BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCI.MARCH, 1849.Vol. LXV.
CONTENTS.
EDINBURGH:
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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCI.MARCH, 1849.Vol. LXV.
SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE.[1]
There are three reasons why the second edition of a good book, upon an advancing branch of knowledge, should be better than the first. The author, however conversant he may have been with the subject when he wrote his book, is always more thoroughly read in it—supposing him a worthy instructor of the public—his opinions more carefully digested, and more fully matured, when a second edition is called for. Then he has had time to reconsider, and, if necessary, remodel his plan—adding here, retrenching there—introducing new subject-matter in one place, and leaving out, in another, topics which he had previously treated of with more or less detail. And, lastly, the knowledge itself has advanced. New ideas, which in the interval have established themselves, find a necessary place in the new issue; facts and hypotheses which have been proved unsound drop naturally out of his pages; and, on the whole, the later work exhibits a nearer approach to that truthful summit, on which the eyes of all the advancers of knowledge are supposed evermore to rest.
For all these reasons, the second edition of the Book of the Farm is better than the first. The opinions of the author have been reconsidered and materially improved—especially in reference to scientific points; the arrangement has been simplified, and the whole book condensed, by the exclusion of those descriptions of machinery which properly belong to the department of agricultural mechanics, and which we believe are about to be published as a separate work; and the strides which practical agriculture has taken during the last ten years, and the topics which have chiefly arrested attention, are considered with the aid of the better lights we now possess.
Of all the arts of life, there is none which draws its knowledge from so great a variety of fountains as practical agriculture. Every branch of human knowledge is mutually connected—we may say interwoven with—and throws light upon, or is enlightened by, every other. But none of those which largely contribute to the maintenance of social life, and conduce to the power and stability of states, is so varied in its demands upon the results of intellectual inquiry, as husbandry,—or rural economy in its largest sense.
Look at that magnificent ship, which cleaves the waters, now trusting to her canvass and wafted by favouring breezes; now, despite the fiercest gales, paddling her triumphant way over hill and valley, precipice and ravine, which the raging sea, out of her fertile materials, is every moment fashioning beneath her feet. Is there any product of human art in which more intellect is embodied than in this piece of living mechanism? The timber can tell of the axe of the woodman on far-distant hills, and of the toils of many craftsmen in fitting it for its present purpose. The iron of the researches of the mineralogist, the laborious skill of the miner, the alchemy of the smelter, the wonders of the tilt-hammer, the ingenuity of the mechanist, and the almost inconceivable and mathematical nicety by which its various portions are fitted to each other, and, like the muscles and sinews of the human body, made to play together for a purpose previously contemplated—an uninstructed man might almost say, previously agreed upon among themselves. The steam, of what hidden secrets of nature!—the mysteries of heat, which could not hide themselves from the searching genius of Black,—the chemistry of water, which the ever-pondering mind of Watt compelled from unwilling nature,—the endless contrivances by which its fierce power was tamed to most submissive obedience in the workshops of Soho. The compass may for a moment carry us back to the fabled mountains of our infancy, in which the hidden loadstone attracted the fated vessel to its ruin; but it brings us forward again to the truer marvels of modern magnetism, and to the intellect which has been expended in keeping the needle true to the pole-star in the iron boat, where, surrounded by metallic influences, countless attractions are incessantly soliciting it to deviate. And when, as the mid-day sun mounts to the zenith, the sextant and the quicksilver appear, how does it flash upon us that modern navigation is the child of astronomy; and that the mind embodied in the latest Rossian telescope is part and parcel of the inappreciable mass of thought to which, "walking the waters as a thing of life," that huge steam-frigate owes its being!
What a concentration of varied knowledge is seen in this single work of art! From how many sources has this knowledge come!—how many diverse pursuits or sciences have yielded their necessary quota to the common stock!—how many varied talents have been put under contribution to contrive its many parts, and put them fittingly together!
But, to the pursuits of the humble farmer, more aids still contribute than to those of the dauntless navigator. His patient and quiet life on land is as dependent upon varied knowledge, draws its instruction from as many sources, and is more bound up in visible union with all the branches of human science, than even the active and stirring life of the dweller on the sea.
Some of our journal writers are accustomed to ridicule the results of agricultural skill; to undervalue our successful field improvements; to laugh at Smithfield Christmas cattle, and at the exhibitions of our great annual shows. In thoughtlessness, often in ignorance, they write, and always for a temporary effect, which our progressing agriculture can well afford to pass by.
But we ask our rural reader to turn up the first volume of the Book of the Farm, and to cast his eye for a moment on the triad of beautiful shorthorns represented in the sixth plate; or on the magnificent stallion of the fourth plate, or on the graceful sheep of the seventh. We pass over the points in which, to the educated eye, their beauty consists; we dismiss, for the present, all consideration of their perfection as well-bred animals, and their fitness for the special purposes for which they have been reared. We wish him to tell us, if he can, how much mind has gone to the breeding, rearing, and feeding of these animals—how many varied branches of knowledge have lent their aid to this apparently simple and un-imposing result.
The food on which they have been brought up has been gathered from the soil—the grass, the hay, the root crops, the linseed, the barley, the oats. And how much intellect, from the earliest dawn of civilisation, has been lavished upon the soil!—how many branches of knowledge are at this moment uniting their strength to develop its latent capabilities! Geology yields the raw materials upon which, in after ages, the toils of the husbandman are expended. She explains what are the variations in the natural quality of these materials; how such variations have arisen; where they lead to increased, and where to diminished fertility; how and where the still living rocks may contribute to the improvement of the dead earth which has been formed from them; and how, in some apparently insecure regions, the unsleeping volcano showers over the land, at varying periods, the elements of an endless fertility. Mineralogy lends her aid to unravel the origin, and nature, and wants, and capabilities of the soil; and, as the handmaid and willing follower of geology, dresses and classes the fragments which geology has let fall from her magnificent formations. But chemistry, especially, exhausts herself in the cause of the husbandman. No branch of rural art, as we shall see, is beyond her province and control. All that the soil originally derives from geologic and mineral materials, chemistry investigates; all that these substances naturally become, all that they ought to yield, how they may be persuaded to yield it; by what changes this is to be brought about; by means of what agencies, and how applied, such changes are to be induced:—chemistry busies herself with all this, and labours in some sense to complete, for the purposes of rural art, the information which geology and mineralogy had begun.
Upon the soil the plant grows. What a wonder and a mystery is the plant! A living, and growing, and breathing existence, that speaks silently to the eye, and to the sense of touch, and to the sense of smell—speaks kindly to man, and soothingly, and appeals to his reasoning powers—but is mute to the most open and wakeful of all his senses, and by no verbal speech reveals the secrets with which its full vessels are bursting. How many wise heads have watched, and tended, and studied it—the humble plant—interpreting its smallest movements, the meaning of every change of hue upon its leaves and flowers, and gathering profoundest wisdom from its fixed and voiceless life! To what new sciences has this study led the way! Botany never wearies in gathering and classifying; and of modern giants, Linnæus, and Jussieu, and Decandolle, and Brown, and Lindley, and Hooker, and Schleiden, have given their best years to unfold and perfect it. Alongside of descriptive and systematic botany has sprung up the allied branch of Structural Physiology, and the use of the microscope has added to this the younger sister Histology; while these two together, calling in the aid of chemistry, have built up the further departments of Chemical Physiology and Chemical Histology—departments too numerous, too profound in their research, and too special in their several niceties of observation, for one head clearly to comprehend and limit them.
And on the plant as it grows, and as a perfect whole, chemistry expends entire and most gifted intellectual lives. Of what the plant consists, whence it draws its subsistence, how it takes it in—in what form, in what quantity, at what period of the day—how the air feeds it, how the soil sustains it, why it grows well here and badly there—what are the nature, composition, action, and special influences of manures—where and when, and of what kind, they should be applied to the plant—how this or that effect is to be produced by them, and this or that defect remedied.
But the life of the plant is an unravelled thread. The steam-frigate appears to live, and thunders as she moves, breathing fire and smoke. But the still life of the plant awes and subdues more than all this. Man may forcibly obstruct the path of the growing twig, but it turns quietly aside and moves patiently on. The dead iron and wood, and the forceful steam, all obey man's will—his intellect overmasters their stubbornness, and tames them into crouching slaves—but the life of the plant defies him. That life he can extinguish; but to use the living plant he must obey it, and study its wants and tendencies. How vastly easier to achieve a boastful triumph over the most stubborn mineral matter, than to mould to man's will the humblest flower that grows!
And each new plant brings with it new conditions of life, new wants, new virtues, new uses, new whims, if we may so speak, to be humoured. The iron, and the timber, and the brass are always one and the same to the mechanist; but with the constitution of each new plant, and its habits, a new series of difficulties opens up to the cultivator, which only time and experience, and much study, can overcome.
But mechanics also exert much influence upon the culture of the soil, and the rearing of useful plants. And though the greatest achievements of mechanical skill were not first made on her behalf, yet even the steam-engine may be said to have become auxiliary to agriculture; and the thousand ingenious implements which Northampton and York exhibited at their recent anniversaries, showed in how many quarters, and to how large an extent, the purely mechanical and constructive arts are expending their strength in promoting her cause.
On meteorology, which studies the aërial meteors—registers, tabulates, and gives even a local habitation and a form to winds, hurricanes, and typhoons—the progress of the navigator much depends. They hinder or hasten his progress; but he overcomes them at last. But atmospheric changes are vital things to the plant and to the soil. Where no rain falls, the plant withers and dies. If too much falls, it becomes sickly, and fails to yield a profitable crop. If it falls too frequently, though not in too large quantity on the whole, one plant luxuriates and rejoices in the genial season, while another with difficulty produces a half return. If it falls at unseasonable times, the seed is denied admission into the ground in spring, or the harvest refuses to ripen in the autumn.
So the warmth and the sunshine, and the evening dews and the fogs, and the electric condition of the air—its transparency and its varying weight—and prevailing winds and hoar-frosts, and blights and hail-storms, and the influence of the heavenly bodies on all these conditions—with all these things the interests of the plant and the soil demand that scientific agriculture should occupy herself. On every single branch of knowledge to which we have alluded, the power and skill profitably to influence the plant are dependent.
And for what purpose does the plant spring up, the soil feed and nourish it, and the blessed sun mature its seeds? To adorn, no doubt, the surface of the beautiful earth, and to keep alive and propagate its species; but principally to nourish the animal races which supply food and yield their service to man. And, upon the study of this nurture and feeding of the animal races, how much intellect has been expended! Has the stoker who heaps coals upon the engine fire, and turns one tap occasionally to maintain the water-level in the boiler, or another to give passage to the steam—and thus keeps the pile-driver, or the coal-drawer, or the tin mine, or the locomotive, or the steam-boat, or the colossal pumps of the Haarlem lake, in easy and continuous operation—has he, or has the man who curiously watches his operations—have either of them any idea of the long days of intellectual toil—of the sleepless nights, during which invention was on the rack—of the mental dejection and throes of suffering, under which new thoughts were born—of the lives of martyred devotion which have been sacrificed, while, or in order that the machine, which is so obediently simple and easily managed, was or might be brought to its present perfection? Yet all this has been, and has been suffered by men now gone, though the ignorance of the humble workman, little more thoughtful than the iron he works with, fails either to feel or to understand it.
And so too often it is with you who feed, and with you who look at the simple process of feeding stock. As the turnip and the barley, and the oats and the linseed, and the beans, are placed before the almost perfect short-horn, or the graceful Ayrshire, or the untamed West Highlander, or the stately stallion, or the well-bred Leicester or Cheviot ram, or the cushioned and padded Berkshire porker—how little do you know or think of the science, and long skill, and intellectual labour, which have been expended in preparing what is to you so simple! It is not without and beyond the ranks of the agricultural community only that we need look for those who lessen the intellectual character of rural industry, and of the rural life. Too many of our practical men, even of high pretensions, are themselves only the stokers of the agricultural machine; and, like ungrateful and degenerate children, in their ignorance deny the head of the mother that bred and fed them.[2]
What are the functions of the animals you rear—what the composition of their several parts—what the nature of the food they require—what the purposes it serves—what the proportions in which this or that kind of food ought to be given—what the changes, in the kind and proportion, to adapt it to the special habits and constitution of the animal, and the purposes for which it is fed? Are these questions deep? Yet they have all been thought over and long considered, and discussed and disputed about, and volumes have been written upon them; and the chemist, and the physiologist, and the anatomist have, unknown to you, all laboured zealously and without wearying, in your service. And what you now find so simple only proves how much their sciences have done for you. They have fitted the machinery together, you but throw in the fuel and keep up the steam.
With the rearing of stock, and the improving of breeds, practical men are, or fancy themselves, all more or less conversant. How much warm and persevering genius, guided by purely scientific principles, has been expended upon our improved shorthorns and Leicesters! Are the whole lives of a Collins, or a Bakewell, or a Bates, nothing to have been devoted to pursuits like this? That these were practical men, and not scientific, and that what they have done is not a debt due by agriculture to science, is the saying of many. Men who have never read a book can do, by imitation, what the patient services and skill of other men discovered, and perfected, and simplified. But in this they are only stokers. The improvers were sound and cautious experimental physiologists, guided by the most fixed and certain principles of animal physiology; and it is the results at which these men arrived that have become the household words of the stokers of our day, who call them practice in opposition to science. If science could forget her high duties to the Deity, and to the human race, she might leave you and your art to your own devices.
