CHAPTER XII.

“Bring the light nearer,” said John Burley—“nearer still.”

Leonard obeyed, and placed the candle on a little table by the sick man’s bedside.

Burley’s mind was partially wandering; but there was method in his madness. Horace Walpole said that “his stomach would survive all the rest of him.” That which in Burley survived the last was his quaint wild genius. He looked wistfully at the still flame of the candle: “It lives ever in the air!” said he.

“What lives ever?”

Burley’s voice swelled—“Light!” He turned from Leonard, and again contemplated the little flame. “In the fixed star, in the Will-o’-the-wisp, in the great sun that illumes half a world, or the farthing rushlight by which the ragged student strains his eyes—still the same flower of the elements. Light in the universe, thought in the soul—ay—ay—Go on with the simile. My head swims. Extinguish the light! You cannot; fool, it vanishes from your eye, but it is still in the space. Worlds must perish, suns shrivel up, matter and spirit both fall into nothingness, before the combinations whose union makes that little flame, which the breath of a babe can restore to darkness, shall lose the power to unite into light once more. Lose the power!—no, the _necessity_:—it is the one _Must_ in creation. Ay, ay, very dark riddles grow clear now—now when I could not cast up an addition sum in the baker’s bill! What wise man denied that two and two made four? Do they not make four? I can’t answer him. But I could answer a question that some wise men have contrived to make much knottier.” He smiled softly, and turned his face for some minutes to the wall.

This was the second night on which Leonard had watched by his bedside, and Burley’s state had grown rapidly worse. He could not last many days, perhaps many hours. But he had evinced an emotion beyond mere delight at seeing Leonard again. He had since then been calmer, more himself. “I feared I might have ruined you by my bad example,” he said, with a touch of humour that became pathos as he added, “That idea preyed on me.”

“No, no; you did me great good.”

“Say that—say it often,” said Burley, earnestly; “it makes my heart feel so light.”

He had listened to Leonard’s story with deep interest, and was fond of talking to him of little Helen. He detected the secret at the young man’s heart, and cheered the hopes that lay there, amidst fears and sorrows. Burley never talked seriously of his repentance; it was not in his nature to talk seriously of the things which he felt solemnly. But his high animal spirits were quenched with the animal power that fed them. Now, we go out of our sensual existence only when we are no longer enthralled by the Present, in which the senses have their realm. The sensual being vanishes when we are in the Past or the Future. The Present was gone from Burley; he could no more be its slave and its king.

It was most touching to see how the inner character of this man unfolded itself, as the leaves of the outer character fell off and withered—a character no one would have guessed in him—an inherent refinement that was almost womanly; and he had all a woman’s abnegation of self. He took the cares lavished on him so meekly. As the features of the old man return in the stillness of death to the aspect of youth—the lines effaced, the wrinkles gone—so, in seeing Burley now, you saw what he had been in his spring of promise. But he himself saw only what he had failed to be—powers squandered—life wasted. “I once beheld,” he said, “a ship in a storm. It was a cloudy, fitful day, and I could see the ship with all its masts fighting hard for life and for death. Then came night, dark as pitch, and I could only guess that the ship fought on. Towards the dawn the stars grew visible, and once more I saw the ship—it was a wreck—it went down just as the stars shone forth.”

When he had made that allusion to himself, he sate very still for some time, then he spread out his wasted hands, and gazed on them, and on his shrunken limbs. “Good,” said he, laughing low; “these hands were too large and rude for handling the delicate webs of my own mechanism, and these strong limbs ran away with me. If I had been a sickly puny fellow, perhaps my mind would have had fair play. There was too much of brute body here! Look at this hand now! you can see the light through it! Good, good!”

Now, that evening, until he had retired to bed, Burley had been unusually cheerful, and had talked with much of his old eloquence, if with little of his old humour. Amongst other matters, he had spoken with considerable interest of some poems and other papers in manuscript which had been left in the house by a former lodger, and which, the reader may remember, that Mrs Goodyer had urged him in vain to read, in his last visit to her cottage. But _then_ he had her husband Jacob to chat with, and the spirit bottle to finish, and the wild craving for excitement plucked his thoughts back to his London revels. Now poor Jacob was dead, and it was not brandy that the sick man drank from the widow’s cruise. And London lay afar amidst its fogs, like a world resolved back into nebulæ. So to please his hostess and distract his own solitary thoughts, he had condescended (just before Leonard found him out) to peruse the memorials of a life obscure to the world, and new to his own experience of coarse joys and woes. “I have been making a romance, to amuse myself, from their contents,” said he. “They may be of use to you, brother author. I have told Mrs Goodyer to place them in your room. Amongst those papers is a journal—a woman’s journal; it moved me greatly. A man gets into another world, strange to him as the orb of Sirius, if he can transport himself into the centre of a woman’s heart, and see the life there, so wholly unlike our own. Things of moment to us, to it so trivial; things trifling to us, to it so vast. There was this journal—in its dates reminding me of stormy events of my own existence, and grand doings in the world’s. And those dates there, chronicling but the mysterious unrevealed record of some obscure loving heart! And in that chronicle, O Sir Poet, there was as much genius, vigour of thought, vitality of being, poured and wasted, as ever kind friend will say was lavished on the rude outer world by big John Burley! Genius, genius; are we all alike, then, save when we leash ourselves to some matter-of-fact material, and float over the roaring seas on a wooden plank or a herring tub?” And after he had uttered that cry of a secret anguish, John Burley had begun to show symptoms of growing fever and disturbed brain; and when they had got him into bed, he lay there muttering to himself, until towards midnight he had asked Leonard to bring the light nearer to him.

So now he again was quiet—with his face turned towards the wall; and Leonard stood by the bedside sorrowfully, and Mrs Goodyer, who did not heed Burley’s talk, and thought only of his physical state, was dipping cloths into iced water to apply to his forehead. But as she approached with these, and addressed him soothingly, Burley raised himself on his arm, and waived aside the bandages. “I do not need them,” said he, in a collected voice. “I am better now. I and that pleasant light understand one another, and I believe all it tells me. Pooh, pooh, I do not rave.” He looked so smilingly and so kindly into her face, that the poor woman, who loved him as her own son, fairly burst into tears. He drew her towards him and kissed her forehead.

“Peace, old fool,” said he fondly. “You shall tell anglers hereafter how John Burley came to fish for the one-eyed perch which he never caught; and how, when he gave it up at the last, his baits all gone, and the line broken amongst the weeds, you comforted the baffled man. There are many good fellows yet in the world who will like to know that poor Burley did not die on a dunghill. Kiss me! Come, boy, you too. Now, God bless you, I should like to sleep.” His cheeks were wet with the tears of both his listeners, and there was a moisture in his own eyes, which nevertheless beamed bright through the moisture.

He laid himself down again, and the old woman would have withdrawn the light. He moved uneasily. “Not that,” he murmured—“light to the last!” And putting forth his wan hand, he drew aside the curtain so that the light might fall full on his face. In a few minutes he was asleep, breathing calmly and regularly as an infant.

The old woman wiped her eyes, and drew Leonard softly into the adjoining room, in which a bed had been made up for him. He had not left the house since he had entered it with Dr Morgan. “You are young, sir,” said she with kindness, “and the young want sleep. Lie down a bit: I will call you when he wakes.”

“No, I could not sleep,” said Leonard. “I will watch for you.”

The old woman shook her head. “I must see the last of him, sir; but I know he will be angry when his eyes open on me, for he has grown very thoughtful of others.”

“Ah, if he had but been as thoughtful of himself!” murmured Leonard; and he seated himself by the table, on which, as he leaned his elbow, he dislodged some papers placed there. They fell to the ground with a dumb, moaning, sighing sound.

“What is that?” said he starting.

The old woman picked up the manuscripts and smoothed them carefully.

“Ah, sir, he bade me place these papers here. He thought they might keep you from fretting about him, in case you would sit up and wake. And he had a thought of me, too; for I have so pined to find out the poor young lady, who left them years ago. She was almost as dear to me as he is; dearer perhaps until now—when—when—I am about to lose him.”

Leonard turned from the papers, without a glance at their contents: they had no interest for him at such a moment.

The hostess went on—

“Perhaps she is gone to heaven before him; she did not look like one long for this world. She left us so suddenly. Many things of hers besides these papers are still here; but I keep them aired and dusted, and strew lavender over them, in case she ever come for them again. You never heard tell of her, did you, sir?” she added, with great simplicity, and dropping a half curtsey.

“Of her?—of whom?”

“Did not Mr John tell you her name—dear—dear;—Mrs Bertram.”

Leonard started;—the very name so impressed upon his memory by Harley L’Estrange.

“Bertram!” he repeated. “Are you sure?”

“Oh yes, sir! And many years after she had left us, and we had heard no more of her, there came a packet addressed to her here, from over sea, sir. We took it in, and kept it, and John would break the seal, to know if it would tell us anything about her; but it was all in a foreign language like—we could not read a word.”

“Have you the packet? Pray show it to me. It may be of the greatest value. To-morrow will do—I cannot think of that just now. Poor Burley!”

Leonard’s manner indicated that he wished to talk no more, and to be alone. So Mrs Goodyer left him, and stole back to Burley’s room on tiptoe.

The young man remained in deep reverie for some moments. “Light,” he murmured. “How often ‘Light’ is the last word of those round whom the shades are gathering!”[31] He moved, and straight on his view through the cottage lattice there streamed light, indeed—not the miserable ray lit by a human hand—but the still and holy effulgence of a moonlit heaven. It lay broad upon the humble floors—pierced across the threshold of the death chamber, and halted clear amidst its shadows.

Leonard stood motionless, his eye following the silvery silent splendour.

“And,” he said inly—“and does this large erring nature, marred by its genial faults—this soul which should have filled a land, as yon orb the room, with a light that linked earth to heaven—does it pass away into the dark, and leave not a ray behind? Nay, if the elements of light are ever in the space, and when the flame goes out, return to the vital air—so thought, once kindled, lives for ever around and about us, a part of our breathing atmosphere. Many a thinker, many a poet, may yet illume the world, from the thoughts which yon genius, that will have no name, gave forth—to wander through air, and recombine again in some new form of light.”

Thus he went on in vague speculations, seeking, as youth enamoured of fame seeks too fondly, to prove that mind never works, however erratically, in vain—and to retain yet, as an influence upon earth, the soul about to soar far beyond the atmosphere where the elements that make fame abide. Not thus had the dying man interpreted the endurance of light and thought.

Suddenly, in the midst of his reverie, a low cry broke on his ear. He shuddered as he heard, and hastened forebodingly into the adjoining room. The old woman was kneeling by the bedside, and chafing Burley’s hand—eagerly looking into his face. A glance sufficed to Leonard. All was over. Burley had died in sleep—calmly, and without a groan.

The eyes were half open, with that look of inexpressible softness which death sometimes leaves; and still they were turned towards the light; and the light burned clear. Leonard closed tenderly the heavy lids; and, as he covered the face, the lips smiled a serene farewell.

OUR LONDON COMMISSIONER.

NO. II.

In the northern outskirt of London, there is a dingy-looking, ill-shaped building, on the bank of a narrow canal, where at one time, not very long ago, real water fell in sparkling cascades, Trafalgars were fought in veritable vessels, and, triumphant over all, radiant in humour and motley, with wit at his fingers’ ends, and ineffable character in his feet, laughed, hobbled, jeered, flouted, and pirouetted the clown, Joseph Grimaldi. The audiences, in those days, were partial to beer. Tobacco was a pleasant accompaniment to the wonders of the scene. Great effect was produced by farces of a very unsentimental kind; and the principal effort of the author was to introduce as much bustle and as many kicks into his piece as he could. A bloody nose secured three rounds of applause; a smack on the cheek was a successful repartee; a coarse oath was only emphatic—nobody blushed, everybody swore. There were fights in the pit, and the police-office was near at hand. It was the one place of entertainment for a poor and squalid district. Poverty and dirt went there to forget themselves, and came away unimproved. It was better, perhaps, than the beer-shop, certainly better than the prize-fight, but not so good as the tea-garden and hop. This building is now the Theatre Royal, Sadler’s Wells, presided over by one of the best actors on the English stage, and ringing, night after night, to the language of Shakspeare and Massinger. How does the audience behave? Better than young gentlemen of the Guards at a concert of sacred music; better than young ladies of fashion at a scientific lecture. They don’t yawn, they don’t giggle, they don’t whisper to each other at the finest passages; but there is intense interest—eyes, heart, mind, all fixed on the wondrous evolvement of the story. They stay, hour by hour, silent, absorbed, attentive, answering the touch of the magician’s wand, warming into enthusiasm, or melting into tears, with as fine an appreciation of the working of the play as if they had studied the Greek drama, and been critics all their days. Are they the same people, or the same class of people, who roared and rioted in the pit in the days of the real water? Exactly the same. The boxes are three shillings, the pit a shilling, the gallery a sixpence. There are many fustian jackets in the pit, and in the gallery a sprinkling of shirt sleeves. Masters of trades, and respectable shopkeepers, and professional men, and their families are in the boxes; and Mr Phelps is as great a benefactor to that neighbourhood as if he had established a public park, or opened a lyceum for education. There is a perceptible difference, we are told, in the manners of the district. You can’t raise a man in any one department without lifting him up in all. Improve his mind, you refine his character; teach him even mathematics, he will learn politeness; give him good society, he will cease to be coarse; introduce him to Shakspeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Massinger, and Webster, he will be a gentleman. A man with friends like these will not go to the tap of the Black Dog. Better spend his sixpence at Sadler’s Wells, and learn what was going on in Rome in the time of Coriolanus, or learn the thanklessness of sycophantic friends in the Athenian Timon. With the bluff and brutal Henry VIII. they are quite familiar, and form a very tolerable idea of a certain pinchbeck cardinal’s pride, from the insolence of the overweening Wolsey. That energy and honour overcome all impediments, they have long discovered from the story of the Lady of Lyons, and the grandeur of self-devotion in the noble aspirations of Ion. A world like this opening to their eyes, reflects a pleasant light on the common earth they inhabit. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” The same sentiment brings a big sob into their rough throats, and swells the gentle bosom of the delicate young lady in the front row of the dress circle. If the Queen were there, there would be a quivering of the royal lip. Jack Wiggins, the tinman, cries as if he were flogged. Let us off to see Sadler’s Wells, where a new play is to be acted, with our old friend James VI. for its hero. A pretty hero for a play!—The pedantic, selfish, ambitious, and cowardly son of Mary Stuart, who kissed the hand reeking with his mother’s blood, and held out the Scottish crown to be an awmous-dish, into which Elizabeth disdainfully threw her niggard charity, like an old maid depositing a farthing in the plate at the Magdalen Hospital door. This play is improperly called a tragedy, because a few people happen to be killed in the course of it. The foundation is decidedly comic—horribly, grotesquely comic. There the laughter tries in vain to banish the shudder, and between them a compound is created which we believe to be new to the stage. The conventional tyrant of tragedy is entirely done away with. There are no knittings of brows and crossings of elbows, starts and struttings, such as we generally see made the accompaniments of revenge and hatred. There is a low, selfish, cruel nature, disguised in ludicrous repartee and jocular conversation—a buffoon animated by the soul of Richard III., a harlequin’s lath tipt with deadly poison—our ordinary ideas turned topsy-turvy, and Polonius running his sword through Hamlet behind the arras. Whether this historical view of James be correct or not, does not matter to the play. It is the view chosen by the author on a preponderating weight of evidence; and the point of his career chosen for the development of these blacker portions of his disposition is the Gowrie plot, where even the king’s adulators were unable to hide the murmurs of the people, who certainly believed his conduct to have been cruel and unjust.

Such a piece of acting as Mr Phelps’s presentment of James is rarely seen on the stage. His command of the Scotch dialect is wonderful in an Englishman; his walk, his look, his attitude, are as palpable indications of character as the language he employs. There is not a turn of his mouth, or a leer of his eye, that is not in harmony with the general design. His pride, terror, abasement, doubt, triumph, and final despair, are all given with a marvellous versatility, which yet never trenches on the identity of the actor’s creation. But touches are here and there added, some to soften, some to darken, till the whole is like a Dutch picture—laboriously minute in all its details, and perfect as a finished whole.

The English envoy, Sir John Ayliffe, has been sent by Elizabeth with an answer to a demand made by James, that she should proclaim him her successor on the English throne. He has diverged from his road to Holyrood to the castle of the Laird of Restalrig—the secret, but principal agent in a plot for seizing the king; and is greatly alarmed on hearing that Spanish and Roman agents are at the Scottish court, promising the king great pecuniary assistance if he will march across the Border, and, with the help of the discontented Catholic nobility, assert his claim by force. He therefore agrees to aid Restalrig in his attempt to secure the king, and proceeds on his way to Edinburgh. Lord Gowrie, with his brother, is on a visit to the Laird, Gowrie being, of course, in love with his daughter, and is easily worked on to aid the plot by hearing of certain indignities which had been offered to his mother in his absence by the minions of the king. He also goes to Edinburgh, and here we are introduced to his mother, the widowed countess, who urges him to revenge her wrongs, and vindicate his honour by confronting the oppressor. Restalrig has also come to the capital, encounters his friend Gomez, the Spanish agent, and is by him requested to take care of certain sums of gold which have been sent over for the purpose of purchasing the assistance of the nobles to the views of Spain. We now come into the court of Holyrood. James gabbles, and storms, and fleeches, and goes through the most strange, yet natural evolutions—hears a negative reply from England delivered by Sir John Ayliffe—is startled by the apparition of Gowrie drest in his father’s arms—and dismisses the court with a threat of vengeance against all his opponents, especially the heirs of his old enemy, Lord Ruthven.

The interest of the plot hangs on the intellectual combat between the wily and sagacious laird, and the truculent and relentless king. With some of the gold obtained from the Spaniard, Restalrig induces James to move the court to Falkland, in order to be more easily seized when in the vicinity of Gowrie’s house; but James carries his design farther, and goes into the mansion of the Gowries, having arranged with his train to follow him, and make themselves masters of his hosts. When Restalrig’s triumph in the success of his plan and the imprisonment of the king is at its height, a chivalrous sense of honour in the young earl has disconcerted the whole design, by restoring James to liberty, and admitting his followers. Slaughter then takes place; but while James is rejoicing in his gratified revenge, and the destruction of his enemies, it is announced to him that Restalrig, at the head of the men of Perth, is at the gate; they are clamorous for vengeance—the alarm-bells are ringing—strange yells of an outraged populace are heard—James, in an agony of cowardly remorse, blames the instruments of his cruelty—and the curtain falls, leaving him in immediate expectation of being torn to pieces in punishment of his useless crime. The performers have little to do in this play, except to bring out the peculiarities of the king. Restalrig is played with a rough humour, and appreciation of the part, by Mr Bennet; but the effect of the young earl, upon whom a great deal depends in the scene of the release, is entirely destroyed by the unfortunate voice and feebleness of the actor. As an exhibition, however, of how one great performer can vivify a whole play in spite of all drawbacks, we pronounce the acting of Mr Phelps in some respects without a parallel on the modern stage.

In the good old comedy of the “Man of the World,” he is no less remarkable in his delineation of Sir Pertinax Macsycophant. His power over the Scotch dialect is the same; and it is only a less powerful performance, from the character itself being less diversified, and the tragic element being entirely omitted. Disagreeable characters both, from their hardness and selfishness; and we should like to see the same art applied to some softer and more captivating specimens of the Scottish species.

