[Pg iii]

THE FUTURE OF INDIA.
A COUP D'ÉTAT.
THEATRICAL MAKE-SHIFTS AND BLUNDERS.
I.—WINTER-MORN IN THE COUNTRY.
II.—WINTER-MORN IN TOWN.
THE HAPPY VALLEY.
THE PHŒNICIANS IN GREECE.
SOME GOSSIP ABOUT LEICESTER SQUARE.
A WOMAN'S LOVE.
AN IMPERIAL PARDON.
CHRISTMAS IN MOROCCO.
THE HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE ITALIAN POETS.
THE VAQUERO.
TWO MODERN JAPANESE STORIES.
SUPPOSED CHANGES IN THE MOON.
RECOLLECTIONS OF THACKERAY.

CONTENTS.

[Pg 1]

THE

LIBRARY MAGAZINE

JANUARY, 1879.

THE FUTURE OF INDIA.

Speculation as to the political future is not a very fruitful occupation. In looking back to the prognostications of the wisest statesmen, it will be observed that they were as little able to foresee what was to come a generation or two after their death, as the merest dolt amongst their contemporaries. The Whigs at the beginning of the last century thought that the liberties of Europe would disappear if a prince of the House of Bourbon were securely fixed on the throne of Spain. The Tories in the last quarter of that century considered that if England lost her American provinces she would sink into the impotence of the Dutch Republic. The statesmen who assembled at the Congress of Vienna would have laughed any dreamer to scorn who should have suggested that in the lifetime of many of them Germany would become an empire in the hands of Prussia, France a well-organized and orderly republic, and the "geographical expression" of Italy vitalised into one of the great powers of Europe. Nevertheless, if politics is ever to approach the dignity of a science, it must justify a scientific character by its ability to predict events. The facts are too complicated, probably, ever to admit the application of exact deductive reasoning; and in the growth of civilised society new and unexpected forms are continually springing up. But though practical statesmen will not aim at results beyond the immediate future, it is impossible for men who pass their lives in the study of the difficult task of government to avoid speculations as to the future form of society to which national efforts should be directed. Some theory or other, therefore, is always present, consciously or unconsciously, to the mind of politicians.

With respect to British India it may be observed that very different views of policy prevail. Native writers in the Indian press view their exclusion from all the higher offices of Government, and the efforts of Manchester to transfer 800,000 l. per annum raised on cotton goods to increased taxation in India, as a policy based on mere selfishness; and a Russian journal, apparently in good faith, assured its readers the [Pg 2] other day, that India pays into the British treasury an annual tribute of twenty to twenty-five millions sterling. On the other hand, some advanced thinkers amongst ourselves hold that India is a burden on our resources, and the cry of "Perish India!" so far as relates to its dependence on England, is considered to be not unsupported by sound reasoning. One of the ablest publicists of India, in a published letter to Sir George Campbell, has declared his conviction, after twenty years' experience in that country, that good government by the British in India is impossible.

It may be admitted that exaggerated notions as to the pecuniary value of India to England prevail, and it must also be confessed that, with all our self-complacency as to the benefits of British rule, we have to accuse ourselves of several shortcomings. Nevertheless, it may be affirmed with confidence that the national instinct as to the value of our possessions in the East coincides with the views of our most enlightened statesmen. My colleague, Colonel Yule, has pointed out, I think with entire justice, that the task which we have proposed to ourselves in India, unlike that of the Dutch in Java, is to improve and elevate the two hundred millions under our charge to the utmost extent of our powers. The national conscience is not altogether satisfied with the mode in which some of our possessions have been acquired, but impartial inquiry demonstrates that unless a higher morality had prevailed than has ever yet been witnessed amongst the sons of men, the occasions for conquest and acquisition of territory that have presented themselves to the British during the last hundred years would not have been foregone by any nation in the world. But the feeling I allude to quickens the sense of our obligations to the inhabitants of India. Having undertaken the heavy task of their government, it is our duty to demonstrate to posterity that under British rule we have enabled them to advance in the route of civilization and progress. We recognise that in all probability so distant and extensive an empire cannot permanently remain in subjection to a small island in the West, and therefore our constant task is to render the population of India at some day or other capable of self-government. Is such a problem susceptible of a favourable solution? I propose to discuss this question in the following pages.

I.

The late Sir George Lewis once observed to me that in his opinion, it was labour lost to endeavour to make anything of the Hindus. They were a race doomed to subjection whenever they came into collision with peoples more vigorous than themselves. They possessed, in short, none of the elements which are requisite for self-government. Any opinion of that philosophic observer is entitled to grave consideration, and undoubtedly there is much in the history of the past that tends to justify the above desponding conclusion. The Persians, the Greeks, the Parthians, the Huns, the Arabs, the Ghaznivides, the Afghans, the Moguls, the Persians a second time, [Pg 3] and the British have successfully entered India and made themselves masters of the greater part of it. But Sir George had never been called upon to make any particular study of Indian history, nor indeed was it open to him during the earlier period of his life, which was devoted exclusively to study, to acquire the knowledge of India which later erudition and research have brought to light. It is possible that a closer attention to what has occurred in the past may enable us to regard the future in a more favourable aspect. It will, I think, be found, after such a study, that more intrinsic vitality and greater recuperative power exist amongst the Hindu race than they have been generally accredited with. Unfortunately the ancient and copious literature of the Hindus presents extremely little of historic value. The tendency of the Indian mind to dreamy speculations on the unseen and the unknown, to metaphysics, and to poetry, has led to a thorough disregard of the valuable offices of history. Accordingly, we find in their great epic poems, which date back, according to the best orientalists, at least seven centuries before Christ, the few historical facts which are mentioned so enveloped in legends, so encumbered with the grossest exaggerations, that it requires assiduous scholarship to extract a scintilla of truth from their relations.

Our distinguished countrymen, Sir William Jones and Mr. Colebrooke, led the way in applying the resources of European learning to the elucidation of the Sanscrit texts. And the happy identification, by the former, of the celebrated Chandragupta of the Hindus with the monarch of Pataliputra, Sandracottus, at whose court Megasthenes resided for seven years in the third century before Christ, laid the first firm foundation for authentic Indian history. Since that period the researches of oriental scholars following up the lines laid down by their illustrious predecessors; the rock inscriptions which have been collected from various parts of India, the coins, extending over many ages, of different native dynasties—all these compared together enable a student even as sceptical as Sir George Lewis to form a more favourable idea of the Hindus in their political capacity than he was disposed to take.

Early European inquirers into Hindu antiquity, with the natural prejudice in favour of their studies in a hitherto unknown tongue, were disposed to lend far too credulous an ear to the gross exaggerations and reckless inaccuracies of the "Máhabhárat" and kindred works. James Mill on the other hand, who was a Positivist before Auguste Comte had begun to write, rejected with scorn all the allusions to the past in these ancient writers as entirely fabulous. Careful scholarship, however, working on the materials of the past which every day's discoveries are increasing, demonstrates that much true history is to be gathered from the works of the Sanscrit writers.

The celebrated granite rock of Girnar [1] in the peninsula of Guzerat presents in itself an authentic record of three distinct dynasties separated from one another by centuries. And we owe to what may be justly called the genius of James Prinsep the decipherment of those inscriptions of Asoka which have brought to the knowledge of Europe a Hindu monarch of the third century before our era, who, whilst he has been equalled by few in the extent of his dominions, may claim superiority over nearly every king that ever lived, from his tender-hearted regard for the interests of his people, and from the wide principles of toleration which he inculcated. [Pg 4]

Horace Wilson, who may be safely cited as the most calm and judicious oriental scholar of our times, asserts that there is nothing to shock probability in supposing that the Hindu dynasties, of whom we trace vestiges, were spread through twelve centuries anterior to the war of the Máhabhárat. [2] This leads us back to dates about 2600 years b.c. We have, therefore, the astounding period of over four thousand years during which to glean facts relating to the Hindu race and their capacity for government, such as may form foundation for conclusions as to the future. The characteristics which have most impressed themselves on my mind after such study of Indian records as I have been able to bestow are, first, the very early appearance of solicitude for the interest and welfare of the people, as exhibited by Hindu rulers, such as has rarely or never been exhibited in the early histories of other nations; secondly, the successful efforts of the Hindu race to re-establish themselves in power on the least appearance of decay in the successive foreign dynasties which have held rule among them. It is only with the latter phenomenon that I propose now to deal, and a rapid retrospect may be permitted.

We learn from European records that Cyrus made conquests in India in the sixth century b.c. , and the famous inscription of his successor Darius includes Sind and the modern Afghanistan amongst his possessions. But when Alexander entered India two centuries later he found no trace of Persian sway, but powerful Indian princes. Taxiles, Abisares, and the celebrated Porus ruled over large kingdoms in the Panjáb. The latter monarch, whose family name Paura is recorded in the Máhabhárat, is described by the Greek writers to have ruled over 300 cities, and he brought into the field against Alexander more than 2,000 elephants, 400 chariots, 4,000 cavalry, and 50,000 foot. Against this force Alexander was only able to bring 16,000 foot and 5,000 horse; but the bulk of the troops were Macedonians, and the leader was the greatest general whom the world has seen. We have full particulars of the celebrated battle which ensued, and which ended in the complete discomfiture of Porus. The conduct of this Indian king, however, in the battle extorted the admiration of the Greek historians. He received nine wounds during the engagement, and was the last to leave the field, affording, as Arrian remarks, a noble contrast to Darius the Second, who was the first to fly amongst his host in his similar conflict with the Greeks. Alexander, as [Pg 5] in the Macedonian conquests generally, left satraps in possession of his Indian acquisitions. But a very few years ensued before we find a native of India had raised up a mighty kingdom, and all trace of Greek rule in the Punjab disappears. Chandragupta, or Sandracottus, is said by a Greek writer to have seen Alexander in person on the Hydaspes. Justin relates that it was he who raised the standard of independence before his fellow-countrymen, and successfully drove out Alexander's satraps. He founded the Maurya dynasty, and the vast extent of the kingdom ruled over by his grandson Asoka is testified by the edicts which the latter caused to be engraved in various parts of his dominions. They also record the remarkable fact of his close alliance with the Greek rulers of Syria, Egypt, Macedon, Cyrene and Epirus. We next find that one of the Greek princes who had established an independent dynasty in Bactria, Euthydemus, invaded India, and made several conquests, but he also was met in the field and overcome by Galoka, son of Asoka, who for some time added Cashmir to his possessions. The Bactrian dynasty was put an end to by Mithridates, 140 b.c. , and consequently the Greeks were driven eastwards, and they planted themselves in various parts of India. We find clear traces of them in Guzerat, where the town of Junaghur (Javanaghur) still records the name of the Greeks who founded the city. The coins and inscriptions of the Sinha rulers of Guzerat furnish us with some particulars as to the Greek holdings at this period, and they seem to have extended from the Jumna on the east to Guzerat and Kutch on the west. The Macedonians seem here, as elsewhere, to have placed natives at the head of their district administrations, and the Sinha rulers call themselves Satraps and Máha Rajahs, and use Greek legends on their coins, but evidently they soon acquired complete independence. Simultaneously or nearly so with these Indo-Greek principalities, we find invasions of India by the race commonly called Scythians, but more accurately Jutchi, Sacæ, and White Huns. These also formed independent kingdoms. But again native leaders of enterprise arose who put an end to foreign dominion. Vikramadit, who founded an era 57 b.c. , and whose exploits have made a deep impression upon the native mind, is thought to be one of the Hindu leaders who succeeded in expelling a foreign dynasty. And it would appear that towards the middle of the third century after Christ all foreign dominion had disappeared from the soil of India, except perhaps some small settlements of Jutchi, on the banks of the Indus; and except the temporary conquest of Sind by the Arabs in the seventh century, from which they were soon expelled by the Sumea Rajputs [3] . Thus, during a period of 600 years, we have encountered a series of invasions and conquests of portions of India by foreign rulers, but all successively driven out by the energy of native leaders. Thereupon followed the establishment of native dynasties all over India. It was chiefly during the 700 years that now ensued, up to the invasion of India by Mahmud of Ghazni, that the great works of Sanscrit literature [Pg 6] in poetry, grammar, algebra, and astronomy, appeared. During this period also the Rajputs, who have been well called the Normans of the East, seem to have found their way to nearly every throne in India. Their acquisition of power has never been fully traced, and probably the materials are wanting for any full or accurate account of it; but the subject is well worthy the attention of an Indian student.

The Mahomedan conquests which, with the fanaticism and savage intolerance introduced by them, commenced a.d. 1001, seem to have exercised most depressing effects on the Hindu mind. But here again we meet with the same phenomenon. So soon as the Mussulman rule becomes enfeebled, a native chief rises up who is enabled to rally his countrymen around him and form a dynasty. Sivaji in 1660-80 established an independency which his successors, as mayors of the palace, enlarged into a kingdom, out of which arose the native powers of Sindia, of the Gaekwar, and of the Bhonslas of Berar. Exactly the same occurrence has been witnessed in the present century by the success of Ranjit Sing in forming an independent principality in the Panjáb. This remarkable man, who was absolutely illiterate, by his own energy of character raised himself from the head of a small Sikh clan to the head of a kingdom with a revenue of two and a half millions sterling. [4] We may be sure that, if the British had not been in force, natives of soldierly qualities like Jung Bahádar of Nepal, or Tantia Topi of the mutinies, would have carved out in the present day kingdoms for themselves in other parts of India.

II.

It may be thought that in the preceding sketch I have been aiming at the conclusion that British dominion is in danger of extinction either by foreign invasion or internal insurrection. Nothing is more foreign from my views. I firmly believe that British rule in the East was never so strong, never so able to protect itself against all attacks from without or from within, as at the present moment. In a foreign dominion such as ours, where unforeseen contingencies may any day arise, and where a considerable amount of disaffection must always exist, constant watchfulness on the part of Government is no doubt required; but this position is thoroughly recognised by all statesmen who occupy themselves with Indian affairs. I do not for a moment delude myself with the idea that we have succeeded in gaining the affections of the natives. No foreign rulers who have kept themselves apart as a separate caste from the conquered nation have succeeded in accomplishing this feat. There is something of incompatibility between the European and Asiatic, which seems to forbid easy amalgamation. Lord Stowell, in one of his fine judgments, has pointed out the constant tendency of Europeans in the East to form themselves into separate communities, and to abstain from all social intercourse with the natives around them, and he illustrates his position with the happy quotation—

[Pg 7]

The English perhaps are distinguishable among all European nations by the deep-rooted notions of self-superiority which their insular position and great success in history have engendered. The southern races of Europe, the Spanish and Portuguese, have shown no reluctance to intermix freely with the native races of America, India, and the Philippines, such as has always been exhibited by inhabitants of the British Isles when expatriated to the East or West. But where race, color, religion, prejudice intervene to prevent social intercourse between the English in India and the natives, what a wide gulf is placed between them!

In justice, however, it must be stated that, although the haughtiness of demeanour and occasional brutality in manners which the aristocratie de peau sometimes engenders in our countrymen are much to be deprecated, the estrangement which exists in India between the English and the natives is not wholly, nor even principally, attributable to the former. A Hindu of very humble caste would think himself polluted if he sat down to dinner with the European governor of his Presidency. In this instance, as in so many others, Hindu opinions have permeated the whole native community; and other races transplanted to India, such as Mahomedans and Parsis, are equally exclusive in their social life. When I was in Bombay I made an attempt to break through the barrier which the latter caste had voluntarily erected for themselves. Sir Jamshedji Jijibhai, an able, self-raised man, was then the acknowledged head of the Parsi community, and was distinguished for his benevolence and enlightened views. I endeavored to persuade him to set his countrymen an example, and to come to a dinner at which I would assemble the chief authorities of the island; and I proposed to him as an inducement that he should send his own cook, who should prepare for him his wonted fare. But the step was too startling a one for him, though I was glad to find that his son, the second baronet, was able to get over his prejudices on his visit, some years after, to London. A ludicrous example of the same exclusive feeling has been related in connection with a Governor-General. His lordship, desirous to break down any notion of social inferiority on the part of a distinguished native who was paying him a visit, placed his arm round his neck as they walked up and down a verandah engaged in familiar conversation. The high-bred Oriental made no sign, but as soon as he could extricate himself from the embraces of his Excellency, he hastened home to wash away the contamination of a Mlecha's touch.

It may also be observed that the mutual repugnance of the two races to such close social intercourse as intermarriage, for example, would produce, gives rise to two excellent results. First, there is every reason to suppose, judging by what we see of the native Portuguese in India, that the English and Hindu would make, in the language of breeders, a very bad cross; and it is therefore satisfactory to find that English rulers in India, unlike the Normans in England, or the Moguls in India, have never intermarried with the natives of the country. The second result is closely connected with the first. What has led to the downfall [Pg 8] of previous foreign dynasties has been that the invaders of the country had become effeminate by their long possession of power, and had lost the original energy and vigour which had enabled their predecessors to gain a throne. The constant recruitment of English rulers from their fatherland wholly prevents this cause of internal decay from making its appearance among the British.

It is not, then, by our hold on the affections of the people that we maintain our dominion in India. The strength and probable endurance of our rule are based on our real power, on our endeavours to do justice, on our toleration. The memory of the excesses committed under Mussulman rule has probably become dim with the great bulk of the people, but it is very vivid among educated Hindus. A strong conviction prevails among them that if British rule were to disappear in India, the same rise of military adventurers, the same struggles for power, and the same anarchy as prevailed during the first half of the last century would again appear. The latest expression of Hindu opinion on this subject which I have met with is contained in a pamphlet published in the present year by Mr. Dadoba Pandurang. [5] He is an aged scholar, and though not a Brahmin, well versed in the Vedas, but, above all, he is distinguished by his devout views and by his desire to elevate and improve his fellow-countrymen. He writes:—

Opinions like these, I am persuaded, prevail throughout the educated community, and the presence of British rule amongst them is recognised as indispensable in the present state of Hindu society.

III.

With respect to a successful invasion of India, it must be confessed that the English mind has always been keenly susceptible of alarm. The wide plains of Hisdustan, which offer so ready an access to aggressive armies, the absence of fortified places, and the frequency with which India has been won and lost in a single pitched battle, all tend to encourage the belief that some day or other British domination will be in [Pg 9] danger from some incursion of this sort. It may be observed that for nearly a century past the English nation has been subjected to periodic fits of Indian panic. Sir John Kaye, in his "History of the Afghan War," states that in 1797 the whole of India was kept "in a chronic state of unrest" from the fears of an Afghan descent upon the plains of Hindustan. In 1800 the Emperor Paul of Russia and Napoleon conceived "a mad and impracticable scheme of invasion," which greatly increased local alarm. In 1809 these fears assumed even larger proportions when an alliance between Napoleon and Persia was on foot with a view to the proposed invasion; and the mission to Persia under Sir John Malcolm was inaugurated. In 1838 Russia took the place which Zeman Shah, Persia, and Napoleon had previously occupied, and the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan was commenced by Lord Auckland from his mountain retreat at Simla.

Since that period the suspicions of the nation have been continually directed against Russia by a small but able party, who, from their chiefly belonging to the Presidency of Bombay, have been termed the Bombay school. The late General John Jacob was the originator of the anti-Russian policy inculcated by them. He was a man of great ability and original views, and, if he had moved in a wider sphere, he might have left a name equal to that of the most illustrious of his countrymen in India. But he passed the greater part of his life on the barren wastes of Sind, and rarely came in contact with superior minds. In 1856 General Jacob addressed a singularly able paper to Lord Canning, then Governor-General, and which Sir Lewis Pelly afterwards published to the world. [8] This was just at the close of the Crimean War, when England was about to undertake an expedition against Persia to repel her aggression on Herát. It was Jacob's firm conviction that, unless India interposed, Russia, having Persia completely under her control, could, whenever she pleased, take possession not only of Herát, but of Candahar, and thus find an entrance to the plains of India, on which our dominion was to disappear. To thwart this contingency, and render the approach of a European army towards our frontier impossible, he would, as an ultimate measure, garrison Herát with twenty thousand troops, but in the first instance would occupy Quetta. These proposals were carefully considered by Lord Canning's Government, but were rejected.

The same arguments were brought forward eleven years later by Sir Bartle Frere, whilst Governor of Bombay, and were laid before the Government of India. That Government was then remarkably strong, consisting of Lord Lawrence, Sir William Mansfield (Lord Sandhurst), Sir Henry Maine, Mr. Massey, and Major-General Sir Henry Durand; but the proposals to improve our frontier by extending our dominions westward, and by the annexation of independent foreign territory, were unanimously disapproved of. [Pg 10]

About the same time that Sir Bartle Frere was endeavouring to stimulate the Government of India to occupy Quetta, my distinguished colleague and friend, Sir Henry Rawlinson, published two articles in the "Quarterly Review," [9] in which he called the attention of the public to the rapidly increasing extension of the Russian dominions in the direction of our Indian frontier, and to the necessity of maintaining outworks such as Herát and Candahar for the protection of our Eastern Empire. But he raised the question in a more solemn form in the confidential memorandum which he transmitted to the Government of India in 1868, and which he afterwards published in 1875, [10] with additional matter, forming a complete conspectus of the aggressive policy to be adopted to guard against a Russian invasion. The views of the Government of India on these papers have not, I believe, been given to the world, but it is well known in Indian circles that the masterly activity therein advocated did not find acceptance.

At the present moment Russophobia is raging to a greater extent than at any previous period; but this is ground on which for the present I am precluded from entering. It is gratifying to observe, however, that in the great conflict of opinion which, as it will be seen, has thus been raging for the last forty years, as to the best method of protecting our north-western frontier from an invading foe, both schools have ultimately agreed on one conclusion, namely, that a successful invasion of India by Russia is in nowise probable. The one side would avert any possibility of an attack by the occupation of Afghanistan, the Suleiman mountains, and probably the Hindu Kush; the other would husband the resources of India, and not waste blood and treasure in anticipation of a conflict that may possibly never occur, and that certainly never will occur without years of warning to the nation.

I cannot pursue this interesting question further at a moment when the whole question of our policy on the Indian frontier is ripening for discussion, and when the materials on which a sound conclusion can be drawn are not yet laid before the public. It is sufficient for my present purpose to repeat that the probability of British dominion in the East being terminated by a Russian invasion is rejected on all sides.

IV.

If the views which have been now put forward are at all sound, we may perhaps conclude that whilst our Indian empire requires on the part of its rulers the utmost watchfulness to guard against dangers and contingencies which may at any moment arise, yet that with ordinarily wise government we may look forward to a period of indefinitely long duration during which British dominion may flourish. That sooner or later the links which connect England with India will be severed, all history teaches us to expect; but when that severance occurs, if the growing spirit of philantrophy and increasing sense of national morality [Pg 11] which characterise the nineteenth century continue, we may fairly hope that the Englishman will have taught the Hindus how to govern themselves. It is England's task, as heretofore, "to teach other nations how to live." A very long period, however, is required before the lesson can be fully learned, and the holders of Indian securities need not fear that the reversionary interests of their grandchildren will be endangered. Our rule in India dates back little more than a century; and although from the first a wise spirit of toleration and an eminent desire to do justice have prevailed, it is only within the last thirty or forty years that any serious attempts to elevate the character of the nation have been manifested.

The educational movement, which is silently producing prodigious changes in India, received its first impulse from England, and the clause in the Act of Parliament [11] which recognised the duty of educating the masses, enabled men like Lord Macaulay, Sir Edward Ryan, and others, to lay the foundations of a system which has since established itself far and wide. But the Court of Directors never took heartily to this great innovation of modern times, and it was only under the direction of English statesmanship that the Indian authorities were induced to act with vigour in this momentous undertaking. Sir Charles Wood's celebrated minute on education, in 1858, laid the foundation of a national system of education, and the principles then inculcated have never since been departed from. Some generations will require to pass before the Oriental mind is enabled to substitute the accurate forms of European thought for the loose speculations that have prevailed through long centuries. But already happy results are appearing, and in connection with the subject of this article it may be noticed as a most hopeful sign of the future that our English schools are turning out native statesmen by whom all our best methods of government are being introduced into the dominions of native princes.

The administration reports of some of these gentlemen may vie with those of our best English officers; and the names of Sir Dinkar Rao, Sir Madava Rao, Sir Salar Jung, and others, give full indication that among the natives of India may be found men eminently qualified for the task of government. Wittingly or unwittingly, English officials in India are preparing materials which some day or other will form the groundwork for a native empire or empires. I was thrown closely into contact with the Civil Service whilst I was in India, for I employed all my vacations in travelling through the country, mostly at a foot's pace. Everywhere I went I found a cultivated English gentleman exerting himself to the best of his ability to extend the blessings of civilisation—justice, education, the development of all local resources. I firmly believe that no government in the world has ever possessed a body of administrators to vie with the Civil Service of India. Nor do I speak only of the service as it existed under the East India Company, for, from all [Pg 12] that I have heard and observed, competition supplies quite as good servants of the State as did in earlier days the patronage of the Court of Directors. The truth is, that the excellence of the result has been attributable in nowise to the mode of selection, but to the local circumstances which call forth in either case, in the young Englishman of decent education and of the moral tone belonging to the middle classes of this country, the best qualities of his nature. But in these energetic, high-principled, and able administrators we have a danger to good government which it is necessary to point out. Every Englishman in office in India has great power, and every Englishman, as the late Lord Lytton once observed to me, is in heart a reformer. His native energy will not enable him to sit still with his hands before him. He must be improving something. The tendency of the English official in India is to over-reform, to introduce what he may deem improvements, but which turn out egregious failures, and this, be it observed, amongst the most conservative people of the world. Some of the most carefully devised schemes for native improvement have culminated in native deterioration. A remarkable illustration of this position is afforded by the late inquiry into the causes of the riots among the cultivators of the Deccan. It has been one of the pretensions of British administration that they have instituted for the first time in India pure and impartial courts of justice. And the boast is well founded. In the Presidency of Bombay also the Government has substituted long leases of thirty years on what may be called Crown Lands for the yearly holdings formerly in vogue. They have also greatly moderated the assessment. The result has been that land in the Bombay Presidency from being unsaleable has acquired a value of from ten to twenty years' purchase. But the effect of these two measures upon the holders of these lands has been disastrous. Finding themselves possessed of property on which they could raise money with facility, they have indulged this national propensity out of all proportion to their means; and the money-lenders in their turn drag the improvident borrowers before a court of justice, and obtain decrees upon the indisputable terms of the contract, which no judge feels competent to disregard.

Another danger of the same sort arises from the short term of office which is allowed to officials in the highest places in India. When the Portuguese had large dominions in India, they found that their Viceroys, if permitted to remain a long time in the East, became insubordinate, and too powerful for the Government at Lisbon to control. They accordingly passed a law limiting the tenure of office to five years. This limitation seems to have been adopted tacitly in our Eastern administrative system, and has undoubtedly been observed for more than a century. But the period of five years is very short to enable either a Governor-General, or Governor, or member of Council to leave his mark on the country; and there is a temptation to attempt something dazzling which would require for its proper fulfilment years to elaborate, but which, if not passed at the moment, would fail to illustrate the era. [Pg 13]

It is needless to observe that a series of ill-considered changes, a constant succession of new laws to be followed by amended laws in the next session, attempts to change manners and practices (not immoral in themselves) that have prevailed for centuries, all tend to make a government, especially a foreign government, odious. But there is one other rock which it is above all essential to avoid when we are considering the problem how best to preserve the duration of British government for the benefit of India. Every ardent administrator desires improvements in his own department; roads, railways, canals, irrigation, improved courts of justice, more efficient police, all find earnest advocates in the high places of government. But improved administration is always costly, and requires additional taxation. I fear that those in authority too often forget that the wisest rulers of a despotic government have always abstained from laying fresh burdens on the people. It is, in fact, the chief merit of such a government that the taxes are ordinarily light, and are such as are familiarised by old usage. New taxes imposed without the will, or any appeal to the judgment, of the people create the most dangerous kind of disaffection. But if this is true generally, it is especially true in India, where the population is extremely poor, and where hitherto the financier has not been enabled to make the rich contribute their due quota to the revenue of the country.

It has been said by some that we have not yet reached the limits of taxation in India, but to them I would oppose the memorable saying of Lord Mayo towards the close of his career. "A feeling of discontent and dissatisfaction existed," in his opinion, "among every class, both European and native, on account of the constant increase of taxation that had for years been going on;" and he added: "The continuance of that feeling was a political danger, the magnitude of which could hardly be over-estimated." The Earl of Northbrook quoted and fully endorsed this opinion in his examination before the House of Commons in the present year. [12]

But although this constant aim at improvement among our English administrators too often leads to irritating changes, harassing legislation, and new fiscal charges on the people, causes are at work which tend to eliminate these obstacles to good and stable government. In our experimental application of remedies to evils patent on the surface, our blunders have chiefly arisen from our ignorance of the people. Institutions that had been seen to work well in Europe might, it was thought, be transplanted safely to India. Experience alone could teach that this is often a grievous error; but experience is being daily afforded by our prolonged rule, and by our increasing acquaintance with the habits, wants, and feelings of the people. The tendency also to change and improvement, which I have before observed upon as leading to ill-considered measures, operates here beneficially, for there is never any hesitation in a local government to reverse the proceedings of its predecessors when found to work injuriously for the community. [Pg 14]

But the most cheering symptom of future good government in India is the increased disposition of British rulers to associate natives of character and ability with themselves in high offices of administration. Parliament so long ago as 1833 laid down the principle that no native shall by reason of his religion, place of birth, or colour, be disabled from holding any office. Her gracious Majesty also in 1858 proclaimed her will "that so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability, and integrity duly to discharge."

Many obstacles have hitherto prevailed, chiefly arising out of the vested interests of a close Civil Service, to prevent full operation being given to a policy so solemnly laid down. But it is no breach of official propriety to announce that Lord Cranbrook has earnestly taken up the proposals of the present Viceroy to clear away the difficulties which have hitherto intervened, and has sent out a despatch to India which it may be fairly anticipated will meet the aspirations of educated natives, and will greatly strengthen the foundations of British government in the East.

It will thus be seen that several factors are at work which cannot fail, under the continued rule of the British Government, to have most beneficial effects on the national character of India. A system of education is being established which is opening a door for the introduction of all the knowledge accumulated in Europe, and which sooner or later must greatly dissipate that ignorance which is at the bottom of so many obstacles to good government in the East. Equality before the law and the supremacy of law have been fully brought home to the cognisance of every inhabitant of India, and they form a striking contrast, fully appreciated by the Hindus, to the arbitrary decisions and the race prerogatives which characterised their former Mahomedan rulers. Continuous efforts at improvement are witnessed in every zillah of India, and if they sometimes fail in their operation it is still patent that the permanent welfare of the people is the constant aim and object of Government. Moreover, the ready ear tendered to any expression of a grievance, the minute subjection of every act of authority in India, from the deputy magistrate up to the Governor-General, to the scrutiny of the Home Government, secure to the meanest inhabitant of India a hearing, and inspire the consciousness that he also is a member of the State, and that his rights and interests are fully recognised. The association of natives with ourselves in the task of government, which has been commenced in the lower branches of the judicial administration with the greatest success, and which is now about to be attempted on a larger scale, as I have before noted, is also a fact of the greatest gravity. On the whole, after very close attention to Indian administration for nearly forty years, of which about twelve were spent in the country itself in a position where I was enabled to take an impartial view of what was going on around me, I am of opinion that a bright future presents itself, and, if [Pg 15] I could see my way more clearly on the very important questions of caste and of the future religion of India, I should say a brilliant future, in which perhaps for centuries to come the supremacy of England will produce the happiest results in India.

V.

But I must not close this article without reference to the very different views which have been lately put forth in this Review under the sensational title of the "Bankruptcy of India." Mr. Hyndman, after much study of Indian statistics, has arrived at the conclusion that "India has been frightfully impoverished under our rule, and that the process is going on now at an increasingly rapid rate." The revenue raised by taxation is about 36,000,000 l. , and "is taken absolutely out of the pockets of the people," three-fourths of whom are engaged in agriculture. The increase of 12,000,000 l. in the revenue which has occurred between 1857 and 1876 "comes almost entirely out of the pockets of the cultivators," and "the greater part of the increase of the salt, stamps, and excise is derived from the same source." The cost of maintaining a prisoner in the cheapest part of India is 56 s. a head, or, making allowance for children, 46 s. ; but the poor cultivator has only 31 s. 6 d. , from which he must also defray the charges "for sustenance of bullocks, the cost of clothing, repairs to implements, house, &c., and for taxation ."

He states the debt of India to be "enormous," amounting to 220,000,000 l. sterling, principally accumulated in the last few years. The railways have been constructed at ruinous cost, for which the "unfortunate ryot has had to borrow an additional five or ten or twenty rupees of the native money-lender at 24, 40, 60 per cent., in order to pay extra taxation." Irrigation works "tell nearly the same sad tale. Here again millions have been squandered—squandered needlessly." Moreover, the land is fast becoming deteriorated or is being worse cultivated. In short, through a long indictment of twenty-three pages, of which I omit many counts, he cannot find a single act of British administration that meets his approval. All is naught. It is true that the Civil Service of India is composed of men who have gained their posts by means of the best education that England can supply, and who from an early period of manhood have devoted their lives to the practical solution of the many difficult problems which Indian administration presents. But Mr. Hyndman finds fault with them all.

The article itself is couched in such an evident spirit of philanthropy that one feels unwilling to notice pointedly the blunders, the exaggerations, and the inaccuracies into which the writer has fallen. But Mr. Hyndman has entered the lists so gallantly with a challenge to all the Anglo-Indian world, that he of course expects to encounter some hard knocks, writing, as he does, on a subject with which he has no practical acquaintance. He has already received "a swashing blow" respecting the agricultural statistics on which he bases the whole of his argument. On data supplied to him by an able native writer, whom I know intimately and for whom I have the [Pg 16] highest respect, he has drawn conclusions which are so manifestly absurd, that all practically acquainted with the subject are tempted to throw aside his article as mere rubbish. But Mr. Dádobhai, like himself, has no knowledge of the rural life of India, or of agriculture generally, or of the practical business of administration. He is a man who has passed his whole life in cities, an excellent mathematician, of unwearied industry, and distinguished, even among his countrymen, for his patriotic endeavours to improve their condition. But the mere study of books and of figures—especially of the imperfect ones which hitherto have characterised the agricultural statistics of India—is not sufficient to constitute a great administrator; and when Mr. Dádobhai, after making himself prominent by useful work in the municipality of Bombay, was selected to fill the high office of Prime Minister to the Gaekwar of Baroda, he was not deemed by his countrymen to have displayed any great aptitude in statesmanship. [13]

The alarming picture drawn by Mr. Hyndman on data thus supplied attracted the attention of the greatest authority in England on agricultural matters; for intrinsic evidence clearly shows that the letters signed "C.," which appeared in the Times of the 5th of October and the 9th of October, can proceed from no other than Mr. Caird. His refutation of Mr. Hyndman's pessimist views is so short, that I give the pith of it here:—

[Pg 17]

When an argument is thus found so completely pecher par sa base , it is needless to pursue it further. But I conceive that Mr. Hyndman, when studying this overwhelming refutation, must feel somewhat conscience-stricken when he reperuses such sentences of his own as the following:—"In India at this time, millions of the ryots are growing wheat, cotton, seeds, and other exhausting crops, and send them away because these alone will enable them to pay their way at all. They are themselves, nevertheless, eating less and less of worse food each year, in spite, or rather by reason, of the increasing exports." Thus a farmer is damaged by finding new markets for his produce! And he sells his wheat, which is the main produce of his arable land in those parts of India where it flourishes, to buy some cheaper grain which his land does not grow! The youngest assistant in a collector's establishment could inform Mr. Hyndman that the food of the agricultural population of India consists of the staple most suitable to the soil of the district: in the Punjab wheat, in Bengal and all well-watered lowlands rice, on the tablelands of the Deccan jowári ( holcus sorghum ) and bájri ( panicum spicatum ), on the more sterile plateau of Southern India the inferior grain rági ( eiuesyne coracauna ).

It must have been under the dominion of the idea produced by Mr. Dádobhai's statistics as to the thoroughly wretched state of the agricultural population of India that Mr. Hyndman has been led into exaggerated statements which his own article shows he knew to be inaccurate. A dreadful case of misgovernment existed in India, and, thoroughly to arouse his countrymen to the fact, it was necessary to pile up the agony. Thus, in one part of his article he states that the "enormous debt" of India amounts to 220,000,000 l. , but in a later portion he admits that it is only 127,000,000 l. , and he knows full well that the amount of 100,000,000 l. of guaranteed railway debt is not only not a present debt due from Government, but is a very valuable property, which will probably bring in some millions of revenue when they exercise their right of buying up the interests of the several guaranteed companies.