Need we allude to the conditions of animal life—in a state of health, and in a state of disease; to the varied constitutions of different races and varieties; to the several adaptations of food, warmth, and shelter which these demand; and to the extensive course of study which is now required to furnish the necessary resources to the accomplished veterinary surgeon? Yet would any breeder be safe for a moment to invest his money in stock, in a country and climate like ours, had he not, either in books, or in his own head, or in that of a neighbouring veterinarian, the results at which the long study of these branches of knowledge, in connexion with animal health, had discovered and established?
We pursue this topic no further at present. We fearlessly assert—we believe that we have shown—that as much intellect has been scientifically expended in elucidating and perfecting the various operations of rural life, by which those magnificent cattle have been produced by art, as has gone to the elaboration of that wonderful wave-subduing ship. The vulgar mind, awed by bulk and sound, and visible emblems of thought, may dissent—may say that we have not so much to show for it. But the laws of life are sought for and studied—they are not made by science. The Deity has forbidden human skill to develop a sheep into an elephant. Living materials, as we have said, are not plastic like wood and iron; and to change the constitution and character of a breed of animals may require as great and as long-continued an exercise of inventive thought as to perfect an imposing piece of machinery. The real worth of a scientific result is the amount of mind expended in arriving at it, as the real height of an animal in the scale of organisation is measured by the proportionate size of its brain.
But we have our more palpable and sense-satisfying triumphs too. Look at that wide valley, with its snow-clad summits at a distance on either hand, and its glassy river flowing, cribbed and confined, in the lowest bottom. Smiling fields, and well-trimmed hedge-rows, and sheltering plantations, and comfortable dwellings, and a busy population, and abundant cattle, cover its undulating slopes. For miles industrious plenty spreads over a country which the river formerly usurped, and the lake covered, and the rush tufted over, and bog and mossy heath and perennial fogs and drizzling rains rendered inhospitable and chill. But mechanics has chained the river, and drained the lakes, and bogs, and clayey bottoms; and giving thus scope to the application of all the varied practical rules to which science has led, the natural climate has been subdued, disease extirpated, and rich and fertile and happy homes scattered over the ancient waste.
Turn to another country, and a river flows deeply through an arid and desolate plain. Mechanics lifts its waters from their depths, and from a thousand artificial channels directs them over the parched surface. It is as if an enchanter's wand had been stretched over it—the green herbage and the waving corn, companied by all the industries of rural life, spring up as they advance.
Another country, and a green oasis presents itself, busy with life, in the midst of a desert and sandy plain. Do natural springs here gush up, as in the ancient oasis of the Libyan wilderness? It is another of the triumphs of human industry, guided by human thought. Geology, and her sister sciences, are here the pioneers of rural life and fixed habitations. The seat of hidden waters at vast depths was discovered by her. Under her directions mechanics has bored to their sources, and their gushing abundance now spreads fertility around.
Such are more sensible and larger triumphs of progressing rural economy—such as man may well boast of, not only in themselves, but in their consequences; and they may take their place with the gigantic vessel of war, as magnificent results of intellectual effort.
But it is after these first ruder though more imposing conquests over nature have been made, that the demand for mind, for applied science, becomes more frequent, and the results of its application less perceptible. And it is because, in ordinary husbandry, we have not always before us the striking illustrations which arrest the vulgar eye, that prevailing ignorance persists in denying its obligations to scientific research.
The waters which descend from a chain of hills become a striking feature in the geography of a country, when they happen to unite together into a large and magnificent river: they escape unseen and unnoticed if, keeping apart, they flow in countless tiny streamlets to the sea. Yet, thus disunited, they may carry fertility over a whole region, like the Nile when it overflows its banks, or as the river of Damascus straying among its many gardens; while the waters of the great river may only refresh and fertilise its own narrow margins, as the Murray and the Darling do in South Australia, or the deep-bedded rivers of Southern Africa.
Thus much we have devoted to the introductory portion of the Book of the Farm. Those of our readers who wish to follow up farther these scientific views may study Johnston's Lectures, and Elements, of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology: and by the way we would commend, for applied science, these works of Johnston's, and for practical knowledge, the book of Stephens, to the special attention of our emigrating fellow-countrymen, of whom so many in their foreign homes are likely to regret the overflowing sources of information on every conceivable topic with which their home literature and home neighbours supplied them.
Let us now take a look at the body of Mr Stephens' work. These are the days of pictorial embellishment—of speaking directly, and plainly, and palpably to the eye. We have accidentally opened the book at the 217th page. What letterpress description could—so briefly we do not say, for that is out of the question—but so graphically and fully, explain the practice of eating off turnips with sheep, and all its appliances of hurdles and nets, and turnip shears, and feeding troughs, and hay racks, as the single woodcut which this page exhibits? And so the practice of bratting and of stelling sheep is illustrated, and all the forms and fashions of stells in high and low countries (pp. 231 to 236;) the pulling, dressing, and storing of turnips, (190 to 195;) the various modes of ploughing, with their ups and downs, and turnings, and crossings, and gatherings, and feerings, and gore furrows, and mould furrows, and broad furrows, and cross furrows, and samcastings, and gaws, and ribs, and rafters, and slices, and crowns, and centres, and a host of other operations and things familiar to the farmer, but the very names and designations of which are Greek to the common English reader. All these the woodcuts explain beautifully and familiarly to the uninitiated readers, and most usefully to the incipient farmer. How is the rural economy of Great Britain and Ireland, in its best forms, stored up, not only for modern and immediate use, but for the understanding of future ages, by these illustrations! We would specify, in addition to those already referred to, the steam-boiling apparatus in page 320; and the taking down of a stack of corn in page 401; and the feeding of the threshing machine in page 406; and the hand-sowing of corn in page 553; and the pickling of wheat, (chaulage of our Gallic neighbours,) page 536; and the measuring of the grain in the barn, &c., page 419; and the full sacks, as they should be, in the barn, in page 423. To the foreigner, how do these pictures speak of English customs, costumes, and usages; to our Trans-atlantic brethren, of the source of those modes and manners which have at once placed them on an elevation in agricultural art, to which 800 years of intellectual struggle had barely sufficed to lift up their fathers and cousins at home; and to the still British colonial emigrant the precise practices, and latest rural improvements, which it will be his interest, at once, and his pride, to introduce into his adopted land!
How would the Scriptores Rei Rusticæ have gained in usefulness in their own time, how immensely in interest in ours, had they been accompanied by such illustrations as these! The clearness of Columella would have been made more transparent, the obscurity of Palladius lessened; and Cato and Varro would have preserved to us the actual living forms, and costumes, and instruments of the ancient Etruscan times, more clearly than the painted tombs are now revealing to the antiquarian the fashions of their feasts, and games, and funereal rites. We have before us the singularly, richly, and extravagantly, yet graphically and most instructively illustrated book of Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica (Basil, 1621.) The woodcuts of the Book of the Farm have induced us to turn it up, and it is with ever new admiration that we turn over its old leaves. It has to us the interest of a child's picture-book; and though, as a chef-d'œuvre of illustrative art, the three hundred woodcuts of Stephens do not approach the book of Agricola, yet what a treasure would the work of Ausonius Popma on the rural implements of the ancients—their instrumenta in its widest sense—have been to us, could it have been illustrated when he wrote (1690) in the style of Agricola, and with the minuteness and fulness of Stephens!
The same desire to render minutely intelligible the whole subject treated of, which these woodcuts show, is manifested in the more solid letterpress of the book. It was said of Columella, by Matthew Gessner, that he discoursed "non ut argumentum simplex quod discere amat, dicendo obscuret, sed ut clarissimâ luce perfundat omnia." Such, the reader feels, must have been the aim of the author of this book. In his descriptions, nothing appears to be omitted; nothing is too minute to be passed over. His book exposes not merely the every-day life, but the very inmost life—the habits, and usages, and instruments of the most humble as well as the most important of the operations of the domestic, equally with the field economy of rural life. We do not know if its effects upon our town population will ever be such as Beza ascribes to that of Columella—
Tu vero, Juni, silvestria rura canendo,
Post te ipsas urbes in tua rura trahis;
but certainly, with a few more woodcuts, it would, in minute and graphic illustration, by prints and letterpress be a most worthy companion to the work of Agricola.
The plan of the book is to give a history of the agricultural year, after the manner of the Roman Palladius and our own old Tucker; and the present volume embraces the operations of the skilful farmer in every kind of husbandry during the winter and spring. But, before we come to the heart of the book, hear what Mr Stephens says about the agricultural learning of our landed gentry:—
"Even though he devote himself to the profession of arms or the law, and thereby confer distinction on himself, if he prefer either to the neglect of agriculture he is rendering himself unfit to undertake the duties of a landlord. To become a soldier or a lawyer, he willingly undergoes initiatory drillings and examinations; but to acquire the duties of a landlord before he becomes one, he considers it quite unnecessary to undergo initiatory tuition. These, he conceives, can be learned at any time, and seems to forget that the conducting of a landed estate is a profession, as difficult of thorough attainment as ordinary soldiership or legal lore. The army is an excellent school for confirming, in the young, principles of honour and habits of discipline; and the bar for giving a clear insight into the principles upon which the rights of property are based, and of the relation betwixt landlord and tenant; but a knowledge of practical agriculture is a weightier matter than either for a landlord, and should not be neglected.
"One evil arising from studying those exciting professions before agriculture is, that, however short may have been the time in acquiring them, it is sufficiently long to create a distaste to learn agriculture afterwards practically—for such a task can only be undertaken, after the turn of life, by enthusiastic minds. But as farming is necessarily the profession of the landowner, it should be learned, theoretically and practically, before his education is finished. If he so incline, he can afterwards enter the army or go to the bar, and the exercise of those professions will not efface the knowledge of agriculture previously acquired. This is the proper course, in my opinion, for every young man destined to become a landowner to pursue, and who is desirous of finding employment as long as he has not to exercise the functions of a landlord. Were this course invariably pursued, the numerous engaging ties of a country life would tend in many to extinguish the kindling desire for any other profession. Such a result would be most advantageous for the country; for only consider the effects of the course pursued at present by landowners. It strikes every one as an incongruity for a country gentleman to be unacquainted with country affairs. Is it not strange that he should require inducements to learn his hereditary profession,—to become familiar with the only business which can enable him to enhance the value of his estate, and increase his income? Does it not infer infatuation to neglect becoming well acquainted with the condition of his tenants, by whose exertions his income is raised, and by which knowledge he might confer happiness on many families, and in ignorance of which he may entail lasting misery on many more? It is in this way too many country gentlemen neglect their moral obligations.
"It is a manifest inconvenience to country gentlemen, when taking a prominent part in county matters without a competent knowledge of agriculture, to be obliged to apologise for not having sufficiently attended to agricultural affairs. Such an avowal is certainly candid, but is anything but creditable to those who have to make it. When elected members of the legislature, it is deplorable to find so many of them so little acquainted with the questions which bear directly or indirectly on agriculture. On these accounts, the tenantry are left to fight their own battles on public questions. Were landowners practically acquainted with agriculture, such painful avowals would be unnecessary, and a familiar acquaintance with agriculture would enable the man of cultivated mind at once to perceive its practical bearing on most public questions."
And what he says respectively of the ignorant and skilful factor or agent is quite as deserving of attention. Not merely whole estates, but in some parts of the island, whole counties lag in arrear through the defective education and knowledge of the agents as a class:—
"A still greater evil, because less personal, arises on consigning the management of valuable estates to the care of men as little acquainted as the landowners themselves with practical agriculture. A factor or agent, in that condition, always affects much zeal for the interest of his employer. Fired by it, and possessing no knowledge to form a sound judgment, he soon discovers something he considers wrong among the poorer tenants. Some rent perhaps is in arrear—the strict terms of the lease have been deviated from—the condition of the tenant seems declining. These are favourable symptoms for a successful contention with him. Instead of interpreting the terms of the lease in a generous spirit, the factor hints that the rent would be better secured through another tenant. Explanation of circumstances affecting the actual condition of the farm, over which he has, perhaps, no control,—the inapplicability, perhaps, of peculiar covenants in the lease to the particular circumstances of the farm—the lease having perhaps been drawn up by a person ignorant of agriculture,—are excuses unavailingly offered to a factor confessedly unacquainted with country affairs, and the result ensues in disputes betwixt him and the tenant. To explanations, the landlord is unwilling to listen, in order to preserve intact the authority of the factor; or, what is still worse, is unable to interfere, because of his own inability to judge of the actual state of the case betwixt himself and the tenant, and, of course, the disputes are left to be settled by the originator of them. Thus commence actions at law,—criminations and recriminations,—much alienation of feeling; and at length a proposal for the settlement of matters, at first perhaps unimportant, by the arbitration of practical men. The tenant is glad to submit to an arbitration to save his money; and in all such disputes, being the weaker party, he suffers most in purse and character. The landlord, who ought to have been the protector, is thus converted into the unconscious oppressor of his tenant.