We have been forced already to confess that single-character pieces are the only style of drama to which full justice can be done in any theatre in London. Many people, deluded by this circumstance, and preferring the perfection of one to the mediocrity of many, will gravely tell you that the drama itself ought to be formed, in this respect, on the model of the stage; that the interest ought to be concentred in the hero, and the others kept entirely subordinate, or at least only endowed with vitality enough to enable them to survive the kicks and buffets with which the chief personage of the plot asserts his superiority. That one central interest must exist in a properly-constructed drama, there is no doubt; but it is a terrible narrowing of the author’s walk if you debar him from affixing this interest to a group, and limit it entirely to one. You force him to descend to mere peculiarities, and the evolvement of character in its most contracted sense—thereby, and to this extent, trenching upon the province of farce, which consists in a development of the humours of some selected individual. The drama, on the other hand, paints humanity in the abstract, modified in its particular action by the position and character of the personages of the story; and in so far as, for the sake of one chief actor, the movement of the play is made to depend on him, the poet sinks from being the Titian or Michael Angelo of his art, into the Watson Gordon, Phillips, or Pickersgill;—high names certainly; but portrait-painting, even at its best, is not history. Let any man read _Julius Cæsar_, and think of the Kembles, Young, Macready, and Elliston all in the same play, and talk no more of a one-charactered drama as the fittest for representation, and the highest of its class. A one-charactered drama is only the best when there is but one good actor in a theatre; if there were three good actors, a three-charactered play would speedily arise; where all were good, Shakspeare would reappear—that is to say, crowds would go to see Shakspeare, instead of going, as now, to see this or that performer in Hamlet or Macbeth.

The nearest approach to this diffusion of excellence is to be found on the French stage. A unity of purpose is visible in the whole company. The flunky who announces the countess’s carriage enters into the spirit of the scene, and is as completely the flunky, and nothing more, as Regnier is the marquis, and nothing less. But one man we possess on the English boards, who is very superior to Regnier and all his clan. Charles Matthews has more graceful ease, more untiring vivacity, more genial comprehension, than the very finest of the Parisians. For ninety-five nights he has held a hushed theatre in the most complete subjection to his magic art, and was as fresh and forcible on the last night of the course as at its beginning. Yet never once does he raise his voice above drawing-room pitch; no reliance has he on silver shoe-buckles or slashed doublets; he wears the same coat and other habiliments in which he breakfasts at home or dines with a friend. Never once does he point an epigram with a grimace, or even emphasise a sentiment with a shrug of his shoulders. The marvel is how the effect is created; for there is no outward sign of effort or intention. That the effect is there, is manifest from pit to gallery; and yet, there stands a quiet, placid, calm-eyed, pleasant-mannered, meek-voiced, bald-headed, gentlemanly stockbroker, with respectable brass-buttoned blue coat and grey trousers, such as is to be seen on any day of the week pursuing his way from St John’s Wood or Brompton; and, at first sight, as unfit for theatrical representation as the contents of his ledger for the material of an epic poem. But he is placed in queer and unaccountable situations?—made intensely interesting by some strange instance of mistaken identity?—or endangered in life and fame by some curiously ingenious piece of circumstantial evidence? Nothing of the kind. The man is before you all the time. You know his whole circumstances as well as he himself does. He has a wife and daughter; he lives in a well-furnished capacious house—we should say in the upper part of Baker Street; and probably a brass plate reveals to the inquiring passenger that it is the residence of Mr Affable Hawk. That is his name: a merchant or stockbroker, at one time very honest and very rich; but his partner, a Mr Sparrow, has eloped with the co-partnery funds, leaving Mr Hawk’s affairs in inextricable confusion, and throwing him into the disagreeable necessity of living on his wits. He has a great and available capital, and lays it out to the best advantage. Never did wits so stand in the stead of money before. With them he pays off debts, with them he embarks in speculations, and on their security raises loans throwing seed in the stoniest places, and receiving a hundredfold. Nor is his triumph over a set of trustful spinsters, or persons unaccustomed to business. He does not live upon pigeons, but, like the lovers in Boccaccio, makes an excellent dinner on a sharp-beaked falcon. Mr Hardcore will stand no more nonsense. He rushes into the house—hat on head, stick in hand. He will have his money, or issue a writ at once. With a gentlemanly motion towards his head, Mr Affable convicts him silently of ill-breeding and impertinence, and the hat is instantly removed. With the utmost suavity, he requests the irate creditor to write to his clerk to stop farther proceedings, and to add, in a postscript, a cheque for £200. The man is staggered by the immensity of the impertinence. But the calm superiority of his debtor makes itself felt in spite of his utmost efforts. Certain shares in a brilliant speculation have been secured by Mr Hawk for his friend at a very low premium. The letter to the clerk is written. But the cheque for £200? Sir Harry Lester, a rich baronet, is about to marry Mr Hawk’s daughter; all debts are to be paid by the enraptured son-in-law; a fitting breakfast must be given; a few trinkets, a few dresses. You wouldn’t have such a glorious prospect spoiled by the want of such a trifle? Hardcore writes the cheque, and rushes off to secure the depreciated shares. Another comes in who throws himself on the charity of his debtor, pleads poverty, distress, even starvation. How can the polished and humane Mr Hawk resist so touching an appeal? He can’t. He doesn’t. He goes for three pounds, as an instalment of which it appears he has already paid nine, making a remarkably good return on the loan of our penurious friend, Mr Earthworm. That gentleman rejoices in the success of his “dodge,” and appears triumphant in his conquest over the feelings of Mr Hawk. But the benevolent debtor now returns, pays the three sovereigns, and hurries his visitor off to make way for Mr Grossmark, who is about to purchase shares in a speculation of Mr Hawk’s, which is to yield three hundred per cent. “How much is required?” says the miserable Earthworm—“three hundred pounds?” He thinks he can raise the sum—a friend who is very rich will help him: he will advance the money. “But the four hundred pounds are required at once.” “Is it _four_ hundred?” A bow from Mr Hawk. “Well, my friend will not stick at that.” “And the five hundred pounds will set the matter afloat,” said Mr Hawk; “but go—there’s a good fellow—for I hear Grossmark’s step, and the shares are promised to him.” Earthworm’s disguise is seen through, and falls off like the traveller’s cloak before the heat of the sun. “Here! here’s the money,” he cries—puts a pile of notes into Mr Hawk’s reluctant hand, and the bargain is closed. Prosperity once more seems an inhabitant of Baker Street. He has received seven hundred pounds, and can now provide a trousseau, and furnish forth a wedding breakfast. Twenty thousand pounds he has settled on his daughter; but they are any twenty thousand he may be able to extract from the uncountable riches of his son-in-law. This noble specimen of Hibernian honour rejoices in a double name; one being Sir Harry Lester, with which to tickle the ears of the millionaires of Baker Street, and the other his workday appellation under which he enacts the distinguished part of a stag in railways, and a defaulter in other speculations. His interview with Mr Hawk would be diamond cut diamond if the strength and brilliancy weren’t all on one side. Preliminaries are settled—the amount of marriage portion agreed upon—a description of the Lester estates, including a salt marsh taken on trust, and all things verging towards a satisfactory fulfilment. The salt marsh instantly suggests to the ingenious Hawk a perfect California of speculation; divided into shares, market rigged, property realised, and no other inquiries are made. But the course of true love never did run smooth. In the most dramatic scene of the play, the mutual discovery is made that Mr Hawk is an insolvent, and Sir Harry a swindler—the Lester estates are in an Irish bog, the salt marsh is the sea. Pleasant is it to see the mild self-composure, and sublime self-reliance of Mr Hawk. For some years he has softened his creditors’ hearts, and amused their hopes with reports of the return of his runaway partner Mr Sparrow, with all the funds of the firm, and a vast increase of capital by successful trade in the East. That expedient has been tried so often that it begins to lose its effect. The creditors laugh when he mentions Sparrow’s name. What can be better than to make Sir Harry bronze his countenance, shave off his beard, put on a wig, buy a carriage in Long Acre, and post up to Baker Street at the very moment, decisive of his fate, when his creditors, now aware of the failure of his chance of marrying his daughter to a fortune, are to assemble with their united claims and remorselessly convey him to the Fleet? Sir Harry agrees. Hawk retires to mature his plans; but Mrs Hawk, radiant with some unexpected good news, hurries in—stops Sir Harry from the execution of his infamous plot, and waits in happy expectation the _dénouement_ of the piece. The creditors come in—they bawl, they grin, they scold, they bully. Sparrow is appealed to in vain. They have heard too much of that Levanter’s return to believe in it any more. Hark! a carriage rattles up to the door. They look out of the window: carriage covered with mud;—old fellow hobbles out—pigtail wig exactly as ordered. Capital, Sir Harry, cries Hawk! Now, then, gentlemen, will you be persuaded? Won’t you wait for ten days till I have arranged our partnership accounts, and then we will pay you in full? The creditors pause. At last one of them goes out to see. He comes back with a cheque for the amount of his debt! Hawk stands aghast. Another goes out, and comes in holding up a bank post bill for ten thousand pounds! More and more confounded. Hawk has uncomfortable thoughts of forgery, and thinks Sir Harry carries the joke too far. At last the wife of his bosom rushes in, and at the other door Sir Harry makes his appearance. This is magic, witchcraft, sorcery; for still the creditors go out, and still come back with all their claims discharged. The real Sparrow has indeed returned; and, having thus made the _amende_, is in a position to solicit an interview with his injured partner; and that sagacious and now thoroughly honourable gentleman concludes the series of his “dodges” with a solemn declaration in favour of probity and fair-dealing, which would have been more edifying if he could have appealed to his own conduct in illustration of what he said. There was no occasion for any piece of hypocrisy like this at the end. His life was a sermon. We have heard an objection made to the moral of this play, that it invests swindling with dignity, and so unites dishonesty with wit, ease, grace, and fascinating manner, as to make dishonesty itself far from a repulsive object. Have you ever reflected, oh critic, that the creditors here are the helots of the scene, to be a disgust and warning to others; and, in the midst of their apparent respectabilities, are shown to be the dishonest workers of their own losses?—that Mr Hawk is far less the tempter of those City gentlemen, than the creation of the style of speculation in which they are all engaged. Without Earthworms and Hardcores there would be no possible existence for our easy, pleasant, buoyant friend Hawk. The whole play may be called “Rochefoucauld’s Maxims Dramatised;” for a better satire on the selfishness, meanness, and gullibility of the animal man is not to be found in the whole range of literature or philosophy. What little is to be done by Mr Roxby, as Sir Harry, is done “excellent well.” There is a very praiseworthy obtuseness to the rascality of his conduct, and calm consideration of his claims, which is very edifying as contrasted with the thorough appreciation of him instantaneously arrived at by his intended father-in-law. The principal creditors also are very adequately represented, especially the miserable begging impostor, by Mr Frank Matthews. A more life-like combination of mendicity, and its unvarying accompaniment mendacity, was never observed by Mr Horsford; and we confess to a feeling approaching displeasure, when we learn that the beneficent Sparrow has restored his money to that smooth-tongued, supple-backed, blackhearted vagabond. Now, what is the conclusion derived from all this?—That a dramatic feast of this quality has not been seen in our time. Not that the language is comparable to Sheridan’s—in fact, the composition is rather poor; not even that there is any novelty in the plot;—but the strength of this play is first of all in the prevailing truthfulness of Charles Matthews’ acting; and, secondly, that it never on any one occasion oversteps the modesty of nature. With the sole exception of the opportune return of the defaulting partner, we believe that the entire story of this drama was enacted every day in the neighbourhood of Capel Court all the time of the railway mania, and is now performing every day not far from the Stock Exchange. And the proof that this lecture, as it may be called, on the art of commercial gambling, is carried on in accordance with inevitable natural laws, is that in spite of the English names, the Irish baronet, the Baker Street furniture, and the thoroughly London atmosphere that surrounds all the personages introduced, the play is originally French. The scene is Paris—the creditors are Parisian—the swindling, speculating, caballing, kite-flying, and mystification, are all originally the offspring of the Bourse; and all the merit of the English play-wright is, that he has very ingeniously hidden the birthplace of his characters, without altering, or in the slightest degree damaging, their features; and, in fact, has given them letters of naturalisation under which they could rise to be Lord Mayors of London, and eat turtle and drink port as if to the manner born. The author is poor Balzac, lately dead, who left _Mercadet_ a legacy to the stage of more value by far than all his contributions to it during his lifetime. His minute dissection of character had given a charm to his novels, but gave no promise of a success upon the boards; for his ends were worked out by a thousand little traits, as in our own Miss Austin, without ever having recourse to the broad effects that seem adapted to the theatre;—and we believe his dramatic triumph came as a surprise upon the Parisian public, which, at the same time, highly appreciated his Eugenie Grandet, and his other revelations of provincial life.

While dwelling on the performances of the Lyceum, it would be unpardonable to omit, from the notice of Maga and her readers, the genius of Mr Beverley, the scene-painter. It almost requires an apology for applying that old appellation to a man who lavishes upon the landscapes required in a play a richness of imagination and power of touch which would bring envy to the hearts of the Poussins or Claude. It is not by gorgeous colours, or startling light and shade, that Beverley produces his effects. With a severe adherence to his original design, he works out a scene, so perfect in its parts, and so combined as a whole, that it is difficult to realise to the mind the gigantic scale, or the coarse touches, with which it is painted: you gaze on it as on a finished picture by some great artist, who has devoted months to its elaboration in the solitude of his studio; and wonder not less at the taste, and fancy, and sentiment of those extraordinary works, than at the rapidity with which they are produced, and the inexhaustible resources of the mind that gives them birth. It rests with Mr Beverley himself, whether to follow his illustrious predecessors, Roberts and Stanfield, to the highest honours of the Academy, or to continue an exhibition of his own, where the applause of shouting theatres testifies nightly to his artistic powers; and ample room and verge enough is given for his highest conceptions, which would, perhaps, object to find themselves cramped within the limits of an ordinary frame, and subjected to the tender mercies of a hostile hanging committee. Whichever way he decides, the arts will infallibly be the gainers. If he descends to ordinary canvass, and places “infinite riches in a little room,” he will take rank in after ages with the masters who have ennobled the English school; if he continues where he is, not less useful will his efforts be in diffusing a love of beauty and a knowledge of effect. The Lyceum, like its Athenian prototype, will become a lecture-hall; and from his lessons and examples, new Wilsons and Turners, new Calcotts and Constables, may arise to maintain the supremacy of British landscape against all competitors.

Our readers must remember a very spirited account of an ascent of Mont Blanc by Mr Albert Smith. Very spirited, and very interesting it was; but you should go and hear the author give his _vivâ voce_ version of it, illustrated by Beverley’s views. When we say the descriptions are funny, we are not correct; though certainly there is a great deal of whim and fun in the course of his address. When we say the narrative is grave, startling, entrancing, we are not correct; though, undoubtedly, there are passages that take away the auditor’s breath, and hair-breadth ’scapes that make him shudder;—but the true description of the whole two hours’ entertainment is, that it is a remarkable combination of talent, humour, lucid narrative, and personal adventure, which everybody ought to go and hear, and a succession of scenes and paintings which everybody ought to go and see. The deaf man will be delighted; the blind man will be amazingly pleased; but people in the full enjoyment of eyes and ears will be inexcusable, if they refuse them so great a treat as the united efforts of two such artists will afford.

Saturday—and the week’s inspection has come to a close. A cold east wind is howling along Oxford Street, evidently in search of snow, and rather disappointed at not finding the Serpentine covered with ice. The Almanac tells us it is April; but our extremities have private information that it is December. As we go shivering home, we will diverge for a moment into the most curious repository of nick-nacks the world contains—being the gatherings of thirty years, at a cost of thirty thousand pounds. We call in Argyll Street, and are civilly received by Mr Hertz, the proprietor of the collection. He is a little, round, oily-faced German, evidently of the Jewish persuasion, and remarkably fond of tobacco. His room is like a pawnbroker’s shop; only all his customers must have been possessors of picture galleries, and have brought themselves into difficulties by cultivating a “taste.” There are wardrobes richly inlaid, with a genealogy as carefully kept as the pedigree of a race-horse. He will tell you how it came into the hands of Louis XIV., and how it ornamented a chamber in the Tuileries during the Empire; or a ring will be shown you, with the hair of Julius Cæsar under the glass. Beautiful miniatures are pointed out, of great value as works of art, but far more valuable from their being undoubted likenesses of their fair and famous originals. Beauties of the reign of Francis; eyes that looked kindly on Henry IV.; cheeks that flushed in vain to win a transient smile from the Grand Monarque, are all there. Then there are little ivory cabinets, and screens magnificently embroidered, all with their respective stories—there being no article that depends entirely on its intrinsic merits, but borrows a great part of its interest from the adventures it has gone through. Finally, he gives you a key, and sends you off, under the guardianship of his maid, to a house in Great Marlborough Street, which you find filled, from cellar to garret, with works of a still more valuable description. We have only time to mention some very fine cartoons by Correggio, and a splendid statue in black marble of a Roman prizefighter. This is a very fine specimen of ancient skill. Mr Hertz’s object is to sell the entire collection, and we believe he declines to dispose of it piecemeal. Were this not the case, it would be indispensable for the country to secure some of the treasures here contained, though it would perhaps be asking too much of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to endow the British Museum with the miscellaneous articles by which the statue and cartoons are accompanied. Colder, colder still, and fast and furious we hurry towards our chambers. What do blockheads and poetasters of all ages mean by the balmy breath of April?—the sunny showers of April?—the “smiles and tears together” characteristic of that hopeful and delicious month? We believe it is a cuckoo note, continued by imitative mediocrity from the days of Theocritus. All very well for him in the beautiful climate of Sicily to cover the head of Spring with fresh flowers, and lie upon the grass playing his Pandean pipes. But where are flowers to be seen, at this most uncheering season, here? Or who can lie down on the grass before the end of July without the certainty of cold and rheumatism? Here has the cold wind been blowing for two months—sneezes and snufflings loading every breeze; and yet you turn to a pastoral poem, an eclogue or rhapsody, about the beauties of nature, and you read whole passages in praise of April! With our hat clenched over our brow, and a handkerchief held to our mouth, we career madly through Leicester Square. On the steps of Miss Linwood’s old exhibition, a man is standing enveloped in ancient armour. He might as well be cased in ice. But utterly unconscious seems he of the absurdity of his appearance, or of the cold that must be shot through him from steel cuirass and iron greaves. In a gentle voice he addresses the passer by. “It is useless to observe,” he says, “that all intelligent individuals will be gratified by a sight of the strongest man in the world.” This is so different from the usual style of those touters, that we involuntarily slacken our pace. “It is scarcely necessary,” he proceeds, “to remark that Professor Crosso is decidedly at the head of his profession, and that the entrance money is only one shilling.” We are won by the smooth volubility of the knightly orator. Who is Professor Crosso?—and what is his profession? We ascended the steps, traversed a gallery, deposited a shilling, and entered a large apartment with a number of wooden benches, a small gallery at the back, and a green curtain door, hiding for a time the wonders of the stage. Three fiddlers strung their instruments with most unholy discord; the company gradually dropped in, principally foreigners; the gas gave a leap of increased light; a tune began, and the curtain rose. Oh, earth and sky! what is this we behold? A _tableau-vivant_ of the death of Hector. Old Priam, venerable from the length of his beard, is the central figure; around him sit the maids and matrons of Troy. Hector lies dead in front; and to slow music, the stage on which they stand is whirled round so as to give a variety of views of the same group, and great applause rewards the display. There is certainly a great scarcity of drapery about the principal figures, but nothing to be found fault with on the score of decorum or propriety; but we read in a small hand-bill that the _artistes_ are all German, and we gaze with great curiosity on the development of the Teutonic form. The round hilarious faces, the flat noses, and prominent chins, would prove, to the entire satisfaction of Professor Owen, that our Bavarian friends were lineal descendants of the Caffres at the Cape. There was not a single one of the Trojan ladies who did not look well practised in asking the inhabitants to buy a broom. The sons of Priam seemed waiters from the foreign _restaurants_ in Lisle Street; and the dead Hector had a strong resemblance to the owner of a small cigar-shop, where there is a card in the window with the words, “Hier sprecht Mann Deutsch.” There were other subjects illustrated, but all by the same _artistes_. The figures were very tastefully disposed; but a little more beauty, and a closer approximation to the outlines of the Canova Venus, would be a great improvement. However, the patriotic audience were highly gratified, and the Dutch ideal evidently fulfilled. Performances then began, where there was a display of strength which would be incredible if there was no trick in some of the displays. The professor tossed weights about which were more fit for waggons than human arms. An immense iron bar was laid upon the floor, which he first lifted by the middle with unanimous approbation; he then raised it, keeping it horizontal by a hold about one-third from the end. He then laid it down, and grasping one end of it, certainly succeeded in raising the other end from the ground, while the minutest observation could detect no hair suspended from the ceiling, nor other means by which he could be assisted in the feat. But the crowning performance, which was preceded by a long pause, to enable “the yellow-haired and blue-eyed Saxons” to recover from their surprise, was called the Harmless Guillotine, and consisted in cutting off a girl’s head, without doing her any harm. The professor walked in leading his victim by the hand. She was probably one of the Trojan maidens, and by no means so favourable a specimen of female charms as the Argive Helen. With a vast amount of guttural and other splutter, the professor addressed the audience in German; and was interpreted by one of the fiddlers for the benefit of any untravelled Englishman who might be present. The object of the speech was to beg the ladies not to be alarmed at what they are about to see; for though the head appeared to be cut off, he assured them, on his own word as a gentleman and a Christian, that it was mere deception, and that he was by no means the murderer he appeared. He then led away his victim, and placed her on a kind of sofa-bed at the back of the stage, and drew the curtains round her. He next advanced, and asked whether the company would have the execution done behind the curtain or in front? There was a unanimous answer to this, that we wished to see the operation; whereupon he drew the curtain, waved a sword two or three times, and appeared to saw away at the girl’s neck, till finally the head came off, and in a triumphant manner he held it up for popular applause. It was a failure. The stage was so dark, the figure so indistinct, the preparation so clumsy, that we could not by any means entertain the feelings of horror and astonishment he intended to produce. The fiddler, in a feeble voice, invited any of the ladies or gentlemen present to go on the stage and examine more nearly the separated head and its marks of reality. But nobody responded to the invitation; and again we fixed our hat desperately over our brows, and faced once more the pitiless blowings of the April breeze.