Again, he speaks throughout his article of the excessive taxation imposed on the poor, half-starved cultivators; and he gives the following table as showing the amount "taken absolutely out of the pockets of the people:"—

He thus maintains that the portion of the rent paid to Government for occupation of the land is a tax upon the cultivator, which is about as [Pg 18] true as to state that the 67,000,000 l. of rental in the United Kingdom is a special tax on the farmers of this country. The amount derived from excise is chiefly produced by the sale of intoxicating liquors, the use of which is forbidden by the social and religious views of the natives; and any contribution to the revenue under this head is clearly a voluntary act on the part of the transgressor. The revenue from stamps proceeds chiefly from what may be called taxes on justice; they are, in my opinion, extremely objectionable, but weighty objections may be urged against nearly every tax, and a large portion of this tax falls on the wealthier class of suitors. The amount contributed by the population under the head of customs, although it may take money out of the pocket of the rayat, actually adds to his store; for, unless he could buy in the bazaar a piece of Manchester long-cloth cheaper than an article of domestic manufacture, it is manifest that he would select the latter. There remains only the single article of salt on which the cultivator undoubtedly is taxed, and which forms the sole tax from which he cannot escape. This tax also is extremely objectionable in theory, more perhaps than in practice, for it amounts to about 7-1/2 d. per head. But even if we take the whole amount of taxation as shown by Mr. Hyndman, excluding the land revenue or rental of the land, the average per head is only 1 s. 6 d. , of which more than one-third can be avoided at the pleasure of any individual consumer. It is not, then, a misstatement to aver that the population of India is more lightly taxed than any population in the world living under an orderly government.

I have thus far thought it my duty to expose what I believe to be grave errors in Mr. Hyndman's sensational article. But I should do him great injustice if I did not admit that he has brought out in vivid colours some very important facts. It is true that these facts are well known to Indian administrators, but they are facts disagreeable to contemplate, and are therefore slurred over willingly; but they have such important bearing on the proceedings of Government in India that they cannot be too frequently paraded before the public eye.

The first of these truths is the undeniable poverty of the great bulk of the population. But here Mr. Hyndman does not appear to me to have taken full grasp of the fact, or to have ascertained its causes. The dense population of India, amounting in its more fertile parts to six and seven hundred per square mile, is almost exclusively occupied in agricultural pursuits. But the land of India has been farmed from time immemorial by men entirely without capital. A farmer in this country has little chance of success unless he can supply a capital of 10 l. to 20 l. an acre. If English farms were cultivated by men as deficient in capital as the Indian rayats, they would be all thrown on the parish in a year or two. The founder of a Hindu village may, by aid of his brethren and friends, have strength enough to break up the jungle, dig a well, and with a few rupees in his pocket he may purchase seed for the few acres he can bring under the plough. If a favourable harvest ensue, he has a large surplus, out of which he pays the jamma or rent [Pg 19] to Government. But on the first failure of the periodical rains his withered crops disappear, he has no capital wherewith to meet the Government demand, to obtain food for his family and stock, or to purchase seed for the coming year. To meet all these wants he must have recourse to the village money-lender, who has always formed as indispensable a member of a Hindu agricultural community as the ploughman himself.

From time immemorial the cultivator of the soil in India has lived from hand to mouth, and when his hand could not supply his mouth from the stores of the last harvest he has been driven to the local saukár or money-lender to obtain the means of existence. This is the first great cause of India's poverty. The second is akin to it, for it exists in the infinite divisibility of property which arises under the Hindu system of succession, and which throws insuperable obstructions to the growth of capital. The rule as to property in Hindu life is that all the members of a family, father, grandfather, children, and grandchildren, constitute an undivided partnership, having equal shares in the property, although one of them, generally the eldest, is recognised as the manager. It is in the power of any member to sever himself from the family group, and the tendency of our Government has been to encourage efforts of what may be called individualism. But the new stock is but the commencement of another undivided family, so strong is the Hindu feeling in favour of this time-honoured custom. It is obvious that where the skill, foresight, and thriftiness required for the creation of capital may be thwarted by the extravagance or carelessness of any one of a large number of partners, its growth must be seriously impeded.

It will be seen, if the above arguments are sound, that the obstructions which oppose themselves to the formation of capital arise out of immemorial usages, and are irremediable by any direct interference of Government. But whatever may be the causes of this national poverty, the fact is undoubted, and it cannot be too steadily contemplated by those who desire to rely on fresh taxation for their favourite projects, whether it be for improved administration, for magnificent public works, or for the extension of our dominions. Mr. Hyndman also points out the great expensiveness of a foreign government, and his remarks on this subject are undoubtedly true. The high salaries required to tempt Englishmen of suitable qualifications to expatriate themselves for the better part of their lives, and the heavy dead weight of pensions and furlough charges for such officials, form, no doubt, a heavy burden on the resources of India. The costliness of a European army is, of course, also undoubtedly great. But these are charges which, to a less or greater degree, are inseparable from the dominion of a foreign government. The compensation for them is to be found in the security they provide against a foreign invader or against internal disturbances, and the protection they afford, in a degree hitherto unknown in India, to life, property, and character. But Mr. Hyndman's [Pg 20] diatribes are useful in pointing to the conclusion that all the efforts of Government should be directed towards the diminution of these charges, where compatible with efficiency, and his striking contrast of the home military charges in 1862-63, which then amounted to 28 l. 3 s. , and now have risen in the present year to 66 l. , deserves most serious consideration.

There is only one other statement of Mr. Hyndman which I desire to notice. He declares the general opinion of the natives to be that life, as a whole, has become harder since the English took the country, and he adds his own opinion that the fact is so. Mr. Hyndman, as we have seen, knows but little of the actual life of the agricultural population, and of their state under native rule he probably knows less. But I am inclined to think he fairly represents a very prevailing belief amongst the natives. A vivid indication of this native feeling is given in the most instructive work on Hindu rural life that I have ever met with. [14] Colonel Sleeman thus recounts a conversation he held with some natives in one of his rambles—

Colonel Sleeman on the same day asked a respectable farmer what he thought of the latter statement. He stated: "The diminished fertility is owing, no doubt, to the want of those salutary fallows which the fields got under former governments, when invasions and civil wars were things of common occurrence, and kept at least two-thirds of the land waste ."

The fact is that, under an orderly government like ours, the causes alluded to above as impeding the growth of capital become very much aggravated. Population largely increases, waste lands are brought under the plough, grazing grounds for stock disappear, and the fallows, formerly so beneficial in restoring fertility to the soil, can no longer be kept free from cultivation. All these considerations form portions of the very difficult problems in government which day by day present themselves to the Indian administrator. But does Mr. Hyndman think they are to be solved by recurrence to the native system of government; by the substitution of a local ruler, sometimes paternal, more frequently the reverse, for the courts of justice which now administer the law which can be read and understood by all; by civil contracts being enforced by the armed servant of the creditor, instead of by the [Pg 21] officers of a court acting under strict surveillance; by the land assessment being collected year by year through the farmers of the revenue according to their arbitrary will, instead of being payable in a small moderate [15] sum, unalterable for a long term of years? If he thinks this—and his allusion to the system of the non-regulation provinces favours the conclusion—he will not find, I think, an educated native in the whole of India who will agree with him.

There are great harshnesses in our rule, there is a rigidity and exactitude of procedure which is often distasteful to native opinion, there are patent defects arising out of our attempts to administer justice, there is great irritation at our constant and often ill-conceived experiments in legislation, there is real danger in the fresh burdens we lay upon the people in our desire to carry out apparently laudable reforms. But with all these blemishes, which have only to be distinctly perceived to be removed from our administrative system, the educated native feels that he is gradually acquiring the position of a freeman, and he would not exchange it for that which Mr. Hyndman appears to desiderate.

E. Perry , in Nineteenth Century .

A COUP D'ÉTAT.

[Pg 22]

THEATRICAL MAKE-SHIFTS AND BLUNDERS.

It is a generally received opinion that all stage wardrobes are made up of tawdry rags, and that the landscapes and palaces that look so charming by gaslight are but mere daubs by day. But there are wardrobes and wardrobes, scenery and scenery. The dresses used for some great "get up" at the opera houses, or at the principal London and provincial theatres, are costly and magnificent; the scenery, although painted for distance and artificial light, is really the product of artists of talent, and there is an attention to reality in all the adjuncts that would quite startle the believers in the tinsel and tawdry view. A millionaire might take a lesson from the stage drawing-rooms of the Prince of Wales and the Court theatres, and no cost is spared to procure the real article, whatever it may be, that is required for the scene. These minutiæ of realism, however, are quite a modern idea, dating no farther back than the days of Boucicault and Fechter. Splendid scenery and gorgeous dresses for the legitimate dramas were introduced by John Kemble, and developed to the utmost extent by Macready and Kean; but it was reserved for the present decade to lavish the same attention and expenses upon the petite drama. Half a century ago the property maker manufactured the stage furniture, the stage books, the candelabra, curtains, cloths, pictures, &c., out of papier mache and tinsel; and the drawing-room or library of a gentleman's mansion thus presented bore as much resemblance to the reality as sea-side furnished lodgings do to a ducal palace. Before the Kemble time a green baize, a couple of chairs and a table, sufficed for all furnishing purposes, whether for an inn or a palace.

In these days of "theatrical upholstery," we can scarcely realize the shabbiness of the stage of the last century. There were a few handsome suits for the principal actors, but the less important ones were frequently dressed in costumes that had done service for fifty years, until they were worn threadbare and frequently in rags. Endeavour to realise upon the modern stage such a picture as this given by Tate Wilkinson, of his appearance at Covent Garden as "The Fine Gentleman," in "Lethe." "A very short old suit of clothes, with a black velvet ground, and broad, gold flowers as dingy as the twenty-four letters on a piece of gingerbread; it had not seen the light since the first year Garrick played 'Lothario,' at the theatre. Bedecked in that sable array for the modern 'Fine Gentleman,' and to make the appearance complete, I added an old red surtout, trimmed with a dingy white fur, and a deep skinned cape of the same hue, borrowed by old Giffard, I was informed, at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, to play 'King Lear' in." When West Digges appeared at the Haymarket [Pg 23] as Cardinal Wolsey, it was in the identical dress that Barton Booth had worn in Queen Anne's time: a close-fitting habit of gilt leather upon a black ground, black stockings, and black gauntlets. No wonder Foote, who was in the pit, exclaimed, upon the appearance of this extraordinary figure, "A Roman sweep on May-day!" When Quin played the youthful fascinating Chamont, in Otway's "Orphan," he wore a long grisly half-powdered periwig, hanging low down each side his breast and down his back, a huge scarlet coat and waistcoat, heavily trimmed with gold, black velvet breeches, black silk neckcloth, black stockings, a pair of square-toed shoes, with an old-fashioned pair of stone buckles, stiff high-topped white gloves, with a broad old scolloped lace hat. Such a costume upon a personage not in his first youth, and more than inclined to obesity, must have had an odd effect. But then, as is well known, Garrick played "Macbeth" in a scarlet coat and powdered wig; John Kemble performed "Othello" in a full suit of British scarlet regimentals, and even when he had gone so far as to dress "Macbeth" as a highlander of 1745, wore in his bonnet a tremendous hearse plume, until Scott plucked it out, and placed an eagle's feather there in its stead. The costumes of the ladies were almost more absurd. Whether they appeared as Romans, Greeks, or females of the Middle Ages, they dressed the same—in the huge hoop, and powdered hair raised high upon the head, heavy brocaded robes that required two pages to hold up, without whose assistance they could scarcely have moved; and servants were dressed quite as magnificently as their mistresses.

In scenery there was no attempt at "sets;" a drop, and a pair of "flats," dusty and dim with age, were all the scenic accessories; and two or three hoops of tallow candles, suspended above the stage, were all that represented the blaze of gas and lime-light to which we are accustomed. The candle-snuffer was a theatrical post of some responsibility in those days. Garrick was the first who used concealed lights. The uncouth appearance of the stage was rendered still worse on crowded nights by ranges of seats raised for spectators on each side. The most ridiculous contretemps frequently resulted from this incongruity. Romeo, sometimes, when he bore out the body of Juliet from the solitary tomb of the Capulets, had to almost force his way through a throng of beaux, and Macbeth and his lady plotted the murder of Duncan amidst a throng of people.

One night, Hamlet, upon the appearance of the Ghost, threw off his hat, as usual, preparatory to the address, when a kind-hearted dame, who had heard him just before complain of its being "very cold," picked it up and good-naturedly clapped it upon his head again. A similar incident once happened during the performance of Pizarro. Elvira is discovered asleep upon a couch, gracefully covered by a rich velvet cloak; Valverde enters, kneels and kisses her hand; Elvira awakes, rises and lets fall the covering, and is about to indignantly repulse her unwelcome visitor, when a timid female voice says: "Please, [Pg 24] ma'am, you've dropped your mantle," and a timid hand is trying to replace it upon the tragedy queen's shoulders. Of another kind, but very much worse, was an accident that befell Mrs. Siddons at Edinburgh, at the hands of another person who failed to distinguish between the real person and the counterfeit. Just before going on for the sleep-walking-scene, she had sent a boy for some porter, but the cue for her entrance was given before he returned. The house was awed into shuddering silence as, in a terrible whisper, she uttered the words "Out, out, damned spot!" and with slow mechanical action rubbed the guilty hands; when suddenly there emerged from the wings a small figure holding out a pewter pot, and a shrill voice broke the awful silence with "Here's your porter, mum." Imagine the feelings of the stately Siddons! The story is very funny to read, but depend upon it the incident gave her the most cruel anguish.

It is not, however, to the uninitiated outsiders alone we are indebted for ludicrous stage contretemps; the experts themselves have frequently given rise to them. All readers of Elia will remember the name of Bensley, one of "the old actors" upon whom he discourses so eloquently—a grave precise man, whose composure no accident could ruffle, as the following anecdote will prove. One night, as he was making his first entrance as Richard III., at the Dublin Theatre, his wig caught upon a nail in the side scene, and was dragged off. Catching his hat by the feather, however, he calmly replaced it as he walked to the centre of the stage, but left his hair still attached to the nail. Quite unmoved by the occurrence, he commenced his soliloquy; but so rich a subject could not escape the wit of an Irish audience. "Bensley, darlin'," shouted a voice from the gallery, "put on your jaisey!" "Bad luck to your politics, will you suffer a whig to be hung?" shouted another. But the tragedian, deaf to all clamour, never faltered, never betrayed the least annoyance, spoke the speech to the end, stalked to the wing, detached the wig from the nail, and made his exit with it in his hand.

Novices under the influence of stage fright will say and do the most extraordinary things. Some years ago, I witnessed a laughable incident during the performance of "Hamlet" at a theatre in the North. Although a very small part, consisting as it does of only one speech, the "Second Actor" is a very difficult one, the language being peculiarly cramped. In the play scene he assassinates the player king by pouring poison into his ear. The speech preceding the action is as follows:

Upon which follows the stage direction—" Pours poison into his ear. "

In a play of so many characters as Hamlet, such a part, in a second-class theatre, can be given only to a very inferior performer. The one [Pg 25] to whom it was entrusted on the present occasion was a novice. Muffled in a black coat and a black slouched hat, and with a face half hidden by burnt cork, he looked a most villainous villain, as he stole on and gazed about in the most approved melo-dramatic fashion. Then he began, in a strong north country brogue,—

then his memory failed him, and he stuck fast. The prompter whispered "drugs fit;" but stage fright had seized him, and he could not take the word. He tried back, but stuck again at the same place. Half-a-dozen people were all prompting him at the same time now, but all in vain. At length one more practical than the rest whispered angrily, "Pour the poison in his ear and get off." The suggestion restored a glimmering of reason to the trembling, perspiring wretch. He could not remember the words of Shakespeare, so he improvised a line. Advancing to the sleeping figure, he raised the vial in his hand, and in a terribly tragic tone shouted, "Into his ear-hole this I'll power !"

Some extraordinary and agonising mistakes, for tragedians, have been made in what are called the flying messages in "Richard III." and "Macbeth," by novices in their nervousness mixing up their own parts with the context; as when Catesby rushed on and cried, "My lord, the Duke of Buckingham's taken." There he should have stopped while Richard replied, "Off with his head! so much for Buckingham!" But in his flurry the shaking messenger added, "and they've cut off his head!" With a furious look at having been robbed of one of his finest "points," the tragedian roared out, "Then, damn you, go and stick it on again!" Another story is told of an actor playing one of the officers in the fifth act of "Macbeth." "My lord," he has to say, "there are ten thousand——" "Geese, villain," interrupts Macbeth. "Ye—es, my lord!" answered the messenger, losing his memory in his terror.

But a far more dreadful anecdote is related of the same play. A star was playing the guilty Thane in a very small company, where each member had to sustain three or four different characters. During the performance the man appointed to play the first murderer was taken ill. There was not another to be spared, and the only resource left was to send on a supernumerary, supposed to be intelligent, to stand for the character. "Keep close to the wing," said the prompter; "I'll read you the words, and you can repeat them after me." The scene was the banquet; the supper was pushed on, and Macbeth, striding down the stage, seized his arm and said in a stage whisper, "There's blood upon thy face." "'Tis Banquo's, then," was the prompt. Lost and bewildered—having never spoken in his life before upon the stage—by the tragedian's intense yet natural tones, the fellow, imitating them in the most confidential manner, answered, "Is there, by God?" put his hand up to his forehead, and, finding it stained with rose pink, added, "Then the property man's served me a trick!"

Once upon a time I was present at the performance of the celebrated dog piece, "The Forest of Bondy," in a small country theatre. The plot [Pg 26] turns upon a well-known story, the discovery of a murder through the sagacity of the victim's dog. The play-bill descanted most eloquently upon the wonderful genius of the "highly trained" animal, and was sufficient to raise expectation on tip-toe. Yet it had evidently failed to impress the public of this town, their experiences probably having rendered them sceptical of such pufferies, for the house was miserably bad. The first entrance of "the celebrated dog Cæsar," however, in attendance upon his master, was greeted with loud applause. He was a fine young black Newfoundland, whose features were more descriptive of good nature than genius. He sat on his haunches and laughed at the audience, and pricked up his ears at the sound of a boy munching a biscuit in the pit. I could perceive he was a novice, and that he would forget all he had been taught when he came to the test. While Aubrey, the hero, is passing through a forest at night, he is attacked by two ruffians, and after a desperate combat is killed; the dog is supposed to be kept out of the way. But in the very midst of the fight, Cæsar, whose barking had been distinctly heard all the time, rushed on the stage. Far from evincing any ferocity towards his master's foes, he danced about with a joyous bark, evidently considering it famous fun. Aubrey was furious, and kicked out savagely at his faithful "dawg," thereby laying himself open to the swords of his adversaries, who, however, in consideration that the combat had not been long enough, generously refused the advantages. "Get off, you beast!" growled Aubrey, who evidently desired to fight it out without canine interference. At length, when the faltering applause from the gallery began to show that the gods had had enough of it, the assassins buried their swords beneath their victim's arms, and he expired in great agony; Cæsar looking on from the respectful distance to which his master's kick had sent him, with the unconcern of a person who had seen it all done at rehearsal and knew it was all sham, but with a decided interest of eye and ear in the direction of the biscuit-muncher. In the next act he was to leap over a stile and ring the bell at a farm house, and, having awakened the inhabitants, seize a lantern which is brought out, and lead them to the spot where the villains have buried his master. After a little prompting Cæsar leaped the stile and went up to the bell, round the handle of which was twisted some red cloth to imitate meat; but there never was a more matter-of-fact dog than this; he evidently hated all shams, even artistic ones; and after a sniff at the red rag he walked off disgusted, and could not be induced to go on again; so the people had to rush out without being summoned, carry their own lantern, and find their way by a sort of canine instinct, or scent, to the scene of the murder. But Cæsar's delinquencies culminated in the last scene, where, after the chief villain, in a kind of lynch law trial, has stoutly asserted his innocence, the sagacious "dawg" suddenly bounds upon the stage, springs at his throat, and puts an end to his infamous career. Being held by the collar, and incited on, in the side scene, Cæsar's deep bark sounded terribly ferocious, and seemed to foreshadow a bloody catastrophe; but his bark proved worse than his [Pg 27] bite, for when released he trotted on with a most affable expression of countenance, his thoughts still evidently bent upon biscuits; in vain did the villain show him the red pad upon his throat and invite him to seize it. Cæsar had been deceived once, and scorned to countenance an imposition. Furious with passion, the villain rushed at him, drew him up on his hind legs, clasped him in his arms, then fell upon the stage and writhed in frightful agonies, shrieking, "Mussy, mussy, take off the dawg!" and the curtain fell amidst the howls and hisses of the audience.

Another laughable dog story, although of a different kind, was once related to me by a now London actor. In a certain theatre in one of the great northern cities business had been so bad for some time that salaries were very irregularly paid. It is a peculiarity of the actor that he is never so jolly, so full of fun, and altogether so vivacious, as when he is impecunious. In prosperity he is dull and melancholy; the yellow dross seems to weigh down his spirit, to stultify it; empty his pockets, and it etherialises him. At the theatre in question, the actors amused themselves if they failed to amuse the audience. Attached to this house was a mongrel cur, whom some of them had taught tricks to while away the tedium of long waits. "Jack"—such was his name—was well known all round the neighbourhood, and to most of the habitues of the house. Among his other accomplishments he could simulate death at command, and could only be recalled to life by a certain piece of information to be presently mentioned. One night the manager was performing "The Stranger" to about half-a-dozen people. Francis was standing at the wing waiting for his cue when his eye fell upon Jack, who was standing just off the stage on the opposite side; an impish thought struck him—he whistled—Jack pricked up his ears, and Francis slapped his leg and called him. Obedient to the summons Jack trotted before the audience, but as he reached the centre of the stage the word "dead!" struck upon his ear. The next moment he was stretched motionless with his two hind legs sticking up at an angle of forty-five degrees. The scene was the one in which the Stranger relates to Baron Steinfort the story of his wrongs, and he had come to the line, "My heart is like a close-shut sepulchre," when a burst of laughter from the front drew his attention to Jack. He saw the trick that had been played in an instant. "Get off, you brute!" he growled, giving the animal a kick. But Jack was too highly trained to heed such an admonition, having learned beforehand that the kicking was not so bad as the flogging he would get for not performing his part correctly. "Doan't tha' kick poor Jack," called out a rough voice, "give un the word." "Ay, ay, give un the word," echoed half-a-dozen voices. The manager knew better than to disregard the advice of his patrons, and ground out between his teeth, "Here's a policeman coming." At that "open Sesame" Jack was up and off like a shot. It must have been one of the finest bits of burlesque to have seen that black-ringlet-wigged, sallow, dyspeptic, tragic-looking individual, repeating the clown's formula over a mangy cur. [Pg 28]

The failure or forgetfulness of stage properties is frequently a source of ludicrous incidents. People are often killed by pistols that will not fire, or stabbed with the butt ends. In some play an actor has to seize a dagger from a table and stab his rival. One night the dagger was forgotten and no substitute was there, except a candle , which the excited actor wrenched from the candlestick, and madly plunged at his opponent's breast; but it effected its purpose, for the victim expired in strong convulsions. It is strange how seldom the audience perceive such contretemps , or notice the extraordinary and ludicrous slips of the tongue that are so frequent upon the stage.

A playbill is not always the most truth-telling publication in the world. Managers, driven to their wits' ends to draw a sluggish public, often announce entertainments which they have no means of producing properly, or even at all, and have to exercise an equal amount of ingenuity to find substitutes, or satisfy a deluded audience. Looking through some manuscript letters of R. B. Peake's the other day, I came across a capital story of Bunn. While he was manager of the Birmingham Theatre, Power, the celebrated Irish comedian, made a starring engagement with him. It was about the time that the dramatic version of Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein"—done, I believe, by Peake himself—was making a great sensation, and Power announced it for his benefit, playing "the Monster" himself. The manager, however, refused to spend a penny upon the production. "You must do with what you can find in the theatre," he said. There was only one difficulty. In the last scene Frankenstein is buried beneath an avalanche, and among the stage scenery of the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, there was nothing resembling an avalanche to be found, and the avalanche was the one prodigious line in the playbill. Power was continually urging this difficulty, but Bunn always eluded it with, "Oh, we shall find something or other." At length it came to the day of performance, and the problem had not yet been solved.

"Well, we shall have to change the piece," said Power.

"Pooh, pooh! nonsense!" answered the manager.

"There is no avalanche, and it is impossible to be finished without."

"Can't you cut it out?"

"Impossible."

The manager fell into a brown study for a few moments. Then suddenly brightening up, he said, "I have it; but they must let the green curtain down instantly on the extraordinary effect. Hanging up in the flies is the large elephant made for 'Blue Beard;' we'll have it whitewashed."

"What?" exclaimed Power.

"We'll have it whitewashed," continued the manager coolly; "what is an avalanche but a vast mass of white? When Frankenstein is to be annihilated, the carpenters shall shove the whitened elephant over the flies—destroy you both in a moment—and down comes the curtain."

As there was no other alternative, Power e'en submitted. The [Pg 29] whitened elephant was "shoved" over at the right moment, the effect was appalling from the front, and the curtain descended amidst loud applause.

Not quite so successful was a hoax perpetrated by Elliston, during his management of the Birmingham Theatre, many years previously. Then, also, business had been very bad, and he was in great difficulties. Let us give the managers their due. They do not, as a rule, resort to swindles except under strong pressure; then they soothe their consciences with the reflection that as an obtuse and ungrateful public will not support their legitimate efforts, it deserves to be swindled. And a very good reflection it is—from a managerial point of view. No man was more fertile in expedients than Robert William Elliston; so after a long continuance of empty benches, the walls and boardings of the town were one morning covered with glaring posters announcing that the manager of the Theatre Royal had entered into an engagement with a Bohemian of extraordinary strength and stature, who would perform some astonishing evolutions with a stone of upwards of a ton weight, which he would toss about as easily as another would a tennis-ball. What all the famous names of the British drama and all the talents of its exponents had failed to accomplish, was brought about by a stone, and on the evening announced for its appearance the house was crammed to the ceiling. The exhibition was to take place between the play and the farce, and scarcely had the intellectual audience patience to listen to the piece, so eager were they for the noble entertainment that was to follow. At length, much to their relief, the curtain fell. The usual interval elapsed, the house became impatient, impatience soon merged into furious clamour. At length, with a pale, distraught countenance, Elliston rushed before the curtain. In a moment there was a breathless silence.

"The Bohemian has deceived me!" were his first words. " That I could have pardoned; but he has deceived you, my friends, you ;" and his voice trembled, and he hid his face behind his handkerchief and seemed to sob.

Then, bursting forth again, he went on: "I repeat, he has deceived me; he is not here."

A yell of disappointment burst from the house.

"The man," continued Elliston, raising his voice, "of whatever name or nation he may be, who breaks his word, commits an offence which——" The rest of this Joseph Surface sentiment was drowned in furious clamour, and for some minutes he could not make himself heard, until he drew some letters from his pocket, and held them up.

"Here is the correspondence," he said. "Does any gentleman here understand German? If so, will he oblige me by stepping forward?"

The Birmingham public were not strong in languages in those days, it would seem, for no gentleman stepped forward.

"Am I, then, left alone?" he exclaimed in tragic accents. "Well, I will translate them for you." [Pg 30]

Here there was another uproar, out of which came two or three voices, "No, no." Like Buckingham, he chose to construe the two or three into "a general acclaim."

"Your commands shall be obeyed," he said bowing, and pocketing the correspondence, "I will not read them. But my dear patrons, your kindness merits some satisfaction at my hands; your consideration shall not go unrewarded. You shall not say you have paid your money for nothing. Thank heaven, I can satisfy you of my own integrity, and present you with a portion of the entertainment you have paid to see. The Bohemian, the villain, is not here. But the stone is, and You shall see it ." He winked at the orchestra, which struck up a lively strain, and up went the curtain, disclosing a huge piece of sand rock, upon which was stuck a label, bearing the legend in large letters, " This is the stone. "

It need scarcely be added that the Bohemian existed only in the manager's brain. But it is a question whether the audience which could be only brought together by such an exhibition did not deserve to be swindled.

An equally good story is told of his management at Worcester. For his benefit he had announced a grand display of fireworks! No greater proof of the gullibility of the British public could be adduced than their swallowing such an announcement. The theatre was so small that such an exhibition was practically impossible. A little before the night Elliston called upon the landlord of the property, and in the course of conversation hinted at the danger of such a display, as though the idea had just struck him; the landlord took alarm, and, as Elliston had anticipated, forbade it. Nevertheless the announcements remained on the walls, and on the night the theatre was crowded. The performance proceeded without any notice being taken by the management of the fireworks, until murmurs swelled into clamour and loud cries. Then with his usual kingly air, Elliston came forward and bowed. He had made, he said, the most elaborate preparation for a magnificent pyrotechnic display; he had left nothing undone, but at the last moment came the terrible reflection, would it not be dangerous? Would there not be collected within the walls of the theatre a number of lovely young tender girls, of respectable matrons, to do him honour? What if the house should catch fire—the panic, the struggle for life—ah, he shuddered at the thought! Then, too, he thought of the property of that worthiest of men, the landlord—he rushed to consult him—and he now called upon him—there he was, seated in the stage box—to publicly state, for the satisfaction of the distinguished audience he saw before him, that he had forbidden the performance from considerations of safety. The landlord, a very nervous man, shrank to the back of his box, scared by every eye in the house being fixed upon him; but the audience, thankful for the terrible danger they had escaped, burst into thunders of applause.

The stories are endless of the shifts and swindles to which country [Pg 31] managers, at their wits' end, have had to resort to attract a sluggish public. How great singers have been advertised that never heard of such an engagement, and even forged telegrams read to an expectant audience, to account for their non-appearance. How prizes have been distributed on benefit nights—to people who gave them back again. How audiences, the victims of some false announcement, have been left waiting patiently for the performance to commence, while the manager was on his way to another town with their money in his pocket. But there is a great sameness about such stories, and one or two are a specimen of all.

H. Barton Baker , in Belgravia .

I.—WINTER-MORN IN THE COUNTRY.

II.—WINTER-MORN IN TOWN.

Alex. H. Japp , in Belgravia .

[Pg 32]

THE HAPPY VALLEY.

A REMINISCENCE OF THE HIMALAYAS.

The privilege which the families of officers in the service of the State may be said exclusively to possess, of reproducing in Upper India—and especially in the Himalayan stations, and valley of Dhera Dhoon—the stately or cottage homes of England, is perhaps one, to a great extent, unfamiliar to their relatives at home; and it is scarcely too much to say that the general public, which, as a rule, considers the Indian climate an insuperable barrier to all enjoyment, has but a faint idea of that glorious beauty, which is no "fading flower," in this "Happy Valley," with its broad belt of virgin forest, that lies between the Himalayas proper and the sharp ridges of the wild Sewalic range. The latter forms a barrier between the sultry plains and the cool and romantic retreats, where the swords of our gallant defenders may be said to rest in their scabbards, and where, surrounded by the pleasures of domestic life, health and happiness may, in the intervals of piping times of peace, be enjoyed to their fullest extent.

In such favoured spots the exile from home may live, seemingly, for the present only; but, in truth, it is not so, for even under such favoured circumstances the tie with our natal place is never relaxed, and the hope of future return to it adds just that touch of pensiveness—scarcely sadness—which is the delicate neutral tint that brings out more forcibly the gorgeous colours of the picture.

The gaieties of the mountain stations of Mussoorie and Landour were now approaching their periodical close, in the early part of October, when the cold season commences. The attractive archery meetings on the green plateaux of the mountain-spurs had ceased, and balls and sumptuous dinner-parties were becoming fewer and fewer; while daily one group of friends after another, "with lingering steps and slow," on rough hill-ponies or in quaint jam-pans, were wending their way some six or seven thousand feet down the umbrageous mountain-sides, watched from above by those who still lingered behind, until they seemed like toilsome emmets in the far distance.

Now that our summer companions were gone we used to while away many an hour with our glasses, scanning in that clear atmosphere the vast plains stretched out beneath us like a rich carpet of many colours, but in which forms were scarcely to be traced at that distance. Here, twisted silver threads represented some great river; there, a sprinkling of rice-like grains, the white bungalows of a cantonment; while occasionally a sombre mass denoted some forest or mango tope. Around us, and quailing under fierce gusts of wind from the passes of the snowy range [Pg 33] rising in peaks to nearly twice the altitude of the Alps, the gnarled oaks, now denuded of their earlier garniture of parasitical ferns, that used to adorn their mossy branches with Nature's own point lace, seemed almost conscious of approaching winter.

Landour, now deserted, save by a few invalid soldiers and one or two resident families, had few attractions. The snow was lying deep on the mountain-sides, and blocking up the narrow roads. But winter in the Himalayas is a season of startling phenomena; for it is then that thunder storms of appalling grandeur are prevalent, and to a considerable extent destructive. During the night, amidst the wild conflict of the elements, would, not unfrequently, be heard the bugles of the soldiers' Sanatorium, calling to those who could sleep to arouse themselves, and hasten to the side of residents whose houses had been struck by the electric fluid.

Still, we clung to our mountain-home to the last, although we knew that summer awaited us in the valley below, and that in an hour and a half we might with ease exchange an almost hyperborean climate for one where summer is perennial, or seems so—for the rainy season is but an interlude of refreshing showers.

At length an incident occurred which somewhat prematurely influenced our departure.

As we were sitting at an early breakfast one morning with the children, Khalifa, a favourite domestic, and one who rarely failed to observe that stately decorum peculiar to Indian servants, rushed wildly into the room, with every appearance of terror, screaming, "Janwar! Burra janwar, sahib!" [16] at the same time pointing to the window.

We could not at first understand what the poor fellow meant; but on looking out, were not a little disconcerted at the sight which presented itself.

Crouched on the garden-wall was a huge spotted animal of the leopard species. It looked, however, by no means ferocious, but, on the contrary, to be imploring compassion and shelter from the snowstorm. Still, notwithstanding its demure cat-like aspect, its proximity was by no means agreeable. With a strange lack of intelligence, the brute, instead of avoiding the cold, had evidently become bewildered, and crawled up the mountain side. As we could scarcely be expected to extend the rites of hospitality to such a visitor, the harmless discharge of a pistol insured his departure at one bound, and with a terrific growl.

Wild beasts are rarely seen about European stations. Those who like them must go out of their way to find them. But perhaps stupefied by cold while asleep, and pinched by hunger, as on the present occasion, they may lose their usual sagacity.

Having got rid of our unwelcome visitor, we determined at once to leave our mountain-home.

The servants were only too glad to hasten our departure, and in the [Pg 34] course of an hour everything was packed up, and we were ready for the descent into the plains.

Notwithstanding the absence of a police force, robberies of houses are almost unknown; and therefore it was only necessary for us to draw down the blinds and lock the main door, leaving the furniture to take care of itself.

The jam-pans and little rough ponies were ready; the servants, although shivering in their light clothing, more active than I had ever before seen them; and in the course of another hour we were inhaling the balmy air of early summer.

The pretty little hotel of Rajpore, at the base of the mountain, was now reached; and before us lay the broad and excellent road, shaded with trees, which, in the course of another twenty minutes, brought us to the charming cantonment of Deyrah. All Nature seemed to be rejoicing; the birds were singing; the sounds of bubbling and splashing waters (mountain-streams diverted from their natural channels, and brought into every garden), and hedges of the double pink and crimson Bareilly rose [17] in full bloom, interspersed with the oleander, and the mehndi (henna of Scripture) with its fragrant clusters, filling the air with the perfume of mignonette, presented a scene of earthly beauty which cannot be surpassed.

"How stupid we were," I remarked, looking back at our late home, now a mere black speck on the top of the snowy mountain far above—"how very foolish and perverse to have fancied ourselves more English in the winter up there, when we might all this time have been leading the life of Eden, in this enchanting spot!"

"Indeed we were," replied my companion. "But it is the way with us in India. We give a rupee for an English daisy, and cast aside the honeyed champah."

In India there is no difficulty in housing oneself. No important agents are necessary, and advertising is scarcely known. Accordingly, without ceremony, we took quiet possession of the first vacant bungalow which we came to, and our fifteen domestics did not seem to question for a moment the propriety of the occupation. Under our somewhat despotic government, are not the sahib lög [18] above petty social observances?

