager People’ s-Priend, clutching his tablets to write : Barbaroux, Betion, writes he with bare shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath : Betion, and Louvet^ and — Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath ; plunges it, with one sure stroke, into the writer’s heart. “ A moi, cTiere amie. Help, dear! ” No more could the Death-choked say or shriek. The helpful Washerwoman running in, there is no Priend of the People, or Priend of the Washerwoman, left; but his life with a groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below. And so Marat, People’s-Priend, is ended ; the lone Stylites has got hurled down suddenly from his Pillar — whitherward^ He that made him knows. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in dole and wail ; re-echoed by Patriot Prance ; and the Convention, ^ Chabot, pale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assassinated,’ may decree him Pantheon Honours, Public Puneral, Mirabeau’s dust making way for him ; and Jacobin Societies, in lamentable oratory, summon up his cha- 150 PJIENCH REVOLUTION. racter, parallel him to One, whom they think it honour to call “the good Sansculotte,” — whom we name not here; also a Chapel may be made, for the urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel ; and new-born children be named Marat ; and Lago-di-Como Hawkers bake mountains of stucco into unbeautiful Busts; and David paint his Picture, or Death- Scene ; and such other Apotheosis take place as the human genius, in these circumstances, can devise : but Marat returns no more to the light of this Sun. One sole circumstance we have read with clear sympathy, in the old Moniteur News- paper: how Marat’s Brother comes from Neuchatel, to ask of the Convention Hhat the deceased Jean- Paul Marat’s musket be given him.’ Por Marat too had a brother, and natural affections ; and was wrapt once in swaddling-clothes, and slept safe in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of men ! — A sister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris. As for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished; the recompense of it is near and sure. The chere amie and neigh- bours of the house flying at her, she ‘ overturns some move- ables,’ intrenches herself till the gendarmes arrive ; then quietly surrenders ; goes quietly to the Abbaye Prison : she alone quiet, all Paris sounding, in wonder, in rage, or admiration, round her. Duperret is put in arrest, on account of her ; his Papers sealed, — which may lead to consequences. Pauchet, in like manner ; though Pauchet had not so much as heard of her. Charlotte, confronted with these two Deputies, praises the grave firmness of Duperret, censures the dejection of Pauchet. On Wednesday morning, the thronged Palais de Justice and ]{evolutionary 'l^ribunal can see her face ; beautiful and calm : she dates it “ fourtli day of the Preparation of Peace.” A strange murmur ran through the Hall at sight of her : you could not say of wliat cluiracter. Tinville has liis indictments and tape-papers ; tlie cutler of the Palais Koyal will testify that he sold her the slmath-knifo ; “ all these details are needless,” interrupted Charlotte ; “ it is I that killed Marat.” “ By whose instigation ? ” “ Hy no one’s.” “ What tempted you, then ? ” “ 11 is crimes. 1 killed one man,” added she, raising her voice CHARLOTTE COllDAY. 151 extremely (extrememenf) ^ as they went on with their questions, “ I killed one man to save a hundred thousand ; a villain, to save innocents ; a savage wild-beast, to give repose to my ‘‘ country. I was a Eepublican before the Eevolution ; I never wanted energy.” There is, therefore, nothing to be said. The public gazes astonished ; the hasty limners sketch her features, Charlotte not disapproving ; the men of law proceed with their formalities. The doom is Death as a murderess. To her Advo- cate she gives thanks ; in gentle phrase, in high-flown classical spirit. To the Priest they send her she gives thanks, but needs not any shriving, any ghostly or other aid from him. On this same evening, therefore, about half-past seven o’clock, from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all on tip- toe, the fatal Cart issues ; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of Murderess ; so beautiful, serene, so full of life ; journeying towards Death, — alone amid the World 1 Many take off their hats, saluting reverently ; for what heart but must be touched ? Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of Mentz, declares that she is greater than Brutus ; that it were beautiful to die with her : the head of this young man seems turned. At the Place de la Eevolution, the countenance of Charlotte wears the same still smile. The executioners pro- ceed to bind her feet ; she resists, thinking it meant as an insult ; on a word of explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck ; a blush of maidenly shame over- spreads that fair face and neck ; the cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to the people. ‘ It is most true,’ says Porster, ‘ that he ‘ struck the cheek insultingly ; for I saw it with my eyes : the ‘ Police imprisoned him for it.’ In this manner have the Beautifullest and the Squalidest come in collision, and extinguished one another. Jean-Paul Marat and Marie- Anne Charlotte Corday both, suddenly, are no more. “ Day of the Preparation of Peace ? ” Alas, how were peace possible or preparable, while, for example, the hearts of lovely Maidens, in their convent-stillness, are 152 FRENCH REVOLUTION. dreaming not of Love-paradises, and the light of Life ; but of Codrus’-sacrifices, and Death well-earned? That twenty-five million hearts have got to such temper, this is the Anarchy ; the soul of it lies in this : whereof not peace can be the embodi- ment ! The death of Marat, whetting old animosities tenfold, will be worse than any life. O, ye hapless Two, mutually extinctive, the Beautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye well — in the Mother’s bosom that bore you both 1 This is the History of Charlotte Corday ; most definite, most complete ; angelic-demonic : like a Star ! Adam Lux goes home, half- delirious ; to pour forth his Apotheosis of her, in paper and print ; to propose that she have a statue with this inscription. Greater than Brutus, Friends represent his danger ; Lux is reckless ; thinks it were beautiful to die with her. French Revolution, vol. iii., pp. 200 — 206, LEVY IN MASS. On the twenty-third of August, Committee of Public Salva- tion, as usual through Barrere, had promulgated, in words not unwortliy of remembering, their Eeport, which is soon made into a Law, of Levy in Mass, ‘ All Prance, and whatsoever it contains of men or resources, is put under requisition,’ says Barrere ; really in Tyrtsean words, the best we know of his. ‘ The Bepublic is one vast besieged city.’ Two hundred and fifty Forges shall, in these days, be set up in the Luxembourg Garden, and round the outer wall of the Tuileries ; to make gun-barrels; in sight of Earth and Heaven! From all ham- h'ts, towards their Departmental Town ; from all Departmental ^J'owns, towards tlic appointed Camp and seat of war, the Sons ol' hV(‘(‘doin shall n)arch ; their banner is to bear : ‘ Le Beuple Franrais drhout contre Irs Tyrans, Tho French People risen against 1’yrants.’ ‘ The young men shall go to the ‘battle; ‘it is their task to conquer: tho married men shall MADAME KOLAND. 153 ‘ forge arms, transport baggage and artillery; provide snbsist- ‘ ence: tbe women shall work at soldiers’ clothes, make tents; ‘ serve in the hospitals : the children shall scrape old linen into ‘ surgeons’-lint : the aged men shall have themselves carried into ‘ public places ; and, there, by their words, excite the courage of ‘ the young ; preach hatred to Kings and unity to the Eepublic.’ Tyrtaean words, which tingle through all Trench hearts. In this humour, then, since no other serves, will Trance rush against its enemies. Headlong, reckoning no cost or consequence ; heading no law or rule but that supreme law, Salvation of the People ! The weapons are, all the iron that is in Trance ; the strength is, that of all the men, women, and children that are in Trance. There, in their two hundred and fifty shed-smithies, in Garden of Luxembourg or Tuileries, let them forge gun-barrels, in sight of Heaven and Earth. French Revolution^ vol. iii., p. 227. MADAME ROLAND. A victim follows who will claim remembrance from seve- ral centuries: Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, the Wife of Poland. Queenly, sublime in her uncomplaining sorrow, seemed she to Eioufie in her Prison. ‘ Something more than is usually found ^ in the looks of women painted itself,’ says Eioufie, ‘ in those ‘ large black eyes of hers, full of expression and sweetness. ‘ She spoke to me often, at the Grate : we were all attentive ‘ round her, in a sort of admiration and astonishment ; she ‘ expressed herself with a purity, with a harmony and prosody ^ that made her language like music, of which the ear could ‘ never have enough. Her conversation was serious, not cold ; ‘ coming from the mouth of a beautiful woman, it was frank and ‘ courageous as that of a great man.’ ‘ And yet her maid said : ‘ “ Before you, she collects her strength ; but in her own room, ‘ she will sit three hours sometimes leaning on the window, and ‘ weeping.” ’ She has been in Prison, liberated once, but recap- tured the same hour : ever since the first of June, in agitation 154 PRENCH EEVOLTJTION. and uncertainty ; which has gradually settled down into the last stern certainty, that of death. In the Abbaye Prison she occupied Charlotte Corday’s apartment. Here in the Concier- gerie, she speaks with Eiouffe, with Ex-Minister Claviere ; calls the beheaded Twenty-two “ JVos miis, our Eriends,” — whom we are soon to follow. During these five months, those Memoirs of hers were written, which all the world still reads. But now, on the 8th of N ovember, ‘ clad in white,’ says Eioufie, ‘ with her long black hair hanging down to her girdle ; she is gone to the Judgment-bar. She returned with a quick step ; lifted her finger, to signify to us that she was doomed : her eyes seemed to have been wet. Eouquier-Tinville’s ques- tions had been ^ brutal ; ’ offended female honour flung them back on him, with scorn, not without tears. And now, short preparation soon done, she too shall go her last road. There went with her a certain Lamarche, ‘ Director of Assignat- printing ; ’ whose dejection she endeavoured to cheer. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, “ to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her : ” a remark- able request; which was refused. Looking at the Statue of Liberty which stands there, she says bitterly ; 0 Liberty, wLat things are done in thy name ! ” Eor Lamarche’ s sake, she will die first ; show liim how easy it is to die : “ Contrary to the order,” said Samson. — “ Pshaw, you cannot refuse the last request of a Lady ; ” and Samson yielded. Hoble white Vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud eyes, long black hair flowing down to the girdle ; and as brave a heart as ever beat in woman’s bosom ! Like a white Grecian Statue, serenely complete, she shines in that black wreck of tilings ; — long memorable. Honour to great Nature, who, in J^aris City, in the Era of Noble-Sentiment and Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Iffilipon, and nourisli lier to clear perennial AVomaiiliood, thougli but on liOgics, Enci/clopcdies, and the Gospel according to J can- J acques ! Biography will long re- member that trait of asking for a pen to write the strange tlioiiglits that were rising in her.” It is as a little light- beam, shedding softness, and a kind of sacredness, over IN CARMAGNOLE COMPLETE. 155 all that preceded : so in her too there was an Unnameahle ; she too was a Daughter of the Infinite ; there were mysteries which Philosophism had not dreamt of! — She left long written counsels to her little Girl ; she said her Husband would not survive her. French Revolution^ vol. iii., p. 251. IN CARMAGNOLE COMPLETE. The suspect may well tremble ; but how much more the open rebels ; — the Girondin Cities of the South 1 Eevolutionary Army is gone forth, under Eonsin the Playwright ; six thousand strong ; ‘ in red nightcap, in tricolor waistcoat, in black-shag ‘ trousers, black-shag spencer, with enormous mustachios, enor- ‘ mous sabre, — \n. carmagnole comjglete and has portable guillo- tines. Eepresentafcive Carrier has got to Nantes, by the edge of blazing La Vendee, which Eossignol has literally set on fire : Carrier will try what captives you make ; what accomplices they have, Eoyalist or Girondin: his guillotine goes always, va toujours ; and his wool-capped ‘ Company of Marat.’ Little children are guillotined, and aged men. Swift as the machine is, it will not serve ; the Headsman and all his valets sink, worn down with work ; declare that the human muscles can no more. Whereupon you must try fusillading ; to which perhaps still frightfuller methods may succeed. In Brest, to like purpose, rules Jean-Bon Saint Andre, with an Army of Eed Nightcaps. In Bourdeaux rules Tallien, with his Isabeau and henchmen ; Guadets, Cussys, Salleses, many fall ; the bloody Pike and Nightcap bearing supreme sway ; the Guillotine coining money. Bristly fox-haired Tallien, once Able Editor, still young in years, is now become most gloomy, potent ; a Pluto on earth, and has the Keys of Tartarus. One remarks however, that a certain Senhorina Cabarus, or call her rather SenJiora and wedded not yet widowed Dame de Dontenai^ brown beautiful woman, daughter of Cabarus the Spanish Merchant, — has softened the red bristly countenance ; plead- 156 FEENCH EEVOLUTION. ing for herself and friends; and prevailing. The Keys of Tartarus, or any kind of power, are something to a woman ; gloomy Pluto himself is not insensible to love. Like a new Proserpine, she, by this red gloomy Dis, is gathered ; and, they say, softens his stone heart a little. Maignet, at Orange in the south ; Lebon, at Arras in the north, become world’s wonders. Jacobin Popular Tribunal, with its National Eepresentative, perhaps where Girondin Popular Tribunal had lately been, rises here and rises there ; where- soever needed. Pouches, Maignet s, Barrases, Prerons scour the Southern Departments ; like reapers, with their guillotine- sickle. Many are the labourers, great is the harvest. By the hundred and the thousand, men’s lives are crept ; cast like brands into the burning. But of the marchings and retreatings of these six thousand no Xenophon exists. Nothing, but an inarticulate hum, of cursing, and sooty frenzy, surviving dubious in the memory of ages ! They scour the country round Paris ; seeking Prisoners ; raising Eequisitions ; seeing that edicts are executed, that the Parmers have thrashed sufficiently ; lowering Church-bells or metallic Virgins. Detachments shoot forth dim, towards remote parts of Prance ; nay, new Provincial Eevolut ionary Armies rise dim, here and there, as Carrier’s Company of Marat, as Tallien’s Bourdeaux Troop ; like sympathetic clouds in an atmosphere all electric. Eonsin, they say, admitted, in candid moments, that his troops were the elixir of the Eascality of the Earth. One sees them drawn up in market-places ; travel- splashed, rougli-bearded, in carmagnole complete : the first exploit is to prostrate what Eoyal or Ecclesiastical monument, crucifix or tlie like, there may be : to plant a cannon at the steeple; fetch down the bell without climbing for it, bell and belfry together. This, however, it is said, depends somewhat on the size of the town : if the town contains much population, and these j)erhaps of a dubious choleric aspect, the Eevolu- tionary Army will do its work gently, by ladder and wrench ; nay pcrhaj)S will take its billet without work at all; and. RISEN AGAINST TYRANTS. 157 refreshing itself with a little liquor and sleep, pass on to the next stage. Pipe in cheek, sabre on thigh ; in Carmagnole complete ! Such things have been ; and maj again be. Charles Second sent out his Highland Host over the Western Scotch Whigs ; Jamaica Planters got Dogs from the Spanish Main to hunt their Maroons with : Prance too is bescoured with a Devil’s Pack, the baying of which, at this distance of half a century, still sounds in the mind’s ear. French Revolution^ vol. iii., pp. 257, 274. kISEN AGAINST TYRANTS. Cut off from Sweden and the world, the Eepublic must learn to make steel for itself ; and, by aid of Chemists, she has learnt it. Towns that knew only iron, now know steel : from their new dungeons at Chantilly, Aristocrats may hear the rustle of our new steel furnace there. Do not bells transmute them- selves into cannon ; iron stancheons into the white- weapon [arme hlanche), by sword cutlery ? The wheels of Langres scream, amid their sputtering fire-halo ; grinding mere swords. The stithies of Charleville ring with gun-making. What say we, Charleville ? Two hundred and fifty-eight Forges stand in the open spaces of Paris itself ; a hundred and forty of them in the Esplanade of the Invalides, fifty-four in the Luxembourg Garden : so many forges stand ; grim Smiths beating and forging at lock and barrel there. The Clockmakers have come, requisitioned, to do the touch-holes, the hard-solder and file- work. Five great Barges swing at anchor on the Seine Stream, loud with boring ; the great press-drills grating harsh thunder to the general ear and heart. And deft Stock-makers do gouge and rasp ; and all men bestir themselves, according to their cunning ; — in the language of hope, it is reckoned that ‘ a thousand finished muskets can be delivered daily.’ Chemists of the Eepublic have taught us miracles of swift tanning : the cordwainer bores and stitches ; — not of ^ wood and pasteboard : ’ 158 FRENCH REVOLUTION. or he shall answer it to Tinville ! The women sew tents and coats, the children scrape surgeons’ -lint, the old men sit in the market-places ; able men are on march ; all men in requisition : from Town to Town flutters, on the Heaven’s winds, this Banner, The Trench People Eisen Against Tyrants. All which is well. But now arises the question : What is to he done for saltpetre ? Interrupted Commerce and the English Navj shut us out from saltpetre ; and without saltpetre there is no gunpowder. Eepublican Science again sits medi- tative; discovers that saltpetre exists here and there, though in attenuated quantity ; that old plaster of walls holds a sprinkling of it ; — that the earth of the Paris Cellars holds a sprinkling of it, diffused through the common rubbish ; that were these dug up and washed, saltpetre might be had. Whereupon, swiftly, see ! the Citoyens, with upshoved bonnet rouge^ or with doffed bonnet, and hair toil- wetted ; digging fiercely, each in his own cellar, for saltpetre. The Earth-heap rises at every door ; the Citoyennes with hod and bucket carrying it up ; the Citoyens, pith in every muscle, shovelling and digging : for life and saltpetre. Dig, my braves ; and right well speed ye ! What of saltpetre is essential the Eepublic shall not want. French Refrolution, vol. iii., p. 281. THE CONVENTION REPRESENTATIVES AND THE ARMY. Consummation of Sansculottism has many aspects and tints : but the brightest tint, really of a solar or stellar brightness, is this whicli the Armies give it. That same fervour of Jaco- binism, which internally fills France with hatreds, suspicions, scaffolds, and Ileason-worship, does, on the Frontiers, show itself as a glorious l^ro patria onori. Ever since Dumouriez’s defection, three Convention Eepresentatives attend every (ieneral. Coininitteo of Salut has sent them ; often with this Jiaconic order only: ‘‘ Do tliy duty, Ah ton deimr^ It is strange, under what impediments tho tiro of Jacobinism, like other such fires, will burn. These Soldiers have shoes of wood CONVENTIO^^ HEPRESENTATIYES AND THE AUMY. 159 and pasteboard, or go booted in baj-ropes, in dead of winter ; they skewer a bast mat round their shoulders, and are destitute of most things. What then ? It is for Eights of Erenchhood, of Manhood, that they fight : the unquenchable spirit, here as elsewhere, works miracles. With steel and bread,’’ says the Convention Eepresentative, “one may get to China.” The Generals go fast to the Guillotine ; justly and unjustly. Erom which what inference ? This, among others : That ill-success is death ; that in victory alone is life ! To conquer or die is no theatrical palabra, in these circumstances, but a practical truth and necessity. All Girondism, Halfness, Compromise is swept away. Eorward, ye Soldiers of the Eepublic, captain and man ! Dash, with your Gallic impetuosity, on Austria, England, Prussia, Spain, Sardinia ; Pitt, Cobourg, York, and the Devil and the World ! Behind us is but the Guillotine ; before us is Victory, Apotheosis and Millenium without end ! See, accordingly, on all Erontiers, how the Sons of Night, astonished after short triumph, do recoil; — the Sons of the Eepublic flying at them, with wild Ca-ira or Marseillaise Aux armes, with the temper of cat-o’-mountain, or demon incarnate ; which no Son of Night can stand ! Spain, which came bursting through the Pyrenees, rustling with Bourbon ban- ners, and went conquering here and there for a season, falters at such cat-o’-mountain welcome ; draws itself in again ; too happy now were the Pyrenees impassable. Not only does Dugommier, conqueror of Toulon, drive Spain back ; he invades Spain. General Dugommier invades it by the Eastern Pyrenees ; General Muller shall invade it by the Western. Shall, that is the word : Committee of Salut 'Public has said it; Eepresentative Cavaignac, on mission there, must see it done. Impossible ! cries Muller. — Infallible! answers Cavaignac. Difficulty, impossibility, is to no purpose. “ The Committee is deaf on that side of its head,” answers Cavaignac, “ n^entend pas de cette oreille la. How many wantest thou, of men, of horses, cannons ? Thou shalt have them. Conquerors, conquered, or hanged, forward we must.” Which things also, even as the Eepresentative spake them. 160 FRENCH REVOLUTION. were done. The Spring of the new Year sees Spain invaded : and Eedoubts are carried, and Passes, and Heights of the most scarped description; Spanish Pield-of&cerism struck mute at such cat-o’-mountain spirit, the cannon forgetting to fire. Swept are the Pyrenees ; Town after Town fiies open, burst by terror or the petard. In the course of another year, Spain will crave Peace ; acknowledge its sins and the Eepublic ; nay, in Madrid, there will be joy as for a victory, that even Peace is got. Pew things, we repeat, can be notabler than these Conven- tion Eepresentatives, with their power more than Kingly. Kay, at bottom are they not Kings, Ahle-men, of a sort ; chosen from the Seven-hundred and Porty-nine Prench Kings ; with this order. Do thy duty ? Eepresentative Levasseur, of small stature, by trade a mere pacific Surgeon- Accoucheur, has mutinies to quell ; mad hosts (mad at the Doom of Custine) bellowing far and wide ; he alone amid them, the one small Eepresentative, — small, but as hard as fiint, which also carries Jire in it ! So too, at Hondschooten, far in the afternoon, he declares that the battle is not lost ; that it must be gained ; and fights, himself, with his own obstetric hand ; — horse shot under him, or say on foot, ‘up to the haunches in ‘ tide- water ; ’ cutting stoccado and passado there, in defiance of Water, Earth, Air, and Pire, the choleric little Eepresen- tative that he was ! Whereby, as natural, Eoyal Highness of York had to withdraw, — occasionally at full gallop ; like to be swallowed by the tide: and his Siege of Dunkirk became a dream, realising only much loss of beautiful siege-artillery and of brave lives. General Houchard, it would appear, stood behind a hedge on this Hondschooten occasion; wherefore they have since guillotined him. French llcvolntion^ vol. iii., p. 282. VICTOEIOUS FRANCE. 161 VICTORIOUS FRANCE. What high feats of arms, therefore, were done in these Fourteen Armies ; and how, for love of Liberty and hope of Promotion, lowborn valour cut its desperate way to Gieneral- ship : and, from the central Carnot in Salut JBuhlic to the outmost drummer on the Frontiers, men strove for their Eepublic, let Eeaders fancy. The snows of Winter, the flowers of Summer continue to be stained with warlike blood. G-aelic impetuosity mounts ever higher with victory ; spirit of Jacobinism weds itself to national vanity : the Soldiers of the Eepublic are becoming, as we prophesied, very Sons of Fire. Barefooted, barebacked : but with bread and iron you can get to China ! It is one Nation against the whole world ; but the Nation has that within her which the whole world will not conquer. Cimmeria, astonished, recoils faster or slower ; all round the Eepublic there rises fiery, as it were, a magic ring of musket- volleying and ga-ira-mg. Majesty of Prussia, as Majesty of Spain, will by and by acknowledge his sins and the Eepublic ; and make a Peace of Bale. French Revolution, vol. iii., p. 287. THE PRISONS. It is time now, however, to cast a glance into the Prisons. When Desmoulins moved for his Committee of Mercy, these Twelve Houses of Arrest held five-thousand persons. Con- tinually arriving since then, there have now accumulated twelve-thousand. They are Ci-devants, Eoyalists ; in far greater part, they are Eepublicans, of various Grirondin, Fayettish, Un-Jacobin colour. Perhaps no human Habitation or Prison ever equalled in squalor, in noisome horror, these Twelve Houses of Arrest. There exist records of personal experience in them, Memoires sur les Prisons ; one of the strangest Chapters in the Biography of Man. 162 PEENCH REVOLUTION. Very singular to look into it : how a kind of order rises up in all conditions of human existence ; and wherever two or three are gathered together, there are formed modes of exist- ing together, habitudes, observances, nay gracefulnesses, joys 1 Citoyen Coittant will explain fully how our lean dinner, of herbs and carrion, was consumed not without politeness and place-aux-clames : how Seigneur and Shoeblack, Duchess and Doll-Tearsheet, flung pellmell into a heap, ranked themselves according to method : at what hour ‘ the Citoyennes took to their needlework ; ’ and we, yielding the chairs to them, endeavoured to talk gallantly in a standing posture, or even to sing and harp more or less. Jealousies, enmities are not wanting ; nor flirtations of an effective character. vVlas, by degrees, even needlework must cease : Plot in the Prison rises, by Citoyen Laflotte and Preternatural Suspicion. Suspicious Municipality snatches from us all implements ; all money and possession, of means or metal, is ruthlessly searched for, in pocket, in pillow and paillasse, and snatched away : red- capped Commissaries entering every cell. Indignation, tem- porary desperation, at robbery of its very thimble. Alls the gentle heart. Old ISTuns shriek shrill discord ; demand to be killed forthwith. No help from shrieking ! Better was that of the two shifty male Citizens, who, eager to preserve an implement or two, were it but a pipe-picker, or needle to darn hose witli, determined to defend themselves : by tobacco. Swift then, as your fell lied Caps are heard in the Corridor rum- maging and slamming, the two Citoyens light their pipes, and begin smoking. Thick darkness envelops them. The Bed Nightcaps, opening the cell, breathe but one mouthful; burst forth into chorus of barking and coughing. “ Qiioi^ Messieurs, cry the two Citoyens, “ you don’t smoke ? Is the pipe dis- agreeable ? l^st-cc (pie vous ne fumez pas?'*'* But tlie lied Nightcaps liavc fled, with slight search : ‘‘ Vous n'aimcz pas la pipe cry the Citoyens, as their door slams-to again. My j)oor brother Citoyens, 0 surely, in a reign of Brotherhood, } on are not the two i would guillotine. Prcnch lUvolution, vol. iii., j). o22. EFEEUVESCENCE OE LUXURY. 163 EFFERVESCENCE OF LUXURY. All Sansculottic things are passing away; all things are becoming Culotfcic. Do but look at the cut of clothes ; that light visible Desult, significant of a thousand things which are not so visible. In winter, 1793, men went in red nightcap ; Municipals themselves in sabots: the very Citoyennes had to petition against such head-gear. But now in this winter, 1794, where is the red nightcap ? With the things beyond the Flood. Tour moneyed Citoyen ponders in what elegantest style he shall dress him- self; whether he shall not even dress himself as the Free Peoples of Antiquity. The more adventurous Citoyenne has already done it. Behold her, that beautiful adventurous Citoyenne: in costume of the Ancient Greeks, such Greek as Painter David could teach ; her sweeping tresses snooded by glittering antique fillet ; bright-dyed tunic of the Greek women; her little feet naked, as in Antique Statues, with mere sandals, and winding- strings of riband, — defying the frost ! There is such an effervescence of Luxury. For your Emigrant Ci-devants carried not their mansions and furnitures out of the country with them ; but left them standing here : and in the swift changes of property, what with money coined on the Place de la Bevolution, what with Army-furnishings, sales of Emigrant Domains and Church Lands and King’s Lands, and then with the Aladdin’ s-lamp of Agio in a time of Paper-money, such mansions have found new occupants. Old wine, drawn from Ci-devant bottles, descends new throats. Paris has swept herself, relighted herself ; Salons, Soupers not Fraternal, beam once more with suitable effulgence, very singular in colour. The fair Cabarus is come out of Prison; wedded to her red- gloomy Dis, whom they say she treats too loftily : fair Cabarus gives the most brilliant soirees. Bound her is gathered a new Bepublican Army, of Citoyennes in sandals ; Ci-devants or other : what remnants soever of the old grace survive, are rallied there. At her right-hand, in this cause, labours' fair Josephine the 164 FRENCH REVOLUTION. "Widow Beauliarnais, though in straitened circumstances: intent, both of them, to blandish down the grimness of Republican austerity, and recivilise mankind. Recivilise, even as of old they were civilised : by witchery of the Orphic fiddle-bow, and Euterpean rhythm ; by the Graces, by the Smiles ! Thermidorian Deputies are there in those soirees: Editor Ereron, Orateur du JPeuple ; Barras, who has known other dances than the Carmagnole. Grim Generals of the Republic are there; in enormous horse-collar neckcloth, good against sabre-cuts ; the hair gathered all into one knot, ‘ flowing down behind, fixed with a comb.’ Among wRich latter, do we not recognise, once more, that little bronze- comp^exioned Artillery- Officer of Toulon, home from the Italian Wars ! Grim enough ; of lean, almost cruel aspect : for he has been in trouble, in ill health ; also in ill favour, as a man pro- moted, deservingly or not, by the Terrorists and Robespierre Junior. But does not Barras know him ? Will not Barras speak a word for him ? Tes, — if at any time it will serve Barras so to do. Somewhat forlorn of fortune, for the present, stands that Artillery- Officer ; looks, with those deep earnest eyes of his, into a future as waste as the most. Taciturn ; yet with the strangest utterances in him, if you awaken him, which smite liome, like light or lightning ; — on tlie whole, rather dangerous ? A ‘ dissocial ’ man ? Dissocial enough ; a natural terror and liorror to all Pliantasms, being himself of the genus Reality 1 lie stands here, without work or outlook, in this forsaken manner; — glances nevertheless, it would seem, at the kind glance of Josephine Beauliarnais ; and, for the rest, with severe countenance, with open eyes, and closed lips, waits what will betide. French FevohUiony vol. iii., p. 348. THE JACOBINS IN FINAL ADJOURNMENT. Where now are tlic Jacobins ? Childless, most decrepit, iiH we saw, sat tlio mighty JMotlier; gnashing not teetli, but emj)ty gums, against a traitorous 'rhcrinidorian Con- THE JACOBINS IN FINAL ADJOUENMENT. 163 veiition and the current of things. Twice were Billaud, Collot and Company accused in Convention, by a Lecointre, by a Legendre ; and the second time, it was not voted calumnious. Billaud from the Jacobin tribune says The lion is not dead, he is only sleeping.” They ask him in Convention, What he means by the awakening of the lion ? And bickerings, of an extensive sort, arose in the Palais-Egalite between Tappe-durs and the Gilt Touthhood ; cries of “ Down with the Jacobins, the Jacoquins^"* coquin meaning scoundrel! The Tribune in mid-air gave battle sound ; answered only by silence and un- certain gasps. Talk was, in Government Committees, of ‘suspending’ the Jacobin Sessions. Hark, there! — it is in Allhall ow-time, or on the Hallow-eve itself, month ci-devant November, year once named of Grace 1794, sad eve for Jacobinism, — volley of stones dashing through our windows, with jingle and execration ! The female Jacobins, famed Tri- coteuses with knitting-needles, take flight ; are met at the doors by a Gilt Touthhood and ‘ mob of four thousand persons ; ’ are hooted, flouted, hustled ; fustigated, in a scandalous manner, cotillons retrousses ; — and vanish in mere hysterics. Sally out, ye male Jacobins! The male Jacobins sally out; but only to battle, disaster and confusion. So that armed Authority has to intervene : and again on the morrow to intervene ; and suspend the J acobin Sessions for ever and a day. — Gone are the Jacobins ; into invisibility ; in a storm of laughter and howls. Their Place is made a Normal School, tlie first of the kind seen ; it then vanishes into a ‘ Market of Thermidor Ninth ; ’ into a Market of Saint-Honore, w^here is now peaceable chaffering for poultry and greens. The solemn temples, the great globe itself ; the baseless fabric ! Are not we such stuff, we and this world of ours, as Dreams are made of ? French Revolution^ vol. iii., p. 358. 166 TRENCH REVOLUTION. THE WHIFF OF ORAPESHOT. It remains to be seen bow the quellers of Sansculottism were themselves quelled, and sacred right of Insurrection was blown away by gunpowder ; wherewith this singular eventful History called French devolution ends. The Convention, driven such a course by wild wind, wild tide, and steerage and non-steerage, these three years, has become weary of its own existence, sees all men weary of it ; and wishes heartily to finish. To the last, it has to strive with contradictions : it is now getting fast ready with a Constitu- tion, yet knows no peace : Sieyes, we say, is making the Con- stitution once more; has as good as made it. Warned by experience, the great Architect alters much, admits much. Distinction of Active and Passive Citizen, that is. Money- qualification for Electors : nay Two Chambers. ‘ Council of Ancients,’ as well as ‘ Council of Eive-hundred; ’ to that con- clusion have we come ! In a like spirit, eschewing that fatal self-denying ordinance of your Old Constituents, we enact not only that actual Convention Members are re-eligible, but that two thirds of them must be re-elected. The Active Citizen Electors shall for this time have free choice of only One-third of their National Assembly. Such enactment, of Two-thirds to be re-elected, we append to our Constitution : we submit our Constitution to the Townships of Erance, and say. Accept hoth, or reject both. Unsavoury as this appendix may be, the Town- ships, by overwlielming majority, accept and ratify. With Directory of Eive ; with Two good Chambers, double-majority of them nominated by ourselves, one hopes this Constitution may ])rovo final. March it will ; for the legs of it, the re-elected Two-thirds, arc already hero, able to march. Sieyes looks at his paper-fabric with just pride. Hut now see how' the contumacious Sections, Lepelletier foremost, kick against the pricks ! Is it not manifest infraction of one’s Elective Eranchiso, Jtights of Man, and Sovereignty of the People, this appendix of re-electing your Two-thirds ? THE WHIFF OF GRAPESITOT. 167 Greedy tyrants who would perpetuate yourselves ! — Eor the truth is, victory over Saint* Antoine, and long right of Insur- rection, has spoiled these men. Nay, spoiled all men. Con- sider too how each man was free to hope what he liked ; and now there is to be no hope, there is to be fruition, fruition of this. In men spoiled by long right of Insurrection, what confused ferments will rise, tongues once begun wagging! Journalists declaim, your Lacretelles, Laharpes ; Orators spout. There is Royalism traceable in it, and Jacobinism. On the West Frontier in deep secrecy, Pichegru, durst he trust his Army, is treating with Conde : in these Sections, there spout wolves in sheep’s clothing, masked Emigrants and Royalists. All men, as we say, had hoped, each that the Election would do something for his own side : and now there is no Election, or only the third of one. Black is united with white against this clause of the Two-thirds; all the Unruly of France, who see their trade thereby near ending. Section Lepelletier, after Addresses enough, finds that such clause is a manifest infraction ; that it, Lepelletier, for one, will simply not conform thereto ; and invites all other free Sections to join it, ‘ in central Committee,’ in resistance to oppression. The Sections join it, nearly all ; strong with their Forty- thousand fighting men. The Convention, therefore, may look to itself! Lepelletier, on this 12th day of Vendemiaire, 4th of October 1795, is sitting in open contravention, in its Convent of Filles Saint-Thomas, Rue Vivienne, with guns primed. The Convention has some Five-thousand regular troops at hand; Generals in abundance ; and a Fifteen-hundred of miscellaneous persecuted Ultra- Jacobins, whom in this crisis it has hastily got together and armed, under the title Patriots of Eighty-nine. Strong in Law, it sends its General Menou to disarm Lepelletier. General Menou marches accordingly, with due summons and demonstration ; with no result. General Menou, about eight in the evening, finds that he is standing ranked in the Rue Vivienne, emitting vain summonses ; with primed guns pointed out of every window at him; and that he cannot disarm 168 FRENCH REVOLUTION. Lepelletier. He lias to return, with whole skin, but without success ; and be thrown into arrest, as ‘ a traitor.’ Whereupon the whole Tort j- thousand join this Lepelletier which cannot be vanquished : to what hand shall a quaking Convention now turn ? Our poor Convention, after such voyaging, just enter- ing harbour, so to speak, has struck on the tar ; — and labours there frightfully, with breakers roaring round it. Forty-thousand of them, like to wash it, and its Sieyes Cargo and the whole future of France, into the deep ! Yet one last time, it struggles, ready to perish. Some call for Barras to be made Commandant ; he conquered in Thermidor. Some, what is more to the purpose, bethink them of the Citizen Buonaparte, unemployed Artillery-Officer, who took Toulon. A man of head, a man of action : Barras is named Commandant’s- Cloak ; this young Artillery-Officer is named Commandant. He was in the Oallery at the moment, and heard it ; he withdrew, some half-hour, to consider with himself: after a half-hour of grim compressed considering, to be or not to be, he answers Yea. And now, a man of head being at the centre of it, the whole matter gets vital. Swift, to Camp of Sablons ; to secure the Artillery, there are not twenty men guarding it ! A swift Adjutant, Murat is the name of him, gallops ; gets thither some minutes witliin time, for Lepelletier was also on march that way : the Cannon are ours. And now beset this post, and beset that ; rapid and firm : at Wicket of the Louvre, in Cul-de-sac ])auphin, in Itue Saint-Honorc, from Pont Neuf all along the north Quays, southward to Pont ci-devant Eoyal, — rank round the Sanctuary of the Tuileries, a ring of steel discipline ; let every gunner have his match burning, and all men stand to their arms ! "J'lms there is Permanent-session through the night ; and thus at sunrise of the morrow, there is seen sacred Insurrec- tion once again: vessel of state labouring on the bar; and tumultuous seas all round her, beating gcncrale^ arming and sounding, — not ringing tocsin, for we have left no tocsin but our own in the I’avilioii of Unity. It is an imminence of THE WHIFF OF GRAPESHOT. 