CHAPTER IX.

THE ARTIST MONK.

On the evening when Agnes and her grandmother had returned from the convent, as they were standing after their supper looking over the garden parapet into the gorge, their attention was caught by a man in an ecclesiastical habit, slowly climbing the rocky pathway towards them.

“Isn’t that brother Antonio?” asked Dame Elsie, leaning forward to observe more narrowly. “Yes, to be sure it is.”

“Oh, how glad I am!” exclaimed Agnes, springing up with vivacity, and looking eagerly down the path by which the stranger was approaching.

A few moments more of clambering, and the stranger met the two women at the gate with a gesture of benediction. He was apparently a little past the middle point of life, and entering on its shady afternoon. He was tall and well proportioned, and his features had the spare delicacy of the Italian outline. The round brow fully developed in all the perceptive and æsthetic regions, the keen eye shadowed by long dark lashes, the thin flexible lips, the sunken cheek, where on the slightest emotion there fluttered a brilliant flush of colour,—all were signs telling of the enthusiast in whom the nervous and spiritual predominated over the animal. At times, his eye had a dilating brightness, as if from the flickering of some inward fire which was slowly consuming the mortal part, and its expression was brilliant even to the verge of insanity. His dress was the simple, coarse, white stuff gown of the Dominican friars, over which he wore a darker travelling garment of coarse cloth, with a hood, from whose deep shadows his bright mysterious eyes looked like jewels from a cavern. At his side dangled a great rosary and cross of black wood, and under his arm he carried a portfolio secured with a leathern strap, which seemed stuffed to bursting with papers.

Father Antonio, whom we have thus introduced to the reader, was a travelling preaching monk from the convent of San Marco in Florence, on a pastoral and artistic tour through Italy.

Convents in the Middle Ages were the retreats of multitudes, of different natures, who did not wish to live in a state of perpetual warfare and offence, and all the elegant arts flourished under their protecting shadows. Ornamental gardening, pharmacy, drawing, painting, carving in wood, illumination, and calligraphy, were not unfrequent occupations of the holy fathers, and the convent has given to the illustrious roll of Italian art some of its most brilliant names. No institution in modern Europe had a more established reputation in all these respects than the convent of San Marco in Florence. In its best days, it was as near an approach to an ideal community, associated to unite religion, beauty, and utility, as ever has existed on earth. It was a retreat from the commonplace prose of life into an atmosphere at once devotional and poetic; and prayers and sacred hymns consecrated the elegant labours of the chisel and the pencil, no less than the more homely ones of the still and the crucible. San Marco, far from being that kind of sluggish lagoon often imagined in conventual life, was rather a sheltered hotbed of ideas—fervid with intellectual and moral energy, and before the age in every radical movement. At this period, Savonarola, the poet and prophet of the Italian religious world of his day, was Superior of this convent, pouring through all the members of the Order the fire of his own impassioned nature, and seeking to lead them back to the fervours of more primitive and evangelical ages, and in the reaction of a worldly and corrupt Church was beginning to feel the power of that current which at last drowned his eloquent voice in the cold waters of martyrdom. Savonarola was an Italian Luther—differing from him as the more ethereally strung and nervous Italian differs from the bluff and burly German; and like Luther he became in his time the centre of every living thing in society about him. He inspired the pencils of artists, guided the councils of statesmen, and, a poet himself, was an inspiration to poets. Everywhere in Italy the monks of his Order were travelling, restoring the shrines, preaching against the voluptuous and unworthy pictures with which sensual artists had desecrated the churches, and calling the people back by their exhortations to the purity of primitive Christianity.

Father Antonio was a younger brother of Elsie, and had early become a member of the San Marco, enthusiastic not less in religion than in art. His intercourse with his sister had few points of sympathy, Elsie being as decided a utilitarian as any old Yankee female born in the granite hills of New Hampshire, and pursuing with a hard and sharp energy her narrow plan of life for Agnes. She regarded her brother as a very properly religious person, considering his calling, but was a little bored with his exuberant devotion, and absolutely indifferent to his artistic enthusiasm. Agnes, on the contrary, had from a child attached herself to her uncle with all the energy of a sympathetic nature, and his yearly visits had been looked forward to on her part with intense expectation. To him she could say a thousand things which instinctively she concealed from her grandmother; and Elsie was well pleased with the confidence, because it relieved her a little from the vigilant guardianship that she otherwise held over the girl: when Father Antonio was about, she had leisure now and then for a little private gossip of her own.

“Dear uncle, how glad I am to see you once more!” was the eager salutation with which the young girl received the monk, as he gained the little garden; “and you have brought your pictures,—oh, I know you have so many pretty things to show me!”

“Well, well, child,” said Elsie, “don’t begin upon that now: a little talk of bread and cheese will be more in point. Come in, brother, and wash your feet, and let me beat the dust out of your cloak, and give you something to stay nature; for you must be fasting.”

“Thank you, sister,” said the monk; “and as for you, pretty one, never mind what she says. Uncle Antonio will show his little Agnes everything by-and-by.—A good little thing it is, sister.”

“Yes, yes, good enough,—and too good,” said Elsie, bustling about;—“roses can’t help having thorns, I suppose.”

“Only our ever-blessed Rose of Sharon, the dear mystical Rose of Paradise, can boast of having no thorns,” said the monk, bowing and crossing himself devoutly.

Agnes clasped her hands on her bosom and bowed also, while Elsie stopped with her knife in the middle of a loaf of black bread, and crossed herself with somewhat of impatience,—like a worldly-minded person of our day, who is interrupted in the midst of an observation by a grace.

After the rites of hospitality had been duly observed, the old dame seated herself contentedly at her door with her distaff, resigned Agnes to the safe guardianship of her uncle, and had a feeling of security in seeing them sitting together on the parapet of the garden, with the portfolio spread out between them; the warm twilight glow of the evening sky lighting up their figures as they bent in ardent interest over its contents. The portfolio showed a fluttering collection of sketches,—fruits, flowers, animals, insects, faces, figures, shrines, buildings, trees; all, in short, that might strike the mind of a man to whose eye nothing on the face of the earth is without beauty and significance.

“Oh, how beautiful!” exclaimed the girl, taking up one sketch, in which a bunch of rosy cyclamen was painted rising out of a bed of moss.

“Ah, that, indeed, my dear!” said the artist. “Would you had seen the place where I painted it! I stopped there to recite my prayers one morning; ’twas by the side of a beautiful cascade, and all the ground was covered with these lovely cyclamens, and the air was musky with their fragrance. Ah, the bright rose-coloured leaves! I can get no colour like them, unless some angel would bring me some from those sunset clouds yonder.”

“And oh, dear uncle, what lovely primroses!” pursued Agnes, taking up another paper.

“Yes, child; but you should have seen them when I was coming down the south side of the Apennines;—these were everywhere so pale and sweet, they seemed like the humility of our most Blessed Mother in her lowly mortal state. I am minded to make a border of primroses to the leaf in the Breviary where is the ‘Hail, Mary!’ for it seems as if that flower doth ever say, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord!’”

“And what will you do with the cyclamen, uncle? does not that mean something?”

“Yes, daughter,” replied the monk, readily entering into that symbolical strain which permeated all the heart and mind of the religious of his day; “I _can_ see a meaning in it. For you see that the cyclamen puts forth its leaves in early spring deeply engraven with mystical characters, and loves cool shadows and moist, dark places, but comes at length to wear a royal crown of crimson; and it seems to me like the saints who dwell in convents and other prayerful places, and have the word of God graven in their hearts in youth, till their hearts blossom into fervent love and they are crowned with royal graces.”

“Ah!” sighed Agnes, “how beautiful and blessed to be among such!”

“Thou sayest well, dear child. Blessed are the flowers of God that grow in cool solitudes, and have never been profaned by the hot sun and dust of this world!”

“I should like to be such a one,” said Agnes. “I often think, when I visit the sisters at the convent, that I long to be one of them.”

“A pretty story!” cried Dame Elsie, who had heard the last words. “What! go into a convent and leave your poor grandmother all alone, when she has toiled night and day for so many years to get a dowry for you and find you a worthy husband!”

“I don’t want any husband in this world, grandmamma,” said Agnes.

“What talk is this? Not want a good husband to take care of you when your poor old grandmother is gone? Who will provide for you?”

“He who took care of the blessed Saint Agnes, grandmamma.”

“Saint Agnes, to be sure! That was a great many years ago, and times have altered since then;—in these days girls must have husbands.”

“But if the darling hath a vocation?” suggested the artist, mildly.

“Vocation! I’ll see to that! She shan’t have a vocation! Do you suppose I’m going to toil, and spin, and wear myself to the bone, and have her slip through my fingers at last with a vocation? No, indeed!”

“Indeed, dear grandmother, don’t be angry!” pleaded Agnes. “I will do just as you say,—only I don’t want a husband.”

“Well, well, my little heart,—one thing at a time; you shan’t have him till you say yes willingly,” said Elsie, in a mollified tone.

Agnes turned again to the portfolio and busied herself with it, her eyes dilating as she ran over the sketches.

“Ah! what pretty, pretty bird is this?” she asked.

“Knowest thou not that bird, with his little red beak?” said the artist. “When our dear Lord hung bleeding and no man pitied Him, this bird, filled with tender love, tried to draw out the nails with his poor little beak—so much better were the birds than we hard-hearted sinners!—hence he hath honour in many pictures. See here—I shall put him in the office of the Sacred Heart, in a little nest curiously built in a running vine of passion-flower. See here, daughter—I have a great commission to execute a breviary for our house, and our holy father was pleased to say that the spirit of the blessed Angelico had in some little humble measure descended on me, and now I am busy day and night; for not a twig rustles, not a bird flies, nor a flower blossoms, but I begin to see therein some hint of holy adornment to my blessed work.”

“Oh, uncle Antonio, how happy you must be!” exclaimed Agnes, her large eyes dilating and filling with tears.

“Happy!—child, am I not?” returned the monk, looking up and crossing himself. “Holy Mother, am I not? Do I not walk the earth in a dream of bliss, and see the footsteps of my most Blessed Lord and his dear Mother on every rock and hill? I see the flowers rise up in clouds to adore them. What am I, unworthy sinner, that such grace is granted me? Often I fall on my face before the humblest flower where my dear Lord hath written his name, and confess I am unworthy the honour of copying his sweet handiwork.”

The artist spoke these words with his hands clasped and his fervid eyes upraised, like a man in an ecstasy; nor can our more prosaic English give an idea of the fluent simplicity and grace with which such images melt into that lovely tongue that seems made to be the natural language of poetry and enthusiasm.

Agnes looked up to him with awe, as to some celestial being; but there was a sympathetic glow in her face, and she crossed her hands on her bosom, as her manner often was when much moved, and, drawing a deep sigh, ejaculated:—“Would that such gifts were mine!”

“They are thine, sweet one,” replied the monk. “In Christ’s dear kingdom is no ‘mine’ or ‘thine,’ but all that each hath is the property of the others. I never rejoice so much in my art as when I think of the communion of saints; and that all that our Blessed Lord will work through me is the property of the humblest soul in his kingdom. When I see one flower rarer than another, or a bird singing on a twig, I take note of the same, and say, ‘This lovely work of God shall be for some shrine, or the border of a missal, or the foreground of an altar-piece, and thus shall his saints be comforted.’”

“But,” said Agnes, fervently, “how little can a poor young maiden do! Ah, I do so long to offer myself up in some way to the dear Lord who gave Himself for us, and for his most Blessed Church!”

As Agnes spoke these words, her cheek, usually so clear and pale, became suffused with a tremulous colour, and her dark eyes beamed with a deep, divine expression; a moment after, the colour slowly faded, her head drooped, and her long dark lashes fell on her cheek, while her hands were folded on her bosom. The eye of the monk was watching her with an enkindled glance.

“Is she not the very presentment of our Blessed Lady in the Annunciation?” said he to himself. “Surely, this grace is upon her for this special purpose. My prayers are answered.”

“Daughter,” he began, in a gentle tone, “a glorious work has been done of late in Florence under the preaching of our blessed Superior. Could you believe it, daughter, in these times of backsliding and rebuke there have been found painters base enough to paint the pictures of vile, abandoned women in the character of our Blessed Lady; yea, and princes have been found wicked enough to buy them and put them up in churches, so that the people have had the Mother of all Purity presented to them in the guise of a vile harlot. Is it not dreadful?”

“How horrible!” ejaculated Agnes.

“Ah, but you should have seen the great procession through Florence, when all the little children were inspired by the heavenly preaching of our blessed Master. These dear little ones, carrying the blessed cross and singing the hymns our Master had written for them, went from house to house and church to church, demanding that everything that was vile and base should be delivered up to the flames; and the people, beholding, thought that the angels had indeed come down, so they brought forth all their loose pictures and vile books, such as Boccaccio’s romances and other defilements, and the children made a great bonfire of them in the Grand Piazza, and thus thousands of vile things were consumed and scattered. And then our blessed Master exhorted the artists to give their pencils to Christ and his Mother, and to seek for her image among pious and holy women living a veiled and secluded life, like that our Lady lived before the blessed Annunciation. ‘Think you,’ he continued, ‘that the blessed Angelico obtained the grace to set forth our Lady in such heavenly wise, by gazing about the streets on mincing women tricked out in all the world’s bravery?—Did he not find her image in holy solitudes, among modest and prayerful saints?’”

“Ah,” exclaimed Agnes, drawing in her breath with an expression of awe, “what mortal would dare to sit for the image of our Lady!”

“Dear child, there be women whom the Lord crowns with beauty when they know it not, and our dear Mother sheds so much of her spirit into their hearts that it shines out in their faces; among such must the painter look. Dear little child, be not ignorant that our Lord hath shed this great grace on thee. I have received a light that thou art to be the model for the ‘Hail, Mary!’ in my Breviary.”

“Oh, no, no, no! it cannot be!” cried Agnes, covering her face.

“My daughter, thou art very beautiful, and this beauty was given thee not for thyself, but to be laid like a sweet flower on the altar of thy Lord. Think how blessed, if, through thee, the faithful be reminded of the modesty and humility of Mary, so that their prayers become more fervent! Would it not be a great grace?”

“Dear uncle,” replied Agnes, “I am Christ’s child. If it be as you say,—which I did not know,—give me some days to pray and prepare my soul, that I may offer myself in all humility.”

During this conversation Elsie had left the garden and gone a little way down the gorge, to have a few moments of gossip with an old crony of hers. The light of the evening sky had gradually faded away, and the full moon was pouring a shower of silver upon the orange-trees. As Agnes sat on the parapet, with the moonlight streaming down on her young, spiritual face, now tremulous with deep suppressed emotion, the painter thought he had never seen any human creature that looked nearer to his conception of a celestial being.

They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion. All was so still around them, that the drip and trickle of the little stream which fell from the garden wall into the dark abyss of the gorge, could be distinctly heard as it pattered from one rocky point to another, with a light, lulling sound. Suddenly their revery was disturbed by the shadow of a figure which passed into the moonlight and seemed to have risen from the side of the gorge. A man, enveloped in a dark cloak with a peaked hood, stepped across the moss-grown garden parapet, stood a moment irresolute, then the cloak dropped suddenly from him, and the cavalier appeared in the moonlight before Agnes. He bore in his hand a tall stalk of white lily, with open blossoms and buds and tender fluted green leaves, such as one sees in a thousand pictures of the Annunciation. The moonlight fell full upon his face, revealing his haughty yet beautiful features, agitated by some profound emotion. The monk and the girl were both too much surprised for a moment to utter a sound; and when, after an instant, the monk made a half-movement as if to speak, the cavalier raised his right hand with a sudden authoritative gesture which silenced him. Then turning toward Agnes, he knelt, and kissed the hem of her robe, and laying the lily in her lap, exclaimed, “Holiest and dearest—oh! forget not to pray for me!” He rose again in a moment, and, throwing his cloak around him, sprang over the garden wall, and was heard rapidly descending into the shadows of the gorge.

All this passed so quickly that it seemed to both the spectators like a dream. The splendid man, with his jewelled weapons, his haughty bearing and air of easy command, bowing with such solemn humility before the peasant girl, reminded the monk of the barbaric princes in the wonderful legends he had read, who had been drawn by some heavenly inspiration to come and render themselves up to the teachings of holy virgins, chosen of the Lord, in divine solitudes. In the poetical world in which he lived such marvels were possible: there were a thousand precedents for them in that dream-land of the devout, “The Lives of the Saints.”

“My daughter,” he said, after looking vainly down the dark shadows to track the path of the stranger, “have you ever seen this man before?”

“Yes, uncle; yesterday evening I saw him for the first time, when sitting at my stand at the gate of the city. It was at the Ave Maria; he came up there and asked my prayers, and gave me a diamond ring for the shrine of Saint Agnes, which I carried to the convent.