While A. was busily employed getting his guns ready and preparing for shikari in the adjacent forest and jungles, which swarm with peafowl, partridges, quail, pigeons, and a variety of other game, my first care was to summon the resident mali (gardener), and ascertain how the beautiful and extensive garden of which we had taken possession [19] might be further stocked.

"Mem sahib," [20] said the quiet old gardener, with his hands in a supplicatory position, "there is abundance here of everything—aloo, lal [Pg 35] sag, anjir, padina, baingan, piyaz, khira, shalgham, kobs, ajmud, kharbuza, amb, amrut, anar, narangi—" [21]

"Stay!" I interrupted; "that is enough."

But the old mali had something more to add:

"Mem sahib, all is your own, and your slave shall daily bring his customary offering, and flowers for the table; and the protector of the poor will not refuse bakshees for the bearer."

I promised to be liberal to the poor old man, and then proceeded to inspect the flower-garden.

Here I was surprised to find a perfect fraternisation between the tropical flora and our own. Amongst flowers not unfamiliar to the European were abundance of the finest roses, superb crimson and gold poincianas, the elegant hybiscus, graceful ipomœas, and convolvuli of every hue, the purple amaranth, the variegated double balsam, the richest marigolds, the pale-blue clusters of the plantago, acacias, jasmines, oranges, and pomegranates, intermixed with our own pansies, carnations, cinerarias, geraniums, fuchsias, and a wealth of blossoms impossible to remember by name.

"If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this!"

Far more beautiful to the homely eye are such gardens than those of Shalimar and Pinjore, with their costly marble terraces, geometrical walks, fountains and cascades falling over sculptured slabs.

Nor are we in India confined to the enjoyment of Nature. Art [22] finds its way to us from Europe, and literature here receives the warmest welcome. Our pianos, our musical-boxes—our costly and richly bound illustrated works, fresh from England—the most thrilling romances of fiction, and all the periodicals of the day, are regularly accumulated in these charming Indian retreats, and keep up the culture of the mind in a valley whose "glorious beauty" is, as I have said, no "fading flower," but the home of the missionary, and the resort of the war-worn soldier or truth-loving artist.

Nor is this all. Around Deyrah is some of the most exquisitely beautiful cave scenery, comparatively unknown even to Europeans; such, for example, as the wondrous natural tunnel, whose sides shine with the varied beauty of the most delicate mosaics, and are lit up by rents in the hill above; the "dropping cave" of Sansadhara, "bosomed high in tufted trees;" and the strange ancient shrines sculptured in the romantic glen of Tope-Kesur-Mahadeo.

Of these, Sansadhara has lately been made the subject of a beautiful photograph, which, however, fails to convey the exquisite charm of the original; but the natural tunnel and Tope-Kesur-Mahadeo have never been presented by the artist to the public, although there are unique sketches of them in the fine collection of a lady [23] who, as the wife of a [Pg 36] former Indian Commander-in-Chief, had opportunities afforded to few of indulging her taste.

One might exhaust volumes in attempting to describe such scenes, and even then fail to do them the faintest justice. The Alps, with all their beauty, lose much of their grandeur after one has been in daily contemplation of the majestic snowy range of the Himalayas, while the forests and valleys that skirt its base have no counterpart in Europe. In these partial solitudes we lose much of our conventionality. The mind is to a certain extent elevated by the grand scale on which Nature around is presented. The occasional alarm of war teaches the insecurity of all earthly happiness. Our life is subject to daily introspection, and before the mind's eye is the sublime prospect, perhaps at no very distant period, of a Christian India rising from the ruins of a sensuous idolatry in immortal beauty.

L. A., in London Society .

THE PHŒNICIANS IN GREECE.

Herodotus begins his history by relating how Phœnician traders brought "Egyptian and Assyrian wares" to Argos and other parts of Greece, in those remote days when the Greeks were still waiting to receive the elements of their culture from the more civilized East. His account was derived from Persian and Phœnician sources, but, it would seem, was accepted by his contemporaries with the same unquestioning confidence as by himself. The belief of Herodotus was shared by the scholars of Europe after the revival of learning, and there were none among them who doubted that the civilization of ancient Greece had been brought from Asia or Egypt, or from both. Hebrew was regarded as the primæval language, and the Hebrew records as the fountain-head of all history; just as the Greek vocabulary, therefore, was traced back to the Hebrew lexicon, the legends of primitive Greece were believed to be the echoes of Old Testament history. Ex Oriente lux was the motto of the inquirer, and the key to all that was dark or doubtful in the mythology and history of Hellas was to be found in the monuments of the Oriental world.

But the age of Creuzer and Bryant was succeeded by an age of scepticism and critical investigation. A reaction sat in against the attempt to force Greek thought and culture into an Asiatic mould. The Greek scholar was repelled by the tasteless insipidity and barbaric exuberance of the East; he contrasted the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Sophocles and Plato, with the monstrous creations of India or Egypt, and the conviction grew strong within him that the Greek could never have learnt his first lessons of civilization in such a school as this. Between the East and the West a sharp line of division was drawn, and to look for the origin of Greek culture beyond the boundaries [Pg 37] of Greece itself came to be regarded almost as sacrilege. Greek mythology, so far from being an echo or caricature of Biblical history and Oriental mysticism, was pronounced to be self-evolved and independent, and K. O. Müller could deny without contradiction the Asiatic origin even of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, where the name of the Semitic sun-god seems of itself to indicate its source. The Phœnician traders of Herodotus, like the royal maiden they carried away from Argos, were banished to the nebulous region of rationalistic fable.

Along with this reaction against the Orientalizing school which could see in Greece nothing but a deformed copy of Eastern wisdom went another reaction against the conception of Greek mythology on which the labours of the Orientalizing school had been based. Key after key had been applied to Greek mythology, and all in vain; the lock had refused to turn. The light which had been supposed to come from the East had turned out to be but a will-o'-the-wisp; neither the Hebrew Scriptures nor the Egyptian hieroglyphics had solved the problem presented by the Greek myths. And the Greek scholar, in despair, had come to the conclusion that the problem was insoluble; all that he could do was to accept the facts as they were set before him, to classify and repeat the wondrous tales of the Greek poets, but to leave their origin unexplained. This is practically the position of Grote; he is content to show that all the parts of a myth hang closely together, and that any attempt to extract history or philosophy from it must be arbitrary and futile. To deprive a myth of its kernel and soul, and call the dry husk that is left a historical fact, is to mistake the conditions of the problem and the nature of mythology.

It was at this point that the science of comparative mythology stepped in. Grote had shown that we cannot look for history in mythology, but he had given up the discovery of the origin of this mythology as a hopeless task. The same comparative method, however, which has forced nature to disclose her secrets has also penetrated to the sources of mythology itself. The Greek myths, like the myths of the other nations of the world, are the forgotten and misinterpreted records of the beliefs of primitive man, and of his earliest attempts to explain the phenomena of nature. Restore the original meaning of the language wherein the myth is clothed, and the origin of the myth is found. Myths, in fact, are the words of a dead language to which a wrong sense has been given by a false method of decipherment. A myth, rightly explained, will tell us the beliefs, the feelings, and the knowledge of those among whom it first grew up; for the evidences and monuments of history we must look elsewhere.

But there is an old proverb that "there is no smoke without fire." The war of Troy or the beleaguerment of Thebes may be but a repetition of the time-worn story of the battle waged by the bright powers of day round the battlements of heaven; but there must have been some reason why this story should have been specially localized in the Troad and at Thebes. Most of the Greek myths have a background in space [Pg 38] and time; and for this background there must be some historical cause. The cause, however, if it is to be discovered at all, must be discovered by means of those evidences which will alone satisfy the critical historian. The localization of a myth is merely an indication or sign-post pointing out the direction in which he is to look for his facts. If Greek warriors had never fought in the plains of Troy, we may be pretty sure that the poems of Homer would not have brought Akhilles and Agamemnon under the walls of Ilium. If Phœnician traders had exercised no influence on primæval Greece, Greek legend would have contained no references to them.

But even the myth itself, when rightly questioned, may be made to yield some of the facts upon which the conclusions of the historian are based. We now know fairly well what ideas, usages, and proper names have an Aryan stamp upon them, and what, on the other hand, belong rather to the Semitic world. Now there is a certain portion of Greek mythology which bears but little relationship to the mythology of the kindred Aryan tribes, while it connects itself very closely with the beliefs and practices of the Semitic race. Human sacrifice is very possibly one of these, and it is noticeable that two at least of the legends which speak of human sacrifice—those of Athamas and Busiris—are associated, the one with the Phœnicians of Thebes, the other with the Phœnicians of the Egyptian Delta. The whole cycle of myths grouped about the name of Herakles points as clearly to a Semitic source as does the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis; and the extravagant lamentations that accompanied the worship of the Akhæan Demeter (Herod. v. 61) come as certainly from the East as the olive, the pomegranate, and the myrtle, the sacred symbols of Athena, of Hera, and of Aphrodite. [24]

Comparative mythology has thus given us a juster appreciation of the historical inferences we may draw from the legends of prehistoric Greece, and has led us back to a recognition of the important part played by the Phœnicians in the heroic age. Greek culture, it is true, was not the mere copy of that of Semitic Asia, as scholars once believed, but the germs of it had come in large measure from an Oriental seed-plot. The conclusions derived from a scientific study of the myths have been confirmed and widened by the recent researches and discoveries of archæology. The spade, it has been said, is the modern instrument for reconstructing the history of the past, and in no department in history has the spade been more active of late than in that of Greece. From all sides light has come upon that remote epoch around which the mist of a fabulous antiquity had already been folded in the days of Herodotus; from the islands and shores of the Ægean, from the tombs of Asia Minor and Palestine, nay, even from the temples and palaces of Egypt and Assyria, have the materials been exhumed for sketching in something like clear outline the origin and growth of Greek civilization. From nowhere, however, have more important [Pg 39] revelations been derived than from the excavations at Mykenæ and Spata, near Athens, and it is with the evidence furnished by these that I now propose mainly to deal. A personal inspection of the sites and the objects found upon them has convinced me of the groundlessness of the doubts which have been thrown out against their antiquity, as well as of the intercourse and connection to which they testify with the great empires of Babylonia and Assyria. Mr. Poole has lately pointed out what materials are furnished by the Egyptian monuments for determining the age and character of the antiquities of Mykenæ. [25] I would now draw attention to the far clearer and more tangible materials afforded by Assyrian art and history.

Two facts must first be kept well in view. One of these is the Semitic origin of the Greek alphabet. The Phœnician alphabet, originally derived from the alphabet of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and imported into their mother-country by the Phœnician settlers of the Delta, was brought to Greece, not probably by the Phœnicians of Tyre and Sidon, but by the Aramæans of the Gulf of Antioch, whose nouns ended with the same "emphatic aleph" that we seem to find in the Greek names of the letters, alpha , beta , gamma , ( gamla ). Before the introduction of the simpler Phœnician alphabet, the inhabitants of Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands appear to have used a syllabary of some seventy characters, which continued to be employed in conservative Cyprus down to a very late date; but, so far as we know at present, the Greeks of the mainland were unacquainted with writing before the Aramæo-Phœnicians had taught them their phonetic symbols. The oldest Greek inscriptions are probably those of Thera, now Santorin, where the Phœnicians had been settled from time immemorial; and as the forms of the characters found in them do not differ very materially from the forms used on the famous Moabite Stone, we may infer that the alphabet of Kadmus was brought to the West at a date not very remote from that of Mesha and Ahab, perhaps about 800 b.c. We may notice that Thera was an island and a Phœnician colony, and it certainly seems more probable that the alphabet was carried to the mainland from the islands of the Ægean than that it was disseminated from the inland Phœnician settlement at Thebes, as the old legends affirmed. In any case, the introduction of the alphabet implies a considerable amount of civilizing force on the part of those from whom it was borrowed; the teachers from whom an illiterate people learns the art of writing are generally teachers from whom it has previously learnt the other elements of social culture. A barbarous tribe will use its muscles in the service of art before it will use its brains; the smith and engraver precede the scribe. If, therefore, the Greeks were unacquainted with writing before the ninth century, b.c. , objects older than that period may be expected to exhibit clear traces of Phœnician influence, though no traces of writing. [Pg 40]

The other fact to which I allude is the existence of pottery of the same material and pattern on all the prehistoric sites of the Greek world, however widely separated they may be. We find it, for instance, at Mykenæ and Tiryns, at Tanagra and Athens, in Rhodes, in Cyprus, and in Thera, while I picked up specimens of it in the neighbourhood of the Treasury of Minyas and on the site of the Acropolis at Orchomenus. The clay of which it is composed is of a drab colour, derived, perhaps in all instances, from the volcanic soil of Thera and Melos, and it is ornamented with geometrical and other patterns in black and maroon-red. After a time the patterns become more complicated and artistic; flowers, animal forms, and eventually human figures, take the place of simple lines, and the pottery gradually passes into that known as Corinthian or Phœniko-Greek. It needs but little experience to distinguish at a glance this early pottery from the red ware of the later Hellenic period.

Phœnicia, Keft as it was called by the Egyptians, had been brought into relation with the monarchy of the Nile at a remote date, and among the Semitic settlers in the Delta or "Isle of Caphtor" must have been natives of Sidon and the neighbouring towns. After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties carried their arms as far as Mesopotamia and placed Egyptian garrisons in Palestine. A tomb-painting of Thothmes III. represents the Kefa or Phœnicians, clad in richly-embroidered kilts and buskins, and bringing their tribute of gold and silver vases and earthenware cups, some in the shape of animals like the vases found at Mykenæ and elsewhere. Phœnicia, it would seem, was already celebrated for its goldsmiths' and potters' work, and the ivory the Kefa are sometimes made to carry shows that their commerce must have extended far to the east. As early as the sixteenth century b.c. , therefore, we may conclude that the Phœnicians were a great commercial people, trading between Assyria and Egypt and possessed of a considerable amount of artistic skill.

It is not likely that a people of this sort, who, as we know from other sources, carried on a large trade in slaves and purple, would have been still unacquainted with the seas and coasts of Greece where both slaves and the murex or purple-fish were most easily to be obtained. Though the Phœnician alphabet was unknown in Greece till the ninth century b.c. , we have every reason to expect to find traces of Phœnician commerce and Phœnician influence there at least five centuries before. And such seems to be the case. The excavations carried on in Thera by MM. Fouqué and Gorceix, [26] in Rhodes by Mr. Newton and Dr. Saltzmann, and in various other places such as Megara, Athens, and Melos, have been followed by the explorations of Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, Tiryns, and Mykenæ, of General di Cesnola in Cyprus, and of the Archæological Society of Athens at Tanagra and Spata. [Pg 41]

The accumulations of prehistoric objects on these sites all tell the same tale, the influence of the East, and more especially of the Phœnicians, upon the growing civilization of early Greece. Thus in Thera, where a sort of Greek Pompeii has been preserved under the lava which once overwhelmed it, we find the rude stone hovels of its primitive inhabitants, with roofs of wild olive, filled with the bones of dogs and sheep, and containing stores of barley, spelt, and chickpea, copper and stone weapons, and abundance of pottery. The latter is for the most part extremely coarse, but here and there have been discovered vases of artistic workmanship, which remind us of those carried by the Kefa, and may have been imported from abroad. We know from the tombs found on the island that the Phœnicians afterwards settled in Thera among a population in the same condition of civilization as that which had been overtaken by the great volcanic eruption. It was from these Phœnician settlers that the embroidered dresses known as Theræan were brought to Greece; they were adorned with animals and other figures, similar to those seen upon Corinthian or Phœniko-Greek ware.

Now M. Fr. Lenormant has pointed out that much of the pottery used by the aboriginal inhabitants of Thera is almost identical in form and make with that found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, in the Troad, and he concludes that it must belong to the same period and the same area of civilization. There is as yet little, if any, trace of Oriental influence; a few of the clay vases from Thera, and some of the gold workmanship at Hissarlik, can alone be referred, with more or less hesitation, to Phœnician artists. We have not yet reached the age when Phœnician trade in the West ceased to be the sporadic effort of private individuals, and when trading colonies were established in different parts of the Greek world; Europe is still unaffected by Eastern culture, and the beginnings of Greek art are still free from foreign interference. It is only in certain designs on the terra-cotta discs, believed by Dr. Schliemann to be spindle-whorls, that we may possibly detect rude copies of Babylonian and Phœnician intaglios.

Among all the objects discovered at Hissarlik, none have been more discussed than the vases and clay images in which Dr. Schliemann saw a representation of an owl-headed Athena. What Dr. Schliemann took for an owl's head, however, is really a rude attempt to imitate the human face, and two breasts are frequently moulded in the clay below it. In many examples the human countenance is unmistakable, and in most of the others the representation is less rude than in the case of the small marble statues of Apollo (?) found in the Greek islands, or even of the early Hellenic vases where the men seem furnished with the beaks of birds. But we now know that these curious vases are not peculiar to the Troad. Specimens of them have also been met with in Cyprus, and in these we can trace the development of the owl-like head into the more perfect portraiture of the human face. [27] In conservative Cyprus there [Pg 42] was not that break with the past which occurred in other portions of the Greek world.

Cyprus, in fact, lay midway between Greece and Phœnicia, and was shared to the last between an Aryan and a Semitic population. The Phœnician element in the island was strong, if not preponderant; Paphos was a chief seat of the worship of the Phœnician Astarte, and the Phœnician Kitium, the Chittim of the Hebrews, took first rank among the Cyprian towns. The antiquities brought to light by General di Cesnola are of all ages and all styles—prehistoric and classical, Phœnician and Hellenic, Assyrian and Egyptian—and the various styles are combined together in the catholic spirit that characterized Phœnician art.

But we must pause here for a moment to define more accurately what we mean by Phœnician art. Strictly speaking, Phœnicia had no art of its own; its designs were borrowed from Egypt and Assyria, and its artists went to school on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates. The Phœnician combined and improved upon his models; the impulse, the origination came from abroad; the modification and elaboration were his own. He entered into other men's labours, and made the most of his heritage. The sphinx of Egypt became Asiatic, and in its new form was transplanted to Nineveh on the one side and to Greece on the other. The rosettes and other patterns of the Babylonian cylinders were introduced into the handiwork of Phœnicia, and so passed on to the West, while the hero of the ancient Chaldean epic became first the Tyrian Melkarth, and then the Herakles of Hellas. It is possible, no doubt, that with all this borrowing there was still something that was original in Phœnician work; such at any rate seems to be the case with some of the forms given to the vases; but at present we have no means of determining how far this originality may have extended. In Assyria, indeed, Phœnician art exercised a great influence in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c. ; but it had itself previously drawn its first inspiration from the empire of the Tigris, and did but give back the perfect blossom to those from whom it had received the seed. The workmanship of the ivories and bronze bowls found at Nineveh by Mr. Layard is thoroughly Phœnician; but it cannot be separated from that of the purely Assyrian pavements and bas-reliefs with which the palaces were adorned. The Phœnician art, in fact, traces of which we find from Assyria to Italy, though based on both Egyptian and Assyrian models, owed far more to Assyria than it did to Egypt. In art, as in mythology and religion, Phœnicia was but a carrier and intermediary between East and West; and just as the Greek legends of Aphrodite and Adonis, of Herakles and his twelve labours, and of the other borrowed heroes of Oriental story came in the first instance from Assyria, so did that art and culture which Kadmus the Phœnician handed on to the Greek race.

But Assyria itself had been equally an adapter and intermediary. The Semites of Assyria and Babylonia had borrowed their culture and civilization from the older Accadian race, with its agglutinative language, [Pg 43] which had preceded them in the possession of Chaldea. So slavishly observant were the Assyrians of their Chaldean models that in a land where limestone was plentiful they continued to build their palaces and temples of brick, and to ornament them with those columns and pictorial representations which had been first devised on the alluvial plains of Babylonia. To understand Assyrian art, and track it back to its source, we must go to the engraved gems and ruined temples of primæval Babylonia. It is true that Egypt may have had some influence on Assyrian art, at the time when the eighteenth dynasty had pushed its conquests to the banks of the Tigris; but that influence does not seem to have been either deep or permanent. Now the art of Assyria is in great measure the art of Phœnicia, and that again the art of prehistoric Greece. Modern research has discovered the prototype of Herakles in the hero of a Chaldean epic composed it may be, four thousand years ago; it has also discovered the beginnings of Greek columnar architecture and the germs of Greek art in the works of the builders and engravers of early Chaldea.

When first I saw, five years ago, the famous sculpture which has guarded the Gate of Lions at Mykenæ for so many centuries, I was at once struck by its Assyrian character. The lions in form and attitude belong to Assyria, and the pillar against which they rest may be seen in the bas-reliefs brought from Nineveh. Here, at all events, there was clear proof of Assyrian influence; the only question was whether that influence had been carried through the hands of the Phœnicians or had travelled along the highroad which ran across Asia Minor, the second channel whereby the culture of Assyria could have been brought to Greece. The existence of a similar sculpture over a rock-tomb at Kumbet in Phrygia might seem to favour the latter view.

The discoveries of Dr. Schliemann have gone far to settle the question. The pottery excavated at Mykenæ is of the Phœnician type, and the clay of which is composed has probably come from Thera. The terra-cotta figures of animals and more especially of a goddess with long robe, crowned head, and crescent-like arms, are spread over the whole area traversed by the Phœnicians. The image of the goddess in one form or another has been found in Thera and Melos, in Naxos and Paros, in Ios, in Sikinos, and in Anaphos, and M. Lenormant has traced it back to Babylonia and to the Babylonian representation of the goddess Artemis-Nana. [28] At Tanagra the image has been found under two forms, both, however, made of the same clay and in the same style as the figures from Mykenæ. In one the goddess is upright, as at Mykenæ, with the polos on her head, and the arms either outspread or folded over the breast; in the other she is sitting with the arms crossed. Now among the gold ornaments exhumed at Mykenæ are some square pendants of gold which represent the goddess in this sitting posture. [29]

The animal forms most commonly met with are those of the lion, [Pg 44] the stag, the bull, the cuttle-fish, and the murex. The last two point unmistakably to a seafaring race, and more especially to those Phœnician sailors whose pursuit of the purple-trade first brought them into Greek seas. So far as I know, neither the polypus nor the murex, nor the butterfly which often accompanies them have been found in Assyria or Egypt, and we may therefore see in them original designs of Phœnician art. Mr. Newton has pointed out that the cuttle-fish (like the dolphin) also occurs among the prehistoric remains from Ialysos in Rhodes, where, too, pottery of the same shape and material as that of Mykenæ has been found, as well as beads of a curious vitreous substance, and rings in which the back of the chaton is rounded so as to fit the finger. It is clear that the art of Ialysos belongs to the same age and school as the art of Mykenæ; and as a scarab of Amenophis III. has been found in one of the Ialysian tombs, it is possible that the art may be as old as the fifteenth century b.c.

Now Ialysos is not the only Rhodian town which has yielded prehistoric antiquities. Camirus also has been explored by Messrs. Biliotti and Saltzmann; and while objects of the same kind and character as those of Ialysos have been discovered there, other objects have been found by their side which belong to another and more advanced stage of art. There are vases of clay and metal, bronze bowls, and the like, which not only display high finish and skill, but are ornamented with the designs characteristic of Phœnician workmanship at Nineveh and elsewhere. Thus we have zones of trees and animals, attempts at the representation of scenery, and a profusion of ornament, while the influence of Egypt is traceable in the sphinxes and scarabs, which also occur plentifully. Here, therefore, at Camirus, there is plain evidence of a sudden introduction of finished Phœnician art among a people whose art was still rude and backward, although springing from the same germs as the art of Phœnicia itself. Two distinct periods in the history of the Ægean thus seem to lie unfolded before us; one in which Eastern influence was more or less indirect, content to communicate the seeds of civilization and culture, and to import such objects as a barbarous race would prize; and another in which the East was, as it were, transported into the West, and the development of Greek art was interrupted by the introduction of foreign workmen and foreign beliefs. This second period was the period of Phœnician colonization as distinct from that of mere trading voyages—the period, in fact, when Thebes was made a Phœnician fortress, and the Phœnician alphabet diffused throughout the Greek world. It is only in relics of the later part of this period that we can look for inscriptions and traces of writing, at least in Greece proper; in the islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, the Cypriote syllabary seems to have been in use, to be superseded afterwards by the simpler alphabet of Kadmus. For reasons presently to be stated, I would distinguish the first period by the name of Phrygian.

Throughout the whole of it, however, the Phœnician trading ships [Pg 45] must have formed the chief medium of intercourse between Asia and Europe. Proof of this has been furnished by the rock tombs of Spata, which have been lighted on opportunely to illustrate and explain the discoveries at Mykenæ. Spata is about nine miles from Athens, on the north-west spur of Hymettos, and the two tombs hitherto opened are cut in the soft sandstone rock of a small conical hill. Both are approached by long tunnel-like entrances, and one of them contains three chambers, leading one into the other, and each fashioned after the model of a house. No one who has seen the objects unearthed at Spata can doubt for a moment their close connection with the Mykenæan antiquities. The very moulds found at Mykenæ fit the ornaments from Spata, and might easily have been used in the manufacture of them. It is more especially with the contents of the sixth tomb, discovered by Mr. Stamatáki in the enceinte at Mykenæ after Dr. Schliemann's departure, that the Spata remains agree so remarkably. But there is a strong resemblance between them and the Mykenæan antiquities generally, in both material, patterns, and character. The cuttle-fish and the murex appear in both; the same curious spiral designs, and ornaments in the shape of shells or rudely-formed oxheads; the same geometrical patterns; the same class of carved work. An ivory in which a lion, of the Assyrian type, is depicted as devouring a stag, is but a reproduction of a similar design met with among the objects from Mykenæ, and it is interesting to observe that the same device, in the same style of art, may be also seen on a Phœnician gem from Sardinia. [30] Of still higher interest are other ivories, which, like the antiquities of Camirus, belong rather to the second than to the first period of Phœnician influence. One of these represents a column, which, like that above the Gate of Lions, carries us back to the architecture of Babylonia, while others exhibit the Egyptian sphinx, as modified by Phœnician artists. Thus the handle of a comb is divided into two compartments—the lower occupied by three of these sphinxes, the upper by two others, which have their eyes fixed on an Assyrian rosette in the middle. Similar sphinxes are engraved on a silver cup lately discovered at Palestrina, bearing the Phœnician inscription, in Phœnician letters, "Eshmun-ya'ar, son of Ashta'." [31] Another ivory has been carved into the form of a human side face, surmounted by a tiara of four plaits. On the one hand the arrangement of the hair of the face, the whisker and beard forming a fringe round it, and the two lips being closely shorn, reminds us of what we find at Palestrina; on the other hand, the head-dress is that of the figures on the sculptured rocks of Asia Minor, and of the Hittite princes of Carchemish. In spite of this Phœnician colouring, however, the treasures of Spata belong to the earlier part of the Phœnician period, if not to that which I have called Phrygian: there is as yet no sign of writing, no trace of the use of iron. But we seem to be approaching the close [Pg 46] of the bronze age in Greece—to have reached the time when the lions were sculptured over the chief gateway of Mykenæ, and the so-called treasuries were erected in honour of the dead.

Can any date be assigned, even approximately, to those two periods of Phœnician influence in Greece? Can we localize the era, so to speak, of the antiquities discovered at Mykenæ, or fix the epoch at which its kings ceased to build its long-enduring monuments, and its glory was taken from it? I think an answer to these questions may be found in a series of engraved gold rings and prisms found upon its site—the prisms having probably once served to ornament the neck. In these we can trace a gradual development of art; which in time becomes less Oriental and more Greek, and acquires a certain facility in the representation of the human form.

Let us first fix our attention on an engraved gold chaton found, not in the tombs, but outside the enceinte among the ruins, as it would seem, of a house. [32] On this we have a rude representation of a figure seated under a palm-tree, with another figure behind and three more in front, the foremost being of small size, the remaining two considerably taller and in flounced dresses. Above are the symbols of the sun and crescent-moon, and at the side a row of lions' heads. Now no one who has seen this chaton, and also had any acquaintance with the engraved gems of the archaic period of Babylonian art, can avoid being struck by the fact that the intaglio is a copy of one of the latter. The characteristic workmanship of the Babylonian gems is imitated by punches made in the gold which give the design a very curious effect. The attitude of the figures is that common on the Chaldean cylinders; the owner stands in front of the deity, of diminutive size, and in the act of adoration, while the priests are placed behind him. The latter wear the flounced dresses peculiar to the early Babylonian priests; and what has been supposed to represent female breasts, is really a copy of the way in which the breast of a man is frequently portrayed on the cylinders. [33] The palm-tree, with its single fruit hanging on the left side, is characteristically Babylonian; so also are the symbols that encircle the engraving, the sun and moon and lions' heads. The chaton of another gold ring, found on the same spot, is covered with similar animal heads. This, again, is a copy of early Babylonian art, in which such designs were not unfrequent, though, as they were afterwards imitated by both Assyrian and Cyprian engravers, too much stress must not be laid on the agreement. [34] The artistic position [Pg 47] and age of the other ring, however, admits of little doubt. The archaic period of Babylonian art may be said to close with the rise of Assyria in the fourteenth century b.c. ; and though archaic Babylonian intaglios continued to be imported into the West down to the time of the Romans, it is not likely that they were imitated by Western artists after the latter had become acquainted with better and more attractive models. I think, therefore, that the two rings may be assigned to the period of archaic Babylonian power in western Asia, a period that begins with the victories of Naram-Sin in Palestine in the seventeenth century b.c. or earlier, and ends with the conquest of Babylon by the Assyrians and the establishment of Assyrian supremacy. This is also the period to which I am inclined to refer the introduction among the Phœnicians and Greeks of the column and of certain geometrical patterns, which had their first home in Babylonia. [35] The lentoid gems with their rude intaglios, found in the islands, on the site of Heræum, in the tombs of Mykenæ and elsewhere, belong to the same age, and point back to the loamy plain of Babylonia where stone was rare and precious, and whence, consequently, the art of gem-cutting was spread through the ancient world. We can thus understand the existence of artistic designs and other evidences of civilizing influence among a people who were not yet acquainted with the use of iron. The early Chaldean Empire, in spite of the culture to which it had attained, was still in the bronze age; iron was almost unknown, and its tools and weapons were fashioned of stone, bone, and bronze. Had the Greeks and the Phœnicians before them received their first lessons in culture from Egypt or from Asia Minor, where the Khalybes and other allied tribes had worked in iron from time immemorial, they would probably have received this metal at the same time. But neither at Hissarlik nor at Mykenæ is there any trace of an iron age.

The second period of Western art and civilization is represented by some of the objects found at Mykenæ in the tombs themselves. The intaglios have ceased to be Babylonian, and have become markedly Assyrian. First of all we have a hunting scene, a favourite subject with Assyrian artists, but quite unknown to genuine Hellenic art. The disposition of the figures is that usual in Assyrian sculpture, and, like the Assyrian king, the huntsman is represented as riding in a chariot. A comparison of this hunting scene with the bas-reliefs on the tombstones which stood over the graves shows that they belong to the same age, while the spiral ornamentation of the stones is essentially Assyrian. Equally Assyrian, though better engraved, is a lion on one of the gold prisms, which might have been cut by an Assyrian workman, so true is it to its Oriental model, and after this I would place the representation [Pg 48] of a struggle between a man (perhaps Herakles) and a lion, in which, though the lion and attitude of the combatants are Assyrian, the man is no longer the Assyrian hero Gisdhubar, but a figure of more Western type. In another intaglio, representing a fight between armed warriors, the art has ceased to be Assyrian, and is struggling to become native. We seem to be approaching the period when Greece gave over walking in Eastern leading-strings, and began to step forward firmly without help. As I believe, however, that the tombs within the enceinte are of older date than the Treasuries outside the Acropolis, or the Gate of Lions which belongs to the same age, it is plain that we have not yet reached the time when Assyro-Phœnician influence began to decline in Greece. The lions above the gate would alone be proof to the contrary.

But, in fact, Phœnician influence continued to be felt up to the end of the seventh century b.c. Passing by the so-called Corinthian vases, or the antiquities exhumed by General di Cesnola in Cyprus, where the Phœnician element was strong, we have numerous evidences of the fact from all parts of Greece. Two objects of bronze discovered at Olympia may be specially signalized. One of these is an oblong plate, narrower at one end than at the other, ornamented with repousse work, and divided into four compartments. In the first compartment are figures of the nondescript birds so often seen on the "Corinthian" pottery; in the next come two Assyrian gryphons standing, as usual, face to face; while the third represents the contest of Herakles with the Kentaur, thoroughly Oriental in design. The Kentaur has a human forefront, covered, however, with hair; his tail is abnormally long, and a three-branched tree rises behind him. The fourth and largest compartment contains the figure of the Asiatic goddess with the four wings at the back, and a lion, held by the hind leg, in either hand. The face of the goddess is in profile. The whole design is Assyro-Phœnician, and is exactly reproduced on some square gold plates, intended probably to adorn the breast, presented to the Louvre by the Duc de Luynes. The other object to which I referred is a bronze dish, ornamented on the inside with repousse work, which at first sight looks Egyptian, but is really that Phœnician modification of Egyptian art so common in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c. An inscription in the Aramaic characters of the so-called Sidonian branch of the Phœnician alphabet is cut on the outside, and reads: "Belonging to Neger, son of Miga." [36] As the word used for "son" is the Aramaic bar and not the Phœnician ben , we may conclude that the owner of the dish had come from northern Syria. It is interesting to find a silver cup embossed with precisely the same kind of design, and also bearing an inscription in Phœnician letters, among the treasures discovered in a tomb at Palestrina, the ancient Præneste, more than a year ago. This inscription is even briefer than the other: "Eshmunya'ar son of 'Ashtâ," [37] where, though ben is employed, the father's name has [Pg 49] an Aramaic form. Helbig would refer these Italian specimens of Phœnician skill to the Carthaginian epoch, partly on the ground that an African species of ape seems sometimes represented on them; [38] in this case they might be as late as the fifth century before the Christian era.

During the earlier part of the second period of Phœnician influence, Phœnicia and the Phœnician colonies were not the only channel by which the elements of Assyrian culture found their way into the West. The monuments and religious beliefs of Asia Minor enable us to trace their progress from the banks of the Euphrates and the ranges of the Taurus, through Cappadocia and Phrygia, to the coasts and islands of the Ægean. The near affinity of Greek and Phrygian is recognized even by Plato; [39] the legends of Midas and Gordius formed part of Greek mythology, and the royal house of Mykenæ was made to come with all its wealth from the golden sands of the Paktolus; while on the other hand the cult of Mâ, of Attys, or of the Ephesian Artemis points back to an Assyrian origin. The sculptures found by Perrot [40] and Texier constitute a link between the prehistoric art of Greece and that of Asia Minor; the spiral ornaments that mark the antiquities of Mykenæ are repeated on the royal tombs of Asia Minor; and the ruins of Sardis, where once ruled a dynasty derived by Greek writers from Ninus or Nineveh, "the son of Bell," the grandson of the Assyrian Herakles, [41] may yet pour a flood of light on the earlier history of Greece. But it was rather in the first period, which I have termed Phrygian, than in the second, that the influence of Asia Minor was strongest. The figure of the goddess riding on a leopard, with mural crown and peaked shoes, on the rock-tablets of Pterium, [42] is borrowed rather from the cylinders of early Babylonia than from the sculptures of Assyria; and the Hissarlik collection connects itself more with the primitive antiquities of Santorin than with the later art of Mykenæ and Cyprus. We have already seen, however, the close relationship that exists between some of the objects excavated at Mykenæ and what we may call the pre-Phœnician art of Ialysos,—that is to say, the objects in which the influence of the East is indirect, and not direct. The discovery of metallurgy is associated with Dodona, where the oracle long continued to be heard in the ring of a copper chaldron, and where M. Karapanos has found bronze plates with the geometrical and circular patterns which distinguish the earliest art of Greece; now Dodona is the seat of primæval Greek civilization, the land of the Selloi or Helloi, of the Graioi themselves, and of Pelasgian Zeus, while it is to the north that the legends of Orpheus, of Musæus, and of other early civilizers looked back. But even at Dodona we may detect traces of Asiatic influence in the part played there by the doves, as well as in the story of Deucalion's deluge, and it may, perhaps, be not too rash to conjecture [Pg 50] that even before the days of Phœnician enterprise and barter, an echo of Babylonian civilization had reached Greece through the medium of Asia Minor, whence it was carried, partly across the bridge formed by the islands of the Archipelago, partly through the mainland of Thrace and Epirus. The Hittites, with their capital at Carchemish, seem to have been the centre from which this borrowed civilization was spread northward and westward. Here was the home of the art which characterizes Asia Minor, and we have only to compare the bas-relief of Pterium with the rock sculptures found by Mr. Davis associated with "Hamathite" hieroglyphics at Ibreer, in Lycaonia, [43] to see how intimate is the connection between the two. These hieroglyphics were the still undeciphered writing of the Hittite tribes and if, as seems possible, the Cypriote syllabary were derived from them, they would be a testimony to the western spread of Hittite influence at a very early epoch. The Cypriote characters adopted into the alphabets of Lycia and Karia, as well as the occurrence of the same characters on a hone and some of the terra-cotta discs found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, go to show that this influence would have extended, at any rate, to the coasts of the sea.

