Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 79, No. 484, February, 1856

by Various

THE WONDROUS AGE.

“Oh wondrous Mother Age!”

Wondrous!—such is the title this Age assumes. She wears it written broadly on her phylactery, trumpets it loudly on quay and bourse, on platforms and at market-places, blabs it at clubs and reading-rooms, placards it in railway carriages, puffs it in steam-ships; everything she buys or sells is docqueted, everything she says or does, engraven with the epithet—Wondrous! This is the Age of ages—so she says. The Golden, the Silver, the Brazen, the Iron ages were as nought: it combines them all, and is grander, richer, stronger in its fusion than any of these separate stages. Men are now only beginning to live. In former times they merely dosed or daundered, trifled or philandered, brawled or rioted, dreamed or philosophised through life, wasting its golden sands in writing love-songs, and calling that—poetry; in fighting great battles, and calling that—heroism, chivalry; in sitting by the midnight lamp, gathering knowledge, which in after years might ripen into wisdom, and calling that—study; in sitting by hearth or board, quaffing from the wine-cup, drinking toasts, telling old stories, singing old songs, and calling that—conviviality, good-fellowship; in giving alms to beggars, in feeding the hunger of the idle and the vagabond, and calling that—charity; in uttering strong words, in doing strong deeds, and calling that—manliness; in upholding nationalities, and calling that—patriotism. Such are a few delusions in which men were ever wrapping themselves, until the day of enlightenment dawned, and this Age burst upon us, with its railways and its steam-ships, its doves of peace and arks of commerce, its treaties and tariffs, its leagues and institutes, its unions and schools, its ledgers and invoices, its cotton-mills and manufactories—proclaiming to the world that the true purpose of life, the true destiny of man, was to trade, to manufacture, to make money and circulate it, and, through the medium of cotton bales, silken freights, cargoes of coal, and sacks of corn, to fulfil the great mission of peace and goodwill. Knowledge, learning, courage, perseverance, mind, thought, enterprise, strength, were not to be utterly repudiated; they were only to be converted to the one purpose, driven out of the old slow processes of development, touched with the impulses of the time, and quickened to a more rapid production and circulation. What boots it that our locomotives go at the rate of forty, fifty, sixty miles an hour? that our ships cross the Atlantic in eleven days? that our electric wires carry messages from one end of the land to the other? that our printing-presses throw forth papers by the hundred and books by the thousand? Of what use are our political economics, our statistics, our lectures, our leagues, our steam-power, our mechanical inventions, our liberalism, if men are to move, talk, think, and legislate no faster than in bygone days? This must be, and is, the age of fastness,—of fast travelling, fast talking, fast thinking, fast reading, fast writing, of fast—no! not fast statesmanship—not fast law. These remain, like the old vans and coaches in the by-roads of Cornwall and Wales, to show the world what slow-going was. Men must not now await the long results of time. They are not to sow in youth that they may reap in old age—to labour and conceive in patience that they may produce in strength. The Age will not admit of such stagnation. Its maxim is, that the greatest production in the shortest time, and at the least cost, the best markets and the quickest returns, are the only worthy aims of labour and intellect—the only fit investment for capital of the brain or the pocket.

Thus the Age is to go on growing stronger, busier, faster, doubling the power of machinery, multiplying its mills, increasing its exports and imports, sending forth its freights, machinery, and products as missionaries to all lands, until, by a loving interchange of cotton and corn, a sweet intercourse with ledgers and bills of exchange, men are knit together in a beautiful unity of commerce, and some glorious consummation be attained, such as the poet sees in his vision—

“When the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle’s flags were furled,

In the parliament of man, the federation of the world,

There the common cause of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.”

And what is to be this universal law, according to the Age, if not to the poet’s meaning? Love? Honour? Charity? Truth? Religion? These are all old-world principles. We, in our blindness, ever believed that love, inspired and propagated by religion, was to be the benign influence which would still the discords, close the schisms, unite the jarring creeds and warring nationalities, soothe the angry passions, and wither the petty jealousies, which set man against man, nation against nation, and bind them in a world-wide brotherhood. We were walking in darkness. The illumination of this Age throws its light upon us, and we know there are other means to this great end: that self-interest, the reciprocity of producers and consumers, buyers and sellers, the sweet persuasions of barter, are ultimately to level nationalities, quench the animosities of race and creed, and create a sort of commercial millennium, in which Swede, Russ, and Turk, Hun, Austrian, and Lombard, Dane and German, are to lie down together under one universal tariff.

Gold—the lust of which has been the bitterest curse of sin, and has ever and ever, through the long roll of ages, begotten hatred, wrath, envy, oppression, bloodshed, and division,—is at last to be the peace-maker, the love-mission of the world. This, however, is a vision of the future—“a wonder that shall be.” Let us turn to the Age as it stands before us—wondrous. All ages have had their characteristics. There have been ages of simplicity, ages of grandeur, ages of heroism, ages of degeneracy, ages of barbarism, ages of civilisation, ages of intellect, ages of darkness, ages of superstition, ages of philosophy, ages of faith, ages of infidelity—ages when men have lived the patriarchal life, sitting under their own vines and their own fig-trees, tilling the ground, tending their flocks, worshipping earnestly, enacting justice severely—ages when they revelled in magnificence and luxury, spread their splendour over the earth, and set it up in palaces and monuments—ages in which the strong heart and the strong deed, the bold thought and the generous impulse, were the master agencies, in which strong men, brave men, noble men, were recognised as the natural chiefs—ages in which the earth reeked with the pestilential vapours of vice and dissoluteness, in which manhood and honour had set in long nights, and the profligate, the profane, the sybarite, walked abroad without scorn, and sat in high places without shame—ages when man’s lordship of creation was manifested only in power over brute life, and in the tenancy of fen, forest, and mountain—ages, again, when culture, art, refinement, found a ripe maturity and gorgeous development—ages in which the light and glory of intellect shone on dark places, and the voices of the gifted echoed through many lands—ages in which such voices were silent, and both mind and intellect lay shrouded in thick darkness, or veiled in twilight—ages when men doubted, speculated, and rationalised—ages when they accepted superstitions as creeds, lies as living truths, serpents for fish, stones for bread—ages in which faith was strong, and earnest men lived in it, strove, fought, died for it—ages when men, worse than devils, neither believed nor trembled. Our Age was none of these. It ignored, repudiated, superseded all others. It is the Age of production, of utility, of circulation—to produce the utmost, by forced processes, from brain and muscle, man-power and steam-power, hand and loom, energy and ingenuity, capital and labour; and to circulate the products with a power which almost commands, and a rapidity which almost outstrips the elements: this is the great wonder of the age.

Heroism, chivalry, faith, imagination, romance—these are all at a discount with it; they are unremunerative, unmarketable, could not be cashed or negotiated. Everything, every man, is to be measured by productive capacity or practical uses. “He who makes a blade of corn grow where a blade of corn ne’er grew before, is of more service to mankind than fifty warriors.” The wit and politician who wrote this, or something like it, would have stared to see the present development of his doctrine—to find production and utility the great tests of progress and civilisation. And is this progress? Is this civilisation? So says the Age. We had dreamed that progress was of the mind and heart; that its stages would be marked by the recognition of justice, the advancement of the knowledge which leads to wisdom, the increase of honesty, courage, faith, honour, truthfulness, the growth of love, and the spread of virtue and godliness, as well as by census tables, statistical returns, financial budgets, and the stock exchange. We had dreamed that civilisation meant mental and social development as well as the existence of wealth; that it must be based on a well-balanced prosperity, which should include a comparative equality in the happiness of all classes, giving each man a power of well-being and comfort in his own sphere—the maintenance of the due proportions in society, and a fair ratio in the increase of riches and the decrease of crime; that it involved the moral, intellectual, religious, and social growth of man, as well as the productiveness of his industry and the development of his science; that it involves the expansion of courtesy, honour, generosity, kindliness, and good faith, as well as the diffusion and circulation of merchandise and gold. Were we dreaming dreams? Are these phantasies? So says the Age; and we, who are living in the glare of its noontide glory, must fain accept its interpretations with humble submission, and expand our faculties to the comprehension of its wonders. But whilst we do this, we may at least indulge in a retrospect of the past,—note what this great change has cost us, and compare our losses with our gains. This has been an age of supercession, and ere we swell the triumph which shall seat the conqueror on its throne, it may be permitted us to look back on the smouldering walls of old homes, the trampled fields of old principles, and the ruined fanes of old faiths, which it has left in its onward march—to mourn over and bury our dead. And what time more fitting for such a valedictory survey than this?—now, when the Age has paused in its career at the grim apparition of war, and the world is undergoing a partial relapse—now, when heroism is once more a power in the land, when men are talking, exulting, and watching over brave deeds, more than over funds, invoices, or railway scrip—when fair women are weeping for the brave dead, and praying for the living brave—now, when a great battle, or the fall of a city, stirs a stronger pulsation in the nation than the rise and fall of stock, or the most stupendous bankruptcies—now, when old things are becoming new, and men are looking back with tolerance, if not with affection, on old principles and old faiths. Let us then cast a glance on the past—our own past—the past of our own generation—think of what we were, and what we are, and strike the balance.

We have little belief in the days of merry England, or in the “good old times,” that illusory paradise of dullards and sluggards, who would rather mourn over a lost Eden than find one in the present, or look for it in a future; but we do remember when the land had more mirth in it than now, when it was more romantic and picturesque. We remember it ere the utilitarian spirit had laid its iron grasp on the hearts of our people, and spread its iron network over our fields and valleys. We remember it less wealthy, less prosperous, less cultivated, and we remember it also as more genial, more joyous, and more beautiful. A change—a great change, almost a revolution—in our social feelings, thoughts and habits,—in our aims and pursuits—in the character of the people and the features of the country—has taken place even in our memory. Has this change wrought most of good or evil? We admit that it had become a necessity of progress that men should be shaken out of their domesticity, their local isolation be more centralised, and become more cosmopolitan—that their intercommunications should be more rapid, their diffusion more general: we admit that the increase of population and labour-power demanded that wealth should no longer be hoarded or land be wasted, and that every penny, every acre, should be made productive—that some such changes as have come upon us must needs have come: but have we not bought them at a price, have we not paid for them at the cost of many manly attributes—many social virtues—by the loss of much rural beauty, and many characteristics of our pastoral life? We quarrel not with steam, the great wonder of the Age—the great means to the mighty end of utilitarianism. We know all that it has done for us—all it has brought us. We know that it has accelerated intercourse, impelled industry, expanded our resources, extended knowledge, equalised consumption and production, given facilities to enterprise, and opportunities to labour. Much has it done for our material prosperity; and we should hail it as an altogether beneficent agent, did we not think—God knows whether rightly or not—that this shuffling together of people, this eager competition, this hot-bed production which it has fostered, was rapidly effacing individuality and simplicity of character—had overstrode that honest persevering industry which toils on slowly and patiently to its end, which is content to labour and to wait—had raised an unrest, a rapid craving for quick results, a discontent with appointed spheres of action, a restless movement of classes to tread on each other’s heels, and had decreased their mutual trust and despondency—did we not know that it had invaded the seclusion of our valleys, smoked and scorched our woods and copses, tunnelled our rocks, cut up our meadows, and overlaid the poesy of nature by the materialism of traffic.

Commerce and manufacture! shall we raise our voices against them? God forbid! Have they not been the great agents in our prosperity? Have they not created our wealth, begotten our merchant princes, raised our shipping, filled our island with products, and circulated our own to the ends of the earth? Have they not promoted science, encouraged enterprise? Have they not nourished our colonies, given employment to our growing millions, made this little spot to swarm like a busy hive, and placed it as the centre of a wide-spreading civilisation—the heart of a mighty organisation? Should they, however, beget a thirst for gold—a mad pursuit for wealth, which will engross and absorb our thoughts and feelings to the exclusion of generous impulses and noble principles, hitherto main elements in the happiness and greatness of nations—will they be all gain? Will not there be a balance then—moral loss against material gain? Answer for thyself, O wondrous Age!

Neither will we quarrel with model farming. The competition of production, the opening of markets, the pressure of other classes and interests, have forced agriculture, for the sake of its very life and being, to adopt utilitarianism—have compelled it to turn every inch of ground to account. Utility demanded that hedgerows should be levelled, the waste patches, knolls, and nooks ploughed up, old pollards and groups of trees uprooted, and that sheep and oxen, instead of cropping the pleasant herbage in pleasant sunny meadows, should be cooped and stalled in narrow spaces, fed by rule and measure, and left to fatten in darkness; that machinery should supersede the reaper’s and thresher’s work, and that crops should be stacked and garnered as a matter of business, and not borne home, as heretofore, with festive rejoicings and thanksgivings. And if the increasing number of mouths required so many more bushels of corn, so many more pounds of meat, and they can be obtained only by such means, then must the picturesque, the poetic, and the beautiful be sacrificed instantly and ruthlessly, that man may eat and live. Yes! uproot, overturn, change, overlay them all, if thus, and thus only, the people may be fed, the poor have bread. The beautiful has ever yielded to the inroads of necessity or utility, which is a sort of modified and modernised necessity. Yet may we not mourn over the things which are gone or going, the things belonging to the outer world of the poetic, the romantic, and the picturesque? They are associated with sunny holidays, with the memories of boyhood, and the feelings of youth; and we must mourn them, though their extirpation be the doom of an imperious and beneficent necessity. We must fain mourn over those hedgerows, as we remember them, with their soft, grassy banks—the nursery of early violets and gregarious primroses—the parterre of more gaudy daffodils, and the nestling-place of hundreds of tiny flowerets, whose names we knew not, but whose faces we loved, with their tops crowned by rich-scented hawthorn, budding hazel, and dark-leaved sloe—with their bases bordered by luxuriant brambles and flowering gorse. They were favourite haunts of ours, those hedgerows: there we sought the early nosegay, there we clutched at the ripe brown clusters of nuts,—the slip shellers, the Spolia prima of the season—our hoards were gathered elsewhere: there we stripped the sloe-bushes of their fruit, under the delusion that, by a long process of hoarding in bran, they would become luxuries, and would not set the teeth on edge; there, with net and ferret, or with dog and gun, we commenced our initiation as sportsmen; there, as Dandie Dinmont would say, we were entered on the rabbit.