“Behold, my dear daughter, the confirmation of what I have just said to thee! It is evident that our Lady hath endowed thee with the great grace of a beauty which draws the soul upward toward the angels, instead of downward to sensual things, like the beauty of worldly women. What saith the blessed poet Dante of the beauty of the holy Beatrice?—that it said to every man who looked on her, ‘_Aspire!_’ Great is the grace; and thou must give special praise therefor.”

“I would,” said Agnes, thoughtfully, “that I knew who this stranger is, and what is his great trouble and need,—his eyes are so full of sorrow. Giulietta said he was the king’s brother, and was called the Lord Adrian. What sorrow can he have, or what need for the prayers of a poor maid like me?”

“Perhaps the Lord hath pierced him with a longing after the celestial beauty and heavenly purity of paradise, and wounded him with a divine sorrow, as happened to Saint Francis and to the blessed Saint Dominic,” said the monk. “Beauty is the Lord’s arrow, wherewith He pierceth to the inmost soul, with a divine longing and languishment which find rest only in Him. Hence, thou seest, the wounds of love in saints are always painted by us with holy flames ascending from them. Have good courage, sweet child, and pray with fervour for this youth: there be no prayers sweeter before the throne of God than those of spotless maidens. The Scripture saith, ‘The beloved feedeth among the lilies.’”

At this moment was heard the sharp, decided tramp of Elsie re-entering the garden.

“Come, Agnes,” she cried, “it is time for you to begin your prayers, or, the saints know, I shall not get you to bed till midnight. I suppose prayers are a good thing,” she added, seating herself wearily; “but if one must have so many of them, one must get about them early: there’s reason in all things.”

Agnes, who had been sitting abstractedly on the parapet, with her head drooped over the lily-spray, now seemed to collect herself. She rose up in a grave and thoughtful manner, and, going forward to the shrine of the Madonna, removed the flowers of the morning, and, holding the vase under the spout of the fountain all feathered with waving maidenhair, filled it with fresh water, the drops falling from it in a thousand little silver rings in the moonlight.

“I have a thought,” said the monk to himself, drawing from his girdle a pencil and hastily sketching by the moonlight. What he drew was a fragile maiden form, sitting with clasped hands on a mossy ruin, gazing on a spray of white lilies which lay before her. He called it, The Blessed Virgin pondering the Lily of the Annunciation.

“Hast thou ever reflected,” he asked of Agnes, “what that lily might be like which the angel Gabriel brought to our Lady?—for, trust me, it was no mortal flower, but grew by the river of life. I have often meditated thereon, that it was like unto living silver with a light in itself, like the moon—even as our Lord’s garments in the Transfiguration, which glistened like the snow. I have cast about in myself by what device a painter might represent so marvellous a flower.”

“Now, brother Antonio,” Elsie broke in, “if you begin to talk to the child about such matters, our Lady alone knows when we shall get to bed. I am sure I’m as good a Christian as anybody; but, as I said, there’s reason in all things: one cannot always be wondering and inquiring into heavenly matters—as to every feather in Saint Michael’s wings, and as to our Lady’s girdle and shoestrings and thimble and work-basket; and when one gets through with our Lady, then one has it all to go over about her mother, the blessed Saint Anne (may her name be ever praised!) I mean no disrespect, but the saints are reasonable folk, and must see that poor folk must live, and, in order to live, must think of something else now and then besides _them_. That’s my mind, brother.”

“Well, well, sister,” returned the monk, placidly, “no doubt you are right. There shall be no quarrelling in the Lord’s vineyard: every one hath his manner and place, and you follow the lead of the blessed Saint Martha, which is holy and honourable.”

“Honourable! I should think it might be!” retorted Elsie. “I warrant me, if everything had been left to Saint Mary’s doings, our Blessed Lord and the Twelve Apostles might have gone supperless. But it’s Martha gets all the work, and Mary all the praise.”

“Quite right, quite right,” said the monk, abstractedly, while he stood out in the moonlight busily sketching the fountain. By just such a fountain he thought our Lady might have washed the clothes of the Blessed Babe. Doubtless there was some such in the court of her dwelling, all mossy and with sweet waters for ever singing a song of praise.

Elsie was now heard within the house making energetic commotion, rattling pots and pans, and effecting decided movements among the simple furniture of the dwelling; probably with a view to preparing for the night’s repose of her guest.

Meanwhile Agnes, kneeling before the shrine, was going through, with great feeling and tenderness, the various manuals and movements of nightly devotion which her own religious fervour and the zeal of her spiritual advisers had enjoined upon her. Christianity, when it entered Italy, came among a people every act of whose life was coloured and consecrated by symbolic and ritual acts of heathenism. The only possible way to uproot this was in supplanting it by Christian ritual and symbolism equally minute and pervading. Besides, in those ages when the Christian preacher was utterly destitute of all such help as the press now gives in keeping under the eye of converts the great inspiring truths of religion, it was one of the first offices of every saint whose preaching stirred the heart of the people, to devise symbolic forms, signs, and observances, by which the mobile and fluctuating heart of the multitude might crystallize into habits of devout remembrance. The rosary, the crucifix, the shrine, the banner, the processions, were catechisms and tracts invented for those who could not read, wherein the substance of pages was condensed and gave itself to the eye and the touch. Let us not, from the height of our day, with the better appliances which a universal press gives us, sneer at the homely rounds of the ladder by which the first multitudes of the Lord’s flock climbed heavenward.

If there seemed somewhat mechanical in the number of times which Agnes repeated the “Hail, Mary!”—in the prescribed number of times she rose, or bowed, or crossed herself, or laid her forehead in low humility on the flags of the pavement, it was redeemed by the earnest fervour which inspired each action. However foreign to the habits of a Northern mind or education such a mode of prayer may be, these forms to her were all helpful and significant; her soul was borne by them Godward, and often, as she prayed, it seemed to her that she could feel the dissolving of all earthy things, and the pressing nearer and nearer of the great cloud of witnesses who ever surround the humblest member of Christ’s mystical body.

“Sweet loving hearts around her beat, Sweet helping hands are stirred, And palpitates the veil between With breathings almost heard.”

Certain English writers, looking entirely from a worldly and philosophical stand-point, are utterly at a loss to account for the power which certain Italian women of obscure birth came to exercise in the councils of nations merely by the force of a mystical piety; but the Northern mind of Europe is entirely unfitted to read and appreciate the psychological religious phenomena of Southern races. The temperament which in our modern days has been called the mediæval, and which with us is only exceptional, is more or less a race-peculiarity of Southern climates, and gives that objectiveness to the conception of spiritual things from which grew up a complete ritual and a whole world of religious art. The Southern saints and religious artists were seers—men and women of that peculiar fineness and delicacy of temperament which made them peculiarly apt to receive and project outward the truths of the spiritual life; they were in that state of “divine madness” which is favourable to the most intense conception of the poet and artist, and something of this influence descended through all the channels of the people.

When Agnes rose from prayer, she had a serene, exalted expression, like one who walks with some unseen excellence and meditates on some untold joy. As she was crossing the court to come towards her uncle, her eye was attracted by the sparkle of something on the ground, and, stooping, she picked up a heart-shaped locket, curiously made of a large amethyst, and fastened with a golden arrow. As she pressed upon this, the locket opened and disclosed to her view a folded paper. Her mood at this moment was so calm and elevated that she received the incident with no start or quiver of the nerves. To her it seemed a providential token, which would probably bring to her some further knowledge of this mysterious being who had been so especially confided to her intercessions.

Agnes had learned of the superior of the convent the art of reading writing, which would never have been the birthright of the peasant-girl in her times, and the moonlight had that dazzling clearness which revealed every letter.

She stood by the parapet, one hand lying in the white blossoming alyssum which filled its marble crevices, while she seriously read and pondered the contents of the paper.

TO AGNES.

Sweet saint, sweet lady, may a sinful soul Approach thee with an offering of love, And lay at thy dear feet a weary heart That loves thee, as it loveth God above? If blessed Mary may without a stain Receive the love of sinners most defiled, If the fair saints that walk with her in white Refuse not love from earth’s most guilty child, Shouldst thou, sweet lady, then that love deny Which all-unworthy at thy feet is laid? Ah, gentlest angel, be not more severe Than the dear heavens unto a loving prayer! Howe’er unworthily that prayer be said, Let thine acceptance be like that on high!

There might have been times in Agnes’ life when the reception of this note would have astonished and perplexed her; but the whole strain of thought and conversation this evening had been in exalted and poetical regions, and the soft stillness of the hour, the wonderful calmness and clearness of the moonlight, all seemed in unison with the strange incident that had occurred, and with the still stranger tenor of the paper. The soft melancholy and half-religious tone of it was in accordance with the whole undercurrent of her life, and prevented that start of alarm which any homage of a more worldly form might have excited. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she read it many times with pauses and intervals of deep thought, and then with a movement of natural and girlish curiosity examined the rich jewel which had enclosed the paper. At last, seeming to collect her thoughts, she folded the paper and replaced it in its sparkling recess, and, unlocking the door of the shrine, laid the gem with its inclosure beneath the lily-spray, as another offering to the Madonna. “Dear Mother,” she prayed, “if indeed it be so, may he rise from loving me to loving thee and thy dear Son, who is Lord of all! Amen!” Thus praying, she locked the door and turned thoughtfully to her repose, leaving the monk pacing up and down in the moonlit garden.

Meanwhile the cavalier was standing on the velvet mossy bridge which spanned the stream at the bottom of the gorge, watching the play of moonbeams on layer after layer of tremulous silver foliage in the clefts of the black, rocky walls on either side. The moon rode so high in the deep violet-coloured sky, that her beams came down almost vertically, making green and translucent the leaves through which they passed, and throwing strongly marked shadows here and there on the flower-embroidered moss of the old bridge. There was that solemn, plaintive stillness in the air which makes the least sound—the hum of an insect’s wing, the cracking of a twig, the patter of falling water—distinct and impressive.

It needs not to be explained how the cavalier, following the steps of Agnes and her grandmother at a distance, had threaded the path by which they ascended to their little sheltered nook—how he had lingered within hearing of Agnes’ voice, and moving among the surrounding rocks and trees, and drawing nearer and nearer as evening shadows drew on, had listened to the conversation, hoping that some unexpected chance might gain him a moment’s speech with his enchantress.

The reader will have gathered from a previous chapter that the conception which Agnes had formed as to the real position of her admirer from the reports of Giulietta was false, and that in reality he was not Lord Adrian, the brother of the king, but an outcast and landless representative of one branch of an ancient and noble Roman family, whose estates had been confiscated and whose relations had been murdered, to satisfy the boundless rapacity of Cæsar Borgia, the infamous favourite of the notorious Alexander VI.

The natural temperament of Agostino Sarelli had been rather that of the poet and artist than of the warrior. In the beautiful gardens of his ancestral home it had been his delight to muse over the pages of Dante and Ariosto, to sing to the lute, and to write in the facile flowing rhyme of his native Italian the fancies of the dream-land of his youth.

He was the younger brother of the family and the favourite son and companion of his mother; who, being of a tender and religious nature, had brought him up in habits of the most implicit reverence and devotion for the institutions of his forefathers.

The storm which swept over his house and blasted all his worldly prospects, blasted, too, and withered all those religious hopes and beliefs by which alone sensitive and affectionate natures can be healed of the wounds of adversity without leaving distortion or scar. For his house had been overthrown, his elder brother cruelly and treacherously murdered, himself and his retainers robbed and cast out, by a man who had the entire sanction and support of the head of the Christian Church, the Vicar of Christ on Earth. So said the current belief of his times—the faith in which his sainted mother died; and the difficulty with which a man breaks away from such ties is in exact proportion to the refinement and elevation of his nature.

In the mind of our young nobleman there was a double current. He was a Roman, and the traditions of his house went back to the time of Mutius Scævola; and his old nurse had told him often that grand story of how the young hero stood with his right hand in the fire rather than betray his honour. If the legends of Rome’s ancient heroes cause the pulses of colder climes and alien races to throb with sympathetic heroism, what must their power be to one who says, “_These were my fathers?_” Agostino read Plutarch, and thought, “_I_, too, am a Roman!” and then he looked on the power that held sway over the Tarpeian Rock and the halls of the old “Sanctus Senatus,” and asked himself, “By what right does it hold these?” He knew full well that, in the popular belief, all those hardy and virtuous old Romans, whose deeds of heroism so transported him, were burning in hell for the crime of having been born before Christ; and he asked himself, as he looked on the horrible and unnatural luxury and vice which defiled the papal chair and ran riot through every ecclesiastical Order, whether such men, without faith, without conscience, and without even decency, were indeed the only authorized successors of Christ and his Apostles?

To us, of course, from our modern stand-point, the question has an easy solution; but not so in those days, when the Christianity of the known world was in the Romish Church, and when the choice seemed to be between that and infidelity. Not yet had Luther flared aloft the bold, cheery torch which showed the faithful how to disentangle Christianity from Ecclesiasticism. Luther in those days was a star lying low in the gray horizon of a yet unawakened dawn.

All through Italy at this time there was the restless throbbing and pulsating, the aimless outreach of the popular heart, which marks the decline of one cycle of religious faith and calls for some great awakening and renewal. Savonarola, the priest and prophet of this dumb desire, was beginning to heave a great heart of conflict towards that mighty struggle with the vices and immoralities of his times, in which he was yet to sink a martyr; and even now his course was beginning to be obstructed by the full energy of the whole aroused serpent brood which hissed and knotted in the holy places of Rome.

Here, then, was our Agostino, with a nature intensely fervent and poetic—every fibre of whose soul and nervous system had been from childhood skilfully woven and intertwisted with the ritual and faith of his fathers,—yearning towards the grave of his mother; yearning towards the legends of saints and angels with which she had lulled his cradle slumbers and sanctified his childhood’s pillow, and yet burning with the indignation of a whole line of old Roman ancestors against an injustice and oppression wrought under the full approbation of the head of that religion. Half his nature was all the while battling the other half. Would he be Roman, or would he be Christian? All the Roman in him said, “No!” when he thought of submission to the patent and open injustice and fiendish tyranny which had disinherited him, slain his kindred, and held its impure reign by torture and by blood. He looked on the splendid snow-crowned mountains whose old silver senate engirdle Rome with an eternal and silent majesty of presence, and he thought how often in ancient times they had been a shelter to free blood that would not endure oppression; and so gathering to his banner the crushed and scattered retainers of his father’s house, and offering refuge and protection to multitudes of others whom the crimes and rapacities of the Borgias had stripped of possessions and means of support, he fled to a fastness in the mountains between Rome and Naples, and became an independent chieftain, living by his sword.

The rapacity, cruelty, and misgovernment of the various regular authorities of Italy at this time, made brigandage a respectable and honoured institution in the eyes of the people; though it was ostensibly banned both by Pope and Prince. Besides, in the multitude of contending factions which were every day wrangling for supremacy, it soon became apparent, even to the ruling authorities, that a band of fighting-men under a gallant leader, advantageously posted in the mountains and understanding all their passes, was a power of no small importance to be employed on one side or the other; therefore it happened, that, though nominally outlawed or excommunicated, they were secretly protected on both sides, with a view to securing their assistance in critical turns of affairs.

Among the common people of the towns and villages their relations were of the most comfortable kind, their depredations being chiefly confined to the rich and prosperous; who, as they wrung their wealth out of the people, were not considered particular objects of compassion when the same kind of high-handed treatment was extended towards themselves.

The most spirited and brave of the young peasantry, if they wished to secure the smiles of the girls of their neighbourhood and win hearts past redemption, found no surer avenue to favour than in joining the brigands. The leaders of these bands sometimes piqued themselves on elegant tastes and accomplishments; and one of them is said to have sent to the poet Tasso, in his misfortunes and exile, an offer of honourable asylum and protection in his mountain-fortress.

Agostino Sarelli saw himself, in fact, a powerful chief; and there were times when the splendid scenery of his mountain-fastness, its inspiring air, its wild eagle-like grandeur, independence, and security, gave him a proud contentment, and he looked at his sword and loved it as a bride. But then again there were moods when he felt all that yearning and disquiet of soul which the man of wide and tender moral organization must feel who has had his faith shaken in the religion of his fathers. To such a man the quarrel with his childhood’s faith is a never-ending anguish; especially is it so with a religion so objective, so pictorial, and so interwoven with the whole physical and nervous nature of man, as that which grew up and flowered in modern Italy.