The traces of Egyptian influence, on the contrary, are few and faint. No doubt the Phœnician alphabet was ultimately of Egyptian origin, no doubt, too, that certain elements of Phœnician art were borrowed from Egypt, but before these were handed on to the West, they had first been profoundly modified by the Phœnician settlers in the Delta and in Canaan. The influence exercised immediately by Egypt upon Greece belongs to the historic period; the legends which saw an Egyptian emigrant in Kekrops or an Egyptian colony in the inhabitants of Argos were fables of a late date. Whatever intercourse existed between Egypt and Greece in the prehistoric period was carried on, not by the Egyptians, but by the Phœnicians of the Delta; it was they who brought the scarabs of a Thothmes or an Amenophis to the islands of the Ægean, like their descendants afterwards in Italy, and the proper names found on the Egyptian monuments of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, which certain Egyptologists have identified with those of Greece and Asia Minor, belong rather, I believe, to Libyan and Semitic tribes. [44] Like the sphinxes at Spata, the indications of intercourse with Egypt met with at Mykenæ prove nothing more than the wide extent of Phœnician commerce and the existence of Phœnician colonies at the mouths of the Nile. Ostrich-eggs covered with stucco dolphins have been found not only at Mykenæ, but also in the grotto of Polledrara near Vulci in Italy; the Egyptian porcelain excavated at Mykenæ is painted to represent the fringed dress of an Assyrian or a [Pg 51] Phœnician, not of an Egyptian; and though a gold mask belonging to Prince Kha-em-Uas, and resembling the famous masks of Mykenæ, has brought to the Louvre from an Apis chamber, a similar mask of size was discovered last year in a tomb on the site of Aradus. Such intercourse, however, as existed between Greece and the Delta must have been very restricted; otherwise we should surely have some specimens of writing, some traces of the Phœnician alphabet. It would not have been left to the Aramæans of Syria to introduce the "Kadmeian letters" into Greece, and Mykenæ, rather than Thebes, would have been made the centre from which they were disseminated. Indeed, we may perhaps infer that even the coast of Asia Minor, near as it was to the Phœnician settlements at Kamirus and elsewhere, could have held but little intercourse with the Phœnicians of Egypt from the fact that the Cypriote syllabary was so long in use upon it, and that the alphabets afterwards employed were derived only indirectly from the Phœnician through the medium of the Greek.

One point more now alone needs to be noticed. The long-continued influence upon early Greek culture which we ascribe to the Phœnicians cannot but have left its mark upon the Greek vocabulary also. Some at least of the names given by the Phœnicians to the objects of luxury they brought with them must have been adopted by the natives of Hellas. We know that this is the case with the letters of the alphabet; is it also the case with other words? If not, analogy would almost compel us to treat the evidences that have been enumerated of Phœnician influence as illusory, and to fall back upon the position of O. K. Müller and his school. By way of answer I would refer to the list of Greek words, the Semitic origin of which admits of no doubt, lately given by Dr. August Müller in Bezzenberger's "Beitrage zur Kunde der indogermanischen Sprachen." [45] Amongst these we find articles of luxury like "linen," "shirt," "sackcloth," "myrrh," and "frankincense," "galbanum" and "cassia," "cinnamon" and "soap," "lyres" and "wine-jars," "balsam" and "cosmetics," as well, possibly, as "fine linen" and "gold," along with such evidences of trade and literature as the "pledge," "the writing tablet," and the "shekel." If these were the only instances of Semitic tincture, they would be enough to prove the early presence of the Semitic Phœnicians in Greece. But we must remember that they are but samples of a class, and that many words borrowed during the heroic age may have dropped out of use or been conformed to the native part of the vocabulary long before the beginning of the written literature, while it would be in the lesser known dialects of the islands that the Semitic element was strongest. We know that the dialect of Cyprus was full of importations from the East.

In what precedes I have made no reference to the Homeric poems, and the omission may be thought strange. But Homeric illustrations of the presence of the Phœnicians in Greece will occur to every one, while [Pg 52] both the Iliad and the Odyssey in their existing form are too modern to be quoted without extreme caution. A close investigation of their language shows that it is the slow growth of generations; Æolic formulæ from the lays first recited in the towns of the Troad are embodied in Ionic poems where old Ionic, new Ionic, and even Attic jostle against one another, and traditional words and phrases are furnished with mistaken meanings or new forms coined by false analogy. It is difficult to separate the old from the new, to say with certainty that this allusion belongs to the heroic past, this to the Homer of Theopompus and Euphorion, the contemporary of the Lydian Gyges. The art of Homer is not the art of Mykenæ and of the early age of Phœnician influence; iron is already taking the place of bronze, and the shield of Akhilles or the palace of Alkinous bear witness to a developed art which has freed itself from its foreign bonds. Six times are Phœnicia and the Phœnicians mentioned in the Odyssey, once in the Iliad; [46] elsewhere it is Sidon and the Sidonians that represented them, never Tyre. [47] Such passages, therefore, cannot belong to the epoch of Tyrian supremacy, which goes back, at all events, to the age of David, but rather to the brief period when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser laid siege to Tyre, and his successor Sargon made Sidon powerful at its expense. This, too, was the period when Sargon set up his record in Cyprus, "the isle of Yavnan" or the Ionians, when Assyria first came into immediate contact with the Greeks, and when Phœnician artists worked at the court of Nineveh and carried their wares to Italy and Sardinia. But it was not the age to which the relics of Mykenæ, in spite of paradoxical doubts, reach back, nor that in which the sacred bull of Astarte carried the Phœnician maiden Europa to her new home in the west.

A. H. Sayce , in Contemporary Review .

[Pg 53]

SOME GOSSIP ABOUT LEICESTER SQUARE.

In old-world London, Leicester Square played a much more important part than it does to-day. It was then the chosen refuge of royalty and the home of wit and genius. Time was when it glittered with throngs of lace-bedizened gallants; when it trembled beneath the chariot-wheels of Beauty and Fashion; when it re-echoed with the cries of jostling chairmen and link-boys; when it was trodden by the feet of the greatest men of a great epoch—Newton and Swift, Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a host of others more or less distinguished. Mr. Tom Taylor, in his interesting work entitled "Leicester Square," tells us that the vicissitudes of a London quarter generally tend downwards through a regular series of decades. It is first fashionable; then it is professional; then it becomes a favourite locality for hotels and lodging-houses; then the industrial element predominates, and then not infrequently a still lower depth is reached. Leicester Square has been no exception to this rule. Its reputation in fact was becoming very shady indeed, when the improvement of its central inclosure gave it somewhat of a start upwards and turned attention to its early history.

Of old, many of these grand doings took place at Leicester House, which was the first house in the Square. It was built by Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, a staunch Royalist, somewhere about 1636. His sons, Viscount Lisle and the famous Algernon Sidney, grew up less of Royalists than he was; and to Leicester House, with the sanction and welcome of its head, came many of the more prominent Republicans of the day, Vane and Neville, Milton and Bradshaw, Ludlow and Lambert. The cream of history lies not so much in a bare notation of facts as in the little touches of nature and manners which reproduce for us the actual human life of a former age, and much of this may be gleaned from the history of the Sidneys. They were an interesting family, alike from their rank, their talents, their personal beauty, and the vicissitudes of their fortunes. The Countess was a clever managing woman; and her letters to her absent lord when ambassador in France convey to us many pleasant details of the home-life at Leicester House. Still more charming is it to read the pretty little billets addressed to the Earl by his elder girls. Of these six beautiful daughters of the house of Sidney, four were married and two died in the dawn of early womanhood. Of the younger of these, Lady Elizabeth, the father has a touching entry in his journal. After narrating her death, he adds: "She had to the last the most angelical countenance and beauty, and the most heavenly disposition and temper of mind that I think were ever seen in so young a creature."

With her death the merry happy family life at Leicester House drew [Pg 54] to a close. The active bustling mother, whose influence had brought the different jarring chords into harmony, died a few mouths afterwards; and the busy years as they sped onwards, while consummating the fall of Charles and consolidating the power of Cromwell, also put great and growing disunion between the Sidney brothers. At the Restoration, Algernon was in exile; Lord Lisle's stormy temper had alienated him from his father; the Earl's favourite son-in-law was dead; of the three who remained he was neither proud nor fond; and lonely and sick at heart, he grew weary of the splendid home from which the fair faces of his handsome children had gone for ever, and made preparations to leave it. He was presented to Charles II.; and immediately afterwards retired to Penshurst in Kent; and Leicester House was let, first to the ambassadors of the United Provinces; and then to a more remarkable tenant, Elizabeth Stewart, the ill-fated Princess and Queen of Bohemia. She had left England in 1613 a lovely happy girl, the bride of the man she loved, life stretching all rainbow-hued before her. She returned to it a weary haggard woman of sixty-five, who had drunk to the dregs of every possible cup of disappointment and sorrow. Her presence was very unwelcome, as that of the unfortunate often is. Charles II., her nephew, was very loath indeed to have the pleasure of receiving her as a guest; but she returned to London whether he would or not, and Leicester house was taken for her. There she languished for a few months in feeble and broken health, and there, on the anniversary of her wedding-day, she died.

The house immediately to the west of Leicester House belonged to the Marquis of Aylesbury; but in 1698 it was occupied by the Marquis of Caermarthen, who was appointed by King William III. cicerone and guide to Peter the Great when he came in the January of that year to visit England. Peter's great qualities have long been done full justice to; but in the far-off January of 1698 he appeared to the English as by no means a very august-looking potentate; he had the manners and appearance of an unkempt barbarian, and his pastimes were those of a coal-heaver. His favourite exercise in the mornings was to run a barrow through and through Evelyn's trim holly-hedges at Deptford; and the state in which he left his pretty house there is not to be described. His chief pleasure, when the duties of the day were over, was to drink all night with the Marquis in his house at Leicester Fields, the favourite tipple of the two distinguished topers being brandy spiced with pepper; or sack, of which the Czar is reported to have drunk eight bottles one day after dinner. Among other sights in London, the Marquis took him to see Westminster Hall in full term. "Who are all these men in wigs and gowns?" he asked. "Lawyers," was the answer. "Lawyers!" he exclaimed. "Why, I have only two in my dominions, and when I get back, I intend to hang one of them."

In January 1712 Leicester House, which was then occupied by the imperial resident, received another distinguished visitor in the person of Prince Eugene, one of the greatest captains of the age. In appearance [Pg 55] he was a little sallow wizened old man, with one shoulder higher than the other. A soldier of fortune, whose origin was so humble as to be unknown, his laurels were stained neither by rapacity nor self-seeking; and in all the vicissitudes of his eventful life he bore himself like a hero, and a gentleman in the truest and fullest acceptation of the word. Dean Swift was also at this time in lodgings in Leicester Fields, noting with clear acute unpitying vision the foibles and failings of all around him, and writing to Stella from time to time after his cynical fashion, "how the world is going mad after Prince Eugene, and how he went to court also, but could not see him, the crowd was so great."

A labyrinth of courts, inns, and stable-yards had gradually filled up the space between the royal mews and Leicester Fields; and between 1680 and 1700 several new streets were opened through these; one reason for the opening of them being the great influx of French refugees into London, on the occasion of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Many of these exiles settled in and around Leicester Fields, and for their use several chapels were built. The neighbourhood has ever since been a resort of French immigrants.

In one of these streets opening into Leicester Square, St. Martin's Street, Sir Isaac Newton lived for the last sixteen years of his life. The house in which he lived looks dingy enough now; but in those days it was considered a very good residence indeed, and Like Leicester House was frequented by the best company in the fashionable world. The genius and reputation of its master attracted scientific and learned visitors; and the beauty of his niece, Mrs. Catharine Barton, drew to her feet all the more distinguished wits and beaux of the time.

Between 1717 and 1760 Leicester House became what Pennant calls "the pouting-place of princes," being for almost all that time in the occupation of a Prince of Wales who was living in fierce opposition to the reigning king. In 1718 the Prince of Wales having had a furious quarrel with his father George I., on the occasion of the christening of the Prince's son George William, left St. James's, and took Leicester House at a yearly rent of five hundred pounds; and until he succeeded to the throne in 1727, it was his town residence.

Here he held his court—a court not by any means strait-laced; a gay little court at first; a court whose selfish intrigues and wild frolics and madcap adventures and humdrum monotony live for us still in the sparkling pages of Horace Walpole; or are painted in with vivid clearness of touch and execution, but with a darker brush, by Hervey, Pope's Lord Fanny, who was a favourite with his mistress the handsome accomplished Caroline, Princess of Wales. Piloted by one or other of these exact historians, we enter the chamber of the gentlewomen-in-waiting, and are introduced to the maids-of-honour, to fair Mary Lepell, to charming Mrs. Bellenden, to pensive, gentle Mrs. Howard. We see them eat Westphalia ham of a morning, and then set out with their royal master for a helter-skelter ride over hedges and ditches, on borrowed hacks. No wonder Pope pitied them; and on their return, who [Pg 56] should they fall in with but that great poet himself! They are good to him in their way, these saucy charming maids-of-honour, and so they take the frail little man under their protection and give him his dinner; and then he finishes off the day, he tells us, by walking three hours in the moonlight with Mary Lepell. We can imagine the affected compliments he paid her and the burlesque love he made to her; and the fun she and her sister maids-of-honour would have laughing over it all, when she went back to Leicester House and he returned to his pretty villa at Twickenham.

As the Prince grew older his court became more and more dull, till at last it was almost deserted, when on the 14th of June 1727 the loungers in its half-empty chambers were roused by sudden news—George I. was dead; and Leicester House was thronged by a sudden rush of obsequious courtiers, among whom was the late king's prime-minister, bluff, jolly, coarse Sir Robert Walpole. No one paid any attention to him, for every one knew that his disgrace was sealed; the new king had never been at any pains to conceal his dislike to him. Sir Robert, however, knew better; he was quite well aware who was to be the real ruler of England now; and he knew that the Princess Caroline had already accepted him, just as she accepted La Walmoden and her good Howard; and so all alone in his corner he chuckled to himself as he saw the crowd of sycophants elbow and jostle and push poor Lady Walpole as she tried to make her way to the royal feet. Caroline saw it too, and with a flash of half-scornful mischief lighting up her shrewd eyes, said with a smile: "Sure, there I see a friend." Instantly the human stream parted, and made way for her Ladyship.

In 1728 Frederick, the eldest son of George and Caroline, arrived from Hanover, where he had remained since his birth in 1707. It was a fatal mistake; he came to England a stranger to his parents, and with his place in their hearts already filled by his brother. It was inevitable that where there was no mutual love, distrust and alienation should come, as in no long time they did, with the result that the same pitiful drama was played out again on the same stage. In 1743 Frederick Prince of Wales took Leicester House and held his receptions there. He was fond of gaiety, and had a succession of balls, masques, plays, and supper-parties. His tastes, as was natural considering his rearing, were foreign, and Leicester House was much frequented by foreigners of every grade. Desnoyers the dancing-master was a favourite habitué, as was also the charlatan St-Germain. In the midst of all this fiddling and buffoonery the Prince fell ill; but not so seriously as to cause uneasiness to any one around him; consequently all the world was taken by surprise when he suddenly died one morning in the arms of his friend the dancing-master. After his death his widow remained at Leicester House, and like a sensible woman as she was, made her peace with the king her father-in-law, who ever afterwards shewed himself very kind and friendly to her.

In October 1760 George III. was proclaimed king; and again a crowd [Pg 57] of courtiers thronged to Leicester House to kiss the hand of the new sovereign. For six years longer the Princess of Wales continued to live at Leicester House; and there in 1765 her youngest son died, and the following year she removed to Carlton House.

While the quarrel between George II. and Frederick was at its fiercest, the central inclosure of Leicester Square was re-arranged very elegantly according to the taste of the day; and an equestrian statue of George I., which had belonged to the first Duke of Chandos and had been bought at the sale of his effects, was set up in front of Leicester House, where it remained, a dazzling object at first, in all the glory of gilding, which passed with the populace for gold; but latterly a most wretched relic of the past, an eyesore, which was removed in 1874 in the course of Baron Grant's improvements.

Leicester Square had other tenants beside Sir Isaac Newton, compared with whom courtiers and gallants and fine gentlemen and ladies look very small indeed. Hogarth lived in this street, and so did Sir Joshua Reynolds. Hogarth's house was the last but two on the east side of the Square. Here he established himself, a young struggling man, with Jane Thornhill, the wife with whom he had made a stolen love-match. In this house, with the quaint sign of the Golden Head over the door, he worked, not as painters generally do, at a multitude of detached pieces, but depicting with his vivid brush a whole series of popular allegories on canvas. When he became rich, as in process of time he did, he had a house at Chiswick; but he still retained the Golden Head as his town-house, and in 1764 returned to it to die.

In No. 47 Sir Joshua Reynolds lived, and painted those charming portraits which have immortalised for us all that was most beautiful and famous in his epoch. He was a kindly genial lovable man, fond of society, and with a liking for display. He had a wonderful carriage, with the four seasons curiously painted in on the panels, and the wheels ornamented with carved foliage and gilding. The servants in attendance on this chariot wore silver-laced liveries; and as he had no time to drive in it himself, he made his sister take a daily airing in it, much to her discomfort, for she was a homely little lady with very simple tastes. He was a great dinner giver; and as it was his custom to ask every pleasant person he met without any regard to the preparation made to receive them, it may be conjectured that there was often a want of the commonest requisites of the dinner-table. Even knives, forks, and glasses could not always be procured at first. But although his dinners partook very much of the nature of unceremonious scrambles, they were thoroughly enjoyable. Whatever was awanting, there was always cheerfulness and the pleasant kindly interchange of thought. In July 1792 Sir Joshua died in his own house in Leicester Square; and within a few hours of his death, an obituary notice of him was written by Burke, the manuscript of which was blotted with his tears.

In No. 28, on the eastern side of the Square, the celebrated anatomist John Hunter lived. Like most distinguished men of the day, he sat to [Pg 58] Sir Joshua Reynolds for his portrait; but was so restless and preoccupied that he made a very bad sitter. At last one day he fell into a reverie. The happy moment had come; Sir Joshua, with his instinctive tact, caught the expression and presented to us the great surgeon in one of his most characteristic attitudes. The other celebrated surgeons, Cruickshank and Charles Bell, also lived in this Square. The house in which Bell resided for many years was large and ruinous, and had once been inhabited by Speaker Onslow. Here he set up his Museum, and began to lecture on anatomy, having for a long time, he writes, scarcely forty pupils to lecture to.

During all the later portion of its history Leicester Square has been famous for shows. In 1771 Sir Ashton Lever exhibited a large and curious Museum in Leicester House. In 1796 Charles Dibdin built at Nos. 2 and 3, on the east side of Leicester Square, a small theatre in which he gave an entertainment consisting of an interesting medley of anecdote and song. In 1787 Miss Linwood opened her gallery of pictures in needlework, an exhibition which lasted forty-seven years, for the last thirty-five of which it was exhibited at Savile House, a building which was destroyed by fire in 1865.

After Miss Linwood's, one of the best shows in Leicester Square was Burford's Panorama, which is now numbered with the things that were, its site being occupied by a French chapel and school. In 1851 a new show was inaugurated by Mr. Wylde the geographer. It consisted of a monster globe sixty feet in diameter, which occupied the central dome of a building erected in the garden of the Square. The world was figured in relief on the inside of it, and it was viewed from several galleries at different elevations. It was exhibited for ten years, and was then taken down by its proprietor, owing to a dispute concerning the ownership of the garden. Out of this case, which was decided in 1867, the proceedings originated which resulted in the purchase and renovation of the garden by Baron Grant, who having once more made it trim and neat, handed it over to the Board of Works.— Chambers's Journal. [Pg 59]

A WOMAN'S LOVE.

A SLAVONIAN STUDY.

Those races that have not undergone the beneficial and domesticating influences of civilisation, and that are isolated from the more cultured nations, possess to an excess the different qualities or impulses inherent to our nature. Amongst the emotions that move the heart of man, love is certainly the one that has the greatest empire over him; it rules the soul so imperiously that all the other passions are crushed by it. It makes cowards of the bravest men, and gives courage to the timid. Love is, indeed, the great motive-power of life.

Our passions and our emotions are, however, more subdued than those of the semi-civilised nations; for, in the first place, we undergo the softening influences of education, and secondly, we are more or less under the restraint of the rules which govern society. Besides this, our mind is usually engrossed by the numerous cares which our state of living necessitates; for we are not like them, contented with little; on the contrary, instead of being satisfied with what is necessary, we require luxuries and superfluities, the procurement of which takes up a considerable portion of our energy and our mental activity.

The Slavonians, and more especially those belonging to the southern regions, such as the Dalmatians and Montenegrins, are, as a general rule, very passionate; ardent in their affections, they are likewise given to anger, resentment, and hatred, the generic sister passion of love.

The Slavonian women are, however, not indolent, nor do they ever indulge in idle dreams; for they are not only occupied with the household cares, but they also take a share, and not the smallest or the slightest, of those toils which in other countries devolve upon the men alone. They therefore, in the manly labours of the field, not only get prematurely old, but they hardly ever possess much grace, slenderness, or delicate complexions. No Slavonian woman, for instance, is ever mignonne . They, in compensation, acquire in health, and perhaps in real æsthetic beauty of proportions, what they lose in prettiness or delicacy of appearance, consequently they never suffer from vapours or from the numerous nervous complaints to which the generality of our ladies are subjected; the natural result of this state of things is mens sana in corpore sano ; this is doubtless the reason why Slavonian women are, as a general rule, fond mothers and faithful wives.

They are certainly not endowed with that charming refinement, the morbidezza of manners which but too often is but a mask covering a morbid selfish disposition, a hypocritical and false nature. Though ignorant, [Pg 60] they are neither void of natural good sense nor wit; they only want that smattering of worldly knowledge which the contact of society imparts, and which but too often covers nothing but frivolity, gross ignorance, and conceit. Their conversation is, perhaps, not peculiarly attractive; for being simple and artless, speech was not given to them as a means of disguising their thoughts; their lips only disclose the fullness of their hearts. Conversation is, besides, a gift conferred to few; and even in our polite circles not many persons can converse in an interesting manner, and fewer can be witty without backbiting; moreover, if man were suddenly to become transparent, would he not have to blush for the frivolous demonstrations of friendship daily interchanged in our artificial state of society?

The different amusements that absorb so much of our time and occupy our minds are unknown in Slavonian countries; the daily occupations and the details of the toilet do not captivate the whole attention; so that when a simple affection is awakening in the heart of a man or of a woman, it by degrees pervades the whole soul and the whole mind, and a strong and ardent passion usually ensues. Moreover, amongst those simple-minded sincere people flirtations are generally unknown; yet when they do love, their affections are genuine; they never exchange amongst each other those false coins bearing Cupid's effigy, and known as coquetry; for their lips only utter what their hearts really feel. People there do not delight in playing with the fire of love, or trying how far they can with impunity make game of sentiments which should be held sacred. Amongst the virile maidens of Slavonia many of them therefore have virgin hearts, that is to say, artless souls, fresh to all the tender sentiments; the reason of this is, that from the age of fifteen they do not trifle with their affections until they have become so callous and sceptical that marriage is merely wealth or a position in life. Men do not first waste away all the tender emotions which the human heart is capable of, and then settle down into a mariage de raison .

The following story, which happened about a century ago, will serve as an illustration of the power of love amongst the Slavonians; it is, indeed, a kind of repetition of the fate which attended the lovers of Sestos and Abydos. This, however, is no legend, but an historical fact; the place where this tragedy happened was the island of St. Andrea, situated between those of Malfi and Stagno, not far from the town of Ragusa.

Though no Musæus has immortalised this story by his verses, it is, however, recorded in the "Revista Dalmata" (1859), in the "Annuario Spalatino" of the same year, as well as other Slavonian periodicals.

The hero of this story, whose Christian name was Teodoro, belonged to one of the wealthiest patrician families of Ragusa, his father being, it is said, Rector of the Republic. He was a young man of a grave character, but withal of a gentle and tender disposition; he not only possessed great talents, but also great culture, for his time was entirely given up to study.

One day, the young patrician having gone from the island of St. Andrea, [Pg 61] where he had been staying at the Benedictine convent, to one of the other two neighboring islands, he in the evening wished to return to his abode. He met upon the beach a young girl who was carrying home some baskets of fish. Having asked her if she knew of anybody who would take him across to the island of St. Andrea, the young girl proffered her services, which the young and bashful patrician reluctantly accepted.

The young girl was as beautiful, as chaste, and as proud as the Arrabiata of Paul Heyse; and for the first time Teodoro felt a new and vague feeling awake in his bosom. He began to talk to the girl, asking her a thousand questions about herself, about her home; and the young girl doubtless told him that she was an orphan, and that she lived with her brothers. Instead of returning to his family, the young nobleman remained at the Benedictine convent, with the purpose of studying in retirement; his mind, however, was not entirely engrossed by his books, and his visits to the island where Margherita lived daily became more frequent.

The love which had kindled in his heart found an echo in the young girl's bosom, and instead of endeavouring to suppress their feelings they yielded to the charms of this saintly affection, to the rapture of loving and being loved. In a few days their mutual feelings had made such progress that the young man promised the barcarinola to marry her. His noble character and his brave spirit made him forget that he could not with impunity break the laws of the society amongst which he lived; for that society, which would have smiled had he seduced the young girl and made her his mistress, would nevertheless have been scandalised had he taken her for his lawful wife.

Peccadilloes are overlooked, and it is almost better in high life to be a knave than a fool; it was, indeed, a quixotic notion for a patrician to marry a plebeian, an unheard of event in the annals of the aristocratic republic of Ragusa. The difficulties which our hero was to encounter were therefore insurmountable.

In the midst of his thoughtless happiness our young lover was suddenly summoned back to his home; for whilst Teodoro was supposed to be deeply engaged in his studies his father, without the young man's knowledge, and not anticipating any opposition, promised his son in marriage to the daughter of one of his friends, a young lady of great wealth and beauty. This union had, it is true, been concerted when the children were mere babes, and it had until then been a bond between the two families. The young lady being now of a marriageable age, and having concentrated all her affections on the young man she had always been taught to regard as her future husband, she now looked forward with joy for the anticipated event.

Teodoro was therefore summoned back home to assist at a great festivity given in honour of his betrothal; he at once hastened back to Ragusa, in order to break off the engagement contracted for him. Vainly, however, did he try to remonstrate, first with his father and [Pg 62] then with his mother. He avowed that he had no inclination for matrimony, that he felt no love for this young lady, nothing but a mere brotherly affection, and that he could not cherish her as his wife; he found, nevertheless, both his parents inexorable. It was too late; the father had given his word to his friend; a refusal would prove an insult, which would provoke a rupture between these two families; no option was left but to obey.

Teodoro thereupon retired to his own room, where he remained in the strictest confinement, refusing to see any one. The evening of that eventful day, the guests were assembled; the bride and her family had already arrived; the bridegroom, nevertheless, was missing. This was indeed a strange breach of good manners, and numerous comments were whispered from ear to ear. The father sent at last a peremptory order to his undutiful son to come at once to him. The young man ultimately made his appearance, attired like Hamlet at his stepfather's court, in a suit of deep mourning, whilst his long hair, which formerly fell in ringlets over his shoulders, was all clipped short. In this strange accoutrement he came to acquaint his father before the whole assembly that he had decided to forego the pleasure, the pomp and vanity of this world, to renounce society, and take up his abode in a convent, where he intended passing his days in study and meditation.

The scene of confusion which followed this unexpected declaration can be imagined. The guests all wished to retire: the first person, however, to leave the house was Teodoro, expelled by his father and bearing with him the paternal malediction. Thus this day of anticipated joy ended in disappointment and humiliation. The discarded bride was borne away by her parents, and it is said that her delicate health never recovered from this unexpected blow.

That very night the young man retired to the Benedictine convent upon the island of St. Andrea, with the firm resolution of passing his life in holy seclusion. When a few days had passed, his love proved, nevertheless, stronger than his will, and he could not refrain from going to see his Margherita, and informing her of all that had happened, telling her that he had been driven from home, and that he had taken refuge at the convent, where he intended passing his life in a state of holy celibacy. Notwithstanding all his good intentions, the sight of the young girl proved too great a temptation, her beauty overcame his resolutions, and he swore to her that he would brave his parents' opposition, as well as the anger of his caste, and that he would marry her in spite of his family and of the whole world.

He thus continued seeing this young girl, till at last the fishermen, her brothers, having found out why this young patrician visited the island so often, severe and jealous like all their countrymen, they waylaid him, and threatened to kill him if he were once more caught upon these shores. The prior of the Benedictines, finding besides that his protege , far from coming to seek peace and tranquillity within the walls of his convent, was, on the contrary, an object of scandal, expressed his intention [Pg 63] to expel him, should he not discontinue his visits to the neighbouring island, and reform.

Every new difficulty seemed to give fresh courage to the lovers; they would have fled from their native country and their persecutors, but they knew that they would be overtaken, brought back, and punished; so they decided to wait some time until the wrath of their enemies had abated, and the storm had blown over.

As Teodoro could not go any more to see the young girl, it was Margherita who now came to visit her lover; to evade, however, the suspicion of her brothers, and that of the friars, they only met in the middle of the night, and as they always changed their place of meeting, a lighted torch was the signal where the young girl was to direct her bark. There were nights, nevertheless, when she could not obtain a boat; yet this was no obstacle to her brave spirit, for upon those nights, she, like Leander, swam across the channel, for nothing could daunt this heroic woman's heart.

These ill-fated lovers were happy notwithstanding their adverse fortune, for the sacred fire of love which burnt within them was bliss enough to compensate for all their woes. Their days were passed in anxious expectation for the hour which was to unite them on the sea-shore, amidst the darkness of the night. There clasped in one another's arms, the world and its inhabitants existed no longer for them; those were moments of ineffable rapture, in which it seemed impossible to drain the whole chalice of happiness; moments in which time and eternity are confounded, instants only to be appreciated by those who have known the infinite bliss of loving and being loved. Their souls seemed to leave their bodies, blend together and soar into the empyreal spaces, the regions of infinite happiness; for them all other sentiments passed away, and nothing was felt but an unmitigated love.

The dangers which encompassed them, their loneliness upon the rocky shores, the stillness of the night, only served to heighten their joy and exultation, for a pleasure dearly bought is always more keenly felt.

Their happiness was, however, not to be of long duration; such felicity is celestial; on this earth,

Margherita's brothers, knowing the power of love, watched their sister, and at last found out that when the young nobleman had ceased coming, it was she who by night visited the Island of St. Andrea, and they resolved to be revenged upon her. They bided their time, and upon a dark and stormy night, the fishermen, knowing that their sister would not be intimidated by the heavy sea, went off with the boat and left her to the mercy of the waves. The young girl, unable to resist the impulse of her love, recommended herself to the Almighty, and bravely plunged into the waters. Her treacherous brothers, having watched her movements, plied their oars and directed their course towards the [Pg 64] island; they landed, went and took the lighted torch from the place where it was burning, and fastened it to the prow of their boat; having done this, they slowly rowed away into the open sea.

Margherita, as usual, swam towards the beacon-light of love, but that night all her efforts were useless—the faster she swam, the greater was the distance that separated her from that ignis-fatuus light; doubtless she attributed this to the roughness of the sea, and took courage, hoping soon to reach that blessed goal.

A flash of lightning, which illumined the dark expanse of the waters, made her at last perceive her mistake; she saw the boat towards which she had been swimming, and also the island of St. Andrea far behind her. She at once directed her course towards it, but there, in the midst of darkness, she struggled with the wild waves, until, overpowered by fatigue, she gave up all hopes of rejoining her beloved one, and sank down in the briny deep.

The cruel sea that separated the lovers was, however, more merciful than man, for upon the morrow the waves themselves softly deposited the lifeless body of the young girl upon the sand of the beach.

The nobleman, who had passed a night of most terrible anxiety, found at daybreak the corpse of the girl he loved. He caused it to be committed to the earth, after which he re-entered within the walls of the convent, took the Benedictine dress, and spent the rest of his life pining in grief.

Adrian de Valvedere , in Tinsley's Magazine .

AN IMPERIAL PARDON.

During a journey through some parts of Russia a few years ago, we engaged, in preference to the imperial post-chaise, a private conveyance for a considerable distance, the driver being a Jew—generally preferred in the East on account of their sobriety and general trustworthiness. On the road my companion became communicative, and entered into philosophic-religious discussion—a topic of frequent occurrence among these bilingual populations. After a somewhat desultory harangue, he suddenly became silent and sad, having just uttered the words: "If a Chassid goes astray, what does he become? A meschumed, i.e. an apostate."—"To what class of people do you allude?" I inquired.—"Well, it just entered my head, because we have to pass the house of one of them—I mean the 'forced ones.'"—"Forced!" I thought of a religious sect. "Are they Christians or Jews?"—"Neither the one nor the other," was the reply, "but simply 'forced.' Oh, sir, it is a great misery and a great crime! Our children at least will not know anything of it, because new victims do not arise, and on the marriage of these parties rests a curse—they remain sterile! But what am I saying? [Pg 65] It is rather a blessing—a mercy! Should thus a terrible misery be perpetuated? These forced people are childless. Well, God knows best. I am a fool, a sinner to speak about it." No entreaty of mine would induce my Jewish companion to afford further information concerning this peculiar people. But before the end of our journey I heard unexpectedly more about this unfortunate class of Russian subjects. We travelled westward through the valley of the Dniester, a district but thinly peopled, and rested at an inn on the borders of an extensive forest.

Amidst the raillery going on in the principal room of this hostelry between guests of different nationalities, we had not heard the noise of wheels which slowly moved towards the house. It was a very poor conveyance, containing a small cask and a basket. The young hostess arose hastily, and, approaching the owner, said in a whisper, "What is it you want?" A slight paleness overspread her countenance, and stranger still was the demeanour of my coachman. "Sir, sir!" he exclaimed loudly, turning towards me, stretching out his hands as if seeking support, or warding off some impending danger. "What is the matter?" I rejoined, greatly surprised: but he merely shook his head, and stared at the new comer.

He was an elderly peasant, attired in the usual garb of the country-people; only at a more close inspection I noticed that he wore a fine white shirt. Of his face I could see but little, it being hidden behind the broad brim of his straw hat.

"Hostess," he said, addressing the young woman, "will you purchase something of me? I have some old brandy, wooden spoons and plates, pepper-boxes, needle-cases, &c., all made of good hard wood, and very cheap." In an almost supplicating tone he uttered these words very slowly, with downcast eyes. From his pronunciation he appeared to be a Pole.

The hostess looked shyly up to him.

"You know my brother-in-law has forbidden me to have dealings with you," she said hesitatingly, "on account of your wife; but to-day he is not at home." After a momentary silence, turning towards the driver, she continued, "Reb Rüssan, will you betray me? You come frequently this way." In reply he merely shrugged his shoulders and moved away. Turning again with some impatience to the peasant, she said, "Bring me a dish and two spoons." When he had gone to fetch these articles, the woman once more accosted my coachman.

"You must not blame me; they are very poor people!"

"Certainly they are very poor"—he replied in a milder tone. "During life, hunger and misery, and after death—hell! and all undeserved!" But the man stood already, at this utterance, with his basket in the room. The bargain was soon concluded, and the few copeks paid. Curiosity prompted me to step forward and examine the merchandise.

"I have also cigar-cases," said the peasant, humbly raising his hat. But his face was far more interesting than his wares. You rarely see [Pg 66] such features! However great the misery on earth, this pale, pain-stricken countenance was unique in its kind, revealing yet traces of sullen defiance, and the glance of his eyes moved instantly the heart of the beholder—a weary, almost fixed gaze, and yet full of passionate mourning.