We must mourn, too, for these groves and thickets, which lay in the intervals of cultivation like the remnants of a conquered race amid the conquerors. Much, very much, did we love to thread these coverts, in the schoolboy pursuits of nutting or bird-nesting, or to roam in mere wantonness through the thick underwood, gathering an immature poetry from the massed foliage of holly, mountain-ash, alder, and willow—from the tangled shades of briar, woodbine, convolvulus, and the other creepers which wreathed their wild luxuriance round stem and boughs, or trailed it in a rich undergrowth along the ground—from the lights, which fell soft and mellow through the openings and through the leaves on the long-tufted grass below, rich with blue-bells, harebells, wild anemone, and many another wildling;—from the fluttering of wings, the twitterings and the cooings of birds—from the sweet-scented breaths—from the solitude, and from the many gentle influences through which nature inspires the beautiful. These places have glad memories—the gladdest of all—the memories of the full heart, the free fresh impulses, and of growing thought. On some such spot, too, we took our first stand as a sportsman. We see it even now—an opening glade, a plash overhung with the boughs of a holly bush—behind a knot of alders and some tangled brushwood. Even now we feel our heart fluttering, and our cheek flushing, as Flush—the best of cockers—after wagging and bustling about in a most excited manner, gave one sharp bark, one spring, and, something rising before us, we fired, and a bird fell. We had killed our first woodcock. Utilitarianism has waged the war of extermination most ruthlessly against these spots, and the gorse brakes which shone in golden patches betwixt the fallow and grass lands. There are few left now. The fields are spread before us, smooth and bare, and the corn waves on the ground, erewhile cumbered by old trees and brushwood, which were of no use, save to grow berries, give a covert to birds, rabbits, and vermin, and to offer the eye a pleasant spot to rest upon in the landscape. Away with such uselessness! The world is not large enough for such waste.

Those old pollards, too—those venerable solitary trees which, with their grey scarred trunks, and the green twigs shooting from their tops, evidences of the life still within,—seemed to us always the very symbols of a hale, vigorous old age, furrowed perchance, or shrunken by time, but crowned and flowering still with the presence of youth. Is there not room for them? and wilt thou, oh man! regret also that utilitarianism has wrought such a similitude betwixt agriculture and manufacture,—has so imbued both with the self-same economy of space and material, that the buildings and structures of the one are as stiff, formal, and red-bricked as the other? Yea, O Age! even so far will our perverseness carry us. Those old farmhouses, with their low thatched roofs covered with grass and lichens, their stacks of chimney, the old tree at the gable-end, the trim little garden and the bee-hives in front, those old straggling farmyards with their ivy-covered out-houses and linheys, their pools and scattered groups of trees, were doubtless incommodious and wasteful, but they had a picturesqueness in our eyes never to be claimed by their successors. Utility seeks not such effects.

Those brooks which used to meander through pleasant meadows and shady copses, or ripple gently over rocks and yellow pebbles, and whose waters are now diverted into straight channels and narrow cuts to irrigate land or turn wheels, are not they a lost beauty? But there is a gain in water-power, a saving in labour.

Harvest-homes—merry-makings—rural feasts! The Age repudiates and ignores them utterly. The land is too poor, life too short, for such follies. Yet do we look back lovingly on the days when the loud shout of the reapers announced far and wide the cutting of the first sheaf—when the last load was carried home, attended by a long procession of men, women, and boys, all rejoicing with shouts, song, and laughter, in the plenty which had been gathered in; and when the event was celebrated ever with feasts and mirth, with open-doored hospitality, and open-handed charity. Nor has there ever yet been a time in the age of the world when the fruitfulness of the earth has not been hailed by man with joy and triumph, or the completion of its riches been calendared by festivity and thankfulness. Now the goodly sheaves are carted and thrown out before their garners as so much manure or so many cotton bales. “So much the better,” says utilitarianism; “there is so much time, so much money saved.”

And are men’s stomachs, men’s pockets, to be the all in all of consideration? Are their hearts and fancies not to be fed or cultured? Is man’s labour to find the dead level of toil, ungladdened by the sound of rejoicing, unbrightened by hours of mirth? Is he to see no other end and aim in such toil than the receipt of a few shillings at the week’s end—the fair day’s wage for the fair day’s work? Is this to be the sole tie betwixt him and the soil—betwixt him and his labour? Is life to be stripped of all its poetic and noble inspirations, and be reduced to a dead materialism? Is man’s soul to become merely the motive power in a mechanism of profit and loss, utility and production? Is thy civilisation to take this form, O wondrous Age! If so, the experiment may be a grand one, a successful one; but the experiences of the past, and the instincts and sentiments of mankind, are against it. For what do men most love to look into the past? To seek the useful, or the heroic and the beautiful? Do they pore over musty tomes, and delve into buried cities, that they may discover the secret of Tyrian dye and Etruscan pottery, the system of Phœnician commerce and the sources of Egyptian wealth; or that their hearts may burn with the heroism of Marathon or swell with the glories of Alexander, and that the thrilling words of Pindar, the noble thoughts of Sophocles, the beautiful legends of Grecian mythology, the grand truths of Grecian history, may be their own? Do they investigate the records of the middle ages to understand the monetary schemes of Lombardy and Venice, or that they may read how men fought, how women loved, and minstrels sang—that they may dwell on knightly courtesy and knightly chivalry? Utility has, I fear, little of the study. This may be a human error, but it is a deep-seated and long-standing one. What a Jeremiad to sing over a fine old hedgerow, rotten stumps, and barbarous customs! Not so, O Age! It is not things themselves we mourn, but the feelings, the principles they nurtured or represented.

Agriculture followed of necessity in the march of utilitarianism. It was challenged to fight for its own footing—to struggle and compete with its rivals in the quickness and quantity of production. In this struggle it gained, maybe, much strength from its alliance with science, and added to its resources by the applications of art; but it lost much of the Arcadian character, the pastoral beauty, the simplicity of pleasure and simplicity of toil, the simple honesty and the generous manliness, which placed in point of attraction the rural life next to the heroic in men’s minds, which invested the vocation of the husbandman with the graces and dignity of a higher order of labour, and wreathed the bare facts of his toil with the garlands of poesy and sentiment. It was forced to strip for the race, to throw away all its adornments, its poetry and sentiments, and descend to the bare remunerative materialism of husbandry. It can no longer afford

“Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,

Those calm desires that asked but little room,

Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene,

Lived in each look, and brightened all the green.”

We doubt whether the consummation, imagined by the poet, has arrived, when “rural mirth and manners are no more,” but we see that they are being fast swept into the vortex of the great maelstrom of utilitarianism and generalisation. Carp we at these changes, then? We merely, according to our first proposition, balance gains against loss, crediting so many more cultivated acres, so many more turnips, so much more corn, against the loss of picturesqueness, the loss of many moral features and characteristics in a class which has hitherto been no mean element in our commonwealth. Had the Age, however, done no more than this, we should not have grudged the sacrifices thrown in the path of the great Juggernaut of progress. Spite of railroad and factory, there will still be beauty enow in our land—enow for poet and painter. It will not lie so much in our daily paths; it will not be such a constant presence to worker and wayfarer; but it will still be found by its worshippers. Even utilitarianism cannot nullify nature or denude the world of its Edens. Still must the corn wave, the grasses grow, the trees bud. Still will the “stately homes of England” stand beautiful “amid their tall ancestral trees through all the pleasant land,”—the cottage homes peep from their coverts. Still will the mountains stand in their grandeur, the rivers run in their gladness, and the valleys laugh and sing.

The rural virtues, too, may have only disappeared, to reappear under the influence of a higher intelligence. At least, we feel that a vocation, which is carried on in the open air, in constant communion with nature, must ever maintain a certain healthiness of feeling, a certain manliness of spirit.

But if this self-same utilitarianism, which has levelled our fields, turned our rivers, and laid open our valleys, be also levelling and laying bare our hearts, and frittering the great currents of the soul into a thousand channels—if it be overthrowing our moral landmarks, and invading the moral principles, which were once laws in our social cosmos, what hast thou, O Age, amid all thy wonders, to balance such work?

First of the levelling. We speak not of the changes or influences of democracy, for we have a firm belief that the proportions of society are determined by laws so fixed and true, that any attempt to violate them will eventually produce reaction; but of the changes which are gradually levelling and overthrowing the moral distinctions and moral barriers of our social life, and especially those of age. Where is now our youth?—where our old age? Where are our boys?—where our old men? We have men-boys and boy-men. But where are the veritable boys—the boys with eager hearts, throbbing pulses, buoyant spirits, gay hopes, glowing fancies, unreasoning beliefs, and ready faith—the boys with the young thoughts and the young feelings gushing through them like the juices of young life—the boys who hail their stage of existence joyfully, gathering its pleasures, battling its sorrows, and venting its impulses; not striving and straining after an unripe knowledge and a forced maturity? Where are now our veritable grey-beards—the old men who calmly, and of course, enter on their stage of life assuming its dignities, claiming its privileges, and fulfilling its functions; separating themselves from the turbid action, the toil and strife of the world, and reposing honourably in the retirement of experience and council; not clinging to the semblance of foregone periods, not envying the energies of youth or the prime of manhood, but keeping alive the memories and feelings of both to ray their declining day with mellow light—the old men who rejoiced to wear their grey hairs as a crown of glory, and stood amid their fellows with their hoary heads, their wise hearts, and their brows engraven with the lines of thought like

“The white almond-trees full of good days.”

Such a man the poet draws—

“Behold a patriarch of years, who leaneth on the staff of religion;

His heart is fresh, quick to feel, a bursting fount of generosity.

He, playful in his wisdom, is gladdened in his children’s gladness;

He, pure in his experience, loveth in his son’s first love.

Lofty aspirations, deep affections, holy hopes are his delight;

His abhorrence is to strip from Life its charitable garment of Idea.

The cold and callous sneerer, who heedeth of the merely practical,

And mocketh at good uses in imaginary things,—that man is his scorn;

The hard unsympathising modern, filled with facts and figures,

Cautious and coarse, and materialised in mind,—that man is his pity.

Passionate thirst for gain never hath burnt within his bosom;

The leaden chains of that dull lust have not bound him prisoner:

The shrewd world laughed at him for honesty, the vain world mouthed at him for honour;

The false world hated him for truth, the cold world despised him for affection:

Still he kept his treasure, the warm and noble heart,

And in that happy wise old man survive the child and lover.”

Such men may still exist, scattered like old pollards over the levelled face of society; but they are not thy products, not the results of thy materialism, O Age! The youth which opens under thy auspices, and runs by thy creeds, cannot sow the seeds of such a harvest. The youth formed under thy influences and action will have no growth, will not know the natural processes of maturation—“First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” Thy youth will be put up and fashioned like a piece of mechanism, set to work like a steam-engine, moving ever by the same hard heavy material laws,—so much speed from so much power, so much knowledge from so much pressure.

Such a morning cannot end in the even we have pictured. “The merely practical,” “the facts and figures,” “the exacting coarse materialism of mind,” “the passionate thirst,” will be “the leading chains” which must bind the old age of the man who lives by thy doctrines and fulfils thy theories. Affection, feeling, imagination, faith, cannot wreathe or foliage the hoar trunk, for these will have been long before lopped off and withered by “that solid falsehood, the material.”