"A factor acquainted with practical agriculture would conduct himself very differently in the same circumstances. He would endeavour to prevent legitimate differences of opinion on points of management from terminating in disputes, by skilful investigation and well-timed compromise. He would study to uphold the honour of both landlord and tenant. He would at once see whether the terms of the lease were strictly applicable to the circumstances of the farm, and, judging accordingly, would check improper deviations from proper covenants, whilst he would make allowances for inappropriate ones. He would soon discover whether the condition of the tenant was caused more by his own mismanagement than by the nature of the farm he occupies, and he would conform his conduct towards him accordingly—encouraging industry and skill, admonishing indolence, and amending the objectionable circumstances of the farm. Such a factor is always highly respected, and his opinion and judgment are entirely confided in by the tenantry. Mutual kindliness of intercourse, therefore, always subsists betwixt such factors and the tenants. No landlord, whether acquainted or unacquainted with farming, especially in the latter case, should confide the management of his estate to any person less qualified."
These extracts are long, but we feel we are rendering the public a service by placing them where they are likely to be widely read.
We have mentioned above that the Book of the Farm is full of that kind of clear home knowledge of rural life which the emigrant in foreign climes at all resembling our own will delight to read and profit by; but it will not supply the place of previous agricultural training. There is much truth and sound practical advice in the following observations:—
"Let every intending settler, therefore, learn agriculture thoroughly before he emigrates; and, if it suits his taste, time, and arrangements, let him study in the colony the necessarily imperfect system pursued by the settlers, before he embarks in it himself; and the fuller knowledge acquired here will enable him, not only to understand the colonial scheme in a short time, but to select the part of the country best suited to his purpose. But, in truth, he has much higher motives for learning agriculture here; for a thorough acquaintance will enable him to make the best use of inadequate means—to know to apply cheap animal instead of dear manual labour,—to suit the crop to the soil, and the labour to the weather;—to construct appropriate dwellings for himself and family, live stock, and provisions; to superintend every kind of work, and to show a familiar acquaintance with them all. These are qualifications which every emigrant may acquire here, but not in the colonies without a large sacrifice of time—and time to a settler thus spent is equal to a sacrifice of capital, whilst eminent qualifications are equivalent to capital itself. This statement may be stigmatised by agricultural settlers who may have succeeded in amassing fortunes without more knowledge of agriculture than what was picked up by degrees on the spot; but such persons are incompetent judges of a statement like this, never having become properly acquainted with agriculture; and however successful their exertions may have proved, they might have realised larger incomes in the time, or as large in a shorter time, had they brought an intimate acquaintance of the most perfect system of husbandry known, to bear upon the favourable circumstances they occupied."
The early winter is spent in ploughing, which we pass over, and mid-winter chiefly in feeding stock, in threshing out the corn, and in attending to composts and dunghills. Preparing and sowing the seed is the most important business of the spring months, to which succeeds the tending of the lambs and ewes, and the preparation of the land for the fallow or root crops. These several operations are treated of in their most minute details, and the latest methods adopted in reference to every point are fully explained.
In the husbandry of the most advanced portions of our island, the turnip occupies a most important place in the estimation of the skilful farmer, whether his dependence for the means of paying his rent be placed upon the profits of his corn crops or of his cattle.
Of the turnip we have now many varieties—though it is only seventy or eighty years since it was first introduced into field culture—at least in those districts of the island in which its importance is most fully recognised. The history of its introduction into Scotland is thus given by Mr Stephens—
"The history of the turnip, like that of other cultivated plants, is obscure. According to the name given to the swede in this country, it is a native of Sweden; the Italian name Navoni di Laponia intimates an origin in Lapland, and the French names Chou de Lapone, Chou de Suède, indicate an uncertain origin. Sir John Sinclair says, 'I am informed that the swedes were first introduced into Scotland anno 1781-2, on the recommendation of Mr Knox, a native of East Lothian, who had settled at Gottenburg, whence he sent some of the seeds to Dr Hamilton.' There is no doubt the plant was first introduced into Scotland from Sweden, but I believe its introduction was prior to the date mentioned by Sir John Sinclair. The late Mr Airth, Mains of Dunn, Forfarshire, informed me that his father was the first farmer who cultivated swedes in Scotland, from seeds sent him by his eldest son, settled in Gottenburg, when my informant, the youngest son of a large family, was a boy of about ten years of age. Whatever may be the date of its introduction, Mr Airth cultivated them in 1777; and the date is corroborated by the silence preserved by Mr Wight regarding its culture by Mr Airth's father when he undertook the survey of the state of husbandry in Scotland, in 1773, at the request of the Commissioners of the Annexed Estates, and he would not have failed to report so remarkable a circumstance as the culture of so useful a plant, so that it was unknown prior to 1773. Mr Airth sowed the first portion of seed he received in beds in the garden, and transplanted the plants in rows in the field, and succeeded in raising good crops for some years, before sowing the seed directly in the fields."
The weight of a good turnip crop—not of an extraordinary crop, which some persons can succeed in raising, and the accounts of which others only refuse to credit—is a point of much importance; and it is so, not merely to the farmer who possesses it, but to the rural community at large. The conviction that a certain given weight is a fair average crop in well-farmed land, where it does not exceed his own, will be satisfactory to the industrious farmer; while it will serve as a stimulus to those whose soil, or whose skill, have hitherto been unable to raise so large a weight. According to our author—
"A good crop of swede turnips weighs from 30 to 35 tons per imperial acre.
"A good crop of yellow turnips weighs from 30 to 32 tons per imperial acre.
"A good crop of white globe turnips weighs from 30 to 40 tons per imperial acre."
Of all kinds of turnips, therefore, from 30 to 40 tons per imperial acre are a good crop.
The readers of agricultural journals must have observed that, of late years, the results of numerous series of experiments have been published. Among those that have been made upon turnips, he will have noticed also that the crop, in about nine cases out of ten, is under twenty tons; that these crops vary, for the most part, between nine and sixteen tons; and that some farmers are not ashamed to publish to the world, that they are content with crops of from seven to ten tons of turnips an acre. Where is our skill in the management of turnip soils, if, in the average of years, such culture and crops satisfy any considerable number of our more intelligent tenantry? We know that soil, and season, and locality, and numerous accidents, affect the produce of this crop; but the margin between the actual and the possible is far too wide to be accounted for in this way. More skill, more energy, more expenditure in draining, liming, and manuring—a wider diffusion of our practical and scientific agricultural literature—these are the means by which the wide margin is to be narrowed; by which what is in the land is to be brought out of the land, and thereby the farmer made more comfortable, and the landlord more rich.
The subject of sheep and cattle feeding is very important, and very interesting, and our book is rich in materials which would provoke us to discuss it at some length, did our limits admit of it. We must be content, however, with a few desultory extracts.
The following, in regard to sheep feeding upon turnips, is curious, and, in our opinion, requires repetition:—
"A curious and unexpected result was brought to light by Mr Pawlett, and is thus related in his own words,—'Being aware that it was the custom of some sheep-breeders to wash the food,—such as turnips, carrots, and other roots,—for their sheep, I was induced also to try the system; and as I usually act cautiously in adopting any new scheme, generally bringing it down to the true standard of experience, I selected for the trial two lots of lambs. One lot was fed, in the usual manner, on carrots and swedes unwashed; the other lot was fed exactly on the same kinds of food, but the carrots and swedes were washed very clean every day: they were weighed before trial, on the 2d December, and again on the 30th December, 1835. The lambs fed with the unwashed food gained each 7½ lb., and those on the washed gained 4¾ lb. each; which shows that those lambs which were fed in the usual way, without having their food washed, gained the most weight in a month by 2¾ lb. each lamb. There appears to me no advantage in this method of management—indeed animals are fond of licking the earth, particularly if fresh turned up; and a little of it taken into the stomach with the food must be conducive to their health, or nature would not lead them to take it.'"
Another experiment on the fattening properties of different breeds of sheep, under similar treatment, quoted from the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, is also deserving the attention of our readers:—
"Experiments were made in 1844-5 on the Earl of Radnor's farm at Coleshill, on the comparative fattening properties of different breeds of sheep under the same treatment. The sheep consisted of Leicesters, South-downs, half-breds,—a cross between the Cotswold and South-down—and Cotswolds. The sheep, being then lambs, were divided into lots of three each of each breed, and were grazed four months, from 29th August 1844 to 4th January 1845, when they were put on hay and swedes for three months, from 4th January to the 31st of March following. While on grass, the different breeds gained in weight as follows:—
| lb. | lb. | ||
| The Leicesters being | 46 | each, gained | 10½ each. |
| South-downs | 47 | " | 11 |
| Half-breds | 44½ | " | 12 |
| Cotswolds | 56½ | " | 10½" |
It is one of the most delicate qualifications connected with the stock-feeder's art to be able to select that stock, and that variety of it, which, under all the circumstances in which he is placed, will give him the largest return in money—hence every experiment like the above, if well conducted, is deserving of his close attention. At the same time, in rural experiments, more almost than in any other, the number of elements which interfere with the result, and may modify it, is so great, that too much confidence ought not to be placed upon single trials. Repeated results of one kind must be obtained, before a farmer can be justified in spending much money on the faith of them.
In turning to the winter feeding of cattle upon turnips and other food—a subject important enough to justify Mr Stephens in devoting forty of his closely printed pages to it—we are reminded of a character of this book which we like very much, which squares admirably with our own idea of neatness, order, and method, and which we heartily commend to the attention of our farming friends: this is the full and minute description he gives of the duties of every class of servants upon the farm, of the necessity of having these duties regularly and methodically performed, and of the way in which the master may bring this about.
The cattle-man is an important person in the winter feeding of cattle; he therefore commences this section with an account of the duties and conduct of this man. Even his dress he describes; and the following paragraph shows his reason for drawing the young farmer's attention to it:—
"The dress of a cattle-man is worth attending to, as regards its appropriateness for his business. Having so much straw to carry on his back, a bonnet or round-crowned hat is the most convenient head-dress for him; but what is of more importance when he has charge of a bull, is to have his clothes of a sober hue, free of gaudy or strongly-contrasted colours, especially red, as that colour is peculiarly offensive to bulls. It is with red cloth and flags that the bulls in Spain are irritated to action at their celebrated bull-fights. Instances are in my remembrance of bulls turning upon their keepers, not because they were habited in red, but from some strongly contrasted bright colours. It was stated that the keeper of the celebrated bull Sirius, belonging to the late Mr Robertson of Ladykirk, wore a red nightcap on the day the bull attacked and killed him. On walking with a lady across a field, my own bull—the one represented in the plate of the Short-horn Bull, than which a more gentle and generous creature of his kind never existed—made towards us in an excited state; and for his excitement I could ascribe no other cause than the red shawl worn by the lady, for as soon as we left the field he resumed his wonted quietness. I observed him excited, on another occasion, in his hammel, when the cattle-man—an aged man, who had taken charge of him for years—attended him one Sunday forenoon in a new red nightcap, instead of his usual black hat. Be the cause of the disquietude in the animal what it may, it is prudential in a cattle-man to be habited in a sober suit of clothes."
Then, after insisting upon regularity of time in everything he does, following the man through a whole day's work, describing all his operations, and giving figures of all his tools,—his graip, his shovel, his different turnip choppers, his turnip-slicer, his wheel-barrow, his chaff-cutters, his linseed bruisers, and his corn-crushers,—he gives us the following illustration of the necessity of regularity and method, and of the way to secure them:—
"In thus minutely detailing the duties of the cattle-man, my object has been to show you rather how the turnips and fodder should be distributed relatively than absolutely; but whatever hour and minute the cattle-man finds, from experience, he can devote to each portion of his work, you should see that he performs the same operation at the same time every day. By paying strict attention to time, the cattle will be ready for and expect their wonted meals at the appointed times, and will not complain until they arrive. Complaints from his stock should be distressing to every farmer's ears, for he may be assured they will not complain until they feel hunger; and if allowed to hunger they will not only lose condition, but render themselves, by discontent, less capable of acquiring it when the food happens to be fully given. Wherever you hear lowings from cattle, you may safely conclude that matters are conducted there in an irregular manner. The cattle-man's rule is a simple one, and easily remembered,—Give food and fodder to cattle at fixed times, and dispense them in a fixed routine. I had a striking instance of the bad effects of irregular attention to cattle. An old staid labourer was appointed to take charge of cattle, and was quite able and willing to undertake the task. He got his own way at first, as I had observed many labouring men display great ingenuity in arranging their work. Lowings were soon heard from the stock in all quarters, both in and out of doors, which intimated the want of regularity in the cattle-man; whilst the poor creature himself was constantly in a state of bustle and uneasiness. To put an end to this disorderly state of things, I apportioned his entire day's work by his own watch; and on implicitly following the plan, he not only soon satisfied the wants of every animal committed to his charge, but had abundant leisure to lend a hand to anything that required his temporary assistance. His old heart overflowed with gratitude when he found the way of making all his creatures happy; and his kindness to them was so undeviating, they would have done whatever he liked."