Thus have we attempted to give a clear and dispassionate view of some of the amusements offered to the millions of London. The list we have chosen is very limited; for, in this communication we have omitted all mention of the great majority of the theatres, the operas, the _salles de danse_, the panoramas, the dioramas, and other pictorial exhibitions. What we wish to impress on the intelligent reader is the absolute necessity of improving, and turning to as beneficial purpose as possible, the means of entertainment which already exist. The theatre, we maintain, has in itself the material most fitted for this purpose; not the theatre of show and spectacle, of burlesque and buffoonery, but the theatre of life and poetry. The machinery is already there, the actors capable of improvement, the drama ready to spring into fresh existence, and all that is wanted is the fostering presence of good and benevolent men—wise enough to see the immense engine, for good or for evil, which it is in their power to direct, and brave enough, in the confidence of a good cause, to despise the sneers of the ignorant. The amusements of the people, properly considered, are as important as their ability to spell, or even as the comfort of their houses; and the philanthropic economist who spreads the light of education into desolate lanes, and brightens, with cleanliness and convenience, the poor man’s room, only half executes his task if he does not afford intellectual recreation to the mechanic who has a shilling or two to spare, but leaves him to the false encitement of the melodrama, or the leer and vulgarity of the tea-garden.

But this is Sunday morning, and we are at Woolwich in time for changing guard. Here are four or five thousand artillery, and a regiment or two of dragoons; and what with cadets and engineers, the fighting population must be close on seven thousand men. The heath spreads its smooth hard surface in front of the parade-ground, and scattered all over the place are cannons and carriages, and mortars and implements of warfare enough to exterminate the human race in half-an-hour. There are no such fine intelligent-looking men as the artillery in the British service. Great care is taken in the selection of recruits; for the duties even of a private need both bodily and mental activity. Their pay is higher than that of the line, and their conduct so good, that out of that immense body only four have made their appearance before a magistrate for the last two years.

The quiet of the town is wonderful. There is not a uniform anywhere to be seen, except where the sentry, with drawn sword, guards the heath gates. On this great expanse there is no motion. A flag here and there sways to and fro in the breeze, and occasionally the burst of a bugle-call rises into the air from some distant barrack-yard. But now a few officers and their wives and families move silently about—fine handsome lads come down by twos and threes from the college of cadets—white-haired generals, and majors and captains scarcely less white-haired, pace solemnly along the gravel—and, finally, we all arrive at the door of the barrack chapel, which is guarded by sentinels, and devoted entirely to the garrison. On entering on the ground line we are surprised to find ourselves in the gallery. On the different pew doors the ranks and designations of the occupants are written—general officers, field-officers, officers, &c. &c.; and on going forward to the front of the seat, and looking down into the body of the building, we see already assembled the men of the 4th Dragoons on the cross-benches in front of the pulpit, and artillerymen on the seats under the gallery. A beautiful sight—above a thousand gallant fellows in their blue trousers with red or yellow stripes, their belts crossed, their side-arms on, and all exhibiting any medals or decorations they may possess. A corporal in full uniform acted as clerk, and the band played the anthems, while some military choristers sang the hymns and responses. Better behaviour it is impossible to see in a church. It was a calm, observant, and very attentive congregation. After the prayers, the clergyman, who rejoices in a very fine voice, commenced his sermon amid the hushed attention of his audience. He was very plain, very straightforward, and spoke to them as men who had duties which were by no means inconsistent with the Christian character. Their temptations he touched upon, and gave them warnings and advice. In about a quarter of an hour, having seen that his admonition had had its effect—for he preached without book, and kept his eye on his congregation the whole time—he dismissed them with their faculties unfatigued, and what he had told them fresh upon their minds. On standing up or kneeling down, the clash of their swords upon the pavement was very fine; the jingle of spurs also was heard whenever they moved; and not the less gallantly will they press their horses’ flanks, and sway their sabres in some deathful charge, that they heard and treasured the lessons of their friend the chaplain. We intend, on some future occasion, to devote a whole paper to a day at Woolwich, but we have already seen enough to take off the edge of our fear of a French invasion. With Hardinge at the head of our Ordnance, and the great name of Wellington still sounding in the hearts of his countrymen—with rifle corps innumerable, and the whole empire ready to rise at the first beacon that flares on Beachy Head—we shall only observe to the whole world in arms, that if by some miracle it finds its way to English ground, it will receive the most tremendous thrashing that ever a world in arms, or out of them, received since history began. We therefore solemnly advise all foreign nations, kings, princes, adventurers, bullies, and personages whatsoever, to keep a civil tongue in their heads, and stay quietly at home.

THE GOLD-FINDER.

I.

To travellers by the seas, or on long plains, The distant objects, on the horizon’s verge, Show but their highest summits; so with Time. Time orbs so silently beneath our feet, We look around, and know not that we move, Or that the point whereon we stand, to-day, This moment, is our culminating point; The Past and Future dip as they recede, And only give to view the tops of things. Therefore, be happy now; the mental eye May take his pleasure, pleasure if it be, In gazing on the Cottage, or the Church; The Heart may fondly dwell upon the one, And think of days of piety, to be; And on the other, till the breath of Home Waft to the soul more pleasant memories Than the West stealing o’er a field of hay;— Blest in our ignorance, we cannot see That, underneath the rose-grown eaves of Home Lurk fire and sickness, bickering and want; Or, where the steeple-cross shines in the sun, That damp, cold graves are nestling dark beneath. All Nature cries, “Be happy now.” The Bee, Whose angry labours wound the ear of Noon, Finds in the winter, from his garnered store, Quick spoliation, and a bitter death; The light-winged Butterfly, with truer scope, Ranges, all summer, through the garden-beds, And, ignorant of darker days to come, Enjoys a life-long holiday; the Man Who spake as never man did, bade us view The untended lilies of the desert-plain: “They toil not,” said he, “neither do they spin; And yet I say to you that Solomon, In all his glory, was not clad like these.” Michael De Mas knew not this holy truth; Alas! _his_ thought was ever of the morrow: And yet he was no foolish homesick swain, Such as, amid the perils of the strife, The conflict of existence, pine and sigh To flee to some ideal resting-place, To feed on contemplation, or to woo Some simple Thestylis in beechen groves. To him the cry of subjugate despair Rang, like a trumpet of encouragement; And brave resistance did but seem to him Another step that led him to the heights. Ten years had poured their various gifts on earth Of death and life, of sunshine and of shade, Since Michael left his little school disgraced By acts of lawless violence; and went Back to a ruined parent’s ruined home, To feed his heart on innutritious dreams And idle scorn of those he would not know. Once when the lights of English Autumn time, Clear, vigorous, spirit-cheering, morning lights, Were dancing on a thousand thousand trees, Were streaming on a thousand fertile fields, And smoking on a hundred cottage tops, He felt that these, once his, were his no more: A stranger ploughed his very garden plots; The Halls, where his forefathers fed the shire, Were fallen, and the stones and timbers sold; One-tenth of all the house, one-hundredth part Of the broad lands, and how much less part still Of the respect and power that graced the name, Would cleave to him the heir. So slow had been The gradual alienation, that till now He had not felt it fully; but that morn (’Twas Sabbath) they had been to worship God, And even in the very Church, where once The service staid for them, and bells rang on Till good Sir Marmaduke, in coach of state, Drawn by six solemn Flanders steeds, and girt By a full score of stalwart serving men, Approaching, gave the signal to begin, Even there a London Scrivener, with his brood Of pale and purse-proud children of the fog, Sate in their ancient place, beneath the crest Which Black Sir Walter wore at Agincourt; Ay, over the cold stones, where lies at peace The knight who fell at Naseby, by his King, There sate his steward’s grandson. “Ah,” thought Michael, “The desolate abomination stands Most proudly where it ought not; ’tis not these I blame, but gold, the cursed cause of all, Gold that o’erthrew my fathers, and raised these, These—and why not me also?” till he swore That gold, and gold alone, should be his god, As who alone rewards its worshippers. “Therefore,” he said, “dear Idol, I to thee From henceforth pay my vows; thou who dost raise The Beggar, till the Princes of the Earth Bow low to kiss his stirrup; who dost give Power and distinction, virtue and renown. My name shall be among the fortunate, For I am of those whose will is Destiny. And then, perhaps, when Victory shall be mine, My Margaret will not turn away from me, As now, methinks, even she must wish to do.” The thought was inspiration: all on fire, He wrote to one, their noble house’s chief, Whose voice was heard at Eastern council boards; And with the ardour of a youthful heart, He urged his claim: “His Lordship knew him well, The soldier’s spirit He felt; for He was strong;— The influence of wind, or sun, or rain, Could never sap His sinews: were it his To draw a sword in yonder golden land, He promised them no niggard of himself, No slothful wearer of a scarlet coat, Most terrible to women.” Marvel not That Michael took the final step alone; His Mother never knew a wish but his; His Father, ah, the sorrows of decay, And sorrow-taught indulgence, made him cold, Cold as the inmate of an idiot’s cell.

II.

Michael had gained his end, and India’s Sun Now ruled his eager blood; some of his hopes Were crowned with triumph; he got store of gold, But lost his sense of honour. In days like those, Deceit and violence gave the rule of life To men once wise and generous; they were poor, And they had power: Opinion, far away Raved, like the idle murmurs of the Sea, Heard, in still summer evenings, from a hill. Blame them not over harshly; skill and valour Give power, which, even when marred and mixed with wrong, May bless those who abide its visitings. When Autumn nights are moonless, and thick clouds Have hid the friendly faces of the stars, The storm may bring keen lightnings: here and there Some wretch, whose hour was come, may gain by them Immunity from other lingering deaths, And that may seem an Evil; yet the air, Purged by those very bolts, grows sweet and clear, And feeds the corn, the oil, the parched vine, And gives to men, for many and many a day, Prosperity and pleasure: so with these, God’s chosen messengers to work his will; They purify the poisoned moral gale, Cause peace and plenty wheresoe’er they go, And lead in happiness on a path of thorns. Among the foes of the English settlers, one Was ever foremost; he—by what arts won Boots not to trace—had made a friend of Michael, Who grew in power and riches day by day. But purer times were coming; there were heard Deserved, though little looked for then from those, Themselves not pure who raised them, murmurings; Surmise grew into knowledge; Michael’s friends Were few; men stained as he pronounced his doom. Still there was hope; he never knew despair: The Rajah he had served should shelter him, And he would lead his Armies; he foresaw More wealth, more power, more means of growing great.

III.

He passed from low Bengal’s unbroken green, That, like a harlot, smiles but to betray, And with a troop of chosen cavaliers, Came to the Holy Land of Hindostan, Wearily wandering, whether the strong sun Parched the wide champaign, and the furnace blasts Came howling, hot and dry, whirling the sand In dense and overwhelming canopy, So that, for hours, the dark was palpable; Or whether, under the moist star of Eve, The village slumbered peaceful, great old trees Intensely still, and immemorial pools Silently shining, save where, now and then, The Alligator glided from the bank, Warned by the chill of evening, or the girls With tinkling bangles, and the ringing laugh Of youth, and happiness, and unrestraint, In coming down for water, scared away The timid monster of two elements. Once, as they halted in an ancient grove, Set by some hospitable hand, of old, And consecrate to travellers, now too near The fortress of a wild Mahratta Prince, The weary band were throwing by their arms, And, gathered in their separate brotherhoods, Prepared for evening’s rest; some made in earth Their simple ovens, some set up the tents, Some slew the bleating kid, some kneeling, turned Their faces to the West, their Prophet’s shrine, And with much prostrate bending, prayed to Him Who made the morning and the even-tide. Suddenly came upon them, unawares, The soldiers of the castle, bound their arms, And drove them, harshly, o’er the plain, on foot, Weary and terror-stricken, through the gate, Into the presence hall, where sate their chief. Sternly he questioned Michael of his wealth, And with what hope he, from a foreign land, Was wandering, thus attended; who, in scorn, Answered him nothing; till “Away with him! Bind him there on the house-top, that the moon Shed curses on his face, pale as her own, And our strong Sun burn up his alien blood; And straitly search, and bring me all his gold.” They laid him on a low, unfurnished couch, And left him, bound, alone; he could but look Up to the sky, his head so fast was set, And so he lay, and strove to rest himself, But vainly; the sharp cords entered his flesh, The dews sank on his shuddering skin; the Moon Rose, like a fire, among the mango boughs, And, slowly wending on her westward way, Smote him with deadly influence: so night passed, A night as long as three; the chilly dawn Came, grey, and weakly struggling with the Moon, Then threw a red flush over all the East, Whereat the Moon turned white, and hid herself, While the great Orb that is her lord arose, And swiftly mounted high: his pain increased, His body streamed, his brain was agonised, His sense was reeling; suddenly there came A tingling stillness on his ears; his eyes Closed; and he scarcely knew of one who said, “Let be; unbind him; ’tis a warrior good.” Long days the fever lasted, but his strength, Nursed by the breezes of a hardier clime, Would not desert him; so that he arose, A bold, refreshed young giant: then the Chief Spoke soothing words; and Michael hid his wrath, And answered calmly; till they made them terms, That Michael gave the service of his skill To tame those wild Mahrattas, ruling them To discipline, that they might grow more fierce, Like dogs, that wreak on foes their masters’ will.

IV.

Time held his course; the strong-willed man of blood Prospered in all he undertook, and throve, And gathered stores, and seemed to casual eyes A happy child of Fortune; yet there burned Two unextinguished furnaces of woe Within him—lust of gold and of revenge: For his was not a spirit that e’er could yield, Or ever cease to think upon its wrongs. And therefore watched he, many days and years, How he might compass his employer’s ruin, And yet not risk his fortunes; the last spark Of holier fire, his love for that fair girl, That cottage-flower of purity and truth, Margaret, the sister of his boyhood’s friend— That spark still smouldered in some inmost nook Of his sin-darkened bosom, for the fumes Of thought debased, rose ever, like a smoke, Dimming the smiles of Nature; the carouse, The fierce extremes of dalliance and of blood, Had almost made him something less than Man. At length came round the time he waited for; The fraud and rapine of the prince he served Rose to such height, as seemed, to the English chiefs A source of fear, if not at once abridged; And thereupon, they issued words of War. Full long the Rajah treated, hoping still, By terms, to pacify the alien power Which, even then, was growing terrible; But each concession, made a day too late, Drew forth fresh claims of power, and land, and gold; For, in those days, the illusion of the East Had not yet vanished; like the peasant boy Who deems that London streets are paved with gold, Men, old in all the arts of peace and war, Dreamed that a land whose poverty they saw, Might harbour still the treasures of romance. At last, grown desperate, he stood at bay, And, hoping that the neighbouring potentates, (Whose crooked policy still left in doubt Which side they meant to favour) when they saw Their countryman but once victorious, Would join to drive the usurper to the Sea, Resolved to stand the hazard of a fight.

V.

The season was the later Indian rains; The sorrowing sky, bereaved of her Lord, Was dark and full of weeping, and the heart Of Michael, though a bold one, had been trained In its cold native Island, to a love Of the bright beams of Summer; and the Sun Even when it dealt destruction, gave him joy: And now he drooped, and felt an inward dread, Such as the priests of old Jerusalem Felt, when they heard the sighing gust that swept, From the dark shrine to the gate Beautiful, Upon the fatal night before the storm, When the Shechinah left them audibly. Long mused he, while the chill damp night came on, And starting, after dark, trooped with sad thoughts, Felt fear and wonder that he was alone. Around his tent he heard the mighty waters Plash in the wet, and hiss upon the dry; Within, the congregated insect life Monotonously hummed; he made two turns, Then, calling for his torch, took an old book, Brass-bound and weather wasted, the last gift Of a dear mother, given to him with sobs, And murmured blessings, when he left his home. He opened it, and face to face arose The dead old years he thought to have escaped, All chronicled in letters; there he saw Answers to some of his, containing doubts Long since become negations, some again Encouraging resolves of his, long broke, And, as he thought, forgotten; not a leaf But marked some downward step: Oh, in our life There are no hours so full of speechless woe, As those in which we read, through misty eyes, Letters from those who loved us once; of whom Some have long ceased to love at all; the hand That traced the fond warm records still and cold; The spirit that turned to ours, long lost to all That moves and mourns and sins upon the earth; And some, oh! sadder! that, by us estranged, Still live, still love, but live for us no more. He sate and gazed, till through the tent was heard That sound the coldest cannot hear unmoved, The strong spasmodic weeping of a man. And all that night in Michael’s tent there burned, Though foul with smoke, and swayed by gusty winds, A strong bright torch, fit emblem of his soul, That keen lamp of God’s lighting bright and strong. While, looking on a tress of golden hair That lay before him, all night long he sate; This was the man who left in days gone by, A friend, and a friend’s sister, dear as he— A most kind mother, sinking with her cares— An apathetic father, worn with woe— A home in ruins—and a noble name, To be renewed, or ended, by himself.

VI.

All things had now combined; they were to march Against the English army; thoughts long nursed Had taken form, to ripen into deeds. The rains were ended; and the army met In an old city where he marshalled them; And, as he walked at evening, on the terrace Of the high castle where his dwelling was, He looked through fretted arches to the plain, And saw their tents dropped white and countless there, Like sheep without a shepherd—like poor sheep Marked for the slaughter—and he pitied them. Ere long, the dying despot of the day Sank softly down, drowned in a sea of blood— Like the old Roman Wolf in Capreæ. Michael prepared for action: dark night fell, The tents were lost to sight, the shouting sank, The drums were silent, all the plain was dark; Only against the far horizon loomed The uneven outline of the distant hills. He called his trusty troopers, and stole forth, Hoping to pass the camp all unobserved; But with that Host was one who loved him not, His own Lieutenant, nephew to the King, And higher in the soldiers’ hearts than he— This man had dogged his path for many a day— And when they came to the town’s outer gate, They found it strictly guarded; Michael rode, In anger, at the densest, shouting loud, “Smite, smite them, spare not, each man for his life.” His Arab Horse, that stood with gathered limbs, And head reined to his chest, sprang at the cry, And leaping, like a flame, plunged in the crowd; The rest was one confusion, without sight, Or sound—a breathless dream of ecstasy— Till he, and half a hundred mounted men, Were pouring o’er the plain, as pour the floods, When the dams burst, and winter drowns the fields. On came the fierce Lieutenant, and behind Thundered a motley rabble, whose lean steeds Could ill sustain that violent career, And soon there were not left who followed him Five hundred horsemen; still the chase was hot;— Hot was the chase, and long—o’er scorched sands, And open cornfields, till the spent pursuers Began to drop behind;—some, rolled on earth, Saw their girths broken, or their horses slain. Then Michael’s men drew bridle and stood still, Waiting the onset of the exhausted crew, Whose numbers now were scarce the double of theirs. First came the bold Foujdar. “Forward!” he cried; “Down with the false Feringhi” his last word;— A pistol flash, a groan, a drop of blood On the white drapery he wore—his horse Was riderless for ever. Michael turned Fierce on the cowed pursuers, “Get you back, And tell your master he is now to pay My long-held forfeit for foul injuries, Who dared to fling on me, when I was weak, The childish insults of a childish mind.” That night he was within the British lines; But his dear gold was gone; for at the gate His waggon-bullocks and their driver slain, And half his guard cut off, he had but saved His life alone, and some few jewels, stored Upon his person: once more, all his toil, His guilt, was foiled; he was a beggar still.