Truly the tendency of thee and thy utilitarianism, O Age! is to materialise the beginning and end of life—to take from youth its freshness and romance, from old age its geniality and repose; and better so, thou sayest, for thus will its space, its strength, and its energies, be concentrated on the great producing period manhood, and not expended in boyish frolics and follies—in the maunderings and idleness of dotage. Why should there be these waste places in life? “Is not youth the preparation for manhood, and old age its result?” Is it not right, therefore, that our youth should not be fed on nursery tales, prurient fancies, fiction, poetry, and high-flown sentiment, but be early imbued with the solid facts, the useful knowledge, the rules of science, and the power of calculation, which will fit it to play its part well and ably in the great battle of utility? And why should old age rest, sink into placid inaction? If it cannot labour, cannot it scheme and calculate and speculate, till the brain begin to err, and the mind to fail in its correctness?—then, indeed, let it be thrown aside like an old file, or used-up machine, to moulder and decay. It were well said, O Age! if life had no uses save the practical—if this world were merely one great warehouse, one great mart, one mass on which trade and manufacture were to erect their fulcra, and were not, as it is, covered and filled with the beautiful and sublime; if man were a machine of brain, muscle, and bone, and not endowed with heart and soul, the divine sparks of vitality; if he were to live by bread alone, or be judged by his gold,—then, indeed, ’twere well said and well done. But whilst beauty and sublimity still exist as elements of the physical cosmos, and heart and soul of the moral; whilst we know the glorious thoughts and glorious deeds which the study and culture of them has produced through all time, we cannot but think that they will still be, as ever, chief agencies in this great world of ours; we cannot but think that the beautiful and sublime, reflected on heart and soul, should now, as ever, radiate in the warm impulses, pure worship, and warm imaginings of youth, and beam round age in the sunset hues of a summer day. What are their uses, sayest thou? What are spring and autumn to the seasons? What morn and even to the day? Shall there be no more spring shooting of leaves—no bursting buds, no fluttering or carollings of spring life? Shall there be no brown leaves, no fallow, no mellow fruit? Shall there be no rosy lights of morn, no jocund sounds or pleasant sights of waking life? Shall there be no gorgeous sunsets, no calm splendour of declining day? Is life to toil and sit henceforth under summer heat, and abide ever in the blaze and glare of noonday, rising only in the glimmer of infancy, and setting in the cold gleam of twilight? Shall the bounding step, the joyous laugh, the free heart, generous thought, and intuitive heroism, be no longer the attributes of our youth? Have these no uses? Do they cast no bright lights on a land, raise no pleasant echoes? Have they no genial influences, no glad inspirations for the working world? Shall we no longer see the glorious sight—to us the most sublime spectacle which human life or the world can offer—the sight of a man resting in old age from his labours, not estranging himself from the world, but weaning his thoughts from its cares and turmoil, holding still by its affections and memories, but gently withdrawing his spirit from the strife, to prepare it by repose for the great emancipation it is expecting? Has this no uses? Has it no grand lessons—no sublime teachings—no infinite suggestions? Does it shed no blessing or holiness around—nor reflect a ray of its own peacefulness on striving, toiling men? And are these things nought, and shall they not be? Wilt thou dare, O Age! to cast thy spell over youth and old age, and thus sacrifice to thy materialism and utility the periods which God has sanctified to the highest manifestations of spiritualism—to the purest developments of innocence, love, truth, and faith—to the richest perfectedness of peace, purpose, and wisdom?

We have seen somewhat of the system by which thou nurturest thy youth, and like not it nor its results. We love not the Lanista, gladiatorial training by which heart and imagination are rubbed, starved, and sweated down—and the mind fed, the intellect exercised, for the merely material struggle—the combat of facts and realities—the great game of profit and loss. We love not the training, nor love we those who undergo it. They have not, in our eyes, the loveliness or the lovableness which we used to associate with the image of youth. Young without youth, old without maturity, young in form, old in heart and brain, they stand before us, keen, sharp, and confident; strong in a knowledge of facts, dates, and tables—a knowledge unleavened by the touches of imagination, unsoftened by modesty, unmoved by the freshness and simplicity which give such beauty to youth, and which sometimes make even the wisdom of manhood bow to its intuitions, confessing with the German philosopher, that “the fresh gaze of the child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indubitable seer.”

In what spirit dost thou lead them to the first study—the book of nature? Dost thou spread it before them as a book of God, that they may see its great wonders, learn its great lessons, perceive its great symbols, learn its great poesy, and inhale its great sublime worship,—not comprehending all at once, but gathering them in, for future thought and future perception? Is it thus thou presentest nature to thy children, or not rather as a science and mechanism, the laws, rules, times and measurements of which they must learn and master, forgetting or heeding not the great principles which these represent, the great system of which they are a part? Thy children are taught accurately the distances between stars and the times of their movements; they can babble of strata and formation, explain the secrets of tide, and current, and the law of storms; classify plants, from the hyssop on the wall to the cedar which groweth on Lebanon, and name scientifically the shells on the sea-shore; but we seldom hear them talk of the glory of the heavens or the beauty of the earth, or the wonders of the sea, or point to them as types and revelations of the Power which made and moveth in them all. Nature, with her laws and changes, appeareth in thy schools as the result of mechanic forces and chemical combinations. If thou teachest more than this, we find it not in thy books, in thy public teachings, or in the minds of thy pupils! Is it not the same with other studies? History, science, and poesy are, with thee, so abridged, extracted, epitomised, and tabulated, that only facts are left for the memory, not thought for the mind. All the noble examples, the heroic deeds, the noble thoughts, and great principles which they recorded or contained, are carefully suppressed or parodied; for what have they to do with the practical work on which this generation is about to enter? Thus with their catechisms and manuals, thy pupils, learning without reverence, thinking without feeling, knowing without believing, unencumbered by modesty, unchecked by impulse, enthusiasm, or imagination, can rush at once into the arena, ready and confident. And in choosing this system of training and education, thou art wise in thy generation—wise as the serpent—for by what other couldst thou hope to raise men, who, eschewing nobleness, and aspiring not to greatness—who, rejecting antecedents and abandoning individuality, shall swell the throng of money-getters, buyers, sellers, producers, contractors, speculators, and other zealots of utility, and thus elevate thee to the height of practical glory, thus make thee still more wondrous!

Such men thou wilt have, such men thy system must make; but to quote more eloquent words and thoughts than our own, “If we read history with any degree of thoughtfulness, we shall find that the checks and balances of profit and loss have never been the grand agents with men; that they have never been roused into deep, thorough, all-pervading efforts by any commutable prospect of profit and loss, for any visible finite object, but always for some invisible and infinite one.”

Ages, in which self-interest has been the one pervading principle, this world has seen before: such an age was that of Louis XV., only that then pleasure, not profit, was the prevailing object; lust, not mammon, the presiding deity. Such an era is being now enacted across the Atlantic. There self-interest, in the shape of mammon, is running its race boldly and fiercely, unstayed by old traditions, old memories, or old institutions, and is exhibiting to the world, in all its glory and success, the reign of the practical, the triumph of utility. Let thy admirers, followers, pupils, study these well, ere they rush on their onward career.

We, personally, stand aghast at thy offspring. They terrify us by their unripe shrewdness and “Smallweed” wisdom. Though verging on the period of the sere and yellow leaf, we ever loved the companionship of boys, and were considered rather a good fellow by them. We could discuss the shape of a bat, the colour of a fly, the merits of a pony, or the distinction of prison bar and prison base, pretty well, and at a push could even talk respectably of the stories of old Virgil, the marches of Xenophon, or the facetiæ of Horace. This was all well. But one does not now dare to touch one of these young prodigies without a fear that he will forthwith shoot an arrow from his quiver of facts and dates, by deliberately asking, how far Saturn is from the Earth, or at what rate sound travels, or what is the population of China, or the date of the Council of Nice.

Our flesh quakes even now, and a cold perspiration comes over us, at the thought of the intellectual contests we shall have to undergo with our firstborn. That child-man haunts us like a phantom. The vision sits upon us like a nightmare. We believe him to be our lawfully-begotten offspring, but he will be thy child, O Age; child of thy nurture, of thy circumstances, thy influences. Thou wilt be the she-wolf who will suckle him! We see him grown formal, knowing, and conceited, battering us with questions from his catechisms, ’ologies, tables, and measures. We are not yet resolved how to meet this coming contest; whether to read up covertly for the emergency, or to follow an expedient once successfully adopted by a patriarch of our experience—that of affecting to despise and pooh-pooh all elementary knowledge as beneath and unworthy of him. Yes; we see this our offspring, and we know him chiefly by negatives, chiefly by contrast with boys of our own youth. We know that he will be more proper, discreet, and decorous than ourselves or our contemporaries. We know that he will not be misled by impulse or sympathy; that his mind will never be led from Euclid or Greek grammar, by the ringing of some old rhyme in his brain, or the memory of some old joke, or the thought of the green fields and green woods on which the sun is shining without; that his pulse will not beat quick at reading of the heroic three hundred at Thermopylæ; that he will perhaps vote the Horatii and Camillus humbugs; pronounce the Lay of the Last Minstrel an idle tale, and the Arabian Nights a collection of fooleries; that he will never believe in ghosts, and will smile scornfully at the mention of fairies and pixies; that he will never risk a flogging for the sake of Robinson Crusoe or Roderick Random; that Childe Harold and Don Juan, so sedulously kept from us, may safely be left within his reach; that he will never secrete the family tinder-box, or tear leaves from his father’s logbook to make bonfires on the 5th of November; that he will never give, except a quid pro quo; or play, except with a calculation of gain or loss. Will he ever know a boy’s love? Yes, perhaps, but he will pursue it calmly and discreetly, like a man and a gentleman; will approach his inamorata without diffidence, and talk to her without hesitation. Not such was our boy’s love; not thus did we go through that ordeal of beating pulse and rushing thought. To our recollection, we never spoke six words to the object of our adoration, and never entered her presence without blushing or stammering; but the sight of her flaxen curls and blue eyes at the window would set our brain in a whirl, and a smile or bob of the curls would cause such a beating of the heart that we forthwith set off at topmost speed, and were only stopped by loss of breath or wind. After all such interviews, the said curls and eyes, and certain frilled trousers with which our deity was generally invested, would come dancing in on every mote and sunbeam, drawing off eye and thought from slate or book; and the memory of the many occasions on which we ate cane on account of such distractions, still causes a tingling in the regions devoted to flagellation.

Will he be a sportsman? Probably, but scientifically and unenthusiastically. We think not that he will ever mingle with his sport that love of wood and fell, stream and river, rock and waterfall, cloud and sunshine, leaf and spray, without which rod and gun would be to us as vain and idle implements. We know that he will never sleep in barn or outhouse to be early by the side of the stream or cover; that he will never invest pocket-money in flies, until their fitness for the season or stream has been well tested; that he will never, in anticipation of a raid on hare or rabbit, collect and lock up all the curs and mongrels in the neighbourhood, thereby delighting his parents by a midnight serenade. Will he delight in feasts and revelry? Yes; but staidly and soberly, dressed in fitting costume, conducting himself decorously, and talking on most proper topics. He will never, methinks, taste the luxury of banqueting on potatoes and sausages roasted in the cinders of a bonfire, or rejoice in the irregular joviality of harvest-home, village feast, or dancing in a barn. Wretch that we are! the shadows of such things cling lovingly to the skirts of our memory. One occasion we remember especially. It was the custom of our locale, that every village should have a day appointed for a feast, and on this all doors were opened, all friends welcomed from far and near. On such a day we crossed accidentally the threshold of a yeoman friend, and were dragged forthwith to a board literally groaning under the weight of a piece of beef of nameless form, a kid-pie made in a milk-pan, a plum-pudding ditto, with other delicacies of the like light kind. After trying our digestion, and working our wicked will on them, we adjourned to the barn, and there, claimed as a partner by a cherry-cheeked daughter of our host, we had to confront the struggle of a country-dance or jig, which or what we know not now, and knew not then. It was a fair trial to dance each other down. A bumpkin at our elbow looked on us with invidious rivalry, and commenced at once most outrageous operations with heel and toe. Our partner rushed recklessly on her fate. We felt misgivings as to our own powers. The limbs grew weak, the breath faint. We looked at the Cherry-cheeks; a few oily drops were trickling down them. We felt encouraged. Presently the steps of our bumpkin fell more fitfully and irregularly. Again we looked at the Cherry-cheeks; the moisture was streaming down now in copious rivulets. Bumpkin at last went off in a convulsive fling, and Cherry-cheeks, with a groan and a sigh, confessed herself beaten. We stood conqueror on the field. It was our first and last saltatory triumph. We have never before or since gained éclat in the mazy. Blush not for thy parent, child of our love, but throw thy mantle decently over his delinquencies! No such escapades will ever disturb the regular mechanism of the life which thou and thy comrades will lead!

Thus we trace him onwards by negatives from a youth without enthusiasm to a manhood without generosity or nobleness—a perfect machine, with the parts well adjusted and balanced, regulated to a certain power, fitted to work for certain ends by certain means—the end profit, the means the quickest and cheapest which can be found. As such a man, he will be a richer and shrewder one than his forefathers, and gain more distinction—perhaps become a railway director, have pieces of plate presented to him at public dinners, die a millionaire or a beggar, and be regarded hereafter, according to success, as a great man or a swindler. Such, O Age! is the distinction, and the reverse, which thou offerest to thy children!

Yes; so bigoted are we, that we would not exchange the memory of days spent on green banks, with the water rippling by and the bright sky above us—of nights passed with an old friend—of hours of loving commune with the gifted thoughts and gifted tongues of other days—the memory of the wild impulses, fervid thoughts, high hopes, bounding sympathies, and genial joys of our past—a past which we hope to carry on as an evergreen crown for our old age—even to play for such a high stake, and win.

We cannot test thee so well by old age, for the old men now standing in this generation are not wholly of thy begetting; but, judging by the law of consequences, we can foretell that material youth and material manhood must lead to a material old age; that souls long steeped in reekings from the presses of Profit, and bound for years in the chains of Utilitarianism, cannot readily escape from their pollution and bondage; and we can see also, even now, the dark shadow of the present passing over the spirits of men who began their career in a past. Old age is not, as of yore, a privileged period. Men no longer recognise and value it as a distinction, nor aspire to it as to an order having certain dignities, privileges, and immunities, like the old men at Rome, who were granted exemption from the heavy burden of state duty, and served her by their home patriotism and counsel. Men love not now to be considered or to become old; they fight against this stage of life by devices and subterfuges, and strive to stave off or disguise its approaches. Nor are they so much to blame. The relations of age are changed; it holds not the same consideration or position as in former days, receives not reverence and deference as its due homage, nor is accorded by common consent an exemption from attack, a freedom of warning and counsel. The practical workers of to-day would as soon think of bowing to the hoary head or wise heart of a man past his labours, as to the remains of a decayed steam-engine or broken-down spinning-jenny. The diseased faculties of old age are to them as the disjecta membra of worn-out mechanism. It is this non-estimation, this non-appreciation, which drives men to ignore and repudiate the signs and masks of a period which brings only disability and disqualification, and makes them cling by every falsehood, outward and inward, to the semblance of youth—very martyrs to sham and pretence.