And the money profit which this attention to regularity will give, in addition to the satisfaction which attends it, is thus plainly set down:—
"Let us reduce the results of bad management to figures. Suppose you have three sets of beasts, of different ages, each containing 20 beasts—that is, 60 in all—and they get as many turnips as they can eat. Suppose that each of these beasts acquires only half a pound less live weight every day than they would under the most proper management, and this would incur a loss of 30 lbs. a-day of live weight, which, over 180 days of the fattening season, will make the loss amount to 5400 lbs. of live weight; or, according to the common rules of computation, 3240 lbs., or 231 stones, of dead weight at 6s. the stone, £69, 6s.—a sum equal to more than five times the wages received by the cattle-man. The question, then, resolves itself into this—whether it is not for your interest to save this sum annually, by making your cattle-man attend your cattle according to a regular plan, the form of which is in your own power to adopt and pursue?"
We must pass over the entire doctrine of prepared food, which has lately occupied so much attention, and has been so ably advocated by Mr Warner, Mr Marshall, Mr Thompson, and which, among others, has been so successfully practised by our friend Mr Hutton of Sowber Hill in Yorkshire. We only quote, by the way, a curious observation of Mr Robert Stephenson of Whitelaw in East-Lothian:
"'We shall conclude,' he says, 'by relating a singular fact'—and a remarkable one it is, and worth remembering—'that sheep on turnips will consume nearly in proportion to cattle, weight for weight; that is, 10 sheep of 14 lbs. a-quarter, or 40 stones in all, will eat nearly the same quantity of turnips as an ox of 40 stones; but turn the ox to grass, and 6 sheep will be found to consume an equal quantity. This great difference may perhaps,' says Mr Stephenson, and I think truly, 'be accounted for by the practice of sheep cropping the grass much closer and oftener than cattle, and which, of course, prevents its growing so rapidly with them as with cattle.'"
The treatment of farm horses in winter is under the direction of the ploughman, whose duties are first described, after which the system of management and feeding of farm and saddle horses is discussed at a length of thirty pages.
Among other pieces of curious information which our author gives us is the nomenclature of the animals he treats of, at their various ages. This forms a much larger vocabulary than most people imagine, and comprises many words of which four-fifths of our population would be unable to tell the meaning.
Thus, of the sheep he informs us—
"A new-born sheep is called a lamb, and retains the name until weaned from its mother and able to support itself. The generic name is altered according to the sex and state of the animal; when a female it is a ewe-lamb, when a male tup-lamb, and this last is changed to hogg-lamb when it undergoes emasculation.
"After a lamb has been weaned, until the first fleece is shorn from its back, it receives the name of hogg, which is also modified according to the sex and state of the animal, a female being a ewe-hogg, a male a tup-hogg, and a castrated male a wether-hogg. After the first fleece has been shorn, another change is made in the nomenclature; the ewe-hogg then becomes a gimmer, the tup-hogg a shearling-tup, and the wether-hog a dinmont, and these names are retained until the fleece is shorn a second time.
"After the second shearing another change is effected in all these names; the gimmer is then a ewe if she is in lamb, but if not, a barren gimmer and if never put to the ram a eild gimmer. The shearling tup is then a 2-shear tup, and the dinmont is a wether, but more correctly a 2-shear wether.
"A ewe three times shorn is a twinter ewe, (two-winter ewe;) a tup is a 3-shear tup; and a wether still a wether, or more correctly a 3-shear wether—which is an uncommon name among Leicester sheep, as the castrated sheep of that breed are rarely kept to that age.
"A ewe four times shorn is a three winter ewe, or aged ewe; a tup, an aged tup, a name he retains ever after, whatever his age, but they are seldom kept beyond this age; and the wether is now a wether properly so called.
"A tup and ram are synonymous terms.
"A ewe that has borne a lamb, when it fails to be with lamb again is a tup-eill or barren ewe. After a ewe has ceased to give milk she is a yeld-ewe.
"A ewe when removed from the breeding flock is a draft ewe, whatever her age may be; gimmers put aside as unfit for breeding are draft gimmers, and the lambs, dinmonts or wethers, drafted out of the fat or young stock are sheddings, tails, or drafts.
"In England a somewhat different nomenclature prevails. Sheep bear the name of lamb until eight months old, after which they are ewe and wether teggs until once clipped. Gimmers are theares until they bear the first lamb, when they are ewes of 4-teeth, next year ewes of 6-teeth, and the year after full-mouthed ewes. Dinmonts are called shear hoggs until shorn of the fleece, when they are 2-shear wethers, and ever after are wethers."
The names of cattle are a little less complicated.
"The names given to cattle at their various ages are these:—A new-born animal of the ox-tribe is called a calf, a male being a bull-calf, a female a quey-calf, heifer-calf, or cow-calf; and a castrated male calf is a stot-calf, or simply a calf. Calf is applied to all young cattle until they attain one year old, when they are year-olds or yearlings—year-old bull, year-old quey or heifer, year-old stot. Stot, in some places, is a bull of any age.
"In another year they are 2-year old bull, 2-year-old quey or heifer, 2-year-old-stot or steer. In England females are stirks from calves to 2-year-old, and males steers; in Scotland both young male and females are stirks. The next year they are 3-year-old bull, in England 3-year-old female a heifer, in Scotland a 3-year-old quey, and a male is a 3-year-old stot or steer.
"When a quey bears a calf, it is a cow, both in Scotland and England. Next year the bulls are aged; the cows retain the name ever after, and the stots or steers are oxen, which they continue to be to any age. A cow or quey that has received the bull is served or bulled, and is then in calf, and in that state these are in England in-calvers. A cow that suffers abortion slips its calf. A cow that has either missed being in calf, or has slipped calf, is eill; and one that has gone dry of milk is a yeld-cow. A cow giving milk is a milk or milch-cow. When two calves are born at one birth, they are twins; if three, trins. A quey calf of twins of bull and quey calves, is a free martin, and never produces young, but exhibits no marks of a hybrid or mule.
"Cattle, black cattle, horned cattle, and neat cattle, are all generic names for the ox tribe, and the term beast is a synonyme.
"An ox without horns is dodded or humbled.
"A castrated bull is a segg. A quey-calf whose ovaries have been obliterated, to prevent her breeding, is a spayed heifer or quey."
Those of the horse are fewer, and more generally known—
"The names commonly given to the different states of the horse are these:—The new-born one is called a foal, the male being a colt foal, and the female a filly foal. After being weaned, the foals are called simply colt or filly, according to the sex, which the colt retains until broken in for work, when he is a horse or gelding which he retains all his life; and the filly is then changed into mare. When the colt is not castrated he is an entire colt; which name he retains until he serves mares, when he is a stallion or entire horse; when castrated he is a gelding; and it is in this state that he is chiefly worked. A mare, when served, is said to be covered by or stinted to a particular stallion; and after she has borne a foal she is a brood mare, until she ceases to bear, when she is a barren mare or eill mare; and when dry of milk, she is yeld. A mare, while big with young, is in foal. Old stallions are never castrated."
Those of the pig are as follows—
"When new-born, they are called sucking pigs, or simply pigs; and the male is a boar pig, the female sow pig. A castrated male, after it is weaned, is a shot or hog. Hog is the name mostly used by naturalists, and very frequently by writers on agriculture; but, as it sounds so like the name given to young sheep, (hogg,) I shall always use the terms pig and swine for the sake of distinction. The term hog is said to be derived from a Hebrew noun, signifying 'to have narrow eyes,' a feature quite characteristic of this species of animal. A spayed female is a cut sow pig. As long as both sorts of cut pigs are small and young, they are porkers or porklings. A female that has not been cut, and before it bears young, is an open sow; and an entire male, after being weaned, is always a boar or brawn. A cut boar is a brawner. A female that has taken the boar is said to be lined; when bearing young she is a brood sow; and when she has brought forth pigs she has littered or farrowed, and her family of pigs at one birth form a litter or farrow of pigs."
The diseases of cattle, horses, pigs, and poultry, are treated of—their management in disease, that is, as well as in health. And it is one of the merits of Mr Stephens that he has taken such pains in getting up his different subjects—that he seems as much at home in one department of his art as in another; and we follow him with equal confidence in his description of field operations, of servant-choosing and managing, of cattle-buying, tending, breeding, feeding, butchering, and even cooking and eating—for he is cunning in these last points also.
His great predecessor Tucker prided himself, in his "Five hundred points," in mixing up huswifry with husbandry:—
"In husbandry matters, where Pilcrow[3] ye find,
That verse appertaineth to Huswif'ry kind;
So have ye more lessons, if there ye look well,
Than huswif'ry book doth utter or tell."
Following Tucker's example, our author scatters here and there throughout his book much useful information for the farmer's wife; and for her especial use, no doubt, he has drawn up his curious and interesting chapter on the treatment of fowls in winter. To show how minute his knowledge is upon this point, and how implicitly therefore he may be trusted in greater matters, we quote the following:—
"Every yellow-legged chicken should be used, whether male or female—their flesh never being so fine as the others." "Young fowls may either be roasted or boiled, the male making the best roasted, and the female the neatest boiled dish." "The criterion of a fat hen, when alive, is a plump breast, and the rump feeling thick, fat, and firm, on being handled laterally between the finger and thumb."
"Of a fat goose the mark is, plumpness of muscle over the breast, and thickness of rump when alive; and in addition, when dead and plucked, of a uniform covering of white fat under a fine skin on the breast." "Geese are always roasted in Britain, though a boiled goose is not an uncommon dish in Ireland; and their flesh is certainly much heightened in flavour by a stuffing of onions, and an accompaniment of apple sauce."
We suppose a boiled goose must be especially tasteless, as we once knew an old schoolmaster on the North Tyne, whose very stupid pupils were always christened boiled geese.
The threshing and winnowing of grain, which forms so important a part of the winter operations of a farm, naturally lead our author to describe and figure the different species of corn plants and their varieties, and to discuss their several nutritive values, the geographical range and distribution of each, and the special uses or qualities of the different varieties.
Widely spread and known for so many ages, the home or native country of our cereal plants is not only unknown, but some suppose the several species, like the varieties of the human race, to have all sprung from a common stock.
"It is a very remarkable circumstance, as observed by Dr Lindley, that the native country of wheat, oats, barley, and rye should be entirely unknown; for although oats and barley were found by Colonel Chesney, apparently wild, on the banks of the Euphrates, it is doubtful whether they were not the remains of cultivation. This has led to an opinion, on the part of some persons, that all our cereal plants are artificial productions, obtained accidentally, but retaining their habits, which have become fixed in the course of ages."
Whatever may be the original source of our known species of grain, and of their numerous varieties, it cannot be doubted that their existence, at the present time, is a great blessing to man. Of wheat there are upwards of a hundred and fifty known varieties, of barley upwards of thirty, and of oats about sixty. While the different species—wheat, barley, and oats—are each specially confined to large but limited regions of the earth's surface, the different varieties adapt themselves to the varied conditions of soil and climate which exist within the natural geographical region of each, and to the different uses for which each species is intended to be employed.
Thus the influence of variety upon the adaptation of the oat to the soil, climate, and wants of a given locality, is shown by the following observations:—
"The Siberian oat is cultivated in the poorer soils and higher districts, resists the force of the wind, and yields a grain well adapted for the support of farm-horses. The straw is fine and pliable, and makes an excellent dry fodder for cattle and horses, the saccharine matter in the joints being very sensible to the taste. It comes early to maturity, and hence its name."
The Tartarian oat, from the peculiarity of its form, and from its "possessing a beard, is of such a hardy nature as to thrive in soils and climates where the other grains cannot be raised. It is much cultivated in England, and not at all in Scotland. It is a coarse grain, more fit for horse-food than to make into meal. The grain is dark coloured and awny; the straw coarse, harsh, brittle, and rather short."
The reader will see from this extract that the English "food for horses" is, in reality, not the same thing as the "chief o' Scotia's food;" and that a little agricultural knowledge would have prevented Dr Johnson from exhibiting, in the same sentence, an example of both his ignorance and his venom.
Variety affects appearance and quality; and how these are to be consulted in reference to the market in which the grain is to be sold, may be gathered from the following:—
"When wheat is quite opaque, indicating not the least translucency, it is in the best state for yielding the finest flour—such flour as confectioners use for pastry; and in this state it will be eagerly purchased by them at a large price. Wheat in this state contains the largest proportion of fecula or starch, and is therefore best suited to the starch-maker, as well as the confectioner. On the other hand, when wheat is translucent, hard, and flinty, it is better suited to the common baker than the confectioner and starch manufacturer, as affording what is called strong flour, that rises boldly with yeast into a spongy dough. Bakers will, therefore, give more for good wheat in this state than in the opaque; but for bread of finest quality the flour should be fine as well as strong, and therefore a mixture of the two conditions of wheat is best suited for making the best quality of bread. Bakers, when they purchase their own wheat, are in the habit of mixing wheat which respectively possesses those qualities; and millers who are in the habit of supplying bakers with flour, mix different kinds of wheat, and grind them together for their use. Some sorts of wheat naturally possess both these properties, and on that account are great favourites with bakers, though not so with confectioners; and, I presume, to this mixed property is to be ascribed the great and lasting popularity which Hunter's white wheat has so long enjoyed. We hear also of 'high mixed' Danzig wheat, which has been so mixed for the purpose, and is in high repute amongst bakers. Generally speaking, the purest coloured white wheat indicates most opacity, and, of course, yields the finest flour; and red wheat is most flinty, and therefore yields the strongest flour: a translucent red wheat will yield stronger flour than a translucent white wheat, and yet a red wheat never realises so high a price in the market as white—partly because it contains a larger proportion of refuse in the grinding, but chiefly because it yields less fine flour, that is, starch."