VII.

His ill-gained wealth was gone, but not his heart; And gain it seemed to that impatient spirit That now he should not go, a man disgraced, To build his fallen ancestral home, long bare To the invading scorn of low-born men. He would sail eastward, with what yet remained, Touch at some island of the Tropic seas, And take a freight of spices; thence set sail For the rich ports of China, there to trade, And see the wonders of that unknown land; Thence o’er the broad Pacific, and so down By Panama, and Valparaiso, home By the cold Land of Fire: thus would he voyage, And gain more wealth, and win himself a name For riches and adventure, courage bold, And knowledge of strange countries. Then no more Would cleave to him the brand of his disgrace;— All bow the knee to him whom Fortune serves, And he would be her master: he would rise Higher and brighter o’er the heads of men, Blaze in their sight—no meteor, shortlived, vain, But rule them like the Day-God; then to him The Senate and the Court should open their gates, The mammon-loving City name his name, His old ancestral mansion rear its head, And he would dwell at ease, for all abroad He should behold the lands his fathers held, And breathe again his genial native air. Nature and he should both their youth renew, And all things have a beauty not their own. There, on the upland, shall a milder sun Smite the white cottage and the glistening vane; And nestle in the balmy stack, and float, A fruitful flood upon the southern wall;— There the great oak shall stir his solemn head, The lime-tree shed her blossoms sweetly faint, The poplar tremble, like the heart of man, Whose darkest thoughts have under-lights of hope;— The beech shall spread his venerable shade, The stately elms’ procession guard his walks, The birch-bark gleam through foliage, and the ash Wave ruddy clusters;—willows there shall weep, And the wet alder shall delight to wade Knee-deep in sluggish waters, where the kine Take the whole meadow with contented eye, Philosophers of nature. One dark thought Alone can mar these visions;—he must die, And leave the dear possessions: in this land Where men are struck down in their hour of strength, That thought will oft intrude;—by day it flies Before the excitement that his life affords— The chase, the goblet, and the battle-field. In sleep it haunts him; once he dreamed a dream: Fifty unspeakable ones had borne his soul, (For he was dead) with sounds of writhing laughter, Into a sideless, roofless, bottomless place, And left him there alone;—there was no pain; But a sense that all was lost for evermore, That this was now, and worse might be to come, Made the stagnation misery; till, behold, The sad and silent years wore on;—at length His musing Spirit said within herself:— “Oh! for one breath of life; a day, an hour, Before the irrevocable change;—how great My power was, had I used it; now ’tis gone. Where is my wealth? a heap of rotten leaves Blown to the shores of folly, where it grew; My cherished body gone, perchance, for ever, Perhaps reserved to torment.” With the thought He strove to utter such a cry, as, heard Echoing beyond the hollow halls of Hell, Upon the confines of the orbed Earth, Might warn the guilty, ere it was too late;— And with that cry he woke: the dawning day Saw him confused with horror; when it set, He was carousing to the lips in sin. Now was no hope! save that domestic joys Might give him pause, and win him from his sins— Sins not now pleasant, but so strong of growth, That, like old Ivy, they had hid the tree, And threatened its destruction. There was one, (Although he dared not name her) who had been A cottage light, still seen, though far away, In the dark, stormy wilderness of life; Her love should win him yet;—for he had heard That she was still unwedded; and he knew Her woman’s heart, in blessed ignorance, Might still be true to that which he had been.

VIII.

He sailed, in search of wealth, from Ganges’ mouth, But the ship’s prow was never seen again, Stemming the homeward waters—whether, whelmed In stormy ocean, half way down she swayed And swung among the dolphins and the sharks; Or whether, on some calm Pacific night, Where on the farthest limits of the dark There rose and fell the momentary flash Of lone inland volcanoes, some soft breeze Had run her slowly on the coral reefs, And the blue waves had rippled o’er her grave, There was a nine days’ wonder;—men inquired, Where was the man, whose wealth, without an heir, (So lost, so wonderfully won again, After he left the country, by the faith Of an old servant, thought to have been slain,) Was fabulously splendid? And some said There was a Will; all he might have was left To strangers—“to a Lady he had loved.” It was the year that filled the century From Michael’s birth, when he was seen again. A venturous band had wandered in the West, Till far from towns, or any haunt of men, They came upon a region by the sea. Rock-bound and bare it lay; and all the storms That hurled the ancient, white-topped, weary waves On California, since the world began, Had, day by day, and year by untold year, Heaped all their violence on its patient side, And wasted it unhindered;—such salt herbs, Such dwarf and barren trees as the keen air Gave sufferance to, but rendered still more grim The stony desolation of the place. Yet was that soil not barren, or the men Had never sought its distant boundaries; For they were of the eager Saxon race, And e’en their rude and weather-wasted garb Bore mark of civilised life: “No foot of man,” Said one, “has trode these wastes from everlasting: Brothers, the land is virgin; part we here, And in the evening let us meet again, There, by the mouth of yonder natural cave, And share the general labours of the day— See, Edward, even now you tripped on gold.” They parted: in the evening, when they met, Their leader wore a sad and solemn look, And with few words he led them up the rocks, Into a stern wild scene. Far as they looked, Cliff heaped on cliff, and stone on fragment stone, The land’s brown ribs extended: here and there Steep chasms it had, declining to the sea:— Some were the beds of streams, that evermore Washed down the golden grain, and in a year Paid to the treasury of the insatiate flood More than the subjects of the richest Kings Yield to their despots in a century;— But some of them were dry, and choked with stones And logs of rotting timber, and deep sand;— Here, with the lumps of ore heaped high around They found a human skeleton; hard by, A rusty cutlass, such as mariners use, Whereon was rudely graven, and half-effaced, The words “Michael De Mas;” and underneath, “I die of want upon a bed of gold.”

THE VINEYARDS OF BORDEAUX.[32]

It is no easy matter now-a-days, for a tourist, whether he travels for pleasure, health, or information, to throw his notes and memoranda into such a shape as shall excite the interest of the reading public. Nothing new is to be picked up by traversing the beaten highways of Europe. We know all about Madrid, and Stockholm, and St Petersburg, and Vienna, and Rome, and Naples. Not only the banks of the Danube and the Rhine, but the coasts of Brittany and the fiords of Norway have been deflowered of all their legends. There exists not as much virgin romance in this quarter of the globe as would furnish a decent excuse for the perpetration of three octavo volumes. Then, as to observations upon men and manners—a line which earnest-minded travellers, who have an eye to the regeneration of the human race, most commonly adopt—we shall fairly confess that we take little interest, and repose less faith, in their fancied discoveries. Your regenerator is almost invariably an ass;—ignorant, garrulous, and as easy to be gulled as the last convert to the Papacy. At every _table d’hôte_ he makes a violent effort to increase his stores of knowledge by inveigling his nearest neighbour into a discussion upon some point of grand social importance; and, in nine cases out of ten, the result is, that he has to pay for the whole of the liquor consumed, without being any wiser than before. And yet, perhaps, even the travelling regenerator is less liable to be humbugged than the travelling collector of statistics. The most truthful people in the world neither think it necessary nor expedient to speak the truth regarding themselves. Individuals are not apt to answer the queries of a stranger touching the state of their own particular finances—neither do men choose to disclose to foreigners the real nature of their national relations. We are all in the habit of fibbing most egregiously, when the honour, the pride, or the interest of our country is in any degree concerned. Why should we scruple to confess that, on various occasions, we made statements to confiding foreigners, under a solemn pledge of secresy, which, when afterwards printed—the inevitable fate of all such confidential statements—have greatly tended to the renown of this portion of the United Kingdom? Our rule has always been to act upon the principle professed by Caleb Balderstone, and never to stick at trifles when the “credit of the family” was involved. We wholly deny that fictions of this kind can be classed in the category of falsehoods. They arise from a just and honourable estimate of the value of national diplomacy; and no one but an arrant idiot would hesitate to contribute his humble quota towards the exaltation of his race.

What right has a Frenchman or any other foreigner to inquire what is going on in the heart of Great Britain? What business is it of his how we cultivate our fields, work our machinery, or clear out the recesses of our mines? Ten to one the fellow is no better than a spy; and if so, it is our bounden duty to mislead him. But patriotism does not belong to one nation only. When the Frenchman or other foreigner beholds an unmistakable Briton, clad, perhaps, in the drab uniform of Manchester, making curious investigations into the value of his crops, and the other sources of his wealth, he most naturally concludes that the child of perfidious Albion is actuated by some sinister motive. The result may be conceived. Figures, more mendacious than any that were ever promulgated by the League, are supplied with amazing liberality to the believing statist. He calculates the product of a province, after the inspection of a single farmyard; commits his observations to the press, and is henceforward quoted as an oracle!

It is not from tourists that we can hope to gather accurate information of the state of other countries. A very great amount of mischief and misconception has arisen from an absurd reliance in the accuracy of men who were absolute strangers to the country in which they sojourned, and necessarily exposed to every sort of imposition; and really, with all deference to our brethren of the daily press, we must be allowed to express our conviction that the system of “Commissionership” has, of late years, been carried a great deal too far. Of the talents of the gentlemen so employed we would wish to speak with the utmost respect. They are, almost all of them, clever fellows, sharp, shrewd, and observing; but it is too much to expect that, at a moment’s notice, they can forget the whole previous antecedents of their lives, and discourse dogmatically and with perfect precision upon subjects of which they knew nothing until they were gazetted for the special service.

Mr Reach, we trust, will do us the kindness to believe that these preliminary remarks have not been elicited by anything contained in his present volume, and also that we intend no insinuation derogatory of his contributions in the capacity of a commissioner. The fact is, that we have not read his papers on the social and agricultural condition of the peasantry of France, being somewhat more deeply interested in the condition of our peasantry at home; but we know quite enough of his talent and ability to make us certain that he has treated the subject both honestly and well. Fortunately we are not called upon now to investigate his statistical budget. He comes before us in the more agreeable character of a traveller in the sunny south of France. Led by a fine natural instinct, he has tarried in the vinous district until he has imbibed the true spirit of the region. His native Caledonian sympathies in favour of claret—a disposition in which we cordially participate, detesting port almost as intensely as Whiggery—were fully developed by a sojourn in the neighbourhood of the Chateau Lafitte. Of Ceres, at so much a quarter, he tells us nothing—of Bacchus, at so much a bottle, he speaks well and eloquently. Endowed by nature with a gay and happy temper, fond of fun, relishing adventure, and with a fine eye for the picturesque, he ranges from the Garonne to the Rhone, from the shores of the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean marshes, from the sterile wastes of the Landes, by the splendour of the Pyrenees, to the old Roman city of Nismes—making us wish all the while that we could have made the journey in such agreeable company. As a fellow-traveller, we should be inclined to say that he errs on the score of haste. Assuredly we should have lingered with reverence at some places which he passed with undue precipitancy. He had no right to hurry through Haut-brion as he did—he should have dwelt longer at Leoville. Our matured taste and experience of vintages would have mitigated the rapidity of his career.

Mr Reach has not done justice to himself in the selection of a title for his volume. _Claret and Olives_ are rather apt to be misunderstood in the present day, owing to the practices of previous authors, who have been in the habit of vending the properties of the deceased Joseph Miller under some such after-dinner disguise. _Wine and Walnuts_ was an old title, whereof we have an indistinct recollection; our impression at this moment being, that the wine was corked and the walnuts woefully shrivelled. Then followed _Nuts and Nutcrackers_—maggoty enough, and filled with devil’s-dust that might have choked a member of the League. _Grog and Biscuits_ we presume to have been a feeble sort of production, emanating from a disappointed mind, working on a heritage of wrong. _Sherry and Cheroots_ did not amalgamate. _Alcohol and Anchovies_ gave token of a diseased intellect and a ruined constitution. _Tumblers and Talk_—a Glasgow publication, if we recollect aright—had little circulation except among bibulous members of town-councils, or similar corporations. _Ale and Æsthetics_ was but an unfortunate specimen of alliteration. How many editions of _Beer and ‘Baccy_ have been printed, we know not; but we are not aware as yet that the author has made his fortune. With all these beacons before him, we could wish that Mr Reach had announced his book under some other name. He is not to be confounded, as an author, with the issuers of such catch-pennies. Putting aside even his present work as one of limited interest—though we should be puzzled to name any tourist who writes more pleasantly than our author—his novel of _Leonard Lindsay_ displays a carefulness of composition, and a life-like painting, in the style of Defoe, which contrasts remarkably with the slip-shod trash now forming the staple commodity of the circulating libraries. There is the right stuff in him, visible throughout whatever he attempts; and if at times his taste is liable to exception, we believe that aberration to be solely owing to the exigencies of the times, which leave far too little leisure to most men to revise and consider their productions.

The title, however, is unquestionably appropriate enough, though it may be calculated to mislead the reader. In his wanderings he has visited the home domain both of the vine and the olive—at least he has passed from the sanctuary of the one to the outskirts of the other; but we could really wish that he had not profaned the goodly vintage by reminding us of those lumps of vegetable fatness which sometimes, even now, are served up at an octogenarian symposium, in honour of the goddess Dyspepsia. We honour oil like the Sultan Saladin, and could wish to see it brought into more general use in this country; but there is something revolting to us in the sight and colour of the olive, which has neither the freshness of youth nor the fine hue of maturity. The last man whom we remember to have seen eating olives was an eminent manufacturer of Staleybridge, who helped himself to the fruit of Minerva with his short stubby fingers, descanting all the while on the propriety of the enactment of a bill for augmenting the hours of infant labour. He died, if we recollect aright, about a fortnight afterwards—perhaps in consequence of the olives: if so, we are not disposed to deny that at times they may be served up with advantage.

Mr Reach, however, loathes the olive as much as we do, and therefore there is no difference of opinion between us. We like the fine enthusiasm with which he does justice to the taste of our mother country—a taste which we are certain will not decay so long as Leith flourishes, and the house of Bell and Rannie continues to maintain its pristine ascendancy in claret. With us in the north, we are glad to say there is no recognised medium between Glenlivat and Bordeaux. Either have in the hot water, or produce your ’34; nobody will thank you for that port which you bought last week at an auction, and which you are desirous to represent as having been bottled for your use about the era of the Reform Bill. It may be both “curious” and “crusted,” as you say it is; but you had better have it set aside to make sauce for wild-ducks. Indeed, “curious” port is, for many reasons, a thing to be avoided. We remember once dining at the house of an excellent clergyman in the country, whose palate, however, might have undergone a little more cultivation, with mutual advantage to himself and to his acquaintance. On that occasion we were presented three times with a certain fluid, under three different names; but all of us afterwards agreed that it was the same liquor, varying simply in degree of temperature. First, it came in smoking in a tureen, and was then called hare-soup; secondly, it was poured out cold from a decanter, under the denomination of port; third, and lastly, it came before us tepidly, with the accompaniment of sugar and cream, and the red-armed Hebe who brought the tray had the effrontery to assure us that it was coffee. So much for the curious vintage of Oporto—but we are forgetting Mr Reach.

“It is really much to the credit of Scotland that she stood staunchly by her old ally, France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty little slice of the worst part of Spain—Portugal, or her brandified potations. In the old Scotch houses a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap. In the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter _tappit-hen_, holding some three quarts—think of that, Master Slender—‘reamed’ (_Anglice_, mantled) with claret just drawn from the cask; and you quaffed it, snapping your fingers at custom-houses. At length, in an evil hour, Scotland fell.”

We have more than half a mind to ascend the Rhine to Bacharach, and swear upon the altar of Lyæus—which must now be visible, if the weather on the Continent has been as dry as here—never to relax our efforts until either the Union, or the infamous duty on the wines of Bordeaux, is repealed! But we must calm ourselves and proceed moderately. Now, then, for the vineyards—here, as elsewhere, no very picturesque objects to the eye, but conveying a moral lesson that real goodness does not depend upon external appearances. We never saw a vineyard yet, whereof the wine was worth drinking, which a man would care to look at twice. Your raspberry-bush is, upon the whole, a statelier plant than the vine when fulfilling its noblest functions; nevertheless, we presume there are few who would give the preference to raspberry vinegar over veritable Lafitte. We have seen the vineyards in spring, when, as poor Ovid says—

“Quoque loco est vitis, de palmite gemma movetur;”

but they do not bud at all so luxuriantly as a poet would fancy. The only time for seeing them to advantage is at the gathering of the grapes, when the gay dresses of the vintagers give animation to the scene, and song and laughter proclaim the season of general jubilee. There is nothing in our northern climates to compare with it, especially of late years, since the harvest-home brings no certainty of added wealth. Just fancy Mr Cobden at a _kirn_! Why, at the very sight of him the twasome reel would stop of its own accord—the blind old fiddler, scenting some unholy thing, would mitigate the ardour of his bow—and the patriarch of the parish, brewing punch, would inevitably drown the miller. Lucky for the intruder if he made his escape without being immersed in a tub of sowens!

We shall let Mr Reach speak for himself, as to the complexion of his favourite vineyards.

“Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking, scrubby bushes, seldom rising two feet above the surface, planted in rows upon the summit of deep furrow ridges, and fastened with great care to low fence-like lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken ranks from one end of the huge fields to the other. These espaliers or lathes are cuttings of the walnut-trees around, and the tendrils of the vine are attached to the horizontally running slopes with withes, or thongs of bark. It is curious to observe the vigilant pains and attention with which every twig has been supported without being trained, and how things are arranged, so as to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a goodly allowance of sun. Such, then, is the general appearance of matters; but it is by no means perfectly uniform. Now and then you find a patch of vines unsupported, drooping, and straggling, and sprawling, and intertwisting their branches like beds of snakes; and again, you come into the district of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter affair, a grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet dwarfs are invariably the great wine-givers. If ever you want to see a homily, not read, but grown by nature, against trusting to appearances, go to Medoc and study the vines. Walk and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened, scrubby, dwarfish expanse of bushes, ignominiously bound neck and crop to the espaliers, like a man on the rack—these utterly poor, starved, and meagre-looking growths, allowing, as they do, the gravelly soil to show in bald patches of grey shingle through the straggling branches,—these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and the most inimitably-flavoured wines. Such are the vines that grow Chateau Margaux at half-a-sovereign the bottle. The grapes themselves are equally unpromising. If you saw a bunch in Covent Garden, you would turn from them with the notion that the fruiterer was trying to do his customer with over-ripe black currants. Lance’s soul would take no joy in them, and no sculptor in his senses would place such meagre bunches in the hands and over the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes, or his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and beware of judging of the nature of either men or grapes by their looks. Meantime, let us continue our survey of the country. No fences or ditches you see—the ground is too precious to be lost in such vanities—only, you observe from time to time a rudely curved stake stuck in the ground, and indicating the limits of properties. Along either side of the road the vines extend, utterly unprotected. No raspers, no ha-ha’s, no fierce denunciations of trespassers, no polite notices of spring-guns and steel-traps constantly in a state of high-go-offism—only, where the grapes are ripening, the people lay prickly branches along the wayside to keep the dogs, foraging for partridges among the espaliers, from taking a refreshing mouthful from the clusters as they pass; for it seems to be a fact, that everybody, every beast, and every bird, whatever may be his, her, or its nature in other parts of the world, when brought amongst grapes, eats grapes. As for the peasants, their appetite for grapes is perfectly preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sickened grocer’s boys, who, after the first week, loathe figs, and turn poorly whenever sugar candy is hinted at, the love of grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on. Every garden is full of table vines. The people eat grapes with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper. The labourer plods along the road munching a cluster. The child in its mother’s arms is lugging away with its toothless gums at a bleeding bunch; while, as for the vintagers, male and female, in the less important plantations, heaven only knows where the masses of grapes go to, which they devour, labouring incessantly at the _metier_, as they do, from dawn till sunset.”