It was not always thus. Within our own experience, men at a certain time of life assumed a change of dress, habits, and bearing—not relinquishing their vocations and amusements, but withdrawing quietly from the mêleé, and becoming quiet actors or spectators; thus signifying that they were no longer challengers or combatants, but rather judges and umpires in the great tussle of life. We remember with what respect we used to regard these as men set apart—a sort of lay priesthood—an everyday social house of peers—a higher court of council and appeal. How deeply we felt their rebukes and praises; with what reverence we received their oracles, whether as old sportsmen, old soldiers, old scholars, or old pastors. These men are becoming few, for such feeling in regard to them is dying out or extinct. Your young utilitarian would show no more mercy to a grey-haired veteran, than the barbarians did to the senatorial band of Rome, but would indifferently hurl Cocker at his head, or joust at him with his statics.

How many classes of these old men, familiar to this generation, are disappearing! We will not touch on the old gentleman, the old yeoman, and others; their portraits have been drawn most truly already, and are impressed on most of our memories; but we must mourn over them with a filial sorrow, believing, O Age! that the high honour, dignity, worth, courage, and integrity by which they tempered society, were of more use to it than the artificial refinement, multiplied conveniences, rabid production, and forced knowledge which thou callest civilisation—that the moral virtues which they represented were more precious to a people, and more glorious to a nation, than the products and wonders of thy mechanism! If thou has bereft us of these, it will be hard to strike the balance!

One class we miss entirely—the old clergymen. Taunt us not, O Age! with the fox-hunting, hard-drinking, hard-riding parsons of the last generation. We knew them too, and knew many whose burden of delinquencies in regard to horse, hound, gun, and wine-cup, leavened as they often were by kindly charities and loving sympathies, will perhaps sit as lightly as that of many a well-oiled, smooth-going machine of capital, who sets the moral tone for our time. We speak not of these, but of the mild evangelists—the gentle brothers whose benevolent faces still beam on our memory; whose gentle words, unmixed with the gall of controversy or the fearfulness of commination, fell often sweetly on our hearts. These lived ere this age discovered that the gospel of Christ required a new development, and the religion of God a new adaptation to the purposes and destinies of man. In many of the quiet sequestered villages of England, pastors who were content to preach and live as their Master had preached and lived, delivering His promises and commands gently and lovingly, and following faithfully His behest in visiting the sick, and comforting the afflicted—many such it was our lot to see and hear. A servant of our household often took us, in our childhood, as the companion of her Sunday holiday. This woman was most erratic in her devotions, and wandered indiscriminately from fold to fold—now sitting under the Established Church, now under Wesleyan, Brionite, or Ranter. Many a field-preaching and conventicle meeting have we attended in consequence, much to the scandal of an orthodox aunt. As she loved, however, to mingle creature-comforts with her religious exercises, we more often visited some friendly yeoman, and went with him and his family to the village church. Pleasant is the memory of many of these Sabbaths; the walk through a quiet lane, or by a shady wood-path; the entry through the sequestered churchyard, with its grass-green graves, ‘neath which the forefathers of the hamlet slept; the church, simple and unadorned, where

“The golden sun

Poured in a dusty beam,

Like the celestial ladder seen

By Jacob in his dream.

And ever and anon the wind,

Sweet-scented with the hay,

Turned o’er the hymn-book’s fluttering leaves

That in the window lay;”

—the minister, reverend and benignant, earnest in entreaty, meek in rebuke—all these are pleasant memories. We knew these pastors better afterward, but this was often our first acquaintance. Oft have we asked for them since. Their places now know them no more. In their pulpits and by their altars, stand men who would impose religion on their fellows as a ceremonial, or inflict it as a penance.

Where, too, are the companions, the fellow-workers of these old pastors, the old-fashioned sisters of charity; those dear old ladies who, with hearts warmed and opened by the affections of their own social life, went forth from their hearths to the homes of the poor, dropping here a word of comfort, here of admonition, here an alms, here a book, and leaving ever behind them a sense of true sympathy and kindly interest? They knew not—so dark was their age—that a regular organisation, discipline, and uniform, a prescribed drill and manuals, were necessary to the perfection of their mission. Their charity was a natural feeling, not an instituted effort; their admonition a friendly appeal, not a systematised summons to reform and penitence; their kindness, an intuition unset to rule; their books, the selection of their own reading, not the licensed and revised issue of repositories and societies. They were the ducts by which many an unseen stream of benevolence flowed into poor houses. Strange to say, too, though unaided by tea-drinkings, public meetings, bazaars, societies, public lists of subscribers, and all the recognised mechanism of modern charity, they had always the wherewithal to give; and almsgiving, as they gave, brought no pain or mortification, injured no sense of self-dependence, and left no moral degradation. They did good in their time—a time when individual endeavour did the work of institutions and corporations, but have passed away now, and are superseded by a very different caste. Their successors march upon us, a stern, zealous, resolute, and to us rather a grim sisterhood—the trained-bands of morality and charity. They are an order having outward and inward forms. The outward sign seems to be sad-coloured raiment; and when we see a young lady dismiss the bows from her bonnet, and adopt a grey shawl, we know that she is about to rush on her vocation as a district visitor. They have rules and codes, an appointed task, and appointed order; and, when duly organised and drilled, advance on some benighted town or village, each cohort attacking a quarter with the stern determination to trample down and drive out poverty, vice, and uncleanliness wherever they may be found. They are a moral police, detective and repressive, each on a separate beat, rushing down courts and through alleys in pursuit of want and immorality. They may fulfil their work, these sisters, and we wish them good speed; but we believe that they must first clothe their charity with more love, and learn especially, what their predecessors knew so well, how to speak to the poor.

We loved those good old sisters and their work. One, whom we remember well—thanks be to God—still walks this earth, doing her beautiful mission of love and charity. How or when she began this mission we know not. It was no sudden adoption, no result of sudden conviction or disappointed hope. We never remember her except as engaged in this genial task. It grew with her growth, as the natural ripening of early sympathies and early feelings. Bred, as gentles often were in those barbarous times, to regard the poor as their lowly friends, and to keep up a kindly intercourse with them, she had come to know their characters and their little histories, to understand their peculiar ways, and to learn to address them in the language by which alone the poor are moved,—the language of the heart. Thus, as time went on, the kindly greetings and kindly interest expanded easily into the higher offices of comfort, instruction, and relief. The transition was natural, and the people wondered not to see one whom they had known, loved, and revered so long, moving among them as a ministering angel of good, chasing darkness from the hours of the bedridden by her pleasant converse, uplifting the soul of some stricken sufferer by her cheering presence, bringing relief to the indigent, or dropping on the ears of some blind or aged Christian the precious words of Gospel writ. Great, too, was she in the nursery and by fireside, as we knew full well, and as another generation is now experiencing. What rhymes she knew, and what stories she told, and how she told them! and how have her love and pleasantness followed us from infancy up to manhood! By the by, what story-tellers there were in those days! The art seems lost at present. People compose their talk now, and the faculty of easy telling a natural narrative is getting rare indeed. Patient and gentle, thus for many years she pursued her loving mission, without the parade of circumstances or ostentation of duty, and without a murmur; though, in later years, she became the channel of all indiscriminate benevolence, and the director of all general charities. No outward humility of garb or look distinguished this our sister. She went forth even on her errands—lady as she was—apparelled after the fashion of her order. Nay, it must be confessed that she rather loved a handsome cloak or bonnet, nor thought them unbeseeming her mission; for she could not understand, nor can we, why acts of charity should be done, like deeds of penitence, in serge and sackcloth. One of her functions was a great mystery to us. Ever and anon mention was made of a certain bag, in connection with certain women. We used to wonder, in our small way, what this could mean; and discovered at last that she was manager of a Lying-in Society, which distributed bags containing all the requisites for ladies expecting that interesting event, and that the bag in the gift of our house was in yearly requisition for a matron, whose habit it was regularly to increase an already swarming brood of white-headed, freckle-faced urchins, who, as soon as they could crawl, seized on gutter and dunghill as their natural heritage.

Her labours were not, however, confined to the homes of the poor, but extended to a field from which most would have shrunk—the prison. Even there, amid the reprobate and the vile, she carried her teachings and her charity, and strove, by earnestness and tenderness, to reclaim and raise her fallen sisters. Many was the rebuff she met with—many the scoff from profligate lips; but still she was neither daunted nor deterred. Vice had for her no pollution, no repulsion; still she persevered; and though her words were often spoken in pain, yet may they often have brought comfort to some sin-laden heart, or awoke contrition in some first sinner. As instances of her failures and disappointments, she used often to tell, with a playful humour, slightly dashed by sorrow, how a woman, who had frequently been a tenant of the jail, and had always left in a feigned state of repentance, on her coming, for the sixteenth time, greeted her with, “Well, ma’am, I must surely be converted this time.” Perhaps the mild teachings and sweet truths, so often told, may, after many days, have been as bread cast on the waters, even to this hardened heart.

Gentle sister! loving heart! thou didst thy mission in love. There be those coming after thee who will employ threat, rebuke, and discipline, where thou wert wont to use persuasion, and strive to force or torture mankind into goodness by forms and penitential processes. They may succeed; but we believe, as thou didst, that God’s work is to be done by gentle influences; that God’s messages should fall on the heart softly as evening dew; that God’s truths should shine on the understanding like the summer sunshine; that God’s promises should be wafted on the soul with the gentleness and fragrance of a south wind. Sweetly does the memory of thy good deeds rest on many a heart, and sweetly, doubtless, has their incense risen to Heaven.

There were other old ladies, too, who had no mission save that of their gentle degree, whom we regard as goodly relics of a past—the old gentlewomen who sat and moved in a certain state and stateliness, and surrounded themselves with a dignity which won deference from those who approached them. We associate these with high-backed chairs, in wainscoted parlours, hung with dark portraits, with old folio picture-bibles; with pleasaunces and laurelled walks—with avenues and parterres—with peacocks and Blenheim spaniels—with gold-headed canes, ebony cabinets, and wondrous coiffures. We defend not those headdresses; they stand in evidence against us, in back numbers of the Ladies’ Magazine. But we remember sitting with great pride at our first play, between two turbans—one yellow, one pink—and recollect regarding the large gold-faced watches which hung pendent from the girdles of our patronesses, as an almost Aladdin realisation of wealth and splendour. Lovely were these gentlewomen often, in the richness and mellowness of their decline, illustrating, by their serenity and peaceful repose, the beauty and holiness of grey hairs—not mocking old age in a caricature of youth, nor scaring young hearts by the skeleton image of their own life.

There were old women, too, whom we regret—old servants, old nurses—garrulous, chattering, snuffy old gossips! O Age! they were pleasant old women withal; told pleasant stories; had an unprofitable habit, when their functions ceased, of regarding those whom their care had brought into the world with a sort of foster affection, and had a pleasant way of bringing back, by story and anecdote, the image of our infancy. These reminiscences were not, however, always gratifying to stripling pride. We remember once, when standing six feet without our boots, and arrayed in our first London suit, being rather humbled at hearing of a period when we hadn’t a shirt to our backs, and might have been squeezed into a quart pot.

We have done with the old age of the past; let it sleep its sleep.

We could instance much more fully, O Age! the levelling tendencies of thy materialism. But if it be true—and surely there must be proof before us—that thy doctrines are shading the brightness of youth, and mumming the majesty of old age, then do we know enough to be certified that those are not all gain! Ring out the table of thy exports, exult over the lists of thy shipping, the number of thy markets, the increase of population, the multiplication of comforts and conveniences, the rapidity of thy communications, the spread of thy education! Yet still would we say, Woe to the land whose youth is not as a vision of gladness! woe to the land where old age is not reverend or revered! Such a land may know a material prosperity, a commercial greatness which shall dazzle the world—may produce men, able in counting-house and on bourse—men ready in speech and debate; but it will not, we think, possess the elements which produce the great qualities—the Heroic—the Poetic—the Moral—the Truthful—on which hitherto have been built the grand structures of the world’s glory. Nor do we think that it would retain virtue enough to continue a line of merchant princes, such as England has ever rejoiced to number among her great men.

PUBLIC LECTURES—MR WARREN ON LABOUR.[^[1]]

A social phenomenon of much interest has recently arisen in Great Britain, and it is one which as yet has no counterpart in other countries. We allude to the practice, now become systematic, of the delivery of public addresses and lectures by the leading men of the nation. We do not refer to the ordinary lectures contracted for by literary institutions, through which the grown-up public supply themselves with important knowledge not obtainable by them in youth at our universities, and for the study of which indeed the brief curriculum of youth has no spare time. The phenomenon to which we allude is something beyond this; it is not stipendiary in character and regular in appearance, but gratis and desultory. It is a spontaneous step taken by men of standing in the world of politics or literature, with the view of adding to the knowledge, improving the social condition, or influencing the political sentiments of their fellow-countrymen. A century ago the only medium of publishing facts and propagating opinions, was the excellent but limited one of books; the last half-century has seen the mighty engine of the Press attain to full power, diffusing views and statements with less accuracy and impartiality than books, but with infinitely greater speed and wider range. As newspapers are commercial adventures, they naturally seek, as their first object, to enunciate views acceptable to the class to whom they address themselves; and hence, whenever any party in the country happens to attain a great preponderance over its rivals, that preponderance is followed by an increase of newspapers in that interest, which in turn tends to augment the preponderance, it may be, even into a tyranny. And accordingly, at times when party-spirit runs high, the side which chances to possess a virtual monopoly of the newspaper press has it in its power, by bold assertion and frequent iteration, to make any misrepresentation or false charges against an antagonist pass generally current as truth, and at the same time keep from view the real principles by which the opposite party are animated. We cannot but regard the recent great development which the practice of making public addresses has obtained amongst us as in some degree a reaction against this natural one-sidedness of the newspaper press, and, on the whole, as the happiest remedy for it that can be devised. For by this means, without the aid of the restricted arena of Parliament, public men of all ranks and parties become the defenders of their own actions, the exponents of their own policy; and, moreover, to a great extent, can thus make the newspapers record at least all sides of the question.