In regard to wheat, it has been supposed, that the qualities referred to in the above extract, as especially fitting certain varieties for the use of the confectioner, &c., were owing to the existence of a larger quantity of gluten in these kinds of grain. Chemical inquiry has, however, nearly dissipated that idea, and with it certain erroneous opinions, previously entertained, as to their superior nutritive value. Climate and physiological constitution induce differences in our vegetable productions, which chemical research may detect and explain, but may never be able to remove or entirely control.
The bran, or external covering of the grain of wheat, has recently also been the subject of scientific and economical investigation. It has been proved, by the researches of Johnston, confirmed by those of Miller and others, that the bran of wheat, though less readily digestible, contains more nutritive matter than the white interior of the grain. Brown, or household bread, therefore, which contains a portion of the bran, is to be preferred, both for economy and for nutritive quality, to that made of the finest flour.
Upon the economy of mixing potato with wheaten flour, and of home-made bread, Mr Stephens has the following:—
"It is assumed by some people, that a mixture of potatoes amongst wheaten flour renders bread lighter and more wholesome. That it will make bread whiter, I have no doubt; but I have as little doubt that it will render it more insipid, and it is demonstrable that it makes it dearer than wheaten flour. Thus, take a bushel of 'seconds' flour, weighing 56 lbs. at 5s. 6d. A batch of bread, to consist of 21 lbs., will absorb as much water, and require as much yeast and salt, as will yield 7 loaves, of 4 lbs. each, for 2s. 4d., or 4d. per loaf. 'If, instead of 7 lbs. of the flour, the same weight of raw potatoes be substituted, with the hope of saving by the comparatively low price of the latter article, the quantity of bread that will be yielded will be but a trifle more than would have been produced from 14 lbs. of flour only, without the addition of the 7 lbs. of potatoes; for the starch of this root is the only nutritive part, and we have proved that but one-seventh or one-eighth of it is contained in every pound, the remainder being water and innutritive matter. Only 20 lbs. of bread, therefore, instead of 28 lbs., will be obtained; and this, though white, will be comparatively flavourless, and liable to become dry and sour in a few days; whereas, without the latter addition, bread made in private families will keep well for 3 weeks, though, after a fortnight, it begins to deteriorate, especially in the autumn.' The calculation of comparative cost is thus shown:—
Flour, 14 lbs., say at 1¼d. per lb., = 1s. 5½d. Potatoes, 7 lbs., say at 5s. per sack, = 0 2 Yeast and fuel, = 0 4½ 2s. 0d. The yield, 20 lbs., or 5 loaves of 4 lbs. each, will be nearly 5d. each, which is dearer than the wheaten loaves at 4d. each, and the bread, besides, of inferior quality.
"'There are persons who assert—for we have heard them—that there is no economy in baking at home. An accurate and constant attention to the matter, with a close calculation of every week's results for several years—a calculation induced by the sheer love of investigation and experiment—enables us to assure our readers, that a gain is invariably made of from 1½d. to 2d. on the 4 lb. loaf. If all be intrusted to servants, we do not pretend to deny that the waste may neutralise the profit; but, with care and investigation, we pledge our veracity that the saving will prove to be considerable.' These are the observations of a lady well known to me."
| Flour, 14 lbs., say at 1¼d. per lb., | = | 1s. | 5½d. |
| Potatoes, 7 lbs., say at 5s. per sack, | = | 0 | 2 |
| Yeast and fuel, | = | 0 | 4½ |
| 2s. | 0d. |
In the natural history of barley the most remarkable fact is, the high northern latitudes in which it can be successfully cultivated. Not only does it ripen in the Orkney and Shetland and Faroe Islands, but on the shores of the White Sea; and near the North Cape, in north latitude 70°, it thrives and yields nourishment to the inhabitants. In Iceland, in latitude 63° to 66° north, it ceases to ripen, not because the temperature is too low, but because rains fall at an unseasonable time, and thus prevent the filling ear from arriving at maturity.
The oat is distinguished by its remarkable nutritive quality, compared with our other cultivated grains. This has been long known in practice in the northern parts of the island, where it has for ages formed the staple food of the mass of the population, though it was doubted and disputed in the south so much, as almost to render the Scotch ashamed of their national food. Chemistry has recently, however, set the matter at rest, and is gradually bringing oatmeal again into general favour. We believe that the robust health of many fine families of children now fed upon it, in preference to wheaten flour, is a debt they owe, and we trust will not hereafter forget, to chemical science.
On oatmeal Mr Stephens gives us the following information:—
"The portion of the oat crop consumed by man is manufactured into meal. It is never called flour, as the millstones are not set so close in grinding it as when wheat is ground, nor are the stones for grinding oats made of the same material, but most frequently only of sandstone—the old red sandstone or greywacke. Oats, unlike wheat, are always kiln-dried before being ground; and they undergo this process for the purpose of causing the thick husk, in which the substance of the grain is enveloped, to be the more easily ground off, which it is by the stones being set wide asunder; and the husk is blown away, on being winnowed by the fanner, and the grain retained, which is then called groats. The groats are ground by the stones closer set, and yield the meal. The meal is then passed through sieves, to separate the thin husk from the meal. The meal is made in two states: one fine, which is the state best adapted for making into bread, in the form called oat-cake or bannocks; and the other is coarser or rounder ground, and is in the best state for making the common food of the country people—porridge, Scottice, parritch. A difference of custom prevails in respect to the use of these two different states of oatmeal, in different parts of the country, the fine meal being best liked for all purposes in the northern, and the round or coarse meal in the southern counties; but as oat-cake is chiefly eaten in the north, the meal is there made to suit the purpose of bread rather than of porridge; whereas, in the south, bread is made from another grain, and oatmeal is there used only as porridge. There is no doubt that the round meal makes the best porridge, when properly made—that is, seasoned with salt, and boiled as long as to allow the particles to swell and burst, when the porridge becomes a pultaceous mass. So made, with rich milk or cream, few more wholesome dishes can be partaken by any man, or upon which a harder day's work can be wrought. Children of all ranks in Scotland are brought up on this diet, verifying the poet's assertion—
"The halesome parritch, chief o' Scotia's food."
Burns.
Forfarshire has long been famed for the quality of its brose and oat-cake, while the porridge of the Borders has as long been equally famous. It is so everywhere, the sharp soil producing the finest cake-meal, and clay land the best meal for boiling. Of meal from the varieties of the oat cultivated, that of the common Angus oat is the most thrifty for a poor man, though its yield in meal is less in proportion to the bulk of corn."
Much valuable information is given on the management of manure-heaps, and the forming of composts in winter. We especially recommend to the reader's attention section 2043, which is too long to extract. Railways have done much to benefit the farmer: in speaking of composts, our author gives us the following example of a local injury produced by them:—
"In the vicinity of villages where fish are cured and smoked for market, refuse of fish heads and guts make an excellent compost with earth. Near Eyemouth and Burnmouth, on the Berwickshire coast, 30 barrels of fish refuse, with as much earth from the head-ridges as will completely cover the heap, are sufficient for an imperial acre. The barrel contains 30 gallons, and 4 barrels make a cart-load, and the barrel sells for 1s. 6d. From 400 to 600 barrels may be obtained for each farm in the neighbourhood, in the course of the season. Since the opening of the North British railway, the curing of the fish is given up, much to the loss of the farmers in that locality; and the fishermen now send, by the railway, the fish in a fresh state to the larger towns at a distance. Thus, railways produce advantage to some, whilst they cause loss to others. In the northern counties of Scotland, fish refuse is obtained in large quantities during the herring fishing season. On the coast of Cornwall, the pilchard fishing affords a large supply of refuse for composts."
In regard to the calving of cows, to milking, and to the rearing of calves, we have information as full, as minute, and as easily conveyed, as on any of the other subjects which have hitherto engaged our attention. When treating of the diseases to which cows, on calving, are subject, we have been interested with the following case:—
"I may here mention an unaccountable fatality which overtook a short-horn cow of mine, in Forfarshire, immediately after calving. She was an extraordinary milker, giving not less than thirty quarts a-day in summer on grass; but what was more extraordinary, for two calvings the milk never dried up, but continued to flow to the very day of calving, and after that event returned in increased quantity. In the third year she went naturally dry for about one month prior to the day of reckoning; every precaution, however, was taken that the milk should dry up without giving her any uneasiness. She calved in high health, the milk returned as usual in a great flush after calving, but it was impossible to draw it from the udder; not a teat would pass milk, all the four being entirely corded. Quills were first introduced into the teats; and then tubes of larger size were pushed up into the body of the udder. A little milk ran out of only one of them—hope revived; but it soon stopped running, and all the art that could be devised by a skilful shepherd proved unavailing to draw milk from the udder; rubbing and softening the udder with goose-fat, making it warmer with warm water—all to no purpose. To render the case more distressing, there was not a veterinary surgeon in the district. At length the udder inflamed, mortified, and the cow died in the most excruciating agony on the third day, from being in the highest state of health, though not in high condition, as her milking propensity usually kept her lean. No loss of the kind ever affected my mind so much—that nothing could be done to relieve the distress of an animal which could not help itself. I was told afterwards by a shepherd, to whom I related the case, that I should have cut off all the teats, and although the horrid operation would, of course, have destroyed her for a milk cow, she might have been saved for feeding. He had never seen a cow so operated on; but it suggested itself to him in consequence of having been obliged at times to cut off the teats of ewes to save their lives. The suggestion I think is good. The cow was bred by Mr Currie, when at Brandon in Northumberland."
Is there really no remedy for so distressing a case as this but that which his shepherd recommended? He might, for the benefit of his readers, have consulted our friend Professor Dick, whose opinions he so frequently and so deservedly quotes.
The following paragraph is very striking, as showing the cruel absurdities which ignorance will sometimes not only perpetrate, but actually establish, as a kind of custom in a country.
"Tail-ill or Tail-slip.—A very prevalent notion exists in Scotland amongst cattle-men, that when the tail of an ox or of a cow feels soft and supple immediately above the tuft of hair, there is disease in it; and it is called the tail-ill, or tail-slip. The almost invariable remedy is to make large incision with the knife along the under side of the soft part, stuff the wound full of salt and butter, and sometimes tar, and roll it up with a bandage for a few days, and when the application is removed, the animal is declared quite recovered. Now, this notion is an absurdity. There is no such disease as that imputed; and as the poor animal subjected to its cure is thus tormented, the sooner the absurd notion is exposed the better. The notion will not soon be abandoned by the cattle-men; but the farmer ought to forbid the performance of such an operation on any of his cattle without his special permission, and the absurd practice will fall into desuetude."
We have not space for the remainder of this paragraph, which contains Professor Dick's demonstration that no such disease exists as the so-called Tail-ill. Mr Stephens' narrations are more like a tale from the times of witchcraft, when old women were supposed to have the power of bringing disease upon cattle, than of those days of general enlightenment.
In sections 2268 and 2269, there is a recipe for making a cow which has once calved give a full supply of milk all the rest of her life, and which recipe is said to be infallible. This is a bon-bouche, however, which we shall leave our readers to turn up for themselves; and we hope the desire to learn it will induce many of our dairy friends to buy the book.
The following is the mode adopted in fattening calves at Strathaven, in Scotland, where the famous veal has been so long grown, chiefly for the Glasgow market:—
"Strathaven in Scotland has long been famed for rearing good veal for the Glasgow and Edinburgh markets. The dairy farmers there retain the quey calves for maintaining the number of the cows, while they feed the male calves for veal. Their plan is simple, and may be followed anywhere. Milk only is given to the calves, and very seldom with any admixture, and they are not allowed to suck the cows. Some give milk, but sparingly at first, to whet the appetite, and prevent surfeit. The youngest calves get the first drawn milk, or fore-broads, as it is termed, and the older the afterings, even of two or three cows, being the richest portion of the milk. After being three or four weeks old, they get abundance of milk twice a-day. They get plenty of dry litter, fresh air, moderate warmth, and are kept nearly in the dark to check sportiveness. They are not bled during the time they are fed, and a lump of chalk is placed within their reach. They are fed from 4 to 6 weeks, when they fetch from £3 to £4 a-piece; and it is found more profitable to fatten the larger number of calves for that time, to succeed each other, of from 25 lb. to 30 lb. per quarter, than to force a fewer number beyond the state of marketable veal."
The Caledonian Railway now puts this choice veal within the reach of English mouths; and we hope it will, at the same time, add to the prosperity and profits of the Strathaven breeders.
The lambing of ewes, the care of the mothers and offspring, the diseases to which they are subject, as well as the other operations which demand the farmer's care in the months of spring, we must pass by. We could go on commenting and quoting from this book, as we have already done, till an entire number of Maga was filled up. But as this would be preposterous, we stop, earnestly pressing upon our readers to place a copy of this storehouse of rural information in the hands of every practical husbandman, in whose professional skill they are at all interested.