Agostino was like a man who lives in an eternal struggle of self-justification,—his reason for ever going over and over with its plea before his regretful and never-satisfied heart, which was drawn every hour of the day by some chain of memory towards the faith whose visible administrators he detested with the whole force of his moral being. When the vesper-bell, with its plaintive call, sounded amid the purple shadows of the olive-silvered mountains,—when the distant voices of chanting priest and choir reached him solemnly from afar,—when he looked into a church with its cloudy pictures of angels and its window-panes flaming with venerable forms of saints and martyrs,—he experienced a yearning anguish, a pain and conflict, which all the effort of his reason could not subdue. How to be a Christian and yet defy the authorized Head of the Christian Church, or how to be a Christian and recognize foul men of obscene and rapacious deeds as Christ’s representatives, was the inextricable Gordian knot which his sword could not divide. He dared not approach the sacrament, he dared not pray; he sometimes felt wild impulses to tread down in riotous despair every fragment of a religious belief which seemed to live in his heart only to torture him. He had heard priests scoff over the wafer they consecrated,—he had known them to mingle poison for rivals in the sacramental wine,—and yet God had kept silence and not struck them dead. Like the Psalmist of old he cried, “Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. Is there a God that judgeth in the earth?”

The first time he saw Agnes bending like a flower in the slanting evening sunbeams by the old gate of Sorrento, while he stood looking down the street lined with kneeling forms, and striving to hold his own soul in the sarcastic calm of utter indifference, he felt himself struck to the heart by an influence he could not define. The sight of that young face, with its clear beautiful lines and its tender fervour, recalled a thousand influences of the happiest and purest hours of his life, and drew him with an attraction he vainly strove to hide under an air of mocking gallantry.

When she looked him in the face with such grave, surprised eyes of innocent confidence, and promised to pray for him, he felt a remorseful tenderness, as if he had profaned a shrine. All that was passionate, poetic, and romantic in his nature was awakened, to blend itself in a strange mingling of despairing sadness and of tender veneration about this sweet image of perfect purity and faith. Never does love strike so deep and immediate a root as in a sorrowful and desolated nature; there it has nothing to dispute the soil, and soon fills it with its interlacing fibres.

In this case it was not merely Agnes that he sighed for, but she stood to him as the fair symbol of that life-peace, that rest of soul, which he had lost, it seemed to him, for ever.

“Behold this pure, believing child,” he said to himself,—“a true member of that blessed Church to which thou art a rebel! How peacefully this lamb walketh the old ways trodden by saints and martyrs, while thou art an infidel and unbeliever!” And then a stern voice within him answered,—“What then? Is the Holy Ghost indeed alone dispensed through the medium of Alexander and his scarlet crew of cardinals? Hath the power to bind and to loose in Christ’s Church been indeed given to whoever can buy it with the wages of robbery and oppression? Why does every prayer and pious word of the faithful reproach me? Why is God silent? Or is there any God? Oh, Agnes, Agnes! dear lily, fair lamb, lead a sinner into the green pastures where thou restest!”

So wrestled the strong nature, tempest-tossed in its strength,—so slept the trustful, blessed in its trust,—then in Italy, as now in all lands.

A County Ball.

Amongst the pleasures in pursuit of which it is the custom to undergo an extraordinary amount of hardship and suffering, the County Ball is entitled to be mentioned, inasmuch as it happens often at a time of year when frost and snow prevail; and that enthusiasm will carry carriage-loads of people a distance of twelve or even twenty miles, that they may dance in a crowd, denser even than that of a London ball, if that is possible, and not go home till morning, when daylight has probably appeared.

It generally takes place at the Town Hall, or at the best inn’s best room, which is decorated with garlands and banners, on which are represented the arms of the noble and influential families of the neighbourhood; and there are portraits of aldermen and other distinguished citizens of the town, illustrious for their civic virtues or for having made their fortunes. And if you have not provided yourself with a ticket beforehand, you have the privilege of being able to pay at the door.

The music, when not supplied by the kind permission of the colonel of the nearest regiment, is formed of the town band, and is remarkable chiefly for the fact that, as the evening proceeds, their intonation becomes more uncertain, but their performance generally more spirited and wilder in execution. The company is composed partly of visitors and partly of natives; the visitors being mostly swells from London and other distant places, and having the conventional manners and customs of such; but the natives may be distinguished by something more of distinct individual character, and there is just a tinge of the rural in their aspect.

The native comes out strong in waistcoats—his array in that respect being gorgeous. In ordinary “society” the waistcoat may be said to be, as it were, merged in the man—a uniform sombreness pervading the entire evening dress. But the country gentleman evidently cherishes his waistcoat—has his favourite waistcoats, which he brings out on great occasions; and it is evident that he has expended much thought on the selection, and that as he expands his chest so as to display as much as possible of that portion of his person, he is proportionately proud of the result.

[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEWS OF SOCIETY. NO. V. A County Ball.]

The County Ball is a great opportunity for the exhibition of uniforms, militia, deputy lieutenant, and other fancy dresses; and it is probable that there are few men with any position at all, who don’t find an excuse for becoming something or other that entitles them to wear a little gold embroidery on their coat, or a silver stripe down their trousers. As for Scotchmen, it is believed that none are to be found, however mild in appearance or manners, who, if their wardrobes were searched, would not be found to possess, only waiting an opportunity to be worn, a complete Highland suit, kilt and etceteras—if, indeed, the word complete can ever be properly applied to that description of costume.

When the usual quantity of quadrilles, waltzes, lancers, country dances, cotillons, reels, and “pop-go-the-weasels,” have been danced or struggled through, in the nature of things comes supper, and then you will observe that a comic man, generally recognized as such, and evidently a great favourite in that part of the country, is called upon to make a speech—returning thanks for the toast of “The Ladies,” probably; and he rises to do so with the air of one who feels that he is the right man, and the confidence following from a conviction that he is in the right place. He proceeds to deliver a speech, which the county paper afterwards describes as “replete with wit and humour,” and as received by the delighted company with “one continued roar of laughter.”

I began by saying something about hardship and suffering, but those words are now withdrawn. What does it matter, if people are good-humoured, and bent upon being amused and amusing others, whether they are driven to the scene of the festivity one or twenty miles, or if the state of the weather is many degrees above freezing point? If the party be a merry one, the longer the journey the better. May County Balls continue and flourish!

My Scotch School.

I have read a good deal of late, in this Magazine and elsewhere, about English public schools, their advantages and disadvantages, their merits and their shortcomings. Have the public any ears to hear something about the public schools of Scotland? Professor John Stuart Blackie has written often and with great force about the Scottish universities, showing that they exhibit the very defects which “Paterfamilias” has pointed out as existing in the public schools of England, with some others to boot. I am not aware that any one has treated in the same way of the Scottish public schools. I am desirous to supply this defect for two—as I think—good reasons. First, because I myself received the rudiments of my education at one of those Scottish schools, and therefore know something of the subject; and, secondly, because there is a great deal of misapprehension in England with respect to Scotch schools and Scotch education generally. The popular idea here seems to be that Scotland, as regards education, is a sort of Tom Tiddler’s ground, a place where the people, both high and low, roll and wallow in education—a land where the rivers run with fertilizing lore; where all the pines are trees of knowledge; where grammar is raked out of the ditches; and where even Greek roots are to be had on the barren hill-sides for the trouble of digging. If this be true, Scotland stands not where it did when I went to school.

Let me premise that I am not going to enter into a disquisition on the subject, to analyze the plan of Scottish education, nor to be didactic in any way whatever. I am simply about to give a sketch of my Scotch school—the school I went to to be prepared for the university. There were penny postage-stamps when I went to my Scotch school; the Reform Bill had been passed eight years previously; daguerrotypes and the electric telegraph were coming in. So it was but the other day. My school was the parochial, or parish school, the school of all Scotch boys who dwell in the country, whether high or low, gentle or simple. Here in England the word “parish” is associated with all kinds of indignity—with the Workhouse, the lock-up, the pound, the pauper’s allowance. It may, therefore, seem to the English reader, ignorant of Scottish matters, when I say I went to the parish school, that I wore a muffin cap and premature knee-breeches (if the English mind can associate Scotland with these nether integuments in any shape), and was educated at the public expense. Let me dissipate this popular error.

The parochial school in Scotland claims equal dignity with the parish Kirk. It is the chief educational establishment—the public school in fact—of the district, and is part of the national system for spreading education and enlightenment among the people of Scotland. The Kirk in Scotland, that is to say, the Established Kirk, is supported by a levy upon the occupiers of the land. The tax, however, is an indirect one, and therefore does not provoke the discontent caused by tithes and church-rates in England. The heritors, that is to say the landowners, pay the amount (on a scale in proportion to the price of grain), and repay themselves out of the rents of their tenants. This payment is not set down as a separate item in the rent-charge, and so the tenant pays his tithes and rates as he pays the tax upon his tea and tobacco. He is bled without knowing it. The parish school shares in this revenue with the parish kirk, but to a limited extent. Turning to the statistical account of my parish—written by the hand which directed the earliest calligraphical exercises of the one which now pens this—I find that the said parish is six miles long by five miles broad, and contains—or did contain then—a population of 1,661 souls. Those English persons who indulge in extravagant notions of the abundance of educational provision in the North may be a little surprised to learn that for this widely-scattered population there were only two schools, each capable of accommodating no more than sixty or seventy scholars. The endowments of these educational establishments were by no means magnificent. The allowance to the master of the parochial school (who was required to be a college man of considerable classical attainments) was 34_l._ 4_s._ 4_d._ per annum, with a dwelling-house and garden, and the fees of the scholars.[3] The fees ranged from 10_s._ to 1_l._ per annum—ten shillings for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and an extra ten for the classics. The master of the other school—an auxiliary seminary established by the General Assembly—received 25_l._ per annum and a cow’s keep, with the fees, averaging about ten shillings per annum for each scholar. It was not required that the master of this establishment should be a high classic, or indeed a classic at all. The appointment was vested in the minister, who was well content to select the candidate, whose letter, soliciting the appointment, exhibited the fewest errors in orthography. Perfection in that branch of grammar he never looked for and never got; for how could you expect irreproachable orthography for 25_l._ a year and a cow’s keep? The worthy man—the minister—made great exertions to establish and carry on this school; but it was always a great source of trouble to him. College men, of course, disdained to accept so trifling a salary; or to undertake so undignified a duty as the instruction of poor cottars’ children in the alphabet. The minister was, therefore, obliged to accept the services of any half-educated aspirant for the honours of a dominie, who could bring testimony to his respectability, and write a tolerable letter. Most of the teachers—for there were frequent changes—were Highlanders, who were more conversant with Gaelic than with English, and who had learned the latter language as a foreign tongue. They all spoke with a fearful Highland twang, all were married, all had slatternly wives, and unreasonably large families. The cow that was kept at the public expense for the sustenance (lacteally) of the General Assembly’s schoolmaster had a hard time of it. Provender was scarce, and the demand for milk excessive; and the schoolmaster’s cow generally died of exhaustion, after a year or two of self-sacrifice.

I remember once going with the minister to pay a visit to the Assembly’s Institute in these parts. When we arrived the academic grove was deserted, and we were informed that the “squeelmaister and the loons were oot on the peat moss.” There we found them, the dominie putting his pupils through a very novel kind of military exercise. He had collected his army on his own division of the moss, where his peats lay in stacks, ready to be carted home, when he could afford to pay for the cartage. We arrived on the scene just as the review began. “Now, poys,” said the dominie, taking up a peat in each hand, “this is a sword and this is a cun”—the Highland pronunciation of “gun”—“shoulder arms, poys.” Here the “poys” took a peat in each hand and shouldered them. “March, poys,” said the dominie, flourishing his peat sword; and away marched the boys with their peats, until they reached the school-house, when the dominie made them defile into a shed and ground arms; that is to say, lay down their peats in a heap convenient for the domestic use. This was what the dominie called his gymnastic exercises, which, he boasted, combined amusement and exercise with instruction; but a suspicion arising that these gymnastics were nothing more nor less than a Highland device for carrying home the dominie’s fuel on an economical principle, an order was issued from head-quarters that such military instruction should only take place in play-hours, and should not be included in the regular curriculum of study.

But I am wandering away from my own school, nestling five miles off among the trees under the shadow of the old kirk. It is a plain one-storey building divided into two parts; the one, consisting of three rooms and a kitchen, forming the home of the schoolmaster, and the other the schoolroom,—a tolerably large and airy apartment, with roughly plastered walls, and furnished with deal desks and forms of the universal school fashion. I do not remember that there were, at any time, more than sixty scholars. They were gathered together from all parts of the parish. Some of them came from a distance of four or five miles, and brought their dinners with them, the provision invariably consisting of a little tin can of milk and a bag of oat-cakes. It was a rule that each scholar should contribute a load or two of peats every quarter for the school fire; but some of them chose to bring a peat with them every morning. These scholars made their morning’s journey to school rather heavily loaded, having to carry, besides their satchel, the tin can of milk, the white calico bag of oat-cake, and the peat. We were of all ages, sexes, and conditions in this school. There was the son of the laird, the heir to an ancient baronetcy. He wore corderoys like the rest of us, and had five rows of broad-headed nails in his shoes. There were several sons of the minister, all destined for one or other of the learned professions; there were the sons of gentlemen farmers and the sons of poor cottars, their dependants; and with these, on terms of the broadest academic equality, mingled the grandson of the parish sexton and bell-ringer, the son of a widow occasionally receiving parochial relief, and the sons and daughters of carpenters, blacksmiths, and farm-servants, including the female descendant of old Lizzy—pauper and egg vendor—who lit the school fire and swept the school floor in discharge of young Lizzy’s fees. No distinction of rank was preserved in any way whatever. The laird’s son and the grave-digger’s son stood up in the same class side by side, and I remember that the expectant baronet was often “taken down” by the heir of the mortuary mattock. In the reading classes the boys and girls were all mingled together, and I have often seen a big, hulking fellow of eighteen—some ambitious cottar’s son who had taken to education late—standing next to a little girl in short petticoats and heel-strapped shoes. There was little jealousy on the score of religious belief in the parish. There were several Roman Catholic boys among us, and they joined in all our exercises, except the reading of the Bible and the saying of the Shorter Catechism. At these times the Roman Catholic boys sat in their seats and amused themselves; and not unfrequently, when memory failed with regard to Justification, Sanctification, and Adoption, we, Protestants, smarting under the consequences, were tempted to wish from the bottom of our hearts that we had been brought up Papists.

There was one feature of our school which appears very startling to me now, but which was never regarded as extraordinary by any of us at the time. It was this. Illegitimate mingled with the legitimate offspring of the same parents. Our parish was rather celebrated for irregularity in the matter of births, owing entirely to a local proneness to irregularity in the matter of marriage. This was not confined to the lower classes. Gentlemen farmers, who moved in the minister’s own circle, occasionally appeared before the Session to be admonished, and this sometimes led to the scandalous anomaly of a gentleman farmer dining at the manse one week and sitting on the stool of repentance the next. As there was only one school in the neighbourhood, and as it was considered imperative that every child, no matter what the circumstances of its birth, or position, should be educated, it constantly happened that there were several duplicates of families at the parochial school. In several instances, that I well remember, the illegitimate scion lived in perfect harmony with the legitimate in the bosom of the same family, and not unfrequently the illegitimate member was regarded as the flower of the flock. I can call up before me now two Marys and two Peters. The two Marys lived under the same roof as sisters, and I never heard a word of reproach cast at the elder Mary, albeit she was prettiest, cleverest, and illegitimate. It was different with the two Peters. Peter the First lived with his mother, Hagar, in the desert, an outcast from the paternal roof. But on the common ground of the parochial school, he sat on the same form, stood up in the same class, and shared equally in the Justification and Adoption of the Shorter Catechism with Peter the true-born. Peter the Base often enjoyed the satisfaction of giving Peter the True a “good licking;” but these quarrels never originated in resentment, arising out of their invidious relationship. So, you see, we were a strange, heterogeneous assemblage at this Scotch school.

A stranger aspect still was occasionally presented when two or three grown men and women took their places among us. I remember Betty, the laird’s nurse, coming for a quarter to improve her handwriting; and, nearly at the same time, the grown-up son of a neighbouring farmer, who had an ambition to become acquainted with mensuration and surveying. Betty had scarcely got to “round hand,” before the farmer’s son, who was accustomed to pursue his studies on the opposite side of the desk, fell in love with her, and the upshot of it was that the farmer’s son and Betty threw learning to the winds, and went and got married before the quarter was out. When Betty was squaring her elbows out at the large text, the laird’s son was wont to take great delight in walking past her and jogging her arm, in revenge for the ruthless way in which Betty used to clean out his ears with a piece of rough flannel on washing nights.