On the whole, we regard the rise of this social phenomenon with much satisfaction. It is the best safeguard, and an ever-living protest, against that worst of all tyrannies, the tyranny of Public Opinion. As yet even America, where it is most needed, has hardly begun to develop the practice; and this not from want of toleration (though the tyranny of the majority be more pressing there than here), but rather from a want of the class from which the chief public speakers of England proceed. American society is not old enough, or rich enough, to have yet given birth to the two classes of public men and literary men, which give such bloom and power to the British commonwealth, and which, mutually aiding and correcting one another, together form a vast and distinguished caste, whose services go directly to instruct, elevate, and guide the general community. In America, the development of Mind as a separate profession, has as yet made but little progress, because the general community is still not rich enough to support a separate literary class of much extent; and their public men, though many of them distinguished by elevated talents, belong in the aggregate to a class entirely dependent for support upon industrial pursuits, the personal direction of which they cannot afford to abandon without pecuniary compensation, and to which they immediately return as soon as released from their legislatorial duties. In Great Britain, on the other hand, our public men are men of substance, who can afford to devote their time wholly to the service of the country, and who in very many cases are trained from their youth to statesmanship as a profession. Such men are proud of their noble profession; to them, their character as legislators and administrators is all in all; and they lose no opportunity of righting themselves with, and impressing their individual views upon the country at large. Hence the frequent public addresses delivered by our leading statesmen during the Parliamentary recess; and even when Parliament is sitting, not seldom do our public men seek a congenial audience out of doors, to which they may make a profession of sentiments which perhaps would be very coldly received from their place in the House. Of late it has been the Peelites and Cobdenites who have stood most in need of this appeal against public opinion; and the studious efforts which some of the leaders of these parties have made to prevent themselves being forgotten, and as protests against the sweeping censure which their indignant country has passed upon them, have not been entirely free of the ludicrous. But this makes no difference. We are proud of a country where opinion is thus free, and where men have the manliness to speak their opinions even when unpopular. It is a noble privilege to our public men, a corrective to the press, a benefit to the community. While it exists, no social or political disease is incurable, and by such aids and renovating influences, we trust, Great Britain is yet destined to flourish and progress for ages to come. The tyranny of the multitude is as odious to England as the oppression of a Czar; and as long as this is the case, the noble inheritance of British freedom is secure; for we shall never react into an autocracy until we have first suffered from the still worse tyranny of the multitude.

But politics furnish hardly a half of that public oratory which nowadays is ever welling forth, like springs of thought, over the length and breadth of the land. The other half belongs in nearly equal proportions to Literature and to practical and patriotic Philanthropy. It is most gratifying to see, as we so often do, the nobility of Britain stepping from their baronial halls to the rural meeting or the provincial athenæum, there to advocate the cause of moral and intellectual improvement,—in words, it may sometimes be, not overcharged with eloquence, but still influential and productive of much good from the position and personal character of the speakers. The place becomes hallowed where good and kindly words have been spoken; and these public addresses have unquestionably contributed with other causes to give a higher tone to many convivial meetings and social gatherings, formerly remarkable for little else than deep drinking and empty laughter. The people still look up to our nobles as their natural leaders, and they may well do so,—for the great body of the aristocracy comport themselves in a manner worthy of their exalted station; and we doubt not the recent eulogium and prophecy of Count Montalembert will prove well-founded, that the nobles of England, ever improving themselves, and still keeping in the van, will continue to rivet to themselves the respect and regards of the British nation.

It must be confessed, however, that our nobles and statesmen appear to greater advantage when advocating the cause of social elevation and moral or sanitary reform, than in addresses of a purely literary character. A good man engaged in a good work disarms criticism and attracts esteem; but when the work essayed is purely literary, the case is otherwise; and in not a few instances addresses of this kind, volunteered by men of position in the country, have fallen far short of the reputation or public position of the speakers. For example, it seems to us that the dignity of statesmanship must suffer an eclipse in public estimation, when one who has played so important a part in imperial politics as Lord John Russell delivers himself of a lecture so altogether trashy as that which he lately pronounced in Exeter Hall. It was a voluntary performance made by his lordship to keep himself before the public eye; but he merely pilloried himself. He has so long regarded himself as the great champion of civil and religious liberty in this country, and has been so flattered by his followers, that he has arrived at a condition in which he is manifestly incapable of measuring his own powers. In the course of the last twelvemonth his lordship has been in the Cabinet and out of it—he has gone to negotiate at Vienna and to lecture at Exeter Hall—he tries everything, and fails in all. In those stirring times, when public questions of the most pressing moment must be answered, and problems of the most complicated kind require to be solved, it was natural to expect that a statesman of Lord John Russell’s standing, if he did court a public appearance, would at least grapple with a question of the day; instead of which, he treated his audience to a piece of “antiquated imbecility,”—as shallow in thought as it was worthless in style,—wherein the “old saws” were schoolboy commonplaces, and the “modern instances” came no nearer to us than the days of Galileo! As a contemporary journal remarked,—“for any sympathy of his readers, or for any practical effect upon their wills, he might as well have discoursed to them of the patience of Job or the justice of Aristides.”

Such exceptions, however, ought not to affect an estimate of the general system or practice, which we regard as fraught with much good. It is observable that men of mark who have special relations to any place, to any town or district, frequently seek to make their literary or oratorical powers a graceful means of cementing the connection which subsists between them and the place in question. It is to a kindly desire of this kind that we owe the lecture or address whose title we have made a text for the preceding remarks, and which we desire to commend to the notice of all address-givers as in many respects a model of this class of compositions. It is well considered,—a tribute of respect to which every assembly is entitled; the rare but fascinating charm of style is felt throughout; and its spirit is not more genial and sympathetic, than its counsels are calculated to be of deep practical influence in the affairs of life.

In choosing Labour for his theme, Mr Warren addressed himself to a subject which he knew must interest every unit in the crowded audience around him. The establishment of the rights of labour is the first-fruit of freedom, and the maintenance of these rights is the first necessity of a commonwealth. “Labour,” says Adam Smith, “was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased.” And, as that clear-sighted writer adds, “the property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing his strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty of both the workman, and those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they think proper.” “Labour,” almost simultaneously remarked the great and good Turgot, “is the poor man’s property: no property is more sacred; and no time nor authority can sanction the violation of his right freely to dispose of this, his only resource.” Words these, as Mr Warren remarks, worthy to be recorded in letters of gold. In Britain, Labour, like Opinion, is FREE. And so profoundly cherished by our nation is the principle of freedom in labour, that even in our colonies we have struck the fetters of bondage from the Negroes, by an act, we will not say prudent in the manner of its accomplishment, but noble in the highest degree from the spirit which dictated it.

But things were not always so in England. In the early stages of society everywhere, the only law is the law of the strongest, and might makes right. Even in the classic States of Greece and Rome, where civilisation of a certain kind reached great eminence, the proportion of free men to slaves was infinitesimal only; and in Russia at the present day, the vast majority of the nation are still kept in a state of serfdom. England too had a period—now happily past by six or seven centuries—when a similar state of things prevailed. The working-classes of England then groaned in the state of slavery called villeinage,—a villein being as absolutely the property of his feudal lord as a dog or a hog; unable to acquire any property for himself, whatever he earned belonging to his lord,—held to belong to the land and sold with it,—torn at will from his family,—his children slaves like himself; and if a male and female slave of different masters married, their masters claimed any children that might be born, who were divided between them! The thirteenth century had ended before any considerable proportion of these villeins had risen into the condition of hired labourers. And the first time we hear of these on a grand scale is in the year 1348; on which occasion, the great plague having terribly reduced their numbers, the legislature sternly interposed, “to deny the poor,” in the indignant language of Mr Hallam, “that transient amelioration of their lot which the progress of population, or other analogous circumstances, would, without any interference, very rapidly take away.” “These poor creatures,” says Mr Warren, “were naturally anxious to be better paid for their labour, when it had become so greatly increased in value; and the legislature, in the time of Edward III., passed acts peremptorily fixing, with great precision, the rates at which artisans should be obliged to work, on pain of punishment by fine and imprisonment. This was the famous Statute of Labourers, passed just five centuries ago (1352), and which applied exclusively to those whose means of living was by the labour of their hands—by the sweat of their brow.”

How different the case in England now! What an advance have the virtues of justice, mercy, and wisdom made amongst us during these last five centuries! Freedom, whether personal or political, is no longer an empty boast,—a privilege reserved for a wealthy or high-born minority. Its only limits are where the liberty of the individual trenches upon the liberty of his fellows, or the good of the commonwealth. As regards the rights of labour, of which Mr Warren so ably treats, a British labourer may work to any master, for any number of hours a-day he pleases, and may even contract to work for a particular master for his whole lifetime.[^[2]] But as regards women and children the case is different, and, acting not in accordance with mere theory, but the dictates of experience and philanthropy, the British Legislature have found it necessary to put restrictions upon female and juvenile labour,—these portions of the community being in certain cases too weak and dependent to look after their own interests. In factory-works this is especially the case. The mighty machinery in these establishments requires simply to be tended, so that a considerable portion of the work can be done by mere children. And hence it happens that premature and improvident marriages are frequent among the mill-workers, who, instead of thinking of supporting their children, look forward to children as a means of supporting themselves! A most cruel and unnatural state of things, fatal to the children, and pernicious to the community, which thus witnesses within its own bosom the growth of a class utterly degenerate in body and totally uneducated in mind. Acting upon these considerations, the British Legislature in 1833 passed the first Factory Act, which bore in its preamble “that it was necessary that the hours of labour, of children and young persons, employed in mills and factories, should be regulated, inasmuch as there are great numbers of children and young persons now employed in them, and their hours of labour are longer than is desirable, due regard being had to their health and means of education.” By that statute many excellent regulations were made to mitigate the evil. And again, in the years 1844, 1847, 1850, and 1853, other acts were passed, says Mr Warren, “further restricting the hours of labour of women, young persons, and children, in print-works, mills, and factories; carefully providing for their education, fixing the time for beginning and ending work, so as to prevent their toiling unnecessarily and at unseasonable hours; securing their holidays and periods for recreation, fixing their meal-times; providing for the cleanliness and ventilation of the scenes of their toil; guarding them as far as possible against exposure to danger from machinery; and subjecting mills and factories to constant and systematic inspection and regulation by medical men and government officers, whose business it is to see that the benevolent care of the Legislature is not defeated, or in any way evaded. Again, no woman or girl, of any age, and no boy under the age of ten years, is now allowed to work on any pretence whatever in any mine or colliery; and no boy can be apprenticed to such work under that age, nor for more than eight years. No young person under twenty-one years of age is allowed to enter any flue or chimney, either to sweep it or extinguish fire; and no boy under sixteen can be apprenticed to a chimney sweeper; and even if he be, the moment he wishes it, a magistrate will discharge him from his articles.” Such legislation, undeniably, requires to be very prudently proceeded with; for, while taking care of the employed, we must at the same time respect the freedom of the employer, otherwise manufacturing capital will flee our shores, and the state of the working-classes will be rendered worse than before.

The question, indeed, at issue between Labour and Capital is one of exceeding difficulty, yet it is one which every year is pressing itself more urgently upon the consideration of the country. The present laws relating to this matter are unquestionably a great improvement upon what they were thirty years ago. Down to the year 1824, two or three working-men could not meet together, though never so quietly, to settle what wages they would work for, and during what hours, without committing an offence in the eye of the law, and being punished for it; while the masters, at the same time, were at full liberty to meet, and agree to give their men no more than a particular sum! That was neither freedom nor justice; and the late Mr Hume only spoke the truth when, stigmatising the principle, he said,—“The law prevented the labouring classes of the community from combining together against their employers, who, though few in number, were powerful in wealth, and might combine against them, and determine not to give them more than a certain sum for their labour. The workmen could not, however, consult together about the rate they ought to fix on that labour, without rendering themselves liable to fine and imprisonment, and a thousand other inconveniences which the law had reserved for them.” This legal inequality has been removed, but how much remains to be done need be told only to such as shut their eyes to the ever-recurring strikes and misery which desolate our manufacturing districts. Labour is free,—and each man wants to get as much for it as he can; but unfortunately another man as naturally wants to get it for as little as he can. There is no love, no sympathy, not even a common understanding of each other’s affairs; each party forms a league against the other,—and so the heartless suicidal strife goes on. Masters and men—it is hard to say which party is the more to blame. If improvidence on the part of the work-people often tempt them into, and aggravate their position in strikes, by leaving them no little surplus wherewith to meet “hard times,”—turn to our last month’s article on the Lancashire strikes, and see if there be not also an improvidence and gambling spirit on the part of the master-manufacturers, by which the wages and employment of their men are needlessly placed in jeopardy.