In all this, however, we cannot say that we detect any matter for surprise. The grape season lasts only for a short period; and we have observed symptoms of a similarly universal appetite in this country when gooseberries are at their perfection. Nay, we shall venture to say that Mr Reach himself would cut no indifferent figure in a garden where the honeyblobs, hairy-yellows, and bloody-captains were abundant. As for the consumption by the vintagers and pressmen, that can be accounted for on the same principle which forbids the muzzling of the ox while treading out the corn; but we never enter willingly into such details, being satisfied that, with regard to many things edible, potable, and culinary, it is imprudent to be too curious in investigation. We eat and drink in confidence, as our fathers did before us, trusting that what harmed not them can do us no manner of injury; and we do not feel at all grateful to those gentlemen who think it necessary to go out of their way for the purpose of presenting as with detailed accounts of the minutiæ of the vinous manufacture.

It is, we think, a peculiar feature of the wines of the Bordelais, that you will rarely, if ever, find a connoisseur who will confess an undivided and exclusive attachment to any one particular growth. We fear that the claret-drinker has much of the libertine in his disposition. He flits from vineyard to vineyard, without being able to fix his affections once and for ever. Such pleasant fickleness is not akin to the downright English spirit, and therefore perhaps it is that Englishmen generally prefer the heavy Portuguese drench, to the lively Gallican nectar. In London it is not uncommon to hear a man swearing by Barclay and Perkins, in almost feudal opposition to Meux. Many would rather be tee-totallers than defile their throats with other beer than that of Hanbury; and the partisans of Bass stand in deadly opposition to those who espouse the cause of Allsopp. So on the Rhine, men are bigoted to their vineyards. One individual approaches you, as Uhland beautifully remarks in the best of his romantic ballads,—

“With a flask of Asmannshauser In each pocket of his trowser,”

and vows, by the memory of Herrmann, and by that of Brennus, who first brought the vine from Italy, that the red fluid is incomparably superior to the pale. With a scornful laugh the adherent of Steinberger listens to the boast, and pours into his glass a beverage which scents the room like a dozen nosegays. A fiery devotee of Neiersteiner stands up—or rather tries to do so, if he is deep in his third bottle—for the credit of his pet vintage; and a priest, addicted to Liebfrauen-milch, in vain attempts to end the controversy by descanting upon the sanctity of his liquor. In Nuremberg we have witnessed several serious rows on the subject of the superiority of beer. A hot contest had been going on for some time as to the merits of the respective browsts of “right Bavarian” at the Himmelsleiter and the Jammer-thal, the two most considerable beer-taverns in Germany; until at last—this was in ’48—we of the Himmelsleiter being no longer able to stand the _outrecuidance_ of our opponents, who were notoriously of the democratic party, marched upon them, and, under cover of political principle, smashed the glasses, and set several casks of the obnoxious fluid abroach. This is bare matter of fact; but if any gentleman is sceptical as to the possibility of such a movement, we may as well remind him that the only serious rising which took place in Bavaria originated from a proposed impost of an infinitesimal duty upon beer. Were England as Bavaria is, the continuance of the malt-tax would have led to a crisis of the most alarming description—and, after all, we cannot help thinking that the name of Hampden would now have been held in higher estimation, had he stood forward in the cause of his country’s beer, instead of being the opponent of a miserable tax, which weighed only upon men of his own condition.

But we must not become political. So, gentlemen, “the memory of Hampden” in any kind of beer you choose, from the smallest to the stiffest;—and now to our present subject. We are very sorry indeed to observe that the taste in champagne—a wine which we hold in much reverence—is becoming hideously depraved in this country. We do not speak merely of England—England can look after herself, and Cyrus Redding is a safe monitor on such subjects, who, we trust, will make strong head against national depreciation. Sparkling Hock and petillating Moselle may be tolerated, though we do not like them; and we have no objection to St Peray as an agreeable companion to a cutlet. But, latterly, some superlative trash has made its appearance among us under such names as the Ruby and the Garnet; and we would earnestly recommend all good Christians who have a regard for their stomachs to avoid these. The fact is, that there is no tolerable medium in the quality of the wines of Champagne. Either they are first-rate, in order to secure which you had best stick to the established names, or they are not one whit preferable to Perry. A conservative taste in wines is likely to be the most correct. Adhere to the ancient vineyards, and have nothing to do with newfangled fluids, however puffed or recommended. If you want to know how these are made, listen to Mr Reach, whose fine palate enabled him at once to detect the slightest touch of adulteration. Young men are apt to be led astray by the splendour of novel names, and to believe in the possibility of the discovery of new vineyards. They cannot resist an imposition, if it is paraded before them with proper pomp and dignity. Some years ago a nondescript species of liquor, bad enough to perpetuate the cholera in a province, was received with considerable approbation, because it bore the high-sounding name of “Œil de Montmorenci.” We always distrust in wines those poetical and chivalresque titles. From this condemnation, however, we would specially exclude “Beaujolais de Fleury,” a delicious liquor, which might have beseemed the cup of old King Réné of Provence. But your Œil de Montmorencis, your Chateau Chastelheraults, and your Sang de St Simeons, with other similar ptisans, are neither more nor less than the concoction of those ingenious troubadours, the wine-fabricators of Cette.

“I said that it was good—good for our stomachs—to see no English bunting at Cette. The reason is, that Cette is a great manufacturing place, and that what they manufacture there is neither cotton nor wool, Perigord pies nor Rheims biscuits, but wine. ‘_Içi_,’ will a Cette industrial write with the greatest coolness over his Porte Cochère—‘_Içi on fabrique des vins._’ All the wines in the world, indeed, are made in Cette. You have only to give an order for Johannisberg or Tokay—nay, for all I know, for the Falernian of the Romans, or the nectar of the gods—and the Cette manufacturers will promptly supply you. They are great chemists, these gentlemen, and have brought the noble art of adulteration to a perfection which would make our own mere logwood and sloe-juice practitioners pale and wan with envy. But the great trade of the place is not so much adulterating as concocting wine. Cette is well situated for this notable manufacture. The wines of southern Spain are brought by coasters from Barcelona and Valencia. The inferior Bordeaux growths come pouring from the Garonne by the Canal du Midi; and the hot and fiery Rhone wines are floated along the chain of etangs and canals from Beaucaire. With all these raw materials, and, of course, a chemical laboratory to boot, it would be hard if the clever folks of Cette could not turn out a very good imitation of any wine in demand. They will doctor you up bad Bordeaux with violet powders and rough cider—colour it with cochineal and turnsole, and outswear creation that it is precious Chateau Margaux, vintage of ’25. Champagne, of course, they make by hogsheads. Do you wish sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Levant? The Cette people will mingle old Rhone wines with boiled sweet wines from the neighbourhood of Lunel, and charge you any price per bottle. Port, sherry, and Madeira, of course, are fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap wine and brandy, for a stock, and with half the concoctions in a druggist’s shop for seasoning. Cette, in fact, is the very capital and emporium of the tricks and rascalities of the wine-trade; and it supplies almost all the Brazils, and a great proportion of the northern European nations, with their after-dinner drinks. To the grateful Yankees it sends out thousands of tons of Ay and Moet; besides no end of Johannisberg, Hermitage, and Chateau Margaux—the fine qualities and dainty aroma of which are highly prized by the Transatlantic amateurs. The Dutch flag fluttered plentifully in the harbour, so that I presume Mynheer is a customer to the Cette industrials—or, at all events, he helps in the distribution of their wares. The old French West Indian colonies also patronise their ingenious countrymen of Cette; and Russian magnates get drunk on Chambertin and Romanee Conte, made of low Rhone and low Burgundy brewages, eked out by the contents of the graduated vial. I fear, however, that we do come in—in the matter of ‘fine golden sherries, at 22s. 9½d. a dozen,’ or ‘peculiar old-crusted port, at 1s. 9d.’—for a share of the Cette manufactures; and it is very probable that after the wine is fabricated upon the shores of the Mediterranean, it is still further improved upon the banks of the Thames.”

We wish that these remarks could be made practically useful to that class of men who give dinners, and gabble about their wines. Nothing is, to our mind, more disgusting than the conduct of an Amphytrion who accompanies the introduction of each bottle by an apocryphal averment as to its age, coupled with a minute account of the manner in which it came into his possession—he having, in nine cases out of ten, purchased it at a sale. Sometimes the man goes further, and volunteers a statement of its price. Now this is, to say the very least of it, a mark of the worst possible breeding. No guest, with a palate to his mouth, will relish the wine any better, because the ninny-hammer who gives it declares that it cost him seven guineas a dozen. We don’t want to know from an entertainer, unless he be a tavern-keeper, the absolute cost of his victuals. Just fancy Lucullus, in the saloon of Apollo, recounting the items of his repast—“Flaccus, my friend, those oysters which you are devouring with so much gusto cost ten sestertii a-piece. Fabius, my fine fellow, that dish of thrushes which you have just swallowed was not got for nothing—it cost me a whole sestertium. Peg away, Plancus, at the lampreys! May Pluto seize me if a dozen of them are not worth a tribune’s salary. You like the Falernian, Furius? Ay—that’s right Anno Urbis 521—I bought it at Sylla’s sale. It just cost me its weight in silver. Davus, you dog! bring another amphora with the red seal—the same that we got from the cellars of Mithridates. Here’s that, O conscript fathers, which will make the cockles of your hearts rejoice!” Now, who will tell us that such conversation, which would be revolting even from a Lucullus, ought to be tolerated from the lips of some pert whippersnapper, who, ten years ago, would have been thankful for a bumper of Bucellas after a repast upon fried liver? We are serious in saying that it is full time to put a stop to such a nuisance, which is more common than many people would believe; and perhaps the easiest way of doing so is by doggedly maintaining that each bottle is corked. After half-a-dozen of the famous vintage have been opened, and pronounced undrinkable, the odds are that you will hear nothing more for the rest of the evening on the subject of liquor. Your suggestion as to a tumbler will be received with grateful humility, and thus you will not only receive the applause of your fellow-guests, but the approbation of your own stomach and conscience, both then and on the following morning.

There are many points connected with dinner-giving—dinner-taking belonging to a different branch of ethics—which deserve mature consideration. If you are not a man of large fortune, you must perforce study economy. We presume that you have in your cellar a certain limited portion of really good wine, such as will make glad the heart of man, and leave no vestige of a headache; but you cannot afford, and you certainly ought not to bestow, that indiscriminately. Good taste in wine is, like good taste in pictures, and good taste in poetry, by no means a common gift. Every man wishes to be thought to possess it; but, in reality, the number of those who have the gift of the “geschmack,” as the Germans term the faculty, is but few. Now it would evidently be the height of extravagance were you to throw away first-rate wine upon men who cannot appreciate it. Who, in the possession of his senses, would dream of feeding pigs on pine-apples? And as, in this wicked world, we are all of us occasionally compelled to give dinners to men, who, though excellent creatures in other respects, are utterly deficient in the finer sensations of our being, we cannot, for the life of us, see why they should be treated contrary to the bent of their organisation. Give them toddy, and they are supremely happy. Why place before them Lafitte, which they are sure to swallow in total ignorance of its qualities, very likely commending it as good “fresh claret,” and expressing their opinion that such wine is better from the wood than the bottle? Keep your real good liquor for such men as are capable of understanding it. There is no higher treat than to form one of a party of six, all people of first-rate intelligence, true, generous, clarety souls, when the best of the vintages of Bordeaux is circulating at the board. No man talks of the wine—he would as soon think of commending the air because it was wholesome, or the sun because it gave him warmth. They drink it with a quiet gusto and silent enjoyment, which prove that it is just the thing; and no impertinent remonstrance is made when the bell is pulled, until taste, which your true claret-drinker never disobeys, simultaneously indicates to the party that they have had a proper allowance. Indeed, you will almost never find a thorough gentleman, who has been properly educated in claret, committing any excess. Port sends people to the drawing-room with flushed faces, husky voices, and staring eyes, bearing evident marks upon them of having partaken of the cup of Circe. Claret merely fosters the kindlier qualities, and brings out in strong relief the attributes of the gentleman and the scholar.

We should have liked, had time permitted, to have transcribed one or two of Mr Reach’s sketches of scenery, especially his description of the Landes, where, instead of wine, men gather a harvest of resin, and where the shepherds imitate the crane, by walking perpetually upon stilts. We already possessed some knowledge of that singular region from the writings of George Sand, but Mr Reach’s description is more simple, and certainly more easily realised. His account also of Pau, and its society, and the neighbouring scenery, is remarkably good; but so is the book generally, and therefore we need not particularise. Only, as we are bound to discharge the critical function with impartiality, and as we are rather in a severe mood, this not being one of our claret days, we take leave to say that the legends which he has engrafted are by far the least valuable portion of the volume. Everybody who knows anything of modern bookmaking, must be aware that such tales are entirely attributable to the fertile genius of the author; for we would as soon believe in the discovery of a buried treasure, as in the existence of those grey-haired guides, veteran smugglers, and antique boatmen, who are invariably brought forward as the Homeridæ or recounters of floating tradition. We have travelled a good deal in different parts of the world, and seen as much of that kind of society as our neighbours; but we can safely aver that we never yet met with a local Sinbad who had anything to tell worth the hearing. If an author wants the materials of romance, the best place that he can frequent is a commercial traveller’s room. We have been privileged to hear in such social circles more marvels than would furnish forth a whole library of romance, with this additional advantage, that the narrator of the tale, whether it referred to love or war, was invariably its principal hero.

But we are now rapidly approaching the limits of our paper, and must break off. Those who have a mind to know something of the south of France—of that strange old place, Aigues-Mortes, from which the Crusaders once embarked for Palestine, but which is now almost entirely deserted, and left like a mouldering wreck in the midst of the marshes that surround it—of Nismes, with its remains of Roman greatness and power—and of Languedoc, the name of which province is more inspiring than its actual appearance—will do well to consult this lively and agreeable volume. But beyond the district of the vine we are determined not to journey now. Fair, we doubt not, are the vineyards in this beautiful spring—fair, at least, in the eye of the poet who believes in the promise of their buds. With us the lilacs and the laburnums are scarce yet expanding their blossoms; but it is a beautiful and a consoling thought that, within the circle of Bordeaux, thousands and thousands of vines are just now bursting into blossom, to alleviate the toils and cheer the hearts of the claret-drinkers of this and perchance of the next generation. May the year be ever famous in the annals of legitimate thirst! And with this devout aspiration, which we doubt not will be echoed by many good fellows and true, we take our leave of Mr Reach, thanking him for the amusement and information we have derived from the perusal of his pleasant book.

THE DEMOCRATIC CONFEDERACY.

Although the precise period for the dissolution of Parliament is not yet known, we hear, on every side, the hum of political preparation. Members who had confidently reckoned on a longer lease of their seats, are trying to reconcile past votes with the present temper of their constituents, and, where they cannot openly vindicate their conduct, suggesting pleas in palliation. The over-timorous, and those who feel that they have no longer a chance of office, are issuing valedictory addresses, expressive of their preference of private life to the turmoil of a public career. Some are recanting former professions—others becoming bolder and more determined in their views. It is natural that such should be the case. The contest is not now solely between Whig and Tory, or even between Free-Trader and Protectionist. It has, owing to the occurrences of the last few months, assumed a more portentous aspect. Since his resignation, if we may not assume an earlier date, Lord John Russell has entered into the most close and intimate relations with the Manchester party, whose confession of political faith, as they themselves hardly scruple to avow, falls very little short of Republicanism. No sooner was he in opposition than he hastened to take counsel with Mr Cobden. The triumvirate was completed by the adhesion of Sir James Graham, a man who, having exhausted every possible form of moderate opinion, having played more parts in his day than the imagination of Autolycus could conceive, has assumed in his advanced years the character of an uncompromising democrat. Under Lord John Russell, Whiggery had lost its power. He could no longer command the suffrages, because he did not avow the opinions of the fiercer Liberal party, and because, so long as he remained allied with and recognised by the Whig aristocracy, he could not conciliate the chiefs and leaders of the democracy. He did not even understand the traditions of his own party—at all events, he has forgotten them for wellnigh twenty years. However much the Whigs, in former times, may, for their own purposes, have appeared to tamper with the Constitution, they were at least understood to be in nowise the advocates of what is now called perpetual progress. They were not constantly innovating, for innovation’s sake—or altering for the sake of securing a little temporary popularity. But Lord John Russell can no more abstain from experiment than a chemical lecturer. Partly from natural propensity, and partly from political exigencies, which he considered himself compelled to meet adroitly, in order to defeat his chief political antagonist, he walked on, step by step, until he reached the boundary of Radicalism. Once there, the temptation to venture over was great. His own immediate followers were few and feeble; behind him was the Conservative phalanx,—firm, united, and powerful; before him was the _Garde Mobile_ of the Destructives, eagerly beckoning him over. He went; and it is little wonder if those of his staff who disapproved of so desperate a course, should now be either retiring from the field, or wandering about in disguise. What line, indeed, can a Ministerial Whig, who purposes to take his seat in the next Parliament, adopt with regard to his constituents? If he should say that he has faith and confidence in Lord John Russell, he must equally declare that he has faith and confidence in Mr Cobden, for these two are now inseparable in virtue of their late alliance. And if he is prepared to support a Cobden Ministry, he must needs avow himself a democrat. If, on the other hand, he should denounce Lord John Russell, and deny his leadership, whom is he prepared to follow? Is he to oppose Lord Derby as a Conservative, when the only possible party that can succeed to office in the event of the defeat of Lord Derby is that of the Destructives? Who leads him? Under what particular banner does he now profess to serve? These are questions and considerations which, during the last two months, have engrossed the attention of many a hesitating Whig, and which are now agitating, with great force, the whole of the electoral community. For it is quite clear that the old Whig party has ceased to have a separate existence. We do not say that, in time coming, it may not be reconstructed. There are materials enough to do that, providing a fitting architect can be found; but in the absence of any such artist, it must necessarily remain in abeyance. Men of moderate opinions—such as Sir William Gibson Craig, whose high character, affable demeanour, and unwearied attention to the interests of his constituents rendered his re-election perfectly secure—decline to present themselves as candidates at the approaching general election. Making every allowance for special and private reasons, on which no one has a right to comment, it does appear to us that such instances of withdrawal argue great uncertainty as to the political future, and cannot in any way be construed into tokens of approval of that line of conduct which Lord John Russell has thought fit to adopt. We could very well understand such withdrawals from public life, were the late Premier still in power. We can hardly believe that they would have taken place, had he remained, in adversity, the exponent and representative of the views which have hitherto been held by gentlemen of the old Whig party. Our own conviction is, that his conduct, since he was compelled to surrender power, has alienated the confidence of the best and wisest of his former adherents, who regarded his proposed Reform Bill with marked apprehension, and were sincerely rejoiced to be freed from the responsibility which must have attached to all, who, from party ties, might have thought themselves obliged to vote for so very dangerous a measure. It is now well known that the leading Whigs of England regard the defeat of Lord John Russell rather as a deliverance than a calamity. Henceforward they have done with him. If he is again to take office, he cannot count upon his old supporters. The Whig peers—the Lansdownes, the Fitzwilliams, the Zetlands—are too sensible, honourable, and loyal to support a Cabinet in which Mr Cobden must have the principal say; and throughout the country we know that public opinion among the educated classes is utterly opposed to, and abhorrent of any such consummation. The few Whigs who are struggling to attain or regain their contested seats, dare not venture upon a distinct enunciation of their own opinions. They usually have recourse to such general terms as—“wise and temperate reform;”—“that degree of progress which the advanced position and increased intelligence of the age render imperative;”—or, “the timely concession to popular demand of those privileges which, if withheld, may hereafter be more clamorously enforced.” It is no use commenting upon such language. The unhappy individuals who employ it are quite guiltless of any meaning; and they could not explain themselves if required. Generally speaking, they cut a most miserable figure when under examination by some burly Radical. On no one point are they explicit, save in their rejection of the ballot, which they think themselves entitled to except to, as Lord John Russell has hitherto declined to pronounce in favour of secret voting; and they dare not, for the lives of them, attempt to mark out the limit of the suffrage, or state the proper period for the duration of Parliaments. This is but a cowardly and contemptible line of conduct. If they have any spark of manhood in them, why can they not speak out? Surely by this time they should know the points of the Charter by heart, and be able to tell the constituencies to which of them they are ready to agree. On the contrary, we find nothing but dodging, shuffling, equivocating, and reserving. The fact is, that they have no mind of their own at all, and they are in sore perplexity as to the state of two other minds which they are trying to reconcile—the first being the mind of Lord John Russell, and the second being the mind of the constituency which they are addressing. For, apart from reform altogether, there are several topics about which your pure Whig candidate must be exceedingly cautious. For example, there is the withdrawal of the grant to Maynooth. Even supposing that Lord John Russell were as alert a Protestant as he professed himself to be in the autumn of 1850, how could he venture to sacrifice the support of the Irish tail? Therein lies the difficulty. You will find plenty of men—very determined Protestants, but also very determined adherents of the late Ministry—who will tell you “that they were always opposed to any grant of the kind;”—that is, that they thought it essentially wrong, not only in a political, but in a religious point of view; but, press one of these gentlemen upon the point, especially if, as in the case of Edinburgh, the selection of a candidate seems to depend greatly on his views with regard to that measure, and you will almost invariably find that his attachment to Protestantism is less strong than his regard for the interests of his party. This may not be right, and we do not think it is so; but we infinitely prefer the conduct and avowal of such men to the disgraceful exhibitions which have lately been made by more than one Whig candidate. Opinions, based on religious principle, never ought to be conceded. Changed they may be; but what idea of the sincerity of such a change can be formed, when we find it taking place immediately on the eve of an election, and, in one instance, after the issue of an address? After all, we are perhaps too severe. Every one knows what was the miserable denouement of Lord John Russell’s determined stand for Protestantism against Papal aggression; and it might be too much to expect that the devoted and even servile follower should exhibit, in his own person, more consistency than was displayed by his redoubted chief.