169 shipwreck, for the whole world to gaze at. Prightfully she labours, that poor ship within cable-length of port ; huge peril for her. However, she has a man at the helm. Insurgent messages, received and not received ; messenger admitted blind- folded ; counsel and counter-counsel : the poor ship labours ! — Venderniaire 13th, year 4 : Curious enough, of all days, it is the fifth day of October, anniversary of that Menad-march, six years ago ; by sacred right of Insurrection, we are got thus far. Lepelletier has seized the Church of Saint-Eoch ; has seized the Pont-Neuf, our piquet there retreating without fire. Stray shots fall from Lepelletier ; rattle down on the very Tuileries staircase. On the other hand, women advance dishevelled, shrieking. Peace ; Lepelletier behind them waving its hat in sign that we shall fraternise. Steady ! The Artillery- Officer is steady as bronze ; can, if need were, be quick as lightning. He sends eight-hundred muskets with ball-cartridges to the Convention itself ; honourable Members shall act with these in case of extremity : whereat they look grave enough. Pour of the afternoon is struck. Lepelletier, making nothing by mes- sengers, by fraternity of hat-waving, bursts out, along the southern Quai Voltaire, along streets and passages, treble- quick, in huge veritable onslaught ! Whereupon, thou bronze Artillery- Officer — ? ‘‘Pire!” say the bronze lips. And roar and thunder, roar and again roar, continual, volcano-like, goes his great gun, in the Cul-de-sac Dauphin against the Church of Saint-Eoch ; go his great guns on the Pont-Eoyal ; go all his great guns ; — blow to air some two-hundred men, mainly about the Church of Saint-Eoch! Lepelletier cannot stand such horse-play ; no Sectioner can stand it ; the Porty-thousand yield on all sides, scour towards covert. ‘ Some hundred or so of them gathered about the Theatre de la Eepublique ; but,’ says he, ‘ a few shells dislodged them. It was all finished at six.’ The ship is over the bar, then ; free she bounds shorewards, — amid shouting and vivats ! Citoyen Buonaparte is ‘ named General of the Interior, by acclamation ; ’ quelled Sections have to disarm in such honour as they may ; sacred right of Insur- rection is gone for ever! The Sieyes Constitution can dis- 170 TTvENCH TtEVOLUTION. embark itself, and begin marching. The miraculous Convention Ship has got to land ; — and is there, shall we figuratively say, changed, as Epic Ships are wont, into a kind of Sea Nym^h, never to sail more ; to roam the waste Azure, a Miracle in History ! ‘ It is false,’ says Hapoleon, ‘ that we fired first with blank charge ; it had been a waste of life to do that.’ Most false : the firing was with sharp and sharpest shot : to all men it was plain that here was no sport ; the rabbets and plinths of Saint- Eoch Church shew splintered by it to this hour. — Singular: in old Broglie’s time, six years ago, this Whiff of Grapeshot was promised ; but it could not be given then ; could not have profited then. Now, however, the time is come for it, and the man; and behold, you have it ; and the thing we specifically call French Bevolution is blown into space by it, and become a thing that was ! French Revolution^ vol. iii., p. 376. RELIGIOUS. E E L I G I 0 U S. ♦ THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. The Christian Doctrine we often hear likened to the Greek Philosophy, and found, on all hands, some measurable way superior to it : but this also seems a mistake. The Christian Doctrine, that Doctrine of Humility, in all senses godlike and the parent of all godlike virtues, is not superior, or inferior, or equal, to any doctrine of Socrates or Thales : being of a totally different nature ; differing from these, as a perfect Ideal Poem does from a correct Computation in Arithmetic. He who com- pares it with such standards may lament that, beyond the mere letter, the purport of this divine Humility has never been dis- closed to him ; that the loftiest feeling hitherto vouchsafed to mankind is as yet hidden from his eyes. Miscellanies^ vol. i., p. 455. THE TRUE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. We often hear that the Church is in danger ; and truly so it is, — in a danger it seems not to know of : for, with its tithes in the most perfect safety, its functions are becoming more and more superseded. The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of its Newspapers. These preach to the people daily, weekly ; admonishing kings themselves ; advising peace or war with an authority which only the first Eeformers, and a long-past class of Popes, were possessed of ; indicting 174 HELIGIOUS. moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, consolation, edification ; in all ways diligently ^ administering tlie Discipline of the Church.’ It may be said too, that in private disposition the new Preachers somewhat resemble the Mendicant Priars of old times : outwardly full of holy zeal ; inwardly not without stratagem, and hunger for terrestrial things. Miscellanies^ vol. ii., p. 76. THE BOOK OF JOB. I call that, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, difierent from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book ; all men’s Book ! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending Problem, — man’s destiny, and God’s ways with him here in this earth. And all in such free flowing out- lines ; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity, in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way ; true eyesight and vision for all things ; material things no less than spiritual : the Horse, — ‘ hast thou clothed his neck with thunder ? ’ — ‘ he laughs at the shaking of the spear ! ’ Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconcilia- tion ; oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind ; so soft, and great ; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars ! There is notliing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit. Lectures on Heroes^ p, 78. DAVID, THE HEBKEW KING. On the whole, we make too much of faults : the details of the busincHH liide the real centre of it. Paults ? The greatest of faults, i should say, is to be conscious of none. Beaders of the SPIRITUAL TEACHERS. 175 Bible above all, one would tbink, might know better. Who is called there ‘ the man according to God’s own heart? ’ David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask. Is this your man according to God’s heart ? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward details of a life ; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten ? It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” Of all acts is not, for a man, repentance the most divine ? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same super- cilious consciousness of no sin ; — that is death ; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is dead : it is ‘‘ pure ” as dead dry sand is pure. David’s life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man’s moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck ; yet a struggle never ended ; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature ! Is not a man’s walking, in truth, always that : ‘ a succession of falls ? ’ Man can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards ; now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his struggle he a faithful unconquerable one : that is the question of questions. Lectures on Heroes^ p. SPIRITUAL TEACHERS. There is not a hamlet where poor peasants congregate, but by one means and another a Church- Apparatus has been got together, — roofed edifice, with revenues and belfries ; pulpit, reading-desk, with Books and Methods : possibility, in short. 17G KELIGIOUS. and strict prescription, That a man stand there and speak of spiritual things to men. It is beautiful; — even in its great obscuration and decadence, it is among the beautifulest, most touching objects one sees on the Earth. This Speaking Man has indeed, in these times, wandered terribly from the point ; has, alas, as it were, totally lost sight of the point : yet, at bottom, whom have we to compare with him ? Of all public functionaries boarded and lodged on the Industry of Modern Europe, is there one worthier of the board he has ? A man even professing, and never so languidly making still some endeavour, to save the souls of men : contrast him with a man professing to do little but shoot the partridges of men ! I wish he could find the point again, this Speaking One ; and stick to it with tenacity, with deadly energy ; for there is need of him yet ! The Speaking E unction — this of Truth coming to us with a living voice, nay in a living shape, and as a concrete practical exemplar: this, with all our Writing and Printing Functions, has a perennial place. Could he but find the point again, — take the old spectacles ofi* his nose, and looking up discover, almost in contact with him, what the real Satanas, and soul- devouring, world-devouring Devil, Now is. Past and Present, p. 325. THE MOST HONOURABLE. Two men I lion our, and no third. First, the toil worn Craftsman tliat with earth-made Implement laboriously con- quers the Earth, and makes her man’s. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged lace, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence ; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must jiity as well as love thee! ilardly- entreated Brother! J^r us was thy back so bent, lor us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our THE TRUE MEANING OE PROTESTANTISM. 177 Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting onr battles wert so marred. For in thee too laj a Grod-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded ; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labour; and thy body, like thy Soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on ; thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may ; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. A second man I honour, and still more highly : Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable ; not daily bread, but the Bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty ; endeavouring towards inward Harmony ; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low ? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one : when we can name him Artist ; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implements conquers Heaven for us ! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality ? These two, in all their degrees, I honour : all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united ; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness. Sartor Resartus^ p, 246. THE TRUE MEANING OF PROTESTANTISM. At first view it might seem as if Protestantism were entirely destructive to this that we call Hero-worship, and represent as the basis of all possible good, religious or social, for mankind. One often hears it said that Protestantism intro- 178 RELIGIOUS. duced a new era, radically different from any tlie world had ever seen before : the era of ‘ private judgment,’ as they call it. By this revolt against the Pope, every man became his own Pope ; and learnt among other things, that he must never trust any Pope, or spiritual Hero-captain, any more ! Whereby, is not spiritual union, all hierarchy and subordination among men, henceforth an impossibility ? So we hear it said. — How I need not deny that Protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties ; Popes and much else. Hay, I will grant that English Puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, was the second act of it ; that the enormous Erench Eevolution itself was the third act, whereby all sovereignties, earthly and spiidtual were, as might seem, abolished or made sure of aboli- tion. Protestantism is the grand root from which our whole subsequent European History branches out. Eorthe spiritual will always body itself forth in the temporal history of men ; the spiritual is the beginning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, the cry is everywhere for Liberty and Equality, Independence and so forth ; instead of Kings, Ballot-boxes and Electoral suffrages : it seems made out that any Hero- sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal or things spiritual, has passed away for ever from the world. I should despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my deepest convictions is, that it is not so. AA^ithout sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy ; the liatefulest of things. But I find Protes- tantism, whatever anarchic democracy it have produced, to be tlie beginning of new genuine sovereignty and order. I find it to be a revolt against sovereigns ; the painful but indis- ])eiisablo first preparative for true sovereigns getting place aiiioug us. Lectures on Heroes^ p. 199. POPEKY CAN^^OT COME BACK. 179 THE TRUE FREEMAN. The free man is he who is loyal to the Laws of this Uni- verse ; who in his heart sees and knows, across all contradic- tions, that injustice cannot befal him here ; that except by sloth and cowardly falsity evil is not possible here. The first symptom of such a man is not that he resists and rebels, but that he obeys. As poor Henry Marten wrote in Chepstow Castle long ago — ‘EReader, if thou an oft-told tale wilt trust, Thou’lt gladly do and suffer what thou must.” Gladly ; he that will go gladly to his labour and his suffering, it is to him alone that the Upper Powers are favourable and the Field of Time will yield fruit. ‘ An oft-told tale,’ friend Harry; all the noble of this world have known it, and in various dialects have striven to let us know it ! The essence of all ‘ religion ’ that was and that will be, is to make men free, "Who is he that, in this Life-pilgrimage, will consecrate himself at all hazards to obey God and God’s servants, and to disobey the Devil and his. With pious valour this free man walks through the roaring tumults invincibly, the way whither he is bound. To him in the waste Saharas, through the grim soli- tudes peopled by galvanised corpses and doleful creatures, there is a lodestar ; and his path, whatever those of others be, is towards the Eternal. A man well worth consulting, and taking the vote of, about matters temporal ; and properly the only kind of man. Latter Day ParnyMets — Parliaments, p. 45. POPERY CANNOT COME BACK. Pop^y can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to all lengths. Popery cannot come back, any more than Paganism can , — which also still lingers in some countries. But, indeed, N 2 180 EELIGIOUS. it is with these things, as with the ebbing of the sea : you look at the waves oscillating hither, thither on the beach; for oninutes you cannot tell how it is going : look in half an hour where it is, — look in half a century where your Popehood is ! Alas, would there were no greater danger to our Europe than the poor old Pope’s revival! Thor may as soon try to revive. And in that this oscillation has a meaning. The poor old Popehood will not die away entirely, as Thor has done, for some time yet; nor ought it. We may say, the Old never dies till this happen. Till all the soul of good that was in it have got itself transfused into the practical New. While a good work remains capable of being done by the Eomish form ; or, what is inclusive of all, while a pious life remains capable of being lead by it, just so long, if we consider, will this or the other human soul adopt it, go about as a living witness of it. So long it will obtrude itself on the eye of us who reject it, till we in our practice too have appropriated whatsoever of truth was in it. Then, but also not till then, it will have no charm more for any man. It lasts here for a purpose. Let it last as long as it can. Lectures on Heroes, p. 222. THE WORTH OF FORMULAS. Wliat we call ‘ Formulas ’ are not in their origin bad ; they are indispensably good. Formula is onetliod, habitude, found wherever man is found. Formulas fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten lligliways, leading towards some sacred or high object, wliither many men are bent. Consider it. One man, full of luMirtfelt earnest impulse, finds out a way of doing somewhat, — were it of uttering his soul’s reverence for the Jlighost, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An in- ventor was needed to do that, a^?oc^; he has articulated the dim- struggling thought that dw(‘lt in his own and many hearts. 'J’liiM is his way of doing that; these are his footsteps, the ])eginning oi’ a ‘ Path.’ And now see: the second man travels WHziT PURITANISM HAS DONE. 181 naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer : it is the easiest method. In the footsteps of his foregoer ; yet with improve- ments, changes where such seem good ; at all events with enlargements, the Path ever widening itself as more travel it ; — till at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive. While there remains a City or Shrine, or any Eeality to drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right welcome ! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Eegulated Things in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Pormulas all begin by \)Qmgfull of substance ; you may call them the shin, the articu- lation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there : they had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper’s heart. Much as we talk against Pormulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high significance of true Pormulas ; that they were, and will ever be, the indis- pensablest furniture of our habitation in this world. Lectures on Heroes, p. 291. WHAT PURITANISM HAS DONE. We may censure Puritanism as we please; and no one of us, I suppose, but would find it a very rough defective thing. But we, and all men, may understand that it was a genuine thing ; for Nature has adopted it, and it has grown, and grows. I say sometimes, that all goes by wager of battle in this world ; that strength, well understood, is the measure of all worth. Give a thing time ; if it can succeed, it is a right thing. Look now at American Saxondom ; and at that little Pact of the sailing of the Mayflower, two hundred years ago, from Delft Haven in Holland! Were we of open sense as the Greeks were, we had found a Poem here ; one of Nature’s own Poems, such as she writes in broad facts over great continents. Por it was properly the beginning of America; there were straggling 18 a RELIGIOUS. settlers in America before, some material as of a body was there; but the soul of it was first this. These poor men, driven out of their own country, not able well to live in Holland, determine on settling in the Hew World. Black untamed forests are there, and wild savage creatures ; but not so cruel as Star-Chamber hangmen. They thought the Earth would yield them food, if they tilled honestly ; the everlasting Heaven would stretch, there too, overhead; they should be left in peace, to prepare for Eternity by living well in this world of Time ; worshipping in what they thought the true, not the idolatrous way. They clubbed their small means together ; hired a ship, the little ship Mayflower, and made ready to set sail. In Neale's History of the Puritans is an account of the ceremony of their departure : solemnity, we might call it rather, for it was a real act of worship. Their minister went down with them to the beach, and their brethren whom they were to leave behind ; all joined in solemn prayer (the Prayer too is given), That God would have pity on His poor children, and go with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had made that, He was there also as well as here. Hah ! These men, I think, had a work ! The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then; but nobody can manage to laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weapons and sinews ; it has fire-arms, war-navies ; it has cun- ning in its ten fingers, strength in its right arm ; it can steer ships, fell forests, remove mountains ; it is one of the strongest things under this sun at present ! Lectures on IlerocSy p. 232. WHAT JESUITISM HAS DONE. Ignatius’s black militia, armed with tliis precious message of salvation, have now been campaigning over all the world for about three hundred years; ajid opeidy or secretly have done a liiighly \Nork over all the world. Who can coiuit what a WHAT JESUITISM HAS DONE. 183 work ! Where you meet a man believing in the salutary nature of falsehoods, or the divine authority of things doubtful, and fancying that to serve the Grood Cause he must call the Devil to his aid, there is a follower of TJnsaint Ignatius : not till the last of these men has vanished from the Earth will our account with Ignatius be quite settled, and his black militia have got their mittimus to Chaos again. They have given a new substantive to modern languages. The word ‘Jesuitism,’ now, in all countries, expresses an idea for which there was in Nature no prototype before. Not till these late centuries had the human soul generated that abomination, or needed to name it. Truly they have achieved great things in the world ; and a general result which we may call stupendous. Not victory for Ignatius and the black militia, — no, till the Universe itself become a cunningly devised Fable, and God the Maker abdicate in favour of Beelzebub, I do not see how ‘ victory ’ can fall on that side ! But they have done such deadly execution on the general soul of man ; and have wrought such havoc on the terrestrial and supernal interests of this world, as ensure to Jesuitism a long memory in human annals. How many three-hatted Papas, and scandalous Consecrated Phantasms, cleric and laic, convicted or not yet suspected to be Phantasms and servants of the Devil and not of God, does it still retain in existence in all corners of this afflicted world ! Germany had its war of Thirty Years, among other wars, on this subject ; and had there not been elsewhere a nobler loyalty to God’s Cause than was to be found in Germany at that date, Ignatius with his rosaries and gibbet-ropes, with his honeymouthed Fathers Lammerlein in black serge, and heavy- fisted Fathers Wallenstein in chain armour, must have carried it ; and that alarming Lutheran new-light would have been got extinguished again. The Continent once well quenched out, it was calculated England might soon be made to follow, and then the whole world were blessed with orthodoxy. So it had been computed. But Gustavus, a man prepared to die if needful, Gustavus with his Swedes appeared upon the scene ; nay shortly Oliver Cromwell with his Puritans appeared upon 184 RELIGIOUS. it ; and the computation quite broke down. Beyond seas and within seas, the Wallensteins and Lammerleins, the Hyacinths and Andreas Habernfelds, the Lauds and Charleses, — in fine, Ignatius and all that held of him, — had to cower into their holes again, and try it by new methods. Many were their methods, their fortune various ; and ever and anon, to the hope or the terror of this and the other man of weak judgment, it has seemed that victory was just about to crown Ignatius. True, too true, the execution done upon the soul of mankind has been enormous and tremendous ; but victory to Ignatius there has been none, — and will and can be none. Latter Day Pamphlets — Jesuitism, p. 15. YES THOUGH NO. A man’s ^ religion ’ consists not of the many things he is in doubt of and tries to believe, but of the few he is assured of, and has no need of efibrt for believing. His religion, whatever it may be, is a discerned fact, and coherent system of discerned facts to him ; he stands fronting the worlds and the eternities upon it : to doubt of it is not permissible at all ! He must verify or 6xpel his doubts, convert them into certainty of Yes or No, or they will be the death of his religion. — But, on the other hand, convert them into certainty of Yes and No, or even of Yes though No, as the Ignatian method is, what w ill become of your religion ? Latter Day Pamphlets — Jesuitism, p. 25. OBEDIENCE IS NOT ALWAYS A DUTY. 1 hear mucli of ‘ obedience, ’ how that and the kindred vir- tues are prescribed and cxcinpliiicd by Jesuitism; the truth ol* which, and the merit of wliicli, far be it Iroin mo to deny. Obedience, a virtue universally forgotten in these days, will liave to become universally known again. Obedience is good. THE WORTH OF SYMBOLS. 185 and indispensable ; but if it be obedience to wbat is wrong and false — good Heavens, there is no name for such a depth of human cowardice and calamity; spurned everlastingly by the gods. Loyalty ? Will you be loyal to Beelzebub ? Will you ‘ make a covenant with Death and Hell ? ’ I will not be loyal to Beelzebub ; I will become a nomadic Chactaw rather, a barricading Sansculotte, a Conciliation-hall repealer; — any- thing and everything is venial to that. Latter Day Pamphlets — Jesuitism^ p. 19. THE WORTH OF SYMBOLS. Yes, Friends, not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us ; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward ; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward. Hay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the implement of Fantasy ; the vessel it drinks out of ? Ever in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two) that gleams in from the circumambient Eternity, and colours with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it ; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its colour- giving retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows’-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their Flag ; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen ? Did not the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown ; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differ- ing from a horse-shoe ? It is in and through Symhols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being : those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognise symbolical worth, and prize it the 186 RELIGIOUS. higliest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike ? Sartor Resartus, p. 240. THE BENTHAM DOCTRINE. It is contended by many, that onr mere love of personal Pleasure, or Happiness, as it is called, acting on every indi- vidual, with such clearness as he may easily have, will of itself lead him to respect the rights of others, and wisely employ his own ; to fulfil, on a mere principle of economy, all the duties of a good patriot ; so that, in what respects the State, or the mere social existence of Mankind, Belief, beyond the testimony of the senses, and Virtue, beyond the very common Virtue of loving what is pleasant, and hating what is painful, are to be considered as supererogatory qualifications, as ornamental, not essential. Many there are, on the other hand, who pause over this doctrine ; cannot discover, in such a universe of conflicting atoms, any principle by which the whole shall cohere ; for if every man’s selfishness, infinitely- expansive, is to be hemmed in only by the infinitely-expansive selfishness of every other man, it seems as if we should have a world of mutually-repulsive bodies, with no centripetal force to bind them togetlier ; in which case, it is well known, they would, by and by, diffuse themselves over space, and constitute a remarkable chaos, but no habitable Solar or Stellar System. M iscellanicSf vol. i., p. 459. THE MODERN RELIGION OF CALCULATION. Kcligion in most countries, more or less in every country, irt no long(‘r what it was, and should be, — a thousand-voiced psalm from the heart of IVlaii to his invisible Father, the fountain of all (ioodiu'ss, Ih auty, Truth, and revealed in every revelation of these ; but for the most part a wise, prudential THE ATHEISTICAL DOCTRINE OE CIRCUMSTANCES. 187 feeling, grounded on mere calculation ; a matter, as all others now are, of Expediency and Utility ; whereby some smaller quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a far larger quantum of celestial enjoyment. Thus Eeligion too is Profit, a working for wages ; not Eeverence, but vulgar Hope or Pear. Many, we know, very many, we hope, are still religious in a far different sense ; were it not so, our case were too desperate ; but to witness that such is the temper of the times, we take any calm observant man, who agrees or disagrees in our feeling on the matter, and ask him w^hether our view of it is not in general well founded. Miscellanies^ vol. ii., p. 75. SCIENCE WITHOUT RELIGION. What a modern talks of by that name, Eorces of Nature, Laws of Nature ; and does not figure as a divine thing, not even as one thing at all, but as a set of things, undivine enough, — saleable, curious, good for propelling steam ships ! With our Sciences and Cyclopsedias, we are apt to forget the divineness, in those laboratories of ours. We ought not to forget it ! That once well forgotten, I know not wLat else were worth remem- bering. Most sciences, I think, were then a very dead thing ; withered, contentious, empty, a thistle in late autumn. The best science, without this, is but as the dead timber ; it is not the growing tree and forests, which gives ever new timber among other things ! Man cannot know either, unless he can worship in some w^ay. His knowdedge is a pedantry, and dead thistle, otherwise. Lectures on Heroes, p. 112. THE ATHEISTICAL DOCTRINE OF CIRCUMSTANCES. The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, wLo inculcates on men the necessity and 188 RELIGIOUS. infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our hap- piness depends on the mind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us ; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chieflj inculcates the reverse of this, — that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances ; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us ; the rest would care for itself! Dissentients from this opinion, ex- pressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with ; widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all. Equally mechanical, and of equal simplicity, are the methods proposed by both parties for completing or securing this all- sufficient perfection of arrangement. It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws. Thus is the Body-politic more than ever worshipped and tended ; but the Soul-politic less than ever. Love of country, in any high or generous sense, in any other than an almost animal sense, or mere habit, has little importance attached to it in such reforms, or in the opposition shown them. Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these ; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine : to the discontented, a ‘ taxing macliine ; ’ to the contented, a ‘ macliine for securing property.’ Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable. MiicellanieSy vol. ii., p. 66. SrilUTUAL OULTUllK. To speak a little pedantically, there is a seience of Dynamics in man’s fertuiu's and nature, as well as of jMcchanics. There is a science which treats of, and practically addresses, the SPIUITUAL CULTURE. 189 primary, unmodified forces and energies of man, tlie mysterious springs of Love, and Fear, and Wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, Eeligion, all which have a truly vital and infinite character ; as well as a science which practically addresses the finite, modified developments of these, when they take the shape of immediate ‘motives,’ as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment. ^^ow it is certain, that in former times the wise men, the enlightened lovers of their kind, who appeared generally as moralists. Poets, or Priests, did, without neglecting the Mechanical province, deal chiefly with the Dynamical ; apply- ing themselves chiefly to regulate, increase, and purify the inward primary powers of man ; and fancying that herein lay the main diflSculty, and the best service they could undertake. But a wide difference is manifested in our age. For the wise men, who now appear as Political Philosophers, deal exclu- sively with the mechanical province ; and occupying themselves in counting up and estimating men’s motives, strive by curious checking and balancing, and other adjustments of Profit and Loss, to guide them to their true advantage ; while, unfor- tunately, those same ‘ motives ’ are so innumerable, and so variable in every individual, that no really useful conclusion can ever be drawn from their enumeration. But though Mecha- nism, wisely contrived, has done much for man in a social and moral point of view, we cannot be persuaded that it has ever been the chief source of his worth or happiness. Consider the great elements of human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt man’s life to its present height, and see what part of these he owes to institutions, to Mechanism of any kind; and what to the instinctive, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him, and still continues to him. Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and Dniversities ? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Eoger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons ; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts ; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted 190 RELIGIOUS. spirit upon the earth ? Again, were Homer and Shahspeare members of any heneficed guild, or made Poets by means of it ? Were Painting and Sculpture created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? Ho ; science and art have, from first to last, been the free gift of JSTature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift; often even a fatal one. These things rose up, as it were, by spontaneous growth, in the free soil and sunshine of Hature. They were not planted or grafted, nor even greatly multiplied or improved by the culture or manuring of institutions. Generally speaking, they have derived only partial help from these ; often enough have suffered damage. They made constitutions for them- selves. They originated in the Dynamical nature of man, not in his Mechanical nature. Miscellanies, vol. ii., p. 68. GERMAN MYSTICISM. Mysticism is a word in the mouths of all : yet, of the hun- dred, perhaps not one has ever asked himself what this oppro- brious epithet properly signified in his mind ; or where the boundary between true science and this Land of Chimeras was to be laid down. Examined strictly, mystical^ in most cases, will turn out to be merely synonymous with not understood. Yet surely there may be haste and oversight here; for it is well known, that, to the understanding of anything, two con- ditions are equally required ; intelligihility in the thing itself being no whit more indispensable, than intelligence in the examiner of it. “ I am bound to find you in reasons. Sir,” said .Johnson, “but not in brains;” a speech of the most shocking unpolitcness, yet truly enough expressing the state of the case. It may throw some light on this question, if wo remind our readers of the Jbllowing Jaet. lii tho field of human investiga- tion there are objects of two sorts: Eirst, tho visible, including not only such as are material, and may be seen by the bodily eye ; GERMAN MYSTICISM. 191 but all sucb, likewise , as may be represented in a shaj^e^ before the mind’s eye, or in any way pictured there ; and, secondly, the invisible, or such as are not only unseen by human eyes, but as cannot be seen by any eye ; not objects of sense at all ; not capable, in short, of being or imaged in the mind, or in any way represented by a shape either without the mind or within it. If any man shall here turn upon us, and assert that there are no such invisible objects ; that whatever cannot be so pictured or imagined (meaning imaged) is nothing, and the science that relates to it nothing ; we shall regret the circum- stance. We shall request him, however, to consider seriously and deeply within himself what he means simply by these two words, GrOD and his own SOUL ; and whether he finds that visible shape and true existence are here also one and the same ? If he still persist in denial, we have nothing for it, but to wish him good speed on his own separate path of inquiry ; and he and we will agree to differ on this subject of mysticism as on so many more important ones. We shall not hesitate to admit, that there is in the German mind a tendency to mysticism, properly so called ; as perhaps there is, unless carefully guarded against, in all minds tem- pered like theirs. It is a fault ; but one hardly separable from the excellences we admire most in them. A simple, tender, and devout nature, seized by some touch of divine Truth, and of this perhaps under some rude enough symbol, is rapt with it into a whirlwind of unutterable thoughts, wild gleams of splendour dart to and fro in the eye of the seer, but the vision will not abide with him, and yet he feels that its light is light from heaven, and precious to him beyond all price. A simple nature, a George Fox, or a Jacob B5hme, ignorant of all the ways of men, of the dialect in which they speak, or the forms by which they think, is labouring with a poetic, a religious idea, which, like all such ideas, must express itself by word and act, or consume the heart it dwells in. Yet how shall he speak ; how shall he pour forth into other souls that of which his own soul is full even to bursting ? He cannot speak to us ; he knows not our state, and cannot make known to us his own. 192 RELIGIOUS. His words are an inexplicable rhapsody, a speech in an un- known tongue. "Whether there is meaning in it to the speaker himself, and how much or how true, we shall never ascertain ; for it is not in the language of men, but of one man who had not learned the language of men ; and, with himself, the key to its full interpretation was lost from amongst us. These are mystics ; men who either know not clearly their own meaning, or at least cannot put it forth in formulas of thought, whereby others, with whatever difldculty, may apprehend it. Was their meaning clear to themselves, gleams of it will yet shine through, how ignorantly and unconsciously soever it may have been delivered ; was it still wavering and obscure, no science could have delivered it wisely. In either case, much more in the last, they merit and obtain the name of mystics. To scoffers they are a ready and cheap prey ; but sober persons understand that pure evil is as unknown in this lower Universe as pure good ; and that even in mystics, of an honest and deep- feeling heart, there may be much to reverence, and of the rest more to pity than to mock. Miscellanies^ vol. i., p. 68, 71. Tins MIRACULOUS WORLD ! You remember that fancy of Aristotle’s, of a man who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was brought, on a sudden, into the upper air to see the sun rise. What would his wonder be, says the Philosopher, his rapt astonish- ment, at tlie sight we daily witness with indifference ! With the free open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, liis wliole lieart would be kindled by that sight — he would discern it well to be Godlike — his soul would fall down in worship before it. Now, just such a childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. The first Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first man that began to think, w^as precisely the child- man of Aristotle. Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and strengtli of a man. Nature had, as yet, no name to him ; 1 / WHAT IS MADNESS. 193 he had not yet united under a name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes, and motions, which we now collectively name Universe, JSTature, or the like, — and so with a name dis- miss it from us. To the wild, deep-hearted man all was as yet new, unveiled under names or formulas ; it stood naked, flashing in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable ! Na- ture was to this man what to the Thinker and Prophet it for ever is — -preternatural. This green, flowery, rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas; that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it ; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain : what is it ? Ay, what ? At bottom we do not yet know ; we can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty ; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our ivmt of insight. Tfc is by not thinking that we cease to won- der at it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays — mere words. We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud ‘ electricity,’ and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk ; but what is it ? What made it ? Whence comes ? whither goes it r Science has done much for us ; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great, deep, sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle — wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more — to whosoever will thinJc of it. Lectures on Heroes^ p. 11. WHAT IS MADNESS. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demono- logy, we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us : What is Madness, what are Nerves ? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair- 0 IIELIGIOUS. 19i painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Eeal. "Was Luther’s Picture of the Devil less Eealitj, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or without it ? In every the wisest soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire ; out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earth-rind. Sartor Resartus, p. 281. THE APES OF THE DEAD SEA. Perhaps few narratives in History or Mythology are more significant than that Moslem one, of Moses and the Dwellers by the Dead Sea. A tribe of men dwelt on the shores of that same Asphaltic Lake ; and having forgotten, as we are all prone to do, the inner facts of Nature, and taken up with the falsities and outer semblances of it, were fallen into sad con- ditions, — verging indeed towards a certain far deeper Lake. Whereupon it pleased kind Heaven to send them the Prophet INIoses, with an instructive word of warning, out of which miglit have sprung ‘ remedial measures ’ not a few. But no : the men of tlie Dead Sea discovered, as the valet-species always does in heroes or prophets, no comeliness in Moses ; listened with real tedium to Moses, with light grinning, or witli splenetic sniffs and sneers, affecting even to yawn ; and signified, in short, that they found him a humbug, and even a bore. Sucli was tlie candid theory these men of the Asphalt lijike formed to tliemselves of Moses, That probably he was a humbug, that certainly he was a bore. Moses withdrew ; but Nature and her rigorous veracities did not withdraw. The ]Men of the Dead Sea, when we next went to visit them, were all ‘ clianged into Apes;’ sitting on the trees there, grinning jiow in th(i most ?/; 2 affected manner; gibbering and chattering rowjtlrfr, nonsense ; finding the whole Universe now a most liiidispulable Humbug! Tlie Universe has become a Humbug THE ONLY EPOCH IN SCOTTISH HISTORY. 195 to these Apes who thought it one ! There they sit and chatter, to this hour ; only I think, every Sabbath there returns to them a bewildered half-consciousness, half-remi- niscence ; and they sit, with their wizzened smoke - dried visages, and such an air of supreme tragigality as Apes may ; looking out, through those blinking smoke-bleared eyes of theirs, into the wonderfulest universal smoky Twilight and undecipherable disordered Dusk of Things; wholly an Un- certainty, Unintelligibility, they and it ; and for commentary thereon, here and there an unmusical chatter or mew : — truest, tragicalest Humbug conceivable by the mind of man or ape ! They made no use of their souls ; and so have lost them. Their worship on the Sabbath now is to roost there, with unmusical screeches, and half-remember that they had souls. Didst thou never, O Traveller, fall in with parties of this tribe ? Meseems they are grown somewhat numerous in our day. Past and Present, p. 205. THE ONLY EPOCH IN SCOTTISH HISTORY. In the history of Scotland I can find properly but one epoch : we may say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all, but this Eeformation by Knox. A poor, barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings ; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little better, perhaps, than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other how to divide what they fieeced from these poor drudges ; but obliged, as the Columbian Eepublics are at this day, to make of every altera- tion a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets : this is an historical spec- tacle of no very singular significance ! ‘‘ Bravery ” enough, I doubt not ; fierce fighting in abundance ; but not braver or fiercer than that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors whose exploits we have not found worth dwelling on ! It is a 196 KELIGIOUS. country as yet without a soul ; nothing developed in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal : and now at the Reforma- tion, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes, kindles itself, like a J)eacon set on high ; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth ; whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ’s visible Church — a veritable Hero, if he prove a true man ! Lectures on Heroes^ p. 234. WHAT SCOTLAND OWES TO JOHN KNOX. A country, where the entire people is, or even once has been, laid hold of, filled to the heart with an infinite religious idea, has ‘ made a step from which it cannot retrogade.’ Thought, conscience, the sense that man is denizen of a Uni- verse, creature of an Eternity, has penetrated to the remotest cottage, to the simplest heart. Beautiful and awful, the feeling of a Heavenly Behest, of Duty God-commanded, over-canopies all life. There is an inspiration in such a people : one may say, in a more special sense, ‘ the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.’ Honour to all the brave and true ; everlasting honour to brave old Knox, one of the truest of the true ! That, in the moment while he and his cause, amid civil broils, in convulsion and confusion, were still but, struggling for life, he sent the schoolmaster forth to all comers, and said, Let the people be taught : ” this is but one, and, indeed, an inevitable and comparatively inconsiderable item in his great message to men. His message, in its true compass, was, “ Let men know tliat they are men ; created by God, responsible to God ; who work in any meanest moment of time what will last through eternity.” It is verily a great message. Not plough- ing and hammering machines, not patent digesters (never so ornamental) to digest the ])roduco of these : no, in no wise ; born slaves neither of their fellow men, nor of their own appc- iiles ; but men! This great message Knox did deliver, with a SCOTCH THEOCRACY. 197 man’s voice and strength ; and found a people to believe him. Of such an achievement, we say, were it to be made once only, the results are immense. Thought, in such a country, may change its form, but cannot go out ; the country has attained majority ; thought, and a certain spiritual manhood, ready for all work that man can do, endures there. It may take many forms : the form of hard-fisted money-getting industry, as in the vulgar Scotchman, in the vulgar New Englander ; but as compact developed force, and alertness of faculty, it is still there : it may utter itself, one day, as the colossal Scepticism of a Hume (beneficent this, too, though painful, wrestling Titan-like through doubt and inquiry towards new belief) : and again, some better day, it may utter itself as the inspired Melody of a Burns : in a word, it is there, and continues to manifest itself, in the Voice and the Work of a Nation of hardy, endeavouring, considering men, with whatever that may bear in it, or unfold from it. The Scotch national character origi- nates in many circumstances ; first of all, in the Saxon stuff there was to work on ; but next, and beyond all else except that, in the Presbyterian Gospel of John Knox. Miscellanies^ vol. iv., p. 118. SCOTCH THEOCRACY. The unforgiveable offence in him (John Knox) is, that he wished to set up Priests over the head of Kings. In other words, he strove to make the Government of Scotland a Theocracy, This indeed is properly the sum of his offences ; the essential sin, for w^hich what pardon can there be ? It is most true, he did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theocracy, or Government of God. He did mean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatising or whatever else they might be doing, should walk according to the Gospel of Christ, and understand that this was their Law, supreme over all laws. He hoped once to see such a thing realised; and the Petition, 198 RELIGIOUS. Thy Kingdom come, no longer an empty word. He was sore grieved when he saw greedy worldly Barons clutch hold of the Church’s property ; when he expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was spiritual property, and should be turned to true churchly uses, education, schools, worship ; and the Eegent Murray had to answer, with a shrug of the shoulders, “It is a devout imagination!” This was Knox’s scheme of right and truth ; this he zealously endeavoured after, to realise it. If we think his scheme of truth was too narrow, was not true ; we may rejoice that he could not realise it ; that it remained, after two centuries of effort, unrealisable, and is a ^ devout imagination ’ still. But how shall we blame him for struggling to realise it ? Theocracy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for 1 All Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that purpose. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for it ; Mahomet attained it. Kay, is it not what all zealous men, whether called Priests, Prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially wish, and must wish ? That right and truth, or God’s Law, reign supreme among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in Knox’s time, and nameable in all times, a revealed ‘ Will of God’), towards which the Eeformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. All true Eeformers, as I said, are by the nature of them Priests, and strive for a Theocracy. Lectures on Heroes, p. 246. FRANCE AND ITS FRIESTHOOD. Por a Priesthood, in like manner, whatsoever its titles, pos- flcssions, professions, there is but one (piestioii : Hoes it teach and spiritually guide tliis people, yea or no ? ]f yea, then is all wc*ll. But if no, then let it strive earnestly to alter, for as yet there is nothing well 1 Nothing, w'c say : and indeed is not this that wo call spiritual guidance properly the soul of the whole, the life and eyesight of the whole? The world asks of MAHOMETANISM NOT AN EASY RELIGION. 199 its Church in these times, more passionately than of any other Institution any question, ‘‘ Cans t thou teach us or not?” — A Priesthood in Prance, when the world asked, “ What canst thou do for us ? ” answered only, aloud and ever louder, “ Are we not of Grod ? Invested with all power ? ” — till at length Prance cut short this controversy too, in what frightful way we know. To all men who believed in the Church, to all men who believed in God and the soul of man, there was no issue of the Prench Eevolution half so sorrowful as that. Prance cast out its benighted blind Priesthood into destruction ; yet with what a loss to Prance also ! A solution of continuity, w'hat we may well call such ; and this where continuity is so momentous : the New, whatever it may be, cannot now grow out of the Old, but is severed sheer asunder from the Old, — how much lies wasted in that gap ! That one whole generation of thinkers should be without a religion to believe, or even to contradict ; that Christianity, in thinking Prance, should as it were fade away so long into a remote extraneous tradition, was one of the saddest facts connected with the future of that country. Look at such Political and Moral Philosophies, St.- Simonisms, Eobert-Macairisms, and the ‘ Literature of Despera- tion ! ’ Kingship was perhaps but a cheap waste, compared with this of the Priestship ; under which Prance still, all but unconsciously, labours ; and may long labour, remediless the while. Let others consider it, and take warning by it ! Chartism^ p. 56. MAHOMETANISM NOT AN EASY RELIGION. His Eeligion is not an easy one ; with rigorous fasts, lava- tions, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not ‘ succeed by being an easy religion.’ As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of reli- gion, could succeed by that ! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense, — sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the 200 UELIGIOUS. next! In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler. The poor swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his ‘ honour of a soldier,’ different from drill-regulations and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God’s Heaven as a god-made Man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest daydrudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. Hot happiness, but something higher : one sees this even in the frivolous classes, with their ‘ point of honour ’ and the like. Not by flattering our appetites ; no, by awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any Eeligion gain followers. Lectures on Heroes, p. 113, HOW MAHOMET’S CEEED SUCCEEDED. Mahomet’s Creed we called a kind of Christianity; and really if we look at the wild rapt earnestness with which it was believed and laid to heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain janglings about llomoiousion and Ilomoousion, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead ! The truth of it is embedded in portentous error and falsehood ; but the truth of it makes it be believed, not the falsehood : it succeeded by its truth. A bastard kind of Christianity, but a living kind ; with a heart- life ill it ; not dead, chopping, barren logic merely 1 Out of all tliat rubbish of Arab idolatries, argumentative theologies, traditions, subtleties, rumours and hypotheses of Greeks and .hnvs, with their idle wire-drawings, this wild man of the Desert, with his wild sincere heart, earnest as death and life, with his gr(‘at flashing natural eyesight, had seen into the hernel of tlie matter. Idolatry is nothing : these Wooden idols of yours, ‘ye rub them with oil and wax, and the flies NIL DESPERANDUM. 201 stick on them,’ — these are wood I tell you! They can do nothing for you ; they are an impotent blasphemous pretence : a horror and abomination, if ye knew them. God alone is ; God alone has power; He made us, He can kill us and keep us alive : “ Allah ahbar^ God is great.” Understand that His will is the best for you ; that howsoever sore to flesh and blood, you will find it the wisest, best ; you are bound to take it so ; in this world and in the next, you have no other thing that you can do I — And now if the wild idolatrous men did believe this, and with their fiery hearts lay hold of it to do it, in what form soever it came to them, I say it was well worthy of being believed. Lectures on Heroes^ p. 101. NIL DESPERANDUM. We confess, the present aspect of spiritual Europe might fill a melancholic observer with doubt and foreboding. It is mournful to see so many noble, tender, and high-aspiring minds deserted of that religious light which once guided all such : standing sorrowful on the scene of past convulsions and con- troversies, as on a scene blackened and burnt up with fire ; mourning in the darkness, because there is desolation, and no home for the soul ; or what is worse, pitching tents among the ashes, and kindling weak earthly lamps which we are to take for stars. This darkness is but transitory obscuration : these ashes are the soil of future herbage and richer harvests. Eeligion, Poetry is not dead ; it will never die. Its dwelling and birthplace is in the soul of man, and it is eternal as the being of man. In any point of Space, in any section of Time, let there be a living Man ; and there is an Infinitude above him and beneath him, and an Eternity encompasses him on this hand and on that ; and tones of Sphere-music, and tidings from loftier worlds, will flit round him, if he can but listen, and visit him with holy influences, even in the thickest press of trivialities, or the din of busiest life. Happy the man, happy 202 RELIGIOUS. the nation that can hear these tidings ; that has them written in fit characters, legible to every eye, and the solemn import of them present at all moments to every heart ! That there is, in these days, no nation so happy, is too clear; but that all nations, and ourselves in the van, are, with more or less dis- cernment of its nature, struggling towards this happiness, is the hope and the glory of our time. To us, as to others, success, at a distant or a nearer day, cannot be uncertain. Meanwhile, the first condition of success is, that, in striving honestly ourselves, we honestly acknowledge the striving of our neighbour ; that with a Will unwearied in seeking Truth, we have a Sense open for it, wheresoever and howsoever it may arise. Miscellanies^ vol. i., p. 83. THE GOSPEL OF LABOUE. THE GOSPEL OF LABOHE. SPIRITUAL ENFRANCHISEMENT. May we not say that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement is even this : When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown open ; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister^ that your America is here or nowhere ? ” The situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal : work it out therefrom ; and working, believe, live, be free. Pool ! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of : what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Perm thou give it be heroic, be poetic ? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the Gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth : the thing thou seekest is already with thee, “ here or nowhere,” couldst thou only see ! Sartor Resa^rtus, p. 212, DO THE DUTY THAT LIES NEAREST. Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is 206 THE GOSPEL OF LABOUR. not possible till then; inasmucb as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices : only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that “ Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action.” On which ground too let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service : “ Do the Duty which lies nearest thee^^ which thou knowest to be a Duty ! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer. Sartor Resartus, p. 211. HAPPINESS ENOUGH. The only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself with asking much about was, happiness enough to get his work done. Kot “I can’t eat!” but “I can’t work!” that was the burden of all wise complaining among men. It is, after all, the one unhappiness of a man. That he cannot work ; that he cannot get his destiny as a man fulfilled. Behold, the day is passing swiftly over, our life is passing swiftly over ; and the night cometh, wherein no man can work. The night once come, our happiness, our unhappiness, — it is all abolished ; vanished, clean gone ; a thing that has been : ‘ not of the slightest consequence ’ whether we were happy as eupeptic Curtis, as the fattest pig of Epicurus, or unhappy as Job with potsherds, as musical Byron with Giaours and sensibi- lities of the heart ; as the unmusical meat-jack with hard labour and rust ! But our work, — behold, that is not abolished, that Ims not vanished : our work, behold, it remains, or the want of it remains; — for endless Times and Eternities, remains ; and that is now the solo question with us for evermore! Brief brawling Day, with its noisy phantasms, its j)Oor paper- crowns tinsel-gilt, is gone; and divine everlasting Night, with THE SPHINX RIDDLE. 207 her star-diadems, with her silences and her veracities is come ! What hast thou done, and how? Happiness, unhappiness: all that was but the wages thou hadst ; thou hast spent all that, in sustaining thyself hitherward ; not a coin of it remains with thee, it is all spent, eaten : and now thy work, where is thy work ? Swift out with it, let us see thy work ! Of a truth, if man were not a poor hungry dastard, and even much of a blockhead withal, he would cease criticising his victuals to such extent ; and criticise himself rather, what he does with his victuals. Past and Present^ p, 210. HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD. Men speak too much about the world. Each one of us here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victorious, has he not a Life of his own to lead ? One Life ; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities ; no second chance to ns for evermore ! It were well for us to live not as fools and simulacra, but as wise and realities. The world’s being saved will not save us ; nor the world’s being lost destroy us. We should look to ourselves : there is great merit herein the ‘duty of staying at home ! ’ And, on the whole, to say truth, I never heard of ‘ worlds ’ being ‘ saved * in any other way. That mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Cen- tury with its windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. Eor the saving of the world I will trust confidently to the Maker of the world ; and look a little to my own saving, which I am more competent to ! Lectures on Heroes, p. 285. THE SPHINX RIDDLE. How true is that old Eable of the Sphinx, who sat by the wayside, propounding her riddle to the passengers, which if they could not answer she destroyed them ! Such a Sphinx is 208 THE GOSPEL OF LABOUR. tills Life of ours, to all men and societies of men. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveliness and tender- ness ; the face and bosom of a goddess, but ending in claws and the body of a lioness. There is in her a celestial beauty, — which means celestial order, pliancy to wisdom ; but there is also a darkness, a ferocity, fatality, which are infernal. She is a goddess, but one not yet disimprisoned ; one still half- imprisoned, — the , inarticulate, lovely still encased in the inarticulate, chaotic. How true ! And does she not propound her riddles to us ? Of each man she asks daily, in mild voice, yet with a terrible significance, Knowest thou the meaning of this Day ? What thou canst do To-day ; wisely attempt to do ? ” Nature, Universe, Destiny, Existence, howsoever we name this grand unnameable Eact in the midst of which we live and struggle, is as a heavenly bride and conquest to the wise and brave, to them who can discern her behests and do them ; a destroying fiend to them who cannot. Answer her riddle, it is well with thee. Answer it not, pass on regarding it not, it will answer itself ; the solution of it is a thing of teeth and claws ; Nature is a dumb lioness, deaf to thy pleadings, fiercely devouring. Thou art not now her victorious bride- groom ; thou art her mangled victim, scattered on the preci- pices, as a slave found treacherous, recreant, ought to be and must. Past and Present^ p. 9. LABORARE EST ORARE. Properly speaking, all true Work is Eeligion : and whatso- ever Keligion is not Work may go and dwell among the Drahmins, Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it will ; witli me it shall have no harbour. Admirable was tliat of the old ATonks, ‘ Lahorare est Orare, AVork is Worship.’ Older than all pn'acljcd Gospels was tliis unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, forever-enduring Gospel : AVork, and therein have well-being. Alan, Son of Earili and of Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost licart of Ihco, a Spirit of active Alethod, a THE SACREDNESS OE WORK 209 Force for Work ; — and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent Facts around thee! What is iinmethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable ; obedient and pro- ductive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest Disorder, there is thy eternal enemy; attack him swiftly, subdue him: make Order of him, the subject not of Chaos, but of Intelligence, Divinity, and Thee ! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out, that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it ; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered. Past and Present, p. 270. THE SACREDNESS OF WORK. There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works : in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, Mean, is in communication with Nature ; the real desire to get Work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature’s appointments and regula- tions, which are truth. The latest Grospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. ‘ Know thyself : ’ long enough has that poor ‘ self’ of thine tormented thee ; thou wilt never get to ‘ know ’ it, I believe 1 Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know w'hat thou canst work at ; and work at it, like a Hercules 1 That will be thy better plan. It has been written, an ^ endless significance lies in Work ; ’ a man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities ; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle and foul unwholesome desert thereby. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is 210 THE GOSPEL OF LABOUR. composed into a kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Eemorse, Indigna- tion, Despair itself, all these like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day- worker, as of every man : but he bends himself with free valour against his task, and all these are stiUed, all these shrink murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame. Past and Present, p. 264. THE VALUE OF WORK. To work ! What incalculable sources of cultivation He in that process, in that attempt ; how it lays hold of the whole man, not of a small theoretical calculating fraction of him, but of the whole practical, doing and daring and enduring man ; thereby to awaken dormant faculties, root out old errors, at every step ! He that has done nothing has known nothing. Vain is it to sit scheming and plausibly discoursing : up and be doing 1 If tby knowledge be real, put it forth from thee : grapple with real Nature ; try thy theories there, and see how they hold out. Do one tiling, for the first time in thy life do a tiling ; a new light will rise to thee on the doing of all things wliatsoever. Truly, a boundless significance lies in work ; whereby the humblest craftsman comes to attain much, which is of indispensable use, but which he who is of no craft, were he never so higli, runs the risk of missing. Once turn to IVactice, Error and Truth will no longer consort together : the result of Jk’ror involves you in the square-root of a negative quantity; try to extract that, to extract any earthly substance or Bust(niancc from that 1 The honourable Member can dis- cover that ‘ tliere is a reaction,’ and believe it, and wearisomely reason on it, in spite of all men, while ho so pleases, for still his wine and his oil will not 1‘ail him : but the sooty Brazier, who discovered that brass was green-cheese, has to net on his WHAT WORK HAS DONE. 211 discovery : finds therefore, that, singular as it may seem, brass cannot be masticated for dinner, green-cheese will not beat into fire-proof dishes ; that such discovery, therefore, has no legs to stand on, and must even be let fall. Now, take this principle of difference through the entire lives of two men, and calculate what it will amount to ! Necessity, moreover, which we here see as the mother of Accuracy, is well known as the mother of Invention. He who wants everything, must know many things, do many things, to procure even a few : difierent enough with him whose indispensable knowledge is this only, that a finger will pull the bell ! Miscellanies^ vol. iii., p. 166. WHAT WORK HAS DONE. It is all work and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed, articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred World. The hands of forgotten brave men have made it a World for us ; they, — honour to them; they, in spite of the idle and the dastard. This English Land, here and now, is the summary of what was found of wise, and noble, and accordant with God’s Truth, in all the generations of English Men. Our English Speech is speakable because there were Hero-Poets of our blood and lineage ; speakable in proportion to the number of these. This Land of England has its conquerors, possessors, which change from epoch to epoch, from day to day ; but its real conquerors, creators, and eternal proprietors are these following, and their representatives if you can find them : All the Heroic Souls that ever were in England, each in their degree ; all the men that ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England. I tell thee, they had not a hammer to begin with ; and yet Wren built St. Paul’s. Past and Present^ p. 178. 212 THE GOSPEL OE LABOUR. CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. The Leaders of Industry, if Industry is ever to be led, are virtually the Captains of the "World ; if there be no nobleness in them, there never will be an Aristocracy more. But let the Captains of Industry consider : once again, are they born of other clay than the old Captains of Slaughter ; doomed for ever to be no Chivalry, but a mere gold-plated Doggery , — what the Trench well name Canaille, ^ Doggery ’ with more or less gold carrion at its disposal ? Captains of Industry are the true Fighters, henceforth recognisable as the only true ones: Fighters against Chaos, Necessity and the Devils and Jotuns ; and lead on Mankind in that great, and alone true, and universal warfare ; the stars in their courses fighting for them, and all Heaven and all Earth saying audibly, "Well-done ! Let the Captains of Industry retire into their own hearts, and ask solemnly. If there is nothing but vulturous hunger, for fine wines, valet reputation and gilt carriages, discoverable there ? Of hearts made by the Almighty God I will not believe such a thing. Deep-hidden under wretchedest god-forgetting Cants, Epicurisms, Dead-Sea Apisms ; forgotten as under foulest fat Lethe mud and weeds, there is yet, in all hearts born into this God’s-AYorld, a spark of the Godlike slumbering. Awake, O nightmare sleepers ; awake, arise, or be for ever fallen ! This is not ]>layhouse poetry; it is sober fact. Our England, our world cannot live as it is. It will connect itself with a God again, or go down with nameless throes and fire- consummation to tlie Devils. Thou who feelcst aught of such a Godlike stirring in thee, any faintest intimation of it as through heavy- laden dreams, follow it, I conjure thee. Arise, save thyself, be one of those that save thy country. Ihist and Present, p. 3G3. RIGHT HONOURABLE WORKERS. 213 RIGHT HONOURABLE WORKERS. It is you, ye Workers, who do already work, and are as grown men, noble and honourable in a sort, that the whole world calls for new work and nobleness. Subdue mutiny, discord, wide- spread despair, by manfulness, justice, mercy, and wisdom. Chaos is dark, deep as Hell ; let light be, and there is instead a green flowery World. O, it is great, and there is no other greatness. To make some nook of God’s Creation a little fruitfuller, better, more worthy of God ; to make some human hearts a little wiser, manfuller, happier, — more blessed, less accursed ! It is a work for a God. Sooty Hell of mutiny, and savagery, and despair, can, by man’s energy, be made a kind of Heaven; cleared of its soot, of its mutiny, of its need to mutiny ; the everlasting arch of Heaven’s azure overspanning it too, and its cunning mechanisms and tall chimney-steeples, as a birth of Heaven ; God and all men looking on it well pleased. Unstained by wasteful deformities, by wasted tears or heart’ s-blood of men, or any defacement of the Pit, noble fruitful Labour, growing ever nobler, will come forth, — the grand sole miracle of Man ; whereby Man has risen from the low places of this Earth, very literally, into divine Heavens. Ploughers, Spinners, Builders ; Prophets, Poets, Kings ; Brind- leys and Goethes, Odins and Arkwrights ; all martyrs, and noble men, and gods, are of one grand Host : immeasurable ; marching ever forward since the Beginnings of the World. The enormous, all- conquering, flame-crowned Host, noble every soldier in it ; sacred, and alone noble. Let him who is not of it hide himself ; let him tremble for himself. Stars at every button cannot make him noble ; sheaves of Bath-garters, nor bushels of Georges ; nor any other contrivance but manfully enlisting in it, valiantly taking place and step in it. 0 Hea- vens, will he not bethink himself; he too is so needed in the Host ! It were so blessed, thrice-blessed, for himself and for us all ! In hope of the Last Partridge, and some Duke of 214 THE GOSPEL OE LABOUR. "Weimar among our Englisli Dukes, we will be patient yet awhile. The Future hides in it Good ha'p and sorrow ; We press still thorow, Nought that abides in it Daunting us, — onward' Past and Present, p. 398. HOW THOUGHT HAS CONQUERED FORCE. He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world : he had invented the Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Kitre, Sulphur and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz^s pestle through the ceiling : what will the last do ? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Porce under Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was in the old-world Grazier, — sick of lugging his slow ox about the country till he got it bartered for corn or oil, — to take a piece of Leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere figure of an Ox (or Pecus) ; put it in his pocket, and call it Pecunia, Money. Tet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled : for there are Eothschilds and English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is Sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men ; commands Cooks to feed liim. Philosophers to teach him. Kings to mount guard over him, — to the length of sixpence. SaHor liesartus, p. 42. DAY’S WAGES FOR DAY’S WORK. I'air (lay’s-wagea for fair day’s-work ! exclaims a sarcastic man: alas, in what corner of tliis Planet, since Adam first awoke on it, was that ever realised? Tlio day’s-wagos of John DAY^S WAGES FOR DAY^^S WORK. 215 Milton’s day’s-work, named 'Paradise Post and Miltords Works, were Ten Pounds paid by instalments, and a rather close escape from death on the gallows. Consider that : it is no rhetorical flourish ; it is an authentic, altogether quiet fact, — emblematic, quietly documentary of a whole world of such, ever since human history began. Oliver Cromwell quitted his farming ; undertook a Hercules’ Labour and lifelong wrestle with that Lernean Hydracoil, wide as England, hissing heaven- high through its thousand crowned, coroneted, shovel-hatted quackheads ; and he did wrestle with it, the truest and ter- riblest wrestle I have heard of ; and he wrestled it, and mowed and cut it down a good many stages, so that its hissing is ever since pitiful in comparison, and one can walk abroad in comparative peace from it ; — and bis wages, as I understand, were burial under the gallows-tree near Tyburn Turnpike, with his head on the gable of Westminster Hall, and two centuries now of mixed cursing and ridicule from all manner of men. His dust lies under the Edgeware Load, near Tyburn Turnpike, at this hour ; and his memory is — Nay, what matters what his memory is ? His memory, at bottom, is or yet shall be as that of a god: a terror and horror to all quacks and cowards and insincere persons ; an everlasting encouragement, new memento, battle word, and pledge of victory to all the brave. It is the natural course and history of the Godlike, in every place, in every time. What god ever carried it with the Tenpound Eranchisers ; in Open Vestry, or with any Sanhedrim of considerable standing ? When was a god found ‘ agreeable ’ to everybody ? The regular way is to hang, kill, crucify your gods, and execrate and trample them under your stupid hoofs for a century or two ; till you discover that they are gods, — and then take to braying over them, still in a very long-ea manner ! — So speaks the sarcastic man ; in his wild way, very mournful truths. Past and Present, p. 25. 216 THE GOSPEL OE LABOUR. THE CROWDED EUROPEAN LABOUR MARKET. There must be something wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from Twenty to as high as two hundred Friedrichs d’or : such is his worth to the world. A full-formed Man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly-devised article, even as an engine ? Good Heavens ! A white European Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two five- fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hundred horses ! True, thou Gold-Hofrath, too crowded indeed ! Meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more ? How thickly stands your Population in the Pampas and Savannas of America; round ancient Carthage, and in the interior of Africa ; on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in the central Plat- form of Asia ; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare ? One man, in one year, as I have under- stood it, if you lend him Earth, will feed himself and nine others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics of our still glowing, still expanding Europe ; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living Valour ; equipped, not now with tlie battle-axe and war-chariot, but witli the steam-engine and ploughshare ? AVhere arc they ? — Preserving their Game ! Sartor JRcsartuSj p. 249. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT’S MONUMENT. Certain 'rim(‘8 do crystallise tlicmselves in a magniliceiit manner ; and others, per]iaj)s, are like to do it in rather a shabby one! — I5ut Kicliard Arkwright too will have Ids INlonii- EICHAUD AUKWEIGHT^S MONUMENT. 217 ment, a thousand years hence : all Lancashire and Yorkshire, and how many other shires and countries with their machineries and industries, for his monument ! A true pyramid or ^ Jlame- mountain/ flaming with steam fires and useful labour over wide continents, usefully towards the Stars, to a certain height ; — how much grander than your foolish Cheops Pyra- :mids or Sakhara clay ones ! Fast and Present, p. 76. POLITICAL. POLITICAL THE ARISTOCRACY IS ANSWERABLE. In modern, as in ancient and all societies, tlie Aristocracy, they that assume the functions of an Aristocracy, doing them, or not, have taken the post of honour; which is the post of difficulty, the post of danger, — of death, if the difficulty be not overcome. II faut payer de sa vie. Why was our life given us, if not that we should manfully give it ? Descend, O Donothing Pomp ; quit thy down-cushions ; expose thyself to learn what wretches feel, and how to cure it ! The Czar of Eussia became a dusty toiling shipwright ; worked with his axe in the Docks of Saardam ; and his aim was small to thine. Descend thou ; undertake this horrid ‘ living chaos of Ignorance and Hunger’ weltering round thy feet ; say, “ I will heal it, or behold I will die foremost in it.” Such is verily the law. Everywhere and every when a man has to ^ pay with his life ; ’ to do his work, as a soldier does, at the expense of life. In no Piepowder earthly Court can you sue an Aristocracy to do its work, at this moment : but in the Higher Court, which even it calls ‘ Court of Honour,’ and which is the Court of Necessity withal, and the eternal Court of the Universe, in which all Pact comes to plead, and every Human Soul is an apparitor, — the Aristocracy is answerable, and even now answering, there. Past and Present^ p. 242. 