An almost universal circumstance tends to make every Scottish parochial schoolmaster discontented with his position and impatient of his duties. The parish-school is the stepping-stone to the kirk, and each schoolmaster when he is installed at the dominie’s desk, begins to long for the day when he will “wag his head in the poopit.” The school-house is the hard shell of the chrysalis; the manse, the flowery elysium of the full-fledged butterfly. When I went to school, our schoolmaster was in full cry after a kirk and a cure of souls. He spent a good deal of his time in reading the newspapers, and, as it appeared to me, in looking out for the demise of neighbouring ministers. Every morning after prayers, he read the newspapers for about an hour, during which time, we, the pupils, sat and learned our lessons, or more often amused ourselves, as quietly as we could. When any unusual disturbance took place, the master threw the “tag”—a piece of a gig trace burnt at the end to make it hard—at the offender. The pupil hit by it—no matter whether he was the real culprit or not—was expected to carry the instrument of punishment to the master and to accept flagellation, commonly on the hands, but not unfrequently (when the prospect of a kirk looked hazy and dim) upon a part of the body which required preliminary untrussing of points to be got at. It fell to the lot of Lizzy, the sweeper’s granddaughter, most frequently to have to take up the “tag.” Lizzy, it is true, was a very “limb” in point of trouble; but she had always more than her fair share of the gig trace. The way in which our schoolmaster lifted his hand against the female sex would have wholly disqualified him, in a nautical drama, from claiming the name of a British tar. The English reader may think that it equally disqualified him for the position of a British schoolmaster; but I do not remember that any one was shocked by these proceedings at the time. If a parent complained, it was not on the score of the indignity, but because the “tag” left its marks.

The course of instruction pursued at our school included reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and the classics. In the general branches all sorts, sizes, and sexes, stood up together in the same classes, according to their relative state of advancement. The Greek and Latin classes only were select, they being composed of some half-dozen boys of superior station destined to go to college when they had mastered Latin enough to enable them to spell through Cæsar and Virgil. With these the master took considerable pains for his own credit’s sake; for it would have been an eternal disgrace to him had his pupils been rejected on their first easy examination at Aberdeen. In the other branches the method pursued was one entirely of routine. Nothing was explained in a rational or intelligible way. The only reading books in the school were the Bible and McCulloch’s first, second, and third _Courses of Reading_, three progressive volumes of badly selected extracts from various authors; and at these we hammered away day after day, and over and over again, from the moment we entered the school until the moment we left it. There was not a single History in the school—not even a History of England in its most modest form of abridgment. As for myself, my early knowledge of English history was entirely derived from a sheet of coloured portraits of the English kings pasted up on the wall of my box-bed at home. My knowledge of the dates of their reigns, and the order of their succession, is even now vividly associated with that coloured sheet. Geography was taught from a book. We learned boundaries and the names of countries by heart, and chattered them like parrots; but of the characteristics of countries and their inhabitants we learned nothing beyond that such and such a people “were a hardy race, who devoted themselves to agriculture,” and the like. Arithmetic was taught in the same way. When we had, by an entirely mechanical and illogical process, committed to memory the multiplication table, we were given over to somebody’s “Arithmetic,” to puzzle over rules and make our answers to the questions tally, by any means whatever, with those in the book. I remember, with regard to the rule of three, that we used to try one position after the other, until we worked out the right answer. The dominie never condescended to explain the simple logic of the process. The result is, as regards myself, that I am to this day the greatest dunce at figures in the world. I believe I have been detected refusing to purchase oranges at two for three halfpence, but readily agreeing to take five for sixpence, with the idea that it was a better bargain.

At the time of which I speak it was a rule of faith with all Scotch schoolmasters that flagellation was the primary and most important agent in the work of education. “Spare the rod, and you spoil the child,” should have been written over the door of every parochial school. Every boy who entered the portals of my Scotch school with a consciousness of being imperfect in any lesson, left all hope of immunity from the tag behind him. The slightest mistake in spelling, or in saying the Shorter Catechism—that hated Shorter Catechism!—was punished by one or more strokes of the tag on the extended hand. I have seen the order go down a whole class, “Hold out your hand, sir.” And crack, crack, crack went the tag on our unflinching palms. We knew if we flinched we should get a double dose, and perhaps on another and more sensitive part of our bodies. I think I may safely say that a day never passed without a flogging. Two or three times a week the “tag” was the occasion of a regular scene. This was when some spirited or big boy refused to hold out his hand or untruss. I remember one notable occasion when the master attempted to inflict the “extreme punishment” on a big ploughman of eighteen or nineteen. There was a regular fight between them: and several times master and pupil went down together on the floor, rolling and struggling with all the desperation of men engaged in a mortal combat. Both parties called upon the pupils to come to their assistance; but we, small boys, were too much alarmed to side with either, albeit our sympathies were decidedly with the ploughman. The result of this conflict was highly agreeable to us all. The dominie was laid up for a week with bruised legs, and during that time there was “no school.” The terror inspired by the tag caused the boys to frequently play the truant; in the vernacular this was called “fugieing.” Scarcely a day passed that some boy did not “fugie,” or fly the school. There was one boy who was particularly distinguished for this art. He had been punished for it over and over again, and beaten at all points until he was black and blue, but still he would “fugie.” He would come away from home in the morning with his satchel and dinner; but, instead of going to school, would betake himself to the forest, and spend the day in birds’-nesting, or in devouring “blaeberries.” When his retreat was discovered, the master started one morning in pursuit of him, followed by all the scholars in a pack. We had a regular hunt, and greatly we enjoyed the sport, not caring so much for the fate of the fugitive, as for the holiday and the exemption for a few hours from lessons and the tag. Sandy, for that was the fugitive’s name, was unearthed like a fox, and hunted like one, all through the wood, and over the burn, and up the hill-side to a clump of tall fir-trees, where, finding the dominie close upon him, with the tag vengefully waved aloft, Sandy clambered up the smooth stem of a tall larch-tree, and perched himself triumphantly among its topmost branches. The dominie, who was not deficient in pluck when upholding the prerogative of the tag, immediately made the attempt to follow him; but finding the branches rather too slight to bear his weight, he was glad to slide down again, after having successfully climbed the stem. Having in vain commanded Sandy to come down, the dominie held a council of war with himself for a few minutes, and suddenly resolved upon his strategy. One of the boys was despatched to a neighbouring farm-house for an axe. When it was brought, the dominie set to work at the root of the tree, and, when he had given it two or three strokes, called out once more to Sandy—“Will you come down, sir?” Sandy looked cautiously over from his nest among the branches to see what probability there was of the dominie’s being able to fell the tree, and, apparently, coming to the conclusion that he couldn’t do it, contemptuously answered—“Na, I winna come doon.” Once more the dominie laid the axe at the root of Sandy’s citadel, and though he made little progress in cutting it, the tree shook at every stroke, until Sandy, becoming rather uncomfortable, consented to come down. He had no sooner reached the ground, than he was collared and marched off to the school in triumph, and was duly whipped by extreme process.

Our parents rarely interfered to protect us from the tag, when it was administered in moderation; though occasionally some noise was made when a boy was sent home utterly incapacitated from occupying a sitting position. The miller’s wife—a strong-minded dame of the “rampaging” order—so far from being maternally indignant when her son, Johnny, was sent home in a state of pulp, would occasionally call in to enjoin the dominie not to spare him. This lady was a chief actor in one of our most memorable “scenes.” Her son Johnny had “fugied” for several days running, and had been found out and duly whipped by the maternal order. Some time after this the good lady found Johnny hiding in the mill, about the middle of the day, when he ought to have been at school. I remember well what came of that discovery. Late one afternoon we were startled from our studies by a noise of wheels, the clattering of some iron instrument, and the accents of a shrill, angry voice. The master immediately ran out to see what was the matter, and we, the pupils, took the opportunity to rush to the windows. It was the miller’s wife, who had arrived with her son Johnny in a cart, keeping guard over him with the kitchen tongs. The next minute Johnny was driven into the schoolroom by his infuriate parent, who banged him with the tongs as he ran. I shall never forget the scene that ensued. “Now have your wull o’ him,” said the Spartan parent to the dominie. The dominie thus licensed, got out the tag; but Johnny no sooner caught sight of that instrument than he was nerved to the most desperate resistance. The moment the dominie advanced to seize him Johnny scrambled over a desk and dodged him; and when the dominie ran round after him he scrambled back again. The miller’s wife now came to the dominie’s assistance, and for nearly a quarter of an hour both together hunted Johnny over the desks and forms, hitting out at him with the tag and the tongs, while the books, and slates, and milk-cans were scattered all over the floor like broken armour on a battle-field. It was not until Johnny was fairly out of breath that he gave in; and then he lay down on his back on the floor, and turning himself rapidly round as on a pivot, menaced first the dominie and then his mother with his iron-shod feet. Johnny managed to resist the extreme penalty designed for him, but what with the bumps he received in riding over the desks, and the random blows from the tongs and the tag, he had punishment enough and to spare. Of course, as we all saw and felt that this constant flagellation was both cruel and unjust, we were never any better for it, and bore it or resisted it manfully, as martyrs bear and resist persecution.

But notwithstanding the loose and desultory, not to say brutal, system pursued at our school, the pupils of all degrees managed, in some way or other, to acquire a very respectable quantum of knowledge, or, if not knowledge itself, the groundwork of knowledge. The boys who learned Greek and Latin went to college and took their degrees; the farmers’ sons went home to give a higher intellectual life to the society in which their families moved; and the humbler class of scholars carried away with them to the plough’s tail, the carpenter’s bench, and the smithy, just enough of the rudiments of learning to enable them to cultivate themselves by after study. This fact may seem a contradiction to the picture I have given of my Scotch school. In Scotland, however, bad teaching and a high state of mental cultivation among the masses are quite consistent. The fact is, the middle and lower classes in Scotland have a passion for learning. The dearest ambition of the poor cottar is to educate his children, and, if possible, to give one, at least, such an amount of schooling as will fit him for a higher station than that occupied by his parents. A poor hillside crofter will starve himself and his family for ten years of their life to send one of the boys to college and qualify him for the kirk. Such boys, however, learn more poring over their books by the humble fireside at home, or out in the fields in the intervals of their farm work, than at the school. They learn under every disadvantage, because they are spurred on by a love of knowledge and a desire to raise themselves. It is this universal thirst after knowledge and intellectual cultivation that gives Scotland so decided a pre-eminence as regards general education. Persons who can neither read nor write are common enough in England, not alone in the country districts, but also in the great towns. I doubt if you could find one such in all Scotland. The classes corresponding to the “hinds” and “navvies” of England, cannot only read and write, but are capable of enjoying literature in its higher developments. Our farming-men at home used to spend their evenings, after their frugal supper of kail brose, in reading the newspapers and discussing the debates in Parliament. Our herd-boy taught himself the elements of astronomy out in the fields, while tending the cattle. He was the first to tell me the names of the planets and point them out to me. I taught him, in return, a little Latin; and I remember, during my last year at college, meeting this herd-boy in the quadrangle, arrayed in the red toga. I have since heard that he carried off the first mathematical prize.

FOOTNOTES

[3] In an abstract of a bill for bettering the condition of the schoolmasters of Scotland, passed at the beginning of the century, it is laid down that “the amount of salary to each parochial schoolmaster shall not be less than the average annual wages of a day labourer, nor above that of two day labourers.”

The Convict out in the World.

At stated periods, the governor of a convict prison gives audience to such inmates of his mansion as may have complaints to make, or petitions to prefer; and of the demands most commonly heard, from old and young, one of the commonest is: “Please, sir, may I grow?” It sounds odd to hear the naïve request put by some square-shouldered grey-haired fellow; but it is usually found so reasonable that, after a word or two of inquiry, the governor consents. The man wishes to let his hair grow within the next three or four months before his leaving the prison; and it is the first step towards his release, whether it be on the expiry of his sentence, or on his earning a “conditional pardon.” Subsequently, the chaplain of the prison sends forth certain formal questions as to the man’s prospect of obtaining honest employment out of doors; and about a month before the date of his departure, the chaplain addresses a letter to any person by whom the prisoner hopes to be employed, describing the man’s state of health, stating his conduct in prison, and asking whether his report upon the subject of employment is true, or whether he has any other means of support. In the majority of cases, I am told, the replies are “satisfactory;” but, in some instances, they are otherwise, and, in some, the man can give no reference. Within my own very limited range of individual observation, I have observed in England the same circumstance which I have noticed in Ireland—that the prisoner often has a dread of returning to his friends, not only because he fears that his character will be known, but because he is too well aware that those with whom he has been acquainted before he entered the prison will draw him back into evil courses. At once, then, we perceive a very unexpected symptom of improvement: the desire of the prisoner to cut all connection with his family, and to avow that he has no means, no chance of obtaining help or employment, is one of the most tangible results of his reformation. In cases where the reply is unsatisfactory, or the man can give no reference, the governor and chaplain fill up a form in which they express an opinion whether he is able to earn his livelihood. From these inquiries and records returns are made to the Secretary of State, specifying the men who are eligible to be recommended for release under a conditional pardon. On receiving the order of the Secretary of State, the licence is printed on a small parchment form, and on the back of that form is the following schedule of conditions:—

“1. The power of revoking or altering the licence of a convict will most certainly be exercised in case of his misconduct.

“2. If, therefore, he wishes to retain the privilege which, by his good behaviour under penal discipline, he has obtained, he must prove, by his subsequent conduct, that he is really worthy of her Majesty’s clemency.

“3. To produce a forfeiture of the licence, it is by no means necessary that the holder should be convicted of any new offence. If he associate with notoriously bad characters, leads an idle and dissolute life, or has no visible means of obtaining an honest livelihood, &c., it will be assumed that he is about to relapse into crime, and he will be at once apprehended, and recommitted to prison under his original sentence.”

Dressed in clothes provided for him by the prison, and suited to his probable occupation, whether as an artisan or a labourer, his parchment licence in his pocket, and the first instalment of his gratuity—probably 2_l._, more or less—with a soldier’s railway pass for the place of his destination, the prisoner sets out. In less lucky instances, he simply walks forth into space “to take his chance”—that is, to beg for employment from those who are too busy to attend to him, or to supply his necessities by some more familiar means. Upon the whole, however, we might classify the prisoners into three classes: those who return to their friends, those who proceed at once to some familiar place of resort, and those who seek the “Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society.”

I have already explained that those persons who were convicted under the Peel’s Servitude Act of 1853, which accidentally omitted to provide for the conditional pardon, form a class which has occasioned some perplexity, but is gradually dying out. The men of this class are divided into four “stages:” those in the second stage have sixpence a week towards their gratuity, in the third ninepence, in the fourth one shilling. Men sentenced under the amended Act of 1857 are divided into three “stages:” in the second stage they receive fourpence a week, and in the third eightpence. The larger sums given to the men of the first class, together with some other indulgences in prison, are allowed as a compensation for their losing the chance of getting a ticket-of-leave, either in the colonies or at home. The accumulated gratuity sometimes rises to a considerable amount. A friend who has studied the subject minutely has found it to range as high as 27_l._ or 28_l._; usually it ranges from 8_l._ to 20_l._; and he computes the average to be about 12_l._ As you already know, this is not handed to the man in one sum. Supposing his gratuity to be of the average amount, on leaving the prison he will receive 2_l._, with the deduction of a few pence for postage which will be incurred on his account after his departure. Ten days later he will receive 2_l._ more, at the end of two months 4_l._, and at the end of three months the balance of 4_l._; so that he will be five months and a half before he can draw the whole sum. Thus, if he is discharged on the 1st of January, he will not have cleared his prison account until the end of June. He cannot draw any of the instalments without obtaining the endorsement of a clergyman, magistrate, or some known persons, to a form which shows that he is living respectably and supporting himself by honest work. Some time since, I am told by the same friend, the discharged prisoners were often unable to obtain any of their gratuity, and in most instances could not arrive at the closing balance. It too frequently happened that the man would return to his friends, recover his original character—that is, become a vagabond and a thief—and so lose the power to procure the valuable endorsement of a magistrate or clergyman. Another danger attended all convicts, and still, I fear, attends the most hardened or the most desolate. At every post where the man was likely to emerge from his seclusion was stationed an agent appointed by the very worst of all “the dangerous classes”—some Fagin or Fagin’s man, the caterer for criminal customers. This functionary is of the same genus with those who tout at the landing-pier of watering-places, with vocal cards issuing from their mouths in praise of certain inns. The gentleman sallying forth from one of her Majesty’s mansions, found himself suddenly courted as a welcome customer, a “distinguished person,” with every convenience offered to him for spending the money in his pocket as fast as possible, and perhaps for discounting the great expectations of the next few months.