It is, however, quite apparent that, notwithstanding Lord John Russell’s advances to the Radical party, the latter are by no means inclined to place confidence in the Whigs. In every case in which such a movement seems likely to be attended with any prospect of success, they are putting forward candidates of their own—men whose adhesion to democratic principles is beyond the possibility of a challenge. Persons whose names were never before heard of—utterly briefless barristers, reporters and writers for the Radical press, broken-down speculators, who consider a career within the walls of St Stephen’s as the best method of effacing the memory of the enormities of Capel Court, attorneys in dubious practice, and the like class of characters—are presenting themselves to constituencies rather on the strength of recommendations from the Radical Reform Junta, than from any particular merits of their own. By these men the Whigs are especially persecuted, and may, perhaps, in various instances, be beaten. Yet, strange to say, the Whigs, as a party, have not the courage to adopt any distinct principle, or announce any determined line of action, which would serve at once to distinguish and separate them from the fellowship of these political adventurers. They are ashamed of their old party names, and persist in calling themselves Liberals. Now, as we all know, Liberality is, in politics, an exceedingly comprehensive term. Cuffey was a Liberal, so is Mr Feargus O’Connor; so are Mr Joseph Hume, Mr John M’Gregor, Mr Cobden, Mr W.J. Fox, Lord Melgund, and Mr James Moncrieff. And yet it would be difficult to say upon what particular point, negations excluded, one and all of these gentlemen are agreed. The fact is—and the Whigs know it—that there is no such a thing as a united Liberal party, and that the soldering up of their differences is impossible. When a Whig appeals to a constituency as a Liberal, he is taking the worst and weakest, because the most untenable, ground. He is acting the part of the Girondists, who persisted in claiming kindred with the Montagnards, until the Mountain fell upon and crushed them. It is this feature which distinguishes the present from every previous contest. The chiefs of the Liberal sections profess to act in concert and amity—they hold meetings, pass resolutions, and lay down plans for future operations—their followers are as much opposed to each other as Abram and Balthazar of the House of Montague were to Sampson and Gregory of the House of Capulet. One thing alone they agree in—they are determined to do everything in their power to obstruct her Majesty’s present Government.

It is very needful that such matters should be considered at the present time—that sober-minded people, who must take a part in the approaching election, should thoroughly understand the responsibility which devolves upon them, and the consequences which may ensue from their committing an error of judgment. The influence of party watchwords, though materially lessened of late years, has not yet ceased to exist; and it is possible that some men may, through a terror of being charged with political inconsistency, actually commit themselves to principles which they hold in sincere abhorrence. Therefore it is necessary to look, not only to the past and present position of parties, but also to their future prospects and views, according to the support which may be accorded to them by the country at the general election.

Let us suppose that, at the opening of the new Parliament, Lord Derby should be defeated by a vote of want of confidence. His resignation must follow as a matter of course, and then begins the strife. Past events render it perfectly clear that the old Whig Government cannot return to office, or, if it could do so, must act upon other principles than before. Lord John Russell’s resignation in February was an event which could not have been long postponed. His Cabinet was broken into divisions; it was unpopular out of doors; and his own conduct had, on various matters, been such as to engender general dissatisfaction. His Reform Bill was a measure which gave vast umbrage to the majority even of the urban electors. Its introduction was, perhaps, the most signal proof of his political weakness, and, we may add, of his ignorance of the state of popular feeling. No matter whether it was intended to be carried or not, it remains, and ever will remain, an example of the length to which personal ambition may carry an unscrupulous Minister. Earl Grey’s administration of the Colonies has become a byword for imbecility, blundering, and disaster. The finances were not in much better hands. No movement was made by Sir Charles Wood towards the termination of the Income-Tax, nor had he even the practical ability to reimpose it upon an equitable basis. We do not allude to these things by way of criticism on the past—indeed it would be unnecessary to do so, as they are matters of common notoriety. We state them merely to show that the reconstruction of the Whig Government, out of old materials, and on old principles, is a thing impossible, and that the next professing Liberal Government must differ greatly in kind and character from any which has hitherto preceded it.

Could it possibly be a moderate Government? Let us first consider that.

Not only the Radical party, (who must be looked upon as the chief supporters of such a Government,) but Lord John Russell and Sir James Graham, are pledged to the introduction of certain organic changes, differing only in degree. To suppose that any of them will adopt a less measure than that which they have advocated, is out of the question; and as the tendency of the movement has been, not from the Radicals to Lord John Russell, but from Lord John Russell to the Radicals, we may very naturally conclude that the result would be an approximation to the views of Mr Cobden. That gentleman, as we know, (for he does not scruple to tell us so in as many words,) has “ulterior objects” of his own, the time for developing which in safety has probably not yet arrived. We shall not inquire too curiously into the nature of those, being satisfied, as probably will be most of our readers who have watched the progress of the man, that they are not at all calculated to improve the stability of any of our institutions. We cannot, therefore, see what hopes can be entertained of the formation of a moderate Government, supposing Lord Derby’s to be overthrown; unless, instead of uniting with Mr Cobden, Lord John Russell could effect a union with some other political party.

No such party exists. Unless we are much deceived, the majority of the followers of the late Sir Robert Peel, at least the majority of those who may be able to re-enter Parliament, are prepared to give their support and confidence to Lord Derby’s Administration. There may, no doubt, be exceptions. Sir James Graham and Mr Cardwell are clearly out of the Conservative ranks, and may enlist under any banner they choose. But as it is extremely problematical whether either of these gentlemen will obtain seats in the new House of Commons, their views are of little consequence. Other Obstructives, of whom there are a few, have no chance whatever of being returned; so that the construction of what we may term a moderate Liberal Government could not take place, from absolute want of material. Indeed, judging from the language lately employed by the knight of Netherby, we should say that moderation is as far from his thoughts as from those of the rankest Radical in Oldham.

Unless, therefore, the electors are really anxious for a Radical Government and for Radical measures, they ought to abstain from giving a vote to any candidate who is hostile to the continuance of Lord Derby’s Administration. Let us not be misunderstood. We are not now arguing as to the propriety of sending Protectionists instead of Free-Traders to Parliament; we are not asking any man to forsake his opinions on points of commercial policy. Doubtless in the next Parliament there will be some opposed to the reimposition of duties upon corn, who, nevertheless, are prepared to accord their general support to Lord Derby, the more readily because he has distinctly stated that he leaves the corn-duties question “to the deliberate judgment of the country, and to the general concurrence of the country, without which I shall not,” said he, “bring forward that proposition.” But in voting for any candidate, who sets forward as a ground for his acceptance, the fact that he belongs to what is called “the Liberal party,” let the electors remember that they are in truth voting for Radical measures, and for organic changes. They may be slow to believe so, but there can actually and absolutely be no other result. These gentlemen of “the Liberal party,” however moderate their individual views may be, seek to enter Parliament for the purpose of overthrowing one Government and establishing another. Of course the overthrow must always precede the reconstruction; and, most commonly, it is not until the overthrow has been made, that the plan of the structure is considered. We have already stated our reasons—and we submit they are strong ones—for thinking that no moderate Liberal Government, in the proper sense of the term, can be again constructed; that Lord John Russell, if once more summoned to form a Cabinet, must do so on a Radical basis, and the inevitable consequence must be the establishment of a thorough democracy, on the ruins of our present Constitution. We appeal in this matter as directly to the old constitutional Whigs, as to that powerful body of the electors, who, entertaining moderate opinions, are attached to no particular party in the state. We entreat them earnestly to consider the difficulties of the present crisis—difficulties which have arisen not so much from any increasing power of the Radical faction, as from the weakness, vacillation, and strong personal ambition of the late Whig leader. No doubt it is an honourable and a high ambition which excites a statesman to aim at the possession of power, but the honour ceases the moment that principle is abandoned. And it does appear to us that, of late years, far too little attention has been paid to the terms of the conditions which are implied by a Minister’s acceptance of office. Under our constitutional monarchy he is the servant of the Crown, and he is bound to bring forward such measures only as will tend to the dignity and the safety of that, and the welfare of the people generally. Is it possible for any one conscientiously to maintain that Lord John Russell has pursued such a course? Is it not, on the contrary, apparent to all, that his main object, and the leading thought of his life, has ever been the supremacy of his own political party? Has he not, in order to prolong that supremacy, approached repeatedly to factions with whose principles he had nothing in common, and purchased their temporary support on terms alike degrading to the giver and to the recipient? That is not the art of governing, at least as it was understood of old. Once let it be known that a Government is plastic—that it may be bullied, coerced, or driven into making terms—and its moral power and influence are for ever gone. Is there any reason—we would ask the electors—why any man should incur such risk as must arise from the instalment of a Radical Ministry in power, solely from personal devotion to the interests of my Lord John Russell? There may be some who think that hitherto he has deserved well of his country. So be it: we have no objection that they should entertain such an opinion. But this much is undeniable, that however good his intentions might be, he neither could, nor can, command a majority of direct followers of his own; and that he has been forced to scramble on from point to point by the assistance of political antagonists, dexterously availing himself, at each turn, of the hand which was immediately nearest. But this kind of course must always have an end. A precipice lay before him; and, as no other arms were open, he leaped into those of Mr Cobden.

If the main body of the Whigs are prepared to follow Lord John Russell wherever he may go, notwithstanding all that has passed, and all that he has indicated for the future, we, of course, can have no manner of objection. But let them distinctly understand what is in store for them if they choose to adopt such a course. Many of them, we know, were thoroughly disgusted with the Reform Bill which he introduced this Session; and did not hesitate to express their conviction that it was an unnecessary, dangerous, and reprehensible measure. If Lord John Russell returns to power, he must bring in a new Reform Bill far more democratic than the last. That is the condition on which he is allowed to retain the nominal leadership of the Opposition, and from it he cannot depart. The Manchester party will not rest until they have attained their end. They are for no half-measures; they are plagued by no scruples. Their doctrine is, that political power should be vested in the uneducated masses,—“the instinct of the million being,” according to their great oracle, “wiser than the wisdom of the wisest.” In other words, mob rule is to be paramount, and whatever the majority wish to be done, must be straightway put into execution. Is there any reflecting man in the country who does not shudder at the thought of such a consummation?—is there any one conversant with history who does not see to what it must necessarily lead? With no lack of demagogues to mislead and excite them, what part of the British fabric would be secure against the attacks of an ignorant democracy? It may be true that Lord John Russell does not contemplate this—that he would even shrink from and repudiate the thought with horror. But he is not the less doing all in his power to forward the advance of anarchy. By consenting to lower the suffrage, he has given authority and significance to demands far more comprehensive in their scope. He has indicated that the bulwark which he himself erected, twenty years ago, is not to be considered as permanent, but merely temporary in its purpose. He has begun, like the foolish dikebuilder of Holland, to tamper with the seawall of his own construction, heedless of the inundation which must follow.

Let the Whigs pause for a moment, and consider what are the principles maintained by the men with whom their leader is now in alliance. Of their notions on religious matters it is difficult to speak with accuracy. One large section of them consists of rank Papists, men under the control and domination of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and ready to do their bidding in anything that may advance the supremacy of a false and apostate Church. Another section professes to regard all Churches and creeds as alike, maintaining, as a fundamental doctrine, that Establishments ought to be abolished, and religious teaching maintained only on the strict Voluntary principle. The advocates of this view are of course prepared to strike down the Established Churches of England and of Scotland, to overturn the whole existing ecclesiastical arrangements, and to confiscate ecclesiastical property. Another section is supremely indifferent to religious teaching of any kind, regarding secular education as quite sufficient for all the requirements of the people. These are the men who regard all opposition to Papal aggression as sheer bigotry and intolerance, who clamour for the admission of Jews into one House of Parliament, whilst in the same breath they profess themselves ready to dismiss the Christian prelates from the other. In politics they are republican, all except the name. But, in truth, it matters little what name is given to their creed, seeing that the principle which they profess is that of pure democracy. It is not pretended, and certainly they do not pretend, that if their scheme were carried, the House of Peers could continue on its present footing to coexist with the House of Commons. They admit that they have “ulterior objects”—all revolutionists have—and these are left to our conjecture. Is then our present Constitution so faulty, that the great body of the electors are prepared to risk, and to recommend a change?

If not, let them beware of returning any man who will so far support Lord John Russell as to act unscrupulously against Lord Derby. By all means let the measures of the present Government be considered with the utmost rigidness and exactitude, and let no favour be shown to them beyond what they conscientiously deserve. The ordeal may be—must be, a severe one; but Ministers will not shrink from it, being conscious of the integrity of their motives. But it is no part of the game of Opposition to allow them a fair trial, or even a fair hearing, if they can in anywise be prevented. They must, say the democrats, be crushed—and that immediately. Mr Cobden went the length of counselling that they should not be permitted to get through the business of the present Session, so apprehensive was he of the effect which an appeal to the constitutional feelings of the country might produce. He and Mr Villiers had concocted a scheme which they thought might precipitate a crisis, but it was too scandalously factious to admit of its being carried into effect.

The late Whig Government has been tried, and found wanting. It never can be reconstituted again, and its old supporters are undoubtedly released from all their ties of allegiance. It will be for them to determine whether they are to follow Lord John Russell in his retreat to the camp of the Radicals, or continue to maintain those constitutional principles which were once the boast of the Whig party. The question is indeed a serious and a momentous one. Lord Derby has most clearly indicated the nature of the ground on which he stands. He does not appeal to the country on this or that financial measure—he comes forward as the supporter of the Protestant institutions of the realm, and as the determined opponent of a designing and encroaching democracy. What sound Protestant, or true lover of his country, can be indifferent to such an appeal?

We have been thus particular in noticing the state of parties, because we observe that various underlings of the late Government are canvassing constituencies, especially in Scotland, in rather an artful manner. They keep out of sight altogether the fact of the Chesham Place alliance. They are as unwilling to allude to that treaty as to the notorious Lichfield House compact, when the Whigs bartered religious principle for Roman Catholic support. Now, this may be very convenient for those gentlemen; but, we presume, the electors will agree with us in thinking that the sooner they can arrive at a distinct understanding upon such points the better. It is all very well to talk of “judicious and timely reform,” but the orator who uses such terms should go a little further, and explain to his audience the exact nature of the reform which he contemplates. Because, if Lord John Russell’s abortive Bill is not to be introduced again, but, in the event of his resumption of office, another, revised by Mr Cobden, and approximating to the full requirements of the Manchester politicians, is to be tabled instead—it would be as well to know how far the liberality of honourable candidates will permit them to advance. Also, it would be a curious and not unprofitable subject of inquiry whether they still hold themselves to be bound by the acts of their parliamentary leader? If they attended the meeting at Chesham Place, they must be held as consenting parties to the Cobden compact; if they did not, it might not be useless to ask who is their leader, and what line of policy do they intend to pursue? It is a good thing to hear the abstract opinions of political soldiers and subalterns; but in these times, it is much more instructive to learn the name of the captain of their troop. None of the gentlemen to whom we are alluding are likely to originate measures—they must be contented to take the word of command from others. If, therefore, they remain, and intend to remain, followers of Lord John Russell, they form part of that grand army of which Mr Cobden is a general of division, if not something higher. They have pronounced for the democracy, and as democrats they should accordingly be viewed.

It would be exceedingly instructive if we could exact from each candidate a distinct definition of the meaning which he attaches to the term “Liberal principles.” We observe from the Edinburgh newspapers that a gentleman, professing “liberal principles,” proposes to contest the representation of the Montrose burghs with Mr Joseph Hume—the inference being, that the principles of the said Joseph are not sufficiently liberal! Then, at Paisley, a candidate recommended by the same Joseph Hume, and that superlative twaddler Sir Joshua Walmsley, comes forward, on “liberal principles,” to oppose Mr Hastie, whom we have hitherto been accustomed to regard as rather in advance of the Whigs. The Radicals of Perth did not think Mr Fox Maule “liberal” enough for them, since they brought forward an opponent in the person of a certain Mr Gilpin; and now that Mr Maule has succeeded to the peerage, the gentleman who next solicits the suffrages of the Fair City in his place, must make up his mind to compare his “liberal principles” with those of the Gilpin. Not long ago a well-known Whig citizen and civic functionary of Edinburgh declared himself opposed to any further extension of the suffrage, thereby intimating his dissent from the principle of Lord John Russell’s Bill; and yet, at a meeting lately held for the purpose of selecting a candidate, this same individual moved a resolution to the effect that the candidate ought to be a man professing “liberal opinions!” Really there is something ludicrous and intensely absurd in this general employment of a phrase which can be made to mean almost anything. Is a man in favour of a republic, abolition of the House of Peers, suppression of the Church, and repudiation of the national debt? Then he is undoubtedly a man of “liberal principles.” Is he merely for household suffrage, electoral divisions, vote by ballot, and triennial parliaments? He is likewise of “liberal principles.” Is he a thick-and-thin supporter of Lord John Russell, having held a place under the late Government? Who so ready as he to lay claim to “liberal principles.” Does he wish the separation of Church and State? “Liberal” again. Does he back up the Papacy in their insolent attempts at aggression, and defend the grant of Maynooth? He does so on “liberal principles.” Does he wish to see the Jews in Parliament? He vindicates that wish on the score of “liberal principles.” Now, surely, unless logic is an art as lying as that of chiromancy, it cannot be that all the men holding such conflicting opinions are entitled to the name of Liberals, or to claim credit to themselves for entertaining “liberal opinions.” If so, who is illiberal? But it is not worth while to comment further upon a point so very obvious as this. If Liberalism means contemplated overthrow and anarchy, we make the gentlemen who profess such principles as welcome to their title as was the late Thomas Paine, when he too arrogated to himself, in his isolation, the name of Liberal. If it means adherence to the principles of the Constitution, love of social order, and regard for the welfare of the general body of the people, we fear that we must deny the name to a good many of those who claim it.