222 POLITICAL. LAISSEZ-FAIRE. At bottom, is it not a singular thing this of Laissez-faire^ from the first origin of it ? As good as an abdication on the part of governors; an admission that they are henceforth incompetent to govern, that they are not there to govern at all, but to do — one knows not what ! The universal demand of Laissezfaire by a people from its governors or upper classes, is a soft-sounding demand : but it is only one step removed from the fatalest. Laissezfaire,^^ exclaims a sardonic German writer, what is this universal cry for Laissezfaire ? Does it mean that human affairs require no guidance ; that wisdom and forethought cannot guide them better than folly and accident ? Alas, does it not mean : ‘ Such guidance is worse than none ! Leave us alone of your guidance ; eat your wages, and sleep ! ’ And now, if guidance have grown indis- pensable, and the sleep continue, what becomes of the sleep and its wages ? In those entirely surprising circumstances to which the Eighteenth Century had brought us, in the time of Adam Laissezfaire was a reasonable cry ; — as, indeed, in all circumstances, for a wise governor there will be meaning in the principle of it. To wise governors you will cry : ‘‘ See what ye will, and will not, let alone.’’ To unwise governors, to hungry Greeks throttling down hungry Greeks on the floor of a St. Stephen’s, you will cry : “ Let all things alone ; for Heaven’s sake, meddle ye with nothing! ” How Laissezfaire may adjust itself in other provinces we say not : but we do venture to say, and ask whether events everywhere, in world- liistory and parish-history, in all manner of dialects, ai’c not saying it. That in regard to the lower orders of society, and their governance and guidance, the principle of Laissezfaire lias terminated, and is no longer applicable at all, in this Ihirope of ours, still less in this England of ours. Not inis- government, nor yet no-governinent ; only government will now serve. Wliat is the meaning of the ‘‘five points,” if we WHOM DO THE PEOPLE CHOOSE P 223 will understand them ? What are all popular commotions and maddest bellowings from Peterloo to the Place- de-Gr eve itself? Bellowings, ^;^articulate cries as of a dumb creature in rage and pain ; to the ear of wisdom they are inarticulate prayers : “ Guide me, govern me ! I am mad, and miserable, and cannot guide myself!” Surely of all ‘‘rights of man,” this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest. Nature herself ordains it from the first; Society struggles towards perfection by enforcing and accomplishing it more and more. If Preedom have any meaning, it means enjoyment of this right, wherein all other rights are enjoyed. It is a sacred right and duty, on both sides ; and the summary of all social duties whatsoever between the two. Why does the one toil with his hands, if the other be not to toil, still more un- weariedly, with heart and head ? The brawny craftsman finds it no child’s play to mould his unpliant rugged masses ; neither is guidance of men a dilettantism : what it becomes when treated as a dilettantism, we may see 1 The wild horse bounds homeless through the wilderness, is not led to stall and manger ; but neither does he toil for you, but for himself only. Chartism^ p. 51. WHOM DO THE PEOPLE CHOOSE ? Given the men a People choose, the People itself, in its exact worth and worthlessness, is given. A heroic people chooses heroes, and is happy ; a valet or flunkey people chooses sham-heroes, what are called quacks, thinking them heroes, and is not happy. The grand summary of a man’s spiritual condition, what brings out all his herohood and insight, or all his flunkeyhood and horn-eyed dimness, is this question put to him, What man dost thou honour? Which is thy ideal of a man ; or nearest that ? So too of a People : for a People too, every People, speahs its choice, — were it only by silently obeying, and not revolting, — in the course of a 22i POLITICAL. century or so. Nor are electoral methods, Eeform Bills and such like, unimportant. A People’s electoral methods are, in the long-run, the express image of its electoral talent; tending and gravitating perpetually, irresistibly, to a conformity vrith that : and are, at all stages, very significant of the People. Past and Present^ p. 102. MESSKS. DOODRAUGHT RIGMAROLE AND DOLITTLE. Is not Pandarus Dogdraught a member of select clubs, and admitted into the drawing-rooms of men ? Visibly to all per- sons he is of the ofial of Creation ; but he carries money in his purse, due lacker on his dog-visage, and it is believed will not steal spoons. The human species does not with one voice, like the Hebrew Psalmist, ‘ shun to sit ’ with Dogdraught, refuse totally to dine with Dogdraught ; men called of honour are willing enough to dine with him, his talk being lively, and his champagne excellent. We say to ourselves “ The man is in good society,” others have already voted for him; why should not I ? We forget the indefeasible right of property that Satan lias in Dogdraught, — we are not afraid to be near Dogdraught! It is we that vote wrong: blindly, nay with falsity prepense I It is we that no longer know the difference between Human Worth and Human Unworth; or feel that the one is admirable and alone admirable, the other detestable, damnable ! How shall we find out, a Hero and Viceking Samson with a maximum of two shillings in his pocket ? AVe have no chance to do such a thing. AV e have got out of the Ages of Heroism, deep into the Ages of Plunkeyism, — and must return or die. AVhat a noble set of mortals are we, who, because there is no Saint Edmund threatening us at the rim of ilie horizon, are not afraid to be whatever, for the day and liour, is smoothest for us ! And now, in good sooth, why should an indigent discerning I'reeinan give his vote without bribes ? Let us rather honour the j)Oor man that he does discern clearly wherein lies, for him, DOGDIIAUGHT^ EIGMAEOLE^ AND DOLITTLE. 225 the true Kernel of the matter. What is it to the ragged grimy Ereeman of a Tenpound-Franchise Borough, whether Aristides Bigmarole, Esq. of the Destructive, or the Hon. Alcides Dolittle, of the Conservative Party, be sent to Parlia- ment ; much more, whether the two-thousandth part of them be sent, for that is the amount of his faculty in it ? Destruc- tive or Conservative, what will either of them destroy or conserve of vital moment to this Freeman ? Has he found either of them care, at bottom, a sixpence for him or his interests, or those of his class or of his cause, or of any class or cause that is of much value to God or to man ? Rigmarole and Dolittle have alike cared for themselves hitherto ; and for their own clique, and self-conceited crotchets, — their greasy dishonest interests of pudding, or^ windy dishonest interests of praise ; and not very perceptibly for any other interest whatever. Neither Rigmarole nor Dolittle will accomplish any good or any evil for this grimy Freeman, like giving him a five-pound note, or refusing to give it him. It will be smoothest to vote according to value received. That is the veritable fact ; and he, indigent, like others that are not indigent, acts conformably thereto. Why, reader, truly, if they asked thee or me. Which way we meant to vote ? — were it not our likeliest answer : Neither way ! I, as a Tenpound Franchiser, will receive no bribe ; but also I will not vote for either of these men. Neither Rigmarole nor Dolittle shall, by furtherance of mine, go and make laws for this country. I will have no hand in such a mission. How dare I ? If other men cannot be got in England, a totally other sort of men, different as light is from dark, as star-fire is from street-mud, what is the use of votings, or of Parliaments in England ? England ought to resign herself ; there is no hope or possibility for England. If England cannot get her Knaves and Dastards ^ arrested ’ in some degree, but only get them ‘ elected,’ what is to become of England ? Past and P resent y p. 342. Q 226 POLITICAL. ELECTION BY BRIBERY. A Parliament, one would say, whicli proclaims itself elected and eligible by bribery, tells the Nation that is governed by it a piece of singular news. Bribery : have we reflected wbat bribery is ? Bribery means not only length of purse, which is neither qualification nor the contrary for legislating well ; but it means dishonesty, and even impudent dishonesty ; — brazen insensibility to lying and to making others lie ; total oblivion, and flinging overboard, for the nonce, of any real thing you can call veracity, morality ; with dexterous putting on the cast-clothes of that real thing, and strutting about in them! What Legislating can you get out of a man in that fatal situation ? None that will profit much, one would think 1 A Legislator who has left his veracity lying on the door- threshold, he, why verily he — ought to be sent out to seek it again ! Past and Present^ p. 338. PARLIAMENT WITH A LIE IN ITS MOUTH. And is it come to this ? And does our venerable Parliament announce itself elected and eligible in this manner ? Surely Bucli a Parliament promulgates strange lioroscopes of itself. AVbat is to become of a Parliament elected or eligible in this manner ? Unless Belial and Beelzebub liave got ])ossession of the throne of this Universe, such Ikirliament is preparing itself ibr new Jhdbnn-bills. We shall have to try it by Chartism, or any conceivable iain^ rather than put up with this ! There is already in Ihigland ‘ religion ’ enough to get six hundred and fifty-(!ight Consnli ing M(‘n brought iogether who do not begin work with a lie in llieir mouth. Our ])Oor old Parliament, thotiHands of years old, is still good foi* something, for several things;- though many an^ beginning to ask, with ominous anxiety, in these days: I'\>r what thing? But lor whatever WHY REBELLIONS ARE NECESSARY. 227 thing and things Parliament be good, indisputably it must start with other than a lie in its month ! On the whole, a Parlia- ment working with a lie in its mouth, will have to take itself away. To no Parliament or thing, that one has heard of, did this Universe ever long yield harbour on that footing. At all hours of the day and night, some Chartism is advancing, some armed Cromwell is advancing, to apprise such Parliament: Ye are no Parliament. In the name of God, — go ! ” Past and Present, p. 340. WHY REBELLIONS ARE NECESSARY. Succession of rebellions ? Successive clippings away of the Supreme Authority ; class after class rising in revolt to say, ‘‘We will no more be governed so ? ” That is not the history of the English Constitution ; not altogether that. Bebellion is the means, but it is not the motive cause. The motive cause, and true secret of the matter, were always this : The necessity there was for rebelling ? Eights I will permit thee to call everywhere ‘ correctly-articulated mights.’ A dread- ful business to articulate correctly ! Consider those Barons of Eunnymead ; consider all manner of successfully revolting men ! Tour Great Charter has to be experimented on, by battle and debate, for a hundred-and-fifty years ; is then found to he correct ; and stands as true Magna Charta, — nigh cut in pieces by a tailor, short of measures, in later generations. Mights, I say, are a dreadful business to articulate correctly ! Yet articulated they have to be ; the time comes for it, the need comes for it, and with enormous difficulty and experi- menting it is got done. Call it not succession of rebellions ; call it rather succession of expansions, of enlightenments, gift of articulate utterance descending ever lower. Class after class acquires faculty of utterance, — Necessity teaching and com- pelling ; as the dumb man, seeing the knife at his father’s throat, suddenly acquired speech ! Consider too how class after class not only acquires faculty of articulating what its Q 2 228 POLITICAL. might is, but likewise grows in might, acquires might or loses might ; so that always, after a space, there is not only new gift of articulating, but there is something new to articulate. Con- stitutional epochs will never cease among men. Chartism^ p. 76. AWAIT THE ISSUE. In this Grod’s world, wdth its wild- whirling eddies and mad foam oceans, w^here men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice ? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise, in all times, were wise because they denied, and knew forever not to be. I tell thee again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below : the just thing, the true thing. My friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in support of an unjust thing; and infinite bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy victory on behalf of it, — I would advise thee to call halt, to fiiug down thy baton, and say, In Grod’s name. No ! ” Thy ^ success ? ’ Poor devil, what will thy success amount to ? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded ; no, not though bonfires blazed from North to South, and bells rang, and editors wrote leading-articles, and the just things lay trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated thing. Success In few years, thou wilt be dead and dark, — all cold, eyeless, deaf; no blaze of bonfires, ding-dong of bells or leading-articles visible or audible to thee again at all for (‘ver : What kind of success is that ? It is true all goes by approximation in this world ; with any not insupportable approximation wo must be patient. There is a noble Conser- vatism as well as an ignoble. Would to I[eaven, for the sake of (.'onservatism itK(*lf, the nol)le alone were left, and the igno- l)ie, l)y some kind severe hand, were ruthlessly lopped away, forbidden ever more to sliew itself! Por it is the right and i.(ible alum- tliat will have victory in this struggle; the rest is AWAIT THE ISSUE. 229 wholly an obstruction, a postponement and fearful imperil- ment of the victory. Towards an eternal centre of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all this confusion tending. We already know whither it is all tending; what will have victory, what will have none ! The Heaviest will reach the centre. The Heaviest, sinking through complex fluctuating media and vortices, has its deflections, its obstruc- tions, nay at times its resiliences, its reboundings ; whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating, “ See, your Heaviest ascends!” — but at all moments it is moving centreward, fast as is convenient for it ; sinking, sinking ; and, by laws older than the World, old as the Maker’s first Plan of the World, it has to arrive there. Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same. He has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to all his right he has prevailed. His very death is no victory over him. He dies indeed ; but his work lives, very truly lives. A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder that his Scotland become, one day, a part of England ; but he does hinder that it become, on tyrannous, unfair terms, a part of it ; commands still, as with a god’s voice, from his old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just real union as of brother and brother, not a false and merely semblant one as of slave and master. If the union with England be in fact one of Scotland’s chief blessings, — we thank Wallace withal that it was not the chief curse. Scotland is not Ireland : no, because brave men rose there, and said, Behold, ye must not tread us down like slaves ; and ye shall not, — and cannot 1 ” Eight on, thou brave true heart, and falter^ not, through dark fortune and through bright. The cause thou fightest for, so far as it is true, no farther, yet precisely so far, is very sure of victory. The falsehood alone of it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it ought to be : but the truth of it is part of Nature’s own Laws, co-operates with the World’s eternal Tendencies, and cannot be conquered. Past and Present, p. 14. 230 POLITICAL. HONOUR TO GENUINE MINORITIES. On the whole, honour to small minorities, when thej are genuine ones. Severe is their battle sometimes, but it is victorious always like that of gods. Tancred of Hauteville’s sons, some eight centuries ago, conquered all Italy ; bound it up into organic masses, of vital order after a sort ; lounded thrones and principalities upon the same, which have not yet entirely vanished, — which, the last-dying wrecks of which, still wait for some worthier successor, it would appear. The Tancred IN’ormans were some Four Thousand strong; the Italy they conquered in open fight, and bound up into masses at their ordering will, might count Eight Millions, all as large of bone, as eupeptic and black-whiskered as they. How came the small minority of Hormans to prevail in this so hopeless- looking debate ? Intrinsically, doubt it not, because they were in the right ; because in a dim, instinctive, but most genuine manner, they were doing the commandment of Heaven, and so Heaven had decided that they were to prevail. But extrinsically also, I can see, it was because the Hermans were not afraid to have their skin scratched ; and were prepared to die in their quarrel wdiere needful. One man of that humour among a thousand of the other, consider it ! Let the small minority, backed by the whole Universe, and looked on by such a cloud of invisible witnesses, fall into no despair. Latter Day Pamphlets — Parliaments, p. 40. THE FIRST STEP. ‘ Hero-worship,’ if you will, — yes, friends ; but, first of all, by being (uirselves of heroic mind. A wliolo world of Jleroes ; a world not of Flunkeys, where no Hero-King can reign: that is what we aim at! We, for our share, will put away all I'lunkeyiMin, HaseneHs, Unveracity irom us; we shall then hope to have iNobleness and Vh'racities set over us; never till then, i.et lh»buM and Company sneer, “ That is your Jvefurm 1 ” THE EIEST STEP. 231 Yes, Bobus, that is our Eeform ; and except in that, and what will follow out of that, we have no hope at all. Eeform, like Charitj, O Bobus, must begin at home. Once well at home, how will it radiate outwards, irrepressible, into all that we touch and handle, speak and work ; kindling ever new light, by incalculable contagion, spreading in geometric ratio, far and wide, — doing good only, wheresoever it spreads, and not evil. By Eeform Bills, Anti-Corn-Law Bills, and thousand other bills and methods, we will demand of our Grovernors, with em- phasis, and for the first time not without effect, that they cease to be quacks, or else depart, that they set no quackeries and blockheadisms anywhere to rule over us, that they utter or act no cant to us, — that it will be better if they do not. Eor we shall now know quacks when we see them ; cant, when we hear it, shall be horrible to us ! We will say with the poor French- man at the Bar of the Convention, though in wiser style than he, and ^ for the space ’ not ^ of an hour ’ but of a lifetime : “ Je demande V arrestation des coquins et des laches ^ ‘ Arrest- ment of the knaves and dastards : ’ ah, we know what a work that is ; how long it will be before they are all or mostly got ‘ arrested : ’ — but here is one ; arrest him, in Grod’s name ; it is one fewer ! We will, in all practicable ways, by word and silence, by act and refusal to act, energetically demand that arrest- ment, — demande cette arrestation IdT^ — and by degrees infallibly attain it. Infallibly : for light spreads ; all human souls, never so bedarkened, love light ; light once kindled spreads, till all is luminous ; — till the cry, ‘‘ Arrest your knaves and dastards ! ” rises imperative from millions of hearts, and rings and reigns from sea to sea. Nay, how many of them may we not ‘ arrest ’ with our own hands, even now ; we ! Do not countenance them, thou there : turn away from their lackered sumptuosities, their belauded sophistries, their serpent graciosities, their spoken and acted cant, with a sacred horror, with an Apage Satanus, — Bobus and Company, and all men will gradually join us. We demand arrestment of the knaves and dastards, and begin by arresting our own poor selves out 232 POLITICAL. of that fraternity. There is no other reform conceivable. Thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like : that will be two heroes to begin with : — Courage ! even that is a whole world of heroes to end with, or what we poor Two can do in furtherance thereof 1 Yes, friends ; Hero-Kings and a whole world not unheroic, — there lies the port and happy haven, towards which, through all these storm-tost seas. Trench devolutions. Chartisms, Man- chester Insurrections, that make the heart sick in these bad days, the Supreme Powers are driving us. On the whole, blessed be the Supreme Powers, stern as they are ! Towards that haven will we, O friends ; let all true men, with what of faculty is in them, bend valiantly, incessantly, with thou- sandfold endeavour, thither, thither! There, or else in the ocean-abysses, it is very clear to me, we shall arrive. Past and Present, p. 46. WHAT IS TO BECOME OF PAELIAMENT ? It is too true tliat Parliament, for the matter of near a cen- tury now, has been able to undertake the adjustment of almost one thing alone, of itself and its own interests ; leaving other interests to rub along very much as they could and would. True, this was the practice of the whole Eighteenth Century ; and struggles still to prolong itself into the Nineteenth, — which however is no longer the time for it! Those Eighteenth-cen- tury J^arliainents, one may hope, will become a curious object one (lay. An^ not these same ^ Memoir es"" of Horace AValpole, to an unparliamentary eye, already a curious object ? One of the clearcst-Highlcd men of the Eightonth Century writes down his Parliamentary observation of it there ; a determined (leH|)iH(‘r and merciless dissc^etor of cant; a liberal withal, (Uie who will go all lengths for the ‘glorious revolution,’ and resist 'Pory j)rincipl(*s to the d(*ath : ho writes, with an indignant elegiac feeling, how Mr. This, who had voted so and then voted DEMOCUACY^ THE CONSUMMATION OF NO GOVERNMENT. 233 SO, and was the son of this and the brother of that, and had such claims to the fat appointment, was nevertheless scanda- lously postponed to Mr. That ; — whereupon are not the affairs of this nation in a bad way ? How hungry Greek meets hungry Greek on the floor of St. Stephens, and wrestles him and throttles him till he has to cry. Hold ! the of&ce is thine ! of this does Horace write. — One must say, the destinies of nations do not always rest entirely on Parliament. One must say, it is a wonderful affair that science of ‘ government,’ as practised in the Eighteenth Century of the Christian era, and still strug- gling to practise itself. One must say, it was a lucky century that could get it so practised : a century which had inherited richly from its predecessors, and also which did not unna- turally bequeath to its successors a Erench Eevolution, general overturn, and reign of terror; intimating, in most audible thunder, conflagration, guillotinement, cannonading and uni- versal war and earthquake, that such century with its practices had ended. Ended; — for decidedly that course of procedure will no longer serve. Parliament will absolutely, with whatever effort, have to lift itself out of those deep ruts of donothing routine : and learn to say, on all sides, something more edifying than Laissez-faire. If Parliament cannot learn it, what is to become of Parliament ? Chartism, p. 64. DEMOCRACY, THE CONSUMMATION OF NO GOVERNMENT. Democracy, we are well aware, what is called ' self-government’ of the multitude by the multitude, is in words the thing every- where passionately clamoured for at present. Democracy makes rapid progress in these latter times, and ever more rapid, in a perilous accelerative ratio ; towards democracy, and that only, the progress of things is everywhere tending as to the flnal goal and winning-post. So think, so clamour the multitudes everywhere. And yet all men may see, whose sight 234 POLITICAL. is good for mucli, that in democracj can lie no finality ; that with the completest winning of democracy there is nothing yet won, — except emptiness, and the free chance to win ! Demo- cracy is, by the nature of it, a self-cancelling business ; and gives in the long-run a net-result of zero, Where no govern- ment is wanted, save that of the parish constable, as in America with its boundless soil, every man being able to find work and recompense for himself, democracy may subsist ; not elsewhere, except briefly, as a swift transition towards something other and farther. Democracy never yet, that we heard of, was able to accomplish much work, beyond that same cancelling of itself. Eome and Athens are themes for the schools ; unexceptionable for that purpose. In Eome and Athens, as elsewhere, if we look practically, we shall find that it was not by loud voting and debating of many, but by wise insight and ordering of a few, that the work was done. So is it ever, so will it ever be. The Drench Convention was a Parliament elected ‘ by the five points,’ with ballot-boxes, universal-suffrages, and what not, as perfectly as Parliament can hope to be in this world ; and had indeed a pretty spell of work to do, and did it. The Drench Convention had to cease from being a free Parliament, and become more arbitrary than any Sultan Bajazet, before it could so much as subsist. It had to purge out its argumentative Girondins, elect its Supreme Committee oi^alut^ guillotine into silence and extinction all that gainsay ed it, and rule and work literally by the sternest despotism ever seen in Europe, before it could rule at all. Napoleon was not President of a Eepublic ; Cromwell tried hard to rule in that way, but found that he could not. These, ‘ the armed soldiers of democracy,’ had to chain democracy under their feet, and become despots over it, before they could work out the earnest obscure purpose of democracy itself! J^emocracy, take it where you will in our Ihirope, is found but as a regulated method of rebellion and abrogation; it abrogates tlie old arrangement of things; and halves, as we say, zero and vacuity for the institution of a new arrangement. Jt is the consummation of No-govornmeut and J^dtHHcz-Jairr. It maybe natural for our Jkiropo at present ; HOW TO BIND DEMOCRACY. 235 but cannot be the ultimatum of it. Not towards the impos- sibilitj, ^ self-government ’ of a multitude by a multitude ; but towards some possibility, government by the wisest, does bewildered Europe struggle. The blessedest possibility: not misgovernment, not Laissez-faire^ but veritable government ! Cannot one discern too, across all democratic turbulence, clat- tering of ballot-boxes and infinite sorrowful jangle, needful or not, that this at bottom is the wish and prayer of all human hearts, everywhere and at all times : “ Give me a leader ; a true leader, not a false, sham leader ; a true leader, that he may guide me on the true way, that I may be loyal to him, that I may swear fealty to him, and follow him, and feel that it is well with me ! ” The relation of the taught to their teacher, of the loyal subject to his guiding king, is, under one shape or another, the vital element of human society ; indispensable to it, perennial in it ; without which as a body reft of its soul, it falls down into death, and with horrid noisome dissolution passes away and disappears. Chartism^ p. 53. HOW TO BIND DEMOCRACY. We are to bethink us that men cannot now be bound by hr ass- collars ^ — not at all : that this brass-collar method, in all figures of it, has vanished out of Europe forevermore ! Huge Democracy, walking the streets everywhere in its Sack Coat, has asserted so much ; irrevocably, brooking no reply ! True enough, Man is for ever the ‘ born thrall ’ of certain men, born master of certain other men, born equal of certain others, let him acknowledge the fact or not. It is unblessed for him when he cannot acknowledge this fact ; he is in the chaotic state, ready to perish, till he do get the fact acknowledged. But no man is, or can henceforth be, the brass-collar thrall of any man ; you will have to bind him by other, far nobler and cunninger methods. Once for all, he is to be loose of the brass-collar, to have a scope as wide as his faculties now are : — 236 POLITICAL. will lie not be all the usefuler to you, in that new state ? Let bim go abroad as a trusted one, as a free one ; and return home to you with rich earnings at night ! Grurth could only tend pigs ; this one will build cities, conquer waste worlds. — How, in conjunction with inevitable Democracy, indispensable Sovereignty is to exist : certainly it is the hugest question ever heretofore propounded to Mankind ! The solution of which is work for long years and centuries. Tears and centuries, of one knows not what complexion ; — blessed or unblessed, according as they shall, with earnest valiant effort, make progress therein, or, in slothful unveracity and dilettantism, only talk of making progress. Dor either progress therein, or swift and ever swifter progress towards dissolution, is hence- forth a necessity. Past and Present^ p. 335. AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak im- pair iotically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enougli, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phe- nomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglo- Saxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy ; and, with tlie axe, and plougli, and hammer, if not yet with any mucli finer kind of implements, are triumphantly clearing out wide spaces, seed fields for tlie sustenance and refuge of man- kind, arenas for tlie future liistory of tlio world ; — doing in tli(*ir day and generation, a creditable and cheering feat under the sun. Eut as to a Model llepublic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to 1)0 said. Nay, the title hitherto to be a Commonwealth, or Nation at all, among the tBvoi of the world, is, strictly con- ?^i(h.T<‘(l, still a thing they are but striving for, and indeed liave not yet doiK* much towards attaining. Idioir Constitution, such as it may bi‘, was made hero, not there ; went over with AMEUICAN DEMOCRACY. 237 them from the Old-Puritan English workshop, ready-made. Deduct what they carried with them from England ready- made, — their common English Language, and that same Con- stitution, or rather elixir of constitutions, their inveterate and now, as it were, inborn reverence for the Constable’s staft’ ; two quite immense attainments, which England had to spend much blood, and valiant sweat of brow and brain, for centuries long, in achieving : — and what new elements of polity or nationhood, what noble new phasis of human arrangement, or social device worthy of Prometheus or of Epimetheus, yet comes to light in America ? Cotton-crops and Indian corn, and dollars come to light ; and half a world of untilled land, where populations that respect the constable can live, for the present, without Government : this comes to light ; and the profound sorrow of all nobler hearts, here uttering itself as silent, patient, unspeakable ennui, there coming out as vague elegiac wailings, that there is still next to nothing more. ^ Anarchy plus a street-constable : ’ that also is anarchic to me, and other than quite lovely ! I foresee, too, that, long before the waste lands are fall, the very street-constable, on these poor terms, will have become impossible : without the waste lands, as here in our Europe, I do not see how he could continue possible many weeks. Cease to brag to me of America, and its model insti- tutions and constitutions. To men in their sleep there is nothing granted in this world : nothing, or as good as nothing, to men that sit idly caucusing and ballotboxing on Ihe graves of their heroic ancestors, saying, “It is well, it is well!” Corn and bacon are granted : not a very sublime boon, on such conditions ; a boon moreover which, on such conditions, cannot last 1 No : America too will have to strain its energies, in quite other fashion than this ; to crack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the rest of us have had to do, in thousandfold wrestle with the Pythons and mud-demons, before it can become a habitation for the gods. America’s battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful though nothing doubting, will wish her streugth for it. New Spiritual 238 POLITICAL. Pythons, plenty of them ; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight Puture on America; and she will have her own agony, and her own victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of. Hitherto she but ploughs and hammers, in a very successful manner ; hitherto, in spite of her ‘ roast-goose with apple-sauce,’ she is not much. ‘ Poast-goose ‘ with apple-sauce for the poorest working man : ’ well surely that is something, — thanks to your respect for the street- constable, and to your Continents of fertile waste land ; — but that, even if it could continue, is by no means enough ; that is not even an instalment towards what will be required of you. My friend, brag not yet of our American cousins ! Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry and resources, I believe to be almost unspeakable ; but I can by no means worship the like of these. What great human soul, what great thought, wliat great noble thing that one could worship, or loyally admire, has yet been produced there ? ISTone ; the American cousins have yet done none of these things. ‘‘ What they have done ? ” growls Smelfungus, tired of the subject. “ They have doubled their population every twenty years. They have begotten, with a rapidity beyond recorded example. Eighteen Millions of the greatest lores ever seen in this world before : — that, hitherto, is their feat in History! ” — And so we leave them for the present ; and cannot predict the success of Democracy, on this side of the A tlantic, from their example. Latter Day Pamphlets — The Present Timej p. 23. YOUNG FRANCE AND GERMANY. Tlic kind of persons wlio excite or give signal to such revo- lutions, — students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot in(?x|)eriene(*d (‘iitlnisiasts, or iierce and justly bankrupt (leHpera(lo(‘s, act ing ov(*ry where on tlie discontent of the mil- lions and blowing it into llaiuo, — might- give rise to retlections as to the character of our epoch. IVevcr till now did young A REAL ARISTOCRACY. 239 men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs. A changed time since the word Senior (Seigneur, or Elder) was first devised to signify ‘ lord,’ or superior ; — as in all languages of men we find it to have been ! Not an honourable document this either, as to the spiritual condition of our epoch. In times when men love wisdom, the old man will ever be venerable, and be venerated, and reckoned noble : in times that love something else than wisdom, and indeed have little or no wisdom, and see little or none to love, the old man will cease to be venerated ; — and looking more closely, also, you will find that in fact he has ceased to be venerable, and has begun to be contemptible ; a foolish hoy still, a boy without the graces, generosity and opulent strength of young boys. In these days, what of lordshijp or leadership is still to be done, the youth must do it, not the mature or aged man ; the mature man, hardened into sceptical egoism, knows no monition but that of his own frigid cautions, avarices, mean timidities ; and can lead nowhither towards an object that even seems noble. Latter Day Pam]ylilets — The Present Time, p. 8. A REAL ARISTOCRACY. What is an Aristocracy ? A corporation of the Best, of the Bravest. To this joyfully, with heart-loyalty, do men pay the half of their substance, to equip and decorate their Best, to lodge them in palaces, set them high over all. Bor it is of the nature of men, in every time, to honour and love their Best ; to know no limits in honouring them. Whatsoever Aristocracy is still a corporation of the Best, is safe from all peril, and the land it rules is a safe and blessed land. Whatsoever Aristocracy does not even attempt to be that, but only to wear the clothes of that, is not safe ; neither is the land it rules in safe ! Bor this now is our sad lot, that we must find a real Aristocracy, that an apparent Aristocracy, how plausible soever, has become inadequate for us. One way or other, the world will abso- lutely need to be governed ; if not by this class of men, then by 240 POLITICAL. that. One can predict, without gift of prophecy, that the era of routine is nearly ended. Wisdom and faculty alone, faith- ful, valiant, ever-zealous, not pleasant, but painful, continual effort, will suffice. Cost what it may, by one means or another, the toiling multitudes of this perplexed, over-crowded Europe, must and will find governors. ‘ Laissez-faire^ Leave them to do ? ’ The thing they will do, if so left, is too frightful to think of ! It has been do7ie once, in sight of the whole earth, in these generations : can it need to be done a second time ? Chartism, p. 55. WHAT MIGHT BE DONE. A modern Duke of Weimar, not a god he either, but a human duke, levied, as I reckon, in rents and taxes and all incomings whatsoever, less than several of our English Dukes do in rent alone. The Duke of Weimar, wdth these incomings, had to govern, judge, defend, every way administer his Duke- dom. He does all this as few others did : and he improves lands besides all this, makes river-embankments, maintains not soldiers only but Universities and Institutions ; and in his Court w’ere these four men : Wieland, Herder, Schiller, Goethe. JS’ot as parasites, which w^as impossible; not as table-wits and poetic Katerfeltoes ; but as noble Spiritual Men working under a noble Practical Man. Shielded by him from many miseries ; perhaps from many shortcomings, destructive aberra- tions. Heaven had sent, once more, heavenly Light into the W'orld ; and this man’s honour w\as that he gave it w'elcome. A new^ noble kind of Clergy, under an old but still noble kind of King! I reckon that this one Duke of Weimar did more for the Culture of liis Nation than all the English Dukes and Duces now extant, or that w'ere extant since Henry the Eighth gave them tlio Church Lands to eat, have done for theirs 1 — I am ashamed, 1 am alarmed for my Ejiglish Dukes: what word have I to say ? Vast and Present, p. 3S0. EDUCATION AND EMIGEATION. 