It was a knowledge of these facts which, in 1857, induced Mr. Whitbread, the Member for Bedford, at present one of the Lords of the Admiralty, to suggest the establishment of an Association for the express purpose of holding out a helping hand to the discharged prisoner. He invited Mr. William Bayne Rankin and other friends to assist him. Some lent him their names, which were in themselves of great value; others gave him their money, and some few rendered active co-operation. Mr. Rankin became the honorary secretary of the Association, and Mr. F. Partridge its secretary. By degrees the “Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society,” which is still an independent charitable body, has become a sort of volunteer auxiliary to the Convict Department. The Association prepared forms, which were sent to every convict prison in England; the nature of the society is explained to each prisoner before his discharge; and he accepts the help or not entirely according to his own free choice. In early days, many prisoners hesitated to comply with the first peremptory condition imposed by the society—that the whole of the gratuity should be placed in its hands. Judged by graduates in a school not calculated to afford the happiest study of human motives, the charitable gentlemen in Westminster were regarded as a great joint-stock crimping establishment; and the newly released suspected that they were to be as much victimized as the German “redemptioners” were in America. By degrees, however, this suspicion wore off; a knowledge of the manner in which the society worked spread amongst the class on whose behalf it acted, and the business of the corporation has expanded accordingly. At first, there would be two or three cases a week; there are now three or four a day. At first, there was scarcely work enough for one secretary; now the society employs a secretary, two clerks, and one or two agents, and finds the machinery altogether insufficient for its exigencies. During the last year, the moneys passing through the hands of the society have amounted to an aggregate between 10,000_l._ and 12,000_l._, composed principally of the prisoners’ own money; for it must be confessed that no society has ever done so much with such a narrow modicum of means. The list of actual subscribers is slender, and we observed that the heaviest share of the burden falls upon a very few in that short list. At the same time, gentlemen at a distance do not scruple to claim the co-operation of the society in helping forward individuals who may have excited a local or individual interest.

The prisoner comes to the office of the society, at 39, Charing Cross, with the papers of his discharge, including one of the forms stating that he is recommended by the governor of the prison which he has left. This paper specifies his registered number in the prison, his name and sentence, his age on conviction, religion and education, date and place of conviction, nature of crime, previous convictions and nature of crimes, character in separate confinements, character on public works, trade and degree of proficiency, capacity for hard labour, the employment desired, the prisoner’s willingness to emigrate, amount of gratuity due, probable period of discharge, with any remarks which the governor may think fit to add. The society disposes of its clients in three ways—first, by obtaining employment for them; secondly, by enabling them to return to their friends; and thirdly, by assisting them to emigrate. The first case which came before the society was in May, 1857; in the interval it has helped more than 1,900 prisoners. The secretaries believe that, of the total number, not more than 100 have been re-convicted. There are no positive data to establish this fact, but there are hopes that hereafter it may be tested by direct record. With regard to the men who are helped, they may be subdivided into two classes—those for whom situations are found by the advice of the society; and those who obtain work themselves, and are helped to procure tools or materials for work. The women remain at a “Home” provided for them, and in most cases enter as domestic servants. Where the society itself recommends its client for employment, and gives him a character, his antecedents are distinctly mentioned; but where he obtains work by his own independent search, his circumstances are not disclosed. I have inspected the books of the society, and have traced a considerable number of cases, both of men and women. Out of the whole number, I have before me a list of twenty-five, and I am able to say that they are not exceptional, but may be paralleled by far more in the books for the current year. The kinds of employment are as various as that indicated in the _London Directory_. The men are engaged as bakers, milkmen, painters, builders, cabinet-makers, commercial travellers, fishmongers, engineers, watermen, hawkers, goldsmiths, &c. The cases to which I refer range over periods of more than a year; some very few are a little less, some extend to three or four years. A few men have been placed in independent business. In two instances a business was purchased for a man, and in both those instances the person assisted is going on well. In all these cases there is complete information down to the latest date in the present year. In one instance, a man who appears to have squandered a part of his gratuity, came to the society at the eleventh hour in want of five shillings to procure tools. There was something in the earnestness of the man which attracted attention; on inquiry, his story proved to be correct; the tools were furnished him, and he is now employed by a great building firm. He learned the particular handicraft in which he is engaged, at Portland. Another instance falls under my personal observation, and it is interesting for special reasons. It is that of a young man who, since his discharge, has obtained work under an old employer, to whom he told all that had happened to him. By his discipline in prison, by acquiring a consciousness of his powers as a workman, with an insight into the opening offered through industry and energy, the man had evidently surmounted the original sense of the degradation. When I met him, accidentally, I observed no desire to parade himself, nor do I suppose he would have preferred to see his departure from his late residence announced in the _Court Circular_; but he did rather seek my notice, no doubt as that of a witness to his working skill, his diligence, and his substantial advancement; and he seemed to feel that the character which he had acquired at Portland was a substantial testimony to his capacity, industry, and resolution. The man is a very good specimen of a sharp Englishman. I have met, of course quite casually, with one or two instances of the same kind.

Another prisoner, assisted by the society, was discharged more than three years and a half ago. He found employment for himself; but after the society had assisted him, he came back to it for a character. He was warned that, if it were given, his employer must be told of his antecedents, but he still seemed to think the character necessary. The person who was about to engage him, a tradesman in a considerable way of business, called upon the secretary of the society. The instant he heard that his servant had been a convict, he turned away, declaring that it was useless to think of engaging him. The secretary stopped him, and inquired the amount of risk which the employer would incur; it turned out that the man would probably have 2_l._ or 3_l._ in his hands at a time, and that a guarantee of 5_l._ would cover the risk. The secretary undertook to guarantee that amount; and the man has remained in the same place for considerably more than three years, with such thorough satisfaction to his employer that that gentleman has spontaneously released the society from its liability. This case also is peculiarly interesting, as showing how the employing classes may be made to learn, by their own inquiry and practical experience, that a fellow-creature who is once a criminal needs not always be so.

Special arrangements are made for disposing of the women who leave the Refuge at Fulham. This place, as well as other portions of our English system, is pointed out as analogous to the “Intermediate” stage in Ireland, but the analogy is very faint. I mentioned the half-pint of beer allowed to the fourth class at Portland, as one amongst other indulgences to compensate for the loss of transportation for prisoners convicted between 1853 and 1857. Objections might be made to the dietary at Fulham, as being on too high a scale; and it is wholly unlike the homely fare which contents the hard-worked labourer at Lusk, or the penitent at the Golden Bridge in Dublin. The Fulham Refuge is also distinguished from the Intermediate prisons of Ireland by less liberty of action, and by containing within itself places of punishment. Still, it is an improvement on older prisons, and is not without _proportionate_ results. From the 1st of January to the end of May, 1861, seventy-two women were discharged from the Fulham Refuge, and were thus distributed:—Sent to parents, eighteen; sent to husbands, seven; to other relatives, fifteen; to friends, three; to service, direct from the Refuge, one; to the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, with a view to service or emigration, twenty-six; sent out on their own account, having no home, eight. The reports of the first four classes are pronounced to be “satisfactory,” with the exception of two in the first class and one in the second. Of the first class three had no home, but had children in workhouses, whom they went to rejoin. Three others have joined friends under anything but hopeful circumstances. One is at service in the house of a clergyman; and another, whose husband is a convict in Australia, is understood to be “going on well.” When any woman is sent out from the Refuge, steps are taken to ascertain where she will be received, and to secure her safe arrival, with authenticated reports of the fact. Communication is always made with the clergyman of the district to which the discharged prisoner proceeds; and, says Mrs. Harpour, the lady superintendent of the Refuge at Fulham, in a letter to Sir Joshua Jebb, “much is learned in this mode of the sad and miserable way in which these poor creatures have been brought up, and the temptations with which they were surrounded immediately on their return to their deplorable haunts. It excites our sympathy, and makes us feel that something must be done by the public, or all our efforts cannot but be fruitless in many cases. I can only hope and pray that the publicity which is now being given to the convict system, will induce the Christian public to lend us a helping hand. We do not ask for their money, but for their sympathy and a little of their time.” I have statements of cases in which prisoners who have left the Refuge have done well; but, in this as in other instances, I am cautioned against their publication, lest exaggerated inferences should be drawn from contracted data. And at the Refuge, as throughout the English establishments, I have failed to obtain anything like the same full, detailed, and long-continued information about convicts at large, which I was enabled to obtain by my own personal examination in Ireland.

One grand resource for the disposal of English convicts, especially of men whose term of incarceration may be shortened by “ticket-of-leave,” is transportation. Theoretically, transportation is still continued to Bermuda, Gibraltar, and Western Australia; but the transport of convicts to Bermuda has been indefinitely suspended. Of the Australian arrangements the most recent account is afforded me in an extract from the unpublished Report to the Directors of Convict Prisons, by the religious instructor, who sailed in the convict ship _Palmerston_, and landed his charges at Fremantle in February.

“_Millbank Prison, May 27, 1861._

“... I visited the prison on the third or fourth day after the men were landed. The chaplain and deputy superintendent kindly accompanied me. It resembles Portland more than any other I know. The cells are small in size, and the interior arrangements on the same principle as at that prison.

“There were two large association rooms occupied, I believe, at night by artisans whom I found employed in the smiths’ forge and carpenters’ shop, which are very extensive, and where work on a large scale was being carried on under the superintendence of the Royal Engineer department. Some large rooms on the basement floor were fitted up as printing-offices, and prisoners were employed here in doing all the Government printing required for the colony.

“There were, I believe, about 400 men in the prison at this time, including about eighty landed from the _Palmerston_. These last were employed, some few in the workshops, and the remainder on the roads, working in gangs.

“The rations were abundant, and of excellent quality; served, precisely as they are at Millbank, to the men in their cells.

“On the general parade, I noticed that the reconvicted, or men remitted to the establishment, and the men sent up for short sentences from the police-office, were paraded apart, and distinguished from the general prisoners by a different dress.

“Being desirous of seeing how the remainder of the men who had come out under our charge in the _Palmerston_ were disposed of, and how the probationary period of six months (through which all convicts are required to pass before they can receive the greater degree of freedom of a ticket-of-licence) is passed through, I visited, in company with Dr. Watson, the surgeon superintendent, four of the out-stations. We found all these stations occupied by men who also had come out in the _Palmerston_; and I was informed that, for some time previous to the arrival of that ship, the road-making had been much interrupted for want of men.

“The parties consisted of from 40 to 80 men, lodged in huts. They were in charge of a warder; and in most places there was one of the Royal Engineers to direct the works on the roads, and two or three convict constables to preserve order and superintend the men at work and in their quarters. The men work on the roads from four to five miles each way, and, whenever I saw them, appeared to be diligently employed.

“Their sleeping-places were divided by partitions of slanting boards, and they took their meals in messes of six or eight at separate tables; the rations being supplied from the chief stations, Perth and Guildford, and the whole from the Commissariat in the first instance. They are also allowed tobacco.

“The men at these stations were cheerful and industrious; they made no complaints, except in reference to the heat of the climate and mosquitoes. Those within reach of the river were permitted to bathe in it in the morning. The hours of labour were from six to six—one hour, I believe, for breakfast, and one and a half for dinner were allowed.

“However desirable it may be to execute works of this nature at a distance from where a proper degree of control may be kept up, I cannot but say that I felt anxious for the welfare of the prisoners who, during their detention in these huts, would be exposed to great temptation and demoralization. In fact, these stations were, in every respect, inferior to the larger and more regularly-arranged stations which I recollect to have visited in Tasmania peninsula. It is also obvious that the sooner the men who go out in a convict-ship can be separated, after they are disembarked, the better for them in every way.

“The men at these stations appeared perfectly aware of the uselessness of attempting escape in a colony which has no known outlet to any other. In point of fact, were the attempt made, their footsteps in the sand would be unerringly traced by the extraordinary sagacity of the natives attached to each police-station for the purpose; they would be captured, or perish for want of water.

“I shall now endeavour to describe their prospects of employment when liberated on a ticket-of-leave, from what came under my own observation.

“A few men who were sent out in the _Palmerston_, having completed a large portion of their sentence at home (two of them with commuted sentence), were discharged from the establishment in about eight days after their arrival. They were supplied with a ticket-of-leave dress, a portion of their gratuity, and a pass for twenty-four hours, to enable them to seek employment. I travelled in the steamboat from Fremantle to Perth on the day some of them left the prison....

“The social status of the sober and industrious convict settler is perfectly assured. In the country districts no difference is made between him and the free settler.

“I am, gentlemen,” &c. &c.

After reading only this brief, sober, and most authentic report, the reader will begin to doubt whether transportation can be what it was once supposed to be—a very terrible penalty, severance of natural ties, death to family associations, and so forth. It has had its terrors, and at more than one season, but the season has always been limited. In July, 1827, came into operation an Act extending transportation to various felonious offences. In the following year there was a great decline in such offences—the new Act had stricken terror; but in the very next year the influence of the punishment had declined; by degrees transportation ceased to be regarded with alarm, and now it is admitted to be a positive reward. Writing years back, Archbishop Whately shows the dawn of this feeling. He quotes the words of convicts, crying out with delight at the accommodation on board ship; thanking God for having been carried to a country where they were well off; writing home with presents to masters whom they had robbed, and even offering patronage and assistance in a country where a man is sure to make his fortune. The keen-sighted teacher of logic foresaw that such dangerous knowledge must spread in the mother-country.

If no longer available as a deterrent, is transportation a purely beneficial auxiliary? Let us look into _that_ question. During the present session of Parliament, Mr. Childers, the Member for Pontefract, obtained a Select Committee “to inquire into the present system of transportation, its utility, and effect upon colonization, and to report whether any improvement could be effected therein.” The committee was, upon the whole, well manned. Mr. Childers himself has a practical knowledge of the subject, from his connection with Australia; and I believe one purpose of the inquiry was to show that, in consideration for the Australian colonies generally, transportation ought to be wholly abandoned, even to Western Australia. The net result of the report is, that the committee advises no interference, but delicately suggests that transportation should continue as it is carried on now, under the actual circumstances of the day. These circumstances are remarkable. It has been resolved to suppress the convict prisons in Bermuda and Gibraltar. The gross number of convicts in England, as well as in Ireland, appears to be actually diminishing. The free colonies of Australia have passed laws for preventing the admission of any licence-holder or expiree, under severe penalties to be inflicted upon any ship-master who shall infringe the local law. Some convicts have escaped from Western Australia, but not in great numbers, and the alarm on the subject appears to have subsided, though the feeling of repugnance is as strong as ever.

It comes out in evidence, that the Western Australians can employ a certain amount of convict labour, but cannot employ much more than they now have, at the present rate of annual supply. Many employers prefer convicts, as more tractable than free labourers, and they are decidedly pleased at the exclusion Acts of the free colonies. Mr. Burgess and other witnesses declare that crime has not increased in proportion to the number of convicts, a considerable proportion of the men having behaved well; but they draw marked distinctions between a bad order of convicts and a better order, strongly hinting that a careful selection should be made; and I am disposed to believe that these hints will not be lost upon the head office in Parliament Street. Several of the colonists had desired the introduction of convicts, because they looked forward to the official expenditure on account of the establishment, &c.; and these speculators have been disappointed. They were particularly annoyed because provisions for convicts were furnished from other colonies, whereas they claimed a protective system of trade, as the correlative of the convict burden. Amongst eastern colonists are many who formerly approved of transportation, but they found “the character of the convicts grow worse as the criminal laws of England were ameliorated and softened.” A very curious lesson is brought out incidentally. “Formerly,” says Mr. Hewitt, of Tasmania—the last colony in which convictism was abolished, much to the chagrin of Governor Denison and the authorities in England—“we got men sent to us for political offences, for poaching, machine-breaking, and so on; and there was always a very large body of convicts who prided themselves that they were not thieves and rogues; but since the alteration of the laws in this country, it seems to me that every man who comes out has committed some grave offence.”

On one point all appear to be agreed: that the old assignment system, and _à fortiori_ any Norfolk Island system, which tends to mass convicts together in bodies undiluted by the elements of ordinary society, can never more be tolerated. Those who view the subject with a practical knowledge, and yet without local predilections, believe that transportation cannot be continued much longer, even to Western Australia. I am well aware that the Irish as well as the English authorities desire that that outlet should be retained, and I see objections to any _sudden_ closing of it; but that it ought to be abolished within a comparatively few years I am convinced. I have the very highest authority for the avowal, that the crime, which irresistibly impelled Sir William Molesworth’s Committee to pronounce the doom of convictism in Australia generally, cannot be prevented or effectively controlled in Western Australia, even now. One of the most experienced officials, Mr. Thomas Frederick Elliot, of the Colonial Office, was amongst those who stood against the abolition proceedings of 1837; but “further observation,” he says, “has altered my opinion.” The convicts who remained in Sydney and New South Wales have done harm. Western Australia may profit from the expedient while the colony is in a languishing state, but it can never be a substitute for ordinary colonization. The relief is not “beneficial to this country”—“the numbers sent out are too trifling to be of any account,” either to the mother country or to the colony. “In every point of view I think that transportation as a system has come to an end, and that its day is past.”

Before I proceed to close this series of papers with the conclusions which have been forced upon me in my survey of the whole, in Ireland and England, I must refer once more to the case set forth on behalf of the English system. The fate of my last paper appears to have been curious. In some quarters it has been regarded as too favourable to the English system, while the chief conductors of that system think that I have “not done them justice.” I am told that I have fallen into many errors, and that the comparison which I have made between England and Ireland is disparaging to England. In the most explicit terms that could be employed I have invited correction of errors. I have avowed my readiness to incorporate in this third paper any emendations with which I can be supplied; my object being, not to advocate one system or to disparage another, but simply to lay before your readers, as far as my examination of the two systems and your space would permit, the facts themselves. The communications upon the subject have been very numerous and protracted. Throughout all, I have been met by Sir Joshua Jebb with the most handsome consideration and a generous frankness. The result, however, is that I have a lengthened statement, from his pen, going over the ground from the time when “sound principles were laid down in 1842 by the then Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham, for establishing probationary periods of discipline at home, in order to the disposal of the convict by transportation;” and this statement I now take bodily, with some very slight curtailment.