"You are a Pole!" I observed after a pause.

"Yes," he replied.

"And do you live in this neighbourhood?"

"At the inn eight werst from here. I am the keeper."

"And besides wood-carver?"

"We must do the best we can," was his reply. "We have but rarely any guests at our house."

"Does your hostelry lie outside the main road?"

"No, close to the high road, sir. It was at one time the best inn between the Bug and the Dniester. But now carriers do not like to stay at our house."

"And why not?"

"Because they consider it a sin—especially the Jews." Suddenly, with seeming uneasiness and haste, he asked, "Will you purchase anything? This box, perhaps. Upon the lid is engraved a fine country-house."

Attracted by the delicate execution, I inquired, "And is this your own workmanship?"

"Yes," was his reply.

"You are an artist! And pray where did you learn wood-engraving?"

"At Kamieniec-Poddski."

"At the fortress?"

"Yes, during the insurrection of 1863."

"Were you among the insurgents?"

"No, but the authorities feared I might join them—hence I and the other forced ones were incarcerated in the fortress when the insurrection broke out, and again set free when it was suppressed."

"Without any cause?"

"Without the slightest. I was already at that time a crushed man. When yet a youth the marrow of my bones had been poisoned in the mines of Siberia. During the whole time of my settlement, I have been since 1858 keeper of that inn; I gave the authorities no cause for suspicion, but I was a 'forced man,' and that sufficed for pouncing upon me."

"Forced! what does it mean?"

"Well, a person forced to accept, when to others free choice is left—domicile, trade or calling, wife and religion."

"Terrible!" I exclaimed. "And you submitted?" A little smile played around his thin lips.

"Are you so much moved at my fate? We generally bear very easily the most severe pains endured by others." [Pg 67]

"That is a saying of Larochefoucauld," I said, somewhat surprised. "Have you read him?"

"I was at one time very fond of French literature. But pardon my acrimony. I am but little accustomed to sympathy, and indeed of what avail would it be to me now!" He stared painfully at the ground, and I also became silent, convinced that any superficial expression of sympathy would, under the circumstances, be downright mockery.

A painful pause ensued, which I broke with the question, if he had worked the engraving upon the lid of the box after a pattern.

"No, from memory," was his rejoinder.

"It is a peculiar kind of architecture!"

"It is like all gentlemen's houses in Littauen; only the old tree is very striking. It was a very old house."

"Has been? Does it exist no longer?"

"It was burnt down seven years ago by the Russians, after they had first ransacked it. They evidently were not aware that they destroyed their own property. It had been confiscated years before, and had been Crown property since 1848."

"And have you yet the outlines of the building so firmly engraved on your memory?"

"Of course! it was my birth-place, which I had rarely left until I was eighteen years old. Such things are not easily forgotten. And although more than twenty years have passed since this sad affair, hardly a day passed on which I did not think of my paternal home. I was aware of the death of my mother, and that my cousin was worse than dead—perhaps I ought to have rejoiced when the old mansion was burnt to the ground; but yet I could not suppress a tear when the news reached me. There is hardly anything on earth which can now move me." I record literally what the unfortunate man related. My Jewish coachman, not easily impressed, had during the conversation crept gradually nearer, and shook his head seriously and sorrowfully.

"Excuse me, Pani Walerian," he interrupted: "upon my honour, yours is a sad story!" He launched out into practical politics, and concluded thus:

"A Pole is not as clever as I am. If he (the Pole) was the equal of the Russian, well and good, fight it out; but the Russian is a hundred times stronger; therefore, Pani Walerian, why irritate him, why confront him?"

I could not help laughing at these remarks; but the poor "forced one" remained unmoved; and only after some silence, he observed, turning towards me:

"I have never even confronted the Russians. I merely received the punishment of the criminal, without being one, or venturing my all in my people's cause. I was very young, when I was transported to Siberia—little more than nineteen years old. My father had died early. I managed our small property, and a cousin of mine, a pretty girl, sixteen years old, lived at our house. Indeed, I had no thoughts of politics. It [Pg 68] is true I wore the national costume, perused our poets, especially Mickiewicz and Slowaski, and had on the wall of my bedroom a portrait of Kosciuszko. For such kind of high treason even the Russian Government would not have crushed me in ordinary times—but it was the year 1848. 'Nicolai Pawlowitch' had not sworn in vain that if the whole of Europe was in flames, no spark should arise in his empire—and by streams of blood and tears, he achieved his object. Wherever a young Polish noble lived who was suspected of revolutionary tendencies, repeated domiciliary searches were made; and if only a single prohibited book was found, the dread fiat went forth, 'To Siberia with him!'

"In my own case it came like a thunderbolt. I was already in Siberia, and could not yet realize my misery. During the whole long journey I was more or less delirious. I hoped for a speedy liberation, for I was altogether innocent, and at that time," he continued with a bitter smile, "I yet believed in God. When all hope became extinct, I began madly to rave, but finally settled down utterly crushed and callous. It was a fearful state—for weeks together, all my past life seemed a complete blank, at most I still remembered my name. This, sir, is literally true: Siberia is a very peculiar place."

The poor fellow had sunk down upon a bench, his hands rested powerless in his lap. I never have seen a face so utterly worn and pain-stricken. After a while he continued:

"Ten years had thus passed away; at least, I was told so—I had long ceased to count the days of my misery. For what purpose should I have done so?

"I had sunk so low that I felt no pity even for my terrible condition. One day I was brought before the Inspector, together with some of my companions. This official informed us that we had been pardoned on condition of becoming colonists in New Russia. The mercy of the Czar would assign to each of us a place of residence, a trade, and a lawful wife, who would be also a pardoned convict. We must of course, in addition, be converted to the Orthodox Greek Church. This latter stipulation did but little concern us. We readily accepted the conditions, for the people are glad of leaving Siberia, no matter whither, even to meet death itself. And had we not been pardoned? Alexander Nikolajewitch is a gracious lord. In Siberia the mines are over-crowded, and in South Russia the steppes are empty! Oh, he is a philanthropist! decus et deliciæ generis humani! But perhaps I wrong him. We entered upon our long journey, and proceeded slowly south-west. In about eight months we reached Mohilew. Here we were only kept in easy confinement, and above all, brought under the influence of the pope. This was a rapid proceeding. One morning we were driven together into a large room, about one hundred men, and an equal number of women. Presently the priest entered; a powerful and dirty fellow, who appeared to have invigorated himself for his holy work with a considerable dose of gin, for we could smell it at least ten paces off, and he had some difficulty in keeping upon his legs. [Pg 69]

"'You ragamuffins!' he stammered; 'you vermin of humanity! you are to become Orthodox Christians; but surely I shall not take much trouble with you. For, what do you think I get per head? Ten copeks, you vermin! ten copeks per head. Who will be a missionary at such pay? I certainly do it to-day for the last time! Indeed, our good father Alexander Nikolajewitch caused one rouble to be set in the tariff; but that rascal, the director, pockets ninety copeks, and leaves only ten for me. To-day, however, I have undertaken your conversion, because I am told there are many of you. Now listen! you are now Catholics, Protestants, Jews! That is sad mistake; for every Jew is a blood-sucker, every Protestant a dog, and every Catholic a pig. Such is their lot in life—but after death? carrion, my good people, carrion! And will Christ have mercy on them at the last day? Verily no! He will not dream of such a thing! And until then? Hell-fire! Therefore, good people, why should you suffer such torments? Be converted! Those who agree to become Orthodox Christians, keep silent; those who demur, receive the knout and go back to Siberia. Wherefore, my dear brothers and sisters, I ask, will you become Orthodox Christians?'

"We remained silent.

"'Well,' continued the priest, 'now pay attention! Those who are already Christians need only to lift up the right hand, and repeat after me the creed. That will soon be done. But with the damned Jews one has always a special trouble—the Jews I must first baptise. Jews, step forward!—the other vermin can remain where they now are.' In this solemn manner the ceremony was brought to a conclusion.

"On the day following," M. Walerian continued, "the second act was performed: the selection of a trade. This act was as spontaneous as our religious conversion; only, some individual regard became here indispensable. Three young Government officials were deputed to record our wishes, and to comply with them as far as the exigencies of the case admitted. The official before whom I appeared was very juvenile. Though externally very polished, he was in reality a frightfully coarse and cruel youth, without a spark of human feeling, so far as we were concerned. We afforded him no small amount of merriment. This youth inquired carefully concerning our wishes, and invariably ordered the very opposite. Among us was a noble lady from Poland, of very ancient lineage, very feeble and miserable, whose utter helplessness might well inspire the most callous heart with respect and compassion. The lady was too old to be married to one of the 'forced ones,' and was therefore asked to state what kind of occupation she desired. She entreated to be employed in some school for daughters of military officers, there being a demand for such service; but the young gentleman ordered her to go as laundress to the barracks at Mohilew! An aged Jew had been sent to Siberia for having smuggled prohibited books across the frontiers. He had been the owner of a printing establishment, and was well acquainted with the business. 'Could he not be employed in one of the Imperial printing offices; and if possible,' urged the aged [Pg 70] man, 'be permitted to reside in a place where few or no Jews lived?' He had under compulsion changed his religion; to which he was yet fervently attached, and trembled at the thought that his former co-religionists would none the less avoid him as an apostate. The young official noted down his request, and made him a police agent at Miaskowka, a small town in the government district of Podolien, almost exclusively inhabited by Jews. Another, a former schoolmaster, in the last stages of consumption, begged on his knees to be permitted to die quietly in some country village. 'That is certainly a modest request!' observed this worthless youth; and sent him as a waiter to a hospital. Need I tell how I fared? Being misled, like the rest, by the hypocritical air and seeming concern of this rascal, I made known to him my desire to obtain the post of under-steward at some remote Crown estate, where I might have as little intercourse as possible with my fellow-men. And thus, sir, I became the keeper of the small inn on a much-frequented highway!"

The unfortunate man arose suddenly, and paced the room in a state of great excitement.

"But now comes the best of all," he exclaimed, with a desperate effort—"the last act, the choice of a wife." Again an internal struggle overpowered the unhappy narrator—a sudden and heavy tear rolled down his care-worn cheek, evidently caused by the remembrance of this abominable transaction. "It was a terrible ordeal," he said. "Sir, sir," he continued after a momentary pause, "since the sun has risen in our horizon, he has shone on many a cruel game which the mighty of the earth have played with the helpless, but a more abominable farce has hardly ever been enacted than the one I am now relating—the manner in which we unfortunate people were coupled together. In my youth I read how Carrier at Nantes murdered the Royalists; how he caused the first best man to be tied with a rope to a woman, and carried down the Loire in a boat. In the middle of the river a trap-door was suddenly opened, and the unfortunate couple disappeared in the waves. But that monster was an angel compared with the officials of the Czar; and these republican marriages were a benevolent act in comparison with those we were forced to conclude. At Nantes, the victims were tied together for a mutual death; we for our mutual lives!... On a subsequent morning we were once more ushered into the room where our conversion had taken place. There were present about thirty men and an equal number of women. Together with the latter entered the official who had so considerately ordered our lot as regards a livelihood.

"'Ladies and gentlemen,' he commenced with a nasal twang, 'his Majesty has graciously pardoned you, and desires to see you all happy. Now, the lonely man is seldom a happy man; and hence you are to marry. Every gentleman is free to select a partner, provided of course the lady accepts the choice. And in order that none of you gentlemen may be placed in the invidious position of having to select a partner unworthy of him, supreme benevolence has ordered that an adequate [Pg 71] number of ladies, partly from penal settlements and partly from houses of correction, should be now offered you. As his Majesty's solicitude for your welfare has already assigned you an occupation, you may now follow unhesitatingly the promptings of your own hearts in the choice of a wife. Ladies and gentlemen, yours is the happy privilege to realise the dream of a purely socialistic marriage. Make, then, your selection without delay; and as "all genuine love is instantaneous, sudden as a lightning flash, and soft as the breezes of spring"—to use the words of our poet Lermontoff—I consider one hour sufficient. Bear also in mind that marriages are ratified in heaven, and trust implicitly to your own heart. I offer you beforehand, ladies and gentlemen, my congratulations.'

"After this address, the young rascal placed his watch in front of him on the table, sat down, and grinned maliciously at our helpless condition. The full measure of scorn implied in this speech but few of us entirely realised, for we were in truth a curious assembly. The most extravagant imagination could hardly picture more glaring contrasts! Side by side with the bestial Bessarabian herdsman, who in a fit of intoxication had slain the whole of his family, stood the highly cultivated professor from Wilna, whom the love of his country and of freedom had consigned to the mines of Siberia; the most desperate thief and shoplifter from Moscow, and the Polish nobleman who at the height of his misfortunes still regarded his honour as the most precious treasure, the ex-professor from Charkow, and the Cossac-robber from the Don; the forger from Odessa, &c. On my own right hand stood a thief and deserter from Lipkany, and on the left a Baschkire, who had been pardoned at the foot of the gallows, though he had once assisted in roasting alive a Jewish family in a village inn. A madly assorted medley of human beings! And the women! The dissolute female gladly released from the house of correction, because she still more depraved her already degraded companions, associated with the unfortunate Polish lady, whose pure mind had never been poisoned by a vulgar word, and whose quiet happiness had not been disturbed by any prospect of misfortune, until a single letter, or act of charity to an exiled countryman, brought her into misery. Pressing against the young girl whose sole offence consisted in being the unfortunate offspring of a mother sent to Siberia, might be seen the infamous hag who had habitually decoyed young girls to ruin, in whose soul every spark of womanhood had long been extinguished. And these people were called upon to marry; and one hour was granted them in which to become acquainted and assorted! Sir, you will now perhaps comprehend my emotion in relating this shocking business!

"I consider it the most shocking and at the same time the most curious outrage which has ever been committed." The "forced" man paused, a deadly pallor suffused his countenance, and his agitation was great. The young hostess appeared perfectly stunned, whilst Reb Rüssan, the coachman, bent his head in evident compassion. [Pg 72]

After a while M. Walerian continued in a calmer mood. "It must certainly have been an entertaining spectacle to notice the behaviour of this ill-assorted people at that trying hour. Even the barefaced monster on his raised daïs betrayed a feverish excitement: he would suddenly jump from his chair, and again recline, playing the while nervously with his fingers. I am hardly able to describe the details, being not altogether unbiassed at this dreadful hour.

"I only know we stood at first in two distinct groups, and for the first few moments after the official announcement, not a glance was exchanged between the two sexes, much less a word spoken. A deep silence reigned in the room, a death-like stillness, varied only by an occasional deep sigh, or a nervous movement. The minutes passed, certainly not many, but they seemed to me an eternity!

"Suddenly a loud hoarse voice exclaimed, 'Up, my lads! here are some very pretty mates!' We all recognised the notorious thief from Moscow, a haggard withered fellow, with the ugliest face I ever beheld. He crossed over to the women and examined in his way which would be the most desirable partner. Here he received an indignant push, and there an impudent alluring glance. Others, again—the better part—recoiled from the approach of the brute. He was followed by the Baschkire, who like a clumsy beast of prey drew nigh, muttering incoherently, 'I will have a fat woman, the fattest among them.' From his approach even the ugliest and most impudent instinctively recoiled—this wooer was really too hideous, at best only suited to a monkey. The third in order who came forward was the Don-Cossac, a pretty slender youth. An impudent lass jauntily met him and fell on his neck; but he pushed her aside, and walked towards the girl who had murdered her child. The discarded female muttered some insulting words, and hung the next moment on my own neck. I shook her off, and she repeated the attempt with my neighbour, and again unsuccessfully.

"Her example became contagious: presently the more shameless of the women made an onslaught on the men. Ten minutes later the scene had changed. In the centre of the room stood a number of men and women engaged in eager negotiation—shouting and scolding. The parties who had already agreed retired to the window-niches, and here and there a man pulled an unfortunate woman, making desperate efforts to escape from him. The females who yet retained a spark of womanhood crept into a corner of the room; and in another recess were three of us—the ex-professor, Count S., and myself. We had instinctively come together, watching with painful emotion this frantic spectacle, not inclined to participate in it. To me at least the thought of selecting a wife here never occurred.

"'Another half an hour at your disposal, ladies and gentlemen,' exclaimed our official tormentor; 'twenty minutes—yet fifteen minutes!' [Pg 73]

"I stood as if rooted to the ground, my knees trembled, my agitation increased, but I remained motionless. Indeed, as often as I heard the unpleasant voice of the official, the blood rushed to my head, but I advanced not one step. My excitement increased—profound disgust, bitter despair—the wildest indignation which perhaps ever pierced a poor human heart. 'No,' I said; 'I must assert the dignity of my manhood!' I was determined not to make the selection of a wife under the eyes of this man. Another impulse I could hardly suppress—viz. to throw myself upon this imperial delegate and strangle him. And if I finally abstained from an act of violence, it was because I yet loved life, and wished not to end it on the gallows. Sir," continued M. Walerian, "the source of great misery on earth is this overpowering instinct of self-preservation; without it, I should be freed this day from all my misery. Thus I stood, so to speak, at bay in my corner, using all my efforts to subdue the evil spirit within me. My looks most probably betrayed me—for when my eyes met those of the official, I noticed an involuntary shudder. A moment afterwards he regarded me with a sly and malignant glance. I turned aside and closed my eyes on this harassing scene.

"'Yet five minutes, ladies and gentlemen! Those as yet undecided must speed themselves, and unburden their heart, or I shall be compelled by virtue of my office to tie them together. And although I shall do so conscientiously, and to the best of my knowledge, there is this risk—that you engage in a marriage of mere convenience, instead of one of free choice and inclination.'

"Though my agitation reached its climax, I made no move. I considered myself an accomplice in this disgraceful outrage, if I within the allotted five minutes declared my heart and made a choice. But another thought flashed across my mind: 'I may still be able to prevent the worst. Who knows with whom that rascal may couple me if I remain altogether passive? Choose for yourself!'—I made a step forward—a mist seemed before my eyes—my heart beat wildly—I staggered, I sought figures in order to distinguish and recognise myself.

"Sir," exclaimed the narrator with a sudden yell, "what scenes did I see there? I am no coward, but I—I dare not venture to speak of it. Thus I moved forward; hardly two minutes passed, but days would not suffice to relate what passed during these terrible moments through my heart and brain. I noticed in a corner a fainting woman, a young and delicate creature. I learnt afterwards that she was an orphan child, born of a dissolute woman in a penal settlement. A coarse fellow with cunning eyes bent over her, endeavouring to raise her from the ground. I suddenly pounced upon the fellow, struck him a heavy blow, and carried the unconscious woman away as if a mere child. I determined to defend her to the last. But no rescue was attempted, though the forger shook his fists at me, but had seemingly not the courage to approach nearer. Gazing about him, another female embraced him, a [Pg 74] repulsive woman. He looked at her somewhat abashed, but soon submitted to her caresses.

"'Ladies and gentlemen! the allotted hour has passed,' said the official. 'I must beg the parties to come forward and make known to me their choice. This may be repugnant to some of you, but my duties prescribe it. I especially request the gentlemen in yonder corner to advance'—pointing to myself and the forger. I clenched my fists involuntarily, but stepped forward with the fainting woman. 'Cossacks, keep your "Kantschu" in readiness,' said the official to the guard which surrounded him. Turning first to me, he said: "And are you, sir, resolved to carry the woman you now hold in your arms, not only in this room, but through life?' I nodded assent. 'And what have you to say, damsel?' The poor creature was as yet unconscious. 'She is in a swoon,' I replied. 'In that case I am sorry,' continued the official, 'to have to refuse in his Majesty's name my consent to your union. In the interests of humanity, I require an audible yes from all parties. I have watched attentively the whole proceedings,' continued the official—'not from mere curiosity, but partly as a duty, and partly out of pure sympathy—and I can assure you, sir, without disparagement to your claims, that the choice of the young lady you now hold in your arms fell not upon you, but upon the gentleman yonder,' pointing to the forger. 'It was probably the excess of happiness at this selection which caused her fainting. For you there is waiting an adequate recompense—that ripe, desirable beauty who now only reluctantly holds the arm of your rival. Therefore, changez, Messieurs!' 'Scoundrel!' I exclaimed, and advanced to seize him. But ere I could lay hold of him, a fearful blow on my head stretched me stunned and bleeding to the ground. When I had somewhat recovered, our marriage procession was in progress of formation. The woman whom the official had assigned to me knelt at my side, bathing my head, endeavouring to revive me. 'I like you,' she observed, 'and will treat you well.' She raised me to my feet, placed her arm in mine, and pushed me in the ranks of the procession, which moved slowly towards the church. On our road a heavy hand seized me suddenly by the collar. 'Brother,' grunted a coarse voice in my ear, 'your stout woman takes my fancy. Will you change with me? Mine is certainly less corpulent, but younger in years.'

"It was the man behind me—the Baschkire. The female whom he dragged along was a lean, ugly, dark-complexioned woman, swooning or near a swoon. An expression of unutterable despair overspread her features, rendering them, if possible, yet more ugly. 'A woman who can suffer so intensely as this one unquestionably does, cannot be without a heart—is not altogether depraved, no matter what cause brought her here.' These reflections determined me. 'She is preferable to the woman at my side. Done!' I whispered to the Baschkire. Just crossing the threshold of the church, a momentary pause ensued, during which we effected the exchange; not without a murmur, however, on the part of my intended wife. But the Baschkire kept her quiet; and [Pg 75] a closer inspection of her new partner seemed to satisfy her. The poor woman I led forward seemed hardly aware of the exchange, she was so entirely absorbed in her grief. We were married. The official only afterwards became aware of what had happened, but could not now undo it. But I had to suffer for it—terrible was the punishment."

Not another word was uttered by the unfortunate man. Quite overcome by the recital of his cruel fate, he suddenly arose and left the house.

On account of the approach of the Jewish Sabbath, my coachman urged on our journey. Half an hour later, we passed the lonely and desolate hostelry of poor M. Walerian, the exile of Siberia, who owed so much to imperial clemency.—F. A. S., in Belgravia .

CHRISTMAS IN MOROCCO.

"To-morrow Christmas for Moros!" said the gentle Hamed, our Moorish servant, entering the room soon after the bang of the last sunset gun of Ramadan had shaken our windows, and the thick smoke of the coarse Moorish powder had floated away, temporarily obscuring the gorgeous hues bestowed by the retiring luminary on the restless waters of the South Atlantic.

"To-morrow Christmas for Moros! In the morning Hamed clean house, go for soko ; then all day no trabally ; have new haik , new slippers, walk about all same tejjer ."

By which little speech our faithful attendant meant to convey that to-morrow's rejoicing at the termination of the long and irksome fast of Ramadan was equivalent to the "Ingleez's" Christmas, and that, after putting the house in order and bringing the provisions from the soko , or market, he would do no more trabally , or work—the word being a corruption of the Spanish trabajo —but would don the new haik and bright yellow slippers for which he had long been saving up, and to the purchase of which certain little presents from the children of our household had materially contributed; and would be entitled, by prescriptive holiday right, to "take his walks abroad" with the dolce far niente dignity of a tejjer , or merchant.

I think we members of the little English community of Mogador—or, as the Moors fondly call this pleasantest town of the Morocco seaboard, "El Souerah," or The Beautiful—had almost as good reason as the Moslem population to rejoice at the termination of the great fast. The Moors not being allowed, during the holy month, to eat, drink, or smoke betwixt the rising and the setting of the sun—the more sternly orthodox even closing their nostrils against any pleasant odour that might casually perfume the air in their vicinity, and their ears against even the [Pg 76] faintest sound of music—debarring themselves, in fact, from whatever could give the slightest pleasure to any of the senses, a considerable amount of gloom and listlessness was the inevitable result.

The servants in the various households, not over active and intelligent at the best of times, became, as the weary days of prayer and fasting wore on, appallingly idiotic, sleepy, and sullen, would do but little work, and that little never promptly nor well. Meals could not be relied on within an hour or two, rooms were left long untidy, essential little errands and messages unperformed, and a general gloomy confusion prevailed.

Did I, tempted by the smoothness of the sea, desire a little fishing cruise, and send a youthful Moor to the neighbouring rocks to get me a basket of mussels for bait, he would probably, directly he got outside the town-gates, deposit the basket and himself in the shade of the first wall he came to, and slumber sweetly till the tide had risen and covered all the rocky ledges where it was possible to collect bait. Had I told the youngster over night that he must come out to sea with me in the morning, and take care that my boat was put outside the dock, so that she would be afloat at a certain hour, I would find, on going down at daybreak with rods and tackle, that the boat was high and dry upon the mud, and it would take the united efforts of half a dozen Moors and myself to get her afloat at the end of nearly an hour's frantic struggling and pushing through mud and water, necessitating on my part the expenditure of a great amount of perspiration, not a little invective, and sundry silver coins.

And when we were fairly afloat my Mahometan youth would be so weak from fasting that his oar would be almost useless; and when we did, after an hour or so of the most ignominious zigzaging, reach our anchorage on one of the fishing-grounds, then would he speedily become sea-sick, and instead of helping me by preparing bait and landing fish, he would lean despairingly over the side in abject misery, and implore me to go home promptly—a piteous illustration of the anguish caused by an empty stomach contracting on itself.

Nor were these the only discomforts under which we groaned and grumbled.

From the evening when the eager lookers-out from minarets of mosques and towers of the fortifications first descried the new moon which ushered in the holy month of fasting, every sunset, as it flushed the far-off waves with purple and crimson and gold, and turned the fleecy cloudlets in the western sky to brightest jewels, and suffused the white houses and towers of Mogador with sweetest glow of pink, and gilded the green-tiled top of each tall minaret, had been accompanied by the roar of a cannon from the battery just below our windows.

"What the deuce is that?" asked a friend of mine, lately arrived from England, as we strolled homewards one evening through the dusty streets, and the boom of the big gun suddenly fell upon his astonished ear. [Pg 77]

"Only sunset," I replied.

"Queer place this," said J. "Does the sun always set with a bang?"

"Always during Ramadan."

"Does it rise with a bang too? I hate to be roused up early in the morning!"

"No, there is no gun at sunrise; but there is a very loud one at about three in the morning, or sometimes half-past, or four, or later."

"Shocking nuisance!" remarked J. "My bedroom window's just over that abominable battery."

The early morning gun was a great trial, certainly. I would not have minded being reveille en sursaut , as a Frenchman would say, and then turning comfortably over on the other side, and going to sleep again.

But somehow or other I always found myself awake half an hour or an hour before the time, and then I could not get to sleep again, but lay tossing about and fidgettily listening for the well-known din. At length I would hear a sound like the hum of an enormous fiendish nightmarish mosquito, caused by a hideous long tin trumpet, the shrill whistle of a fife or two, and the occasional tom-tomming of a Moorish drum. "Ha, the soldiers coming along the ramparts; they will soon fire now."

But the sound of the discordant instruments with which the soldiery solaced themselves in the night for their enforced abstinence from such "sweet sounds" in the day would continue for a long time before the red flash through my wide-open door would momentarily illumine my little chamber on the white flat roof, and then the horrid bang would rend the air, followed by a dense cloud of foul-smelling smoke; and then would my big dog Cæsar for several minutes rush frantically to and fro upon the roof in hot indignation, and utter deep-mouthed barks of defiance at the white figures of the "Maghaseni," as they flitted ghost-like along the ramparts below, and snort and pant and chafe and refuse to be pacified for a long time.

At the firing of the sunset gun the Moors were allowed to take a slight refection, which generally consisted of a kind of gruel. I have seen a Moorish soldier squatting in the street with a brass porringer in his lap, eagerly awaiting the boom of the cannon to dip his well-washed fingers in the mess.

At about 9 p.m. another slight meal was allowed to the true believers, and they might eat again at morning gun-fire, after which their mouths were closed against all "fixings, solid and liquid," even against the smallest draught of water or the lightest puff at the darling little pipe of dream-inducing kief .

On the twenty-seventh day of Ramadan we were informed that twenty-seven guns would be fired that night, and that we had better leave all our windows open, or they would certainly be broken by the violence of the discharge. This was pleasant; still more delightful was the glorious uncertainty which prevailed in the minds of our informants as to the time at which we might expect the infliction.

Some said that the twenty-seven guns would be fired before midnight; [Pg 78] Hamed opined that the cannonade would not take place till 3 or 4 a.m. Many of the guns on the battery in close proximity to our abode were in a fearfully rusty and honeycombed condition, so that apprehensions as to some of them bursting were not unnatural, and I thought it extremely probable that a few stray fragments might "drop in" on me.

That night I burned the "midnight oil," and lay reading till nearly two, when sweet sleep took possession of me, from which I was awakened about four in the morning by a terrific bang that fairly shook the house.

A minute more, and there came a red flash and another bang, presently another. Thought I, "I will go out and see the show;" so I went on to the flat white roof in my airy nocturnal costume, and leaning over the parapet looked down on to the platform of the battery below. A group of dim white figures, a flickering lantern, a glowing match, a touch at the breech of a rusty old gun, a swift skurry of the white figures round a corner, a squib-like fountain of sparks from the touch-hole, a red flash from the mouth, momentarily illumining the dark violet sea, a bang, and a cloud of smoke.

Then the white figures and the lantern appeared again; another squib, another flash, another bang, Cæsar galloping up and down over the roof, snorting his indignation, but not barking, probably because he felt "unable to do justice to the subject;" and at length, after the eleventh gun had belched forth crimson flames and foul smoke, all was peace, save a distant discord of tin trumpets, gouals and gimbris , and I returned to my mosquito-haunted couch with a sigh of relief.

Pass we now to the eve of "Christmas for Moros," and let ethnologist and hagiologist derive some satisfaction from the evidences I collected in this far-away Moorish town that the gladness of the Mahometan festival does, similarly to the purer joy of the Christian, though in a less degree perhaps, incline towards "peace and good-will to men," charity and kindliness.

As we sat chatting that evening round the tea-table, to us entered Hamed, bearing, with honest pride illumining his brown features, a great tray of richly engraved brass, heaped up with curious but tempting-looking cakes.

Gracefully presenting them to "the senora," he intimated that this was his humble offering or Christmas token of good-will towards the family, and that his mother (whom the good fellow maintains out of his modest wages) had made them with her own hands.

The cakes were made of long thin strips of the finest paste, plentifully sweetened with delicious honey, twisted into quaint shapes, and fried in the purest of oil. I need hardly say that the children were delighted, and immediately commenced to court indigestion by a vigorous onslaught on the new and tempting sweets. Nay, why should I blush to confess that I myself have a very sweet tooth in my head, and such a liking for all things saccharine that my friends say jokingly that I must be getting into my second childhood?—an imputation which, as I am only [Pg 79] a little on the wrong side of thirty, I can bear with equanimity. However, I firmly decline to inform an inquisitive public how many of those delightful Moorish cakes I ate: truth to tell, I do not remember; but I enjoyed them heartily, nor found my digestion impaired thereby.

We had a little chat with Hamed—whose face was lighted up with the broadest of grins as we praised his mother's pastry and showed our appreciation of it in the most satisfactory manner—on certain matters of the Mahometan religion and the position of women in the future life. Some of the sterner Muslims believe that women have no souls; others opine that while good men go to " Eljannah ," or heaven, and bad ones to " Eljehannam ," or hell, women and mediocre characters are deported to a vague kind of limbo which they designate as " Bab Maroksh ," or the Morocco Gate.

But the gentle, liberal, and gallant Hamed informed us, in reply to an individual query with regard to our Moorish housemaid, that "if Lanniya plenty good, no tiefem (steal), no drinkum sharab (wine), and go for scula ("school," or religious instruction in the mosque, or in a schoolhouse adjoining it), by and by she go for " Eljannah ."

I am hardly correct, by the way, in speaking of Lanniya as "house- maid ," for Moorish maidens and wives never go in the service of European families, being prohibited by their religion from showing their faces; it is only widows and divorced women who may go about unveiled, and mingle with Christians.

The next morning, soon after the last gun of Ramadan had sounded its joyous boom in my ear, I was up and stirring, donning my shooting apparel and preparing for an early country walk with my faithful four-footed comrade. I had no fear of exciting the fanaticism of the Muslim population by going out shooting on their holy day, for there is not much bigotry in Mogador,—Moors, Christians, and Jews observing their several religions peacefully side by side, so that three Sundays come in every week, the Mahometan on Friday, the Jewish on Saturday, and then ours.

The sun, just rising from behind the eastern sand-hills, was gilding all the house-tops and minarets, till our white town looked like a rich assemblage of fairy palaces of gold and ivory; the smiling sea, serene and azure, came rippling peacefully up to the base of the rugged brown rocks, enlivened to-day by no statuesque figures of Moorish fishermen; nor did a single boat dot the broad blue expanse of the unusually smooth South Atlantic, of which the fish and the sea-fowl were for once left in undisturbed possession.

As I gazed from the flat roof away over the great town, I heard from many quarters loud sounds of music and merriment. As I passed presently through the narrow streets, with their dead white walls and cool dark arches, scarcely a camel was to be seen at the accustomed corners by the stores of the merchants, where usually whole fleets of the "ships of the desert" lay moored, unloading almonds, and rich gums, and hides, and all the varied produce of the distant interior. [Pg 80]

Outside the town-gates the very hordes of semi-wild scavenger dogs seemed to know that the day was one of peace, for they lay in the sunshine, nor barked and snapped at the infidel intruder as he walked over the golden sands, along the edge of the marshy pool, past the pleasant-looking Moorish cemetery with its graceful verdant palm-trees, a calm oasis in the sandy plain, and out across the shallow lagoon formed by overflows of high tides, by which a few late trains of homeward-bound camels went softly stepping, looking wonderfully picturesque as they marched through shallow waters so beautifully gilded by the morning sun, their drivers doubtless eager to reach their own home or the shelter of some friendly village to participate in the modest revelries of the joyous season. How I wandered along the shore of the "many-sounding sea," enjoying a little rough sport, and the blithe companionship of the big doggie; how I saw never a Moor upon the rocks, but many Jews with long bamboo rods, busily engaged in fishing for bream and bass and rock-fish, it boots not to describe with a minuteness which might be wearisome to my readers, for I am not now writing "of sport, for sportsmen."

So let us turn homewards, as the sun is getting high in the heavens, and note the scenes by the way.

Yonder, near the marshy corner of the plain, haunted by wild-fowl, and carrion crows, and mongrel jackal-like dogs, is the rough cemetery of the despised "Jehoud," the Israelites who form so large and so wealthy a portion of the population of Mogador. Among the long flat stones that mark the graves of the exiled sons and daughters of Israel there is a winding crowd of white-draped figures, a funeral procession. Unwilling to intrude upon their grief, I pass on, casting an involuntary glance at the picturesque garb and wild gesticulations of the mourners as the women's loud and bitter cry of "Ai, Ai, Ai, Ai!" sounds weirdly through the air, just as it may have done in the old scriptural times, when "the mourners went about the streets" and gave unchecked vent to their grief in public, even as they do to this day.

But as I neared Morocco Gate, from the neighbouring "Running Ground" came very different sounds—a din of many drums, a squeaking of merry fifes, the firing of many long Moorish guns, the shouting of men and boys, and the eerie shrill taghariet of the Moorish women.

And as I passed in front of the round battery, out from the great gate of the New Kasbah came the crowd of men, women, and children who had been clamouring joyfully in the Running-Ground, a bright throng of brown faces and white raiment, interspersed with the gay colours worn by the little children, and dotted here and there by the blood-red of the national flag. Suddenly from a cannon just behind me came a cloud of smoke enveloping me and the dog, and a bang which fairly shook us, and then another and another. The firing of the guns from this battery was the spectacle the Moorish populace had come out to [Pg 81] see.

It was an uncomfortable sensation to have big guns going off just behind one; they were only loaded with blank cartridge, of course, but we were quite near enough to be knocked down by a stray piece of wadding, and something did once whistle past my ear suggestively.

But it would never do for an "Ingleez" to run away in the presence of a lot of Moors; so I walked calmly across the sands while the whole battery of guns—twelve, I think—were fired, Cæsar meanwhile prancing about majestically, and loudly giving vent to his indignation at a proceeding which he evidently considered, as he always does the firing of any gun or pistol by any one but me, an express insult to his master, and an infringement of his peculiar privileges.