241 EDUCATION AND EMIGRATION. This one Bill, which lies yet unenacted, a right Education Bill, is not this of itself the sure parent of innumerable wise Bills, — wise regulations, practical methods and proposals, gradually ripening towards the state of Bills ? To irradiate with intelligence, that is to say, with order, arrangement and all blessedness, the Chaotic, Unintelligent : how, except by educating, can you accomplish this ? That thought, reflection, articulate utterance and understanding be awakened in these individual million heads, which are the atoms of your Chaos : there is no other way of illuminating any Chaos : there is no other way of illuminating any Chaos ! The sum- total of intelligence that is found in it, determines the extent of order that is possible for your Chaos, — the feasibility and rationality of what your Chaos will dimly demand from you, and will gladly obey when proposed by you ! It is an exact equation; the one accurately measures the other. — If the whole English people, during these ‘ twenty years of respite,’ be not educated with at least schoolmaster’s educating, a tremendous responsibility, before God and men, will rest some- where ! How dare any man, especially a man calling himself minister of God, stand up in any Parliament or place, under any pretext or delusion, and for a day or an hour forbid God’s Light to come into the world, and bid the Devil’s Darkness continue in it one hour more! Eor all light and science, under all shapes, in all degrees of perfection, is of God ; all darkness, nescience, is of the Enemy of God. ‘ The school- master’s creed is somewhat awry ? ’ Yes, I have found few creeds entirely correct ; few light-beams shining white, pure of admixture: but of all creeds and religions now or ever before known, was not that of thoughtless thriftless Animalism, of Distilled Gin, and Stupor and Despair, unspeakably the least orthodox ? We will exchange it even with Paganism, with Eetishism; and, on the whole, must exchange it with something. R 242 POLITICAL. An effective ^ Teaching Service ’ I do consider that there must be ; some Education Secretary, Captain- General of Teachers, who will actually contrive to get us taught. Then again, why should there not be an ^ Emigration Service,’ and Secretary, with adjuncts, with funds, forces, idle Navy-ships, and ever-increasing apparatus ; in fine an effective system of Emigration; so that, at length, before our twenty years of respite ended, every honest willing Workman who found England too strait, and the ‘ Organisation of Labour ’ not yet sufficiently advanced, might find likewise a bridge built to carry him into new Western lands, there to ‘organise’ with more elbow-room some labour for himself? There to be a real blessing, raising new corn for us, purchasing new webs and hatchets from us ; leaving us at least in peace ; — instead of staying here to be a Physical-Force Chartist, unblessed and no blessing ! Is it not scandalous to consider that a Prime Minister could raise within the year, as I have seen it done, a Hundred and Twenty Millions Sterling to shoot the French ; and we are stopt short for want of the hundredth part of that to keep the English living ? The bodies of the English living; and the souls of the English living : — these two ‘ services,’ an Education Service and an Emigration Service, these with others will actually have to be organised ! A free bridge for Emigrants : why we should then be on a par with America itself, the most favoured of all lands that have no government ; and we should have, besides, so many tradi- tions and mementos of priceless things America has cast away. We could proceed deliberately to ‘organise Labour,’ not doomed to perish unless we afibcted it within year and day ; — every willing Worker that proved superlluous, finding a bridge ready for liiin. This verily will have to be done ; the ''I'iine is big witli this. Our little Isle is grown too narrow for us ; but the world is wide enough yet for another Six Thousand Tears. England’s sure markets will be among new Colonies of Euglishiuen in all quarters of the Globe. All men trade with all men, when mutually convenient; and are even bound to do it by the IMaker of men. Our friends of China, w’ho EDUCATION AND EMIGRATION. 243 guiltily refused to trade, in these circumstances, — had we not to argue with them, in cannon-shot at last, and convince them that they ought to trade ! ‘ Hostile Tariffs ’ will arise, to shut us out ; and then again will fall, to let us in : but the Sons of England, speakers of the English language, were it nothing more, will in all times have the ineradicable predisposition to trade with England. Mycale was the Pan-Ionion^ rendezvous of all the Tribes of Ion, for old Greece: why should not London long continue the AlhSaxon-Jiome, rendezvous of all the ‘ Children of the Harz-Eock,’ arriving, in select samples, from the Antipodes and elsewhere, by steam and otherwise, to the ‘ season ’ here ! — What a Future ; wide as the world, if we have the heart and heroism for it, — which, by Heaven’s blessing, we shall : ‘ Keep not standing fixed and rooted, Briskly venture, briskly roam ; Head and band, where’er thou foot it, And stout heart are still at home, In what land the sun does visit, Brisk are we, whate’er betide : To give space for wandering is it That the world was made so wide.’ Fourteen hundred years ago, it was by a considerable ‘ Emigra- tion Service,’ never doubt it, by much enlistment, discussion and apparatus, that we ourselves arrived in this remarkable Island, — and got into our present difficulties among others ! It is true the English Legislature, like the English People, is of slow temper; essentially conservative. In our wildest periods of reform, in the Long Parliament itself, you notice always the invincible instinct to hold fast by the Old ; to admit the minimum of new ; to expand, if it be possible, some old habit or method, already found fruitful, into new growth for the new need. It is an instinct worthy of all honour ; akin to all strength and all wisdom. The Future hereby is not dissevered from the Past, but based continuously on it ; grows with all the vitalities of the Past, and is rooted down deep into the beginnings of us. The English Legislature is entirely repugnant to believe in ^ new epochs.’ The English R 2 244 POLITICAL. Legislature does not occupy itself with epochs ; has, indeed, other business to do than looking at the Time-Horologe and hearing it tick ! Nevertheless new epochs do actually come ; and with them new imperious peremptory necessities ; so that even an English Legislature has to look up, and admit, though with reluctance, that the hour has struck. The hour having struck, let us not say ‘ impossible : ’ — it will have to be pos- sible ! ‘ Contrary to the habits of Parliament, the habits of Grovernment ? ’ Yes : but did any Parliament or Government ever sit in a Tear Eorty-three before ? One of the most original, unexampled years and epochs ; in several important respects, totally unlike any other ! Eor Time, all-edacious, and alhferacious, does run on : and the Seven Sleepers, awakening hungry after a hundred years, find that it is not their old nurses who can now give them suck ! Eor the rest, let not any Parliament, Aristocracy, Millo- cracy, or Member of the Governing Class, condemn with much triumph this small specimen of ‘ remedial measures ; ’ or ask again, with the least anger, of this Editor, What is to be done. How that alarming problem of the Working Classes is to be managed ? Editors are not here, foremost of all, to say How. A certain Editor thanks the gods that nobody pays him three hundred thousand pounds a year, two hundred thousand, twenty thousand, or any similar sum of cash for saying How ; — that liis wages are very different, his work somewhat fitter for him. An Editor’s stipulated work is to apprise thee that it must be done. The ‘ way to do it,’ is to try it, knowing tliat thou shalt die if it be not done. There is tlie bare back, there is the web of cloth ; thou slialt cut me a coat to cover tlie bare back, tliou wliose trade it is. Impossible ? Hapless Eraction, dost thou discern Eate there, lialf-unveiliiig herself in the gloom of the future, with her gibbet-cords, her steel- whips, and very authentic Tailor’s Hell ; waiting to see whether it is ‘ possible ? ’ Out with thy scissors, and cut that cloth or thy own windpipe. Past and Present, p. 355. WHAT SOCIETY EXISTS EOR. 245 WHAT SOCIETY EXISTS FOR. One tiling, which the British reader often reads and hears in this time, is worth his meditating for a moment : That Society ‘ exists for the protection of property.’ To which it is added, that the poor man also has property, namely, his ‘ labour,’ and the fifteenpence or three-and-sixpence a day he can get for that. True enough, 0 friends, ‘ for protecting property ; ’ most true : and indeed if you will once sufficiently enforce that Eighth Commandment, the whole ^ rights of man ’ are well cared for ; I know no better definition of the rights of man. Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not he stolen fro7n : what a Society were that ; Plato’s Eepublic, More’s Utopia mere emblems of it 1 Give every man what is his, the accurate price of what he has done and been, no man shall any more complain, neither shall the earth suffer any more. Eor the protection of property, in very truth, and for that alone \ — And now, what is thy property ? That parchment title- deed, that purse thou buttonest in thy breeches-pocket ? Is that thy valuable property ? Unhappy brother, most poor insolvent brother, I, without parchment at all, with purse oftenest in the flaccid state, imponderous, which will not fling against the wind, have quite other property than that ! I have the miraculous breath of Life in me, breathed into my nostrils by Almighty God. I have affections, thoughts, a god-given capability to be and do; rights, therefore, — the right for instance to thy love if I love thee, to thy guidance if I obey thee : the strangest rights, whereof in church-pulpits one still hears something, though almost unintelligible now ; rights, stretching high into Immensity, far into Eternity ! Eifteen- pence a day ; three-and-sixpence a day ; eight hundred pounds and odd a day, dost thou call that my property ? I value that little ; little all I could purchase with that. Eor truly, as is said, what matters it ? In torn boots, in soft-hung carriages- and-four, a man gets always to his journey’s end. Socrates walked barefoot, or in wooden shoes, and yet arrived happily. 246 POLITICAL. They never asked him, What shoes or conveyance ? never, "VVhat wages hadst thou ? but simply. What work didst thou ? — Property, O brother ? ‘ Of my very body I have but a life- rent.’ As for this flaccid purse of mine, ’tis something, nothing; has been the slave of pickpockets, cut-throats, Jew- brokers, gold-dust-robbers ; ’twas his, ’tis mine ; ’tis thine, if thou care much to steal it. But my soul, breathed into me by God, my Me, and what capability is there ; that is mine, and I will resist the stealing of it. I call that mine and not thine ; I will keep that, and do what work I can with it : God has given it me, the Devil shall not take it away ! Alas, my friends, Society exists and has existed for a great many pur- poses, not so easy to specify ! Chartism, p. 58. GIRONLIN EEYOLUTIONISTS. There is a class of revolutionists named Girondins, whose fate in history is remarkable enough ! Men who rebel, and urge the Lower Classes to rebel, ought to have other than Formulas to go upon. Men w'ho discern in the misery of the toiling complaining millions not misery, but only a raw- material which can be wrought upon, and traded in, for one’s owm poor hide-bound theories and egoisms ; to whom millions of living fellow-creatures, with beating hearts in their bosoms, beating, suffering, hoping, are ‘ masses,’ mere ‘ explosive masses for blowing down Bastilles with,’ for voting at hustings for Its : such men are of the questionable species ! Chartism, p. 93. THE ONE INSTITUTION. Who can despair of Governments that passes a Soldier’s Guanlhouso, or meets a redcoated man on the streets! That u body of men could bo got together to kill other men when THE ONE INSTITUTION. 247 you bade them : this, a 'priori^ does it not seem one of the impossiblest things ? Yet look, behold it : in the stolidest of Donothing Grovernments, that impossibility is a thing done. See it there, with buff-belts, red coats on its back ; walking sentry at guardhouses, brushing white breeches in barracks ; an indisputable palpable fact. Out of grey Antiquity, amid all finance-difficulties, scaccarium-idMie^^ ship-monies, coat-and- conduct monies, and vicissitudes of Chance and Time, there, down to the present blessed hour, it is. Often, in these pain- fully decadent and painfully nascent Times, with their distresses, inarticulate gaspings and ‘ impossibilities ; ’ meeting a tall Lifeguardsman in his snow-white trousers, or seeing those two statuesque Lifeguardsmen in their frowning bearskins, pipe-clayed buckskins, on their coal-black sleek-fiery quadru- peds, riding sentry at the Horse- Guards, — it strikes one with a kind of mournful interest, how, in such universal down- rushing and wrecked impotence of almost all old institutions, this oldest Fighting Institution is still so young! Fresh- complexioned, firm-limbed, six feet by the standard, this fighting-man has verily been got up, and can fight. While so much has not yet got into being ; while so much has gone gradually out of it, and become an empty Semblance or Clothes- suit ; and highest king’s-cloaks, mere chimeras parading under them so long, are getting unsightly to the earnest eye, unsightly, almost offensive, like a costlier kind of scarecrow’s- blanket, — here still is a reality. Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on. Was this, then, of all the things mankind had some talent for, the one thing important to learn well, and bring to perfection ; this of successfully killing one another ? Truly you have learned it well, and carried the business to a high perfection. It is incalculable what, by arranging, commanding and regimenting, you can make of men. These thousand straight-standing firm- set individuals, who shoulder arms, who march, wheel, advance, retreat ; and are, for your behoof, a magazine charged with fiery death, in the most perfect condition of potential activity ; few months ago, till the persuasive sergeant came, what were 248 POLITICAL. they ? Multiform ragged losels, runaway apprentices, starved weavers, thievish valets ; an entirely broken population, fast tending towards the treadmill. But the persuasive sergeant came ; by tap of drum enlisted, or formed lists of them, took heartily to drilling them ; — and he and you have made them this ! Most potent, effectual for all work whatsoever, is wise planning, firm combining and commanding among men. Let no man despair of Grovernments who looks on these two sentries at the Horse- Guards, and our United-Service Clubs ! I could conceive an Emigration Service, a Teaching Service, considerable varieties of United and Separate Services, of the due thousands strong, all efiective as this Lighting Service is ; all doing their work, like it ; — which work, much more than fighting, is henceforth the necessity of these 'New Ages we are got into ! Much lies among us, convulsively, nigh desperately struggling to he horn. Past and P resent y 349 , 351 . HISTORICAL. HISTOEICAL THE LAWS OF PEESPECTIVE IN HISTORY. Look back from end to beginning, over any History ; over our own England: bow, in rapidest law of perspective, it dwindles from the canvass ! An unhappy Sybarite, if we stand within two centuries of him and name him Charles Second, shall have twelve times the space of a heroic Alfred ; two or three thousand times, if we name him George the Fourth. The whole Saxon Heptarchy, though events, to which Magna Charta 'and the world-famous Third Beading, are as dust in the balance, took place then, — for did not England, to mention nothing else, get itself, if not represented in Parlia- ment, yet converted to Christianity ? — the whole Saxon Heptarchy, I say, is summed up practically in that one sentence of Milton’s, the only one succeeding writers have copied, or readers remembered, of the ‘ fighting and flocking of kites and crows.’ Neither was that an unimportant was- sail-night, when the two black-browed Brothers, strong- headed, headstrong, Hengst and Horsa {Stallion and Horse), determined on a man-hunt in Britain, the boar-hunt at home having got over-crowded; and so, of a few hungry Angles made an English Nation, and planted it here, and — produced thee, O Header ! Of Hengst’s whole campaignings scarcely half a page of good Narrative can now be written ; the Lord Mayor s Visit to Oxford standing, meanwhile, revealed to mankind in a respectable volume. Nay, what of this ? Does not the Destruction of a Brunswick Theatre take above a million times as much telling as the Creation of a World ? 262 HISTOEICAL. To use a ready-made similitude, we might liken Universal History to a magic 'web ; and consider with astonishment how, by philosophic insight and indolent neglect, the ever-growing fabric wove itself forward, out of that ravelled immeasurable mass of threads and thrums, which we name Memoirs ; nay, at each new lengthening, at each new epochs changed its whole proportions, its hue and structure to the very origin. Thus, do not the records of a Tacitus acquire new meaning, after seven- teen hundred years, in the hands of a Montesquieu ? Mebuhr must reinterpret for us, at a still greater distance, the writings of a Titus Livius : nay, the religious archaic chronicles of a Hebrew Prophet and Lawgiver escape not the like fortune ; and many a ponderous Eichhorn scans, with new-ground philosophic spectacles, the revelation of a Moses, and strives to reproduce for this century what, thirty centuries ago, was of plainly infinite significance to all. Consider History with the beginnings of it stretching dimly into the remote Time; emerging darkly out of the mysterious Eternity : the ends of it enveloping us at this hour, whereof we at this hour, both as actors and relators, form part ! Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 197. ROBERTSON’S HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. I would fain know the History of Scotland : who can tell it me? “Kobertson,” say innumerable voices; “Eobertson against the world.” I open Eobertson ; and find there, through long ages too confused for narrative, and fit only to be presented in the way of epitome and distilled essence, a cunning answer and hypothesis, not to this question: Ey whom, and by what means, when and how, was this fair broad Scotland, with its Arts and Manufactures, Temples, Schools, Institutions, Poetry, Spirit, National Character, created, and made arable, v(‘rdant, peculiar, great, hero as I can see some fair section of it lying, kind and strong (like some Bacchus- tamed Jdon), from the Castle-liill of Edinburgh ? — but to this other question: How did the King keep himself alive in HOBERTSON^S HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 253 those old days ; and restrain so many Butcher-Barons and ravenous Henchmen from utterly extirpating one another, so that killing went on in some sort of moderation ? In the one little Letter of Hlneas Sylvius, from old Scotland, there is more of History than in all this. — At length, however, we come to a luminous age, interesting enough ; to the age of the Beforma- tion. All Scotland is awakened to a second higher life : the Spirit of the Highest stirs in every bosom, agitates every bosom ; Scotland is convulsed, fermenting, struggling to body itself forth anew. To the herdsman, among his cattle in remote woods ; to the craftsman, in his rude, heath-thatched workshop, among his rude guild-brethren ; to the great and to the little, a new light has arisen : in town and hamlet groups are gathered, with eloquent looks, and governed or ungovernable tongues ; the great and the little go forth together to do battle for the Lord against the mighty. We ask with breathless eagerness : How was it ; how went it on ? Let us understand it, let us see it, and know it ! — In reply, is handed us a really graceful and most dainty little Scandalous Chronicle (as for some Journal of Fashion) of two persons : Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but over lightheaded ; and Henry Darnley, a Booby who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed and cooed, according to nature ; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged, and blew one another up with gunpowder : this, and not the History of Scotland, is what we goodnaturedly read. Nay, by other hands, something like a horse-load of other Books have been written to prove that it was the Beauty who blew up the Booby, and that it was not she. Who or what it was, the thing once for all heing so effectually done, concerns us little. To know Scotland, at that great epoch, were a valuable increase of knowledge ; to know poor Darnley, and see him with burning candle, from centre to skin, were no increase of knowledge at all. — Thus is History written. Miscellanies^ vol. iii., p. 37. 254 HISTORICAL. THE TASK OF ENGLAND. Who shall saj what work and works this England has yet to do ? Eor what purpose this land of Britain was created, set like a jewel in the encircling blue of Ocean ; and this Tribe of Saxons, fashioned in the depths of Time, “ on the shores of the Black Sea ” or elsewhere, “out of Harzgebirge rock ” or whatever other material, was sent travelling hitherward ? No man can say : it was for a work, and for works, incapable of announcement in words. Thou seest them there ; part of them stand done, and- visible to the eye; even these thou canst not name : how much less the others still matter of prophecy only ! They live and labour there, these twenty million Saxon men ; they have been born into this mystery of life out of the dark- ness of Past Time : — how changed now since the first Bather and first Mother of them set forth, quitting the Tribe of Tlieutli, with passionate farewell, under questionable auspices ; on scanty bullock-cart, if they had even bullocks and a cart ; with axe and hunting-spear, to subdue a portion of our com- mon Planet ! This nation now has cities and seedfields, has spring- vans, dray-waggons. Long-acre carriages, nay railway trains ; has coined-money, exchange-bills, laws, books, war- fleets, spinning-jennies, warehouses and West India Docks: see what it has built and done, what it can and will yet build and do ! These umbrageous pleasure-woods, green meadows, shaven stubble-fields, smooth-sweeping roads ; these high- domed cities, and what they hold and bear ; this mild Good- morrow which the stranger bids thee, equitable, nay forbearant if need were, judicially calm and law-observing towards thee a stranger, wliat work has it not cost ? How many brawny arms, generation after generation, sank down wearied ; how many noble liearts, toiling wliilo life lasted, and wise heads tiiat wore tliemselves dim with scanning and discerning, before tliis waste WhitrcliJI] Albion, so-called, with its other Cassi- tcrides Tin Ishnuh, became a British Empire! The stream of World- History has altered its complexion; Homans THE TWELFTH CENTURY. 255 are dead oat, English are come in. The red broad mark of Eomanhood, stamped ineffaceably on that Chart of Time, has disappeared from the present, and belongs only to the past. England plays its part ; England too has a mark to leave, and we will hope none of the least significant. Of a truth, who- soever had, with the bodily eye, seen Hengst and Horsa mooring on the mud-beach of Thanet, on that spring morning of the year 449 ; and then, with the spiritual eye, looked forward to New York, Calcutta, Sidney Cove, across the ages and the oceans ; and thought what Wellingtons, Washingtons, Shakspears, Miltons, Watts, Arkwrights, William Pitts and Davie Crocketts had to issue from that business, and do their several taskworks so , — he would have said, those leather- boats of Hengst had a kind of cargo in them ! Chartism^ p. 70. THE TWELFTH CENTURY. How much is still alive in England ; how much has not yet come into life ! A Feudal Aristocracy is still alive, in the prime of life ; superintending the cultivation of the land, and less consciously the distribution of the produce of the land, the adjustment of the quarrels of the land ; judging, soldiering, adjusting ; everywhere governing the people, — so that even a Gurth born thrall of Cedric lacks not his due parings of the pigs he tends. Governing ; — and, alas, also game-preserving, so that a Robert Hood, a William Scarlet and others have, in these days, put on Lincoln coats, and taken to living in some universal-sufirage manner, under the greenwood tree ! How silent, on the other hand, lie all Cotton-trades and such like ; not a steeple- chimney yet got on end from sea to sea ! North of the Humber, a stern Willelmus Conquestor burnt the Country, finding it unruly, into very stern repose. Wild fowl scream in those ancient silences, wild cattle roam in those ancient solitudes ; the scanty sulky Norse-bred popula- tion all coerced into silence, — feeling that, under these new Norman Governors, their history has probably as good as 256 HISTORICAL. ended. Men and Nortliumbrian Norse populations know little what has ended, what is but beginning ! The Eibble and the Aire roll down, as yet unpolluted by dyers’ chemistry ; tenanted by merry trouts and piscatory otters; the sunbeam and the vacant wind’s-blast alone traversing those moors. Side by side sleep the coal-strata and the iron-strata for so many ages ; no Steam-Demon has yet risen smoking into being. Saint Mungo rules in Glasgow; James Watt stiU slumbering in the deep of Time. Mancunium^ Manceaster, what we now call Manchester, spins no cotton, — if it be not ivool ‘cottons,’ clipped from the backs of mountain sheep. The Creek of the Mersey gurgles, twice in the four-and-twenty hours, with eddying brine, clangorous with sea-fowl ; and is a Lither-^ool, a lazy or sullen Pool, no monstrous pitchy City, and Sea- haven of the world ! Past and Present, p. 88. THE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May ; but at length the season of summer does come. So long the tree stood naked; angry wiry naked boughs, moaning and creaking in the wind : you w’ould say. Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground ? Not so ; we must wait ; all things will have their time. — Of the man Shakspeare and his Elizabethan era, with its Sydneys, Ealeighs, Bacons, what could we say ? That it was a spiritual flower- time. Suddenly, as with the breath of J une, your rude naked tree is touched ; bursts into leaves and flowers, such leaves and flowers ! The past long ages of nakedness, and wintry fermen- tation and elaboration, liave done their part, though seeming to do nothing. 'Die past silence has got a voice, all the more significant the longer it had continued silent. In trees, men, institutions, creeds, nations, in all tilings extant and growing in this universe, wc may note such vicissitudes, and budding- tiinea. Moreover there are spiritual budding- times ; and then aUu Ihero are physical, appointed to nations. THE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. 257 Thus in the middle of that poor calumniated Eighteenth Century, see once more ! Long winter again past, the dead- seeming tree proves to be living, to have been always living ; after motionless times, every bough shoots forth on the sudden, very strangely : — it now turns out that this favoured England was not only to have had her Shakspeares, Bacons, Sydneys, but to have her Watts, Arkwrights, Brindleys ! We will honour greatness in all kinds. The Prospero evoked the singing of Ariel, and took captive the world with those melodies : the same Prospero can send his Eire-demons panting across all oceans; shooting with the speed of meteors, on cunning highways, from end to end of kingdoms ; and make Iron his missionary, preaching its evangel to the brute Primeval Powers, which listen and obey : neither is this small. Man- chester, with its cotton-fuz, its smoke and dust, its tumult and contentious squalor, is hideous to thee ? Think not so : a precious substance, beautiful as magic dreams and yet no dream but a reality, lies hidden in that noisome wrappage ; — a wrappage struggling indeed (look at Chartisms and such like) to cast itself off, and leave the beauty free and visible there ! Hast thou heard, with sound ears, the awakening of a Man- chester, on Monday morning, at half-past five by the clock ; the rushing off of its thousand mills, like the boom of an Atlantic tide, ten thousand times ten thousand spools and spindles all set humming there, — it is perhaps, if thou knew it well, sublime as a Niagara, or more so. Cotton -spinning is the clothing of the naked in its result ; the triumph of man over matter in its means. Soot and despair are not the essence of it ; they are divisible from it, — at this hour, are they not crying fiercely to be divided ? The great Goethe, looking at cotton Switzerland, declared it, I am told, to be of all things that he had seen in this world the most poetical. Whereat friend Kanzler von Muller, in search of the palpable picturesque, could not but stare wide-eyed. Nevertheless our World-Poet knew well what he was saying. Chartism, p. 82. 258 HISTORICAL. THE PHILOSOPHE-CENTURY. In any plienomenon, one of the most important moments is the end, l^ow this epoch of the Eighteenth or Philosophe-centur}^ was properly the End ; the End of a Social System which for above a thousand years had been building itself together, and, after that, had begun, for some centuries (as human things all do), to moulder down. The mouldering down of a Social System is no cheerful business either to form part of, or to look at : however, at length, in the course of it, there comes a time when the mouldering changes into a rushing ; active hands drive-in their wedges, set-to their crowbars ; there is a comfortable appearance of work going on. Instead of here and there a stone falling out, here and there a handful of dust, whole masses tumble down, whole clouds and whirlwinds of dust : torches too are applied, and the rotten easily takes fire : so what with flame-w^hirlwind, wEat with dust- whirl wind, and the crash of falling towers, the concern grows eminently interesting; and our assiduous craftsmen can encourage one another with Vivats, and cries of Speed the worh. Add to this, that of all labourers, no one can see such rapid extensive fruit of his labour as the Destroyer can and does : it will not seem unreasonable that measuring from effect to cause, he should esteem his labour as the best and greatest ; and a Voltaire, for example, be by his guild-brethren and apprentices confidently accounted ‘ not only tlie greatest man of this age, but of all past ages, and ])erhaps the greatest that Nature could produce.’ Wortliy old Nature! 8he goes on producing whatsoever is needful in each season of her course ; and produces, with perfect composure, that Encyclopedist opinion, that she can j)roduce no more. Such a torch-and-crowbar period, of quick rushing down and conilagration, was tliis of the Siccle do Louis Quinze ; when the Social System having all lallen into rottenness, rain-holes and noisome decay, tlie shivering natives resolved to cheer their dull abode by the questionable step of setting it on fire. OU^ CLO. 259 Questionable we call tbeir manner of procediire ; tbe thing itself, as all men may now see, was inevitable ; one way or other, whether by prior burning or milder methods, the old house'^ must needs be new-built. W e behold the business of pulling down, or at least of assorting the rubbish, still go resolutely on, all over Europe : here and there some traces of new foundation, of new building up, may now also, to the eye of Hope, disclose themselves. Miscellanies^ vol. iii., p. 202. OU’ CLO. Did you never hear, with the mind’s ear as well, that fateful Hebrew Prophecy, I think the fatefullest of all, which sounds daily through the streets, ‘ Ou’ do ! Ou’ do ! ’ — A certain People, once upon a time, clamorously voted by overwhelming majority, ‘Hot he ; Barabbas, not he! Him, and what he is, ‘ and what he deserves, we know well enough : a reviler of the ‘ Chief Priests and sacred Chancery wigs ; a seditious Heretic, ‘ physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country and man- ‘ kind : To the gallows and the cross with him 1 Barabbas is ‘ our man ; Barabbas, we are for Barabbas 1 ’ They got Barabbas : — have you well considered what a fund of purblind obduracy, of opaque Jiunlceyism grown truculent and trans- cendant ; what an eye for the phylacteries, and want of eye for the eternal noblenesses ; sordid loyalty to the prosperous sem- blances, and high-treason against the supreme Pact, such a vote betokens in these natures ? Eor it was the consummation of a long series of such; they and their fathers had long kept voting so. A singular People ; who could both produce such divine men, and then could so stone and crucify them : a People terrible from the beginning! — Well, they got Barabbas; and they got, of course, such guidance as Barabbas and the like of him could give them; and, of course, they stumbled ever downwards and devilwards, in their truculent and stiff-necked way ; and — and, at this hour, after eighteen centuries of sad s 2 260 HISTORICAL. fortune, they prophetically sing, ‘ Ou’ do ! ’ in all the cities of the world. Might the world, at this late hour, but take note of them, and understand their song a little ! Latter Day Pamphlets — The Present Time^ p. 39. THE MELBOURNE MINISTRY IN 1839. How Parliamentary Radicalism has fulfilled this mission, entrusted to its management these eight years now, is known to all men. The expectant millions have sat at a feast of the Barmecide ; been bidden fill themselves with the imagination of meat. What thing has Radicalism obtained for them ; what other than shadows of things has it so much as asked for them? Cheap Justice, Justice to Ireland, Irish Appropriation Clause, Ratepaying Clause, Poor-Rate, Church-Rate, Household Suflfrage, Ballot- Question, ‘open^ or shut: not things but shadows of things ; Benthamee formulas ; barren as the east- wind ! An Ultra-radical, not seemingly of the Benthamee species, is forced to exclaim : ^ The people are at last wearied. ‘ They say. Why should we be ruined in our own shops, thrown ‘ out of our farms, voting for these men? Ministerial majorities ‘ decline ; this Ministry has become impotent, had it even the will ‘ to do good. They have called long to us, ‘‘We are a Reform “‘Ministry; will ye not support us?^^ We have supported ‘ them ; borne them forward indignantly on our shoulders, time ‘ after time, fall after fall, when they had been hurled out into ‘ the street ; and lay prostrate, helpless, like dead luggage. It ‘ is the fact of a Reform Ministry, not the name of one that we ‘ would support ! Languor, sickness of hope deferred pervades ‘ the public mind ; the public mind says at last. Why all this ‘ struggle for the name of a Reform Ministry ? Let the Tories ‘be Ministry if they will ; let at least some living reality be ‘ Ministry ! A rearing horse that will only run backward, he ‘ is not the horse one would choose to travel on : yet of all ‘ conceivable horses tlie worst is the dead horse. Mounted ou ‘a rearing horse, you may back him, spur him, check him. THE MANCHESTER INSURRECTION OE 1842. 261 ‘ make a little way even backwards : but seated astride of your ‘ dead horse, what chance is there for you in the chapter of ‘ possibilities? You sit motionless, hopeless, a spectacle to gods ^ and men.’ Chartism^ p. 92. THE MANCHESTER INSURRECTION OF 1842. Blusterowski, Colacorde, and other Editorial prophets of the Continental Democratic Movement, have in their leading- articles shewn themselves disposed to vilipend the late Man- chester Insurrection, as evincing in the rioters an extreme backwardness to battle ; nay, as betokening, in the English People itself, perhaps a want of the proper animal-courage in- dispensable in these ages. A million hungry operative men started up, in utmost paroxysm of desperate protest against their lot ; and, ask Calacorde and Company, How many shots were fired ? Very few in comparison ! Certain hundreds of drilled soldiers sufficed to suppress this million-headed hydra, and tread it down, without the smallest appeasement or hope of such, into its subterranean settlements again, there to recon- sider itself. Compared with our revolts in Lyons, in Warsaw, and elsewhere, to say nothing of incomparable Paris City past or present, what a lamblike Insurrection 1 The present Editor is not here, with his readers, to vindicate the character of Insurrections; nor does it matter to us whether Blusterowski and the rest may think the English a courageous people or not courageous. In passing, however, let us mention that, to our view, this was not an unsuccessful Insurrection; that as Insurrections go, we have not heard lately of any that succeeded so well. A million of hungry operative men, as Blusterowski says, rose all up, came all out into the streets and — stood there. What other could they do ? Their wrongs and griefs were bitter, insupportable, their rage against the same was just : but who are they that cause these wrongs, who that will honestly make effort to redress them ? Our enemies are we know not 262 HISTORICAL. who or what ; our friends are we know not where ! How shall we attack any one, shoot or be shot by any one ? O, if the accursed invisible ISTightmare, that is crushing out the life of us and ours, would take a shape ; approach us like the Hyrca- nian tiger, the Behemoth of Chaos, the Archfiend himself ; in any shape, that we could see, and fasten on ! A man can have himself shot with cheerfulness ; but it needs first that he see clearly for what. Shew him the divine face of Justice, then the diabolic monster which is eclipsing that : he will fly at the throat of such monster, never so monstrous, and need no bid- ding to do it. Woolwich grapeshot will sweep clear all streets, blast into invisibility so many thousand men: but if your Woolwich grapeshot be but eclipsing Divine Justice, and the God’s-radiance itself gleam recognisable athwart, then, yes then is the time come for fighting and attacking. All artillery- parks have become weak, and are about to dissipate : in the God’s-thunder, their poor thunder slackens, ceases ; finding that it is, in all senses of the term, a hrute one ! That the Manchester Insurrection stood still, on the streets, ith an indisposition to fire and bloodshed, was wisdom for it even as an Insurrection. Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity ; and governors who wait for that to instruct them, are surely getting into the fatallest courses, — proving themselves sons of Nox and Chaos, of blind Cowardice, not of seeing Valour ! How can there be any remedy in insur- rection ? It is a mere announcement of the disease, — visible now even to Sons of Night. Insurrection usually ‘ gains * little; usually wastes how much! One of its worst kinds of waste, to say nothing of the rest, is that of irritating and exas- perating men against each other, by violence done ; which is always sure to bo injustice done, for violence does even justice unjustly. Who sball coin])ute the waste and loss, the obstruction of (jvery sort, that was produced in the IManchester region by IV-tcrloo alone! Home thirteen unarmed men and women cut down, — the number of the slain and maimed is very countable : but the treasury of rage, burning hidden or visible in all hearts THE MANCHESTER INSURRECTION OF 1842. 2G3 ever since, more or less perverting tlie effort and aim of all hearts ever since, is of unknown extent. ‘‘ How ye came among us, in your cruel armed blindness, ye unspeakable County Yeomanry, sabres flourishing, hoofs prancing, and slashed us down at your brute pleasure ; deaf, blind to all our claims and woes and wrongs ; of quick sight and sense to your own claims only ! There lie poor sallow workworn weavers, and complain no more now: women them selves are slashed and sabred, howling terror fills the air ; and ye ride prosperous, very victorious, — ye unspeakable : give m sabres too, and then come-on a little!’’ Such are Peterloos. In all hearts that witnessed Peterloo, stands written, as in fire- characters, or smoke-characters, prompt to become fire again, a legible balance-account of grim vengeance ; very unjustly balanced, much exaggerated, as is the way with such accounts ; but payable readily at sight, in full with compound interest 1 Such things should be avoided as the very pestilence. Por men’s hearts ought not to be set against one another ; but set with one another, and all against the Evil Thing only. Men’s souls ought to be left to see clearly ; not jaundiced, blinded, twisted all awry, by revenge, mutual abhorrence, and the like. An Insurrection that can announce the disease, and then retire with no such balance-account opened anywhere, has attained the highest success possible for it. And this was what these poor Manchester operatives, with all the darkness that was in them and round them, did manage to perform. They put their huge inarticulate question, “ What do you mean to do with us ? ” in a manner audible to every reflective soul in this kingdom ; exciting deep pity in all good men, deep anxiety in all men whatever ; and no conflagration or outburst of madness came to cloud that feeling anywhere, but everywhere it operates unclouded. All England heard the question : it is the first practical form of our Sphinx-riddle. England will answer it ; or, on the whole, England will perish ; — one does not yet expect the latter result 1 Past and Present, p. 19. 264 HISTORICAL. PIO NONO. IS’ot long ago tlie world saw, with thoughtless joy, which might have been very thoughtful joy, a real miracle not here- tofore considered possible or conceivable in the world : a Eeforming Pope. A simple pious creature, a good country priest, invested unexpectedly with the tiara, takes up the New Testament, declares that this henceforth shall be his rule of governing. No more finesse, chicanery, hypocrisy, or false or foul dealing of any kind : God’s truth shall be spoken, God’s justice shall be done, on the throne called of St. Peter: an honest Pope, Papa, or Father of Christendom, shall preside there. And such a throne of St. Peter ; and such a Christen- dom, for an honest Papa to preside in ! The European popu- lations everywhere hailed the omen ; with shouting and rejoicing, leading-articles and tar-barrels; thinking people listened with astonishment, — not with sorrow if they were faithful or wise ; with awe rather as at the heralding of death, and with a joy as of victory beyond death ! Something pious, grand, and as if awful in that joy, revealing once more the Presence of a Divine Justice in this world. For, to such men, it was very clear how this poor devoted Pope would prosper, with his New Testament in his hand. An alarming business, that of governing in the throne of St. Peter by the rule of veracity ! By the rule of veracity, the so-called throne of St. Peter was openly declared above three hundred years ago, to be a falsity, a huge mistake, a pestilential dead carcass, which this Sun was weary of. More than three hundred years ago, tlie tlirone of St. Peter received peremptory judicial notice to quit ; authentic order, registered in Heaven’s chancery and since legible in the hearts of all brave men, to take itself away, — to begone, and let us have no more to do with it and its delusions and impious deliriums; — and it has been sitting every day since, it may depend upon it, at its own peril withal, and will have to pay exact damages yet for every day it has so sat. Jaiw of veracity? What this Popedom had to do by the law 1848. 265 of veracity, was to give up its foul galvanic life, an offence to gods and men ; honestly to die, and get itself buried ! Par from this was the thing the poor Pope undertook in regard to it ; — and yet on the whole it was essentially this too. ‘‘Eeforming Pope?” said one of our acquaintance, often in those weeks, “ Was there ever such a miracle ? About to break “ up that huge imposthume too, by ‘ curing ’ it ? Turgot and “ Necker were nothing to this. Grod is great ; and when a scandal is to end, brings some devoted man to take charge of it in hope, not in despair ! ” But cannot he reform ? asked many simple persons ; — to whom our friend in grim banter would reply : Eeform a Popedom, — hardly. A wretched old kettle, ruined from top to bottom, and consisting mainly now of foul grime and rust : stop the holes of it, as your antecessors have been doing, with temporary putty, it may hang together yet a while ; begin to hammer at it, solder at it, to what you call mend and rectify it, — it will fall to sherds, as sure as rust is rust ; go all into nameless dissolution, — and the fat in the fire will be a thing worth looking at, poor Pope ! ” — So accord- ingly it has proved. The poor Pope, amid felicitations and tar-barrels of various kinds, went on joyfully for a season : but he had awakened, he as no other man could do, the sleeping elements; mothers of the whirlwinds, conflagrations, earth- quakes. Questions not very soluble at present, were even sages and heroes set to solve them, began everywhere with new emphasis to be asked. Questions which all ofdcial men wished, and almost hoped, to postpone till Doomsday. Doomsday itself had come ; that was the terrible truth ! Latter Day Pamphlets. The Present Time^ p. 2. 1848. One of the most singular, disastrous, amazing ; and on the whole humiliating years the European world ever saw. Not since the irruption of the Northern Barbarians has there been the like. Everywhere immeasurable Democracy rose mon- 266 HISTOEICAL. strous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as tlie voice of chaos. Every- where the Official holy-of-holies was scandalously laid bare to dogs and the profane : — Enter, all the world, see what kind of Official holy it is. Kings everywhere, and reigning persons, stared in sudden horror, the voice of the whole world bellowing in their ear, Begone, ye imbecile hypocrites, histrios not heroes! Off with you, off!” — and, what was peculiar and notable in this year for the first time, the Kings all made haste to go, as if exclaiming, We are poor histrios, we, sure enough ; — did you want heroes ? Don’t kill us ; we couldn’t help it ! ” Not one of them turned round, and stood upon his Kingship, as upon a right he could afford to die for, or to risk his skin upon ; by no manner of means. That, I say, is the alarming peculiarity at present. Democracy, on this new occasion, finds all Kings conscious that they are but Playactors. The miserable mortals, enacting their High Life Below Stairs, with faith only that this universe may perhaps be all a phantasm and hypocrisis, — the truculent Constable of the Destinies suddenly enters : ‘‘ Scandalous Phantasms, what do you here ? Are ^ solemnly constituted Impostors ’ the proper Kings of men ? Did you think the Life of Man was a grimacing dance of apes ? To be led always by the squeak of your paltry fiddle ? Ye miserable, this Universe is not an upholstery Puppet-play, but a terrible God’s Pact ; and you, I think, had not you better be gone ! ” They fled precipitately, some of them with what we may call an exquisite ignominy, — in terror of the treadmill or worse. And everywhere the people, or the populace, take their own government upon themselves ; and open ‘ kinglessness,’ what we call anarchy, — how happy if it be anarchy a street constable ! — is everywhere the order of the day. Such was the history, from J kiltie to Mediterranean, in Italy, Prance, JVussia, Austria, from end to end ot Europe, in those March days of 1818 . Since the destruction of the old Koman Empire liy inroad of the Northern Barbarians, I have known nothing Hiiiiilar. JaiUcy Day l^ampldcls. The Present 'Time, p. (>. THE SPANISH REFUGEES. 267 THE SPANISH REFUGEES. In those years [1823-4] a visible section of the London population, and conspicuous out of all proportion to its size or value, was a small knot of Spaniards, who had sought shelter here as Political Eefugees. Political Eefugees : a tragic succession of that class is one of the possessions of England in our time. Six-and-twenty years ago, when I first saw London, I remember those unfortunate Spaniards among the new phe- nomena. Daily in the cold spring air, under skies so unlike their own, you could see a group of fifty or a hundred stately tragic figures, in proud threadbare cloaks ; perambulating, mostly with closed lips, the broad pavements of Euston Square and the regions about St. Pancras new Church. Their lodg- ing was chiefly in Somers Town, as I understood ; and those open pavements about St. Pancras Church were the general place of rendezvous. They spoke little or no English; knew nobody, could employ themselves on nothing, in this new scene. Old steel-grey heads, many of them ; the shaggy, thick, blue-black hair of others struck you ; their brown com- plexion, dusky look of suppressed fire, in general their tragic condition as of caged Numidian lions. That particular Plight of Dnfortunates has long since fled again, and vanished ; and new have come and fled. In this convulsed revolutionary epoch, which already lasts above sixty years, what tragic flights of such have we not seen arrive on the one safe coast which is open to them, as they get successively vanquished, and chased into exile to avoid worse ! Swarm after swarm, of ever new complexion, from Spain as from other countries, is thrown off, in those ever- recurring paroxysms ; and will continue to be thrown off. As there could be (sug- gests Linnaeus) a ‘‘flower-clock,” measuring the hours of the day, and the months of the year, by the kinds of flowers that go to sleep and awaken, that blow into beauty and fade into dust : so in the great Eevolutionary Horologe, one might 268 HISTOUICAL. mark the years and epochs by the successive kinds of exiles that walk London streets, and, in grim silent manner, demand pity from us and reflections from us. This then extant group of Spanish Exiles was the Trocadero swarm, thrown off in 1823, in the Eiego and Quirogas quarrel. These were they whom Charles Tenth had, by sheer force, driven from their consti- tutionalisms and their Trocadero fortresses. Charles Tenth, who himself was soon driven out, manifoldly by sheer force ; and had to head his own swarm of fugitives ; and has now himself quite vanished, and given place to others. Eor there is no end of them ; propelling and propelled ! Life of Sterling, p. 84. ITALY AND RUSSIA. It is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate voice ; that it produce a man who will speak forth melodiously what the heart of it means ! Italy, for example, poor Italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder, not appearing in any protocol or treaty as a unity at all ; yet the noble Italy is actually one : Italy produced its Dante ; Italy can speak ! The Czar of all the Eussias, he is strong, with so many bayonets, Cossacks, and cannons ; and does a great feat in keeping such a tract of Earth politically together ; but he cannot yet speak. Something great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has had no voice of genius, to be heard of all men and times. He must learn to speak. He is a great dumb monster hitherto. His cannons and Cossacks will all have rusted into nonentity, while tliat Dante’s voice is still audible. The nation that has a Dante is bound together as no dumb Eussia can be. Lectures on Ueroes, p. 185. SOCIAL KEFORM. SOCIAL EEFOEM. THE DEVIL’S REaiMENTS OF THE LINE. If I liad a commonwealtli to reform or to govern, certainly it should not be the DeviFs regiments of the line that I would first of all concentrate my attention on! With them I should be apt to make rather brief work ; to them one would apply the besom, try to sweep them with some rapidity into the dust-bin, and well out of one’s road, I should rather say. Fill your thrashing-floor with docks, ragweeds, mugworths, and ply your flail upon them, — that is not the method to obtain sacks of wheat. Away, you ; begone, swiftly, ye regiments of the line : in the name of Grod and of His poor struggling servants, sore put to it to live in these bad days, I mean to rid myself of you with some degree of brevity. To feed you in palaces, to hire captains and schoolmasters and the choicest spiritual and material artificers to expend their industries on you, — Ho, by the Eternal 1 I have quite other work for that class of artists ; Seven-and-Twenty Millions of dejected mortals who have not yet quite declared for the Devil. Mark it,"my diabolic friends, I mean to lay leather on the backs of you, collars round the necks of you ; and will teach you, after the example of the gods, that this world is not your inheritance, or glad to see you in it. Ton, ye diabolic canaille, what has a Governor much to do with you ? You, I think, he will rather swiftly dismiss from his thoughts, — which have the whole celestial and terrestrial for their scope, and not the subterranean of scoundreldom alone. You, I consider, he will sweep pretty rapidly into 272 SOCIAL HEFORM. some Norfolk Island, into some special Convict Colony or remote domestic Moorland, into some stone-walled Silent- system, under hard drill-sergeants, just as Hhadamanthus, and inflexible as he, and there leave you to reap what you have sown ; he meanwhile turning his endeavours to the thousand- fold immeasurable interests of men and gods, — dismissing the one extremely contemptible interest of scoundrels ; sweeping that into the cesspool, tumbling that over London Bridge, in a very brief manner, if needful ! Who are you, ye thriftless sweepings of Creation, that we should for ever be pestered with you ? Have we no work to do but drilling Devil’s regi- ments of the line ? If I had schoolmasters, my benevolent friend, do you imagine I would set them on teaching a set of unteachables, who, as you perceive, have already made up their mind that black is white, — that the Devil namely is the advantageous Master to serve in this world ? My esteemed Benefactor of Humanity, it shall be far from me. Minds open to that particular conviction are not the materials I like to work upon. When once my schoolmasters have gone over all the other classes of society, from top to bottom ; and have no other soul to try with teaching, all being thoroughly taught, — I will then send them to operate on these regiments of the line ; then, and, assure yourself, never till then. The truth is, I am sick of scoundreldom, my esteemed Benefactor ; it always was detest- able to me ; and here where I find it lodged in palaces and waited upon by the benevolent of the world, it is more detestable, not to say insufferable to me than ever. Latter Day Pamphlets, Model Prisons, p. 13. NO BROTHERHOOD WITH SCOUNDRELS. IVlost sick am I, 0 friends, of this sugary disastrous jargon of philantliropy, the reign of love, new era of universal brother- hood, and not J*aradiso to the AVell-deserving, but Paradise to All-and-sundry, which possesses tlio benighted minds of men THE ONLY TEUE AIM OF PUNISHMENT. 273 and women in our day. My friends, I think you are much mistaken about Paradise ! ‘No Paradise for anybody ; he that cannot do without Paradise, go his ways : ’ suppose you tried that for a while ! I reckon that the safer version. — Unhappy sugary brethren, this is all untrue, this other ; contrary to the fact ; not a tatter of it will hang together in the wind and weather of fact. In brotherhood with the base and foolish I, for one, do not mean to live. Not in brotherhood with them was life hitherto worth much to me ; in pity, in hope not yet quite swallowed of disgust, — otherwise in enmity that must last through eternity, in unappeasable aversion, shall I have to live with these ! Brotherhood ? No, be the thought far from me. They are Adam’s children, — alas yes, I well remember that, and never shall forget it ; hence this rage and sorrow. But they have gone over to the dragons ; they have quitted the Bather’s house, and set up with the Old Serpent : till they return, how can they be brothers ? They are enemies, deadly to themselves and to me and to you, till then , till then, while hope yet lasts, I will treat them as brothers fallen insane ; — when hope has ended, with tears grown sacred and wrath grown sacred, I will cut them off in the name of God ! It is at my peril, if I do not. With the servant of Satan I dare not continue in partnership. Him I must put away, resolutely and forever : ‘ lest,’ as it is written, ‘ I become partaker of his plagues.’ Latter Hay Pamphlets. Model Prisons, p. 22. THE ONLY TE.UE AIM OF PUNISHMENT. I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason and only one, for either punishing a man or rewarding him in this world ; one reason, which ancient piety could well define ; That you may do the will and commandment of God with regard to him ; that you may do justice to him. This is your one true aim in respect of him ; aim thitherward with all your heart and all your strength and all your soul ; thitherward, and not 274 SOCIAL REFORM. elsewhither at all ! This aim is true, and will carry you to all earthly heights and benefits, and beyond the stars and Heavens. All other aims are purblind, illegitimate, untrue ; and will never carry you beyond the shop-counter, nay very soon will prove themselves incapable of maintaining you even there. Tind out what the Law of God is with regard to a man ; make that your human law, or I say it will be ill with you, and not well ! If you love your thief or murderer, if IS’ature and eternal Eact love him, then do as you are now doing. But if Nature and Eact not love him? If they have set inexorable penalties upon him, and planted natural wrath against him in every god-created human heart, — then I advise you, cease, and change your hand. Latter Day Pam;pTilets, Model Prisons, p. 33. “WHAT TO DO WITH OUR CRIMINALS?’^ Beally, one of the most difiicult questions this we have in these times. What to do with our criminals ? ” blandly ob- served a certain Law-dignitary, in my hearing once, taking the cigar from his mouth, and pensively smiling over a group of us under tlie summer beech-tree, as Eavonius carried off the tobacco-smoke ; and the group said nothing, only smiled and nodded, answering by new tobacco-clouds. “ AVhat to do with our criminals ? ” asked the official Law-dignitary again, as if entirely at a loss. — “I suppose,’' said one ancient figure not engaged in smoking, ‘Ghe plan would be to treat them according to the real law of the case : to make the Law of England, in respect of them, correspond to the Law of the Universe. Criminals, I suppose, would prove manageable in that way: If we could do approximately as God Almighty does towards tliem ; in a word, if we could try to do Justice towards them.” “I’ll thank you, for a deiinition of Justice?” sneered the official person in a clicerily scornful and triumphant manner, backed by a slight laugh from the lionourable com- jmny ; whicli irritated the other speaker. — “Well, 1 have no BENEVOLENCE V, JUSTICE. 275 pocket-definition of Justice,” said he, ‘Ho give jour Lordship. It has not quite been mj trade to look for such a definition ; I could rather fancy it had been jour Lordship’s trade, sitting on jour high place this long while. But one thing I can tell you: Justice always is, whether we define it or not. Everything done, suffered, or proposed, in Parliament or out of it, is either just or else unjust ; either is accepted by the gods and eternal facts, or is rejected by them. Your Lordship and I, with or without definition, do a little know Justice, I will hope ; if we don’t both know it and do it, we are hourly travelling down towards — Heavens, must I name such a place ! That is the place we are bound to with all our trading-pack, and the small or extensive budgets of human business laid on us ; and there if we don^f 'know Justice, we, and all our budgets and Acts of Parliament, shall find lodging when the day is done!” — The official person, a polite man otherwise, grinned as he best could some semblance of a laugh, mirthful as that of the ass eating thistles, and ended in “ Hah, oh, ah I ” Latter Day Pamjyhlets. Model Prisons, p. 30. BENEVOLENCE V. JUSTICE. On the whole, what a reflection is it that we cannot bestow on an unworthy man any particle of our benevolence, our patronage, or whatever resource is ours, — without withdrawing it, it and all that will grow of it, from one worthy, to whom it of right belongs 1 W e cannot, I say ; impossible ; it is the etern law of things. Incompetent Duncan MTastehorn, the haple ■ incompetent mortal to whom I gave the cobbling of my bc^is, — and cannot find in my heart to refuse it, the poor drunken wretch having a wife and ten children ; he withdraws the job from sober, plainly competent and meritorious Mr. Sparrowbill, generally short of work too ; discourages Sparrow- bill ; teaches him that he too, may as well drink and loiter and bungle ; that this is not a scene for merit and demerit at all, but for dupery, and whining flattery, and incompetent cobbling T 2 276 SOCIAL RErORI\r. of every description; clearly tending to the ruin of poor Sparrowbill ! What harm had Sparrowbill done me that I should so help to ruin him ? And I couldn’t save the insalvable M‘Pastehorn : I merely yielded him, for insufficient work, here and there a half-crown, — which he oftenest drank. And now Sparrowbill also is drinking ! Latter Day Pamphlets, Model Prisons^ p. 24, JUST LEGISLATION. The aim of all reformers, parliamentary and other, is still defined by them as ‘just legislation,’ just laws; with which definition who can quarrel ? They will not have ‘ class legisla- tion,’ which is a dreadfully bad thing ; but ‘ all classes legis- lation,’ I suppose, which is the right thing. Sure enough, just laws are an excellent attainment, the first condition of all prosperity for human creatures ; but few reflect how extremely difficult such attainment is ! Alas, could we once get laws which were just^ that is to say, which were the clear transcript of the Divine Laws of the Universe itself; so that each man were incessantly admonished, under strict penalties, by all men, to walk as the Eternal Maker had prescribed ; and he alone received honour whom the Maker had made honourable, and wliom the Maker had made disgraceful, disgrace: alas, were not liere tlie very ‘ Aristocracy ’ we seek ? A new veritable Hierarchy of Heaven, — approximately such in very truth, — bringing Earth nearer and nearer to the blessed Law of Heaven. Heroic men, the Sent of Heaven, once more bore rule : and on the throne of kings there sat splendent, not King i I iidson, or King Popinjay, but the Eravest of existing Men; and on the gihbet there swung as a tragic pendulum, admoni- tory to Ikirth in the name of Heaven, — not some insignificant, abject, necessitous outcast, who had violently, in his extremo misery and darkness, stolen a leg of mutton, — but veritably the Supreme Scoundrel of the Commonwealth, who in his insatiable greed and bottomless atrocity had long, hoodwinking the poor HONOUR THE RIGHT MAN. 277 world, gone himself, and led multitudes to go, in the ways of gilded human baseness ; seeking temporary profit (scrip, first- class claret, social honour, and the like small ware) where only eternal loss was possible; and who now, stripped of all his gildings and cunningly- devised speciosities, swung there an ignominious detected scoundrel; testifying aloud to all the Earth : “ Be not scoundrels, not even gilt scoundrels, any one of you ; for God, and not the Devil, is verily king, and this is where it ends, if even this be the end of it ! ” O Heaven, 0 Earth, what an ‘ attainment ’ were here, could we but hope to see it ! Eeformed Parliament, People’s League, Hume-Cobden agitation, tremendous cheers, new Battles of JSTaseby, Erench Be volution, and Horrors of Erench Bevolution, — all things were cheap and light to the attainment of this. Eor this were in fact the millennium ; and indeed nothing less than this can be it. Latter Day Pamjphlets, Hudson's Statue^ p, 23. HONOUR THE RIGHT MAN. Government is loath to interfere with the pursuits of any class of citizens ; and oftenest looks on in silence while follies are committed. But Government does interfere to prevent afflictive accumulations on the streets, malodorous or other unsanitary public procedures of an extensive sort ; regulates gully-drains, cesspools ; prohibits the piling-up of dungheaps, and is especially strict on the matter of indecent exposures. Wherever the health of the citizens is concerned, much more where their soul’s health, and as it were their very salvation, is concerned, all Governments that are not chimerical make haste to interfere. How if dungheaps laid on the streets, afflictive to the mere nostrils, are a subject for interference, what, we ask, are high columns, raised by prurient stupidity and public delusion, to blockheads whose memory does in eternal fact deserve the sinking of a coalshaft rather ? Give to every one what he S78 SOCIAL EEFORM. deserves, what really is his ; in all scenes and situations thou shalt do that, — or in very truth wo will betide thee, as sure as thou art living, and as thy Maker lives. Blockhead, this big Gambler sw^ollen to the edge' of bursting, he is not ‘ great ’ and honourable ; he is huge and abominable ! Thou shalt honour the right mau, and not honour the wrong, under penalties of an alarming nature. Honour Barabbas the Bobber, thou shalt sell old-clothes through the cities of the world ; shalt accumulate sordid moneys, with a curse on every coin of them, and be spit upon for eighteen hundred years. Baise statues to the swollen Gambler as if he were great, sacrifice oblations to the King of Scrip, — unfortunate mortals, you will dearly pay for it yet. Quiet as Nature’s countinghouse and scrip-ledgers are, no faintest item is ever blotted out from them, for or against ; and to the last doit that account too will have to be settled. Bigorous as Destiny ; — she is Destiny. Chancery or Better Lane is soft to her, when the day of settlement comes. With her, in the way of abatement, of oblivion, neither gods nor men prevail. Abatement ? That is not our way of doing busi- ness ; the time has run out, the debt it appears is due.” Will the ‘ laws of gravitation abate ’ for you ? Gravitation acts at the rate of sixteen feet per second, in spite of all prayers. AVere it the crash of a Solar System, or the fall of a Yarmouth Herring, all one to gravitation. Latter Day Pamphlets, Hudson's Statue^ p. 41. LONDON SIIIRTMAKERS. ]\Iany things have been written about shirtmaking ; but here ])erha})8 \h the saddest thing of all, not written anywhere till now, that 1 know of. Sliirts by the thirty-thousand are made at twoj)(*nce-halfpenny each ; — and in the meanwhile no needle- woman, (liHtrcssed or oilier, can be procured in London, by any iiouHcwii’e to give, for liiir wages, fair help in sewing. Ask any thrifty hous(?-inother, high or low, and she will answer. In high houses and in low there is the same answer: No ENGLISH PUEFEEY. 279 needlewoman, ^ distressed ’ or other, has been found attainable in any of the houses I frequent. Imaginary needlewomen, who demand considerable wages, and have a deepish appetite for beer and viands, I hear of everywhere ; but their sewing proves too often a distracted puckering and botching ; not sewing, only the fallacious hope of it, a fond imagination of the mind. Good sempstresses are to be hired in every village ; and in London, with its famishing thirty-thousand, not at all, or hardly. Latter Day Pam;phlets. The Present Time^ p. 33. ENGLISH PUFFERY. You will walk in no public thoroughfare or remotest byway of English Existence but you will meet a man, an interest of men, that has given up hope in the Everlasting, True, and placed its hope in the Temporary, half or wholly Ealse. The Honourable Member complains unmusically that there is ‘ devil’s-dust * in Yorkshire cloth. Yorkshire cloth, — why the very Paper I now write on is made, it seems, partly of plaster lime well smoothed, and obstructs my writing ! You are lucky if you can find now any good Paper, — any works really done^ search where you will, from highest Phantasm apex to lowest Enchanted basis ! Consider, for example, that great Hat seven feet high, which now perambulates London Streets ; which my Eriend Sauerteig regarded justly as one of our Eng- lish notabilities ; “the topmost point as yet,” said he, “would it were your culminating and returning point, to which English Puffery has been observed to reach ! ” — The Hatter, in the Strand of London, instead of making better felt hats than another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster Hat, seven feet high, upon wheels ; sends a man to drive it through the streets ; hoping to be saved thereby. He has not attempted to malce better hats, as he was appointed by the Universe to do, and as with this ingenuity of his he could very probably have done ; but his whole industry is turned to persuade us that he has 280 SOCIAL EEFOEM. made such ! He too knows that the Quack has become God. Laugh not at him, 0 reader ; or do not laugh only. He has ceased to be comic ; he is fast becoming tragic. To me this all- deafening blast of Puffery, of poor Palsehood grown necessitous, of poor Heart Atheism fallen now into Enchanted Work- houses, sounds too surely like a Doom’s blast ! I have to say to myself in old dialect : God’s blessing is not written on all this; His curse is written on all this!” Unless perhaps the Universe he a chimera ; — some old totally deranged eight day clock, dead as brass ; which the Maker, if there ever was any Maker, has long ceased to meddle with ? To my Eriend Sauerteig this poor seven-feet Hat manufacturer, as the top- stone of English Puffery, was very notable. Past and Present,, p. 191. HOW DR. FEANCIA MADE GOOD WORKMEN. Prancia had extensive barrack buildings, nay city buildings, arm furnishings ; immensities of work going on ; and his work- men had in general a tendency to be imaginary. He could get no work out of them ; only a more or less deceptive simili- tude of work. Masons so called, builders of houses, did not build, but merely seemed to build; their walls would not bear weather, stand on their bases in high winds. Hodge- razors, in all conceivable kinds, were openly marketed, ‘ which were never meant to shave, but only to be sold I ’ Eor a length of time, Eraiicia’s righteous soul struggled sore, yet unex- plosively, with the propensities of these unfortunate men. By rebuke, by remonstrance, encouragement, offers of reward, and every vigilance and effort, he strove to convince them that it wa.s unfortunate for a 8011 of Adam to bo an imaginary ’work- man ; that every Son of Adam had better make razors which /tr/x' meant to shave. In vain, all in vain 1 At length, Erancia lm*t j)atieneo with them. ‘‘ Thou wretched Eraction, wilt thou be the ninth part even of a tailor? Does it beseem thee to weave cloth ot devilVdust instead of true wool ; and cut and sew it as CONDITION OP THE WORKING CLASSES. 281 if thou wert not a tailor, but the fraction of a very tailor ! I cannot endure everything ! ’’ Prancia, in despair, erected his ‘Workmen’s G-allows.’ Tes, that institution of the country did actually exist in Paraguay ; men and workmen saw it with eyes. A most remarkable, and, on the whole, not unbeneficial institu- tion of society there. Miscellanies^ vol. iv., p. 305. CONDITION OP THE WORKING CLASSES. What constitutes the well-being of a man ? Many things ; of which the wages he gets, and the bread he buys with them, are but one preliminary item. Grant, however, that the wages were the whole ; that once knowing the wages and the price of bread, we know all ; then what are the wages ? Sta- tistic Inquiry, in its present unguided condition, cannot tell. The average rate of day’s wages is not correctly ascertained for any portion of this country ; not only not for half-centuries, it is not even ascertained anywhere for decades or years : far from instituting comparisons with the past, the present itself is unknown to us. And then, given the average of wages, what is the constancy of employment ; what is the difS.culty of finding employment ; the fluctuation from season to season, from year to year ? Is it constant, calculable wages ; or fluc- tuating, incalculable, more or less of the nature of gambling ? This secondary circumstance, of quality in wages, is perhaps even more important than the primary one of quantity. Parther we ask, can the labourer, by thrift and industry, hope to rise to mastership ; or is such hope cut off from him ? How is he related to his employer ; by bonds of friendliness and mutual help ; or by hostility, opposition, and chains of mutual necessity alone ? In a word, what degree of contentment can a human creature be supposed to enjoy in that position ? With hunger preying on him, his contentment is likely to be small ! But even with abundance, his discontent, his real misery may be great. The labourer’s feelings, his notions of 282 SOCIAL EEFOEM. being justly dealt with or unjustly ; his wbolesome composure, frugality, prosperity in the one case, his acrid unrest, reckless- ness, gin-drinking, and gradual ruin in the other, — how shall figures of arithmetic represent all this ? So much is still to be ascertained; much of it by no means easy to ascertain! Till, among the ‘ Hill Cooly ’ and ‘ Dog-cart ’ questions, there arise in Parliament and extensively out of it a ‘ Condition-of- England question,’ and quite a new set of inquirers and methods, little of it is likely to be ascertained. Chartism f p. 12. SAYINGS OF THE WOEKING CLASSES. Is the habit of saving increased and increasing, or the con- trary ? Where the present writer has been able to look with his own eyes, it is decreasing, and in many quarters all but disappearing. Statistic science turns up her Savings-Bank Accounts, and answers, Increasing rapidly.” Would that one could believe it 1 But the Danaides’-sieve character of such statistic reticulated documents is too manifest. A few years ago, in regions where thrift, to one’s own Knowledge, still was, Savings-Banks were not ; the labourer lent his money to some farmer of capital, or supposed to be of capital, — and has too often lost it since ; or he bought a cow with it, bought a cottage with it ; nay hid it under his thatch : the Savings- Banks books then exhibited mere blank and zero. That they swell yearly now, if such be the fact, indicates that what thrift exists does gradually resort more and more thither rather than elsewhitlier ; but tlie question. Is thrift increasing ? runs tlirough the reticulation, and is as water spilt on the ground, not to bo gathered liere. Chartism^ p. 13. THE CASH NEXUS. 283 THE CASH NEXUS. Cash Payment the sole nexus ; and there are so many things which cash will not pay ! Cash is a great miracle ; yet it has not all power in Heaven, nor even on Earth. ‘ Supply and demand ’ we will honour also ; and yet how many ‘ demands ’ are there, entirely indispensable, which have to go elsewhere than to the shops, and produce quite other than cash, before they can get their supply ! On the whole, what astonishing payments does cash make in this world ! Of your Samuel Johnson furnished with ‘fourpence halfpenny a day,’ and solid lodgings at nights on the paved streets, as his payment, we do not speak ; — not in the way of complaint ; it is a world-old business for the like of him, that same arrangement or a worse ; perhaps the man, for his own uses, had need even of that and of no better. JSTay is not Society, busy with its Talfourd’s Copyright Bill and the like, struggling to do something effectual for that man ; — enacting with all industry that his own creation be accounted his own manufacture, and con- tinue unstolen, on his own market- stand, for so long as sixty years ? Perhaps Society is right there ; for discrepancies on that side too may become excessive. All men are not patient docile J ohnsons ; some of them are half-mad inflammable Eousseaus. Such, in peculiar times, you may drive too far. Society in Prance, for example, was not destitute of cash : Society contrived to pay Philippe d’ Orleans not yet Egalite three hundred thousand a-year and odd, for driving ca- briolets through the streets of Paris and other work done: but in cash, encouragement, arrangement, recompense or recognition of any kind, it had nothing to give this same half-mad Bousseau for his work done ; whose brain in con- sequence, too ‘ much enforced ’ for a weak brain, uttered hasty sparks, Contrat Social and the like, which proved not so quenchable again ! In regard to that species of men too, who knows whether Laissez-faire itself (which is Sergeant 284 SOCIAL REFORM. Talfourd’s Copyright Bill continued to eternity instead of sixty years) will not turn out insufficient, and have to cease one day ? Chartism^ p. 66. IS THERE WORK FOR ALL. The New Poor-Law is an announcement, sufficiently dis- tinct, that whosoever will not work ought not to live. Can the poor man that is willing to work, always find work, and live by his work ? Statistic Inquiry, as we saw, has no answer to give. Legislation presupposes the answer — to be in the affirmative. A large postulate ; which should have been made a proposition of ; wffiich should have been demonstrated, made indubitable to all persons ! A man willing to w^ork, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that Fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun. Burns expresses feelingly what thoughts it gave him : a poor man seeking worh ; seeking leave to toil that he might be fed and sheltered ! That he might but be put on a level w ith the four-footed workers of the Planet which is his ! There is not a horse willing to work but can get food and shelter in requital ; a thing this two-footed worker has to seek for, to solicit occasionally in vain. Pie is nobody’s two-footed worker ; he is not even anybody’s slave. And yet he is a two^ footed w^orker ; it is currently reported there is an immortal soul in liim, sent down out of Heaven into the Earth ; and one beholds liim seelcimj for this ! — Nay what will a wise Legisla- ture say, if it turn out that he cannot find it ; that the answer to their postulate proposition is not affirmative but negative. Chartism, p. 24. COTTON SriNNERS AND IIAND-LOOM WEAVERS. 'Wages of w'orking men differ greatly in different quarters of this country ; according to the rcHearcliea or the guess of IMr. SyniiuoiiH, an intc'lligent humane inquirer, they vary in the ratio OVER-POPULATION. 285 of not less than three to one. Cotton-spinners, as we learn, are generally well paid, while employed ; their wages, one week with another, wives and children all working, amount to sums which, if well laid out, were fully adequate to comfortable living. And yet, alas, there seems little question that comfort or reasonable well-being is as much a stranger in these households as in any. At the cold hearth of the ever-toiling ever-hungering weaver, dwells at least some equability, fixation as if in perennial ice : hope never comes ; but also irregular impatience is absent. Of outward things these others have or might have enough, but of all inward things there is the fatallest lack. Economy does not exist among them ; their trade now in plethoric prosperity, anon extenuated into inanition and ‘ short-time,’ is of the nature of gambling ; they live by ifc like gamblers, now in luxurious super- fluity, now in starvation. Black mutinous discontent devours them ; simply the miserablest feeling that can inhabit the heart of man. English Commerce with its world-wide convulsive fluctuations, with its immeasurable Proteus steam- demon, makes all paths uncertain for them, all life a bewilderment ; sobriety, steadfastness, peaceable continuance, the first blessings of man, are not theirs. Chartism^ p. 34. OVER-POPULATION. Over-population is the grand anomaly, which is bringing all other anomalies to a crisis. Now once more, as at the end of the Eoman empire, a most confused epoch and yet one of the greatest, the Teutonic Countries find themselves too full. On a certain western rim of our small Europe, there are more men than were expected. Heaped up against the western shore there, and for a couple of hundred miles inward, the ^ tide of population ’ swells too high, and confuses itself somewhat ! Over-population ? And yet, if this small western rim of Europe is overpeopled, does not everywhere else a whole vacant Earth, as it were, call to us. Come and till me, come and reap me ! Can it be an evil that in an earth such as ours there should be 286 SOCIAL UEFORM. new Men ? Considered as mercantile commodities, as working machines, is there in Birmingham or out of it a machine of such value ? ‘ Good Heavens ! a white European Man, standing on his two legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle- hones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth something considerable, one would say ! ’ The stupid black African man brings money in the market ; the much stupider four-footed horse brings money : it is we that have not yet learned the art of managing our white European man ! Chartism^ p. 108. LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. LITEEATUEE AND JOEENALISM. THE VOICE OF THE PAST. In Eooks lies the soul of the whole Past Time ; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbours and arsenals, vast cities, high domed, many engined, — they are precious, great : but what do they become ? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks ; but the Books of Greece ! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives ; can be called up again into life. No magic Bune is stranger than a Book. All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been : it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men. Lectures on Heroes^ p. 253. THE NOBLEST HUMAN WOEK. On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we call Books ! Those poor bits of rag paper with black ink on them ; from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew Book, what have they not done, what are they not doing ! Por indeed, whatever be the outward form of the thing (bits of paper, as we say, and 290 LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. black ink), is it not verilj, at bottom, tbe highest act of man’s faculty that produces a Book ? It is the Thought of man ; the true thaumaturgic virtue ; by which man works all things what- soever. A.11 that he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a Thought. This London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One ; — a huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust. Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it ! Hot a brick was made but some man had to think of the making of that brick. The thing we called “bits of paper with traces of black ink,” is the purest embodiment a Thought of man can have. Ho wonder it is, in all ways, the activest and noblest. Lectures on Heroes^ p. 266. THE SOLDIERS OF LITERATURE. If the young aspirant is not rich enough for Parliament, and is deterred by the basilisks or otherwise from entering on Law or Church, and cannot altogether reduce his human intellect to the beaverish condition, or satisfy himself with the prospect of making money, — what becomes of him in such case, which is naturally the case of very many, and ever of more ? In such case there remains but one outlet for him, and notably enough that too is a talking one ; the outlet of Literature, of trying to write IBooks. Since, owing to preliminary basilisks, want of cash, or superiority to cash, he cannot mount aloft by eloquent talking, let him try it by dexterous eloquent writing. Here ha])pily, having three lingers, and capital to buy a quire of paper, he can try it to all lengths and in spite of all mortals : in this career there is happily no public impediment that can turn him back ; nothing but private starvation, — which is itself a fuuH or kind of goal, — can pretend to hinder a British man from prosecuting literature to the very utmost, and wringing the final secret from her : “ A talent is in thee j Ho talent is in thee.” THE SOLDIERS OF LITERATURE. 291 To the British subject who fancies genius may be lodged in him, this liberty remains ; and truly it is, if well computed, almost the only one he has. A crowded portal this of Literature, accordingly ! The haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and alas also of expatriated vanities and prurient imbecilities : here do the windy aspirations, foiled activities, foolish ambitions, and frustrate human energies reduced to the vocable condition, fly as to the one refuge left ; and the Eepublic of Letters increases in population at a faster rate than even the Eepublic of America. The strangest regi- ment in her Majesty’s service, this of the soldiers of Literature : — would your Lordship much like to march through Coventry with them ? The immortal gods are there (quite irrecognisable under these disguises), and also the lowest broken valets ; — an extremely miscellaneous regiment. In fact the regiment, superficially viewed, looks like an immeasurable motley flood of discharged playactors, funambulists, false prophets, drunken ballad-singers ; and marches not as a regiment but as a bound- less canaille, — without drill, uniform, captaincy or billet ; with huge o^^^r-proportion of drummers ; you would say, a regiment gone wholly to the drum, with hardly a good musket to be seen in it, — more a canaille than a regiment. Canaille of all the loud-sounding levities, and general winnowings of Chaos, march- ing through the world in a most ominous manner ; proclaiming, audibly if you have ears : “ Twelfth hour of the Night ; ancient graves yawning ; pale clammy Puseyisms screeching in their winding-sheets ; owls busy in the City regions ; many goblins abroad ! Awake ye living ; dream no more ; arise to judgment ! Chaos and Grehenna are broken loose ; the Devil with his Bedlams must be flung in chains again, and the Last of the Days is about to dawn! ’’ Such is Literature to the reflective soul at this moment. Latter Day Pamphlets, Stump Orator ^ p. 23. 292 LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. THE CRIME OF WORTHLESS WRITINH. ]S’o mortal has a right to wag his tongue, much less to wag his pen, without saying something : he knows not what mis- chief he does, past computation : scattering words without meaning, to afflict the whole world yet before they cease. For thistle-down flies abroad on all winds and airs of wind : idle thistles, idle dandelions, and other idle products of ISTature or the human mind, propagate themselves in that way ; like to cover the face of the earth, — did not a man’s indignant provi- dence, with reap hook, with rake, with autumnal steel-and- tinder, intervene. It is frightful to think how every idle volume flies abroad like an idle globular downbeard, embryo of new millions ; every word of it a potential seed of infinite new downbeards and volumes : for the mind of man is voracious, is feracious ; germinative, above all things, of the downbeard species ! Why, the Author corps in Grreat Britain, every soul of them inclined to grow mere dandelions if permitted, is now supposed to be about ten thousand strong; and the reading corps, who read merely to escape from themselves, with one eye shut and the other not open, and will put up with almost any dandelion, or thing which they can read without opening both their eyes, amounts to twenty-seven millions all but a few. Miscellanies, vol. iv., p. 271. THE SMALL REVIEWER. In wliat is called reviewing such a book as tins, [Novalis’ writings] we are aware tliat to the judicious craftsman two iiietliods present themselves. Idic first and most convenient is, for the J{eviewer to j)erch himself resolutely, as it were, on the shoulder of his Author, and therefrom to show as if he com- manded him and looked down on him by natural superiority of THE WORLD AND ITS TEACHERS. 293 stature. Whatsoever the great man says or does, the little man shall treat with an air of knowingness and light condescending mockery ; professing, with much covert sarcasm, that this and that other is beyond Tiis comprehension, and cunningly asking his readers if they comprehend it ! Herein it will help him mightily, if, besides description, he can quote a few passages, which, in their detached state, and taken most probably in quite a wrong acceptation of the words, shall sound strange, and, to certain hearers, even absurd ; all which will be easy enough, if he have any handiness in the business, and address the right audience ; truths, as this world goes, beiug true only for those that have some understanding of them ; as, for instance, in the Yorkshire Wolds, and Thames Coal ships, Christian men enough might be found, at this day, who, if you read them the Thirty-ninth of the Frincipia^ would ‘ grin intelligence from ear to ear.’ On the other hand, should our Eeviewer meet with any passage, the wisdom of which, deep, plain and palpable to the simplest, might cause mis- givings in the reader, as if here were a man of half unknown endowment, whom perhaps it were better to wonder at than laugh at, our Eeviewer either suppresses it, or citing it with an air of meritorious candour, calls upon his Author, in a tone of command and encouragement, to lay aside his transcendental crotchets, and write always thus, and he will admire him. Whereby the reader again feels comforted ; proceeds swimmingly to the conclusion of the “ Article,” and shuts it with a victorious feeling, not only that he and the Eeviewer understand this man, but also that, with some rays of fancy and the like, the man is little better than a living mass of darkness. Miscellanies, vol. ii., p. 5. THE WORLD AND ITS TEACHERS. Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we call the disorganised condition of society : how ill many arranged forces 294 LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. of society fulfil their work ; how maDj powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a complaint, as we all know. But perhaps if we look at this of Books and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, as it were, the summary of all other disorganisation ; a sort of hearty from which and to which all other confusion circulates in the world ! Considering what Book writers do in the world, and what the world does with Book writers, I should say, It is the most anomalous thing the world at present has to show. Lectures on Heroes ^ p. 256. THE PRIESTHOOD OF LETTERS. Our pious Bathers, feeling well what importance lay in the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made endowments, regulations ; everywhere in the civilised world there is a Pulpit, environed with all manner of complex dignified appurtenances and furtherances, that therefrom a man with the tongue may, to best advantage, address his fellow men. They felt that this was the most important thing; that without this there was no good thing. It is a right pious work, that of theirs ; beautiful to behold ! But now with the art of AVriting, with the art of Printing, a total change has come over that business. Tlie AVriter of a Book is not he a Preacher preaching, not to tliis parish or that, on this day or that, but to all men in all times and places ? Surely it is of the last importance that he do his work right, whoever do it wrong ; — that the eye report not falsely, for then all the other members are astray ! AV^ell ; how he may do his work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is a point which no man in the world has taken the ])ain8 to think of. To a certain shopkeeper, trying to get some money for his books, if lucky, ho is of some im- portance ; to no other man of any. AVhenco he came, whither he is bound, by what ways ho arrived, by what ho might bo furtliered on his course, no one asks, lie is an A NEW UNIVERSITY WANTED. 295 accident in society. He wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a world of which he is as the spiritual light, either the guidance or the misguidance. Lectwres on EeroeSj 257. A NEW UNIVERSITY WANTED. Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded them ! The teacher needed not now to gather men personally round him, that he might speaJc to them what he knew : print it in a Book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it ! — Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in Speech ; even writers of Books may still, in some circumstances, find it convenient to speak also, — witness our present meeting here ! There is, one would say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. In regard to all things this must remain ; to Universities among others. But the limits of the two have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained ; much less put in practice : the University which would completely take in that great new fact, of the existence of Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing for the Nineteenth Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet come into existence. If we think of it, all that a University, or final highest School can do for us, is still but what the first School began doing, — teach us to read. We learn to read^ in various languages, in various sciences ; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of Books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the Books themselves ! It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us. The true University of these days is a Collection of Books. Lectures on Heroes^ p. 261. 296 LITEEATUEE AND JOUENALISM. THE LITEEAEY GUILD QUESTION. If Men of fLetters are so incalculably influential, actually performing sucb work for us from age to age, and even from day to day, then I think we may conclude that Men of Letters wiU not always wander like unrecognised unregulated Ishmael- ites among us. Whatsoever thing, as I said above, has virtual unnoticed power will cast off its wrappages, bandages, and step forth one day with palpably articulated, universally visible power. That one man wear the clothes, and take the wages, of a func- tion which is done quite by another : there can be no profit in this ; this is not right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, the mahing of it right, — what a business, for long times to come ! Sure enough, this that we call Organisation of the Literary Guild is still a great way off, incumbered with all manner of com- plexities. If you ask me what were the best possible organi- sation for the Men of Letters in modern society ; the arrangement, of furtherance and regulation, grounded the most accurately on the actual facts of their position and of the world’s position, — I should beg to say that the problem far exceeded my faculty ! It is not one man’s faculty ; it is that of many successive men turned earnestly upon it, that will bring out even an approximate solution. What the best arrangement were, none of us could say. But if you ask, AVhich is the worst ? I answer ; This w'hich we now have, that Chaos should sit umpire in it ; this is the worst. To the best, or any good one, there is yet a long way. Lectures on Heroes^ p. 267. MONEY IS NOT THE PANACEA. To give our l\len of Letters stipends, endowments, and all furtherances of casli, will do little towards the business. On the whole, one is weary of hearing about the oinnipotenco of money. 1 will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is no evil MONEY IS NOT THE PANACEA. 297 to be poor ; that there ought to be Literary Men poor, — to show whether they are genuine or not ! Mendicant Orders, bodies of good men doomed to heg, were instituted in the Christian Church ; a most natural and even necessary develop- ment of the spirit of Christianity. It was itself founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, Crucifixion, every species of worldly Distress and Degradation. "We may say that he who has not known those things, and learned from them the price- less lessons they have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of schooling. To beg and go barefoot, in coarse woollen cloak, with a rope round your loins, and be despised of all the world, was no beautiful business ; — nor an honourable one in any eye, till the nobleness of those who did so had made it honoured of some ! Begging is not in our course at the present time : but for the rest of it, who will say that a J ohnson is not perhaps the better for being poor ? It is needful for him, at all rates, to know that outward profit, that success of any kind is not the goal he has to aim at. Pride, vanity, ill-conditioned egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in every heart ; need, above all, to be cast out of his heart, — to be, with whatever pangs, torn out of it, cast forth from it, as a thing worthless. Byron, born rich and noble, made out even less than Burns, poor and plebeian. Who knows but in that same ‘ best pos- sible organisation ’ as yet far ofi*, Poverty may still enter as an important element ? "What if our Men of Letters, men setting up to be Spiritual Heroes, were still then, as they now are, a kind of ^ involuntary monastic order ; ’ bound still to this same ugly Poverty, — till they had tried what was in it too, till they had learned to make it too do for them ! Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the pro- vince of it, and confine it there ; and even spurn it back, when it wishes to get further. Lecti^res on Heroes, p. 268. 298 LITEKATURE AND JOURNALISM. GERMAN CRITICISM. The grand question is not now a question concerning the qualities of diction, the coherence of metaphors, the fitness of sentiments, the general logical truth, in a work of art, as it was some half century ago among most critics ; neither is it a question mainly of a psychological sort, to be answered by discovering and delineating the peculiar nature of the poet from his poetry, as is usual with the best of our own critics at present ; but it is, not indeed exclusively, but inclusively of those two other questions, properly and ultimately a question on the essence and peculiar life of the poetry itself. The first of these questions, as we see it answered, for instance, in the criticisms of J ohnson and Karnes, relates, strictly speaking, to the garment of poetry ; the second, indeed, to its hody and material existence, a much higher point ; but only the last to its soul and spiritual existence, by which alone can the body, in its movements and phases, be informed with significance and rational life. The problem is not now to determine by what mechanism Addison composed sentences and struck out simili- tudes ; but by what far finer and more mysterious mechanism Shakspeare organised his dramas, and gave life and individuality to his Ariel and his Hamlet. Wherein lies that life ; how have they attained that shape and individuality ? Whence comes that empyrean fire, which irradiates their whole being, and pierces, at least in starry gleams, like a diviner thing, into all hearts ? Are tliese dramas of his not verisimilar only, but true ; nay, truer tlian reality itself, since the essence of uninixed reality is bodied forth in them under more expressive symbols? What is this unity of theirs; andean our deeper inspection discern it to be indivisible, and existing by necessity, because each work H[)ringH, as it were, from the general ele- ments of all Thouglit, and grows up therefrom, into form and exi)anHion by its own growth ? Not only who was the poet, and liow did ho coinj)OBO; but what and how was the poem, and why was it a poem and not rhymed eloquence, creation GERMAN CRITICISM. 299 and not figured passion? These are the questions for the critic. Criticism stands like an interpreter between the inspired and the uninspired ; between the prophet and those who hear the melodj of his words, and catch some glimpse of their material meaning, but understand not their deeper import. She pretends to open for us this deeper import ; to clear our sense that it may discern the pure brightness of this eternal Beauty, and recognise it as heavenly, under all forms where it looks forth, and reject, as of the earth earthy, all forms, be their material splendour what it may, where no gleaming of that other shines through. * * * The authors and promulgators of this new critical doctrine, were at one time contemptuously named the New School ; nor was it till after a war of all the few good heads in the nation, with all the many bad ones, had ended as such wars must ever do, that these critical principles were generally adopted ; and their assertors found to be no School, or new heretical Sect, but the ancient primitive Catholic communion, of which all sects that had any living light in them were but members and subordinate modes. It is indeed the sacred article of this creed to preach and practice universal tolerance. Every litera- ture of the world has been cultivated by the Germans ; and to every literature they have studied to give due honour. Shaks- peare and Homer, no doubt, occupy alone the loftiest station in the poetical Olympus ; but there is space in it for all true Singers out of every age and clime. Eerdusi and the primeval Mythologists of Hindostan live in brotherly union with the Troubadours and ancient Story-tellers of the West. The way- ward mystic gloom of Calderon, the lurid fire of Dante, the auroral light of Tasso, the clear icy glitter of Bacine, all are acknowledged and reverenced ; nay, in the celestial fore-court an abode has been appointed for the Gressets and Delilles, that no spark of inspiration, no tone of mental music, might remain unrecognised. The Germans study foreign nations in a spirit which deserves to be oftener imitated. It is their honest endeavour to understand each, with its own peculiari- ties, in its owQ special manner of existing; not that they may 300 LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. praise it, or censure it, or attempt to alter it, but simply that they may see this manner of existing as the nation itself sees it, and so participate in whatever worth or beauty it has brought into being. Of all literatures, accordingly, the German has the best as well as the most translations ; men like Goethe, Schiller, AVieland, Schlegel, Tieck, have not disdained this task. Of Shakspeare there are three entire versions admitted to be good ; and we know not how many partial, or considered as bad. In their criticisms of him we ourselves have long ago admitted, that no such clear judgment or hearty appreciation of his merits had ever been exhibited by any critic of our own. ^ ^ ^ ^ AYhat has been the fruit of this its high and just judgment on these matters ? Yf hat has Criticism profited it, to the bringing forth of good works? How do its poems and its poets correspond with so lofty a standard ? We answer, that on this point also, Germany may rather court investigation than fear it. There are poets in that country who belong to a nobler class than most nations have to show in these days ; a class entirely unknown to some nations ; and, for the last two centuries, rare in all. We have no hesitation in stating, that w'e see in certain of the best German poets, and those too of our own time, something which associates them, remotely or nearly we say not, but which does associate them with the Masters of Art, the Saints of Poetry, long since departed, and, as we thought, without successors, from the earth, but canonised in the hearts of all generations, and yet living to all by the memory of wliat they did and were. Glances we do seem to find of tliat ethereal glory, which looks on us in its full brightness from the Tramfigiiration of Eafiaelle, from the Tempest of Sliakspeare ; and in broken, but purest and still lieart-piercing beams, struggling throiigli the gloom of long ages, from the tragedies of Sophocles, and the weather-worn sculptures of tlie JWtlienon. This is that heavenly spirit, wliicli, best seen in the aerial embodiment of poetry, but spreading likewise over all the thouglits and actions ot an ago, has given us Surrciys, Sidneys, Jtaleiglis in court and caiuj), Cecils in policy, Hookers in divinity. Bacons in philosophy, GEEMAN CllITICISM. 801 and Sliakspeares and Spensers in song. All hearts that know this, know it to be the highest; and that, in poetry or else- where, it alone is true and imperishable. In affirming that any vestige, however feeble, of this divine spirit, is discernible in German poetry, we are aware that we place it above the existing poetry of any other nation. To prove this bold assertion, logical arguments were at all times unavailing, and in the present circumstances of the case more than usually so. Neither will any extract or specimen help us ; for it is not in parts, but in whole poems, that the spirit of a true poet is to be seen. We can, therefore, only name such men as Tieck, Richter, Herder, Schiller, and above all, Goethe ; and ask any reader who has learned to admire wisely our own literature of Queen Elizabeth’s age, to peruse these writers also ; to study them till he feels that he has under- stood them, and justly estimated both their light and darkness; and then to pronounce whether it is not, in some degree, as we have said. Are there not tones here of that old melody ? i^re there not glimpses of that serene soul, that calm harmonious strength, that smiling earnestness, that Love and Eaith and Humanity of nature? Do these foreign contemporaries of ours still exhibit, in their characters as men, something of that sterling nobleness, that union of majesty with meekness, which we must ever venerate in those our spiritual fathers ? And do their works, in the new form of this century, shew forth that old nobleness, not consistent only with the science, the precision, the scepticism of these days, but wedded to them, incorporated with them, and shining through them like their life and soul ? Might it in truth almost seem to us, in reading the prose of Goethe, as if we were reading that of Milton ; and of Milton writing with the culture of this time ; combining Erench clearness with old English depth ? And of his poetry may it indeed be said that it is poetry, and yet the poetry of our own generation ; an ideal world, and yet the world we even now live in ? — These questions we must leave candid and studious inquirers to answer for themselves ; premising only that the secret is not to be found on the surface ; that the 302 LITERATUUE AND JOURNALISM. first reply is likely to be in tbe negative, but with inquirers of this sort, by no means likely to be the final one. Miscellanies^ vol. i., pp. 49, 52, 62. A SOIREE OF LIONS. Glittering are the rooms, well lighted, thronged ; bright flows their undulatory flood of blonde-gowns and dress-coats, a soft smile dwelling on all faces ; for behold there also flow the lions, hovering distinguished : oracles of the age, of one sort or another. Oracles really pleasant to see; whom it is worth while to go and see : look at them, but inquire not of them, depart rather and be thankful. Tor your Mon-soiree admits not of speech ; there lies the speciality of it. A meeting together of human creatures ; and yet (so high has civilisation gone) the primary aim of human meeting, that soul might in some articulate utterance unfold itself to soul, can be dis- pensed with in it. Utterance there is not : nay there is a certain grinning play of tongue-fence, and make-believe of utterance, considerably worse than none. Tor which reason it has been suggested, with an eye to sincerity and silence in such Mon-soirees, might not each lion be, for example, ticketed, as wine-decanters are ? Let him carry, slung round him, in such ornamental manner as seemed good, his silver label with name engraved; you lift his label, and read it, with what farther ocular survey you And useful, and speech is not needed at all. O renimore Cooper, it is most true there is ‘an instinctive tendency in man to look at any man that has become distinguished;’ and moreover,. an instinctive desire in men to become distinguislied and be looked at ! Miscellanies, vol. iv., p. 99. TOO MANY NOTED MEN. Jn noted men, undoubtedly enougli, wc surpass all ages since the crcutioii of the world ; and from two plain causes : Lirst, GENERAL WORTHLESSNESS OE MODERN LITERATURE. 803 that there has been a French Eevolution, and that there is now pretty rapidly proceeding a European Eevolution ; whereby everything as in the Term-day of a great city, when all mortals are removing, has been, so to speak, set out into the street ; and many a foolish vessel of dishonour, unnoticed and worth no notice in its own dark corner, has become universally recognisable, when once mounted on the summit of some furniture-waggon, and tottering there (as Committee-president, or other head-director), with what is put under it, slowly onwards to its new lodging and arrangement, itself alas, hardly to get thither without breakage. Secondly, that the Printing Press, with stitched and loose leaves, has now come into full action; and makes, as it were, a sort of universal daylight, for removal and revolution and everything else to proceed in, far more commodiously, yet also far more conspicuously. A com- plaint has accordingly been heard that famous men abound, that we are quite overrun with famous men : however, the remedy lies in the disease itself ; crowded succession already means quick oblivion. For waggon after waggon rolls off, and either arrives or is overset ; and so, in either case, the vessel of dishonour, which, at worst, we saw only in crossing some street, will afflict us no more. Miscellanies^ vol. iii., p. 112. THE GENERAL WORTHLESSNESS OF MODERN LITERATURE. Considering the multitude of mortals that handle the Pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without glaring violations of grammar, the question naturally arises : How is it, then, that no Work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp of authenticity and permanence ; of worth for more than one day ? Ship-loads of fashionable Hovels, Sentimental Ehymes, Tragedies, Farces, Diaries of Travels, Tales by flood and field, are swallowed monthly into the bottomless Pool : still does the Press toil ; innumerable Paper-makers, Compositors, Printers’ Devils, Book-binders, and Hawkers grown hoarse with loud 804 LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. proclaiming, rest not from their labour ; and still, in torrents, rushes on the great array of Publications, unpausing, to their final home ; and still Oblivion, like the Grave, cries. Give ! Give ! How is it that of all these countless multitudes, no one can attain to the smallest mark of excellence, or produce aught that shall endure longer than ‘ snow-flake on the river,’ or the foam of penny-beer ? We answer : Because they are foam; because there is no Beality in them. These Three Thousand men, women, and children, that make up the army of British Authors, do not, if we will consider it, see anything whatever ; consequently have nothing that they can record and utter, only more or fewer things that they can plausibly pre- tend to record. The Universe, of Man and Nature, is still quite shut up from them ; the ^ open secret ’ still utterly a secret ; because no sympathy with Man or N ature, no love and free simplicity of heart has yet unfolded the same. Nothing but a pitiful Image of their own pitiful Self, with its vanities, and grudgings, and ravenous hunger of all kinds, hangs for ever painted in the retina of these unfortunate persons; so that the starry All, with whatsoever it embraces, does but appear as some expanded magic-lantern shadow of that same Image, — and naturally looks pitiful enough. Miscellanies^ vol. iii., p. 14. THE FATE OF POPULAR WRITERS. It is good to understand, that no popularity, and open- mouthed wonder of the world, continued even for a long series of years, can make a man great. Such popularity is a remark- able fortune ; indicates a great adaptation of the man to his element of circumstances ; but may or may not indicate any- thing great in the man. To our imagination, tlicro is a certain apotheosis in it ; but in reality no a])otheosis at all. Popu- larity is as a bla/.o of illumination, or alas, of conflagration, kindled round a man ; sJiewiny what is in him ; not putting the Binallcst item more into ; often abstracting much from him ; THE FATE OF POPULAR WRITERS. 305 conflagrating the poor man himself into ashes and cafut mor- tuum! And then, by the nature of it, such popularity is transient ; your ‘ series of years,’ quite unexpectedly, some- times almost all on a sudden, terminates ! For the stupidity of men, especially of men congregated in masses round any object, is extreme. What illuminations and conflagrations have kindled themselves, as if new heavenly suns had risen, which proved only to be tar-barrels, and terrestrial locks of straw ! Profane Princes cried out, ‘One God, one Farinelli ! ’ — and whither now have they and Farinelli danced ? * * =5^ * Lope de Vega, whom all the world swore by, and made a proverb of ; who could make an acceptable five-act tragedy in almost as many hours ; the greatest of all popularities past or present, and perhaps one of the greatest men that ever ranked among popularities : Lope himself, so radiant, far shining, has not proved to be a sun or star of the firmament ; buv is as good as lost and gone out : or plays at best, in the eyes of some few, as a vague aurora- borealis, and brilliant ineffec- tuality. The great man of Spain sat obscure at the time, all dark and poor, a maimed soldier ; writing his Don Quixote in prison. And Lope’s fate withal was sad, his popularity per- haps a curse to him; for in this man there was something ethereal too, a divine particle traceable in few other popular men ; and such far shining diffusion of himself, though all the world swore by it, would do nothing for the true life of him even while he lived : he had to creep into a convent, into a monk’s cowl, and learn, with infinite sorrow, that his blessed- ness had lain elsewhere ; that when a man’s life feels itself to be sick and an error, no voting of bystanders can make it well and a truth again. Or coming down to our own times, was not August Kotzebue popular ? Kotzebue, not so many years since, saw himself, if rumour and hand-clapping could be credited, the greatest man going ; saw visibly his Thoughts, dressed out in plush and pasteboard, permeating and per- ambulating civilised Europe; the most iron visages weeping with him, in all theatres from Cadiz to Kamtchatka ; his own ‘ astonishing genius ’ meanwhile producing two tragedies or so X 306 LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. per month : he, on the whole, blazed high enough : he too has gone out into Night and Orcus, and already is not. Miscellanies^ vol. iv., p. 110, ENCOURAGEMENT FOR MINERVA PRESS NOVELISTS. Consider the whole class of Fictitious Narratives ; from the highest category of epic or dramatic Poetry, in Shakspeare and Homer, down to the lowest of froth Prose in the Fashionable Novel. "What are all these but so many mimic Biographies ? Attempts, here by an inspired Speaker, there by an uninspired Babbler, to deliver himself, more or less inelfectually, of the grand secret, wherewith all hearts labour oppressed : the significance of Man’s Life ; — which deliverance, even as traced in the unfurnished head, and printed at the Minerva Press, finds readers. For, observe, though there is a greatest Fool, as a superlative in every kind; and the most Foolish man in the Earth is now indubitably living and breathing, and did this morning or lately eat breakfast, and is even now digesting the same ; and looks out on the world, with his dim horn-eyes, and inwardly forms some unspeakable theory thereof : yet where shall the authentically Existing be personally met with ! Can one of us, otherwise than by guess, know that we have got sight of him, have orally com- muned with him ! To take even the narrower sphere of this our English Metropolis, can any one confidently say to himself, that he has conversed with the identical, individual Stupidest man now extant in London ? No one. Deep as we dive in the Profound, there is ever a new depth opens : where the ultimate bottom may lie, through what new scenes of being we must pass l)efore reaching it (except that we know it does lie somewhere, and might by human faculty and opportunity bo reached), is altogether a mystery to us. Strange, tan- talising pursuit ! We have the fullest assurance, not only that there is a Stupidest of London men actually resident, with bed and board of some kind, in London ; but that several persons A DESIDERATUM IN LITERATURE. 307 have been or perhaps are now speaking face to face with him : while for us, chase it as we may, such scientific blessedness will too probably be forever denied ! — But the thing we meant to enforce was this comfortable fact, that no known Head was so wooden, but there might be other heads to which it were a genius and Friar Bacon’s Oracle. Of no given Book, not even of a Fashionable Novel, can you predicate with certainty that its vacuity is absolute ; that there are not other vacuities which shall partially replenish themselves therefrom, and esteem it a ^plenum. How knowest thou, may the distressed Novel-wright exclaim, that I, here where I sit, am the Foolishest of existing mortals; that this my Long-ear of a Fictitious Biography shall not find one and the other into whose still longer ears it may be the means, under Providence, of instilling somewhat ? We answer. None knows, none can certainly know ; therefore, write on, worthy Brother, even as thou canst, even as it has been given thee. Miscellanies^ vol. iii., p. 4. A DESIDERATUM IN LITERATURE. There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write. Nay, in sober truth, is not this actually the truth in all writing ; and moreover, in all conduct and acting ? Not what stands above ground, but what lies unseen under it, as the root and subterrene element it sprang from and emblemed forth, determines the value. Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity ; speech is shallow as Time. Paradoxical does it seem? Woe for the age, woe for the man, quack-ridden, bespeeched, bespouted, blown about like barren Sahara, to whom this world-old truth were altogether strange ! Such we say is the rule, acted on or not, recognised or not ; and he who departs from it, what can he do but spread himself into breadth and length, into superficiality and saleability : and, except as X 2 808 LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. filigree, become comparatively useless ? One thinks, Had but the hogshead of thin wash, which sours in a week ready for the kennels, been distilled, been concentrated ! Our dear Teni- more Cooper, whom we started with, might, in that way, have given us one Natty Leather stoching, one melodious synopsis of Man and ISTature in the West (for it lay in him to do it), almost as Saint Pierre did for the Islands of the East ; and the hundred Incoherences cobbled hastily together by order of Colburn and Company, had slumbered in Chaos, as all inco- herences ought if possible to do. Verily this same genius of diffused writing, of diffuse acting, is a Moloch ; and souls pass through the fire to him, more than enough. Surely, if ever discovery was valuable and needful, it were that above indi- cated, of paying by the work, not visibly done ! Which need- ful discovery we will give the whole projecting, railwaying, knowledge-difi*using, march of intellect and otherwise promo- tive and locomotive societies in the Old and New World, any re-, quired length of centuries to make. Once made, such discovery once made, we too will fling cap into the air, and shout ‘ lo Lcean I the Devil is conquered.’ Miscellanies, vol. iv., p. 103. MEMOIRS OF A CONTEMPORARY. On the whole, is there not, to the eager student of History, something at once most attractive and yet most provoking in all Memoirs by a Contemporary ? Contemporaneous words by an eye-witness are like no other. For every man who sees witli eyes is, approximately or else afar off, — either approxi- mately and in some faint degree decipherable, or too far off, altogetlier i^;idcciplierable, and as if vacant and blank, — the miraculous ‘ Daguorreotype-mirror,’ above mentioned, of wliatever tiling transacts itself before him. No shadow of it but left some trace in him, deciplierablo or undecipherable. The poor soul had, lying in it, a far stranger alchemy than that of the electric-plates : a living INJeinury, namely, an intelligence. MEMOIES OF A CONTEMPORAHY. 