Those who, like ourselves, take an interest in the diffusion of improved agriculture, scientific, and practical—and especially of our own agricultural literature in other countries—will be pleased to learn, not only that the work of which the title is prefixed to the present article, as well as the others upon agricultural chemistry to which we have referred, have made their way into the common stock of the book-stores of the United States, but that the editing of the American reprint of the second edition of the Book of the Farm has been undertaken by our friend Professor Norton, of Yale College, (may his shadow never be less!) so well known and esteemed in Scotland, where he obtained the Highland Society's £50 prize for a chemical examination of our native oat, which was published in their Transactions. He is a worthy representative of the "country of steady habits" to which he belongs; and we hope his countrymen will be discriminating enough to appreciate his own character and scientific labours, as well as the value of the books he undertakes to bring before them.
THE SYCAMINE.
I.
The frail yellow leaves they are falling
As the wild winds sweep the grove;
Plashy and dank is the sward beneath,
And the sky it is gray above.
II.
Foaming adown the dark rocks,
Dirge-like, the waterfall
Mourns, as if mourning for something gone,
For ever beyond its call.
III.
Sing, redbreast! from the russet spray;
Thy song with the season blends:
For the bees have left us with the blooms,
And the swallows were summer friends.
IV.
The hawthorn bare, with berries sere,
And the bramble by the stream,
Matted, with clay on its yellow trails,
Decay's wan emblems seem.
V.
On this slope bank how oft we lay
In shadow of the sycamine tree;
Pause, hoary Eld, and listen now—
'Twas but the roaring of the sea!
VI.
Oh, the shouts and the laughter of yore—
How the tones wind round the heart!
Oh, the faces blent with youth's blue skies—
And could ye so depart!
VII.
The crow screams back to the wood,
And the sea-mew to the sea,
And earth seems to the foot of man
No resting-place to be.
VIII.
Search ye the corners of the world,
And the isles beyond the main,
And the main itself, for those who went
To come not back again!
IX.
The rest are a remnant scatter'd
Mid the living; and, for the dead,
Tread lightly o'er the churchyard mounds;
Ye know not where ye tread!
Δ
AFTER A YEAR'S REPUBLICANISM.
The revolutionary year has almost closed; the anniversary of the days of February is at hand. A Year's Republicanism has run the course of its unchecked experience in France: to believe its own boast, it has ridden boldly forward, seated upon public and popular opinion, in the form of the widest, and, upon republican principle, the honest basis of universal suffrage; it has been left to its own full career, unimpeded by enemies either at home or abroad. And what has been the result of the race?—what has been the harvest which the republican soil, so carefully turned over, tilled, and manured, has produced?
It would be a useless task to recapitulate all the different stages of the growth of the so-called fair green tree of liberty, and enumerate all the fruits that it has let drop from time to time, from the earliest days of last spring, to the tempestuous summer month of June; and then, through the duller, heavier, and gloomy months of autumn, to those of winter, which brought a president as a Christmas-box, and which have shown a few scattered gleams of fancied sunshine, cold at the best, and quickly obscured again by thick-coming clouds of dis-accord, misapprehension, and startling opposition of parties. All the world has had these fruits dished up to it—has handled them, examined them, tasted them; and, according to their opinions or prejudices, men have judged their savour bitter or sweet. All that can be said on the subject, for those who have digested them with pleasure, is, that "there's no accounting for tastes." In calculating the value of the year's republicanism which France has treasured up in its history, it is as well, then, to make no further examination into the items, but to look to the sum-total as far as it can be added up and put together, in the present aspect of affairs. In spite of the openly expressed detestation of the provinces to the capital—in spite of the increasing spirit of decentralisation, and the efforts made by the departments to insure a certain degree of importance to themselves—it is still Paris that reigns paramount in its power, and as the influential expression, however false in many respects it may be, of the general spirit of the country. It is upon the aspect of affairs in Paris, then, and all its numerous conflicting elements, that observation must still be directed, in order to make a résumé, as far as it is practicable, of this sum-total of a year's republican rule. The account must necessarily be, more or less, a confused one, for accounts are not strictly kept in Republican Paris—are continually varying in their results, according as the political arithmeticians set about their "casting up"—and are constantly subject to dispute among the accountants: the main figures, composing the sum-total, may, however, be enumerated without any great error, and then they may be put together in their true amount, and according to their real value, by those before whom they are thus laid.
One of the most striking figures in the row, inasmuch as the lateness of the events has made it one of the most prominent, is to be derived from the position and designs of those who declare themselves to be the only true and pure republicans in the anomalous Republic of France, as exemplified by that revolutionary movement which, although it led to no better result than a révolution avortée, takes its date in the history of the Republic beside the more troublous one of May, and the more bloody one of June, as "the affair of the 29th of January." Paris, after the removal of the state of siege, had done its best to put on its physiognomy of past years, had smeared over its wrinkles as best it might, and had made sundry attempts to smile through all this hasty plastering of its poor distorted face. Its shattered commerce still showed many rags and rents; but it had pulled its disordered dress with decency about it, and set it forth in the best lights; it had called foreigners once more around it, to admire it; and they had come at the call, although slowly and with mistrust. It had some hopes of mending its rags, then, and even furbishing up a new fresh toilette, almost as smart as of yore; it danced and sang again, although faintly and with effort. The National Assembly clamoured and fought, it is true; but Paris was grown accustomed to such discordant music, and at most only stopped its ears to it: ministers held their portfolios with ticklish balance, as if about to let them fall; but Paris was determined not to care who dropped portfolios, or who caught them: there were clouds again upon the political horizon, and distant rumblings of a crisis-thunderstorm; but Paris seemed resolved to look out for fine weather. All on a sudden, one bright morning, on the 29th of January, the smile vanished: the troubled physiognomy was again there; the revolutionary air again pervaded it; and foreigners once more, not liking the looks of the convulsed face, began to start back in alarm. The rappel was again beaten, for the turning out of the national guards at the earliest hour of the morning: that drumming, which for many months had filled the air incessantly, again deafened sensitive ears and harassed sensitive nerves. The streets were thronged with troops, marching forwards in thick battalions; while before them retreated some hundreds of those nameless beings, who come no one knows whence, and go no one knows whither—those mysterious beings, peculiar to revolutionary cities, who only appear like a cloud of stinging dust when the wind of the revolution-tempest begins to blow, and who in Paris are either brigands or heroes of barricades, according as the language of the day may go—back, back, grumbling and threatening, into the faubourgs, where they vanished until the gale may blow stormier again, and meet with less resistance. The garden of the Tuileries was closed to the public, and exhibited an armed array once more among its leafless trees; the Champs Elysées had again become a camp and a bivouac; cannon was again posted around the National Assembly. Formidable military posts surrounded every public building; the streets were crowded with the curious; thick knots of men again stood at every corner; people asked once more, "What's on foot now?" but no one at first could answer: they only repeated from mouth to mouth the mysterious words of General Changarnier, that "he who should venture to displace a paving-stone would never again replace it;" and they knew what that meant. Paris was, all at once, its revolutionary self again; and, in some degree, so it remained during the ensuing weeks—with cannon displayed on hazardous points, and the great railway stations of the capital filled with battalions of soldiers, bivouacking upon straw in courts and salles d' attente; and huge military posts at every turn, and thick patrols parading gloomily at night, and palaces and public buildings closed and guarded, just as if retrograde monarchy were about to suppress fervent liberalism, and a "glorious republic" had not been established for a country's happiness wellnigh a year already; just as if republicans, who had conspired darkly a year before, had not obtained all they then clamoured for—a republic based upon institutions resulting from universal suffrage—and were conspiring again. And so it was. A deep-laid conspiracy—a conspiracy of republicans against a republic, which they chose to call deceptive and illusory—was again on foot. They had possessed, for nigh a year, the blessing for which they had conspired, intrigued, and fought; and they conspired, intrigued, and would have fought again. One of the figures, then, to form the total which has to be summed up as the result of a year's republicanism, is—conspiracy; conspiracy more formidable than ever, because more desperate, more bloody-minded in its hopes, more destructive in its designs to all society.
In spite of the denegations of the Red-republican party, and the counter-accusations of their allies the Montagnards in the Assembly, the question of all Paris, "What's on foot now?" was soon answered; and the answer, spite of these same denegations, and counter-accusations, was speedily understood and believed by all France. A conspiracy of the ultra-democrats, Red republicans and Socialists, (all now so shaken up together in one common dark bag of underhand design, that it is impossible to distinguish the shades of such parties,) was on the point of breaking out in the capital: the 29th of January had been fixed upon by the conspirators for their general insurrection. The Red republicans (to include all the factions of the anarchist parties under that title, in which they themselves rejoice, although the designation be derived from "blood") had felt how strong and overpowering had become the clamour raised throughout the land against that National Assembly which had run its course, and was now placed in constant opposition, not only to the president of the republic, as represented by his ministers, but to the general spirit and feeling of the country at large; they were aware, but too feelingly, that, should the Assembly give way before this clamour, in spite of its evidences of resistance, and decree its own dissolution, the elections of a new Legislative Assembly by that universal suffrage which had once been their idol, and was now to be scouted and despised, would inevitably produce what they termed a reactionary, and what they suspected might prove, a counter-revolutionary and monarchic majority; and they had determined, in spite of their defeat in June, to attempt another revolution, in the hope of again surprising the capital by a coup-de-main, and seizing the reins of power into their own hands at once. This conspiracy was affiliated together, in its various branches, by those formidable sociétés secrètes, which, long organised, had been again called into service by the persevering activity of the party, not only in Paris, but in all the larger provincial towns, and for which fresh recruits had been zealously drummed together. A general outbreak all over the country was regulated to explode simultaneously on the 29th of January, or during the following night: that monomania, which has never ceased to possess the minds of the frantic chiefs of the Red-republican party, and which still entertains the vain dream that, if they rise, all the lower classes, or what they call "the people," must rise at their call, to fight in their wild cause, gave them support in their designs. Pretexts for discontent, at the same time, were not wanting. The project of the government for a general suppression of the clubs—a measure which they declared unconstitutional, gave a colour to disaffection and revolt; and hopes that fresh allies would join the insurrection gave the party a bold confidence, which it had not possessed since the days of June. The garde mobile, in fact, had been tampered with. The spirit of these young janissaries of the capital, for the most part but a year ago the mere gamins de Paris, always vacillating and little to be relied upon, spite of their deeds in June, had already been adroitly worked upon by the fostering of that jealousy which subsisted between them and the regular army into a more decided hatred, when a decree of the government for the reorganisation of the corps was interpreted by the designing conspirators into an insult offered to the whole institution, and a preparatory measure to its total dissolution. Such insinuations, carefully fomented among these young troops, led to tumultuous demonstrations of disaffection and discontent. This ferment, so opportune for the designs of the Red republicans, induced them to believe that their hour of struggle and of approaching triumph was at hand: they counted on their new allies; all was ready for the outbreak. But the government was alive to the tempest rising around it; it was determined to do its duty to the country in preventing the storm, rather than in suppressing it when once it should have broken forth. Hence the military preparations which, on the morning of the 29th of January, had once more rendered all Paris a fortress and a camp; hence the warning sound of the rappel, which at an early hour had once more roused all the citizens from their beds, and called alarmed faces forth at windows and upon balconies in the gloom of the dawn; hence the stern commanding words of General Changarnier, and the orders to the troops and the national guards, that any man attempting to raise a stone from the streets should be shot forthwith, and without mercy; hence the consternation with which the outpost allies of the Red republicans hurried back growling to their mysterious dens, wherever such may exist. Prevention was considered better than cure, in spite of the misinterpretations and misapprehensions to which it might be exposed, and by which it was subsequently assailed by the disappointed faction. Arrest then followed upon arrest; upwards of two hundred of the suspected chiefs of the conspiracy were hurried off to prison. Among them were former delegates to the once famous committee of the Luxembourg, whose conduct gave evidence of the results produced by the dangerous utopian theories set forth under the lectureship of M. Louis Blanc, and his noble friend the soi-disant ouvrier Albert. Chiefs of the clubs bore them company in their incarceration; and the ex-Count D'Alton Shee, the ex-élégant of the fashionable salons of Paris, but now the socialist-atheist and anarchist, suffered the same penalty of his actions as leading member of the club "De la Solidarité Républicaine." Turbulent officers of the Garde Mobile underwent a similar fate. Even the national guard was not spared in the person of one of its superior officers, whose agitation and over-zealous movements excited suspicion; and, by the way, in the general summing up, arrest, imprisonment, restriction of liberty, may also take their place in the row as another little figure in the total.
The conspiracy, however, was suppressed; the insurrection failed entirely for the time; and Paris was told that it might be perfectly reassured, and doze quietly again upon its pillow, without any fear that Red-republicanism should again "murder sleep." But Paris, which has not learned yet to recover its old quiet habit of sleeping calmly, and has got too much fever in its system to close its eyes at will, is not to be lulled by such mere sedatives of ministerial assurance. Once roused in startled hurry from its bed again, and seeing the opiate of confidence which was beginning to work its effect in very small doses snatched from its grasp, it cannot calm its nerves at once. It will not be persuaded that the crisis is over, and has passed away for ever; like a child awakened by a nightmare, it looks into all sorts of dark holes and corners, thinking to see the spectre lurking there. It knows what it had to expect from the tender mercies of its pitiless enemies, had they succeeded in their will; what was the programme of a new Red-republican rule—a comité du salut public, the régime of the guillotine, the épuration of suspected aristocrats, the confiscation of the property of emigrants, a tax of three milliards upon the rich, a spoliation of all who "possess," the dissolution of the national guard, the exclusive possession of all arms by the soi-disant people, and—but the list of such new-old measures of ultra-republican government would be too long; it is an old tale often told, and, after all, only a free translation from the measures of other times. Paris, then, knows all this; it knows the fanatic and inexpressible rage of its antagonist, to which the fever of madness lends strength; it allows itself to be told all sorts of fearful tales—how Socialists, in imitation of their London brethren, have hired some thousand apartments in different quarters of the capital, in order to light a thousand fires at once upon a given signal. It goes about repeating the old vague cry—"Nous allons avoir quelque chose;" and, however foolishly exaggerated its alarm, the results it experiences are the same—again want of confidence arising from anxiety, again suspension of trade, again a renewal of misery. The fresh want of confidence, then, with all the attendant evils in its train, may again, as the year of republicanism approaches to its close, be taken as another figure in the sum-total that is sought.