I went home by way of the Water-Port, where there was no movement of lighters or fishing-craft, no stir of bare-legged porters and fishermen, no bustle of Jewish and European merchants; nearly all the boats were drawn up on the shore, and those which remained afloat, slumbered tenantless on the broad blue bosom of the sea. On rocks, and in the pleasant shade of walls and arches, a few figures, in bright and gauzy haiks and gorgeous new slippers, lounged and dozed, perchance tired with the revelries they had gone through since daybreak, and recruiting their energies for fresh rejoicings towards evening. Reaching home about eleven, I rested a while, deposited my birds in the larder, and then proceeded to stroll about the streets and see how the populace comported themselves on this festive occasion. I was sorry to learn that some of the younger and more fanatical of the Moors had been relieving their feelings by abusing the Jews, some of whom had had stones thrown at them, and their heads slightly broken. But this temporary riot was over, and now all was "peace and good-will," except that perhaps there may have lurked a little not unnatural ill-feeling in the minds of the broken-headed Israelites, who could not help feeling rather disgusted at the manner in which the Muslim youths had celebrated "Christmas for Moros."

As I passed along the narrow lane wherein the soldiers of the Kaid or Governor, in the snowiest of haiks and tallest and reddest of tarbooshes , squatted against the wall, chatting blithely as they awaited the advent of their master, a grave and venerable-looking Moorish grandpapa, hurrying along with a great armful of cakes in one of the folds of his haik , stumbled against a loose stone and dropped several of the cakes.

I hastily stooped and picked them up; the old man muttered a few words of blessing upon me, insisted on my accepting the dainties I had rescued from the dust, utterly refused to receive them back, pressed my hand, and hurried on, leaving me in a state of embarrassment, from which I was opportunely relieved by the arrival of a bright-eyed little Moor of seven or eight summers, who was perfectly willing to relieve me from all trouble connected with the handful of cakes. Passing into the busy streets of the Moorish quarter, I found the population coming out of the various mosques, where they had been to morning service, and now going in for a systematic course of "greetings in the market-place," [Pg 82] and purchasing of presents. O, for an artist's pencil and colours to depict the gorgeous costumes of the town Moors, the quaint, wild garb of their country cousins; the gauzy cream-tinted haiks from Morocco; the rich silken caftans of purple, or crimson, or yellow, or green, or azure, or pink, sweetly half-veiled by a fold or two of snowy gauze thrown over them; the bright red fez caps, and voluminous snowy turbans of the patriarchal-looking old men; the broad silken sashes from Fez, heavy and stiff with rich embroidery of gold; the great curved daggers in their richly chased silver or brass sheaths, suspended amid the folds of the haik by thick woolen cords of gay colours; the handsome brown faces, the flashing black eyes, the wonderful white teeth, the sinewy brown bare legs, the brand-new yellow slippers of the merry Moors of Mogador!

And the negroes, or, as old Fuller would quaintly have called them, "the images of God cut in ebony," how their honest black features glistened, and how their bright teeth grinned beneath turban or fez, or gaudy handkerchief of many colours!

The negro servant of one of the European residents, a good-humoured giant of nearly seven feet, whom his master is wont to describe as "his nigger and a half," came stalking down amongst the little shops and stalls with a flaunting bandanna round his head, a purple jacket, a most gorgeous sash, a pair of green baggy breeches, a glittering silver-sheathed dagger, and a most imposing haik , thrown in toga-like folds over all.

Negro women, unveiled, white-clad, adorned as to their shiny black arms with rude heavy bracelets of silver or brass, sat at street-corners with baskets of sweet cakes and little loaves for sale. Veiled Moorish women, perchance showing just one bright black eye to tantalise the beholder, glided along like substantial ghosts in the white raiment which enveloped them from their heads down to the little feet shod with red or yellow slippers embroidered with gold thread or bright-coloured silks. Women leading tiny toddlers of children, little bright-eyed boys with crowns shaven all but one queer little tufted ridge in the middle, deftly curled this morning by mamma's loving fingers; foreheads adorned with quaint frontlets, from which hung curious ornaments of gold and coral and silver, spells against the evil eye, talismans, and what not.

Little boys in beautiful cloth or silken cloaks of pale blue, or delicate purple, or crimson, or rich green, or golden yellow, trotting along as proud as peacocks, holding by the hand some tiny brother who can barely toddle. Children who have just had new slippers purchased for them, and are carrying them home in triumph; children who, with funny little copper coins in their hand, are congregating round the stall of the swarthy seller of sweetstuffs, who is ejaculating loudly, " Heloua , Heloua !" busily brandishing a feathery branch of green artim the while, to keep the vagrom flies off his stores of rich dainties composed of walnut and almond toffee, pastes made of almonds and honey and sugar, little brown sugar balls thickly strewn with cummin-seeds, long sticks of peppermint, and other delicacies difficult to describe. [Pg 83]

As to the grown-up Moors, never was seen such a hand-shaking as is going on amongst them. Everybody is shaking hands with everybody else, each wishing the other the Arabic substitute for "A merry Christmas," and after each handshaking each of the participants puts his hand to his lips and proceeds, to be stopped two yards farther on for a repetition of the performance.

On we go through the meat-market, and note pityingly the leanness of the Moors' Christmas beef, which has just been butchered, and of which an eager good-humored crowd are buying small pieces amid much vociferation, chaff, and "compliments of the season" generally.

Then we come to the green-grocers' shops, where we see huge radishes, great pomegranates, sweet potatoes, and bunches of fragrant mint for the flavouring of the Moors' passionately loved beverage, green tea; then to the grocers' quarter, where, asking a grave and portly Moor for a pennyworth fakea (dried fruit), he puts into half a gourd-shell a pleasant collection of dates, almonds, figs, and raisins, hands them to us with benign politeness. Opposite his store is a low table covered with queer bottles of all shapes and sizes, filled with a dubious-looking pink fluid, resembling the most delicious hair oil, but apparently highly appreciated by the Moorish and Jewish youth who crowd around.

In the centre is a burly brandy-bottle, bearing the well-known label of "J. and F. Martell," now filled with a fluid presumably more innocuous than the choicest cognac; the big bottle is flanked by rows of little medicine-vials and long thin bottles such as are used for attar of roses and other Eastern scents; for the vendor of this bright-coloured liquor does not possess cups or tumblers, but dispenses it in the little bottles. A bare-headed youth, with shaven crown, tenders a mozouna , receives a two-ounce vial, empties it solemnly amid the envious looks of his comrades, sets it down, and walks gravely away.

Away we go too, Cæsar and I, and I note that there is hardly a Jew to be seen in the streets; they are afraid of stone-throwing, and outbursts of the slumbering hatred and contempt with which they are regarded by the orthodox Muslim.

As for Christians, Englishmen especially, they are much more tolerated and respected; and I know that I may walk the town all day without fear of molestation, and get plenty of kindly greetings and many a smile and shake of the hand.

Out of the busy market, up the narrow and shady streets, hearing sounds of the fearsome trumpet, which I have already compared to an exaggerated mosquito, meeting that instrument presently at a corner—a horrid tin thing about two yards long, wielded by a sinewy little man in a blue tunic, accompanying a gaily-dressed boy on a sleek and patient donkey. Fifing and drumming and firing of guns going on all around.

Fierce-looking Moors and Arabs from the country leaning on their long silver-mounted guns, scowling at the "Kaffer," whom they have perchance not seen until they came to El Souërah. A veiled, but evidently [Pg 84] portly, dame, leading by the hand a pretty little girl, in a red skirt below a rich garment of lace or embroidery, with a crimson hooded cloak or djelab over it, rich ornaments on her smooth brown forehead, enormous silver anklets, little bare feet, dyed, like her hands and those of most of the little girls and many of the big ones, a bright red with henna. Little girl shrinks behind her mother, afraid of the Giaour or of his big dog; the Giaour slips by with a smile, doggie with a friendly wag of his tail, and we go homeward for a while; Cæsar to make a hearty meal of the biscuits which have come all the way from England for him; his master to partake of lunch, then smoke a pipe on the roof, and look wistfully out over the bright blue sky, and let his thoughts wander far, far away to many a pleasant Christmas in a pleasant corner of the fair Western land:

But the Moor's Christmas has come early in October; there is time yet, and plenty of English steamers going backwards and forwards; who knows whether the wanderer may not yet spend the next Christmas by a genial English fireside, and recount to prattling children on his knee (others' children, alas!) the curious sights, sounds, and scenes of "Christmas for Moros?" But I have not quite done with you yet, kindly reader. I must just briefly tell you how I went out again in the afternoon with Cæsar and a two-legged friend, and found more shopping going on and more handshaking, and found the more festive spirits getting hilarious over green tea and coffee and kief ; how we strolled down to the Water-Port and sat on the quay, surrounded by merry young Moors in their "Sunday best;" how my friend essayed to sketch one or two of them, and they did not like it, but thought some evil spell would be put upon them thereby; how they asked us many questions about England, and particularly wanted to know how many dollars we possessed; how my companion won the hearts of some of the younger members of the party by teaching them how to whistle between their thumbs, and how to make a certain very loud and direfully discordant screech; and how J. and I finished the afternoon by partaking of a delightful bottle of English ale in the courtyard of a cool store, leaning our chairs against massive stone pillars, and smoking the pipe of peace.

But I fear the stern Editor will not grant me any more space, and I must leave at present the recital of all that I saw on the ensuing day, which the gentle Hamed, if he were a little more closely acquainted with our institutions, would call "Boxing-day for Moros."

C. A. P. (" Sarcelle "), in London Society ,

Mogador.

[Pg 85]

THE HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE ITALIAN POETS.

GUARINI.

Pastoral poetry had in Italy a tendency to a rapid degeneration from the first. "Decipit exemplum vitiis imitabile." The earliest "pastorals" were far from being without merit, and merit of a high order. But they were eminently "vitiis imitabiles." Two specimens of Italian Arcadian poetry stand out, from the incredibly huge mass of such productions still extant, superior to all the innumerable imitations to which they gave rise in a more marked degree even than "originals" usually surpass imitations in value. These are the "Aminta" of Tasso, and the "Pastor Fido" of the poet with whom it is the object of these pages to make the English nineteenth century reader, who never will find the time to read him, in some degree acquainted—Batista Guarini. It would be difficult to say which of these two celebrated pastoral dramas was received with the greater amount of delight and enthusiasm by the world of their contemporaries, or even which of them is the better performance. The almost simultaneous production of these two masterpieces in their kind is a striking instance of the, one may almost say, epidemic nature of the influences which rule the production of the human intellect; influences which certainly did not cease to operate for many generations after that of the authors of the "Aminta" and the "Pastor Fido," although the servile imitation of those greatly admired works unquestionably went for much in causing the overwhelming flood of pastorals which deluged Italy immediately subsequent to their enormous success.

I have said that it would be difficult to assign a preëminence to either of these poems. But it must not be supposed that it is intended thence to insinuate an equality between the authors of them. Tasso would occupy no lower place on the Italian Parnassus if he had never written the "Aminta." His fame rests upon a very much larger and firmer basis. But Guarini would be nowhere—would not be heard of at all—had he not written the "Pastor Fido." Having, however, produced that work—a work of which forty editions are said to have been printed in his lifetime, and which has been translated into almost every civilised language, including Latin, Greek, and Hebrew—he has always filled a space in the eyes of his countrymen, and occupied a position in the roll of fame, which render his admission as one of our select band here imperative. He is, besides, a representative poet; the head and captain of the pastoral school, which attained everywhere so considerable a vogue, and in Italy such colossal proportions. [Pg 86]

Guarini was born in the year 1537 in Ferrara,—desolate, dreary, shrunken, grass-grown, tumble-down Ferrara, which in the course of one half-century gave to the world, besides a host of lesser names, three such poets as Tasso, Ariosto and Guarini. Ariosto died four years before Guarini was born; but Tasso was nearly his contemporary, being but seven years his junior.

In very few cases in all the world and in all ages has it happened that intellectual distinction has been the appanage of one family for as many generations as in that of the Guarini. They came originally from Verona, where Guarino, the first of the family on record, who was born in 1370, taught the learned languages, and was one of the most notable of the band of scholars who laboured at the restoration of classical literature. He lived to be ninety years old, and is recorded to have had twenty-three sons. It is certain that he had twelve living in 1438. One of them, Giovanni Batista, succeeded his father in his professorship at Ferrara, to which city the old scholar had been invited by Duke Hercules I. It would seem that another of his sons must also have shared the work of teaching in the University of Ferrara: for Batista the poet was educated by his great-uncle Alessandro, and succeeded him in his professorship. Of the poet's father we only learn that he was a mighty hunter, and further, that he and his poet-son were engaged in litigation respecting the inheritance of the poet's grandfather and great-uncle. It is probable that the two old scholars wished to bequeath their property, which included a landed estate, to their grandson and great-nephew, who already was manifesting tastes and capacities quite in accordance with their own, rather than to that exceptional member of the race who cared for nothing but dogs and horses.

Nor was Batista the last of his race who distinguished himself in the same career. His son succeeded him in his chair at the university; and we have thus at least four generations of scholars and professors following the same course in the same university, which was in their day one of the most renowned in Europe.

All this sounds very stable, very prosperous, very full of the element of contentment. And there is every reason to believe that the great-grandfather, the grandfather, the great-uncle, the son, were all as tranquil and contented and happy as well-to-do scholars in a prosperous university city should be. But not so the poet. His life was anything but tranquil, or happy, or contented. The lives of few men, it may be hoped, have been less so.

Yet his morning was brilliant enough. He distinguished himself so remarkably by his success in his early studies that, on the death of his great-uncle Alexander when he was only nineteen, he was appointed to succeed him. This was in 1556, when Hercules II. was Duke of Ferrara, and when that court of the Este princes was at the apogee of its splendour, renown, and magnificence. The young professor remained working at the proper labours of his profession for ten years; and they were in all probability the best and happiest, the only happy ones of his [Pg 87] life. Happy is the nation, it has been said, which has no history; and much the same probably may be said of an individual. Respecting these ten years of Guarini's life but little has been recorded. No doubt the chronicle of them would have been monotonous enough. The same quiet duties quietly and successfully discharged; the same morning walk to his school, the same evening return from it, through the same streets, with salutations to the same friends, and leisurely pauses by the way to chat, Italian fashion, with one and another, as they were met in the streets, not then, as now, deserted, grass-grown, and almost weird in their pale sun-baked desolation, but thronged with bustling citizens, mingled with gay courtiers, and a very unusually large proportion of men whose names were known from one end of Italy to the other. Those school haunts in the Ferrarese University were haunts which the world-weary ex-professor must often throughout the years of his remaining life—some forty-five of them, for he did not die till 1612, when he was seventy-five—have looked back on as the best and happiest of his storm-tossed existence.

There is, however, one record belonging to this happy time which must not be forgotten. It was at Padua, Padova la dotta , as she has been in all ages and is still called, Padua the learned, in the year 1565. Guarini was then in his twenty-eighth year, and had been a professor at Ferrara for the last eight years. Probably it was due to the circumstance that his friend and fellow-townsman, Torquato Tasso, was then pursuing his studies at Padua, that the young Ferrarese professor turned his steps in that direction, bound "on a long vacation ramble." Tasso was only one-and-twenty at the time; but he was already a member of the famous Paduan Academy of the "Etherials," which Guarini was not. And we may readily fancy the pride and pleasure with which the younger man, doing the honours of the place to his learned friend, procured him to be elected a member of the "Etherials." Guarini (so called nel secolo —in the world), was Il Costante —the "Constant One" among the "Etherials." Scipio Gonzaga, who became subsequently the famous Cardinal, spoke an oration of welcome to him on his election. Then what congratulations, what anticipations of fame, what loving protestations of eternal friendship, what naïve acceptance of the importance and serious value of their Etherial Academic play, as the two youths strolling at the evening hour among the crowds of gravely clad but in no wise gravely speaking students who thronged the colonnades in deep shadow under their low-browed arches, sally forth from beneath them as the sun nears the west, on to the vast open space which lies around the great church of St. Antony! Advancing in close talk they come up to Donatello's superb equestrian statue of the Venetian General Gattamelata, and lean awhile against the tall pedestal, finishing their chat before entering the church for the evening prayer.

The "Etherials" of Padua constituted one of the innumerable "Academies" which existed at that day and for a couple of centuries subsequently in every one of the hundred cities of Italy. The "Arcadian" [Pg 88] craze was the generating cause of all of them. All the members were "shepherds;" all assumed a fancy name on becoming a member, by which they were known in literary circles; and every Academy printed all the rhymes its members strung together!

Those must have been pleasant days in old Padua, before the young Professor returned to his work in the neighbouring university of Ferrara. The two young men were then, and for some time afterwards, loving friends; for they had not yet become rival poets.

At the end of those ten years of university life he may be said to have entered on a new existence—to have begun life afresh—so entirely dis-severed was his old life from the new that then opened on him. Alphonso II., who had succeeded his father, Hercules II., as Duke of Ferrara in 1559, "called him to the court" in 1567, and he began life as a courtier, or a "servant" of the Duke, in the language of the country and time.

Well, in 1567 he entered into the service of the Duke, his sovereign, and never had another happy or contented hour!

The first service on which the Duke employed him, and for the performance of which he seems specially to have taken him from his professional chair, was an embassy to Venice, to congratulate the new Doge, Pietro Loredano, on his elevation to the ducal throne, to which he had been elected on the previous 19th of June. On this occasion the Professor was created Cavaliere, a title to which his landed estate of Guarina, so called from the ancestor on whom it had been originally bestowed by a former duke, fairly entitled him.

Shortly afterwards he was sent as ambassador to the court of Turin; and then to that of the Emperor Maximilian at Innspruck. Then he was twice sent to Poland; the first time on the occasion of the election of Henry the Third of France to the throne of that kingdom; and the second time when Henry quitted it to ascend that of France on the death of his brother Charles IX. The object of this second embassy was to intrigue for the election to the Polish crown of Alphonso. But, as it is hardly necessary to say, his mission was unsuccessful.

It seems, too, to have been well-nigh fatal to the ambassador. There is extant a letter written from Warsaw to his wife, which gives a curious and interesting account of the sufferings he endured on the journey and at the place of his destination. He tells his wife not to be discontented that his silence has been so long, but to be thankful that it was not eternal, as it was very near being! "I started, as you know, more in the fashion of a courier than of an ambassador. And that would have been more tolerable if bodily fatigue had been all. But the same hand that had to flog the horses by day, had to hold the pen by night. Nature could not bear up against this double labour of body and mind; especially after I had travelled by Serravelles and Ampez, [48] which is more disagreeable and difficult than I can tell you, from the ruggedness no [Pg 89] less of the country than of the people, from the scarcity of horses, the miserable mode of living, and the want of every necessary. So much so that on reaching Hala [49] I had a violent fever. I embarked, however, for Vienna notwithstanding. What with fever, discouragement, an intense thirst, scarcity of remedies and of medical assistance, bad lodging, generally far to seek, [50] and often infected with disease, food disgusting, even to persons in health, bed where you are smothered in feathers, in a word, none of the necessaries or comforts of life! I leave you to imagine what I have suffered. The evil increased; my strength grew less. I lost my appetite for everything save wine. In a word, little hope remained to me of life, and that little was odious to me. There is on the Danube, which I was navigating, a vast whirlpool, so rapid that if the boatmen did not avail themselves of the assistance of a great number of men belonging to the locality, strong and powerful and well acquainted with the danger, who are there constantly for the purpose, and who struggle with their oars against the rapacious gulf, there is not a vessel in that great river which would not be engulfed! The place is worthy of the name of "the Door of Death," which with a notoriety of evil fame it has gained for itself. There is no passenger so bold as not to pass that bit of the course of the river on foot; for the thing is truly formidable and terrible. But I was so overcome by illness, that having lost all sense of danger or desire to live, I did not care to leave the boat, but remained in it, with those strong men, I hardly know whether to say stupidly or intrepidly—but I will say intrepidly, since at one point, where I was within an ace of destruction, I felt no fear."

He goes on to tell how at Vienna a physician treated him amiss, and made him worse; how every kind of consideration, and his own desire to save his life, counselled him to delay there; but how the honour, the responsibility of the embassy wholly on his shoulders, his duty to his sovereign prevailed to drive him onwards. He feared, too, lest it should be supposed at Warsaw that he preferred his life to the business on which he came, an accusation which might have been made use of by suspicious and malignant adversaries to deprive him of all the credit of his labours, and "to snatch from my Prince the crown which we are striving to place on his head. It is impossible to imagine," he continues, "what I suffered in that journey of more than six hundred miles from Vienna to Warsaw, dragged rather than carried in carts, broken and knocked to pieces. I wonder that I am still alive! The obstinate fever, the want of rest, of food, and of medicine, the excessive cold, the infinite hardships, the uninhabited deserts, were killing me. More often than not it was a much lesser evil to crouch by night in the cart, which dislocated my bones by day, rather than to be suffocated in the foulness of those dens, or stables rather, where the dogs and cats, the cocks and hens, and the geese, the pigs and the calves, and sometimes the children, kept me waiting." [Pg 90]

He proceeds to tell how the country was overrun, in that time of interregnum, by lawless bands of Cossacks; how he was obliged to travel with a strong escort, but nevertheless was obliged several times to deviate from the direct road to avoid the Cossacks, but on two occasions had very narrow escapes from falling into their hands. When he reached Warsaw at last, more dead than alive, the only improvement of his position was that he was stationary instead of in motion. "The cart no more lacerates my limbs!" But there was no rest to be got. "The place, the season, the food, the drink, the water, the servants, the medicines, the doctors, mental trouble, and a thousand other ills make up my torment. Figure to yourself all the kingdom lodged in one little town, and my room in the midst of it! There is no place from the top to the bottom, on the right or on the left, by day or by night, that is not full of tumult and noise. There is no special time here destined for business. Negotiation is going on always, because drinking is going on always; and business is dry work without wine. When business is over, visits begin; and when these are at an end, drums, trumpets, bombs, uproar, cries, quarrels, fighting, split one's head in a manner piteous to think of. Ah! if I suffered all this labour and this torment for the love and the glory of God, I should be a martyr!" (one thinks of Wolsey!) "But is he not worthy of the name who serves without hope of recompense?"

He concludes his letter, bidding his wife not to weep for him, but to live and care for her children, in a manner which indicates that he had even then but little hope of returning alive.

We are nevertheless assured by his biographers that he acquitted himself upon all these occasions in such sort as to give satisfaction to his sovereign and to acquire for himself the reputation of an upright and able minister. The Italian practice of entrusting embassies especially to men of letters, which we first had occasion to note when tracing the vicissitudes of the life of Dante in the thirteenth century, which we saw subsequently exemplified in the cases of Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto, and which might be further exemplified in the persons of many other Italian scholars and men of letters, still, as we see, prevailed in the sixteenth century, and continued to do so for some little time longer.

But in no one instance, of all those I have mentioned, does the poet thus employed in functions which in other lands and other times have usually led to honours and abundant recognition of a more solid kind, appear to have reaped any advantage in return for the service performed, or to have been otherwise than dissatisfied and discontented with the treatment accorded to him.

It would have been very interesting to learn somewhat of the impression made upon an Italian scholar of the sixteenth century by the places visited, and persons with whom he must have come in contact in those [Pg 91] transalpine lands, which were then so far off, so contrasted in all respects with the home scenes among which his life had been passed in the low-lying, fat, and fertile valley of the Po. Of all this his various biographers and contemporaries tell us no word! But there is a volume of his letters, a little square quarto volume, now somewhat rare, printed at Venice in the year 1595. [51] These letters have somewhat unaccountably not been included in any of the editions of his works, and they are but little known. But turning to this little volume, and looking over the dates of the letters (many of them, however, are undated), I found three written "Di Spruch," and eagerly turned to them, thinking that I should certainly find there what I was seeking. The letters belong to a later period of Guarini's life, having been written in 1592, when he was again sent on an embassy to the German Emperor. This circumstance, however, is of no importance as regards the purpose for which I wanted the letters. I was disappointed. But I must nevertheless give one of these letters, not wantonly to compel my reader to share my disappointment, but because it is a curiosity in its way. The person to whom he writes is a lady, the Contessa Pia di Sala, with whom he was evidently intimate. He is at Innspruck at the Court of the Emperor Maximilian. The lady is at Mantua, and this is what he writes to her:

[Pg 92]

Now, this letter I consider to be a very great curiosity! The other two written from the same place, one to a Signor Bulgarini at Siena, the other to a lady, the Marchesa di Grana, at Mantua, are of an entirely similar description. I turned to them in the hope of finding how Innspruck, its stupendous scenery, its court, its manners so widely different from those to which the writer and his correspondents were used, its streets, its people, impressed a sixteenth century Italian from the valley of the Po. I find instead a psychological phenomenon! The writer is a grave, austere man (Guarini was notably such), celebrated throughout Italy for his intellectual attainments, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, with a wife and family; he is amidst scenes which must, one would have thought, have impressed in the very highest degree the imagination of a poet, and must, it might have been supposed, have interested those he was writing to in an only somewhat less degree, and he writes the stuff the reader has just waded through. It is clear that this Italian sixteenth century scholar, poet and of cultivated intellect as he was, saw nothing amid the strange scenes to which a hard and irksome duty called him, which he thought worthy of being mentioned even by a passing word to his friends! Surely this is a curious trait of national character.

He remained in the service of the court for fourteen years, employed mainly, as it should seem, in a variety of embassies; an employment which seems to have left him a disappointed, soured, and embittered man. He considered that he had not been remunerated as his labour deserved, that the heavy expenses to which he had been put in his long journeys had not been satisfactorily made up to him, and that he had not been treated in any of the foreign countries to which his embassies had carried him with the respect due to his own character and to his office.

He determined therefore to leave the court and retire to Padua, a residence in which city, it being not far distant from his estate of Guarina, would offer him, he thought, a convenient opportunity of overlooking his property and restoring order to his finances, which had suffered much during his travels. This was in the year 1582, when Guarini was in the forty-fifth year of his age. It is not clear, however, that this retirement was wholly spontaneous; and the probability is that the Duke and his ambassador were equally out of humour with each other. And it is probable that the faults were not all on the side of the Duke. There is sufficient evidence that the author of the "Pastor Fido" must have been a difficult man to live with.

The old friendship of happier days with Tasso had not survived the wear and tear of life at court. It was known that they no longer saw or spoke with each other. And everybody—if not of their contemporaries, at least of subsequent writers—jumped to the conclusion [Pg 93] that the writer of the "Aminta" and the writer of the "Pastor Fido" must be jealous of each other. Jealousy there certainly was. But some frailer and more mortal female than the Muse was the cause of it. The Abate Serassi in his life of Tasso admits that Tasso first gave offence to Guarini by a sonnet in which he endeavoured to alienate the affections of a lady from him, by representing him as a faithless and fickle lover. The lines in which Tasso attacked his brother poet are, it must be admitted, sharp enough!

The attack was savage enough, it must be admitted, and well calculated to leave a lasting wound. Guarini immediately answered the cruel sonnet by another, the comparative weakness of which is undeniable.

There is reason to think that the accusation of many times binding and loosing the same knot, may have hit home. The sneer about bending the gods to favour him, alludes to Tasso's favour at court, then in the ascendant, and may well have been as offensive to the Duke and the ladies of his court as to the object of his satire. Both angry poets show themselves somewhat earth-stained members of the Paduan "Etherials." But the sequel of the estrangement was all in favour of the greater bard. Tasso, in desiring a friend to show his poems in manuscript to certain friends, two or three in number, on whose opinion he set a high value, named Guarini among the number. And upon another occasion wishing to have Guarini's opinion as to the best of two proposed, methods of terminating a sonnet, and not venturing to communicate directly with him, he employed a common friend to obtain [Pg 94] his brother-poet's criticism. Tasso had also in his dialogue entitled the "Messagero" given public testimony to Guarini's high intellectual and civil merits. But Guarini appears never to have forgiven the offence. He never once went to see Tasso in his miserable confinement in the hospital of St. Anne; nor, as has been seen, would hold any communication with him.

He must have been a stern and unforgiving man. And indeed all the available testimony represents him as having been so,—upright, honest, and honourable, but haughty, punctilious, litigious, quick to take offence, slow to forget or forgive it, and cursed with a thin-skinned amour propre easily wounded and propense to credit others with the intention of wounding where no such intention existed. The remainder of the story of his life offers an almost unbroken series of testimonies to the truth of such an estimate of his character.

It was after fourteen years' service in the court of Duke Alphonso, as has been said, that he retired disgusted and weary to live in independence and nurse his estate in the neighbourhood of Padua. But the part of Cincinnatus is not for every man! It was in 1582 that he retired from the court intending to bid it and its splendours, its disappointments and its jealousies, an eternal adieu. In 1585, on an offer from the Duke to make him his secretary, he returned and put himself into harness again!

But this second attempt to submit himself to the service, to the caprices and exigencies of a master and of a court ended in a quicker and more damaging catastrophe than the first. In a diary kept by the poet's nephew, Marcantonio Guarini, under the date of July 13, 1587, we find it written that "the Cavalier Batista Guarini, Secretary of the Duke, considering that his services did not meet with sufficient consideration in proportion to his worth, released himself from that servitude." The phrase here translated "released himself" is a peculiar one— si licenzio —"dismissed himself." To receive licenza , or to be licenziato , is to be dismissed, or at least parted with in accordance with the will of the employer. But the phrase used by the diarist seems intended to express exactly what happened when the poet, once more discontented, took himself off from Ferrara and its Duke. He seems to have done so in a manner which gave deep and lasting offence. In a subsequent passage of the above-quoted diary we read, "the Cavaliere Batista Guarini having absented himself from Ferrara, disgusted with the Duke, betook himself to Florence, and then, by the intermedium of Guido Coccapani the agent, asked for his dismissal in form and obtained it." We happen, however, to have a letter written by this Coccapani, who seems to have been the Duke's private secretary and managing man, in which he gives his version of the matter. He was "stupefied," he says, "when he received the extravagant letter of the Cavaliere Guarini, and began to think that it would be with him as it had been with Tasso," who by that time had fallen into disgrace. There is reason to think that he left Ferrara secretly, without taking leave of the Duke, or letting anybody [Pg 95] at court know where he had gone. He did, however, obtain his formal dismissal, as has been said, but the Duke by no means forgave him.

Though it would appear that on leaving Ferrara in this irregular manner he went in the first instance to Florence, it seems that he had had hopes given him of a comfortable position and honourable provision at Turin. He was to have been made a Counsellor of State, and entrusted with the task of remodelling the course of study at the university, with a stipend of six hundred crowns annually. But on arriving at Turin he found difficulties in the way. In fact, the angry Duke of Ferrara had used his influence with the Duke of Savoy to prevent anything being done for his contumacious Secretary of State. Guarini, extremely mortified, had to leave Turin, and betook himself to Venice.

His adventure, however, was of a nature to cause great scandal in that clime and time. As usual, the Italians were offended at the "imprudence" of which Guarini's temper had led him to be guilty, more than they would have been by many a fault which among ourselves would be deemed a very much worse one. A violence of temper or indignation shown in such a manner as to injure one's own interests is, and in a yet greater degree was, a spectacle extremely disgusting to Italian moral sentiment.

The outcry against Guarini on this occasion was so great that he found himself obliged to put forth an exculpatory statement.

"If human actions, my most kind readers," he begins, "always bore marked on the front of them the aims and motives which have produced them, or if those who talk about them were always well informed enough to be able to judge of them without injury to the persons of whom they speak, I should not be compelled, at my age, and after so many years of a life led in the eyes of the world, and often busied in defending the honour of others, to defend this day my own, which has always been dearer to me than my life. Having heard, then, that my having left the service of His Serene Highness the Duke of Ferrara and entered that of the Duke of Savoy has given occasion to some persons, ignorant probably of the real state of the case, to make various remarks, and form various opinions, I have determined to publish the truth, and at the same time to declare my own sentiments in the matter.

"I declare, then, that previously to my said departure I consigned to the proper person everything, small as it was, which was in my hands regarding my office, which had always been exercised by me uprightly and without any other object in view than the service of my sovereign and the public welfare. Further, that I, by a written paper under my own hand (as the press of time and my need rendered necessary), requested a free and decorous dismissal from the Duke in question, and also, that I set forth in all humility the causes which led me to that determination; and I added (some of the circumstances in which I was compelling me to do so) that if His Serene Highness did not please to give me any other answer, I would take his silence as a consent to my request of dismissal. I declare further that the paper was delivered to [Pg 96] the principal Minister of his Serene Highness, and lastly, that my salary was, without any further communication with me, stopped, and cancelled from the roll of payments. And as this is the truth, so it is equally true that my appointment as reformer of the University of Turin, and Counsellor of State with six hundred crowns yearly, was settled and concluded with His Serene Highness the Duke of Savoy, and that I declined to bind myself, and did not bind myself, to ask any other dismissal from His Serene Highness the Duke of Ferrara than that which I have already spoken. And, finally, it is true that, as I should not have gone to Turin if I had not been engaged for that service and invited thither, so I should not have left, or wished to leave this place, [55] had I not known that I received my dismissal in the manner above related. Now, as to the cause which may have retarded and may still retard the fulfillment of the engagement above mentioned, I have neither object, nor obligation, nor need to declare it. Suffice it that it is not retarded by any fault of mine, or difficulty on my side. In justification of which I offered myself, and by these presents now again offer myself, to present myself wheresoever, whensoever, and in whatsoever manner, and under whatsoever conditions and penalties, as may be seen more clearly set forth in the instrument of agreement sent by me to His Highness. From all which, I would have the world to know, while these affairs of mine are still in suspension, that I am a man of honour, and am always ready to maintain the same in whatsoever manner may be fitting to my condition and duty. And as I do not at all doubt that some decision of some kind not unworthy of so just and so magnanimous a prince will be forthcoming; so, let it be what it may, it will be received by me with composure and contentment; since, by God's grace, and that of the serene and exalted power under the most just and happy dominion of which I am now living, and whose subject, if not by birth, yet by origin and family, I am, [56] I have a comfortable and honoured existence. And may you, my honoured readers, live in happiness and contentment. Venice, February 1, 1589."

We must, I think, nevertheless be permitted to doubt the contentment and happiness of the life he led, as it should seem, for the next four years, at Venice. No such decision of any kind, as he hoped from the Duke of Savoy, was forthcoming. He was shunted! He had quarrelled with his own sovereign, and evidently the other would have none of him. The Italians of one city were in those days to a wonderful degree foreigners in another ruled by a different government; and there can be little doubt that Guarini wandered among the quays and "calle" of Venice, or paced the great piazza at the evening hour, a moody and discontented man! [Pg 97]

At last, after nearly four years of this sad life, there came an invitation from the Duke of Mantua proposing that Guarini should come to Mantua together with his son Alessandro, to occupy honourable positions in that court. The poet, heartily sick of "retirement," accepted at once, and went to Mantua. But there, too, another disappointment awaited him. The "magnanimous" Duke Alphonso would not tolerate that the man who had so cavalierly left his service should find employment elsewhere. It is probable that this position was obtained for him by the influence of his old friend and fellow-member of the "Etherials" at Padua, Scipione Gonzaga; and it would seem that he occupied it for a while, and went on behalf of the Duke of Mantua to Innspruck, whence he wrote the wonderful letters which have been quoted.

The Cardinal's influence, however, was not strong enough to prevail against the spite of a neighbouring sovereign. There are two letters extant from the Duke, or his private secretary, to that same Coccapani whom we saw so scandalized at Guarini's hurried and informal departure from Ferrara, and who was residing as Alphonso's representative at Mantua, in which the Minister is instructed to represent to the Duke of Mantua that his brother of Ferrara "did not think it well that the former should take any of the Guarini family into his service, and when they should see each other he would tell him his reasons. For the present he would only say that he wished the Duke to know that it would be excessively pleasing to him if the Duke would have nothing to say to any of them."

This was in 1593; and the world-weary poet found himself at fifty-six once again cast adrift upon the world. The extremity of his disgust and weariness of all things may be measured by the nature of the next step he took. He conceived, says his biographer Barotti, that "God called him by internal voices, and by promise of a more tranquil life, to accept the tonsure." His wife had died some little time before; and it was therefore open to him to do so. He went to Rome accordingly for the purpose of there taking orders. But during the short delay which intervened between the manifestation of his purpose and the fulfilment of it, news reached him that his friend and protectress the Duchess of Urbino, Alphonso's sister, had interceded for him with the Duke, and that he was forgiven! It was open to him to return to his former employment! And no sooner did the news reach him than he perceived that "the internal voices" were altogether a mistake. God had never called him at all, and Alphonso had! All thoughts of the Church were abandoned on the instant, and he hastened to Ferrara, arriving there on the 15th of April, 1595.