“The difficulties which occurred at that time in Van Diemen’s Land prevented the development of these principles, and led to a modified arrangement under Earl Grey and Sir George Grey. Under the system as it was then settled, from 1847 to 1853, a printed notice was communicated to every convict, telling him that the first period of probation would be passed in solitary confinement for some time; and employment on the public works for the second period; the third stage under a ticket-of-leave in one of the colonies. The incentives to industry and good conduct, during the two first periods, were very fully explained in this document. They consisted of remissions of the imprisonment, gratuities, badges marking the progress of each individual, and other records, by which a man’s fate was placed in his own hands, and was mainly dependent upon his own exertions.

“In regard to the third period of probation, however, with a ticket-of-leave, the following conditions were promulgated:—‘The holder of a ticket-of-leave will be required to remain within a certain district; he will not be released from the custody of the Government until engaged to serve an employer for twelve months; he will then be placed under the supervision of the police, will be required to register his place of abode, and periodically report himself to the police,’ &c. Pentonville and Portland afford the fullest means of judging of the system of discipline and the results of the two periods which were to be enforced in this country. The commissioners of the former prison, after anxiously watching the moral effects of the great experiment conducted for five years under their superintendence, thus recorded the conclusion at which they had arrived, in a report dated in 1847:—‘We feel warranted in expressing our firm conviction, that the moral results of the discipline have been most encouraging, and attended with a success which, we believe, is without parallel in the history of penal discipline.’

“With respect to Portland, Captain Whitty, in his report for 1850, after stating his conviction that the system of following up a period of separate confinement by associated labours, was working well, states:—‘The subdued, improved, and disciplined state in which the convicts generally arrive at Portland from the stage of separate confinement, appears to be an admirable preparation for their transfer to the greater degree of freedom unavoidable on public works.’ Captain Knight, who succeeded Captain Whitty as Governor, remarks in his report for 1851:—‘I have frequently watched the working parties from positions in which I could not have been seen by them, and I have seldom seen a greater amount of willingness or industry displayed by men whose livelihood depended upon their exertions.’ [I myself was a witness of the same degree of cheerful industry, in 1861.] It appears from the returns, that 400 men are at the present time quarrying and loading from the great ditch of the fortress about three tons a man, for which a contractor had previously received 1_s._ 5_d._ a ton. The net saving to the Government, after deducting 4_d._ for the cost of plant, would give 3_s._ 3_d._ a day as the net earnings of each man in the working parties; whilst the entire cost, exclusive of buildings, will not exceed 1_s._ 9_d._ a head. Were it not that a proportion of the convicts are detained at school, and employed as cooks, tailors, &c., the prison would be self-supporting; and had there been opportunity for the full development of convict labour, at least one-half of the usual cost of such works would have been saved.

“Though Portland is only known to the general public as a place where an outbreak occurred some years ago; and though the discipline has endured the rudest shocks from the changes consequent on the cessation of transportation,—which not only disappointed the expectations that had been held out to the men, but entirely shook their confidence, and was the cause of the outbreak referred to,—the establishment never was in a much higher state of discipline and efficiency than at the present time. The breakwater and fortifications, too, are advancing towards completion, and already constitute a grand and imperishable monument of what can be effected by convict labour.

“From 1848 to 1853, during which time alone the established system appears to have been in full operation, everything went on swimmingly. It was ‘all right,’ in the English prisons of Pentonville and Portland; and we have it on the authority of Sir W. Denison, the Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, that in 1851 the convicts sent from public works were generally conducting themselves as honestly and industriously as unconvicted farm-servants in England. Every interest was then satisfied. The mother-country annually got rid of some 3,000 of her criminal population, and the colony obtained the advantage of cheap labour. This was the culminating point of a sound and carefully devised system of penal and reformatory discipline. [Sir Joshua Jebb states, in one of his reports, that we never may hope to see the like again. The last ship sailed in 1852; and though he must have cast a lingering look after it, he appears to have manfully set to work to repair the breach made in the system of discipline.]

“An Act was passed in 1853, under the provisions of which a large proportion of convicts might be sentenced to ‘penal servitude,’ instead of transportation. It will not escape notice that, during the whole period of a convict’s being employed on public works, he is placed in a condition intermediate between imprisonment and liberty. During this portion of the sentence, as I described in a former article, the men work in association; good order being preserved by the presence of an officer with each party; and their return from distant works in the open quarries at Portland, or from dockyards or fortifications at Portsmouth or Chatham, being insured by watchfulness of guards. With a view to afford greater encouragement, it was considered desirable to divide this probationary period into four progressive stages, to each of which certain ameliorations and privileges were attached. In the last stage, especially, a proportion of the men are selected for ‘special service,’ in which they pursue their several avocations, relieved from any direct supervision. At Portland, they may be seen passing to and fro with tools, attending points on the railways, &c.; at Dartmoor, they attend cattle on the hills, and perform various farm operations, independent of control. A large body of these men have also been employed at Woking assisting in the completion of the new prison, and others are to be sent to Broadmoor.

“We now come to the consideration of the third period of the system, with a probation pass or a ticket-of-leave designed for a distant colony, but now forced on our attention at home. Here the range is limited to the few convicts who since 1852 have been sent to Western Australia, and the English system in its entirety requires to be judged by the few openings afforded in that colony. Here we see an intermediate system, expressly designed to fit the man for colonial life and labour, in full operation, on a plan suggested by Sir Joshua Jebb in 1849. It is well known to any one who has experience of convicts, that release from imprisonment will alone afford any sure test of character; and it is to this test, in the face of all the difficulties which had to be encountered, that an appeal has necessarily been made. The system of granting pardons, revocable on certain conditions, popularly known as tickets-of-leave, has been adopted from the colonial stage, an a precautionary measure; and the benevolent assistance of the public has been sought in every way that has been possible. On mature consideration, however, and on very sufficient grounds, it has been deemed inexpedient to do more, either in giving effect to the principle of the probation gangs, or the supervision of police. There is scarcely an officer in the convict service who does not strongly entertain this conviction. [After alluding to the help afforded by the chaplains and the Prisoners’ Aid Society, the statement proceeds.] Thousands have been rescued from criminal courses and tided over their greatest difficulties, by these most wise and economical preventive measures.

“We now come to the results, which are given in the accompanying comprehensive tabular returns. [The tables are placed at the end of this article.]

“If the results be carefully consulted, it must be confessed they have been more favourable than could have been anticipated; for though twenty, or perhaps even twenty-five, per cent., may have returned upon the hands of the Government in seven or eight years, it is a fact that the number sentenced has diminished from 3,311 in 1848, when the great majority were transported to Van Diemen’s Land,[4] to an average, during the last three years, of 2,226, when the great majority have been released at home. Many causes must have combined to produce a result so wholly subversive of all previous calculations;[5] but a sound, deterrent, and, at the same time, an enlightened and Christian discipline, steadily persevered in under the authority of every Secretary of State since 1838, may fairly be allowed to claim its share.

“In an admirable article which appeared in the _Times_ of the 18th of April last, the writer has ‘hit the right nail on the head.’ After a graphic description of desperate and highly-skilled ruffians returning to their malpractices, after confinement, with greater zest than ever, he states—‘These constitute the ugly percentage of convicts with which nothing can be done, the true blackamoors of the system who can never be washed white.’ Here it is, and, perhaps, here only we fail.

“We find the following, in Sir Joshua Jebb’s report for 1849:—‘In connexion with the subject of modification of the present system, I would submit the expediency of establishing a more severe system of discipline, and of enforcing a more protracted term of imprisonment, in the case of all men convicted of heinous offences, especially such as were accompanied by violence, and in certain cases. It is impossible to state the precise operations of such measures, or the extent to which they might be applied; but if the very worst characters were imprisoned for the whole term of life, or during their respective sentences, at some penal establishment at home, or in the colonies, others disposed of by tickets-of-leave in Western Australia, and the residue released at home with conditional pardons, or encouraged to emigrate, I believe that no sensible inconvenience could possibly be experienced.’

“The foregoing is a brief sketch of the English system and its results, deprived as it is of its mainstay, namely, a satisfactory means of disposing of the convicts who are subject to the two first probationary stages; and defective, as it is admitted to be, in the means of dealing with the ‘true blackamoors of the system.’”

This document is, as I have said, the statement of Sir Joshua Jebb, very slightly curtailed to bring it within your space. I have abridged a small portion of the retrospect at the commencement, and have shortened the transitions here and there; and that is all the change. The writer has not allowed himself to take the broadest view of the subject; which we shall not quite understand, unless we glance at the chronic controversy between the two systems of England and Ireland. In 1857, Sir Joshua Jebb made a report professing to describe the Irish system, and stating his own opinion upon it. I certainly could not adopt Sir Joshua Jebb’s description of the arrangements in Ireland; nor can I entirely agree with what he supposes to be the object of inquiry: namely, to ascertain whether the probationary prisoners should be withdrawn from the higher stages on public works, and congregated in the huts of the intermediate stage; whether discharged prisoners could not be placed under the supervision of the police, and whether employment could not be found for prisoners released on licence as in Ireland. Sir Joshua meets these questions in the negative, and I believe I am correct in stating his conclusions thus:—

“Firstly. The character of the convicts in this country, and the circumstances, differ so much from those of Ireland, that any plan for congregating them together under less control than is at present exercised, would not be calculated to render them more fit for discharge, or give the officers to whose care they might be consigned better, or even the same, opportunities of judging their character as those which exist at present.

“Secondly. That even if such objects could be promoted by removing selected convicts into separate, small, intermediate establishments, with diminished control and more voluntary action, the exhibition of convict discipline in such a form would impair the exemplary character and deterrent effects of a sentence of penal servitude, which, on all accounts, it is most essential to preserve as the most formidable of our secondary punishments.

“Thirdly. That any general superintendence of the police would be impossible in England, without obstructing the employment of the men.

“Fourthly. That if such measures could be systematically organized, it would be very desirable to afford convicts some special information or instruction in connection with their future prospects during the last few months of their confinement—not in separate, intermediate establishments disconnected from the prisons, but in the stage of discipline which precedes discharge.”

I have already said, that controversy in the subjunctive mood is totally worthless. You can establish no logical conclusion except by a statement of facts, which, like the figures in an arithmetical sum, render the ultimate fact, the _x_ to be proven, a matter of moral certainty. Undoubtedly there are great differences in the character of Englishmen and of Irishmen, and, therefore, in the character of the convicts of the two countries; but the points of resemblance between all civilized communities are more numerous than the points of difference. This is peculiarly the case with races under the same governments and laws; and when we select a special class, formed by the aberrant tendencies of all humanity, we increase the ratio of resemblance. The treatment of convicts in the two countries might vary; we have no reason to assume that it should be fundamentally opposed.

Secondly, there is reason to doubt whether the deterrent element ever has much force in the operation of penal servitude, of imprisonment, or of any penalty save those involving acute physical suffering for very short periods. The deterrent effect is severe in the case of hanging, flogging, torture, and the like. In the case of correctional discipline, the effect seems to be produced, far more, by a sort of compulsory teaching. Through the force of facts, the involuntary student is made to learn that a dishonest line of conduct cannot be pursued, but must sooner or later be frustrated; therefore that an honester course of life is unavoidable, and the attempt to avoid it foolish. At one time transportation, was a penalty accounted “secondary” to death alone; but I have already shown you that in 1861 it is accounted an actual boon, an increase to the opportunities and enjoyments of life. Indeed it is, literally, in this auxiliary sense that transportation to Western Australia, which still tolerates the practice, is now recommended. In England, as well as in Ireland, it is claimed as usefully completing that round of correctional discipline which ends in reformation—holding out a hope to the reformed convict of employment in a sphere where he will have the reward of industry without disgrace. But in Ireland, we see that as the criminal advances through his course of penal servitude, the whole system is made to have the character of correction, and to awaken the hope of betterment through honest exertion.

Thirdly, the statement that the general superintendence of the police would be impossible in England, without obstructing the employment of the men or without converting the men into spies and tyrants, is thus far a pure assumption. Not a shadow of evidence to establish it has been shown to me. I know that policemen have interfered injuriously, but they have not yet been instructed in a different line of conduct; and I also know that there are, amongst the chief officers of the police in the counties, those who are perfectly competent to study such a subject, and who are prepared to begin the inquiry in a favourable spirit. But we must also remember that the police do not represent the only class of public servants who might be employed to act in this behalf, and report the conduct of men out on licence.

The fourth objection applies, in some degree, to the English arrangement, in which the teaching of trades is by no means systematic; for it is principally confined to the earlier stages of imprisonment, while the employment of the vast majority on public works sends them into the world only as common labourers. In Ireland, the adaptation of the instruction is much more individualized, and the Intermediate stages turn out a much greater variety of callings.

A fifth objection on which the English authorities lay very great stress is, that if the English convict be suffered to go at large, as he is at Lusk, he will, perhaps in the very first hour of his freedom, run away to rejoin his friends; particularly if he be a married man: nothing will restrain him from decamping to rejoin his wife and family! “The introduction of the Irish system into this country, the first element being imperfect liberty granted to a man whose own act could make it absolute in a moment, and would debar the married man from the society of his wife and children, would do so much violence to every feeling of his mind, that we could not be surprised if the slight barrier were instantly broken which held him from the world. One of our most deserving prisoners, lately discharged, of whose sincerity I have the highest opinion, told me some months since that if 10,000_l._ were offered to him to stay for twelve months, with nothing if he insisted on going to his wife and children, then he would prefer the liberty to the money.” So writes the chaplain of Portland Prison, in an unpublished report forwarded to me, with his usual kindness and frankness, by Sir Joshua Jebb; who also insists strongly on the same point.

Now, at several of the prisons I have been shown convicts who are employed on “special service,” and whom I have confounded with the more numerous body of prisoners working at large on Southsea Common. This mistake is corrected by a friendly note from the Governor of Portsmouth Prison. “The greater number of the men,” he says, “were ordinary prisoners—in the ordinary stages, and still under the usual surveillance.” The man I referred to, who wished to be transferred from that spot, was not in the special class at all. “Had he been so,” writes Captain Rose, “the privilege of change of labour would probably have been accorded to him. He merely asked for a transfer of party—a very common demand, and rarely founded on any sufficient reason. Another point in which I wish to correct you, or I should rather say, to make myself more clear than perhaps I did during our far too hurried interview, relates to the adoption of an ‘Intermediate stage,’ from which it might be inferred that I advocated the Irish system in its integrity (the word being there employed). I was careful to guard myself against this; and in saying that I would willingly enlarge the special class to one or two hundred men, for the purpose of employing them on Portsdown Hill, without prison dress, and merely attended by a few picked officers as general superintendents (equally undistinguished by any distinctive dress), I reserved the important question whether they should be there located as in Ireland, or be still subjected to the ordinary routine of prison discipline and restraint, going to and returning from their distant labour daily by special train. The difference would be most important, and, in fact, constitutes the point mainly at issue between Sir Joshua Jebb and Captain Crofton. Should you write again, perhaps you will make this more clear.”[6]

From these corrections with which I have been favoured, we gather two things. First, that the special class are exempted from surveillance: they are employed in carrying messages, and in other duties which send them abroad into the world, like the trusted members of the Intermediate class in Ireland. The application of the principle, indeed, is so fractional, that all comparisons which I see attempted between it and the Irish Intermediate system are untenable. But, secondly, the corrections appear to me to show that in England there is no resistless impulse to break through the moral restraint, and that in this respect the Englishman is quite as amenable as the Irishman. I have never been told, with regard either to Portsmouth or any other English prison, that they limit this privilege to bachelors.

Another incident appears to me sufficient not only to corroborate my doubt, but to annihilate the official presumption in England. Recently there have been those very important extensions of the Convict Prison at Woking, to which Sir Joshua Jebb alludes in the statement I have embodied. The work was carried on, in part at least, by convicts from another prison—from Portland, I believe. The men were not taken from those on special service; they were not selected even from those accustomed to labour out of bounds; they were, I have been told, “just the ordinary prisoners.” I have not visited Woking, but I am also informed that they were diligent at their work; and that there was no escape, nor any serious attempt at escape, if any at all. The prisoners were fifty in number; and, again, I was not told that they were all selected from the unmarried class. It appears to me, therefore, that this imputed family _storge_ is a myth.