One miserable feature in the conduct of some of these _soi-disant_ Liberal candidates, especially the new ones, is their extreme avidity to swallow any pledge that may be proposed, provided that, by so doing, they can secure the suffrages of some inconsiderable fraction of the electors. Their addresses are not deliberate expositions of their own formed opinions, but are framed upon another and very liberal principle. They endeavour to ascertain the points of doctrine which are supposed to be the most popular with the constituency whom they are ambitious to represent, and they issue their manifestoes accordingly. If anything has been omitted, or if they have not gone far enough, an opportunity is usually afforded them to make up for that deficiency at the first meeting of the electors—so called by courtesy, for in many cases there are not half-a-dozen electors, besides those on the platform, in the room. Such meetings are invariably attended by the busy-bodies of the place—radical cobblers, church-rate martyrs, philosophical barbers, and perhaps one or two specimens of that most loathsome of all animals, the dirty dandy. Here the candidate is expected to go through his facings, and to answer every question which insolence can suggest, or ignorance render unintelligible. No matter:—as our friend is a member of the “Liberal party,” he can safely expand his conscience to any extent which may be required; and the decisive and prompt manner in which he frequently disposes of the most knotty points of social and political economy, is delightful and edifying. Without ever having read a single page on the subject, he is quite ready to reconstruct the Currency, and pledges himself to bring in a bill to that effect, at the request of a snuffy dealer in gingerbread, who never had credit for five pounds in his life, and who has just made application for a _cessio bonorum_. An individual in fustian, evidently in the last stage of _delirium tremens_, after a hiccupped harangue on ecclesiastical rapacity, demands from him his thoughts upon Church Establishments in general; and the liberal candidate at once undertakes to have them all suppressed. If his opinions on the subject of National Education are somewhat vague, the fault lies with the respectable non-elector, who could not frame his question so as to render it intelligible. To one earnest inquirer—a carrier—he promises an entire and compulsory stoppage of Sunday trains. To another—a publican—he pledges himself to remove the excise duties from British spirits. To a third—a cabman—he indicates his resolution of commencing a violent onslaught on the Customs, so that “the poor man’s tobacco” may be no longer smoked under a sense of injustice. Of course he disposes very summarily of the Army, Navy, and Colonies, these being parasitical weeds which ought immediately to be done away with; in fact, before he has done, there is hardly one institution, tax, custom, establishment, or system in the United Kingdom which he has not denounced as odious, and which he has not pledged himself to alter! So convenient are your “liberal principles” in adjusting themselves to the popular will.

What takes place now, bad as it is, is but a faint type of what would be enacted if democracy had the upper-hand; and we would recommend all those who are sceptical as to this matter, to attend personally some meeting at which a candidate is subjected to this kind of examination, and mark the intelligence which is displayed by the questioners, and the consistency which is exhibited in the replies. It is, indeed, as sorry a spectacle as a man could wish to witness; and could we suppose it to be a reflex either of the mind of the electors, or of the settled opinions of those who are likely to be Liberal members of Parliament, the idea would inevitably cast a heavy gloom over our anticipations for the future. But the truth is, that the electors have little or nothing to do with it; and the great majority of the upstart aspirants after the honours of legislation will, in a month or so, return to their usual avocations, probably not without an imprecation on the folly which induced them, at the bidding of an interested faction, to suspend the humble toils on which their daily bread depended, and expose themselves alike to ridicule and defeat. There are, however, reflections of a very serious nature suggested by the efforts which the Radical party are making for the introduction of organic changes, which ought not to be lightly passed over.

Why is it that certain parties are now, more than heretofore, engaged in getting up a cry for reform and extension of suffrage? Why is it that some men, ostensibly belonging to the Whig party, who, a year or two ago, held such views in utter detestation, have declared themselves favourable to the movement? Has anything been done to curtail the popular privileges—to take away from the people any portion of the power which they previously possessed—to curtail the liberty of the press—or in any way to trench upon the rights which are common to every subject? Has there been any tyranny on the part of the Crown—any audible complaint against the acts of the House of Peers? Nothing of the kind. Has, then, the House of Commons failed in the fulfilment of its duty? That averment can hardly be made, with consistency at least, by any member of the Liberal party, since they have made it their boast that, at the present moment, they are in possession of a majority in the Lower House, and have taken credit to themselves for magnanimity in allowing Lord Derby’s Ministry to exist, as they say, by sufferance, until the ordinary business of the Session is completed. What, then, can be the motive for the change which is now so loudly urged? It is simply this: The Liberal party are aware that they no longer possess the confidence of the country, and they hope, by rousing a new and formidable agitation, to divert the public mind into another channel, and prevent it from dwelling upon the injuries which they have inflicted upon the industrious classes of the nation. How otherwise can we account for this sudden and violent mania for extending the suffrage, which is apparent in the election speeches of most of the Liberal candidates? Mark the inconsistency of these men. They tell us—no matter whether falsely or not—that the country never was in a state of greater prosperity than now, and that such has been the fruit of their earnest and triumphant efforts. Very well. If it be so, what reason can be urged for making any organic change? Are not the prosperity and the welfare of a nation, and that content which, as we are told, reigns among the working-classes, the surest proofs that the Constitution is working admirably; and would it not, in that case, be utter madness to alter its arrangement? Yet such is the dilemma in which the Liberals, including Lord John Russell, are placed. They dare not aver that the country is not prospering, seeing that, for many years, they have had it all their own way, and that any statement of the kind would be tantamount to a censure passed upon themselves. On the contrary, they avow prosperity in the highest degree, and yet they are clamouring for a change, which cannot improve, but may possibly imperil it!

They cannot say that they demand extension of the suffrage because the acts of another Ministry might possibly endanger the prosperity which they assume to exist. Both the Radicals and Lord John Russell had declared for extension of the suffrage long before Lord Derby was summoned to take office. They were quite as keen for organic change at the time when they tauntingly told us that Protection was coffined and buried for ever, as they are now when they behold it in life and motion. Nor can they reasonably suppose that a cry for extended suffrage will be generally acceptable to the great body of the present electors, who are jealous enough of the privileges which they have so long possessed, and are by no means disposed to part with them, or to be swamped by the uneducated rabble. We are loath to suppose that any, beyond the worst and most unprincipled agitators of the Manchester rump, are base enough to hope in their hearts that they may succeed in exciting popular tumult and disturbance. We shall not consult Mr Roebuck’s _History of the Whig Ministry_ for any similar passages in former days—we content ourselves with the assurance that no disposition of the kind exists anywhere. Therefore, after looking at the subject in all its bearings, we are constrained to come to the conclusion, that all this talk about reform on the part of the Liberals has its origin in a sincere and not unnatural desire to mislead the people of this country, and to withdraw their attention from those matters in which they are immediately and most deeply interested.

The advocates of that system which has been dominant for several years, although its introduction is of an older date, are, of course, loud in its praise, and claim for it the credit of full and triumphant success. We do not deny that their system has, in the mean time, had the effect of cheapening commodities, though not in the ratio which they predicted. The price of the loaf, of sugar, and of various other articles commonly termed “of first necessity,” is lowered; and we may fairly acknowledge that to many this not only appears, but is, a valuable boon. For, undoubtedly, if we could procure all the articles which we consume at a far lower rate than before, retaining, at the same time, our incomes undiminished, we should each of us be immense gainers—we might either work less, and continue to live as formerly, or we might work as formerly, and gradually accumulate a capital; but if, in proportion to the cheapness of commodities, our incomes equally diminish, then it is not easy to see wherein the advantage lies.

It is obvious, then, that at least one class of persons—those who are in the receipt of fixed incomes—must profit materially by any system which induces the cheapening of commodities. The mere annuitant can now live more comfortably than before; but as annuitants do not constitute a very large class of the community, and as they necessarily must derive their incomes from the product of internal labour, we apprehend that, in treating of such questions, it is proper to look directly to the working and productive classes. We do not intend to argue over again points which we have repeatedly discussed in previous articles; our object just now is to show that these pretended Liberals have reason on their side in wishing to escape from a calm and deliberate investigation of the consequences of their lauded policy.

We are told by them that the working-classes never were so comfortable as they are just now. If we believed this, and believed also that the comfort _could be permanent_—because both points of belief are necessary before any one can be convinced of the excellence of their system—we should submit to the deep degradation of acknowledging, in silence and tears, our conversion to the tenets of the men of Manchester. But, unfortunately, we believe nothing of the kind—nay, we know that the contrary is the fact; and, first, let us try to understand, if possible, the meaning of the Free-Traders.

We need not complicate the question as to what the working-classes are, by insisting that every man who depends for his support upon his own exertions belongs to that order. Heaven knows that the pen is oftentimes a more toilsome implement than the shuttle or the spade; and, although we cannot say that we ever had a fancy to try our hand at the loom, we would have no objection, on occasion, to take a turn at trenching. By the working-classes, we understand those who are engaged in mechanical toil—in tilling the earth, cultivating its products, raising and smelting its minerals, producing fabrics from raw materials, and assisting the operations of commerce and manufactures in an endless variety of ways. They are distinguished from the capitalist in this, that they labour with their hands, and that labour is their sole inheritance.

That it is the first duty of every Government to guard and protect that class, has been our invariable doctrine. In them the motive strength of Britain lies. Machinery is of man’s invention—the human frame is the work of God alone, animated by His breath, and must not be treated as a machine. They may be called upon—as all of us are called upon—to contribute some portion of their labour for the maintenance of our national institutions, which have undeniably exempted us from those terrible calamities by which almost every other state in Europe has been visited. A bad system of the entailment of state debts, commenced more than a hundred and sixty years ago by a monarch who came over to this country as a Liberator, has increased the national burdens, and occasioned a further tax upon labour. Yet, nevertheless, it is undeniable that the condition of the British labourer, in every department of industry, has been for a long time superior to that of his fellow in any other European country. The men of the working-classes are, though they may not know it, possessed of enormous power. Wronged they cannot be, except by their own consent, and as victims of delusion; for the sympathy of the intelligence of the country is with them, and so is that of the higher orders. To all who have true nobility of soul, the rights of the working man are sacred; and when that ceases to be the case, the days of the aristocracy are numbered.

But _why_ is it that the condition of the British labourer has been superior to that of his foreign equal? That is indeed a consideration of the very greatest importance; and it would be well if statistical compilers and political economists had set themselves seriously to consider “the reason why,” instead of simply noting the fact. We have read a good many volumes—more than we care to enumerate—written by gentlemen of that class, but we never have been able to find any intelligible explanation of that phenomenon. Yet surely it is a remarkable one. This country is, in respect of its population, far more heavily burdened than any of the leading states of Europe—it has not the climatic advantages of some of them—and it can scarcely be said to produce the precious metals. Its exports, though undoubtedly large, were, and are, as nothing to the quantity produced, intended for the home consumption. It has been computed, from an investigation of the census taken in 1841, that not much more than half a million of people, the population being then nearly twenty seven millions, were employed in the manufacture of articles for the foreign trade.[33]

It may be useful here to mention that, according to one foreign statistical authority, Schnabel, the proportion of taxes paid yearly by each individual in Great Britain, France, and Prussia, was in the following ratio:—

Great Britain, 18 France, 11⅔ Prussia, 5½

And the comparative rate of agricultural wages is stated thus by Rau, in his _Lehrbuch der Politischen Oekonomie_:—

S. D. Great Britain, (average,) 1 6 France, (do.) 1 0¾ East Prussia, 0 4⅔

These figures, of course, may be slightly inaccurate, but they are sufficient to show the great variation, both in taxation and wages, which prevails in the three countries which are here specified; and we have no reason to believe that, during the few years which have elapsed since these calculations were made, any material difference in proportion has taken place. A similar discrepancy prevails in wages of every kind. For example, Mr Porter tells us that in Wurtemberg the wages of the artisans in towns are from 1s. 8d. to 4s. 2d. per week; that in Bavaria “labourers are paid at the rate of 8d. per day in the country, and from 8d. to 1s. 4d. in the towns;” and that in Saxony “a man employed in his loom, working very diligently from Monday morning until Saturday night, from five o’clock in the morning until dusk, and even at times with a lamp, his wife assisting him in finishing and taking him the work, could not possibly earn more than 20 groschen (2s. 6d. sterling) per week.” We might have added many other instances to these, but we judge it to be unnecessary. We quote them simply for the purpose of showing that labour in Britain, if heavily taxed, was better remunerated than elsewhere.

Now, why was it better remunerated? That is—after all that has been said and written on the subject, and Eolus-bags of oratory, and hundreds of thousands of reams of paper have been expended on it—the question, upon the solution of which the merit of the rival systems depends. It was better remunerated in this way—because in Great Britain there has been a far greater outlay of capital in every department and branch of industry, than has been made in any other country of the world. With us, land has been reclaimed, and brought under tillage, which elsewhere would have been left in a state of nature. At an immense cost the difficulties of climate have been overcome, and the soil rendered productive, and capable of sustaining an increased number of inhabitants. We must go back farther than the memory of the present generation can reach, in order to appreciate the vast nature of the improvements which were so effected. Since the commencement of the present century, very nearly four millions of acres, in England alone, have been brought into cultivation under the Inclosure Acts, besides all that has been effected by private enterprise—and it is probable that amount immensely exceeds the other—on land held by a simple tenure. Eighty years ago, the greater part of the surface of what are now our best cultivated counties, was covered with heath and ling, and of course wholly unproductive. It was from this outlay of capital in the cultivation of the soil that the rapid growth of our towns, and the great increase of our manufactures, took their rise. The latter cannot precede—it must always follow the other. The country supplied the towns with food, and the towns in turn supplied the country with manufactures. Such being the case, it is evident that the prosperity of either interest depended greatly upon the circumstances of the other. If agriculture was depressed, from whatever cause, there was no longer the same demand as formerly for manufactures; if manufactures were depressed, the agriculturist suffered in his turn. But in reality, except from over-trading, and a competition pushed to an extent which has affected the national interest, it is difficult to understand how a depression in manufactures for the home trade could take place, except through and in consequence of agricultural calamity. The home demand was remarkably steady, and could be calculated upon with almost a certainty of return. It was reserved for the enlightened economists of our age to discover that the interests of agriculture and manufactures were not harmonious. Such, clearly, was not the theory of our forefathers. The Book of Common Prayer contains a form of thanksgiving for a good harvest—it has none for a year of unusual export and import.

We must not, however, pass over without notice, the circumstances which led to the extraordinary development of industry and enterprise in Great Britain, in every department. Without consumers, it is quite evident that agriculture could not have advanced with such rapid strides; and it is important that there should be no misunderstanding on this matter. The possession of a hundred or a thousand acres of land is of little value unless the owner can command a remunerative market for his produce; nor will he cultivate his land to the utmost unless he has the assurance of such a market. It is all very well to say, that, by the expenditure of a certain sum of money, such and such an amount of crops may be reared on each acre;—that is a mere feat of agricultural chemistry, such as Mr Huxtable offered to undertake upon pure sand with the assistance of pigs’ dung; but the real and only question is—will the return meet the outlay? Without some unusual and extraordinary cause to increase the number of consumers, it is clear to us that the progress of agriculture must have been comparatively slow; and accordingly, we find that cause in the Continental war, which continued for nearly a quarter of a century, and which has effected such mighty changes—the end of which is not yet apparent—in the social position of Great Britain.

To maintain that war, the resources of this country were taxed to the utmost. So great were the demands, that they could not possibly have been met but for two things—one being the result of internal arrangement, and the other arising from external circumstances. The first of these was the suspension of cash payments, and the extension, or rather creation, of credit, arising from an unlimited paper currency. The second was the monopoly of the foreign markets, which we engrossed, in virtue of our naval supremacy. No writer on the social state of Britain, even at the present hour, and no political economist who does not specially refer to these two circumstances, are worth consulting. Better put their volumes into the fire, than discuss effects without regard to their antecedent cause.

It may be that the extent to which that unlimited currency was pushed, has since had disastrous results. If unwisely permitted without control or regulation, it was, as we think, contracted in a manner even more unwise; and the practical consequence has been an enormous addition to the weight of the public debt. But without a currency of very large extent—without the credit which that currency created—Great Britain could not have continued the struggle so long, nor brought it to a triumphant issue. It was this that stimulated both agriculture and manufactures, the latter having, in addition, the inestimable privilege of the command of the markets of the world, without any interference of a rival. Reclaimed fields and new manufactories were the products of that period; and unquestionably there never was an era in our history when prosperity appeared to be more generally diffused. If prices were high, so were wages. Employment was plentiful, because improvement was progressing on every side, and no jealousy existed between the manufacturer and the agriculturist. During fifteen years, from 1801 to 1815, the average annual quantity of wheat and wheat-flour imported to this country was only 506,000 quarters.

Perhaps it may be instructive here to quote the words of an acute observer in 1816, regarding the improvements which had taken place, before any check occurred. The writer of the historical summary in the _Edinburgh Annual Register_ for that year thus expresses himself:—

“During the continuance of the last war, many things had conspired to stimulate to the highest extent the exertions of every class of the people of England. Cut off by the decrees of Buonaparte from direct intercourse with some of the richest countries of Europe, the policy which England had adopted in revenge of this exclusion, had greatly increased the action of those many circumstances which naturally tended towards rendering her the great, or rather the sole entrepot, of the commerce of the world. In her the whole of that colonial trade which had formerly been sufficient to enrich, not her alone, but France and Holland also, had now centred. The inventive zeal of her manufacturers had gone on from year to year augmenting and improving branches of industry, in which, even before, she had been without a rival. The increase of manufactures had been attended with a perpetual increase in the demand for agricultural produce, and the events of the two years of scarcity (as they were called) lent an additional spring to the motion of those whose business it was to meet this demand. The increase which took place in the agricultural improvements of the island, was such as had never before been equalled in any similar period of time. Invention followed invention, for economising labour, and increasing production; till throughout no inconsiderable part of the whole empire the face of the country was changed. ‘It may safely be said,’ asserted Mr Brougham, ‘that without at all comprehending the waste lands wholly added to the productive tenantry of the island, not perhaps that two blades of grass now grow where one only grew before, but certainly that five grow where four used to be; and that this kingdom, which foreigners were wont to taunt as a mere manufacturing and trading country, inhabited by a shopkeeping nation, is, in reality, for its size, by far the greatest agricultural state in the world!’”

Contrary, perhaps, to the general expectation, the close of the war and the return of peace operated disastrously upon the internal interests of the country. Though the manufacturing energies of the Continent had been checked, its agriculture was ready and available; and accordingly, no sooner were the ports opened than prices fell at an alarming rate. The result was not only immediate agricultural distress in Britain, but _the greatest depression in every branch of manufacture connected with the home trade_. The agricultural distress needs no explanation. The vast improvements on land had been made with borrowed money; and when prices went down, the proprietor too often found himself unable from his rents to pay the bare interest of the money expended. Yet, had these improvements not taken place, how could Britain have continued the struggle so long—how could her manufacturing population have been fed? These are questions never considered now, especially by those agitators who revile the landlords, or rather the Legislature, for the imposition of the Corn Laws; but the truth is, that, unless the corn duty had been then imposed, England must, within a very few years, either have exhibited the humiliating spectacle of a bankrupt and ruined state, or been plunged in revolution. The distress rapidly spread to the manufacturers—for example, those engaged in the silk trade, and the iron and coal-workers of Staffordshire and Wales. The fall in the price of corn produced its natural effect by limiting the consumption of everything else; and, as if to crown the calamity, the exporting manufacturers, in their eagerness for gain, committed precisely the same blunder, from the effects of which they are now suffering so severely; and by creating a glut in the Continental markets, they both annihilated their own profits, and excited such an alarm in foreign governments as to give rise to a system of prohibitory duties, which continues to the present hour. Then followed the resumption of cash payments, with all its train of ruin—a measure which, whether necessary or not in principle, could not have been carried but for the existence of a corn law, which in some degree mitigated its pressure.