But neither on this occasion was he destined to find the tranquillity which he seemed fated never to attain! And this time the break-up was a greater and more final one than the last. Duke Alphonso died in 1597; and the Pontificial Court, which had long had its eye on the possibility of enforcing certain pretended claims to the Duchy of Ferrara, found the means at Alphonso's death of ousting his successor the Duke [Pg 98] Cesare, who remained thenceforward Duke of Modena only, but no longer of Ferrara.

Guarini was once more adrift! Nor were the political changes in Ferrara the only thing which rendered the place no longer a home for him. Other misfortunes combined to render a residence in the city odious to him. His daughter Anna had married a noble gentleman of Ferrara, the Count Ercole Trotti, by whom she was on the 3rd of May, 1598, murdered at his villa of Zanzalino near Ferrara. Some attempt was made to assert that the husband had reason to suspect that his wife was plotting against his life. But there seems to have been no foundation for any accusation of the sort; and the crime was prompted probably by jealousy. Guarini, always on bad terms with his sons, and constantly involved in litigation with them, as he had been with his father, was exceedingly attached to this unfortunate daughter.

But even this terrible loss was not the only bitterness which resulted from this crime. Guarini composed a long Latin epitaph, in which he strongly affirms her absolute innocence of everything that had been laid to her charge, and speaks with reprobation of the husband's [57] crime. But scarcely had the stone bearing the inscription been erected than the indignant father was required by the authorities of the city to remove it. A declaration, which he published on the subject, dated June 15, 1598, is still extant. "On that day," he writes, "the Vice-legate of Ferrara spoke with me, in the name of the Holy Father, as to the removing of the epitaph written by me on Anna my daughter in the church of Sta. Catherina. He said that there were things in it that might provoke other persons to resentment, and occasion much scandal; and that, besides that, there were in the inscription words of Sacred Scripture, which ought not to be used in such a place. I defended my cause, and transmitted a memorial to his Holiness, having good reason to know that these objections were the mere malignity of those who favour the opposite party, and of those who caused the death of my innocent child. But at last, on the 22nd, I caused the epitaph to be removed, intimating that it was my intention to take up the body, and inter it elsewhere. On which it is worthy of remark, that having made my demand to that effect, I was forbidden to do so." He further adds: "Note! news was brought to me here that my son Girolamo, who was evidently discovered to be the accomplice, and principal atrocious author of the death of his sister Anna, received from the Potesta of Rovigo licence to come into the Polisina with twelve men armed with arquebuses."

All this is very sad; and whether these terrible suspicions may or may not have had any foundation other than the envenomed temper generated by the family litigations, it must equally have had the effect of making the life of Guarini a very miserable one, and contributing to his determination to abandon finally his native city. [Pg 99]

More surprising is it that, after so many disgusts and disappointments, he should once again have been tempted to seek, what he had never yet been able to find there, in a court. In a letter written in November, 1598, he informs the Duke Cesare (Duke of Modena, though no longer of Ferrara) that the Grand Duke of Florence had offered him a position at Florence. And his Serene Highness, more kindly and forgiving than the late Duke, wrote him an obliging and congratulatory letter in the following month.

At Florence everything at first seemed to be going well with him, and he seemed to stand high in favour with the Grand Duke Ferdinand. But very shortly he quitted Florence in anger and disgust on the discovery of the secret marriage of his third son, Guarini, with a woman of low condition at Pisa, with at least the connivance, as the poet thought, whether justly or not there is nothing to show, of the Grand Duke.

After that his old friend the Duchess of Urbino once again stood his friend, and he obtained a position in the court of Urbino, then one of the most widely famed centres of cultivation and letters in Italy. And for a while everything seemed at last to be well with him there. On the 23rd of February, 1603, he writes to his sister, who apparently had been pressing him to come home to Ferrara:—"I should like to come home, my sister. I have great need and a great desire for home; but I am treated so well here, and with so much distinction and so much kindness, that I cannot come. I must tell you that all expenses for myself and my servants are supplied, so that I have not to spend a farthing for anything in the world that I need. The orders are that anything I ask for should be furnished to me. Besides all which, they give me three hundred crowns a year; so that, what with money and expenses, the position is worth six hundred crowns a year to me. You may judge, then, if I can throw it up. May God grant you every happiness!

Your brother,
B. Guarini ."

But all would not do. He had been but a very little time in this little Umbrian Athens among the Apennines before he once again threw up his position in anger and disgust, because he did not obtain all the marks of distinction to which he thought that he was entitled. This was in 1603. He was now sixty-six, and seems at length to have made no further attempt to haunt at court. Once again he was at Rome in 1605, having undertaken, at the request of the citizens of Ferrara, to carry their felicitations to the new Pope, Paul the Fifth. And with the exception of that short expedition his last years were spent in the retirement of his ancestral estate of Guarina.

The property is situated in the district of Lendinara, on the fat and fertile low-lying region between Rovigo and Padua, and belongs to the commune—parish, as we should say—of St. Bellino. The house, dating probably from the latter part of the fifteenth century, is not much more [Pg 100] than a hundred yards or so from the piazza of the village, which boasts two thousand inhabitants. The road between the two is bordered with trees. The whole district is as flat as a billiard table, and as prosaical in its well-to-do fertility as can be imagined. It is intersected by a variety of streams, natural and artificial. About a couple of miles from the house to the south is the Canalbianco; and a little farther to the north the Adigetto. To the east runs the Scortico. St. Bellino, from whom the village is named, was, it seems, enrolled among the martyrs by Pope Eugenius the Third in 1152. He has a great specialty for curing the bite of mad dogs. There is a grand cenotaph in his honour in the village church, which was raised by some of the Guarini family. But this, too, like all else, became a subject of trouble and litigation to our poet. A certain Baldassare Bonifaccio of Rovigo wanted to transport the saint to that city. Guarini would not hear of this; litigated the matter before the tribunals of Venice, and prevailed. So the saint still resides at St. Bellino to the comfort of all those bitten by mad dogs in those parts. The house and estate have passed through several hands since that time; but a number of old family portraits may still be seen on the walls, together with the family arms, and the motto, "Fortis est in asperis non turbari." The armchair and writing table of the poet are also still preserved in the house, and a fig-tree is pointed out close by it, under the shade of which the poet, as tradition tells, wrote on that table and in that chair his "Pastor Fido." There is an inscription on the chair as follows: "Guarin sedendo qui canto, che vale al paragon seggio reale." [58]

It was not, however, during this his last residence here that the "Pastor Fido" was written, but long previously. It was doubtless his habit to escape from the cares of official life in Ferrara from time to time as he could; and it must have been in such moments that the celebrated pastoral was written. [59]

The idea of a scholar and a poet, full of years and honours, passing the quiet evening of his life in a tranquil retirement in his own house on his own land, is a pleasing one. But it is to be feared that in the case of the author of the "Pastor Fido" it would be a fallacious one. Guarini would not have come to live on his estate if he could have lived contentedly in any city. We may picture him to ourselves sitting under his fig-tree, or pacing at evening under the trees of the straight avenue between his house and the village, or on the banks of one of the sluggish streams slowly finding their way through the flat fields towards the Po; but I am afraid the picture must be of one "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," with eyes bent earthwards, and discontented mind: "remote," because to the Italian mind all places beyond the easy reach of a city are so; "unfriended," because he had quarrelled with everybody; "melancholy," because all had gone amiss with him, and his life had been a failure; "slow," because no spring of hope in the mind gave any elasticity to his step. [Pg 101]

One other "haunt" of the aged poet must, however, be mentioned, because it is a very characteristic one. During this last residence at Guarina, he hired an apartment at Ferrara, selecting it in a crowded part of the centre of the city, especially frequented by the lawyers, that he might be in the midst of them, when he went into the city on the various business connected with his interminable lawsuits. The most crowded part of the heart of the city of Ferrara! It would be difficult to find any such part now. But the picture offered to the imagination, of the aged poet, professor, courtier, haunting the courts, the lawyers' chambers, leaving his, at least, tranquil retreat at St. Bellino, to drag weary feet through the lanes of the city in which he had in earlier days played so different a part, is a sad one. But there are people who like contention so much that such work is a labour of love to them. And certainly, if the inference may be drawn from the fact of his never having been free from lawsuits in one quarrel or another, Guarini must have been one of these. But it is passing strange that the same man should have been the author of the "Pastor Fido."

They pursued him to the end, these litigations; or he pursued them! And at last he died, not at Guarina, but at Venice, on the 7th of October, 1612, where, characteristically enough, he chanced to be on business connected with some lawsuit.

And now a few words must be said about his great work, the "Pastor Fido." It is one of the strangest things in the range of literary history that such a man should have written such a poem. He was, one would have said, the last man in the world to produce such a work. The first ten years of his working life were spent in the labour of a pedagogue; the rest of it in the inexpressibly dry, frivolous, and ungenial routine of a small Italian court, or in wandering from one to the other of them in the vain and always disappointed search for such employment. We are told that he was a punctilious, stiff, unbending, angular man; upright and honourable, but unforgiving and wont to nurse his enmities. He was soured, disappointed, discontented with everybody and everything, involved in litigation first with his father, and then with his own children. And this was the man who wrote the "Pastor Fido," of all poems comparable to it in reputation the lightest, the airiest, and the most fantastic! The argument of it is as follows:

The Arcadians, suffering in various ways from the anger of Diana, were at last informed by the oracle that the evils which afflicted them would cease when a youth and a maiden, both descended from the Immortals, as it should seem the creme de la creme of Arcadian society mostly was, should be joined together in faithful love. Thereupon [Pg 102] Montano, a priest of the goddess who was descended from Hercules, arranged that his only son Silvio should be betrothed to Amaryllis, the only daughter of Tytirus, who was descended from Pan. The arrangement seemed all that could be desired, only that a difficulty arose from the fact that Silvio, whose sole passion was the chase, could not be brought to care the least in the world for Amaryllis. Meantime Mirtillo, the son, as was supposed, of the shepherd Carino, fell desperately in love with Amaryllis. She was equally attached to him, but dared not in the smallest degree confess her love, because the law of Arcadia would have punished with death her infidelity to her betrothed vows. A certain Corisca, however, who had conceived a violent but unrequited passion for Mirtillo, perceiving or guessing the love of Amaryllis for him, hating her accordingly, and hoping that, if she could be got out of the way, she might win Mirtillo's love, schemes by deceit and lies to induce Mirtillo and Amaryllis to enter together a cave, which they do in perfect innocence, and without any thought of harm. Then he contrives that they should be caught there, and denounced by a satyr; and Amaryllis is condemned to die. The law, however, permits that her life may be saved by any Arcadian who will voluntarily die in her stead; and this Mirtillo determines to do, although he believes that Amaryllis cares nothing for him, and also is led by the false Corisca to believe that she had gone into the cave for the purpose of meeting with another lover. The duty of sacrificing him devolves on Montano the priest; and he is about to carry out the law, when Carino, who has been seeking his reputed son Mirtillo, comes in, and while attempting to make out that he is a foreigner, and therefore not capable of satisfying the law by his death, brings unwittingly to light circumstances that prove that he is in truth a son of Montano, and therefore a descendant of the god Hercules. It thus appears that a marriage between Mirtillo and Amaryllis will exactly satisfy the conditions demanded by the oracle. There is an under-plot, which consists in providing a lover and a marriage for the woman-hater Silvio. He is loved in vain by the nymph Dorinda, whom he unintentionally wounds with an arrow while out hunting. The pity he feels for her wound softens his heart towards her, and all parties are made happy by this second marriage.

Such is a skeleton of the story of the "Pastor Fido." It will be observed that there is more approach to a plot and to human interest than in any previous production of this kind, and some of the situations are well conceived for dramatic effect. And accordingly the success which it achieved was immediate and immense. Nor, much as the taste of the world has been changed since that day, has it ever lost its place in the estimation of cultivated Italians.

It would be wholly uninteresting to attempt any account of the wide-spreading literary controversies to which the publication of the "Pastor Fido" gave rise. The author terms it a tragi-comedy; and this title was violently attacked. The poet himself, as may well be imagined from the idiosyncrasy of the man, was not slow to reply to his critics, [Pg 103] and did so in two lengthy treatises entitled from the name of a contemporary celebrated actor, "Verato primo," and "Verato secondo," which are printed in the four-quarto-volume edition of his works, but which probably no mortal eye has read for the last two hundred years!

The question of the rivalry between the "Aminta" of Tasso and the "Pastor Fido" has an element of greater interest in it. It is certain that the former preceded the latter, and doubtless suggested it. It seems probable that Ginguené is right in his suggestion, that Guarini, fully conscious that no hope was open to him of rivalling his greater contemporary and townsman in epic poetry, strove to surpass him in pastoral. It must be admitted that he has at least equalled him. Yet, while it is impossible to deny that almost every page of the "Pastor Fido" indicates not so much plagiarism as an open and avowed purpose of doing the same thing better, if possible, than his rival has done it, the very diverse natural character of the two poets is also, at every page, curiously indicated. Specially the reader may be recommended to compare the passages in the two poems where Tasso under the name of Thyrsis, and Guarini under the name of Carino (Act 5, scene 1), represent the sufferings both underwent at the court of Alphonso II. The lines of Guarini are perhaps the most vigorous in their biting satire. But the gentler and nobler nature of Tasso is unmistakable.

It is strange that the Italian critics, who are for the most part so lenient to the licentiousness of most of the authors of this period, blame Guarini for the too great warmth, amounting to indecency, of his poem. The writer of his life in the French "Biographie Universelle" refers to certain scenes as highly indecent. I can only say that, on examining the passages indicated carefully, I could find no indecency at all. It is probable that the writer referred to had never read the pages in question. But it is odd that those whose criticism he is no doubt reflecting should have said so. No doubt there are passages, not those mentioned by the writer in the "Biographie," but for instance the first scene of the second act, when a young man in a female disguise is one among a party of girls, who propose a prize for her who can give to one of them, the judge, the sweetest kiss, which prize he wins, which might be deemed somewhat on the sunny side of the hedge that divides the permissible from the unpermissible. But in comparison with others of that age Guarini is pure as snow.

It has been said in speaking of the sad story of his daughter Anna, that she was accused of having given her husband cause for jealousy. It would seem very clear that there was no ground for any such accusation. But it was said that the misconduct on her part had been due to the corruption of her mind by the reading of her father's verses. The utter groundlessness of such an assertion might be shown in many ways. But the savage and malignant cruelty of it points with considerable evidence to the sources of the current talk about the courtier poet's licentiousness. [Pg 104]

It is impossible to find room here for a detailed comparison between these two celebrated pastorals; and it is the less needed inasmuch as Ginguené has done it very completely and at great length in the twenty-fifth chapter of the second part of his work.

Guarini also produced a comedy, the "Idropica," which was acted with much success at the court of Mantua, and is printed among his works, as well as some prose pieces of small importance, the principal of which is "Il Secretario," a treatise on the duties of a secretary, not printed among his works, but of which an edition exists in pot quarto (186 pages) printed at Venice in 1594. Neither have his letters been printed among his works. They exist, printed without index or order of any kind, in a volume of the same size as the "Secretario," printed at Venice also in 1595, but by a different printer.

The name, however, of Batista Guarini would have long since been forgotten, had he not written the "Pastor Fido."

T. Adolphus Trollope , in Belgravia.

THE VAQUERO. [60]

Frank Desprez , in Temple Bar .

TWO MODERN JAPANESE STORIES.

The two stories which follow were circulated in the city of Yedo some years back, and show that the better educated classes of Japanese are keenly alive to the absurdity of the figure cut by their countrymen when they attempt to jump over five hundred years in five hundred days.

I. A REGULAR MESS.

Some six years back lived in the beautiful village of Minoge an old lady who kept the big tea-house of the place known as the "White Pine." Minoge is situated at the base of the holy mountain Oyama, and during the months of August and September trade in Minoge was always brisk, on account of the influx of pilgrims from all parts of Japan, who came hither to perform the holy duty of ascending the mountain, and of paying their devoirs at the shrine of the Thunder-God, previous to making the grand pilgrimage of Fuji-Yama.

The old lady was well off, and her inn bore an unblemished reputation for possessing the prettiest serving-girls, the gayest guest-chambers, and the primest stewed eels—the dish par excellence of Japanese gourmets —of any hostelry in the country side. One of her daughters was married in Yedo, and a son was studying in one of the European colleges of that city; still she was as completely rustic and unacquainted with the march of affairs outside as if she had never heard of Yedo, much less of foreigners. At that time it was a very rare thing indeed for a foreigner to be seen in Minoge, and the stray artists and explorers who had wandered there were regarded much in the same way as would have been so many white elephants. [Pg 106]

It caused, therefore, no little excitement in the village when, one fine autumn evening, the rumour came along that a foreigner was making his way towards the "White Pine." Every one tried to get a glimpse of him. The chubby-cheeked boys and girls at the school threw down their books and pens, and crowded to the door and windows; the bath-house was soon empty of its patrons and patronesses, who, red as lobsters with boiling water, with dishevelled locks and garments hastily bound round them, formed line outside; the very Yakunin, or mayor, sentenced a prisoner he was judging straight off, without bothering himself to inquire into evidence, so as not to be balked of the sight, and every wine and barber's shop sent forth its quota of starers into the little street.

Meanwhile the foreigner was leisurely striding along. He was taller by far than the tallest man in Minoge, his hair was fair, and even his bronzed face and hands were fair compared to those of the natives. On the back of his head was a felt wide-awake, he wore a blue jacket and blue half trousers (Anglicè, knickerbockers), thick hose, and big boots. In his mouth was a pipe—being much shorter than Japanese smoking tubes—in his hand a stick, and on his back a satchel.

As he passed, one or two urchins, bolder than the rest, shouted out, "Tojin baka" ("Foreign beast") and instantly fled indoors, or behind their mothers' skirts; but the majority of the villagers simply stared, with an occasional interjection expressive of wonder at his height, fair hair, and costume.

At the door of the "White Pine" he halted, unstrapped his bundle, took off his boots, and in very fair Japanese requested to be shown his room. The old lady, after a full ten minutes' posturing, complimenting, bowing, and scraping, ushered him into her best guest-chamber. "For," said she, "being a foreigner, he must be rich, and wouldn't like ordinary pilgrim accommodation." And she drew to the sliding screens, and went off to superintend his repast. Although nothing but the foreigner's boots were to be seen outside, a gaping crowd had collected, striving to peer through the cracks in the doors, and regarding the boots as if they were infernal machines. One, more enterprising than the rest, took a boot up, passed it to his neighbour, and in a short time it had circulated from hand to hand throughout the population of Minoge, and was even felt and pinched by the mayor himself, who replaced it with the reverence due to some religious emblem or relic.

Then the hostess served up her banquet—seaweed, sweets, raw "tighe"—the salmon of Japan—in slices, garnished with turnips and horse-radish, egg soup with pork lumps floating in it, chicken delicately broiled, together with a steaming bottle of her choicest "San Toku Shiu," or wine of the Three Virtues (which keeps out the cold, appeases hunger, and induces sleep).

The foreigner made an excellent meal, eked out by his own white bread, and wine from a flask of pure silver, then, lighting his pipe, reclined at full length on the mats, talking to the old lady [Pg 107] and her three damsels, O Hana, O Kiku, and O Riu (Miss Flower, Miss Chrysanthemum, and Miss Dragon). He was walking about the country simply for pleasure, he said—which astonished the women greatly—he had been away from Yokohama three weeks, and was now on his road to the big mountain. The party were soon screaming with laughter at his quaint remarks and at his occasional colloquial slips, and in a short time all were such good friends that the old lady begged him to display the contents of his satchel. "Certainly," said the stranger, pulling it towards him and opening it. A dirty flannel shirt or two didn't produce much impression—perhaps wares of a similar nature had been imported before into Minoge—nor did a hair-brush, tooth-brush, and comb; but when he pulled out a pistol, which was warranted to go off six times in as many seconds, and proceeded to exemplify the same in the air, popular excitement began to assert itself in a series of "naruhodo's" ("really!"). Then he pulled out a portable kerosine lamp—(kerosine lamps are now as common in Japan as shrines by the road-side)—and the light it made, throwing entirely into the shade the native "andon," or oil wick, burning close by, raised the enthusiasm still higher. Lastly he showed a small box of medicines, "certain cures," said he, "for every disease known amongst the sons of men."

The old lady and the maids were enchanted, and matters ended, after much haggling and disputation, in the foreigner allowing them to keep the three articles for the very reasonable sum of fifty dollars—about fifteen pounds sterling—which was handed over to the foreigner, who called for his bedding and went fast asleep.

The first thing for the old lady to do the next day was to present herself and maids in full holiday costume with their recent purchases at the house of the mayor. The great man received them and their goods with the dignity befitting his rank, and promised that a public trial should be made of the pistol, lamp, and medicines, at an early date, in order to determine whether they were worthy to be adopted as institutions in the village.

Accordingly, by proclamation, at a fixed date and hour, all Minoge assembled in the open space facing the mayor's house, and the articles were brought forth. The pistol was first taken and loaded, as directed by the foreigner, by the boldest and strongest man in the village. The first shot was fired—it wounded a pack-horse, standing some twenty yards away, in the leg; he took fright and bolted with a heavy load of wine tubs down the street into the fields: the second shot went through a temple roof opposite, and shattered the head of the deity in the shrine: the third shot perforated the bamboo hat of a pilgrim; and it was decided not to test the remaining three barrels.

Then the lamp was brought forth: the wick was turned up full, and the village strong man applied a light. The blaze of light was glorious, and drew forth the acclamations of the crowd; but the wick had been turned up too high, the glass burst with a tremendous report, the [Pg 108] strong man dropped the lamp, the oil ignited, ran about and set fire to the matting. In ten minutes, however, the local fire brigade got the flames under, and the experiments proceeded.

The medicine packets were brought forth. The first was a grey powder. A man who had been lame from youth upwards was made to limp out. The powder mixed with water, according to directions, was given him. He hobbled away in frightful convulsions, and nearly injured his whole limb in so doing.

The second packet was then unsealed—it contained pills. A blind man was called out—six pills were rammed down his throat, and he was left wallowing in a ditch. The third packet, a small book containing sticking plaster, was then introduced. A burly peasant, victim to fearful toothache, was made to stand forth. The interior of his mouth was lined with the plaster, and when he attempted in his disgust to pull it off, away came his skin also.

The medicines were condemned nem. con.

The foreigner returned, asked how matters had gone, and was told in polite but firm terms that his machines were not suited to the people of Minoge. Whereupon he returned the fifty dollars to the old lady of the "White Pine," and went away laughing. Minoge subsided into its ordinary every-day groove of life, and it was not till some years after that the inhabitants became better used to pistols, lamps, and European medicines.

II. PADDLING HIS OWN CANOE.

Takezawa was the head of a large silk and rice house in Yedo. His father had been head, his grandfather had been head, his great-grandfather had been head: in fact, the date when the first of the name affixed his seal to the documents of the house was lost in the mists of antiquity. So, when foreigners were first allowed a foot-hold on the sacred soil of Japan, none were so jealous of their advance, none so ardent in their wishes to see the white barbarians ousted, as the members of the firm of Takezawa and Co.

But times changed. Up to the last, Takezawa held out against the introduction of foreign innovations in the mode and manner of conducting the affairs of the firm; other houses might employ foreign steamboat companies as carriers for their produce from port to port, might import foreign goods, and even go so far as to allow the better paid of their clerks to dress themselves as they liked in foreign costume; but Takezawa and Co. were patriotic Japanese merchants, and resolved to run on in the old groove of their ancestors.

But times still changed, and the great house, running on in its solid old-fashioned manner, found itself left in the lurch by younger and more enterprising firms. This would never do. So Takezawa consulted with his partners, patrons, clients, and friends, and after much worthy discussion, and much vehement opposition on the part of the old man, it was resolved to keep pace with the times, as much as possible, without absolutely overturning the old status of the house. [Pg 109]

Well, Takezawa and Co. had still a very fair share of the export rice and silk business; but their slow, heavy-sterned junks were no match for the swift, foreign-built steamers employed by other firms; so, with a tremendous wince, and not without a side thought at "Hara Kiri"—(the "Happy Despatch")—Takezawa consented to the sale of all his junks, and the purchase with the proceeds of a big foreign steamer.

The steamer was bought—a fine three-masted, double-funnelled boat, complete with every appliance, newly engined, and manned by European officers and leading seamen. From the dock at Yokoska, where she was lying, a preliminary trip was made; and so smoothly did everything work, and so easily did everything seem to act, under the guidance of the Europeans, that Takezawa considered his own mariners perfectly competent to handle the vessel after an hour's experience on board. So the Europeans were discharged with six months' salaries—about six times as much as they would have received at home—and Takezawa fixed a day when the ship should be rechristened, and should make her trial trip under Japanese management.

It was a beautiful day in autumn—the most glorious period of the year in Japan—when Takezawa and a distinguished company assembled on board the steamer, to give her a new name, and to send her forth finally as a Japanese steamer. The ship looked brave enough as she lay in the dock—ports newly painted, brass-work shining, yards squared, and half buried in bunting. At the mizen floated the empire flag of Japan—a red sun on a white ground—and as Takezawa gazed fore and aft, and his eyes rested on brightness, cleanliness, and order everywhere, he wondered to himself how he could have been such a fool as to stand out so long against the possession of such a treasure, merely on the grounds of its not being Japanese. A fair daughter of one of his partners dashed a cup of "sake" against the bows of the vessel, and the newly named "Lightning Bird" dashed forward into the ocean. Her head was made straight for Yokohama (Takezawa had seen the Englishmen at the wheel manipulate her in that course on her trial trip, so he knew she couldn't go wrong). And straight she went. Every one was delighted; sweetmeats and wine were served round, whilst on the quarterdeck a troupe of the best "Geyshas" or singing-girls in Yedo mingled their shrill voices and their guitar notes with the sound of the fresh morning breeze through the rigging.

The engines worked magnificently: coals were poured into the furnaces by the hundredweight, so as to keep a good uniform thick cloud of smoke coming from the funnels—if the smoke lacked intensity for a minute, Takezawa, fearful that something was wrong, bellowed forth orders for more coal to be heaped on, so that in a quarter of an hour's time the "Lightning Bird" consumed as much fuel as would have served a P. and O. steamer for half a day. On she went, everybody pleased and smiling, everything taut and satisfactory. Straight ahead was Treaty Point—a bold bluff running out into the sea. The "Lightning Bird" was bound for Yokohama—Yokohama lies well behind [Pg 110] Treaty Point—but at the pace she was going it was very apparent that, unless a sudden and rapid turn to starboard was made, she would run, not into Yokohama, but into Treaty Point.

The singing and feasting proceeded merrily on deck, but Takezawa was uneasy and undecided on the bridge. The helm was put hard a-port, the brave vessel obeyed, and leapt on straight for the line of rocks at the foot of the Point, over which the waves were breaking in cascades of foam. But the gods would not see a vessel, making her first run under Japanese auspices, maltreated and destroyed by simple waves and rocks; so, just in time to save an ignominious run aground, the helm was put hard over, fresh fuel was piled on to the furnaces, and by barely half a ship's length the "Lightning Bird" shaved the Point, and stood in straight for Yokohama bay.

Takezawa breathed freely for the moment; but, as he saw ahead the crowd of European ships and native junks through which he would have to thread his way, he would have given a very large sum to have had a couple of Europeans at the wheel in the place of his own half-witted, scared mariners.

However, there was no help for it; the ship sped on, and the guests on board, many of whom were thorough rustics, were in raptures at the distant views of the white houses on the Yokohama Bund, at the big steamers and the graceful sailing vessels on all sides. To avoid the chance of a collision, Takezawa managed to keep his steamer well outside; they nearly ran down a fishing junk or two, and all but sunk the lightship; still, they had not as yet come to absolute grief. Round they went for a long half-hour; many of the guests were suffering from sickness, and Takezawa thought that he might bring the trip to an end. So he bellowed forth orders to stop the engines, and anchor. The anchor was promptly let go, but stopping the engines was another matter, for nobody on board knew how to do so—there was nothing to be done but to allow the vessel to pursue a circular course until steam was exhausted; and she could go no farther. It was idle to explain to the distinguished company that this was the course invariably adopted by Europeans, for under their noses was the graceful P. and O. steamer, a moment since ploughing along at full steam, now riding at anchor by her buoy. So round and round went the "Lightning Bird," to the amazement of the crews of the ships in harbour and of a large crowd gathered on the "Bund;" the brave company on board were now assured that the judgment of the gods was overtaking them for having ventured to sea in a foreign vessel, and poor Takezawa was half resolved to despatch himself, and wholly resolved never to make such an experiment as this again. He cursed the day when he was finally led to forsake the groove so honourably and profitably grubbed along by his fathers, and strode with hasty steps up and down the bridge, refusing to be comforted, and terrifying out of their few remaining wits the two poor fellows at the wheel. After a few circles, an English man-of-war sent a steam launch [Pg 111] after the "Lightning Bird," and to the intense disgust of the great Japanese people on board, who preferred to see eccentricity on the part of their countrymen, to interference by foreigners, but to the great delight of the women and rustics, who began to be rather tired of the fun, the engines were stopped. Takezawa did not hear the last of this for a long, long time; caricatures and verses were constantly being circulated bearing upon the fiasco, although it would have been as much as any man's life was worth to have taunted him openly with it. But it was a salutary lesson; and although he still kept the "Lightning Bird," he engaged Europeans to man her, until his men proved themselves adepts, and she afterwards became one of the smartest and fastest craft on the coast.— Belgravia.

SUPPOSED CHANGES IN THE MOON.

In this Magazine for August last I considered the moon's multitudinous small craters with special reference to the theory that some among those small craters may have been produced by the downfall of aerolithic or meteoric masses upon the moon's once plastic surface. Whether it be considered probable that this is really the case or not with regard to actually existent lunar craters, it cannot be doubted that during one period of the moon's history, a period probably lasting many millions of years, many crater-shaped depressions must have been produced in this way. As I showed in that essay, it is absolutely certain that thousands of meteoric masses, large enough to form visible depressions where they fell, must have fallen during the moon's plastic era. It is certain also that that era must have been very long-lasting. Nevertheless, it remains possible (many will consider it extremely probable, if not absolutely certain) that during sequent periods all such traces were removed. There is certainly nothing in the aspect of the present lunar craters, even the smallest and most numerous, to preclude the possibility that they, like the larger ones, were the results of purely volcanic action; and to many minds it seems preferable to adopt one general theory respecting all such objects as may be classed in a regular series, than to consider that some members of the series are to be explained in one way and others in a different way. We can form a series extending without break or interruption from the largest lunar craters, more than a hundred miles in diameter, to the smallest visible craters, less than a quarter of a mile across, or even to far smaller craters, if increase of telescopic power should reveal such. And therefore many object to adopt any theory in explanation of the smaller craters (or some of them) which could manifestly not be extended to the largest. Albeit we must remember that certainly if any small craters had been formed during the [Pg 112] plastic era by meteoric downfall, and had remained unchanged after the moon solidified, it would now be quite impossible to distinguish these from craters formed in the ordinary manner.

While we thus recognise the possibility, at any rate, that multitudes of small lunar craters, say from a quarter of a mile to two miles in diameter, may have been formed by falling meteoric masses hundreds of millions of years ago, and may have remained unchanged even until now, we perceive that on the moon later processes must have formed many small craters, precisely as such small craters have been formed on our own earth. I consider, at the close of the essay above mentioned, the two stages of the moon's development which must have followed the period during which her surface was wholly or in great part plastic. First, there was the stage during which the crust contracted more rapidly than the nucleus, and was rent from time to time as though the nucleus were expanding within it. Secondly, there came the era when the nucleus, having retained a greater share of heat, began to cool, and therefore to contract more quickly than the crust, so that the crust became wrinkled or corrugated, as it followed up (so to speak) the retreating nucleus.

It would be in the later part of this second great era that the moon (if ever) would have resembled the earth. The forms of volcanic activity still existing on the earth seem most probably referable to the gradual contraction of the nucleus, and the steady resulting contraction of the rocky crust. As Mallet and Dana have shown, the heat resulting from the contraction, or in reality from the slow downfall of the crust, is amply sufficient to account for the whole observed volcanian energy of the earth. It has indeed been objected, that if this theory (which is considered more fully in my "Pleasant Ways in Science") were correct, we ought to find volcanoes occurring indifferently, or at any rate volcanic phenomena of various kinds so occurring, in all parts of the earth's surface, and not prevalent in special regions and scarcely ever noticed elsewhere. But this objection is based on erroneous ideas as to the length of time necessary for the development of subterranean changes, and also as to the extent of regions which at present find in certain volcanic craters a sufficient outlet for their subterranean fires. It is natural that, if a region of wide extent has at any time been relieved at some point, that spot should long afterwards remain as an outlet, a sort of safety-valve, which, by yielding somewhat more quickly than any neighbouring part of the crust, would save the whole region from destructive earthquakes; and though in the course of time a crater which had acted such a part would cease to do so, yet the period required for such a change would be very long indeed compared with those periods by which men ordinarily measure time. Moreover, it by no means follows that every part of the earth's crust would even require an outlet for heat developed beneath it. Over wide tracts of the earth's surface the rate of contraction may be such, or may be so related to the thickness of the crust, that the heat developed can find ready escape by [Pg 113] conduction to the surface, and by radiation thence into space. Nay, from the part which water is known to play in producing volcanic phenomena, it may well be that in every region where water does not find its way in large quantities to the parts in which the subterranean heat is great, no volcanic action results. Mallet, following other experienced vulcanologists, lays down the law, "Without water there can be no volcano;" so that the neighbourhood of large oceans, as well as special conditions of the crust, must be regarded as probably essential to the existence of such outlets as Vesuvius, Etna, Hecla, and the rest.

So much premised, let us enquire whether it is antecedently likely that in the moon volcanic action may still be in progress, and afterwards consider the recent announcement of a lunar disturbance, which, if really volcanic, certainly indicates volcanic action far more intense than any which is at present taking place in our own earth. I have already, I may remark, considered the evidence respecting this new lunar crater which some suppose to have been formed during the last two years. But I am not here going over the same ground as in my former paper ("Contemporary Review" for August, 1878). Moreover, since that paper was written, new evidence has been obtained, and I am now able to speak with considerable confidence about points which were in some degree doubtful three months ago.

Let us consider, in the first place, what is the moon's probable age, not in years, but in development. Here we have only probable evidence to guide us, evidence chiefly derived from the analogy of our own earth. At least, we have only such evidence when we are enquiring into the moon's age as a preliminary to the consideration of her actual aspect and its meaning. No doubt many features revealed by telescopic scrutiny are full of significance in this respect. No one who has ever looked at the moon, indeed, with a telescope of great power has failed to be struck by the appearance of deadness which her surface presents, or to be impressed (at a first view, in any case), with the idea that he is looking at a world whose period of life must be set in a very remote antiquity. But we must not take such considerations into account in discussing the a priori probabilities that the moon is a very aged world. Thus we have only evidence from analogy to guide us in this part of our enquiry. I note the point at starting, because the indicative mood is so much more convenient than the conditional, that I may frequently in this part of my enquiry use the former where the actual nature of the evidence would only justify the latter. Let it be understood that the force of the reasoning here depends entirely on the weight we are disposed to allow to arguments from analogy.

Assuming the planets and satellites of the solar system to be formed in some such manner as Laplace suggested in his "Nebular Hypothesis," the moon, as an orb travelling round the earth, must be regarded as very much older than she is, even in years. Even if we accept the theory of accretion which has been recently suggested as better according with known facts, it would still follow that probably the moon had [Pg 114] existence, as a globe of matter nearly of her present size, long before the earth had gathered in the major portion of her substance. Necessarily, therefore, if we assume as far more probable than either theory that the earth and moon attained their present condition by combined processes of condensation and accretion, we should infer that the moon is far the older of the two bodies in years.

But if we even suppose that the earth and moon began their career as companion planets at about the same epoch, we should still have reason to believe that these planets, equal though they were in age so far as mere years are concerned, must be very unequally advanced so far as development is concerned, and must therefore in that respect be of very unequal age.