I have bestowed great attention and pains on the endeavour to find out if the leading objectors in the English system had actually made themselves masters of the Irish system in its details, even so far as I have done myself. I have sometimes feared that I pressed my questions upon them further than was courteous; though I must confess that I have uniformly been met with a frankness as candid as it was kind. I have not only found that the study of the Irish system has been very partial, and that the judgment against it has been formed on arguments in the subjunctive mood and the most arbitrary assumptions, but I have also observed that even with regard to the English system, there is not the same mastery of the whole process in detail that I noticed in Ireland. For instance, I am not aware that the leading authorities of the English system have personally examined the working of the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, or have in many instances personally traced the behaviour of discharged convicts out in employment.

The investigation of the subject, in one respect, is neither easy nor inviting. I have myself observed amongst discharged English prisoners an unbecoming levity, mingled with a marked ill feeling towards the prison authorities; and I am not satisfied that all the prisoners who seek the aid of the society in Charing Cross, are conscious of the obligations which they owe to it. I felt less pained at the exhibition for the sake of the society and its officers, than for the sake of the men who thus betrayed their total unfitness to guide themselves through the world into which they were again thrown. My hearing is considerably keener than most men’s, and probably the applicants for succour were not aware that I could hear every word of the conversation which was going forward between them in groups; but I did, and the whispered talk related to plans of amusement, of social meetings, of sports by no means elevating, and of gambling. I have forborne to ask the secretary whether ingratitude is the rule, because no such questioning should be instituted without an authority to compel which should absolve the respondent from responsibility; but I believe that no investigation could be more interesting than one into the conduct of prisoners whom the society has relieved, and particularly into their bearing towards those who have helped them. I doubt whether the authorities of our convict system have examined into this part of the matter at all. It is impossible not to make a comparison between the peculiar bearing of the English prisoners and the entirely opposite demeanour of the prisoners in Ireland. The manner there is more free, the men speak with less reserve, and they look less “cowed,” but they are much graver; and, if they do not deal in professions of gratitude, they permit you to see that the treatment that they have received and the opportunities opened to them are taken very much to heart.

The fact is, that the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society requires to be placed on a much broader basis. In order that it should act with thorough efficacy, it ought to be converted into a public department, with authority to take cognizance of all prisoners leaving prison, to follow up its information respecting discharged prisoners, and to dispose of them with a freer choice than it can at present command. As I have before remarked, there are several public organizations which might supply an agency, but it is not for me to dictate any particular arrangement. In my three reports on the convict systems, I have limited myself to a plain statement of such facts as I was able to verify, and as I could group into a summary of the general subject. Another change needed to render the society efficient, and therefore secure of public support and of its future position, is that the prisoners who seek its aid should be trained to a greater variety of callings, so that no opportunities may be lost through the over supply in one particular branch of industry or a want in another branch. But, thirdly, and most chiefly, the discharged prisoners who are candidates for the patronage of the society should come to it in a condition of better moral training. They should have learned, not simply the outward fashion of their behaviour, but the facts concerning themselves which would suffice alone to prompt better feelings; and they should have been more thoroughly taught, by the mode of discipline, to appreciate the kindness so spontaneously extended to them.

The requirements which appear to me necessary for the complete efficiency of the society, and, therefore, for its stability, imply two radical changes in its position. The first is a more distinct legislative and official recognition of it as a constituent part of the English convict system. For either the society is surplusage, or it is an essential; and if it is essential, it should be brought into a more universal and co-ordinate working with the rest of the establishment. The second change is, that the convicts should pass through something analogous to the Intermediate stage of the Irish system.[7]

It seems to me quite time that the rivalry, displayed in the reports on both sides of the Channel, should be absolutely and finally discontinued. I must confess that the documents before me go to show that the initiative of aggression was taken on the English side,—that representations with regard to the working of the Irish system were put forward with a high official authority on this side of the Channel, and that they called for rectification from the other side; but it is idle to enter into any retrospective award upon the merits of that obsolete controversy. Our business is to take things as we find them _now_, and to do the best we can both for England and for Ireland. I have already said, that the Irish system appears to me to be the best; and I ascribe its excellence to these three reasons—that, being the most recent invention, it comprises the chief advantages of previous systems, with new applications and extensions of tried principles admirably designed by Captain Crofton; that it is planned upon a consideration of the objects to be attained, irrespectively of difficulties or predilections; and that it is carried out by men who are personally familiar with its details in every part.

I am not prepared to say that all details of the arrangement in Ireland are essential to the completeness of an equally good system in England; but the principles upon which the Irish system relies are applicable over the whole globe, and they are consequently drawing the attention of the most intelligent and active criminal reformers in distant countries. I know that their progress is watched from Heidelberg, which has itself been a great centre of prison improvement, under that able and enthusiastic lawyer, Professor Mitternaier. Among the reforms which have been pushed forward by the immortal Cavour, is a system of convict discipline established at Pianosa, a small island lying south of Elba. Tuscany has always been celebrated for reforms of the kind; and it is not losing its reputation in our own day. One of the distinguishing traits in the Pianosa system is the introduction of the Intermediate stage, which Cavour had thoroughly studied; and the Superintendent of the Prisons, M. de Peri, reports with great satisfaction on the working of the new plan. A little farther east, at Corfu, we see M. Cozziris, the Inspector-general of the Prisons in the Ionian Islands, diligently following out the same work. His report for the year, which is now before me, shows a thorough acquaintance with the Intermediate system, and a proportionate admiration of it.[8] While I was in the United States, I had the opportunity of visiting some of those prisons which have often been mentioned as examples of modern improvement, and such unquestionably they were a few years back. It is no reproach to the intelligence of the American reformers that, in great part by their help, we have since surpassed them; and it must be allowed that they might have made more progress than they have, but for that unlucky working of their government system, which so periodically and thoroughly removes the higher officers in all departments of the State. Amongst the leading managers of these prisons, however, I found considerable interest excited by the reference to the Irish system, and a ready disposition to enter into its advantages; which have been the subject of a special explanation in the _Philadelphia Journal of Prison Discipline_ for January of the present year. In other countries, therefore, even more remote from Ireland than England, there is no reluctance to study the newest experiment, and to profit by its instruction.

I can well understand that there are difficulties in altering the arrangements of any system; and our arrangements in England have been particularly designed to suit a past state of circumstances, and to attain particular objects. The leading objects were—the construction of prisons so designed as to facilitate the ready inspection of large numbers; the mustering of very numerous bodies of men upon public works, which was thought to be an economical and beneficial employment of convict labour; and the ultimate disposal of the convict by transportation. Transportation has nearly ceased; we have arrived at the perception that labouring on public works is not exclusively the best discipline for all criminals; and we have learned that the best system of our day attains its striking success by subdividing the prisoners into small bodies and dealing with them in detail individually. A show of transportation exists to tantalize the English officials, the system of public works goes on with as much success as ever, and we have large prisons on our hands; to say nothing of the fact, that the authors of the living picture are naturally proud of the high development which has been given to it. To get rid of these accessories of the system is the greatest difficulty in any change, and I admit it in its fullest force.

Other difficulties have been alleged—the greater delicacy of the Englishman who has been criminal in concealing his shame, and, therefore, in shrinking from any Intermediate stage; his impatience, under the enforcement of conditions, to the ticket-of-licence, and the indomitable impetuosity which will make every married convict break bounds the instant he is placed in a state of half freedom; the reluctance of English employers to co-operate, and other special distinctions ascribed to the English character. But, on closer scrutiny, the force of these difficulties is refuted by facts which I have stated in the foregoing pages. Indeed, I have found the raw materials for the Irish system scattered throughout English prisons, only they are not turned to account, and are not placed in their natural order. I have expressed my readiness to put forward any facts to prove that the English system attains results equal to those which exist in Ireland, but I have been supplied with no such facts. What we claim in England, by all the rights of urgent necessity, of national intelligence, and of national resources, is the most perfect system of convict system that the world can supply,—whether we call that system “Irish,” or, as I should prefer to call it, British. The one step needed for the introduction of those tried principles amongst us is, to institute a thorough inquiry; and, undoubtedly, Parliament is bound to inquire, and, having inquired, to deal with the ascertained facts. Until that be done, we English are left with a system not so good as the one we might have; we are compelled to suffer for more crime than would otherwise exist in the country; and uneducated misguided multitudes are suffered to stray into destruction, from which they might otherwise be rescued.

* * * * *

Subjoined are the tables mentioned at page 240. The following facts are necessary to complete the information conveyed in the first table:—

No. 1.—9,180 orders of licence have been issued to the directors for the release of male convicts from the different convict prisons since the commencement of the system in October, 1853, out of which 834 have had their licences revoked and 1,038 have been reconvicted to penal servitude or transportation, making a total of 1,872 who have forfeited their licence; being an average percentage of 20.3, or an average of 2.2 per annum, during the seven and a half years of its operation.

No. 2.—9,180 orders of licence have been issued; out of which number, 1,363, or 14.8 per cent., were returned to convict prisons for larceny and light offences, and 509, or 5.5 per cent., for offences of a graver character, in seven and a half years; being 1.9 per cent. per annum of light offences, and 0.7 per cent. per annum of more serious crimes.

No. 3.—3,307 convicts have been transported to Western Australia during the years 1853 to 1861; out of which, it may be assumed from the reports received, that from 5 to 8 per cent. only may have relapsed into crime. This, if taken into account, would reduce the average results of the English system.

RETURN of the NUMBER of MALE CONVICTS released under ORDERS of LICENCE in each Year, from October 1853, to April 1861; showing the NUMBER returned to the CONVICT PRISONS, either by having had their LICENCES REVOKED for trifling Offences, or by being sentenced to PENAL SERVITUDE or TRANSPORTATION.

--------+--------+-------------------------------------------------- | | Number of MALE CONVICTS whose Licences have been | | revoked, or who have been reconvicted. | +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ Years. | No. | 1853. | 1854. | 1855. | 1856. | 1857. | |Licensed+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.| | | | | | | | | | | | | --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | 1853[9] | 335 | 1 | | 7 | 10 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 1854 | 1,895 | | | 14 | 19 | 63 | 53 | 38 | 64 | 19 | 33 | 1855 | 2,528 | | | | | 40 | 47 |126 |190 | 99 | 64 | 1856 | 2,007 | | | | | | | 49 |131 |122 |106 | 1857 | 674 | | | | | | | | | 15 | 34 | 1858 | 318 | | | | | | | | | | | 1859 | 260 | | | | | | | | | | | 1860 | 818 | | | | | | | | | | | 1861[10]| 345 | | | | | | | | | | | --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ Totals | 9,180 | 1 | | 21 | 29 |106 |105 |215 |389 |257 |242 | --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+

---------------------------------------------------------+---------+---- Number of MALE CONVICTS whose Licences have been | Per | revoked, or who have been reconvicted | Centage.| P ---------+---------+---------+---------+-----+-----+---- +----+----+ e 1858. | 1859. | 1860. | 1861. |Total|Total|Grand| | | r ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ Rev.| Rec.|Total| | | i | | | | | | | | | | |Rev.|Rec.| o Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.| | | | | | d | | | | | | | | | | | | | . ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+---- | | | | | | | | | | | | |Y.M. | | | | | | | | 15 | 24 | 39 | 4.5| 7.1|7 6 5 | 10 | 2 | 3 | 2 | | | | 143 | 182 | 325 | 7.5| 9.6|7 3 36 | 24 | 12 | 15 | 1 | 7 | | 1 | 314 | 348 | 662 |12.5|13.7|6 3 52 | 52 | 26 | 33 | 8 | 13 | | 2 | 257 | 337 | 594 |12.8|16.7|5 3 31 | 20 | 14 | 22 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 69 | 82 | 151 |10.2|12.1|4 3 7 | 10 | 12 | 12 | 6 | 4 | | | 25 | 26 | 51 | 7.8| 8.1|3 3 | | 5 | 4 | 3 | 10 | | 1 | 8 | 15 | 23 | 3.0| 6.1|2 3 | | | | 2 | 15 | | | 2 | 15 | 17 | 0.2| 1.8|1 3 | | | | | | 1 | 9 | 1 | 9 | 10 | 0.2| 2.6|0 3 ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+---- 131 |116 | 71 | 89 | 30 | 54 | 2 | 14 | 834 |1,038|1,872| 9.0|11.3| ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----

The following shows the percentage per annum of Male Convicts returned to Convict Prisons, either by revocation of licence, or under fresh sentences, to Penal Servitude or Transportation, during the 7½ years the system has been in operation:—

licensed Per ct. Yrs. Per ct. Of the Number 335 from Oct. to 31st Dec. 1853 11.6 or in 7½ 1.5 per ann. ” 1,895 in the year 1854 16.11 ” 7¼ 2.2 ” ” 2,528 ” 1855 26.2 ” 6¼ 4.1 ” ” 2,007 ” 1856 29.5 ” 5¼ 5.5 ” ” 674 ” 1857 22.3 ” 4¼ 5.1 ” ” 318 ” 1858 15.9 ” 3¼ 4.5 ” ” 200 ” 1859 9.1 ” 2¼ 4.0 ” ” 818 ” 1860 2.0 ” 1¼ 1.5 ” ” 34 to 31st March 1861 2.8 ” 3 mos. 0.12 ”

As regards the nature of the Crimes for which the 834 Male Convicts had their licences only revoked, and the 1,038 who have been re-convicted for fresh offences, the following is an analysis:—

MINOR OFFENCES.

Larceny 650 Offences against vagrant act 126 Assaults on police 34 Desertion 18 Picking pockets 27 Wilful damage 14 Assault 118 Offences against game laws 21 Theft, misdemeanour, and other offences 355 ----- Total 1,363

OFFENCES OF A GRAVER CHARACTER.

Murder 2 Forgery, uttering forged notes or base coin 44 Burglary 106 Robbery 41 Robbery with violence 16 Highway robbery 6 Cutting and wounding with intent 6 Felony, housebreaking, sheep-stealing, &c. 284 Arson 4 ----- Total 509 Minor offences 1,363 ----- Total 1,872

RETURN of the NUMBER of FEMALE CONVICTS released under ORDERS of LICENCE in each Year, from October 1853, to June 1861; showing the NUMBER returned to CONVICT PRISONS, either by having had their LICENCES REVOKED for trifling Offences, or by being sentenced to PENAL SERVITUDE or TRANSPORTATION.

--------+--------+-------------------------------------------------- | |Number of FEMALE CONVICTS whose Licences have been | | revoked, or who have been reconvicted. | +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ Years. | No. | 1853. | 1854. | 1855. | 1856. | 1857. | |Licensed+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.| | | | | | | | | | | | | --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | 1853[11]| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 1854 | 40 | | | | | 1 | | 1 | 1 | | | 1855 | 115 | | | | | 2 | 1 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 1856 | 221 | | | | | | | 10 | 11 | 14 | 8 | 1857 | 55 | | | | | | | | | 5 | 3 | 1858 | 18 | | | | | | | | | | | 1859 | 29 | | | | | | | | | | | 1860 | 183 | | | | | | | | | | | 1861[12]| 103 | | | | | | | | | | | --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ Totals | 764 | | | | | 3 | 1 | 21 | 19 | 24 | 13 | --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+

---------------------------------------------------------+---------+---- Number of FEMALE CONVICTS whose Licences have been | Per | revoked, or who have been reconvicted | Centage.| P ---------+---------+---------+---------+-----+-----+---- +----+----+ e 1858. | 1859. | 1860. | 1861. |Total|Total|Grand| | | r ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ Rev.| Rec.|Total| | | i | | | | | | | | | | |Rev.|Rec.| o Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.| | | | | | d | | | | | | | | | | | | | . ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+---- | | | | | | | | | | | | |Y.M. — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | —| —| — | | | | | | | | 2 | 1 | 3 | 5. | 1.5|7 8 1 | 3 | | 1 | | | | | 18 | 14 | 32 |14.7|12.1|6 5 7 | 9 | 2 | 1 | | 1 | | | 33 | 30 | 63 |14.9|13.5|5 5 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | | 2 | | | 7 | 7 | 14 |12.7|12.7|4 5 | 1 | | | | 1 | | | | 2 | 2 | |11.1|3 5 | | 1 | | | 1 | | | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3.4| 3.4|2 5 | | | | 4 | 3 | | 5 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 2.1| 4.2|1 5 | | | | | | | 2 | | 2 | 2 | | 1.9|0 5 ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+---- 9 | 14 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 8 | | 7 | 65 | 65 | 130 | 8.5| 8.5| ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----

The following shows the percentage per annum of Female Convicts returned to Convict Prisons, either by revocation of licence, or under fresh sentences, to Penal Servitude or Transportation, during the seven years and eight months the system has been in operation:—

licensed Per ct. Yrs. M. Per ct. Of the No. 40 from Oct. 1853 to 31st Dec. 1854 6.5 or in 7 8 0.8 per ann. ” 115 in the year 1855 26.8 ” 6 5 4.0 ” ” 221 ” 1856 28.4 ” 5 5 5.2 ” ” 55 ” 1857 25.4 ” 4 5 5.9 ” ” 18 ” 1858 11.1 ” 3 5 3.2 ” ” 29 ” 1859 6.8 ” 2 5 3.3 ” ” 183 ” 1860 6.3 ” 1 5 4.4 ” ” 103 to 1st June 1861 1.9 ” 0 5 ”

As regards the nature of the Crimes for which the 65 Female Convicts had their licences only revoked, and the 65 who have been re-convicted for fresh offences, the following is an analysis:—

MINOR OFFENCES.