Masters and men combine against each other—that is the barbarous order of the day. Men who fancy that war with foreign nations can be wholly abolished by means of arbitration, yet wage an internecine contest with their own brother-countrymen,—a war which, so far from even acknowledging the principle of arbitration, is regularly carried on until one or other of the parties sinks exhausted in the combat! It is not long ago since the combinations of the workmen on strike were of the most savage and atrocious character.[^[3]] Of late they have become less envenomed in spirit; but still the tyranny which trades-unions exercise over individual members of the trade is as glaring as could be practised by Governments even the most despotic. The law attempts to remedy this, but, alas! with little effect. “If,” says the late Chief-Justice Tindal, expounding the existing statutes upon this point, “there be one right, which beyond all others the labourer ought to be able to call his own, it is the right of the exertion of his own personal strength and skill, in the full enjoyment of his own free will, altogether unshackled by the control or dictates of his fellow-workmen; yet strange to say, this very right which the discontented workman claims for himself to its fullest extent, he does, by a blind perversity and unaccountable selfishness, entirely refuse to his fellows who differ in opinion from himself! It is unnecessary to say that a course of proceeding so utterly unreasonable in itself, so injurious to society, so detrimental to the interests of trade, and so oppressive against the rights of the poor man, must be a gross and flagrant violation of the law, and when the guilt is established, must be visited by a proper measure of punishment.” But the masters also may now be made to feel the restraining power of the law; and at this moment one of our highest tribunals, a Court of Error, is occupied with a question of no small importance and difficulty, arising from an attempt of eighteen Lancashire mill-owners to enter into a counter-combination. Their men having combined to support each other in forcing their masters to yield to their terms, the masters entered into a bond to each other not to open their mills for twelve months, except on terms agreed to by a majority; and the question was brought before the Court of Queen’s Bench, whether such an agreement was or was not one in restraint of trade, and consequently consistent or inconsistent with the public good. “The Court differed,” says Mr Warren; “but the majority held that the agreement was illegal, as unduly restraining the freedom of trade, holding ‘that if particular masters might thus combine, so might all the masters in the kingdom:’ and, on the other hand, all the men in the kingdom might combine themselves into a sort of Labour Parliament.” The case, it is understood, will not be held settled on either side until it has been taken to the House of Lords, and decided by the Court of last appeal in the kingdom.

The principle or object kept in view by the Legislature in framing the present statutes seems to have been, as Chief-Justice Tindal once observed, “that if the workmen, on the one hand, refused to work, or the master, on the other, refused to employ, as such a state of things could not continue long, it might fairly be expected that the party must ultimately give way whose pretensions were not founded on reason or justice—the masters if they offered too little, the workmen if they demanded too much.” But, says Mr Warren, “this leaves each party to decide on the reason and justice of its pretensions, and the unreasonableness and injustice of those of its opponent. And it is more likely that the Legislature said to itself,—‘It will always be a question of time; the weakest will go to the wall first, though not till after it has greatly hurt the stronger.’” They just left each side to do its worst, and worry or be worried to death by its opponent, without the State interfering so long as this work of social murder went on peaceably!

Truly, this is sad work! And yet legislation, we fear, though it may in some degree curb, will never reach the root of the evil. The only cure, we feel persuaded, will be found in social, not legislative reform. Better information on the part of the working-classes will do something to the attainment of this most desirable end; and Mr Warren, while paying a just tribute to the “keen mother-wit and right honest heart” of the English working-classes, says,—

“If many years’ observation and reflection entitle me to make a recommendation, it would be, that the working-classes would find it of the highest value to acquire, in a general way, as they could with a little effort,—as by plain and good lectures in this very place,—some knowledge of the circumstances which determine the rate of wages. That is a question, in its higher and remoter branches, of extreme difficulty; but its elementary principles are pretty well agreed upon now, and directly touch the only capital of the poor man—his labour, and teach him how to set a true and not a chimerical and exaggerated value on it, at times when the keenest dispute has arisen on that very subject. Oh, what incalculable benefits might arise from a knowledge, by the acute working-classes, of the leading principles agreed upon by great thinkers, statesmen, and economists of every hue of opinion, as those regulating the relation between employers and employed, and establishing, not a conflict of interest, but an absolute identity!”

Yet it is not Ignorance, but Selfishness—that passion the most abiding of our nature—that is the prime mover in these dire contests between the employers and employed; and along with every effort for the education of our working-classes, we should strive also still more assiduously to cultivate their moral nature and make mutual charity and forbearance more prevalent both among high and low. Very beautifully, and no less wisely and earnestly, does Mr Warren speak on this subject. Inculcating forbearance between master and man in hard-times, he says:—

“Each ought honestly to place himself, for a moment, in the other’s situation—when each might see causes in operation which he might not otherwise have seen—trials and difficulties of which he had not dreamed. Let the master look steadily at the position of the working man, especially in hard times, pressed down to the earth with exhausting labour, anxiety, and galling privations endured by himself and his family, often almost maddening him, as he feels that it is in vain for him to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrow: in moments of despondency and despair, he feels as though the appalling language of the prophet were sounding in his ears—Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with carefulness! He cannot keep himself and those towards whom his harassed heart yearns so tenderly from the jaws of starvation, with all his patience, economy, and sobriety; and yet he sees out of the fruit of his labours, his employers apparently rolling in riches, and revelling in luxury and splendour! But let that workman, on the other hand, do as he would be done by: let his master deal with his capital, which happens to be money, as the workman with his, which happens to be labour—‘freely.’ Let him reflect on the anxieties and dangers to which his employer is often exposed, but dare not explain, or make them public, lest it should injure or ruin his credit: his capital may be locked up in machinery, or he may be otherwise unable to realise it, however desperate his emergency, without a destructive sacrifice: great but perfectly legitimate speculation may have failed from causes he could not foresee or control—from accident, from fraud, or misfortune of others—from a capricious change in public taste: he may have been running desperately, but with an honest spirit, along the black line of bankruptcy for many months, without his workmen dreaming of it, and yet has punctually paid their weekly wages to perhaps several or many hundreds of them, often borrowing at heavy interest to do so, while these workmen supposed him always the master of untold thousands! Now I say, let each party try to think of all these things, and pause before he commits himself to a rash and ruinous line of hostility. A strike too often partakes of the nature of a social suicide. Capital—that is, labour and money—at war with itself, may be compared to the madman who, in a sudden phrenzy, dashes each of his fists against the other, till both are bleeding and disabled—perhaps for ever.... Let each party sincerely try to respect the other; to find out and dwell on those qualities really, and to so large an extent, entitling each to the other’s respect and sympathy. Let the master reflect on the patience, ay the truly heroic patience, self-denial, fortitude, and energy with which the workman endures severe trials and privations; and let the workman reflect on the fairness and moderation, often under circumstances of serious difficulty,—on the generosity and munificence of his master, as could be testified by tens of thousands of grateful workmen, in seasons of sickness, suffering, and bereavement.”

Towards the close of his elaborate lecture, Mr Warren discourses nobly and cheerfully on the Dignity and Consolations of labour, and glances at the monster evils of Improvidence and Intemperance by which the daily life of the working-classes is robbed alike of its honour and its comfort. In this part occurs a passage so striking and so eloquent that we cannot but transfer it to our pages, and we trust the warning and appeal which it conveys will animate all who have the privilege of influencing the working-classes, with an enduring desire to banish the debasing and all-abstracting passion of intemperance from their ranks.

“I hope and believe that I must go out of this hall, to find a victim of Intemperance! Such a man, or rather wreck of a man, is not to be found here! I know, however, where to find him; there is another hall in which I took my seat this morning, have sate all day, and shall be at my gloomy post again in the morning, to see,—possibly,—standing trembling, or sullen and desperate at the bar of justice, one whom the untiring and remorseless fiend Intemperance has dragged thither, and stands grim but unseen beside his victim. He had been a man, might we say, well to do in the world, and getting respected by all his neighbours, till he took to drink, and then it was all up with him—and there he stands! disgraced, and in despair. I need not draw on my imagination for illustrations, especially before an audience which numbers so many men whose painful duty as jurymen it is to sit every sessions, with myself, engaged in the administration of justice. You have seen how often, in a moment of voluntary madness occasioned by drink, a life’s character has been sacrificed, the brand of felon impressed on the brow, and free labour exchanged for that which is profitless, compulsory, and ignominious to the workman, within the walls of your prison! It would be unjust, however, not to say that exhausting labour, and the companionship of those who are together so exhausted, supply but too many temptations to seek the refreshment and exhilaration afforded by liquor, and which soon degenerates, from an occasional enjoyment, into an accursed habit. Home soon ceases to be home, to him who returns to it under the guilty delirium of intoxication: there, weeping and starving wife and children appear like dismal spectres flitting before his bloodshot eye and reeling brain. As the husband frequents the dramshop, so he drives his wretched wife the oftener to the pawn-shop, and her and his children at length to the workhouse; or perhaps in her desperation—but I dare not proceed! The coroner can tell the rest.

“Look at yonder desolate little room, at the end of a dreary court; a funeral goes out from it in the morning! Enter this evening. All is silent, and a single candle on the mantel-piece sheds a dull flickering light on a coffin, not yet screwed down. Beside it sits morally a murderer; his bloated face is hid in his shaking hands; he has not yet ventured to move aside the coffin lid, but at length he dares to look at his poor victim—his broken-hearted wife! Poor, poor soul! thou art gone at last! Gone, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest! ’Tis a happy release, say the friendly neighbours, who have contributed their little means to lay her decently in her coffin. Ay, besotted husband! let your bloodshot eyes look on that white face, that wreck of a face so sweet and pretty when you married her! Never fear! the eyes are closed, and will weep and look mournfully at you no more! Touch, if you dare, those limbs, which the woman who laid them out said, with a sigh, were mere skin and bone! Dare you take hold of her cold hand and look at her wedding-ring? Do you see how her finger is worn with the needle? During the day, during the night, this poor creature was your willing slave, mending your linen, and that of your wronged children, and what was left of her own, and which are nearly rags. Do you hear those children sobbing in the next room? Do you see the scar on that cheek? Look and tremble. Have you forgotten the blow that caused it, given by your hand of drunken and ruffian violence? Yet she never reproached you! And when at length, worn away with misery, starvation, and ill-usage, she was forced to give up the struggle for life, her last—her very last act was gently and in silence to squeeze your unworthy hand! Perhaps remorse is now shaking your heart, and you inwardly groan—

‘Oh, if she would but come again,

I think I’d grieve her so no more!’

She will come no more on earth, but you will have to meet her again! So, man, close the coffin lid! Go to bed, and sleep if you can! The funeral is in the morning, and you must follow the poor emaciated body close past your favourite dramshop!”

As befitted the audience, it is manual or mechanical labour that Mr Warren in his essay chiefly concerns himself with. But so eminent an author cannot be insensible to the still nobler labour of the Mind, or to the grand and touching lives of so many of its votaries. Manual labour may appear harder than some kinds of intellectual pursuits, but it cannot be carried to the same excess. It is less fatal, because less alluring. The labour of the hands does not kill like the labour of the head. It is not the lower classes alone that work. Mr Warren well says:—

“The working-classes! Are those not worthy of the name, and in its very highest sense, few in number, comparatively, though they be, who by their prodigious powers of thought make those discoveries in science which have given tenfold efficacy and value to labour, turned it suddenly into a thousand new channels, and conferred on all classes of society new conveniences and enjoyments? Are we to overlook those great intellects which have devoted themselves to statesmanship, to jurisprudence, to morals, to the science of medicine—securing and advancing the best interests of mankind, and relieving them from physical anguish and misery; the noble genius devoted to literature, refining, expanding, and elevating the minds of all capable of it, and whose immortal works are glittering like stars of the first magnitude in the hemisphere of thought and imagination? No, my friends; let us not be so unjust, ungrateful, or unthinking; let us rather be thankful to God for giving us men of such powers, and opportunity and inclination to use them, not for their own reputation’s sake alone, but for our advantage; and let us not enhance the claims of manual, by forgetting or depreciating intellectual labour. I could at this moment give you a dozen instances within my personal knowledge, of men whom God has given very little physical strength, but great mental endowments, and who cheerfully undergo an amount of exhausting labour of which you have no idea, in conducting public affairs, political and legal, and prosecuting scientific researches, immortalising the age in which they live.”

Genius in all ages commands the spontaneous homage of mankind. And it is only just that it should be so. “Tell me,” said an acute observer of human affairs, “what a few leading minds are thinking in their closets, and I will tell you what their countrymen will be thinking in the next generation.” It is the great minds of a country that most deeply influence its fortunes,—it is the great minds of the world that mould the progress of our race. These men may live a life of toil and sacrifices in the cause to which their high powers are devoted, and may die ere the precious seed sown by them has begun to germinate. But they do not lose their reward. The fruit comes at last. Their words enlighten the world, hastening its progress to a happy goal; while their example of high powers and glorious self-devotion reaps a rich recompense by inspiriting others through future ages to follow in their steps. As saith Longfellow,—

“Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us,

Footprints on the sands of time:

Footprints that perchance another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwreck’d brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again!”

TOUCHING OXFORD.
A LETTER TO PROFESSOR NEBEL.