In a country so loaded with debt as ours, it is in vain to talk, as Lord John Russell lately did, of a “natural price.” The term, indeed, has no kind of significance under any circumstances; and we are perfectly certain that the noble lord, when he employed it, was not attempting to clothe a distinct idea in words. He found the phrase somewhere—perhaps borrowed it from the _Economist_—and used it, because he thought it sounded well. If he could reduce the price of all commodities here to the level of that which prevails in a Continental country—a consummation which appears to be contemplated and desired by the Free-Traders—the result would necessarily be a like decadence of our wealth—not accompanied, however, by a relaxation of our present burdens. The high wages which the working-classes receive in this country, contrasted with the low wages which are given elsewhere, depend upon the return which is yielded to the capitalist who calls their labour into being. Now, let us see what effect depression in any one great branch of industry exercises upon the working-classes, who are not immediately dependent upon it for their subsistence.

This involves one of the most curious phenomena in economical science. When an interest is depressed, it does not always happen—especially in the first stage of depression—that the labourers attached to that interest feel immediately the consequences of the decline. Agricultural wages, for example, do not fluctuate according to the price of wheat. The retrenchment which becomes necessary in consequence of lessened returns is usually effected, in the first instance at least, by curtailment of personal expenditure on the part of the cultivator—by abstinence from purchases, not necessary indeed, but convenient—and by that species of circumspect, but nameless thrift, which, at the end of a year, makes a very considerable difference in the amount of tradesmen’s bills. This kind of retrenchment is the easiest, the safest, and the most humane; and it is not until the depression becomes so great as to render other and more stringent modes of economising necessary, that the agricultural labourer is actually made to feel his entire dependence upon the land, and the interest which he has in its returns. The small tradesmen and dealers in the country and market towns are usually the first to discern what is called the pressure of the times. They find that the farmers are no longer taking from them the same quantity of goods as before; that their stocks, especially of the more expensive articles, remain on their hands unsold; and that there is no demand for novelties. If the depression goes so far as to necessitate a diminution of rental, then the same economy, but on a wider scale, is practised by the landlord. Expensive luxuries are given up, establishments contracted, and the town’s-people begin to complain of a dull season, for which they find it impossible to account, seeing that money is declared to be cheap. All this reacts upon the artisans very severely; because in towns labour has a far less certain tenure than in the country; and when there is a cessation of demand, workmen, however skilled, are not only liable, but certain to be dismissed. If the shopkeeper cannot get his goods off his hands, the manufacturer need not expect to prevail upon him to give any farther orders. The demand upon the mills becomes slack, and the manufacturer, finding that there is no immediate prospect of revival, considers it his duty to have recourse to short time.

This is precisely what has been going on for the last two years. Landlords and farmers have curtailed their expenditure in consequence of the great fall of prices; and the parties who have actually suffered the most are the tradesmen with whom they commonly deal, and the artisans in their employment. It is impossible to affect materially the gigantic interest of agriculture without striking a heavy blow at the prosperity of home manufactures; and unfortunately these manufactures, or at least many branches of them, are now liable to foreign competition. If it should be allowed that this is a true statement of the case—and we cannot see how it can be controverted—then it will appear that the working-classes, the vast majority of whom are engaged in producing for the home market, have lost largely in employment if they have gained by cheaper food.

And it is most remarkable, that in proportion as food has become cheap in this country, so has emigration increased. That is apparently one of the strangest features of the whole case. What contentment can there be in a nation when the people are deserting their native soil by hundreds of thousands? They did not do so while the other system was in operation. Whatever were the faults of Protection, it did not give rise to scenes like the following, which we find quoted in the _Economist_ of 17th April, as if it were something rather to be proud of than otherwise. The pious editor entitles it “The Exodus.” Certainly he and his friends have made Ireland the reverse of a land flowing with milk and honey:—

“The flight of the population from the south is thus described by the _Clonmel Chronicle_:—‘The tide of emigration has set in this year more strongly than ever it has within our memories. During the winter months, we used to observe solitary groups wending their way towards the sea-coast, but since the season opened, (and a most beautiful one it is,) these groups have been literally swelled into shoals, and, travel what road you may, you will find upon it strings of cars and drays, laden with women and children and household stuffs, journeying onward, their final destination being America. In all other parts of the country it is the same. At every station along the rail, from Goold’s Cross to Sallins, the third-class carriages receive their quota of emigrants. The Grand Canal passage-boats, from Shannon harbour to Sallins, appear every morning at their accustomed hour, laden down with emigrants and their luggage, on their way to Dublin, and thence to Liverpool, whence they take shipping for America.’”

And yet this wholesale expatriation is so far from appearing a disastrous sign, that it does not even excite a word of comment from the cold-blooded man of calculations. Truly there are various points of similarity between the constitution of the Free-Trader and the frog!

Remarkable undoubtedly it is, and to be remarked and remembered in all coming estimates of the character and ability of the men, styling themselves statesmen, whose measures have led to the frightful depopulation of a part of the British Empire. Remarkable it is, but not to be wondered at, seeing that the same thing must occur in every instance where a great branch of industry is not only checked, but rendered unprofitable. Succeeding generations will hardly believe that it was the design of the Whigs and the Free-Traders to feed the Irish people with foreign grain, and so promote their prosperity, at a time when their sole wealth was derived from agricultural produce. Just fancy a scheme for promoting the prosperity of Newcastle by importing to it coals to be sold at half the price for which that article is at present delivered at the pit-mouth! Conceive to yourselves the ecstasy which would prevail in Manchester if Swiss calicoes were brought there to be vended at rates greatly lower than are now charged by the master manufacturers! Undoubtedly the people of Newcastle and the operatives of Manchester would in that case pay less than formerly both for fuel and clothing—both of them “first articles of necessity;” but we rather imagine that no long time would elapse before there were palpable symptoms of a very considerable emigration. And lest, in their grand reliance in a monopoly of coals and cottons, the Free-Traders should scoff at our parallels as altogether visionary, we challenge them to make a trial in a case which is not visionary. _Let them take off the manufacturing protective duties which still exist, and try the effect of that measure upon Birmingham, Sheffield, and Paisley._ Of course they know better than to accept any such challenge; but we warn the manufacturers—and let them look to it in time—that the day is rapidly drawing near when all these duties must be repealed, unless justice is done to the other suffering interests. If they persist in asking Free Trade, and in refusing all equivalents or reparation for the mischief they have done, _they shall have Free Trade_, BUT ENTIRE. Then we shall see whether they—with all their machinery, all their ingenuity, and all their capital—with all their immunity from burdens which are imposed upon other classes—with all the stimulus given to them by the income-tax, now levied since 1842, in order that taxes weighing on the manufacturing interest might be repealed—can compete on open terms in the home market with the manufacturers of the Continent. Do not let them deceive themselves; that reckoning is nigh at hand. They must be content to accept the measure with which they have meted to others; and we tell them fairly, that they need not hope that this subject will be any longer overlooked. _Not one rag of protection can be left to manufactures of any kind, whether made up or not_, if Free Trade is to be the commercial principle of the country. If so, the principle must be universally recognised.

What is now taking place in Ireland, must, ere long, we are convinced, take place in Britain. Nay, in so far as Scotland is concerned, the same symptoms are exhibited already, almost in the same degree. In one point of view, we cannot deplore the emigration. If it is fated that, through the blindness and cupidity of men whose religious creed consists of Trade Returns, and whose sole deity is Mammon, the system which has contributed so much to the greatness and wealth of the nation, and which has created a garden out of a wilderness, is to be abandoned for ever, it is better that our people should go elsewhere, and find shelter under a government which, if not monarchïcal, may be more paternal than their own. It is a bitter thing, that expatriation; but it has been the destiny of man since the Fall. They will find fertile land to till in the prairies of the West—they will have blue skies above them, and a brighter sun than here; and, if that be any consolation to them in their exile, they may still contribute to the supply of food to the British market, without paying, as they must have done had they continued here, their quota to the taxes of the country. But we must fairly confess that we feel less sympathy for those who go than for those who are compelled to linger. Until the home demand is revived—which can only be in consequence of the enhanced value of home produce—we can see nothing but additional misery in store for all those artisans and operatives who are unconnected with the foreign trade. With regard to that trade, we have yet to learn how it has prospered. Those who are engaged in it admit that, in spite of increased exports—which, be it remembered, do not by any means imply increased demand—their reasonable hopes have been disappointed; and that in regard to the countries from which we now derive the largest supply of corn, their exports have materially decreased. That is a symptom of no common significance; for it shows that, simultaneously with the increase of their agriculture, those countries are fostering and extending their own manufactures. As for the other—the home trade—it is, by the unanimous acknowledgment of our opponents, daily dwindling; and the income of the country—as the last returns of the property-tax, which do not by any means disclose the whole amount of the deficit, have shown us—has fallen off six millions within the last two years. Were we to add the diminution on incomes under £150 per annum, we have no doubt whatever that the loss would be found to amount to more than three times that sum. All that is so much lost to the retailer and home manufacturer. For a time, even yet, cheapness may serve to palliate and disguise the evil; but it cannot do so long. Many important branches of industry, such as the iron trade, are in a state of extreme depression. The evil is not confined to the mother country; it is impoverishing the fairest parts of our colonial empire. Some of the sugar-growing colonies are on the verge of abandonment. Unless a very different policy from that adopted by the Liberals is pursued and sanctioned by the people of this country, the catastrophe cannot long be delayed; and then, perhaps, the British public, though too late, may be instructed as to the relative value of colonial possessions of our own, and those belonging to states which do not recognise reciprocity.

Years ago, when the Free-Traders were in the first blush of their success, and the minds of men were still inflamed with the hot fever of speculation, the advocates of the new system were requested to state in what way they proposed to employ that mass of labour which must necessarily be displaced by the substitution of so much foreign produce instead of our own. They answered, with the joyousness of enthusiasm, that there would be room enough and to spare in the factories for every man who might so be thrown out of employment. It was not until an after period that the stern and dreary remedy of emigration was prescribed and enforced—not until it had become apparent from experience that all their hopes of increased profit from foreign trade and expected reciprocity were based upon a delusion. Then indeed the misery which had been created by reckless legislation was exalted into a cause for triumph, and the Exodus of the poor from the land of their birth, wherein they no longer could find the means of labour, was represented as a hopeful sign of the future destinies of the country.

We are very far, indeed, from blaming those who, at the present time, declare themselves averse to any violent changes, and who think that some remedy and redress may be given, without having recourse to an entire alteration of the principle upon which our present commercial policy is based. It may be that time is yet required before the effects of Free Trade can be fully felt and appreciated by some of the classes of this country; and, certainly, the first step which ought to be taken in the new Parliament, should be a readjustment of taxation, corresponding to the altered circumstances of the community. Of course, as this demand is founded strictly upon justice, it will be opposed strenuously by many of those who glory in their Liberal opinions; but we believe that the great bulk of the British people, whatever may be their thoughts on other points, have that regard to justice, that they will not countenance oppression. It may be that the agricultural classes cannot yet expect to receive that measure of relief which they have waited and hoped for so long. The partial failure of the last harvest on the Continent, though it has not brought up prices to a remunerative level, has had more than the effect of checking their further decline; and that circumstance, we are bound to admit, may have some influence on the minds of many who are slow to believe that foreign importations can really affect the permanence of British agriculture. The experience of another season may be necessary to open their eyes. So far as we can gather from the opinions of men who are engaged in the trade, and who are best qualified to form a judgment upon such subjects, we may look almost immediately for a great increase of importations, and a rapid decline of prices. The failure on the Continent did not extend to the wheat crop—it was limited to the rye and potatoes, the customary food of the peasantry; and it is now ascertained that there is a large surplus of wheat ready to be thrown into our ports. But it would be out of place to discuss such points just now. The verdict lies with the country, to which Lord Derby has appealed. If that verdict should not be of a nature to enable him at once to apply a remedy to agricultural distress, by the reimposition of a duty on corn, then we must look in the first instance to such a readjustment of burdens as shall at least give fair play to the cultivator of the soil. But there is much more than this. The strength of the Protective case lies in its universal application to all classes of the community; and it is not we, but our opponents, who affect to regard it as a question in which no one is interested beyond the landlord and the tenant. We look upon it as of vital importance to the retailer, the tradesman, the artisan, and the home manufacturer, and to all who labour for them; and it appears to us that the time has now arrived when a full and searching Parliamentary inquiry should be made on the subject of the cheap loaf in connection with the rate of wages, and the prosperity of the home trade. Surely the Free-Traders can have no reason to object to this. They ground their case on philanthropy and regard to the interest of the poor and labouring man, and in that respect we are both agreed. Well then;—if, as we think and say, agricultural distress, occasioned by the low prices which have prevailed in consequence of the large importations of foreign corn, has had the effect of lessening employment generally throughout the country—a position which, in our mind, is much strengthened by the enormous and unprecedented increase of emigration—surely that proposition is capable of tangible proof or equally distinct refutation. Let us know, from authentic sources, not from partial or interested assertion, whether, along with the cheap loaf, the people have had full and remunerative employment—whether the condition of the working-classes and of the home interests has been improved by the change or not. The inquiry undoubtedly would be an extended, but at the same time a most valuable one. It would necessarily, in order to arrive at a fair and thorough understanding of the subject, embrace the present state of every trade as contrasted with that of former years—it would show us in what way the home market has been affected by what we must still be allowed to term a diminution of the means of the purchaser. Surely such a subject as this is well worth the pains of inquiry. Parliament cannot be better occupied than in receiving evidence upon the condition of the people. And we cannot rate too highly, either for the present or the future, the importance of such an investigation in checking and correcting, or, it may be, in confirming the doctrines of political economy, as they are usually quoted and received.

Some, no doubt, may be interested in opposing such an inquiry. We have little expectation that the Manchester men will accede to any such reasonable proposal; for, as we have already said, we regard this outcry of theirs for wild and sweeping reform simply as a ruse to withdraw the attention of the public from the disastrous effects of their lauded commercial system. Lord John Russell and his immediate Liberal followers would probably oppose such an inquiry as impious, because casting a doubt on the infallibility of Whig tradition. But we are convinced that sensible and moderate men, of every shade of opinion, would rejoice to see this vexed question brought to something like a practical test; so that, whatever policy England may pursue for the future, it shall at least have for its object that of promoting the welfare and the happiness of the people.

_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

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Footnote 1:

_Notes on the Distribution of Gold throughout the World._ London: JAMES WYLD, 1851.

Footnote 2:

_An Historical Inquiry into the Production and Consumption of the Precious Metals._ By WILLIAM JACOB, Esq., F.R.S. London: 1851.

Footnote 3:

_California: its Past History, its Present Position, its Future Prospects_, p. 77.

Footnote 4:

We leave our readers to form their own opinion of the following passage from Mr Theodore Johnson’s “Sights in the Gold Region:”—Speaking of the _Padres_ of the old mission of San Francisco Dolores, he says, “That these priests were cognisant of the abundance of the precious metal at that period is now well known; but they were members of the extraordinary society of the Jesuits, which, jealous of its all-pervading influence, and dreading the effect of a large Protestant emigration to the western as well as to the eastern shores of America, applied its powerful injunctions of secresy to the members of the order; and their faithful obedience, during so long a period, is another proof both of the strength and the danger of their organisation.”—(Second Edition, p. 104.)

Footnote 5:

Reports of British Association for 1849—Appendix, p. 63.

Footnote 6:

JACOB, i. chap. x. _passim_.

Footnote 7:

Murchison—Reports of British Association, 1849, (Appendix, pp. 61, 62.)

Footnote 8:

“In the Temeswar Bannat the washings were performed exclusively by the gypsies, who display great skill in finding it. They dig chiefly on the _banks_ of the river Nera, where more gold is found than in the bottom of the stream.”—JACOB, i. p. 245.

Footnote 9:

_A Ride over the Rocky Mountains._ By the Hon. HENRY J. COKE, p. 359.

Footnote 10:

_Sights in the Gold Region, and Scenes by the Way._ By THEODORE J. JOHNSON. Second Edition. New York, 1850.

Footnote 11:

Quoted by JACOB, vol. i. pp. 56, 57.

Footnote 12:

_The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints_, (a cotemporary history,) p. 227. London, 1851.

Footnote 13:

JACOB, i. p. 246, note.

Footnote 14:

JACOB, ii. pp. 263, 264, note.

Footnote 15:

A pood is 36 lb. Russian, of which 100 are about 90 English avoirdupois; and a solotnik, 1–96th of a Russian pound, or about 65½ troy grains.

Footnote 16:

ROSE, _Reise nach dem Ural_, &c., chaps. ii. iv. viii. Berlin, 1842.

Footnote 17:

Compare WYLD, p. 26, with JACOB, ii. pp. 62, 167.

Footnote 18:

JACOB, i. p. 56. In copying the above extract from Diodorus, we inserted the word _quartz_ in brackets after his word “marble,” under the impression that the old Egyptian mines were, like the similar ones in California, really situated in veins of quartz, and not of marble. We have since communicated with a gentleman who, about twenty years ago, accompanied M. Linant, a French engineer in the service of Mehemet Ali, to examine these mines, and he informs us that the gold was really found in _quartz veins_ traversing a black slaty rock. The locality, as may be seen in Sharpe’s _Chronology and Geography of Ancient Egypt_, plate 10, is in the Eastern Desert, about the middle of the great bend of the Nile, and about the 21st parallel. The samples of rock brought down by M. Linant were considered rich enough to justify the despatch of a body of miners, who were subsequently attacked by the natives, and forced to abandon the place. A strong government would overcome this difficulty; and modern modes of crushing and extraction might possibly render the mines more productive than ever. A very interesting account of these mines is to be found in a work by Quatremere de Quincy—“_Notice des Pays voisins de l’Egypte_.”

Footnote 19:

_Ibid._ p. 247.

Footnote 20:

FOURNET, _Etudes sur les Depôts Metallifers_, p. 167.

Footnote 21:

The reader will be interested by satisfying himself of this fact, so peculiar to Victoria, and so favourable to it as a place of settlement. He will find it pictured before his eye in the newly-published small and cheap, but beautifully executed, _School Physical Atlas_ of Mr Keith Johnston.

Footnote 22:

JACOB, i. p. 55.

Footnote 23:

_Ibid._ ii. p. 267.

Footnote 24:

FOURNET, p. 169.

Footnote 25:

Cortes invaded Mexico in 1519; Pizarro landed in Peru in 1527; and Potosi was discovered in 1545.

Footnote 26:

ROSE, _Reise nach dem Ural_, i. 555–7.

Footnote 27:

To some of our readers this remark may call to mind the beautiful process of Mr Lee Pattinson, of Newcastle, for refining lead, by which so much more silver is now extracted from all our lead ores, and brought to market.

Footnote 28:

_Commercial Dictionary_, edit. 1847, p. 1056.

Footnote 29:

Quoted in JOHNSTON’S _Notes on North America_, vol. ii. pp. 216, 217.

Footnote 30:

_The Life and Letters of Barthold George Niebuhr, with Essays on his Character and Influence._ By the Chevalier BUNSEN and Professors BRANDIS and LOEBALL. In 2 vols.

Footnote 31:

Every one remembers that Goethe’s last words are said to have been, “More Light;” and perhaps what has occurred in the text may be supposed a plagiarism from those words. But, in fact, nothing is more common than the craving and demand for light a little before death. Let any consult his own sad experience in the last moments of those whose gradual close he has watched and tended. What more frequent than a prayer to open the shutters and let in the sun? What complaint more repeated, and more touching, than “that it is growing dark?” I once knew a sufferer—who did not then seem in immediate danger—suddenly order the sick room to be lit up as if for a gala. When this was told to the physician, he said gravely, “No worse sign.”

Footnote 32:

_Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone._ By ANGUS B. REACH. London: 1852.

Footnote 33:

Mr Spackman, in his _Analysis of the Occupations of the People_, states the whole number of persons employed in manufactures of every kind at 1,440,908; the total

annual value of their production in 1841, at £187,184,292 Whereof, for the Home Trade, £128,600,000 For the Foreign Trade, 58,584,292 ———————————— 187,184,292

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.