Larceny 72 Wilful damage 2 Breach of peace 3 Vagrancy 5 Theft 26 Disorderly conduct 4 Picking Pockets 4 ---- Total 116

OFFENCES OF A GRAVER CHARACTER.

Uttering base coin 2 Unlawful possession 3 Horse-stealing 1 Robbery 2 Receiving stolen goods 1 Wounding 1 Housebreaking 4 ---- Total 14 Minor offences 116 ---- Total 130

FOOTNOTES

[4] In the years from 1841 to 1845, the average annual number of convicts sent to Van Diemen’s Land was 3,527.

[5] One of the official calculations laid before the Government was, that in the event of transportation being abolished, it would be necessary to provide accommodation for 28,000 offenders, in addition to that which then existed.

[6] There were two other clerical errors in the part of the paper referring to Portsmouth. The thirty-three convicts were fulfilling sentence not under the new, but under the old Act; and in lieu of seventy-three under report for misconduct, it should have been thirteen—an important difference.

[7] The annual report of the Directors of Convict Prisons for 1860, published recently, more than confirms the report which I made to you, and which was published in your April number. The excellent working and progress of the Irish system continue with increasing force. The Government prisons contain accommodation for 3,000 convicts; the total number incarcerated in the first year of the new system, 1854, exclusively of the 345 convicts in the county prisons, and several hundreds in Bermuda or Gibraltar, was 3,933, and it has decreased, by a steady progress, to 1,492. In 1861 the number convicted has decreased from 710 to 331. This is the more remarkable, since the deportation of convicts from Ireland ranged from 600 to 1,540 in the five years preceding 1854. Out of 5,500 convicts discharged in the last seven years, 1,462 were discharged on licence; 89 licences have been revoked, amounting to seven per cent. “We do not,” say the Directors, “believe a single case can be proved of a convict having been reported for infringing the condition of his licence, and still remaining at large in this country.”

[8] Statistica del Penitenziario di Corfu, per gli Anni 1857, 1858, 1859. Compilata da Giovanni Cozziris, Governatore del Penitenziario di Corfu, ed Inspettore Generale delle Prigioni dello Stato Ionio.

[9] From October to December 31st, 1853.

[10] To 31st March, 1861.

[11] From October, 1853.

[12] To June, 1861.

Roundabout Papers.—No. XV.

OGRES.

I daresay the reader has remarked that the upright and independent vowel, which stands in the vowel-list between E and O, has formed the subject of the main part of these essays. How does that vowel feel this morning?—fresh, good-humoured, and lively? The Roundabout lines, which fall from this pen, are correspondingly brisk and cheerful. Has anything, on the contrary, disagreed with the vowel? Has its rest been disturbed, or was yesterday’s dinner too good, or yesterday’s wine not good enough? Under such circumstances, a darkling, misanthropic tinge, no doubt, is cast upon the paper. The jokes, if attempted, are elaborate and dreary. The bitter temper breaks out. That sneering manner is adopted, which you know, and which exhibits itself so especially when the writer is speaking about women. A moody carelessness comes over him. He sees no good in any body or thing; and treats gentlemen, ladies, history, and things in general, with a like gloomy flippancy. Agreed. When the vowel in question is in that mood; if you like airy gaiety and tender gushing benevolence—if you want to be satisfied with yourself and the rest of your fellow-beings; I recommend you, my dear creature, to go to some other shop in Cornhill, or turn to some other article. There are moods in the mind of the vowel of which we are speaking, when it is ill-conditioned and captious. Who always keeps good health, and good humour? Do not philosophers grumble? Are not sages sometimes out of temper? and do not angel-women go off in tantrums? To-day my mood is dark. I scowl as I dip my pen in the inkstand.

Here is the day come round—for everything here is done with the utmost regularity:—intellectual labour, seventeen hours; meals, thirty-two minutes; exercise, a hundred and forty-eight minutes; conversation with the family, chiefly literary, and about the housekeeping, one hour and four minutes; sleep, three hours and fifteen minutes (at the end of the month, when the Magazine is complete, I own I take eight minutes more); and the rest for the toilette and the world. Well, I say, the _Roundabout Paper Day_ being come, and the subject long since settled in my mind, an excellent subject—a most telling, lively, and popular subject—I go to breakfast determined to finish that meal in 9¾ minutes, as usual, and then retire to my desk and work, when—oh, provoking!—here in the paper is the very subject treated, on which I was going to write! Yesterday another paper which I saw treated it—and of course, as I need not tell you, spoiled it. Last Saturday, another paper had an article on the subject; perhaps you may guess what it was—but I won’t tell you. Only this is true, my favourite subject, which was about to make the best paper we have had for a long time; my bird, my game that I was going to shoot and serve up with such a delicate sauce, has been found by other sportsmen; and pop, pop, pop, a half-dozen of guns have banged at it, mangled it, and brought it down.

“And can’t you take some other text?” say you. All this is mighty well. But if you have set your heart on a certain dish for dinner, be it cold boiled veal, or what you will; and they bring you turtle and venison, don’t you feel disappointed? During your walk you have been making up your mind that that cold meat, with moderation and a pickle, will be a very sufficient dinner: you have accustomed your thoughts to it; and here, in place of it, is a turkey, surrounded by coarse sausages, or a reeking pigeon-pie, or a fulsome roast-pig. I have known many a good and kind man made furiously angry by such a _contretemps_. I have known him lose his temper, call his wife and servants names, and a whole household made miserable. If, then, as is notoriously the case, it is too dangerous to baulk a man about his dinner, how much more about his article? I came to my meal with an ogre-like appetite and gusto. Fee, faw, fum! Wife, where is that tender little Princekin? Have you trussed him, and did you stuff him nicely, and have you taken care to baste him and do him, not too brown, as I told you? Quick! I am hungry! I begin to whet my knife, to roll my eyes about, and roar and clap my huge chest like a gorilla; and then my poor Ogrina has to tell me that the little princes have all run away, whilst she was in the kitchen, making the paste to bake them in! I pause in the description. I won’t condescend to report the bad language, which you know must ensue, when an ogre, whose mind is ill-regulated, and whose habits of self-indulgence are notorious, finds himself disappointed of his greedy hopes. What treatment of his wife, what abuse and brutal behaviour to his children, who, though ogrillons, are children! My dears, you may fancy, and need not ask my delicate pen to describe, the language and behaviour of a vulgar, coarse, greedy, large man with an immense mouth and teeth, that are too frequently employed in the gobbling and crunching of raw man’s meat.

And in this circuitous way you see I have reached my present subject, which is, Ogres. You fancy they are dead or only fictitious characters—mythical representatives of strength, cruelty, stupidity, and lust for blood? Though they had seven-leagued boots, you remember all sorts of little whipping-snapping Tom Thumbs used to elude and outrun them. They were so stupid that they gave into the most shallow ambuscades and artifices: witness that well-known ogre who, because Jack cut open the hasty-pudding, instantly ripped open his own stupid waistcoat and interior. They were cruel, brutal, disgusting with their sharpened teeth, immense knives, and roaring voices: but they always ended by being overcome by little Tom Thumbkins, or some other smart little champion.

Yes; that they were conquered in the end, there is no doubt. They plunged headlong (and uttering the most frightful bad language) into some pit where Jack came with his smart _couteau de chasse_ and whipped their brutal heads off. They would be going to devour maidens,

“But ever when it seemed Their need was at the sorest, A knight, in armour bright, Came riding through the forest.”

And, down after a combat, would go the brutal persecutor with a lance through his midriff. Yes, I say, this is very true and well. But you remember that round the ogre’s cave, the ground was covered, for hundreds and hundreds of yards, _with the bones of the victims_ whom he had lured into the castle. Many knights and maids came to him and perished under his knife and teeth. Were dragons the same as ogres? Monsters dwelling in caverns, whence they rushed, attired in plate armour, wielding pikes and torches, and destroying stray passengers who passed by their lair? Monsters, brutes, rapacious tyrants, ruffians, as they were, doubtless they ended by being overcome. But, before they were destroyed, they did a deal of mischief. The bones round their caves were countless. They had sent many brave souls to Hades, before their own fled, howling, out of their rascal carcasses, to the same place of gloom.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that fairies, champions, distressed damsels, and by consequence ogres have ceased to exist. It may not be _ogreable_ to them (pardon the horrible pleasantry, but, as I am writing in the solitude of my chamber, I am grinding my teeth—yelling, roaring, and cursing—brandishing my scissors and paper-cutter, and, as it were, have become an ogre). I say there is no greater mistake than to suppose that ogres have ceased to exist. We all _know_ ogres. Their caverns are round us, and about us. There are the castles of several ogres within a mile of the spot where I write. I think some of them suspect I am an ogre myself. I am not: but I know they are. I visit them. I don’t mean to say that they take a cold roast prince out of the cupboard, and have a cannibal feast before _me_. But I see the bones lying about the roads to their houses, and in the areas and gardens. Politeness, of course, prevents me from making any remarks; but I know them well enough. One of the ways to know ’em is to watch the scared looks of the ogres’ wives and children. They lead an awful life. They are present at dreadful cruelties. In their excesses those ogres will stab about, and kill not only strangers who happen to call in and ask a night’s lodging, but they will outrage, murder, and chop up their own kin. We all know ogres, I say, and have been in their dens often. It is not necessary that ogres who ask you to dine should offer their guests the _peculiar dish_ which they like. They cannot always get a Tom Thumb family. They eat mutton and beef too; and I daresay even go out to tea, and invite you to drink it. But I tell you there are numbers of them going about in the world. And now you have my word for it, and this little hint, it is quite curious what an interest society may be made to have for you, by your determining to find out the ogres you meet there.

What does the man mean? says Mrs. Downright, to whom a joke is a very grave thing. I mean, madam, that in the company assembled in your genteel drawing-room, who bow here and there and smirk in white neckcloths, you receive men who elbow through life successfully enough, but who are ogres in private: men wicked, false, rapacious, flattering; cruel hectors at home; smiling courtiers abroad; causing wives, children, servants, parents, to tremble before them, and smiling and bowing as they bid strangers welcome into their castles. I say, there are men who have crunched the bones of victim after victim; in whose closets lie skeletons picked frightfully clean. When these ogres come out into the world, you don’t suppose they show their knives, and their great teeth? A neat simple white neckcloth, a merry rather obsequious manner, a cadaverous look, perhaps, now and again, and a rather dreadful grin; but I know ogres very considerably respected: and when you hint to such and such a man, “My dear sir, Mr. Sharpus, whom you appear to like, is, I assure you, a most dreadful cannibal;” the gentleman cries, “Oh, psha, nonsense! Daresay not so black as he is painted. Daresay not worse than his neighbours.” We condone everything in this country—private treason, falsehood, flattery, cruelty at home, roguery, and double dealing—What? Do you mean to say in your acquaintance you don’t know ogres guilty of countless crimes of fraud and force, and that knowing them you don’t shake hands with them; dine with them at your table; and meet them at their own? Depend upon it, in the time when there were real live ogres in real caverns or castles, gobbling up real knights and virgins—when they went into the world—the neighbouring market-town, let us say, or earl’s castle; though their nature and reputation were pretty well known, their notorious foibles were never alluded to. You would say, “What, Blunderbore, my boy! How do you do? How well and fresh you look! What’s the receipt you have for keeping so young and rosy?” And your wife would softly ask after Mrs. Blunderbore and the dear children. Or it would be, “My dear Humguffin! try that pork. It is home-bred, home-fed, and, I promise you, tender. Tell me if you think it is as good as yours? John, a glass of Burgundy to Colonel Humguffin!” You don’t suppose there would be any unpleasant allusions to disagreeable home-reports regarding Humguffin’s manner of furnishing his larder? I say we all of us know ogres. We shake hands and dine with ogres. And if inconvenient moralists tell us we are cowards for our pains, we turn round with a _tu quoque_, or say that we don’t meddle with other folk’s affairs; that people are much less black than they are painted, and so on. What? Won’t half the county go to Ogreham Castle? Won’t some of the clergy say grace at dinner? Won’t the mothers bring their daughters to dance with the young Rawheads? And if Lady Ogreham happens to die—I won’t say to go the way of all flesh, that is too revolting—I say if Ogreham is a widower, do you aver, on your conscience and honour, that mothers will not be found to offer their young girls to supply the lamented lady’s place? How stale this misanthropy is! Something must have disagreed with this cynic. Yes, my good woman. I daresay you would like to call another subject. Yes, my fine fellow; ogre at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and shaking in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of sham gaiety to conceal thy terror, lest I should point thee out:—thou art prosperous and honoured, art thou? I say thou hast been a tyrant and a robber. Thou hast plundered the poor. Thou hast bullied the weak. Thou hast laid violent hands on the goods of the innocent and confiding. Thou hast made a prey of the meek and gentle who asked for thy protection. Thou hast been hard to thy kinsfolk, and cruel to thy family. Go, monster! Ah, when shall little Jack come and drill daylight through thy wicked cannibal carcass? I see the ogre pass on, bowing right and left to the company; and he gives a dreadful sidelong glance of suspicion as he is talking to my lord bishop in the corner there.

Ogres in our days need not be giants at all. In former times, and in children’s books, where it is necessary to paint your moral in such large letters that there can be no mistake about it, ogres are made with that enormous mouth and _ratelier_ which you know of, and with which they can swallow down a baby, almost without using that great knife which they always carry. They are too cunning now-a-days. They go about in society, slim, small, quietly dressed, and showing no especially great appetite. In my own young days there used to be play ogres—men who would devour a young fellow in one sitting, and leave him without a bit of flesh on his bones. They were quiet gentlemanlike-looking people. They got the young fellow into their cave. Champagne, paté de foie-gras, and numberless good things were handed about; and then, having eaten, the young man was devoured in his turn. I believe these card and dice ogres have died away almost as entirely as the hasty-pudding giants whom Tom Thumb overcame. Now, there are ogres in City courts who lure you into their dens. About our Cornish mines I am told there are many most plausible ogres, who tempt you into their caverns and pick your bones there. In a certain newspaper there used to be lately a whole column of advertisements from ogres who would put on the most plausible, nay, piteous appearance, in order to inveigle their victims. You would read, “A tradesman, established for seventy years in the City, and known, and much respected by Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Baring Brothers, has pressing need for three pounds until next Saturday. He can give security for half a million, and forty thousand pounds will be given for the use of the loan,” and so on; or, “An influential body of capitalists are about to establish a company, of which the business will be enormous and the profits proportionately prodigious. They will require A SECRETARY, of good address and appearance, at a salary of two thousand per annum. He need not be able to write, but address and manners are absolutely necessary. As a mark of confidence in the company, he will have to deposit,” &c.; or, “A young widow (of pleasing manners and appearance) who has a pressing necessity for four pounds ten for three weeks, offers her Erard’s grand piano valued at three hundred guineas; a diamond cross of eight hundred pounds; and board and lodging in her elegant villa near Banbury Cross, with the best references and society, in return for the loan.” I suspect these people are ogres. There are ogres and ogres. Polyphemus was a great, tall, one-eyed, notorious ogre, fetching his victims out of a hole, and gobbling them one after another. There could be no mistake about _him_. But so were the Syrens ogres—pretty blue-eyed things, peeping at you coaxingly from out of the water, and singing their melodious wheedles. And the bones round their caves were more numerous than the ribs, skulls, and thigh-bones round the cavern of hulking Polypheme.

To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up rides the dapper champion of the pen; puffs boldly upon the horn which hangs by the chain; enters the hall resolutely, and challenges the big tyrant sulking within. We defy him to combat, the enormous roaring ruffian! We give him a meeting on the green plain before his castle. Green? No wonder it should be green: it is manured with human bones. After a few graceful wheels and curvets, we take our ground. We stoop over our saddle. ’Tis but to kiss the locket of our lady-love’s hair. And now the vizor is up: the lance is in rest (Gillott’s iron is the point for me). A touch of the spur in the gallant sides of Pegasus, and we gallop at the great brute.

“Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, my squire!” And who are these who pour out of the castle? the imprisoned maidens, the maltreated widows, the poor old hoary grandfathers, who have been locked up in the dungeons these scores and scores of years, writhing under the tyranny of that ruffian! Ah! ye knights of the pen! May honour be your shield and truth tip your lances! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest to women. Be tender to children. And as for the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and have at him.