In the midst of this sudden ferment, which has appeared towards the end of the republican year like a tableau final at the conclusion of an act of a drama—hastily thrust forward when the interest of the piece began to languish,—how stands the state of parties in that Assembly which, although it is said—and very correctly, it would appear—no longer to represent the spirit of the country at large, must still be considered as the great axis of the republic, around which all else moves? Always tumultuous, disorderly, and disdainful of those parliamentary forms which could alone insure it the aspect of a dignified deliberative body, the National Assembly, as it sees its last days inevitably approaching—although it retards its dissolution by every quack-doctoring means within its grasp—seems to have plunged, in its throes, into a worse slough of triple confusion, disorder, and uncertainty than ever. Jealous of its dignity, unwilling to quit its power, unwilling—say malicious tongues—to quit its profit, and yet pressed upon by that public opinion which it would vainly attempt to deny, to misinterpret, or to despise, it has shown itself more vacillating, capricious, and childish than ever. It wavers, votes hither and thither, backwards and forwards—now almost inclined to fall into the nets spread for it by the ultra-democratic party, that supports its resistance against all attempts to dissolve it, and upon the point of throwing itself into that party's arms; and now, again, alarmed at the allies to whom it would unite itself, starting back from their embrace, turning round in its majority, and declaring itself against the sense of its former decisions. Now, it offers an active and seemingly spiteful opposition to the government; and now, again, it accepts the first outlet to enable it to turn back upon its course. Now it is sulky, now alarmed at its own sulkiness; now angry, now begging its own pardon for its hastiness. It is like a child that does not know its own mind or temper, and gives way to all the first vagaries that spring into its childish brain: it neglects the more real interests of the country, and loses the country's time in its service, in its eternal interpellations, accusations, recriminations, jealousies, suspicions, and offended susceptibilities; it quarrels, scratches, fights, and breaks its own toys—and all this in the midst of the most inextricable confusion. To do it justice, the Assembly, as represented by its wavering majority, is placed between two stools of apprehension, between which it is continually coming to the ground, and making wofully wry faces: and, between the two, it is not very easy to see how it should preserve a decent equilibrium. On the one hand, it suspects the reactionary, and perhaps counter-revolutionary designs of the moderate party on the right, whose chiefs and leaders have chosen to hold themselves back from any participation in the governmental posts, which they have otherwise coveted and fatally intrigued for, as if they had an arrière-pensée of better and more congenial opportunities in store, and whose reliance in this respect seems equivocal; and it looks upon them as monarchists biding their time. On the other hand, it dreads the Montagnards on the extreme left, with their frantic excesses and violent measures, however much it has looked for their support in the momentous question of the dissolution of the Assembly. It bears no good-will to the president, whose immense majority in the elections has been mainly due to the hopes of the anti-republicans that his advent might lead to a total change of government: it bears still less good-will to the ministers of that president's choice. Between its two fears, then, no wonder that it oscillates like a pendulum. The approach of its final dissolution, which it has at last indefinitely voted, and yet endeavours to retard by fresh obligations for remaining, gives it that character of bitterness which an old coquette may feel when she finds her last hope of conquest slipping indubitably away from her. Without accusing the majority of that desperate clinging to place from interested motives—which the country, however, is continually casting in its teeth—it may be owned that it is not willing to see power wrested from it, when it fears, upon its return to its constituents, it may never find that power placed in its hands again, and seeks every means of prolonging the fatal hour under the pretence of serving the best interests of that country to which it fears to appeal: and to this state of temper, its waspishness, uncertainty, and increasing disorder, may be in some degree attributed.
Of the hopes and designs of the extreme moderate and supposed reactionary party, little can be said, inasmuch as it has kept its thoughts to itself, and not permitted itself to give any open evidences whatever upon the point. But the ardent and impetuous Montagnards are by no means so cautious: their designs, and hopes, and fears, have been clearly enough expressed; and they flash forth continually, as lightnings in the midst of the thunder of their incessant tumult. The allies and representatives, and, if all tales be true, the chiefs of the Red-republican party out of the Assembly—they still cherish the hope of establishing an ultra-democratic republican government, by some means or other—"by foul if fair should fail"—a government of despotic rule by violence—of propagandism by constraint—of systematic anarchy. They still form visions of some future Convention of which they may be the heroes—of a parliamentary tyrannical oligarchy, by which they may enforce their extravagant opinions. Driven to the most flagrant inconsistencies by their false position, they declare themselves also the true and supreme organ—not only of those they call "the people," but of the nation at large; while, at the same time, they affect to despise, and they even denounce as criminal, the general expression of public opinion, as evidenced by universal suffrage. They assume the attitudes of sauveurs de la patrie; and in the next breath they declare that patrie traitre to itself. They vaunt themselves to be the élus de la nation; and they openly express their repugnance to meet again, as candidates for the new legislative assembly, that majority of the nation which they now would drag before the tribunal of republicanism as counter-revolutionary and reactionary. In short, the only universal suffrage to which they would appeal is that of the furious minority of their perverted or hired bands among the dregs of the people. They have thus in vain used every effort to prolong to an indefinite period, or even to render permanent, if possible, the existence of that Assembly which their own party attacked in May, and which they themselves have so often denounced as reactionary. It is the rock of salvation upon which they fix their frail anchor of power, in default of that more solid and elevated foundation for their sway, which they are well aware can now only be laid for them by the hands of insurgents, and cemented by the blood of civil strife in the already blood-flooded streets of Paris. With the same necessary inconsistency which marks their whole conduct, they fix their hopes of advent to power upon the overthrow of the Assembly of which they are not masters, together with the whole present system of government; while they support the principle of the inviolability and immovability of that same Assembly, under such circumstances called by them "the holy ark of the country," when a fresh appeal is to be made to the mass of the nation at large. During the waverings and vacillations of the majority—itself clinging to place and power—they more than once expected a triumph for themselves in a declaration of the Assembly's permanence, with the secret hope, en arrière pensée, of finding fair cause for that insurrection by which alone they would fully profit, if a coup-de-main were to be attempted by the government, in obedience to the loudly-expressed clamour of popular opinion, to wreck that "holy ark" in which they had embarked their lesser hopes. When, however, they found that the crew were disposed to desert it, on feeling the storms of public manifestation blowing too hard against it—when they found that they themselves must in a few weeks, or at latest months, quit its tottering planks, their rage has known no bounds. Every manœuvre that can be used to prolong life, by prolonging even the daily existence of the Assembly, is unscrupulously put into practice. They clamour, they interrupt discussion—they denounce—they produce those daily "incidents" of French parliamentary tradition which prevent the progress of parliamentary business—they invent fresh interpellations, to create further delays by long-protracted angry quarrel and acrimony. Part of all this system of denunciation, recrimination, and acrimonious accusation, belongs, it is true, to their assumed character as the dramatis personæ of an imaginary Convention. They have their cherished models of old, to copy which is their task, and their glory; the dramatic traditions of the old Convention are ever in their winds, and are to be followed in manner, and even costume, as far as possible. And thus Ledru Rollin, another would-be Danton, tosses back his head, and raises his nose aloft, and pulls up his burly form, to thunder forth his angry Red-republican indignation; and Felix Pyat, the melodramatic dramatist, of the boulevard du crime—fully in his place where living dramas, almost as extravagant and ranting as those from his own pen, are to be performed—rolls his large round dark eyes, and swells his voice, and shouts, and throws about his arms, after the fashion of those melodrama actors for whose noisy declamation he has afforded such good stuff, and because of his picturesque appearance, fancies himself, it would seem, a new St Just. And Sarrans, soi-disant "the young," acts after no less melodramatic a fashion, as if in rivalry for the parts of jeune premier in the drama, but cannot get beyond the airs of a provincial groundling; and Lagrange, with his ferocious and haggard countenance, and his grizzled long hair and beard, yells from his seat, although in the tribune he affects a milder language now, as if to contradict and deny his past deeds. And Proudhon shouts too, although he puts on a benevolent air patelin, beneath the spectacles on his round face, when he proposes his schemes for the destruction of the whole fabric of society. And Pierre Leroux, the frantic philosopher, shakes his wild greasy mane of hair about his heavy greasy face, and raves, as ever, discordantly; and old Lammenais, the renegade ex-priest, bends his gloomy head, and snarls and growls, and utters low imprecations, instead of priestly blessings, and looks like another Marat, even if he denies the moral resemblance to its full extent. And Greppo shouts and struggles with Felix Pyat for the much-desired part of St Just. And gray-bearded Couthons, who have not even the ardour of youth to excuse their extravagancies, rise from their curule chairs to toss up their arms, and howl in chorus. And even Jules Favre, although he belongs not to their party, barks, bites, accuses, and denounces too, all things and all men, and spits forth venom, as if he was regardless where the venom fell, or whom it blistered; and, with his pale, bilious face, and scrupulously-attired spare form, seems to endeavour to preserve, as far as he can, in a new republic, the agreeable tradition of another Robespierre. And let it not be supposed, that malice or prejudice attaches to the Montagnards these names. The men of the last republican era, whom history has execrated, calumniously and unjustly they will say, are their heroes and their demi-gods; the sage legislators, whose principles they vaunt as those of republican civilisation and humanity; the models whom they avowedly, and with a confessed air of ambition, aspire to copy in word and deed. Part, however, of the systematic confusion, which it is their evident aim to introduce into the deliberations of the Assembly, is, in latter days, to be attributable to their desire to create delays, and lead to episodical discussions of angry quarrel and recrimination, which may prolong the convulsive existence of the Assembly to an indefinite period, or by which they may profit to forward their own designs. Thus the day is rare, as a ray of sunshine in a permanent equinoctial storm, when the Montagnards do not start from their seats, upon the faintest pretext for discontent or accusation of reactionary tendencies; and, either en masse or individually, fulminate, gesticulate, clamour, shout, denounce, and threaten. The thunder upon the "Mountain's" brow is incessant: if it does not burst forth in heavy peals, it never ceases to growl. Each Montagnard is a Jupiter in his own conceit, and hurls his thunderbolt with what force he may. Not a word can be spoken by a supposed reactionary orator without a murmur—not a phrase completed without a shout of denegation, a torrent of interruptions, or peeling bursts of ironical laughter. The "Mountain" is in perpetual labour; but its produce bears more resemblance to a yelping pack of hungry blood-hounds, than to an innocent mouse: it is in perpetual movement; and, like crushing avalanches from its summit, rush down its most energetic members to the tribune, to attempt to crush the Assembly by vehemence and violence of language. These scenes of systematic tumult have necessarily increased in force, since the boiling spite of disappointment has flowed over in hot reality, in place of the affected and acted indignation: the rage and agitation no longer know the least control. The affair of the abolition of the clubs had scarcely lent an excellent pretext for this violence, when the suppression of the insurrection, and the arrests consequent upon the discomfiture of the conspiracy on the 29th of January, gave a wide field for the exercise of the system of denunciation commonly pursued. To be beforehand with accusation by counter-accusation, has been always the tactics of the party: when the party-chiefs find themselves involved in the suspicion of subversive attempts, they begin the attack. The Montagnards have burst forth, then, to declare that the military precautions were a systematic provocation on the part of the ministry and General Changarnier, to incite the population of Paris to civil discord; that the only conspiracy existed in the government itself, to suppress liberty and overthrow the republic—at least to cast a slur upon the only true republicans, and have an excuse for tyrannical oppression towards them. They closed their eyes to the fact that the insurrection, of the proposed reality of which no doubt can remain, spite of these angry denegations, would have produced a crisis to which the real reactionary anti-republicans looked as one that must produce a change in the detested government of the country, should the moderate party triumph in the struggle, as was probable; and that by the suppression of the insurrection the crisis was averted, and the republic evidently consolidated for a time, not weakened. With their usual inconsistency, and want of logical deduction, at the same time that they accused the minister of a useless and provocative display of the military force, they denounced the conspiracy as real, but as proceeding from "infamous royalists," and not anarchist Red republicans. And then, to follow up this pell-mell of self-contradictions—while, on the one hand, they denied any insurrectionary movement at all, and, on the other, attributed it to royalists—they called, in their language at the rostrum, the commencement of the street demonstration on the morning of the 29th of January—which could not be denied, and which had come down as usual from the faubourgs, ever ripe for tumult—"the sublime manifestation of the heroic people." Propositions couched in furious language, for "enquêtes parlementaires," and for the "mise en accusation des ministres"—every possible means of denunciation and intimidation were employed, to increase the agitated hurly-burly of the Assembly, and subvert, as far as was possible, the few frail elements of order and of confidence that still subsisted in it. In marking thus, in hasty traits, the position of parties in the Assembly, called together to establish and consolidate the republic upon a basis of peace and order, what are the figures which are so noted down as forming part of the sum-total, as the approaching conclusion of the revolutionary year is about to make up its accounts? As regards the Assembly, increased confusion, disunion, bitter conflict of exasperated parties, suspicion, mistrust, disaffection, violence.