My dear Professor!—You see that I have not forgotten the note of admiration which your countrymen use at the beginning of letters when they address each other. It is an easy way of giving emphasis to the greeting, or of expressing the admiration of the writer for the character of the person written to. When I last saw you at Dummerjungenberg, I recollect I promised to write you down the impressions which an intended visit to my old University might make upon me, and I hasten to fulfil that promise now. It is superfluous for me to tell you that the two English universities are essentially different in their constitution from a German university, as you are well acquainted theoretically with the constitutions of both. I maintain that each kind is good, and answers its own end. The German university fully answers its purpose of making men learned, but the stamp of character which it affixes to the man is evanescent, and does not follow him through life. According to the language of the Bursch or German student, as soon as a man has ceased to be a student, he falls back again, as a matter of course, into the Philisterium, or limbo of the Philistines, which is the student’s term to designate the uncovenanted class, which comprises all mankind excepting the student. On the other hand, we speak of men for the whole of life as Oxford or Cambridge men much more than we do of them as Göttingen or Leipzig men, inferring by this mode of expression that they have been, as it were, fed on the milk of Alma Mater, which continues through the whole of life to affect their constitutions in a peculiar manner. So highly do some of our men think of this influence, that they dread too much infusion of the Germanic element, as dangerous to this peculiar quality of our universities of forming and stamping the whole man, instead of merely the logical part of him. I recollect well that at a meeting of Convocation at Oxford, when some material changes were brought under consideration, no sentiment was more highly applauded than one which concluded the Latin speech of a talented polemical churchman, when he said, “Hanc Universitatem Germanizari non volo”—“I protest against this university being Germanised;”—by which he plainly meant, not that he objected to the widening of its scope of teaching, but that he feared that mere instruction would usurp too much prominence in the scheme of education, and throw into the shade that general moral training which is now a most essential part of the system. One of the feelings, to speak individually, that I should be sorry to lose is that which this very name of Alma Mater implies. The word “Almus” is one of the most beautiful in the Latin language; it means that whose nature is to cherish, nourish, inspire with life. Thus, Venus is called “Alma” by the ancients, as representing the principle of life in nature; Ceres is also called “Alma,” as being the goddess that supplies the staff of life. If it be true, as Mr Carlyle says, that our word “lady” is derived from two old words, meaning a giver of loaves, it would be a good translation of the word “Alma.” And desirable it certainly is, that the word “lady” should bear this fulness of meaning; the function of woman, in her beautiful ideal, being to give life, to support life, and to make life worth living. And the poet saw the matter truly, as poets generally do the most truly, when he said—

“Woman, dear woman, in whose name,

Wife, sister, mother meet,

Thine is the heart by earliest claim,

And thine its latest beat.”

Now, to every Oxford man, his Lady Mother, or Alma Mater, in the transcendental sense, is his university, occupying nearly as high a place in his heart as Our Lady occupies in that of the devout Catholic. And this much I can say from experience. As Hercules could do nothing in wrestling against the giant Antæus, the son of the Earth, as long as he persisted in throwing him, seeing that whenever he fell in his mother’s lap he gained new strength, so is it with myself; the world never throws me,—I never am cast down by circumstances, but a thrill from the warm bosom of Alma Mater, as powerful but more enduring than galvanism, inspires me with a new life, and I rise with fresh courage and fresh heart to the wrestling-match of life.

I have lately visited my old University after a long absence, and found its outward aspect fair as ever—nay, rather fairer and fresher than ever. Changed it is undoubtedly, but changed for the better. Much that is new and tasteful, at the same time—a rare accident in our times—has been added, and the hand of Time has been arrested, and that which was decayed or destroyed has been restored with affectionate fidelity. One of the greatest improvements, to my mind, has been effected by the railroad, which was at first greatly feared as a revolutionary agent. It has diverted from the main thoroughfares that brawling stream of traffic which formerly flowed through them in the shape of stage-coaches, stage-waggons, and other properties and accessories of the stage, and left the town to its genuine academical character of a dignified repose. Although this change gives to the town, in the eyes of commercial travellers, a somewhat dead-alive appearance, and although a similar change in other places seems to take away truly the only life they possessed, it seems, on the contrary, to have withdrawn an unpleasant intrusion from Oxford, and left her to the dignified retirement from the world of bustle and action, in which she most delights.

Oxford is a town which, for its medieval beauty, deserves to be kept under a glass-case; and nothing can be more advantageous to its academical character, than diverting from its walls the turbid current of commerce which belongs to this much-bepraised nineteenth century. This the railroad has achieved most effectually. There is still abundance of life in the streets, but life in unison with the history of the place; and suddenly whirled as one is by the express train from the turmoil of London to the repose of Oxford, with its lines of venerable colleges, and troops of sombre but graceful gowned figures, one experiences a feeling as of having been transported in a trance on the carpet of the Arabian Nights from one place to another. Never did the High Street appear so broad or so beautiful as now that its area is uninvaded by the rattle of vulgar vehicles. The time to see it to perfection is when the sun happens to set behind the opening at Carfax Church, dazzling the eye at its focus, and forcing shafts of amber light out along the fronts of St Mary’s and All Saint’s churches, and the fantastic façade of Queen’s College. This is a condition which presents one of the finest town-views in the world that can be seen where there are no mountains in the case. There is much similarity between Oxford and the grand old Flemish towns; and the railway has been a boon to them, as it has been to her, in preserving their quiet character. Unlike other English towns, the inhabitants of which point with an ignorant pride to the substitution of stucco-fronted houses, and cockney plate-glass, for the cross-beamed gables and lattices, all the architectural changes which have taken place of late years in Oxford appear to have been for the better. One is certainly sorry to see the time-corroded and weather-beaten stone disappearing from the faces of the colleges, and new freestone appearing in its place; but this change, though one that we may sigh over as even over the seasonal changes of nature, is, in reality, of a conservative character, and its absolute necessity is an unanswerable plea. The nature of the stone of which most of the colleges are built being such as to peculiarly expose it to wear and tear of weather, we are not sorry to see it replaced by a material which looks durable in its novelty, and to many generations yet to come will become more beautiful with age. No expense has been spared in these reparations; and the stranger will be peculiarly struck with the manner in which they have been carried out in many of the principal buildings. In Oxford alone, of all the towns in England, domestic architecture appears properly subordinate to that devoted to public purposes; and as she grows in beauty with each addition, her inhabitants may be one day allowed to boast as the Romans of the olden time,

“Privatus illis census erat brevis,

Commune magnum,”

for the splendour of her public buildings will quickly dwarf the most ambitious attempts of private proprietors; and one good result of the communal, or, as a Cantab would rather say, combinational life of Oxford, is the prospect that things will be achieved there by bodies of men imbued with the “genius loci,” which would surpass the aspiration, taste, or indeed ability of most individuals to accomplish elsewhere. So should it ever be. What can the use be of any individual, whose establishment does not assume palatial proportions, pluming himself on the possession of architectural decorations, or masterpieces of painting or sculpture, which, added to a public gallery, would give delight and instruction to thousands, instead of administering to the pleasures of a few? I do not know whether you have ever visited Oxford. If you have, I may remind you, though unnecessarily, that, besides the world-renowned High Street, there are two other streets in it not less characteristic—one the Broad Street, parallel with it for a part of its length; and the other St Giles’s, a continuation of the Corn Market, running at right angles to the High Street from Oxford Cross. The Broad Street is one of those areas reminding us of Continental cities, where the population might be mustered in arms if necessary. It was in the middle of this that Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were martyred; and at its junction with St Giles’s is now set up an elegant Gothic monument, something in the manner of Sir Walter Scott’s at Edinburgh, to perpetuate the memory of that event. St Giles’s is a most remarkable street. It has a church at its commencement and near its end, where it branches into two roads. It is so spacious that the houses on each side, irregularly built as they are, and ought to be, appear diminutive; and between the houses and the central road, on each side, is a row of trees, which gives it the appearance of a boulevard. On entering it, you have on the right the new buildings of Baliol, and farther on, the more ancient face of St John’s College; facing which are the new Taylor Buildings—a structure with which much fault has been found, as a weak centre on the side towards Beaumont Street appears to carry two heavy wings, but which must be allowed on all hands to conduce greatly to the adorning of its site, and indeed of the town generally. It is in this street that fountains, judiciously placed, would add much to the general effect; but many may doubt whether fountains would ever have other than an unnatural and artificial aspect in England, where the wetness of the atmosphere renders drier objects pleasanter to look upon. There are two seasons of the year when fountains are especially agreeable—in the summer heats, when it is delightful to be within reach of their spray; and in frost, when they are draped with pendulous icicles of the most fantastic beauty—a phenomenon I have indeed seen on the little fountain in the Botanic Garden at Oxford. Both these seasons are generally with us of short duration, and during all the rest, fountains to many would be somewhat of an eyesore, and create a shivering sensation. Those in Trafalgar Square count as nothing. As for the Crystal Palace and Versailles fountains, and all of the same description, people delight in them more for their mechanical cleverness than their artistic effect, and they are things got up for holiday occasions, not meant to form parts of the scenes of everyday life, like the fountains of Italy, or the gossip-haunted Brunnen of Germany. I fear then that, for the present, Oxford must be contented with her rivers, and not babble of fountains. She is one of the few large towns singularly blest with the presence of ever-flowing and ever-living water. The Isis runs beside her, covered with a fleet of pleasure-boats, probably as large as that of Athens during the Peloponnesian war, to which it has been wittily compared, and in the summer days, swarming in and out amongst each other like the gondolas of Venice. The Cherwell, which is a river as large as the famed Cam, or nearly so, encircles the meadows of Christchurch and Magdalen, and, with its sinuous course, and banks overshadowed with trees, presents numberless nooks of beauty, and spots of refuge from the heats of summer. The avenue in Christchurch meadow is second to none in the world, perhaps superior to all, though there are many like it; for instance, the avenue at Cambridge, which was compared by Porson to a college fellowship, as a long dreary vista with a church at the end of it; the avenue by the Severn, in the Quarries at Shrewsbury: that of the University of Bonn, and others at royal residences, and near places of academic retirement. In connection with this avenue, it is well to mention that there is a time-honoured custom prevalent in the University, of making it a general promenade on the Sunday in Commemoration-week, which generally occurs towards the end of the leafy month of June. On that day, most of the members of the University are to be seen in their distinctive dresses; and those are considered happy who are accompanied with friends, called, from their object in visiting the University, “lions and lionesses;” nor is the wealth and beauty of the city unrepresented. From this custom arises the name of “Show Sunday.”

The rivers afford an inexhaustible source of amusement, at a cheap and easy rate, to the gownsmen, who luxuriate in all sorts of boats, according to their activity or laziness—the energetic eight-oar, the social four-oar, the friendly pair-oar, the fantastic canoe, the adventurous outrigger-skiff, the dreamy sailing-boat, and the sleepy punt, the latter having come into fashion chiefly of late years, and in the hot season, and being a method of amusement which, at the price of the violent exertion of one of the party, purchases the perfect repose of the rest, who lie on their backs in boating-dresses, cigar in mouth, and the last work of Dickens or Thackeray, chosen for its lightness, in hand, and watch over the sides the swimmings of their Skye terriers. This peculiar dog, distinguished from all others by its sagacity, fidelity, and an ugliness which has worn into beauty, is now quite a part of the University system; yet I remember when the first was introduced into Oxford, and considered so remarkable that he gave his master the name among the townsmen of the “gentleman what belongs to the dog.” The poor little fellow had to suffer much for his resemblance to a door-mat, before his position was fully recognised.

Next in importance to the colleges and rivers of Oxford are the gardens. With the latter we must include the college-meadows, which are composed of a real meadow in the centre, surrounded by a planted gravel-walk, bounded generally, on the outer side, by one of the rivers. These gardens, though private, are liberally opened by the college authorities to the public, and, occupying a large part of the area of the town, they invite the residents to a number of short walks and lounges, the temptation to which in other towns is generally wanting, but which must be most conducive to health. In some of them—as in St John’s—the members of the college amuse themselves with archery, in others with bowls—a truly after-dinner recreation; while in the park that is attached to the grounds of Magdalen College the eye is gladdened by the sight of a number of browsing deer, who become singularly tame in consequence of the attentions of the Fellows. Well might Macaulay call it “their pleasant abode” of Magdalen! Magdalen is now rendered even more pleasant to some minds by the choral service of the Church of England having been brought to perfection in its chapel, so that its members can never attend Divine service without their ears being charmed by the most exquisite music. Others may be of opinion that the service solemnly read produces an effect which is appreciable by all rather than by a few of peculiar temperament. I do not take upon myself to strike the balance. In two other colleges is the service sung instead of being said—namely, in St John’s and New Colleges, and these three colleges are naturally a source of great attraction to strangers—so much so, that the chapels being of limited dimensions, admission to them has of necessity been made a favour. In the chapels at Oxford, customs have been perpetuated from time immemorial, which would shock rigid Protestantism, unless inured to them by habitual contact—such as the lighting of candles on the altar, and painted altar-pieces, instead of the Commandments-table which is usual in Anglican churches. Be this as it may, the attendance at morning chapel, which is enforced on the junior members, and sometimes considered by them a grievance, becomes in time so much a habit that they feel the want of it when they become parochial clergymen, and in many cases endeavour to perpetuate it by daily services (having certainly the letter of the law of their Church on their side), with considerable success indeed in some town parishes, and among the richer classes; but with doubtful result in the rural districts, where the peculiar habits of the labouring poor scarcely seem to allow them to fall in with it to any great extent.