It was, I believe, Sir Isaac Newton who first called attention to the circumstance that the larger a planet is, the longer will be the various stages of its existence. He used the same reasoning which was afterwards urged by Buffon, and suggested an experiment which Buffon was the first to carry out. If two globes of iron, of unequal size, be heated to the same degree, and then left to cool side by side, it will be found that the larger glows with a ruddy light after the smaller has become quite dark, and that the larger remains intensely hot long after the smaller has become cool enough to be handled. The reason of the difference is very readily recognised. Indeed, Newton perceived that there would be such a difference before the matter had been experimentally tested. The quantity of heat in the unequal globes is proportional to the volume, the substance of each being the same. The heat is emitted from the surface, and at a rate depending on the extent of surface. But the volume of the larger exceeds that of the smaller in greater degree than the surface of the larger exceeds the surface of the other. Suppose, for instance, the larger has a diameter twice as great as that of the smaller, its surface is four times as great as that of the smaller, its volume eight times as great. Having, then, eight times as much heat as the smaller at the beginning, and parting with that heat only four times as fast as the smaller, the supply necessarily lasts twice as long; or, more exactly, each stage in the cooling of the larger lasts twice as long as the corresponding stage in the cooling of the smaller. We see that the duration of the heat is greater for the larger in the same degree that the diameter is greater. And we should have obtained the same result whatever diameters we had considered. Suppose, for instance, we heat two globes of iron, one an inch in diameter, the other seven inches, to a white heat. The surface of the larger is forty-nine times that of the smaller, and thus it gives out at the beginning, and at each corresponding stage of cooling, forty-nine times as much heat as the smaller. But it possesses at the beginning three hundred and forty-three (seven times seven times seven) times as much heat. Consequently, the supply will last seven times as long, precisely as a stock of three hundred and forty-three thousand pounds, expended forty-nine times as fast as a stock of one thousand pounds only, would last seven [Pg 115] times as long. In every case we find that the duration of the heat-emission for globes of the same material equally heated at the outset is proportional to their diameters.

Now, before applying this result to the case of the moon, we must take into account two considerations:—First, the probability that when the moon was formed she was not nearly so hot as the earth when it first took planetary shape; and secondly, the different densities of the earth and moon.

The original heat of every member of the solar system, including the sun, depended on the gravitating energy of its own mass. The greater that energy, the greater the heat generated either by the process of steady contraction imagined in Laplace's theory, or by the process of meteoric indraught imagined in the aggregation theory. To show how very different are the heat-generating powers of two very unequal masses, consider what would happen if the earth drew down to its own surface a meteoric mass which had approached the earth under her own attraction only. (The case is of course purely imaginary, because no meteor can approach the earth which has not been subjected to the far greater attractive energy of the sun, and does not possess a velocity far greater than any which the earth herself could impart). In this case such a mass would strike the earth with a velocity of about seven miles per second, and the heat generated would be that due to this velocity only. Now, when a meteor strikes the sun full tilt after a journey from the star depths under his attraction, it reaches his surface with a velocity of nearly three hundred and sixty miles per second. The heat generated is nearly fifty times greater than in the imagined case of the earth. The moon being very much less than the earth, the velocity she can impart to meteoric bodies is still less. It amounts, in fact, to only about a mile per second. The condensing energy of the moon in her vaporous era was in like manner far less than that of the earth, and consequently far less heat was then generated. Thus, although we might well believe on a priori grounds, even if not assured by actual study of the lunar features, that the moon when first formed as a planet had a surface far hotter than molten iron, we must yet believe that, when first formed, the moon had a temperature very much below that of our earth at the corresponding stage of her existence.

On this account, then, we must consider that the moon started in planetary existence in a condition as to heat which our earth did not attain till many millions, probably hundreds of millions of years after the epoch of her first formation as a planet.

As regards the moon's substance, we have no means of forming a satisfactory opinion. But we shall be safe in regarding quantity of matter in the moon as a safer basis of calculation than volume, in comparing the duration of her various stages of development with those of our own earth. When, in the August number of this Magazine, I adopted a relation derived from the latter and less correct method, it was because the more correct method gave the result most favourable to the argument [Pg 116] I was then considering. The same is indeed the case now. Yet it will be better to adopt the more exact method, because the consideration relates no longer to a mere side issue, but belongs to the very essence of my reasoning.

The moon has a mass equal to about one eighty-first part of the earth's. Her diameter being less than the earth's, about as two to seven, the duration of each stage of her cooling would be in this degree less than the corresponding duration for the earth, if her density were the same as the earth's, in which case her mass would be only one forty-ninth part of the earth's. But her mass being so much less, we must assume that her amount of heat at any given stage of cooling was less in similar degree than it would have been had her density been the same as the earth's. We may, in fact, assume that the moon's total supply of heat would be only one eighty-first of the earth's if the two bodies were at the same temperature throughout. [63] But the surface of the moon is between one-thirteenth and one-fourteenth of the earth's. Since, then, the earth at any given stage of cooling parted with her heat between thirteen and fourteen times as fast as the moon, but had about eighty-one times as much heat to part with (for that stage), it follows that she would take about six times as long (six times thirteen and a-half is equal to eighty-one) to cool through that particular stage as the moon would.

If we take this relation as the basis of our estimate of the moon's age, we shall find that, even if the moon's existence as a planet began simultaneously with the earth's instead of many millions of years earlier, even if the moon was then as hot as the earth instead of being so much cooler that many millions of years would be required for the earth to cool to the same temperature—making, I say, these assumptions, which probably correspond to the omission of hundreds of millions of years in our estimate of the moon's age, we shall still find the moon to be hundreds of millions of years older than the earth.

Nay, we may even take a position still less favourable to my argument. Let us overlook the long ages during which the two orbs were in the vaporous state, and suppose the earth and moon to be simultaneously in that stage of planetary existence when the surface has a temperature of two thousand degrees Centigrade.

From Bischoff's experiments on the cooling of rocks, it appears to follow that some three hundred and twenty millions of years must have elapsed between the time when the earth's surface was at this temperature and the time when the surface temperature was reduced to two hundred degrees Centigrade, or one hundred and eighty [Pg 117] degrees Fahrenheit above the boiling point. The earth was for that enormous period a mass (in the main) of molten rock. In the moon's case this period lasted only one-sixth of three hundred and twenty million years, or about fifty-three million years, leaving two hundred and sixty-seven million years' interval between the time when the moon's surface had cooled down to two hundred degrees Centigrade and the later epoch when the earth's surface had attained that temperature.

I would not, however, insist on these numerical details. It has always seemed to me unsafe to base calculations respecting suns and planets on experiments conducted in the laboratory. The circumstances under which the heavenly bodies exist, regarding these bodies as wholes, are utterly unlike any which can be produced in the laboratory, no matter on what scale the experimenter may carry on his researches. I have often been amused to see even mathematicians of repute employing a formula based on terrestrial experiments, physical, optical, and otherwise, as though the formula were an eternal omnipresent reality, without noting that, if similarly applied to obtain other determinations, the most stupendously absurd results would be deduced. It is as though, having found that a child grows three inches in the fifth year of his age, one should infer not only that that person but every other person in every age and in every planet, nay, in the whole universe, would be thirty inches taller at the age of fifteen than at the age of five, without noticing that the same method of computation would show everyone to be more than fifteen feet taller at the age of sixty-five. It may well be that, instead of three hundred and twenty millions of years, the era considered by Bischoff lasted less than a hundred millions of years. Or quite as probably it may have lasted five or six hundred millions of years. And again, instead of the corresponding era of the moon's past history having lasted one sixth of the time required to produce the same change in the earth's condition, it may have lasted a quarter, or a third, or even half that time, though quite as probably it may have lasted much less than a sixth. But in any case we cannot reasonably doubt that the moon reached the stage of cooling through which the earth is now passing many millions of years ago. We shall not probably err very greatly in taking the interval as at least two hundred millions of years.

But I could point out that in reality it is a matter of small importance, so far as my present argument is concerned, whether we adopt Bischoff's period or a period differing greatly from it. For if instead of about three hundred millions the earth required only thirty millions of years to cool from a surface temperature of two thousand degrees Centigrade to a temperature of two hundred degrees, we must assume that the rate of cooling is ten times greater than Bischoff supposed. And we must of course extend the same assumption to the moon. Now, since the sole question before us is to what degree the moon has cooled, it matters nothing whether we suppose the moon has been cooling very slowly during many millions of years since she was in the same condition as the earth at present, or that the moon has been cooling ten times [Pg 118] as quickly during a tenth part of the time, or a hundred times as quickly during one-hundredth part of the time.

We may, therefore, continue to use the numbers resulting from Bischoff's calculation, even though we admit the probability that they differ widely from the true values of the periods we are considering.

Setting the moon, then, as about two hundred and fifty millions of years in advance of the earth in development, even when we overlook all the eras preceding that considered by Bischoff, and the entire sequent interval (which must be long, for the earth has no longer a surface one hundred degrees Centigrade hotter than boiling water), let us consider what is suggested by this enormous time-difference.

In the first place, it corresponds to a much greater interval in our earth's history. During the two hundred and fifty millions of years the moon has been cooling at her rate, not at the earth's. According to the conclusion we deduced from the moon's relative mass and surface, she has aged as much during those two hundred and fifty million years as the earth will during the next fifteen hundred million years.

Now, however slowly we suppose the earth's crust to be changing, it must be admitted that in the course of the next fifteen hundred millions of years the earth will have parted with far the greater part, if not with the whole, of that inherent heat on which the present movements of her surface depend. We know that these movements at once depend upon and indicate processes of contraction. We know that such processes cannot continue at their present rate for many millions of years. If we assume that the rate of contraction will steadily diminish—which is equivalent, be it noticed, to the assumption that the earth's vulcanian or subterranean energies will be diminished—the duration of the process will be greater. But even on such an assumption, controlled by consideration of the evidence we have respecting the rate at which terrestrial contraction is diminishing, it is certain that long before a period of fifteen hundred millions of years has elapsed, the process of contraction will to all intents and purposes be completed.

We must assume, then, as altogether the most probable view, that the moon has reached this stage of planetary decrepitude, even if she has not become an absolutely dead world. We can hardly reject the reasoning which would show that the moon is far older than has been assumed when long stages of her history and our earth's have been neglected. Still less reasonable would it be to reject the conclusion that at the very least she has reached the hoar antiquity thus inferred. Assuming her to be no older, we yet cannot escape the conviction that her state is that of utter decrepitude. To suppose that volcanic action can now be in progress on the moon, even to as great a degree as on the earth, would be to assume that measurable sources of energy can produce practically immeasurable results. But no volcanic changes now in process on the earth could possibly be discernible at the moon's distance. How utterly unlikely does it seem, then, that any volcanic changes can be now taking place on the moon which could be recognized [Pg 119] from the earth! It seems safe to assume that no volcanic changes at all can be in progress; but most certainly the evidence which should convince us that volcanic changes of so tremendous a character are in progress that at a distance of two hundred and sixty thousand miles terrestrial telescopists can discern them, must be of the strongest and most satisfactory character.

Evidence of change may indeed be discovered which can be otherwise explained. The moon is exposed to the action of heat other than that which pervaded her own frame at the time of her first formation. The sun's heat is poured upon the moon during the long lunar day of more than a fortnight, while during the long lunar night a cold prevails which must far exceed that of our bitterest arctic winters. We know from the heat-measurements made by the present Lord Rosse, that any part of the moon's surface at lunar mid-day is fully five hundred degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the same part two weeks later at lunar midnight. The alternate expansions and contractions resulting from these changes of temperature cannot but produce changes, however slowly, in the contour of the moon's surface. Professor Newcomb, indeed, considers that all such changes must long since have been completed. But I cannot see how they can be completed so long as the moon's surface is uneven, and at present there are regions where that surface is altogether rugged. Mighty peaks and walls exist which must one day be thrown down, so unstable is their form; deep ravines can be seen which must one day be the scene of tremendous landslips, so steep and precipitous are their sides. Changes such as these may still occur on so vast a scale that telescopists may hope from time to time to recognise them. But changes such as these are not volcanic; they attest no lunar vitality. They are antecedently so probable, indeed, while volcanic changes are antecedently so unlikely, that when any change is clearly recognised in the moon's surface, nothing but the most convincing evidence could be accepted as demonstrating that the change was of volcanic origin and not due to the continued expansion and contraction of the lunar crust.

And now let us see how stands the evidence in the few cases which seem most to favour the idea that a real change has taken place.

We may dismiss, in the first place, without any hesitation, the assertion that regular changes take place in the floor of the great lunar crater Plato. According to statements very confidently advanced a few years ago, this wide circular plain, some sixty miles in diameter, grows darker and darker as the lunar day advances there until the time corresponding to about two o'clock in the afternoon, and then grows gradually lighter again till eventide. The idea seems to have been at first that some sort of vegetation exists on the floor of this mighty ring-shaped mountain, and that, as the sun's heat falls during the long lunar day upon the great plain, the vegetation flourishes, darkening the whole region just as we might imagine that some far-extending forest on the earth would appear darker as seen from the moon when fully clothed [Pg 120] with vegetation than when the trees were bare and the lighter tints of the ground could be seen through them. Another idea was that the ground undergoes some change under the sun's heat corresponding to those which are produced in certain substances employed in photography; though it was not explained why the solar rays should produce no permanent change, as in the terrestrial cases adduced in illustration. Yet another and, if possible, an even stranger explanation, suggested that, though the moon has no seas, there may be large quantities of water beneath her crust, which may evaporate when that crust becomes heated, rising in the form of vapour to moisten and so darken the crust. Certainly, the idea of a moistening of the lunar crust, or of portions thereof, as the sun's rays fall more strongly upon it, is so daring that one could almost wish it were admissible, instead of being altogether inconsistent, as unfortunately it is, with physical possibilities.

But still more unfortunately, the fact supposed to have been observed, on which these ingenious speculations were based, has not only been called in question, but has been altogether negatived. More exact observations have shown that the supposed darkening of the floor of Plato is a mere optical illusion. When the sun has lately risen at that part of the moon, the ringed wall surrounding this great plain throws long shadows across the level surface. These shadows are absolutely black, like all the shadows on the moon. By contrast, therefore, the unshadowed part of the floor appears lighter than it really is; but the mountain ring which surrounds this dark grey plain is of light tint. So soon as the sun has passed high above the horizon of this region, the ring appears very brilliant compared with the dark plain which it surrounds; thus the plain appears by comparison even darker than it really is. As the long lunar afternoon advances, however, black shadows are again thrown athwart the floor, which therefore again appears by contrast lighter than it really is. All the apparent changes are such as might have been anticipated by anyone who considered how readily the eye is misled by effects of contrast.

To base any argument in favour of a regular change in the floor of Plato on evidence such as this, would be as unwise as it would be to deduce inferences as to changes in the heat of water from experiments in which the heat was determined by the sensations experienced when the hands were successively immersed, one hand having previously been in water as hot as could be borne, the other in water as cold as could be borne. We know how readily these sensations would deceive us (if we trusted them) into the belief that the water had warmed notably during the short interval of time which had elapsed between the two immersions; for we know that if both hands were immersed at the same moment in lukewarm water, the water would appear cold to one hand and warm to the other.

Precisely as in such a case as we have just considered, if we were obliged to test the water by so inexact a method, we should make experiments [Pg 121] with one hand only, and carefully consider the condition of that hand during the progress of the experiments, so in the case of the floor of Plato, we must exclude as far as possible all effects due to mere contrast. We must examine the tint of the plain, at lunar morning, mid-day, and evening, with an eye not affected either by the darkness or brightness of adjacent regions, or adjacent parts of the same region. This is very readily done. All we have to do is to reduce the telescopic field of view to such an extent that, instead of the whole floor, only a small portion can be seen. It will then be found, as I can myself certify (the more apparently because the experience of others confirms my own), that the supposed change of tint does not take place. One or two who were and are strong believers in the reality of the change do indeed assert that they have tried this experiment, and have obtained an entirely different result. But this may fairly be regarded as showing how apt an observer is to be self-deceived when he is entirely persuaded of the truth of some favourite theory. For those who carried out the experiment successfully had no views one way or the other; those only failed who were certainly assured beforehand that the experiment would confirm their theory.

The case of the lunar crater Linné, which somewhere about November 1865 attracted the attention of astronomers, belongs to a very different category. In my article on the moon in the "Contemporary Review" I have fully presented the evidence in the case of this remarkable object. I need not therefore consider here the various arguments which have been urged for and against the occurrence of change. I may mention, however, that, in my anxiety to do full justice to the theory that change has really occurred, I took Mädler's description of the crater's interior as "very deep," to mean more than Mädler probably intended. There is now a depression several hundred yards in depth. If Mädler's description be interpreted, as I interpreted it for the occasion in the above article, to mean a depth of two or three miles, it is of course certain that there has been a very remarkable change. But some of the observers who have devoted themselves utterly, it would seem, to the lively occupation of measuring, counting, and describing the tens of thousands of lunar craters already known, assert that Mädler and Lohrman (who uses the same description) meant nothing like so great a depth. Probably Mädler only meant about half a mile, or even less. In this case their favourite theory no longer seems so strongly supported by the evidence. In some old drawings by the well-known observer Schröter, the crater is drawn very much as it now appears. Thus, I think we must adopt as most probable the opinion which is, I see, advanced by Prof. Newcomb in his excellent "Popular Astronomy," that there has been no actual change in the crater. I must indeed remark that, after comparing several drawings of the same regions by Schröter, Mädler, Lohrman, and Schmidt, with each other and with the moon's surface, I find myself by no means very strongly impressed by the artistic skill of any of these observers. I scarcely know a single region in the moon [Pg 122] where change might not be inferred to have taken place if any one of the above-named observers could be implicitly relied upon. As, fortunately, their views differ even more widely inter se than from the moon's own surface, we are not driven to so startling a conclusion.

However, if we assume even that Linné has undergone change, we still have no reason to believe that the change is volcanic. A steep wall, say half a mile in height, surrounding a crater four or five miles in diameter, no longer stands at this height above the enclosed space, if the believers in a real change are to be trusted. But, as Dr. Huggins well remarked long ago, if volcanic forces competent to produce disturbance of this kind are at work in the moon, we ought more frequently to recognize signs of change, for they could scarcely be at work in one part only of the moon's surface, or only at long intervals of time. It is so easy to explain the overthrow of such a wall as surrounded Linné (always assuming we can rely upon former accounts) without imagining volcanic action, that, considering the overwhelming weight of a priori probability against such action at the present time, it would be very rash to adopt the volcanic theory. The expansions and contractions described above would not only be able to throw down walls of the kind, but they would be sure to do so from time to time. Indeed, as a mere matter of probabilities, it may be truly said that it would be exceedingly unlikely that catastrophes such as the one which may have occurred in this case would fail to happen at comparatively short intervals of time. It would be so unlikely, that I am almost disposed to adopt the theory that there really has been a change in Linné, for the reason that on that theory we get rid of the difficulty arising from the apparent fixity of even the steepest lunar rocks. However, after all, the time during which men have studied the moon with the telescope—only two hundred and sixty-nine years—is a mere instant compared with the long periods during which the moon has been exposed to the sun's intense heat by day and a more than arctic intensity of cold by night. It may well be that, though lunar landslips occur at short intervals of time, these intervals are only short when compared with those periods, hundreds of millions of years long, of which we had to speak a little while ago. Perhaps in a period of ten or twenty thousand years we might have a fair chance of noting the occurrence of one or two catastrophes of the kind, whereas we could hardly expect to note any, save by the merest accident, in two or three hundred years.

To come now to the last, and, according to some, the most decisive piece of evidence in favour of the theory that the moon's crust is still under the influence of volcanic forces.

On May 19, 1877, Dr. Hermann J. Klein, of Cologne, observed a crater more than two miles in width, where he felt sure that no crater had before existed. It was near the centre of the moon's visible hemisphere, and not far from a well-known crater called Hyginus. At the time of observation it was not far from the boundary between the light and dark parts of the moon: in fact, it was near the time of sunrise at [Pg 123] this region. Thus the floor of the supposed new crater was in shadow—it appeared perfectly black. In the conventional language for such cases made and provided (it should be stereotyped by selenographers, for it has now been used a great many times since Schröter first adopted the belief that the great crater Cassini, thirty-six miles in diameter, was a new one) Dr. Klein says, "The region having been frequently observed by myself during the last few years, I feel certain that no such crater existed in the region at the time of my previous observations." He communicated his discovery to Dr. Schmidt, who also assured him that the region had been frequently observed by himself during the last few years, and he felt certain that no such crater, &c., &c. It is not in the maps by Lohrman and by Beer and Mädler, or in Schröter's drawings, and so forth. "We know more," says a recent writer, singularly ready to believe in lunar changes; "we know that at a later period, with the powerful Dorpat telescope, Mädler carefully re-examined this particular region, to see if he could detect any additional features not shown in his map. He found several smaller craterlets in other parts " (the italics are mine), "but he could not detect any other crater in the region where Dr. Klein now states there exist a large crater, though he did find some very small hills close to this spot." "This evidence is really conclusive," says this very confident writer, "for it is incredible that Mädler could have seen these minute hills and overlooked a crater so large that it is the second largest crater of the score in this region." Then this writer comes in, of course, in his turn, with the customary phrases. "During the six years, 1870-1876, I most carefully examined this region, for the express purpose of detecting any craters not shown by Mädler," and he also can certify that no such crater existed, etc., etc. He was only waiting, when he thus wrote, to see the crater for himself. "One suitable evening will settle the matter. If I find a deep black crater, three miles in diameter, in the place assigned to it by Dr. Klein, and when six years' observation convinces me no such crater did exist, I shall know that it must be new."

Astronomers, however, require somewhat better evidence.

It might well be that a new crater-shaped depression should appear in the moon without any volcanic action having occurred. For reasons already adduced, indeed, I hold it to be to all intents and purposes certain that if a new depression is really in question at all, it is in reality only an old and formerly shallow crater, whose floor has broken up, yielding at length to the expansive and contractive effects above described, which would act with exceptional energy at this particular part of the moon's surface, close as it is to the lunar equator.

But it is by no means clear that this part of the moon's surface has undergone any change whatever. We must not be misled by the very confident tone of selenographers. Of course they fully believe what they tell us: but they are strongly prejudiced. Their labours, as they well know, have now very little interest unless signs of change should be detected in the moon. Surveyors who have done exceedingly useful [Pg 124] work in mapping a region would scarcely expect the public to take much interest in additional information about every rock or pebble existing in that region, unless they could show that something more than a mere record of rocks and pebbles was really involved. Thus selenographers have shown, since the days of Schröter, an intense anxiety to prove that our moon deserves, in another than Juliet's sense, to be called "the inconstant moon." In another sense again they seem disposed to "swear by the inconstant moon," as changing yearly, if not "monthly, in her circled orb." Thus a very little evidence satisfies them, and they are very readily persuaded in their own mind that former researches of theirs, or of their fellow-pebble-counters, have been so close and exact, that craters must have been detected then which have been found subsequently to exist in the moon. I do not in the slightest degree question their bona fides , but a long experience of their ways leads me to place very little reliance on such stereotyped phrases as I have quoted above.

Now, in my paper in the "Contemporary Review" on this particular crater, I called attention to the fact that in the magnificent photograph of the moon taken by Dr. Louis Rutherfurd on March 6, 1865 (note well the date) there is a small spot of lighter colour than the surrounding region, nearly in the place indicated in the imperfect drawing of Klein's record which alone was then available to me. For reasons, I did not then more closely describe this feature of the finest lunar photograph ever yet obtained.

The writer from whom I have already quoted is naturally (being a selenographer) altogether unwilling to accept the conclusion that this spot is the crater floor as photographed (not as seen) under a somewhat higher illumination than that under which the floor of the crater appears dark. There are several white spots immediately around the dark crater, he says: "which of these is the particular white spot which the author" (myself) "assumes I did not see?" a question which, as I had made no assumption whatever about this particular writer, nor mentioned him, nor even thought of him, as I wrote the article on which he comments, I am quite unable to answer. But he has no doubt that I have "mistaken the white spot" (which it seems he can identify, after all) "for Klein's crater, which is many miles farther north, and which never does appear as a white spot: he has simply mistaken its place."

I have waited, therefore, before writing this, until from my own observation, or from a drawing carefully executed by Dr. Klein, I might ascertain the exact place of the new crater. I could not, as it turned out, observe the new crater as a black spot myself, since the question was raised; for on the only available occasion I was away from home. But I now have before me Dr. Klein's carefully drawn map. In this I find the new crater placed not nearly, but exactly where Rutherfurd's crater appears. I say "Rutherfurd's crater," for the white spot is manifestly not merely a light tinted region on the darker background of the Sea of Vapours (as the region in which the crater has been found is [Pg 125] called): it is a circular crater more than two miles in diameter; and the width of the crescent of shadow surrounding its eastern side shows that in March 1865, when Rutherfurd took that photograph, the crater was not (for its size) a shallow one, but deep.

Now, it is quite true that, to the eye, under high illumination, the floor of the crater does not appear lighter than the surrounding region; at least, not markedly so, for to my eye it appears slightly lighter. But everyone knows that a photograph does not show all objects with the same depth of shading that they present to the naked eye. A somewhat dark green object will appear rather light in a photograph, while a somewhat light orange-yellow object will appear quite dark. We have only to assume that the floor of the supposed new crater has a greenish tinge (which is by no means uncommon) to understand why, although it is lost to ordinary vision when the Sea of Vapours is under full illumination, it yet presents in a photograph a decidedly lighter shade than the surrounding region.

I ought to mention that the writer from whom I have quoted says that all the photographs were examined and the different objects in this region identified within forty-eight hours of the time when Dr. Klein's letter reached England. He mentions also that he has himself personally examined them. Doubtless at that time the exact position of the supposed new crater was not known. By the way, it is strange, considering that the name Louis Rutherfurd is distinctly written in large letters upon the magnificent photograph in question, that a selenographer who has carefully examined that photograph should spell the name Rutherford. He must really not assume, when on re-examining the picture he finds the name spelled Rutherfurd, that there has been any change, volcanic or otherwise, in the photograph.

In conclusion I would point out that another of these laborious crater-counters, in a paper recently written with the express purpose of advocating a closer and longer-continued scrutiny of the moon, makes a statement which is full of significance in connection with the subject of lunar changes. After quoting the opinion of a celebrated astronomer, that one might as well attempt to catalogue the pebbles on the sea-shore as the entire series of lunar craters down to the minutest visible with the most powerful telescope, he states that while on the one hand, out of thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-six craters given in Schmidt's chart, not more than two thousand objects have been entered in the Registry he has provided for the purpose (though he has been many years collecting materials for it from all sides); on the other hand, "on comparing a few of these published objects with Schmidt's map, it has been found that some are not in it ,"—a fact to which he calls attention, "not for the purpose of depreciating the greatest selenographical work that has yet appeared, but for the real advancement of selenography." Truly, the fact is as significant as it is discouraging,—unless we are presently to be told that the craters which are not common to both series are to be regarded as new formations.

Richard A. Proctor , in Belgravia .

[Pg 126]

RECOLLECTIONS OF THACKERAY.

In the absence of any complete biography of the late William Makepeace Thackeray, every anecdote regarding him has a certain value, in so far as it throws a light on his personal character and methods of work. Read in this light and this spirit, all the tributes to his memory are valuable and interesting. Glancing over some memoranda connected with the life of the novelist, contained in a book which has come under our notice, entitled "Anecdote Biographies," we gain a ready insight into his character. And from the materials thus supplied, we now offer a few anecdotes treasured up in these too brief memorials of his life.

Thackeray was born at Calcutta in 1811. While still very young, he was sent to England; on the homeward voyage he had a peep at the great Napoleon in his exile-home at St. Helena. He received his education at the Charterhouse School and at Cambridge, leaving the latter without a degree. His fortune at this time amounted to twenty thousand pounds; this he afterwards lost through unfortunate speculations, but not before he had travelled a good deal on the continent, and acquainted himself with French and German everyday life and literature. His first inclination was to follow the profession of an artist; and curious to relate, he made overtures to Charles Dickens to illustrate his earliest book. Thackeray was well equipped both in body and mind when his career as an author began; but over ten years of hard toil at newspaper and magazine writing were undergone before he became known as the author of "Vanity Fair," and one of the first of living novelists. He lectured with fair if not with extraordinary success both in England and America, when the sunshine of public favour had been secured. His career of successful novel-writing terminated suddenly on 24th December 1863, and like Dickens, he had an unfinished novel on hand.

One morning Thackeray knocked at the door of Horace Mayhew's chambers in Regent Street, crying from without: 'It's no use, Horry Mayhew; open the door.' On entering, he said cheerfully: 'Well, young gentleman, you'll admit an old fogy.' When leaving, with his hat in his hand, he remarked: 'By-the-by, how stupid! I was going away without doing part of the business of my visit. You spoke the other day of poor George. Somebody—most unaccountably—has returned me a five-pound note I lent him a long time ago. I didn't expect it. So just hand to George; and tell him, when his pocket will bear it, to pass it on to some poor fellow of his acquaintance. By-bye.' He was gone! This was one of Thackeray's delicate methods of doing a favour; the recipient was asked to pass it on .

One of his last acts on leaving America after a lecturing tour, was to return twenty-five per cent. of the proceeds of one of his lectures to a young speculator who had been a loser by the bargain. While known to hand a gold piece to a waiter with the remark: 'My friend, will you do me the favour to accept a sovereign?' he has also been known to say to a visitor who had proffered a card: 'Don't leave this bit of paper; it has cost you two cents, and will be just as good for your next call.' Evidently aware that money when properly used is a wonderful health-restorer, he was found by a friend who had entered his bedroom in Paris, gravely placing some napoleons in a pill-box, on the lid of which was written: 'One to be taken occasionally.' When asked to explain, it came out that these strange pills were for an old person who said she was very ill, and in distress; and so he had concluded that this was the medicine wanted. 'Dr. Thackeray,' he remarked, 'intends to leave it with her himself. Let us walk out together.' To a young literary man afterwards his amanuensis, he wrote thus, on hearing that a loss had befallen him: 'I am sincerely sorry to hear of your position, and send the little contribution which came so opportunely from another friend whom I was enabled once to help. When you are well-to-do again, I know you will pay it back; and I daresay somebody else will want the money, which is meanwhile most heartily at your service.'

When enjoying an American repast at Boston in 1852, his friends there, determined to surprise him with the size of their oysters, had placed six of the largest bivalves they could find, on his plate. After swallowing number one with some little difficulty, his friend asked him how he felt. 'Profoundly grateful,' he gasped; 'and as if I had swallowed a little baby.' Previous to a farewell dinner given by his [Pg 127] American intimates and admirers, he remarked that it was very kind of his friends to give him a dinner, but that such things always set him trembling. 'Besides,' he remarked to his secretary, 'I have to make a speech, and what am I to say? Here, take a pen in your hand and sit down, and I'll see if I can hammer out something. It's hammering now, I'm afraid it will be stammering by-and-by.' His short speeches, when delivered, were as characteristic and unmistakable as anything he ever wrote. All the distinct features of his written style were present.

It is interesting to remark the sentiments he entertained towards his great rival Charles Dickens. Although the latter was more popular as a novelist, than he could ever expect to become, he expressed himself in unmistakable terms regarding him. When the conversation turned that way, we would remark: 'Dickens is making ten thousand a year. He is very angry at me for saying so; but I will say it, for it is true. He doesn't like me. He knows that my books are a protest against his—that if the one set are true, the other must be false. But "Pickwick" is an exception; it is a capital book. It is like a glass of good English ale.' When "Dombey and Son" appeared in the familiar paper cover, number five contained the episode of the death of little Paul. Thackeray appeared much moved in reading it over, and putting number five in his pocket, hastened with it to the editor's room in "Punch" office. Dashing it down on the table in the presence of Mark Lemon, he exclaimed! 'There's no writing against such power as this; one has no chance! Read that chapter describing young Paul's death; it is unsurpassed—it is stupendous!'

In a conversation with his secretary previous to his American trip, he intimated his intention of starting a magazine or journal on his return, to be issued in his own name. This scheme eventually took shape, and the result was the now well known "Cornhill Magazine." This magazine proved a great success, the sale of the first number being one hundred and ten thousand copies. Under the excitement of this great success, Thackeray left London for Paris. To Mr. Fields, the American publisher, who met him by appointment at his hotel in the Rue de la Paix, he remarked: 'London is not big enough to contain me now, and I am obliged to add Paris to my residence. Good gracious!' said he, throwing up his long arms, 'where will this tremendous circulation stop? Who knows but that I shall have to add Vienna and Rome to my whereabouts? If the worst come to the worst, New York also may fall into my clutches, and only the Rocky Mountains may be able to stop my progress.' His spirits continued high during this visit to Paris, his friend adding that some restraint was necessary to keep him from entering the jewellers' shops and ordering a pocketful of diamonds and 'other trifles; for,' said he, 'how can I spend the princely income which Smith [64] allows me for editing "Cornhill," unless I begin instantly somewhere!' He complained too that he could not sleep at nights 'for counting up his subscribers.' On reading a contribution by his young daughter to the "Cornhill," he felt much moved, remarking to a friend; 'When I read it, I blubbered like a child; it is so good, so simple, and so honest; and my little girl wrote it, every word of it.'

Dickens in the tender memorial which he penned for the "Cornhill Magazine," remarks on his appearance when they dined together. 'No one,' he says, 'can ever have seen him more genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and honestly impulsive than I have seen him at those times. No one can be surer than I of the greatness and goodness of the heart that had then disclosed itself.'

Beneath his 'modestly grand' manner, his seeming cynicism and bitterness, he bore a very tender and loving heart. In a letter written in 1854, and quoted in James Hannay's sketch, he expresses himself thus. 'I hate Juvenal,' he says. 'I mean I think him a truculent fellow; and I love Horace better than you do, and rate Churchill much lower; and as for Swift, you haven't made me alter my opinion. I admire, or rather admit, his power as much as you do; but I don't admire that kind or power so much as I did fifteen years ago, or twenty shall we say. Love is a higher intellectual exercise than hatred; and when you get one or two more of those young ones you write so pleasantly about, you'll come over to the side of the kind wags, I think, rather than the cruel ones.' The pathetic sadness visible in much that he wrote sprung partly from temperament and partly from his own private calamities. Loss [Pg 128] of fortune was not the only cause. When a young man in Paris, he married; and after enjoying domestic happiness for several years, his wife caught a fever from which she never afterwards sufficiently recovered to be able to be with her husband and children. She was henceforth intrusted to the care of a kind family, where every comfort and attention was secured for her. The lines in the ballad of the "Bouillabaisse" are supposed to refer to this early time of domestic felicity:

In dictating to his amanuensis during the composition of the lectures on the "Four Georges," he would light a cigar, pace the room for a few minutes, and then resume his work with increased cheerfulness, changing his position very frequently, so that he was sometimes sitting, standing, walking, or lying about. His enunciation was always clear and distinct, and his words and thoughts were so well weighed that the progress of writing was but seldom checked. He dictated with calm deliberation, and shewed no risible feeling even when he had made a humorous point. His whole literary career was one of unremitting industry; he wrote slowly, and like 'George Eliot,' gave forth his thoughts in such perfect form, that he rarely required to retouch his work. His handwriting was neat and plain, often very minute; which led to the remark, that if all trades failed, he would earn sixpences by writing the Lord's Prayer and the Creed in the size of one. Unlike many men of less talent, he looked upon caligraphy as one of the fine arts. When at the height of his fame he was satisfied when he wrote six pages a day, generally working during the day, seldom at night. An idea which would only be slightly developed in some of his shorter stories, he treasured up and expanded in some of his larger works.

While Alfred Tennyson the future Laureate received the gold medal at Cambridge given by the Chancellor of the university for the best English poem, the subject being "Timbuctoo," we find Thackeray satirising the subject in a humorous paper called "The Snob." Here are a few lines from his clever skit on the prize poem:

The personal appearance of Thackeray has been frequently described. His nose through an early accident, was misshapen; it was broad at the bridge, and stubby at the end. He was near-sighted: and his hair at forty was already gray, but massy and abundant—his keen and kindly eyes twinkled sometimes through and sometimes over his spectacles. A friend remarked that what he 'should call the predominant expression of the countenance was courage—a readiness to face the world on its own terms.' Unlike Dickens, he took no regular walking exercise, and being regardless of the laws of health, suffered in consequence. In reply to one who asked him if he had ever received the best medical advice, his reply was: 'What is the use of advice if you don't follow it? They tell me not to drink, and I do drink. They tell me not to smoke, and I do smoke. They tell me not to eat, and I do eat. In short, I do everything that I am desired not to do—and therefore, what am I to expect?' And so one morning he was found lying, like Dr. Chalmers, in the sleep of death with his arms beneath his head, after one of his violent attacks of illness—to be mourned by his mother and daughters, who formed his household, and by a wider public beyond, which, had learned to love him through his admirable works.— Chambers's Journal.