809 better or worse. Words by an eye witness ! You have there the words which a son of Adam, looking on the phenomenon itself, saw fittest for depicturing it. Strange to consider ; it, the very phenomenon itself, does stand depictured there, though under such inextricable obscurations, short-comings, perversions, — fatally eclipsed from us for ever. For we cannot read it ; the traces are so faint, confused, as good as non-extant to our organs : the light was so unfavourable, ‘ the electric plate ’ was so extremely had, Alas, you read a hundred autograph holograph letters, signed ‘ Charles Eex,’ with the intensest desire to understand Charles Eex, to know what Charles Eex was, what he had in his eye at that moment; and to no purpose. The summary of the whole hundred autographs is vacuity, inanity ; like the moaning of winds through desert places, through damp empty churches : what the writer did actually mean, the thing he then thought of, the thing he then was, remain for ever hid from you. No answer ; only the ever- moaning, gaunt, unsjllabled woo-woo of wind in empty churches ! Most provoking ; a provocation as of Tantalus ; for there is not a word written there but stands like a kind of window through which a man might see, or feels as if he might see, a glimpse of the whole matter. Not a jolt in those crabbed angular sentences, nay not a twirl in that cramp pen- manship, but is significant of all you seek. Had a man but intellect enough, — which, alas, no man ever had, and no angel ever had, — how would the blank become a picture all legible ! The doleful, unsyllabled woo-woo of church winds had become intelligible, cheering articulation; that tragic, fatal-looking, peak-bearded individual, ‘ your constant assured friend, Charles Eex,’ were no longer an enigma and chimera to you ! With intellect enough, — alas, yes it were all easy then ; the very signing of his name were then physiognomical enough of him ! Miscellanies, vol. iv., p. 225. 310 LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. THE PERENNIAL INTEREST OF BIOGRAPHY. Man’s sociality of nature evinces itself, in spite of all that can be said, with abundant evidence by this one fact, were there no other : the unspeakable delight he takes in Biography. It is written, ‘ The proper study of mankind is man ; ’ to which study, let us candidly admit, he, by true or by false methods, applies himself nothing loath. ‘ Man is perennially interesting to man ; nay, if we look strictly to it, there is nothing else interesting.^ How inexpressibly comfortable to know our fellow-creature ; to see into him, understand his goings forth, decipher the whole heart of his mystery : nay, not only to see into him, but even to see out of him, to view the world alto- gether as he views it ; so that we can theoretically construe him, and could almost practically personate him ; and do now thoroughly discern both what manner of man he is, and what manner of thing he has got to work on and live on ! . . . . Observe, accordingly, to what extent, in the actual course of things, this business of Biography is practised and relished. Define to thyself, judicious Eeader, the real significance of these phenomena named Gossip, Egoism, Personal Narrative (miraculous or not), Scandal, Eaillery, Slander, and such like ; the sum-total of which (with some fractional addition of a better ingredient, generally too small to be noticeable), constitutes that other grand phenomenon still called ‘ Conversation.’ Do they not mean wholly : Biograjphy and Aidobiography ? Not ouly in the common Speech of men ; but in all Art too, which is or should be the concentrated and conserved essence of what men can speak and show. Biography is almost the one thing needful. Miscellanies^ vol. iii., pp, 1, 2. MODERN HISTORY. 311 MODERN HISTORY. Mournful, in truth, is it to behold what the business called ‘ History,’ in these so enlightened and illuminated times, still continues to be. Can you gather from it, read till your eyes go out, any dimmest shadow of an answer to that great question : How men lived and had their being ; were it but economically, as what wages they got, and what they bought with these ? Unhappily you cannot. History will throw no light on any such matter. At the point where living memory fails, it is all dark- ness ; Mr. Senior and Mr. Sadler must still debate this simplest of all elements in the condition of the Past : Whether men were better off, in their mere larders and pantries, or were worse off than now ! History, as it stands all bound-up in gilt volumes, is but a shade more instructive than the wooden volumes of a Backgammon-board. How my Prime Minister was appointed is of less moment to me than How my House Servant was hired. In these days, ten ordinary Histories of Kings and Courtiers were well exchanged against the tenth part of one good History of Booksellers. Miscellaniesy vol. iii., p. 36. THE DAILY NEWSPAPER EDITOR. Consider his leading articles : what they treat of, how pass- ably they are done. Straw that has been thrashed a hundred times without wheat ; ephemeral sound of a sound ; such por- tent of the hour as all men have seen a hundred times turn out inane : how a man, with merely human faculty, buckles him- self nightly with new vigour and interest to this thrashed straw, nightly thrashes it anew, nightly gets up new thunder about it ; and so goes on thrashing and thundering for a con- siderable series of years ; this is a fact remaining still to be accounted for, in human physiology. The vitality of man is great. Miscellanies^ vol. iv., p. 158. 312 LITERATUEE AND JOURNALISM. THE NEW PREACHINO FRIARS. There is no Church, sayest thou ? The voice of Prophecy has gone dumb ? This is even what I dispute : but, in any case, hast thou not still Preaching enough? A Preaching Friar settles himself in every village ; and builds a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper. Therefrom he preaches what most momen- tous doctrine is in him for man’s salvation ; and dost not thou listen, and believe ? Look well, thou seest everywhere a new Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some almost bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These break in pieces the ancient idols ; and, though themselves too often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new Churches, where the true God-ordained, that are to follow, may find audience and minister. Said I not, Before the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it ? Sartor JResartus, p. 274. CAPTAIN STERLING OF THE TIMES.” An amazingly impetuous, hasty, explosive man, this Cap- tain AVhirlwind,” as I used to call him ! Great sensibility lay in him, too ; a real sympathy, and affectionate pity and soft- ness, which he liad an overtendency to express even by tears, — a singular siglit in so leonine a man. Enemies called them maudlin and hypocritical, these tears ; but that was nowise the complete account of them. On the whole, there did conspi- cuously lie a dash of ostentation, a self-consciousness apt to become loud and braggart, over all ho said and did and felt: this was tlio alloy of the man, and you had to be thankful for the abundant gold along with it. (Quizzing enougli ho got among us for all this, and for tlio singular chiaroncuro manner of procedure, like that of an CAPTAIN STERLING OP THE TIMES 313 Archimagus Cagliostro, or Kaiser Joseph Incognito, which his anonymous known-unknown thunderings in the Times neces- sitated in him ; and much we laughed, — not without explosive counter-banterings on his part ; — but in fine one could not do without him ; one knew him at heart for a right brave man. “ By Jove, sir ! ” thus he would swear to you, with radiant face ; sometimes, not often, by a deeper oath. With persons of dignity, especially with women, to whom he was always very gallant, he had courtly delicate manners, verging towards the wiredrawn and elaborate; on common occasions, he bloomed out at once into jolly familiarity of the gracefully boisterous kind, reminding you of mess-rooms and old Dublin days. His offhand mode of speech was always precise, emphatic, inge- nious ; his laugh, which was frequent rather than otherwise, had a sincerity of banter, but no real depth of sense for the ludicrous ; and soon ended, if it grew too loud, in a mere dissonant scream. He was broad, well-built, stout of stature ; had a long lowish head, sharp grey eyes, with large strong aquiline face to match ; and walked, or sat, in an erect decisive manner. A remarkable man ; and playing, especially in those years 1830-40, a remarkable part in the world. Dor it may be said, the emphatic, big- voiced, always influ- ential and often strongly unreasonable Times Newspaper, was the express emblem of Edward Sterling ; he, more than any other man or circumstance, was the Times Newspaper, and thundered through it to the shaking of the spheres. And let us assert withal, that his and its influence, in those days, was not ill grounded but rather well ; that the loud manifold unreason, often enough vituperated and groaned over, was of the surface mostly; that his conclusions, unreasonable, partial, hasty as they might at first be, gravitated irresistibly towards the right : in virtue of which grand quality indeed, the root of all good insight in man, his Times oratory found acceptance, and influential audience, amid the loud whirl of an England itself logically very stupid, and wise chiefly by instinct. England listened to this voice, as all might observe ; and to one who knew England and it, the result was not quite a 314 LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. strange one, and was honourable rather than otherwise to both parties. A good judge of men’s talents has been heard to say of Edward Sterling : There is not a faculty of improvising equal to this in all my circle. Sterling rushes out into the clubs, into London society, rolls about all day, copiously talk- ing modish nonsense or sense, and listening to the like, with ‘‘ the multifarious miscellany of men ; comes home at night, redacts it into a Times Leader, — and is found to have hit the essential purport of the world’s immeasurable babblement that day, with an accuracy beyond all other men. This is what the “ multifarious Babel sound did mean to say in clear words ; this, more nearly than anything else. Let the most gifted intellect, capable of writing epics, try to write such a Leader for the “ Morning Newspapers ! No intellect but Edward Sterling’s “ can do it. An improvising faculty without parallel in my “ experience.” — In this ‘ improvising faculty,’ much more nobly developed, as well as in other faculties and qualities with unexpectedly new and improved figure, John Sterling, to the accurate observer, showed himself very much the son of Edward. Life of Sterling^ p. 303. JEAN PAUL EICHTER. JEAN PAUL EICHTEE. It is some six years * since the name ‘ Jean Paul Priedrich Pichter ’ was first printed with English types ; and some six- and-forty since it has stood emblazoned and illuminated on all true literary Indicators among the Germans ; a fact which, if we consider the history of many a Kotzebue and Chateaubriand, within that period, may confirm the old doctrine, that the best celebrity does not always spread the fastest ; but rather, quite contrariwise, that as blown bladders are far more easily carried than metallic masses, though gold ones, of equal bulk, so the Playwright, Poetaster, Philosophe, will often pass triumphantly beyond seas, while the Poet and Philosopher abide quietly at home. Such is the order of Nature : a Spurzheim flies from Vienna to Paris and London, within the year ; a Kant, slowly advancing, may perhaps reach us from Konigsberg within the century: Newton, merely to cross the narrow Channel, re- quired fifty years ; Shakspeare, again, three times as many. It is true, there are examples of an opposite sort ; now and then, by some rare chance, a Goethe, a Cervantes, will occur in literature, and Kings may laugh over Bon (Quixote while it is yet unfinished, and scenes from Werter be painted on Chinese tea-cups while the author is still a stripling. These, however, are not the rule, but the exceptions : nay, rightly interpreted, the exceptions which confirm it. In general, that sudden tumultuous popularity comes more from partial delirium on both sides, than from clear insight ; and is of evil omen to all concerned with it. How many loud Bacchus-festivals of this sort have we seen prove to be Pseudo-Bacchanalia, and end * This was written in 1830, 318 JEAN PAUL RICHTER. in directly the inverse of Orgies ! Drawn by his team of lions, the jolly god advances as a real god, wnth all his thyrsi, cymbals, Phallophori, and Msenadic women ; the air, the earth is giddy with their clangour, their Evohes : but, alas, in a little while, the lion-team shows long ears, and becomes too clearly an ass-team in lion-skins ; the Maenads wheel round in amaze- ment; and then the jolly god, dragged from his chariot, is trodden into the kennels as a drunk mortal. That no such apotheosis was appointed for Eichter in his own country, or is now to be anticipated in any other, we cannot but regard as a natural and nowise unfortunate circum- stance. "What divinity lies in him requires a calmer worship, and from quite another class of worshippers. Neither, in spite of that forty-years abeyance, shall we accuse England of any uncommon blindness towards him : nay, taking all things into account, we should rather consider his actual footing among us as evincing not only an increased rapidity in literary inter- course, but an intrinsic improvement in the manner and objects of it. Our feeling of foreign excellence, we hope, must be becoming truer : our Insular taste must be opening more and more into a European one. Eor Eichter is by no means a man whose merits, like his singularities, force themselves on the general eye ; indeed, without great patience, and some consi- derable Catholicism of disposition, no reader is likely to prosper much with him. He has a fine, high, altogether unusual talent ; and a manner of expressing it perhaps still more un- usual. lie is a Humorist heartily and throughout ; not only in low provinces of thought, where this is more common, but in the loftiest provinces, where it is well-nigh unexampled ; and thus, in wild sport, ‘playing bowls with the sun and moon,’ he fashions the strangest ideal world, which at first glance looks no better tlian a cliaos. The Germans themselves find mucli to bear witli in him ; and for reader of any other nation, ho is involved in almost boundless complexity ; a mighty maze, indeed, ])ut in which the plan, or traces of a plan, are nowhere visible. 1^'ar from apjmcciating and aj)propriating the spirit of his writings, foreigners find it in the Iiighcst JEAN PAUL EICHTEP. 319 degree difficult to seize their grammatical meaning. Probablj there is not, in any modern language, so intricate a writer ; abounding, without measure, in obscure allusions, in the most twisted phraseology; perplexed into endless entanglements and dislocations, parenthesis within parenthesis ; not forgetting elisions, sudden whirls, quips, conceits and all manner of inexplicable crotchets: the whole moving on in the gayest manner, yet nowise in what seem military lines, but rather in huge particoloured mob-masses. How foreigners must find themselves bested in this case, our readers may best judge from the fact, that a work with the following title was under- taken some twenty years ago, for the benefit of Hichter’s own countrymen : ‘ K. Reinliold's Lexicon for Jean LauVs Works, or explanation of all the foreign words and unusual modes of speech which occur in his loritings ; with short notices of the historical persons and facts therein alluded to ; and plain German versions of the more difficult passages in the context : — a necessary assistance for all who would read those works with profit ! * So much for the dress or vehicle of Eichter’s thoughts: now let it only be remembered farther, that the thoughts themselves are often of the most abstruse description, so that not till after laborious meditation, can much, either of truth or of falsehood, be discerned in them; and we have a man, from whom readers with weak nerves, and a taste in any degree sickly, will not fail to recoil, perhaps with a sentiment approaching to horror. And yet, as we said, notwithstanding all these drawbacks, Eichter already meets with a certain recognition in England ; he has his readers and admirers ; various translations from his works have been published among us ; criticisms also, not without clear discernment, and nowise wanting in applause ; and to all this, so far as we can see, even the TJn-Gierman part of the public has listened with some curiosity and hopeful anticipation. From which symptoms we should infer two things, both very comfortable to us in our present capacity : First that the old strait-laced, microscopic sect of Belles-lettres men, whose divinity was ^ Elegance,’ a creed of French growth, and more admirable for men-milliners, 320 JEAN PAUL UICHTER. than for critics and philosophers, must be rapidly declining in these Islands ; and, secondly, which is a much more personal consideration, that, in still further investigating and exhibiting this wonderful Jean Paul, we have attempted what will be for many of our readers, no unwelcome service. It does not appear that Pichter’s life, externally considered, differed much in general character from other literary lives, which, for most part, are so barren of incident : the earlier portion of it was straitened enough, but not otherwise dis- tinguished ; the latter and busiest portion of it was, in like manner, altogether private ; spent chiefly in provincial towns, and apart from high scenes or persons; its principal occur- rences the new books he wrote, its whole course a spiritual and silent one. He became an author in his nineteenth year ; and with a conscientious assiduity adhered to that employment ; not seeking, indeed carefully avoiding, any interruption or disturbance therein, were it only for a day or an hour. Never- theless, in looking over those sixty volumes of his, we feel as if Richter’s history must have another, much deeper interest and worth, than outward incidents could impart to ‘it. Por the spirit which shines more or less completely through his writings is one of perennial excellence ; rare in all times and situations, and perhaps no where and in no time more rare than in literary Europe, at this era. We see in this man a high, self- sub sistent, original, and, in many respects, even great character. He shows himself a man of wonderful gifts, and with, perhaps, a still happier combination and adjustment of these : in whom Philosophy and Poetry are not only reconciled, but blended together into a purer essence, into Religion ; who, with the softest, most universal sympathy for outward things, is inwardly calm, impregnable ; holds on his way through all temptations and alllictions, so quietly, yet so inflexibly ; the true literary man, among a thousand false ones, the Apollo among neatherds ; in one word, a man understanding the nineteenth century, and living in the midst of it, yet whoso life is, in some measure, a luToic and devout one. No character of this kind, wo are aware, is to bo formed without manifold and victorious strug- JEAN PAUL EICHTER. 321 gling with the world ; and the narrative of such struggling, what little of it can be narrated and interpreted, will belong to the highest species of history. The acted life of such a man, it has been said, “ is itself a Bible it is a ‘‘ Gospel of Freedom,” preached abroad to all men ; whereby, among mean unbelieving souls, we may know that nobleuess has not yet become impos- sible ; and, languishing amid boundless triviality and despica- bility, still understand that man’s nature is indefeasibly divine, and so hold fast what is the most important of all faiths, the faith in ourselves. But if the acted life of a 'pius Yates is so high a matter, the written life, which, if properly written, would be a translation and interpretation thereof, must also have great value. It has been said that no Poet is equal to his Poem, which saying is partially true ; but, in a deeper sense, it may also be asserted, and with still greater truth, that no Poem is equal to its Poet. Now, it is Biography that first gives us both Poet and Poem ; by the significance of the one, elucidating aud completing that of the other. That ideal outline of himself, which a man unconsciously shadows forth in his writings, and which, rightly deciphered, will be truer than any other representation of him, it is the task of the Biographer to fill up into an actual coherent figure, and bring home to our experience, or at least our clear undoubting admiration, thereby to instruct and edify us in many ways. Conducted on such principles, the Biography of great men, especially of great Poets, that is, of men in the highest degree noble-minded and wise, might become one of the most dignified and valuable species of composition. As matters stand, indeed, there are few Biographies that accom- plish anything of this kind : the most are mere Indexes of a Biography, which each reader is to write out for himself, as he peruses them : not the living body, but the dry bones of a body, which should have been alive. To expect any such Promethean virtue in a common Life-writer were unreasonable enough. How shall that unhappy Biographic brotherhood, instead of writing like Index-makers and Government-clerks, suddenly become enkindled with some sparks of intellect, or even of 323 JEAN PAUL mCHTER. genial fire ; and not onlj collecting dates and facts, but making use of tbem, look beyond the surface and economical form of a man’s life into its substance and spirit ? The truth is, Biogra- phies are in a similar case with sermons and songs : they have their scientific rules, their ideal of perfection and of imperfec- tion, as all things have ; but hitherto their rules are only, as it were, unseen Laws of Nature, not critical Acts of Parliament, and threaten us with no immediate penalty ; besides, unlike Tragedies and Epics, such works may be something without being all : their simplicity of form, moreover, is apt to seem easiness of execution ; and thus, for one artist in those depart- ments, we have a thousand bunglers. Bichter was born at Wonsiedel in Baireuth, in the year 1763; and as his birthday fell on the 21st of March, it was sometimes wittily said that he and the spring were born together. He himself mentions this, and with a laudable inten- tion : “ this epigrammatic fact,” says he, “that I, the Professor, and the Spring came into the world together, I have indeed brought out a hundred times in conversation, before now ; but I fire it off here purposely, like a cannon-salute, for the hundred and first time, that so by printing I may ever henceforth be unable to offer it again as honmot-bonbon, when, through the Printer’s Devil, it has already been presented to all the world.” Destiny, he seems to think, made another witticism on him ; the word Eichter being appellative as well as proper, in the German tongue, where it signifies Judge. His Christian name, Jean Paul, which long passed for some freak of his own, and a pseudonym, he seems to have derived honestly enough from his maternal grandfather, Johann Paul Kuhn, a substantial cloth-maker in Hof; only translating the German Johann into the Erench Jean. Tlie Eicliters, for at least two generations, liad been schoolmasters, or very subaltern churchmen, distin- guished for their poverty and their piety: the grandfather, it appears, is still remembered in his little circle, as a man of quite remarkable innocence and holiness ;“ in Neustadt,” says his descendant, “ they will show you a bejich behind the organ, where lie knelt on Sundays, and a cave he had made for liimself, JEAN PAUL EICHTER. 323 in what is called the Little Culm, where he was wont to pray.” Holding, and laboriously discharging, three school or church offices, his yearly income scarcely amounted to fifteen pounds : “ and at this Hunger-fountain, common enough for Baireuth school-people, the man stood thirty-five years long, and cheer- fully drew.” Preferment had been slow in visiting him ; but at length ^‘it came to pass,” says Paul, ‘‘just in my birth-year, that, on the 6th of August, probably through special connexions with the Higher JPowers, he did obtain one of the most important places ; in comparison with which, truly, Eectorate, and Town, and cave in the Culmberg, were well worth exchanging; a place, namely, in the Neustadt Churchyard. — His good wife had been promoted thither twenty years before him. My parents had taken me, an infant, along with them to his death- bed. He was in the act of departing, when a clergyman (as my father has often told me) said to them ; Now, let the old Jacob lay his hand on the child, and bless him. I was held into the bed of death, and he laid his hand on my head. — Thou good old grandfather ! Often have I thought of thy hand blessing as it grew cold, — when Pate led me out of dark hours into clearer, — and already I can believe in thy blessing, in this material world, whose life, foundation, and essence, is Spirit ! ” The father, who at this time occupied the humble post of Tertius (Under-Schoolmaster), and organist at Wonsiedel, was shortly afterwards appointed clergyman in the hamlet of Jodiz ; and thence, in the course of years, transferred to Schwarzenbach on the Saale. He too was of a truly devout disposition, though combining with it more energy of character, and apparently more general talent ; being noted in his neigh- bourhood as a bold, zealous preacher ; and still partially known to the world, we believe, for some meritorious compositions in church-music. In poverty he cannot be said to have altogether equalled his predecessor, who, through life, ate nothing but bread and beer ; yet poor enough he was ; and no less cheerful than poor. The thriving burgher’s daughter, whom he took to wife, had, as we guess, brought no money with her, but only Y 2 JEAN PAUL RICHTER. 32-1 habits little advantageous for a schoolmaster or parson ; at all events, the worthy man, frugal as his household was, had con- tinual difficulties, and even died in debt. Paul, who in those days was called Fritz, narrates gaily, how his mother used to dispatch him to Hof, her native town, with a provender-bag strapped over his shoulders, under pretext of purchasing at a cheaper rate there ; but in reality to get his groceries and dain^ ties furnished gratis by his grandmother. He was wont to kiss his grandfather’s hand behind the loom, and speak with him ; while the good old lady, parsimonious to all the world, but lavish to her own, privily filled his bag with the good things of this life, and even gave him almonds for himself, which, however, he kept for a friend. One other little trait, quite new in ecclesiastical annals, we must here communicate. Paul, in summing up the joys of existence at Jodiz, mentions this among the number ; In autumn evenings (and tliough the weather were had), the Father used to go in his night-gown, with Paul and Adam, into a potato-field lying over the Saale. The one younker carried a mattock, the other a hand-basket. Arrived on the ground, the Father set to digging new potatoes, so many as were wanted for supper ; Paul gathered them from the bed into the basket, whilst Adam, clambering in the hazel thickets, looked out for the best nuts. After a time, Aflam had to come down from his boughs into the bed, and Paul in his turn ascended. And thus, with potatoes and nuts, they returned contentedly home ; and the pleasure of having run abroad, some mile in space, some hour in time, and then of celebrating the harvest-home by candle-light, when they came back^ — let every one paint to himself as brilliantly as the receiver thereof.” To such persons as argue that tlie respectability of the cloth depends on its price at the clothier’s, it must appear surprising that a Protestant clergyman, who not only was in no case to keep fox-hounds, but even saw it convenient to dig his own ])otatoes, should not have fallen under universal odium, and j'elt his usefulness very considerably diminished. Nothing of this kind, however, becomes visible in the history of the Jodiz parson; wo find him a man powerful in his vocation; loved and venerated by his flock ; nay, associating at will, and ever as an honoured guest, with tho gentry of A'^oigtlaud, not, in- deed, iu the character of a gentleman, yet in that of priest, JEAN PAUL RICHTER. 325 which he reckoned far higher. Like an old Lutheran, says his son, he believed in the great, as he did in ghosts ; but without any shade of fear. The truth is, the man had a cheerful, pure, religious heart ; was diligent in business, and fervent in spirit ; and in all the relations of his life found this well-nigh sufficient for him. To our Professor, as to Poets in general, the recollections of childhood had always something of an ideal, almost celestial character. Often, in his fictions, he describes such scenes with a fond minuteness ; nor is poverty any deadly, or even unwel- come ingredient in them. On the whole, it is not by money, or money’s worth, that man lives and has his being. Is not God’s Universe within our head, whether there be a torn skull- cap or a king’s diadem without ? Let no one imagine that Paul’s young years were unhappy ; still less that he looks back on them in a lachrymose, sentimental manner, with the smallest symptom either of boasting or whining. Poverty of a far sterner sort than this would have been a light matter to him ; for a kind mother. Nature herself, had already provided against it ; and, like the mother of Achilles, rendered him invulnerable to outward things. There was a bold, deep, joy- ful spirit looking through those young eyes; and to such a spirit, the world has nothing poor, but all is rich, and full of loveliness and wonder. That our readers may glance with us into this foreign Parsonage, we shall translate some paragraphs from Paul’s second Lecture, and thereby furnish, at the same time, a specimen of his professorial style and temper : — “ To represent the Jodiz life of our Hans Paul, — for by this name we shall for a time distioguish him, yet ever changing it with others, — our best course, I believe, will be to conduct him through a whole Idyl -year ; dividing the Normal year into four seasons, as so many quarter Idyls ; four Idyls exhaust his happiness. For the rest, let no one marvel at finding an Idyl-kingdom and pastoral- world in a little hamlet and parsonage. In the smallest bed you can raise a tulip-tree which shall extend its flowery boughs over all the garden ; and the life -breath of joy can be inhaled as well through a window, as in the open wood and sky. Nay, is not Man’s Spirit (with all its infinite celestial-spaces), walled in within a six-feet body, with integuments, and Malpighian mucT7;pes, 826 JEAN PAUL KICHTER. and capillary tubes ; and has only five straight world-windows, of Senses, to open for the boundless round-eyed, round-sunned All ; — and yet it discerns and reproduces an All ! Scarcely do I know with which of the four quarterly Idyls to begin ; for each is a little heavenly forecourt to the next ; however, the climax of joys, if we start with Winter and January, will perhaps be most apparent. In the cold, our Father had commonly, like an Alpine herdsman, come down from the upper altitude of his study ; and, to the joy of the children, was dwelling on the plain of the general family-room. In the morning he sat by a window, committing his Sunday’s sermon to memory ; and the three sons, Fritz (who I myself am), and Adam, and Gottlieb, carried, by turns, the full coffee-cup to him, and still more gladly carried back the empty one, because the carrier was then entitled to pick the unmelted remains of the sugar-candy, (taken against cough) from the bottom thereof. Out of doors, truly, the sky covered all things with silence ; the brook with ice ; the village with snow : but in our room there was life : under the stove a pigeon establishment ; on the windows finch cages ; on the floor the invincible bull-brach, our Bonne, tho night-guardian of the court-yard ; and a poodle, and the pretty Scharmantel (Poll), a present from the Lady von Plotho ; and close by, the kitchen, with two maids ; and farther off, against the other end of the house, our stable, with all sorts of bovine, swinish and feathered cattle, and their noises : the threshers, with their flails, also at work within the court-yard, I might reckon as another item. In this way, with nothing but society on all hands, the whole male portion of the household easily spent their forenoon in tasks of memory, not far from the female portion, as busily employed in cooking,” ‘‘ Holidays occur in every occupation ; thus I too had my airing holidays, — analogous to watering holidays, — so that I could travel out in the snow of the court-yard, and to the barn with its threshing. Nay, was there a delicate embassy to be transacted in the village, — for example, to the schoolmaster, to the tailor, — I was sure to be dispatched thither in the middle of my lessons ; and thus I still got forth into the open air and the cold, and measured myself with the new snow. At noon, before our own dinner, we children might also, in the kitchen, have the hungry satisfaction to see the threshers fall-to and consume their victuals. “ The afternoon, again, was still more important, and richer in joys. Winter sliortened and sweetened our lessons. In the long dusk, our Father walked to and fro ; and the children, according to ability, trotted under his nightgown, holding by his hands. At sound of the Vesi)er-bell, we placed ourselves in a circle, and in concert devotionally chaunted the hymn Diejinstre Narlit brkht stark herein (The gloomy night is gathering round). Only in villages, not in towns, where probably there is more night tliaii day labour, liavc the evening chimes a meaning and beauty, and are the swan-song of the day : the evening hell is, as it were, the inullle of the over-loud heart, and, like a Uanre dcs Vackes of the jdains, aills men from their running and toiling, into the land of silence and dreams. After a pleasant watching about the kitchen-door for the inoouriso of candlelight, we saw our wide room at JEAN PAUL RICHTER. 327 once illuminated and barricaded ; to wit, tbe window-shutters were closed and bolted ; and behind these window bastions and breast- works the child felt himself snugly nestled, and well secured against Knecht Ruprecht, who, on the outside, could not get in, but only in vain keep growling and humming. ‘ ‘ About this period too it was that we children might undress, and in long train-shirts skip up and down. Idyllic joys of various sorts alternated : our Father either had his quarto Bible, interleaved with blank folio sheets, before him, and was marking at each verse the book wherein he had read anything concerning it ; or more commonly he had his ruled music-paper, and, undis- turbed by this racketing of children, was composing whole concerts of Church- music, with all their divisions ; constructing his internal melody without any help of external tones (as Reichard too advises), or rather in spite of all external mistones. In both cases, in the last with more pleasure, I looked on as he wrote ; and rejoiced specially, when, by pauses of various instruments, whole pages were at once filled up. The children sat sporting on that long writing and eating table, or even under it. Then, at length, how did the -winter evening, once a week, mount in worth, when the old errand-woman, coated in snow, with her fruit, flesh, and general-ware basket, entered the kitchen from Hof ; and we all, in this case, had the distant town in miniature before our eyes, nay, before our noses, for there were pastry-cakes in it ? ” Thus, in dull winter imprisonment, among all manner of bovine, swinish, and feathered cattle, with their noises, may Idyllic joys be found, if there is an eye to see them and a heart to taste them. Truly happiness is cheap, did we apply to the right merchant for it. Paul warns us elsewhere not to believe, for these Idyls, that there were no sour days, no chid- ings, and the like, at Jodiz: yet on the whole he had good reason to rejoice in his parents. They loved him well ; his Pather, he says, would “ shed tears” over any mark of quick- ness or talent in little Pritz : they were virtuous also, and devout, which, after all, is better than being rich. ‘‘ Ever and anon,” says he, “ I was hearing some narrative from my Pather, how he and other clergymen had taken parts of their dress and given them to the poor ; he related these things with joy, not as an admonition, but merely as a necessary occur- rence, O God ! I thank thee for my Pather ! ” Eichter’s education was not of a more sumptuous sort than his board and lodging. Some disagreement with the schoolmaster at Jodiz, had induced the parson to take his sons from school, and determine to teach them himself. This determination 328 JEAN PAUL RICHTER. he executed faithfully indeed, yet in the most limited style; his method being no Pestalozzian one, but simply the old scheme of task-work and force-work, operating on a Latin Grammar and a Latin Yocabulary : and the two boys sat all day, and all year, at home, without other preceptorial nourish- ment than getting by heart long lists of words. Lritz learned honestly, nevertheless, and in spite of his brother Adam’s bad example. Lor the rest, he was totally destitute of books, except such of his Lather’s theological ones as he could come at by stealth : these, for want of better, he eagerly devoured ; understanding, as he says, nothing whatever of their contents. With no less impetuosity, and no less profit, he perused the antiquated sets of newspapers, which a kind patroness, the Lady von Plotho, already mentioned, was in the habit of fur- nishing to his Lather, not in separate sheets, but in sheaves monthly. This was the extent of his reading. Jodiz, too, was the most sequestered of all hamlets ; had neither natural nor artificial beauty ; no memorable thing could be seen there in a life-time. Nevertheless, under an immeasurable sky, and in a quite wondrous World it did stand; and glimpses into the infinite spaces of the Universe, and even into the infinite spaces of Man’s Soul, could be had there as well as elsewhere. Lritz had his own thoughts, in spite of schoolmasters : a little heavenly seed of Knowledge, nay of Wisdom, had been laid in him, and with no gardener but Nature herself, it was silently growing. To some of our readers, the following circumstance may seem unparalleled, if not unintelligible; to others nowise so : — “ In the future Literary History of our liero, it will become doubtful whether he was not born more for Philosophy than for Poetry, In earliest times, the word WdtwehJiclt (Philosophy, World-ivisdom ), — yet also another word, M orfjcidandy (East, M ornhuj-land )^ — was to me an open Heaven’s gate, through wliicli 1 looked-in over long, long gardens of joy. — Never shall 1 forget tlmt inward occurrence, till now narrated to no mortal, wherein I witncHi*ed tlio birth of my Self-consciousness, of which 1 can still give the place and time. One forenoon, I was standing, a very young child, in the outer door, ami looking leftward at the stack of the fuel-wood, — wlien, all at once, the int