How stands the government of the country after the year's republicanism? At its head is the Republican President, elected by the immense majority of the country, but elected upon a deceptive basis—elected neither for his principles, which were doubtful; nor for his qualities, which were unknown or supposed to be null; nor even for his name, (although much error has been founded upon the subject,) which, after all, dazzled only a comparatively small minority—but because he was supposed to represent the principle opposed to republicanism—opposed to the very régime he was elected to support—opposed to that spirit of which the man who had once saved the country from anarchy, and had once received the country's blessings, was considered to be the type—because hopes were founded on his advent of a change in a system of government uncongenial, and even hateful, to the mass of the nation; whether by the prestige of his name he attempted to re-establish an empire, or whether, as another Monk, he formed only a stepping-stone for a new monarch. Elected thus upon false principles, the head of the government stands in an eminently false position. He may have shown himself moderate; inclined to support the republic upon that "honest" basis which the better-thinking republicans demand; firm in the support of a cabinet, the measures of which he approves; and every way sincere and straightforward, although not in all his actions wise: but his position remains the same—placed between the ambitious hope of a party which might almost be said to exist no longer, and which has become that only of a family and a few old adherents and connexions, but which attempts to dazzle a country vain and proud of the word "glory," like France, by the somewhat tarnished glitter of a name, and the prospect of another which calls itself legitimate;—the point de mire of the army, but, at the same time, the stalking-horse of a nation miserably wearied with the present hobby, upon which it has been forced unwillingly to ride, with about as much pleasure and aplomb as the famous tailor of Brentford—and, on the other hand, suspected, accused, and denounced by those who claim to themselves the only true and pure essence of veritable republicanism. It is a position placed upon a "see-saw"—placed in the centre, it is true, but liable, in any convulsive crisis, to be seriously compromised by the violent and abrupt elevation of either of the ends of the plank, as it tosses up and down: for the feet of the president, instead of directing the movements of this perpetually agitated "see-saw," and giving the necessary steadiness, without which the whole present republican balance must be overturned, seem more destined to slip hither and thither in the struggle, at the imminent risk of losing all equilibrium, and slipping off the plank altogether. As yet, the president, whenever he appears in public, is followed by shouting and admiring crowds, who run by his horse, clap their hands, call upon his name, greet him with noisy cries of "vive," grasp his hands, and of course present some hundreds of petitions; but these demonstrations of respect must be attributed far less to personal consideration, or popular affection, or even to the prestige of the name of Napoleon, than to the eagerness of the Parisian public, even of the lowest classes—spite of all that may be said of their sentiments by their would-be leaders, the ultra-democrats—to salute with acclamation the personage who represents a head, a chief, a point d'appui quelconque—a leading staff, a guiding star, a unity, instead of a disorderly body—in one word, a resemblance of royalty. It is the president, and not the man, who is thus greeted. The usual curiosity and love of show and parade of the Parisian badauds, at least as "cockney" as the famed Londoner, may be much mixed up again in all this, but the sentiment remains the same; nor do these demonstrations alter the position of the man who stands at the head of the government of France. The ministry, supported in principle by the country, although not from any personal respect or liking, stands in opposition to an Assembly, elected by that country, but no longer representing it. The army shows itself inclined to protect the government, on the one hand, and is said to be ready, on the other, to follow in the cry of "vive l'Empereur!" should that cry be raised. The garde mobile, although modified by its late reorganisation, is suspected of versatility and unsoundness, if not exactly of disaffection: it stands in instant collision with the dislike and jealousy of the army, and, spite of its courageous part in June, is looked upon askance by the lovers of order. What aspect, then, have the figures which may be supposed to represent all this in the sum-total of the year's republicanism? They bear the forms of instability, suspicion, doubt, collision, want of confidence in the future, and all the evils attendant upon the uncertainty of a state of things which, spite of assurances, and spite of efforts, the greater part of France seems inclined to look upon merely as provisionary.
Under what form, then, does the public spirit exhibit itself in circumstances of so much doubt and instability? The attitude of the working classes in general, of the very great majority, in fact—for those still swayed by the delusive arguments, and still more delusive and destructive promises of the Socialists and Republicans are comparatively few, although formidable in the ferocity of their doctrines and their plans, and in the active restlessness of their feverish and excited energies, which resemble the reckless, sleepless, activity of the madman—the attitude of the working classes in Paris is calm, and even expectant; but calm from utter weariness—calm from the convictions, founded on the saddest experience, in the wretched results of further revolutions—calm from a sort of prostrate resignation, and almost despair, in the midst of the miseries and privations which the last fatal year has increased instead of diminishing, and written with a twofold scourge upon their backs: an attitude reassuring, inasmuch as it implies hatred and opposition to the subversive doctrines of the anarchists, but not without its dangers, and, to say the least, heartrending and afflicting—and expectant in the hope and conviction of change in the cause of stability and order. The feeling which, after a few months of the rule of a reckless provisionary government, was the prevailing one among the majority of the working classes—the feeling, which has been already noted, that king Log, or even king Stork, or any other concentrated power that would represent stability and order, would be preferable to the uncertainties of a vacillating republican rule—has ever gained ground among them since those hopes of re-established confidence, and a consequent amelioration of their wretched position, which they first founded upon the meeting of the National Assembly, and then upon the election of a president, have twice deceived them, and left them almost as wretched as ever in the stagnation of trade and commercial affairs. The feeling thus prevalent among the working classes in the capital, is, at the same time, the feeling of the country at large, but to an even far wider extent, and more openly expressed. The hatred of the departments to Paris, as the chief seat of revolution and disorder, has also increased rather than diminished; and everywhere the sentiments of utter weariness, disaffection to the Republic, and impatience under a system of government of which they are no longer inclined to await the promised blessings, are displayed upon all possible occasions, and by every possible organ. The upper classes among moneyed men, and landed proprietors, remain quiet and hold their tongue. They may be expectant and desirous of change also, but they show no open impatience, for they can afford to wait. It is they, on the contrary, who more generally express their opinions in the possibility of the establishment of a prosperous republic—a possibility which the working classes in their impatience deny. In spite of all that ultra-democratic journals may say, in their raving denunciations, borrowed of the language of another Republic, some of the most eager and decided of those they term "reactionary," and denounce as "aristocrats," are thus to be found among the lower working classes. To do justice to the truth of the accusations brought by the Red republican party, in another respect, it is in the bourgeois spirit that is to be found the strongest and most openly avowed reactionary feeling. It is impossible to enter any shop of the better order in Paris, and speak upon the position of affairs, without hearing not only the hope, but the expectation openly expressed, of a monarchic restoration, and that restoration in favour of the elder branch of the Bourbons. The feeling is universal in this class: the name of "Henri V.," scarce mentioned at all, and never under this title, during the reign of Louis Philippe, except in the exclusive circles of the Faubourg St Germain, is now in every shopkeeper's mouth. Louis Philippe, the Regency, all the members of the Orleans family, the Empire, a Bonapartist rule—all are set aside in the minds of these classes for the now-desired idol of their fickle choice, the Duke of Bordeaux. In these classes a restoration in favour of Henri V. is no longer a question of possibility; it is a mere question of time: it is not "L'aurons-nous?" that they ask; it is "Quand l'aurons-nous?" In this respect the real and true republicans, in the "honest" designation of the term, have certainly every reason to raise an angry clamour; if sedition to the existing régime of the country is not openly practised, it is, at all events, openly and generally expressed. Nor are their accusations brought against the government entirely without justice; for while, on the one hand, a measure of a nature altogether arbitrary, under the freedom of a republican rule, is exercised against a well-known artist, by seizing in his atelier the portraits of the Duke of Bordeaux, or, as he is called, the Count of Chambord, and of the Countess, as seditiously exhibited, lithographed likenesses of the Bourbon heir are to be seen on all sides at print-shop windows, and in popular temporary print-stalls; in galleries, arcades, and upon street walls; in vignettes, upon ballads, with such titles, as "Dieu le veut," or "La France le veut," or in busts of all dimensions. Again, the Henri-quinquiste feeling, as it is called, is universal among the fickle bourgeoisie of Paris—the rock upon which Louis Philippe founded his throne, and which sank under him in his hour of need: and the bourgeois, eager and confident in their hopes, wilfully shut their eyes to the fact that, were their detested republic overthrown, there might arise future convulsions, and future civil strife, between a Bonapartist faction—which necessarily grows, and increases, and flourishes more and more under the rule, however temporary, of a chief of the name—and the legitimist party: for the Orleanists, whether fused by a compromise of their hopes with the Legitimists, as has been said, or fallen into the obscurity of forgetfulness or indifference in the majority of the nation, hold forth no decided banner at the present moment. In regarding, then, the public spirit among the majority of all classes in Paris, without consulting the still more reactionary feeling of the departments, the figures to be added to the sum-total of the year's republican account will be again found similar to those already enumerated, in the shape of disaffection, abhorrence of the republican government, want of confidence in its stability, expectation and hope of a change, however it may come, and although it may be brought about by a convulsion.
Meanwhile the uncertainty and anxiety are increased by the continued expectation of some approaching crisis, which the explosion of the insurrection, destined for the 29th of January, would have hastened, and which the precautions taken for the suppression of the outbreak have evidently averted for the time. But what confidence can be expressed in the stability of this temporary state of order in a country so full of excitement and love of change, and in a state of continual revolution, in which such conspiracy ceases not to work in darkness, with the hope of attaining despotic power, and in which disaffection to the state of things is openly expressed? Events have run their course with such fearful rapidity, and the unexpected has been so greatly the "order of the day," in the last year's history of France, that who can answer for the future of the next months, or even weeks? Political prophets have long since thrown up the trade of oracle-giving in despair; and the tripod of the oracle has been left to the occupation of the chances of the imprévu. In spite, then, of the temporary reassurance of peace given by the last measures of the government, which have been denounced by the ultra-democrats as arbitrary, subversive, and unconstitutional, the underground agitation still continues. Paris dances once more, repeating to itself, however, the often-repeated words, "Nous dansons sur un volcan." The carnival pursues its noisy pleasures, under the protection of the forests of bayonets that are continually glittering along the gay sunlit streets, and to the sound of the drum of the marching military, who still give Paris the aspect of a garrison in time of war. Gay salons are opened, and carriages again rattle along the streets on moonlit nights; but the spirit of Parisian gaiety reposes not upon confidence, and is but the practical application of the epicurean philosophy that takes for its maxim, "Carpe diem."
Whatever may be the reality of an approaching crisis, which, however feeble the symptoms at present, the Parisians insist upon regarding as near at hand,—whatever may be the hopes of some that the crisis, however convulsive, must produce a desired change, and the fears of others of the civil strife,—whatever thus the desires of the sanguine, the expectations of the hopeful, the apprehensions of the peaceful, and the terrors of the timorous, the result is still the same—the uncertainty, the want of confidence, the evils attendant upon this feeling of instability, so often already enumerated. The violence and struggling rage of the ultra-democratic and socialist journals, increasing in denunciation to the death, and positively convulsive in their rage, as the anti-republican reactionary spirit grows, and spreads wider, and every day takes firmer root, and even dares to blossom openly in the expression of public opinion, are looked upon as the throes of dying agony by the bold, but are regarded with dread by the less courageous, who know the force of the party's exaggerated violence, and have already felt the miseries of their fanatic subversive attempts. Meanwhile, the moderate or honest republic, which vainly attempts a juste milieu of republicanism, between extravagance and disaffection, limps sadly forwards; or, as one of the late satirical pieces, which openly attack the republic on the stage, expresses it—amidst the applause and shouts of deriding laughter, which hail it nightly in crowded houses, not so much from the boxes as from the galleries thronged with types of the "people"—"Elle boîte! elle boîte!" Republicans may thus clamour against the culpable laxity of a government, which permits these much-applauded attacks upon the Republic, in accordance with the principle of freedom of opinion, and in pursuance of the abolition of a theatrical censorship which they themselves condemned: but so it is; and therein may be sought and found one of the strongest popular evidences of popular disaffection. And satires too, and caricatures, abound, in which the unhappy Republic is still more soundly scourged—demonstrations not less lively, although they call not forth the evident approbation of a congregated multitude. Now, then, that the revolutionary year has almost closed there—now that the anniversary of the days of February is at hand—let people take the figures enumerated, and justly enumerated, as they will, and place them as they fancy in the sum-total, and cast them up as they please, or deduce what value they may from the amount of the first year of new republicanism in France. Another question. What fêtes are to greet the anniversaries of the "glorious" days of the "glorious" revolution which established a "glorious" Republic? Assuredly the fête will not be in the people's hearts: no, not even in the hearts of those whom their mis-named, self-appointed friends choose to call, par excellence, "the people."