While on the subject of Oxford, you naturally wish me to say what I think generally of the system of education of the place. I will tell you, then, in short, that I consider it the best possible system of education to form the character of a man and a gentleman. Do you ask me why? I answer that it is so for this simple reason—that it tends to develop in the fairest manner all the various energies of that many-sided creature, Man. There are two sorts of education at Oxford, as at our public schools—one enforced by law, the other dependent on social customs: both have their full sway at Oxford. Thus we have a practical illustration of the strongest kind of the Platonic theory of education. Plato very properly thought that the development of the bodily powers was almost of as much consequence as that of the mental, and accordingly enjoined that education in his Utopia should consist of music and gymnastics. By music he understood all that falls into the province of either of the nine Muses. By gymnastics he understood not a dreary tugging at ropes, and hugging of bars, and climbing ladders with hands, but a simultaneous exercise of mind and body in pastimes where the body is deceived by the mind into activity, and cheated into wholesome weariness—such as contests of strength and passages of arms, hunting, fowling, and the like. Even so at Oxford physical education is complete; and although it does not form a subject of examination in the schools under the new system, it is carried perhaps to greater perfection than any other kind, and therefore we may conclude that the Royal Commission does well to leave it where it stands. These Oxford gymnastics (using the word always in its special and Platonic sense) are for the greater part perfectly consistent with the “musical” part of the system which emanates from authority. Occasionally, however, those sports, which, as a Catholic founder of one of the colleges said, “miram atque incredibilem delectationem afferunt” (showing that the old boy himself, though he wished to see his seminary like a bee-hive, thoroughly appreciated them), interfere with the hours devoted to study; and therefore fox-hunting, which I especially allude to, is generally discouraged by the Dons even in the case of those students who are able to afford it. The delicious languor, so unlike the rude and partial fatigue resulting from any other exercise, which pervades the whole system after a good day’s riding, and gives a Parisian savour to the plainest dinner, is of course fatal for the rest of the day to any other intellectual work; for who shall deny that hunting is intellectual work?—intellectual for the hounds, who have the sagest of beasts to outwit—intellectual for the horses, who have the safest footing to choose in a moment of time, and the exactest distances to measure; intellectual for the rider, who requires the eye of an eagle and the judgment of a Solon to know where he ought to be, not to mention the huntsman and M. H., whose whole lives, if they take deep interest in the matter, as they generally do, must be spent in intense thought? An excellent exercise it is of mind, undoubtedly, but fatal to other exercises of a less absorbing character, and therefore consistently discouraged by the Dons. The same may be said of driving. Driving is at best but a lazy exercise; and though it requires skill, it is not sufficiently gymnastic; besides, it is expensive, and presents no advantage corresponding to the expense. But we cannot help thinking that if the thunders of each university Zeus had been less lavishly launched against tandem-driving in particular, this antiquated practice, very good in peculiar countries, but generally merely a puppyish display, would have died out of itself. There is always a peculiar sweetness to young minds in forbidden pleasures.

But boating and cricket and football, tennis, rackets, fives, and billiards, still please, although there is nothing illegitimate about them, and are perfectly consistent with the earnest pursuits of the place. With regard to billiards, I must just observe that this fascinating game has in a great measure lost its reputation, from the fact that the billiard-room is in most English towns the rendezvous of all the blackguardism of the place; but in Oxford the billiard-rooms are private, and engaged by each party of players; they are an especial refuge on wet days, nor can I see any exception that can be taken to the pastime, save when it degenerates into the public pool, becomes a species of gambling, and loses its real character, which is that of a game of skill, quite as much as that of chess, combined with gentle exercise. As there is not the slightest danger of the studies I have mentioned falling into desuetude, so have they been with good judgment overlooked by the University authorities, and as they present in every phase an examination of themselves, it has not been found necessary to create any special honours as a reward for proficiency in them. The universal existence of this gymnastic education in Oxford, superadded to a peculiar keenness and dampness in the air, induces an appetite which can only be satisfied by what appears to strangers an unusual amount of eating and drinking. In the latter particular there is indeed a great improvement. Excess in quantity is extremely rare even among extravagant students; but the fiery wines of Portugal and Spain still hold their ground against all comers, and public opinion is decidedly in their favour—so much so, that others are treated with a sort of contempt. It is said that on the occasion of the visit of a great personage to the sister University, whose habits bear a strong resemblance to those of Oxford, when the servants of that personage sent a complaint to the entertainer,—a Head of a House,—that they were only supplied with port when they were used to claret, he sent back a message to them that the college port, with a due admixture of pump-water, would make the best claret in the world. The substantial nature of an Oxford breakfast, enough of itself to convert Bishop Berkeley to a belief in the existence of Matter, is in itself an evidence that the potations of the preceding night have seldom been immoderate. With regard to that part of the education of the place, to the furtherance of which its gymnastics and good fare are supposed only to administer, it is truly “musical” in the Greek sense of the word. Of music, as we understand it, there is certainly little as yet enjoined; but every encouragement is given to its culture by chanted services in certain chapels, by a liberal allowance of concerts sanctioned by authority, by doctor’s degrees conferred in it, with a most splendid gown worthy of Apollo himself if he ever wore one; by especially the Grand Commemoration festival, at which the first public singers are often engaged. On the whole, there is a great taste in Oxford for this beautiful art, which requires little forcing, for it grows of itself in the climate of the place. This taste is especially shown by the liberality with which brass-bands playing your national airs are remunerated; but important as it is, it is sometimes found to interfere with the soundless but sounder elements of education, and therefore it becomes necessary in certain cases to check it. The rooms of the men have in general such thin partitions, that the noise of one seriously interferes with the silence of another. I once knew a reading man in —— College, who was placed between two pianofortes, one overhead, and the other underfoot: he especially complained of the interruption on Sundays, as on that day his more celestial neighbour played sacred tunes, while his neighbour of the nether world played profane, producing a discord in mid-air as ludicrous as painful to an ear of taste. But I take it that the sense in which music is used in old scholastic Latin, is in general the Platonic sense, and thus the Music school at Oxford means one not especially devoted to exercises in what we call music, but to exercises on examination in belles lettres. That this term has acquired a broader significance by the recent changes in the Oxford University system, I cannot but think a subject for congratulation. When the University departed as a general principle from the practice of making verse-writing in the dead languages the mainspring of erudition in them—a practice still far from obsolete in the public schools of England—it became necessary, if only to take up the time of the students, and prevent them from lapsing into intellectual inanition, to supply them with other food congenial to the spirit of the place. The germ of these new studies had existed before, and only required development. There could be no better foundation for culture in modern history and jurisprudence than the exact study of the ancient historians of Greece and Rome pursued under the old system. Even so with mathematics. The modern examinations are, for the most part, mere distributions of the former work, and by getting part of it over sooner, the student is less puzzled as to the disposal of his time. But the paucity of candidates for mathematical honours, in comparison with those who cling to belles lettres, is a sign that the exact sciences are still exotics in the atmosphere of Oxford; and as long as the spirit of the place remains what it is, they are scarcely likely to become otherwise. Nor are the physical sciences apparently likely to acquire soon a hold on the popular feeling of the University. Still, as before, the pivot around which Oxford studies revolve is formed by the solid metal of the ancient classical authors, whose words are picturesque and statuesque, and fraught with the same eternal beauty, the same adaptability as models for all time, as the things that the hands of their contemporaries produced. Although as yet no school of modern languages has been formed in which examination in them forms a part of the University system, yet every encouragement has been given to the study of them by the foundation of a professorship supported by public teacherships; and even if nothing more is done, there is every reason to think that, supported as it is by the cosmopolitan position which our country has taken of late years, this important branch of literature will sufficiently nourish in Oxford.

So far it appears that the changes which have been made in the constitution of Oxford have been of a conservative character—the reforms have destroyed nothing, but developed a great deal that formerly lay dormant in the University system. They will continue to be of this character if the University is allowed abundance of light and air and space to put forth its own energies, and not damaged by injudicious meddling from without. There have been rumours of further changes, some of which are apparently called for by the necessities of the time, while others have merely been engendered by the inventiveness of the spirit of innovation. One peculiarly delicate subject has been brought on the tapis, which, although I hold an opinion of my own respecting it, I should prefer stating in the position of one balancing two conflicting views, as far as my prejudice admits. I mean the celibacy of the Fellows. In the first place, if it is true that women are like a church, because there is no living without them, a proposition I heard the other day in the form of a riddle, the business is settled at once, because it is cruelty to condemn any body of men to a living grave; but, on the other hand, if the men themselves acquiesce in this social burial, and refuse to be delivered from it, they have undeniably a voice in the matter, even though it be from the catacombs, and ought to be heard in a manner so nearly and dearly affecting their own interests. The defenders of the present system have a great advantage in being able to raise a laugh against those who from within advocate a change, alleging that they have some gentle reasons for doing so. We are a nation peculiarly sensitive to being placed in a ridiculous position, and it requires no small amount of moral courage for any man who is a member of a body to start opinions which the rest, though they may in their hearts sympathise with, are not immediately prepared to fall in with. It must be allowed that the outcry against collegiate celibacy has been louder outside than inside the walls of common rooms. It may be said, on the other side, that the voices of those without are not stifled by the fear of snubbing and ridicule as those within are, and that those who see the effect of a system on others are better qualified to judge than those whose own minds are biassed by its pressure. Those who work in mines and live in unwholesome air only feel by diminished energy the evil effects of the miasma they have to breathe, while those who live apart from them see it in their pale and haggard looks. It is not the bondsman in general who calls for emancipation so loudly as the spectator who has tasted the sweets of freedom. To come to a practical aspect of the question; it is urged by the advocates of emancipation that celibacy was part of the religious system under which the colleges were founded, and that as that religious system has ceased to exist in reference to them, there is no object in keeping up a restriction which can have no such motive; and to those who would urge that the intentions of the founders ought to be consulted as that of any testator ought to be, it is answered that it is hypocrisy to pretend to consult the wills of founders in a matter which is merely a corollary to a rule which has been essentially broken through, and that the wills of founders are even in this instance nullified by the marriage of heads of colleges, who being of necessity priests by the statutes under the papal regime, would render such a prohibition in their cases superfluous. Again, those who are for continuing the celibacy system urge that a fellowship is intended only as a stepping-stone to a permanent provision in the view of the world, and that to allow the marriage of Fellows would render the succession so slow as to destroy the practical value of the foundations. To this is opposed the statement that in fact men are well content to settle down on a fellowship, which is indeed a premium on indolence, and that they acquire, even if industrious, habits of expense, which make them loth to part with a large proportion of their incomes without grave cause, so that in fact many men do continue Fellows until late in life, when they care naturally less about marriage; and moreover, that the slowness of succession might equally be urged in the case of livings which only become vacant by death, and that for the same reason it would be equally reasonable to enforce the celibacy of bishops were they not expressly commanded to be husbands, as some interpret Scripture; yet more, the fellowship might be made tenable for a certain number of years only, and superannuation might not entail, as it does now, the loss of the chance of college patronage to livings. Some satirical writers have drawn a humorous picture of the condition of colleges with sets of rooms inhabited by family Fellows, the quadrangles turned into play-grounds, and the sacred grass-plots invaded by nursemaids with their charges, still further presuming to imagine intestine feuds between jealous fellowinnen (as you Germans would call them), which they think would be incompatible with the feeling of collegiate brotherhood or sisterhood. To this it may be answered, that, as it is, the majority of Fellows reside in the country, and are otherwise occupied than with collegiate duties, and there would be less inducement than formerly for the plural Fellow to content himself with the limited accommodation of a college; and it would be easy to make a rule that a certain number of the Fellows,—that is to say, of the younger, should reside to undertake the offices; and even if they were married, those offices should only continue so long as to incur no danger of their inundating the quadrangles with urchins. The worst of it is, that the Oxford education has a peculiar tendency to develop the poetical and artistic temperament; and to men of this temperament, who are, in all countries, in a much larger proportion to others than is generally thought, the long vista of celibacy is little else than a long perspective of purgatory. To all who love the beautiful, whether saints or sinners, there is one central point round which all their thoughts revolve—one standard by which all their comparisons are made,—and that is none other than woman. The musical mind is drawn to her through the symphonies of Mozart or Handel—through the complicated opera strain, and the simple national air—

“The soul of love and bravery;”

for even the hero-songs of war, by arousing the manliness of man, suggest the loveliness of woman. The artistic mind is drawn to her through all the schools of painting—through even the sumptuous Madonnas which the sacred painters have imagined, as through the sun-warm but less heavenly creations of Titian or Correggio. It is impossible for the artistic eye to look at the symmetry of a tree or the graceful lines of a mountain, or even the crystal curves in a fountain, without dwelling on that form which, of all created, is undeniably the most beautiful without any of its associations, and dwelling on it, too, with somewhat other feelings than those expressed by the Italian priest when he remarked, in a tone of reproof, to a friend who wished to call his attention to a fair lady at an assembly—

“Una bella creatura di Dio!”

Thus I do think that if this celibacy is to be continued, it would be a great improvement to enjoin the study of pure mathematics on college Fellows, with examinations at intervals to prove that their time is only taken up in contemplating the affinities of triangles, and the love of the angles (not of the angels). The whole series of classical literature ought to be forbidden them for the time; ditto all galleries, pictures, and statues, all music and poetry; and they ought, as a final measure, to be relegated to that monastery mentioned by Mr Curzon, somewhere in the Acroceraunian mountains, where there were some Greek monks who had never seen a female face, and had even forgotten their mothers. One of them asked him whether women were like the Madonna. The poor fellow had better not have seen that Madonna. Even now, some men in their undergraduate life grow tired of the exclusively masculine aspect of the University, and some very good lines on that subject, of which I only recollect the end, were written by a now eminent poet, when he was an undergraduate—

“As I am one who feels the full divinity

Of a fair face in woman, I protest

I’m sick of this unvaried regularity

Of whiskered cheeks and chins of black barbarity.”

And one painful consequence of the present system is, the violation of the good old adage, “Happy’s the wooing that’s not long a-doing:” the notorious evil of long engagements becomes, in this case, exaggerated to a painful degree. There being no absolute, but only a conditional prohibition, and the prospect of a living, certain though distant, appearing to justify the formation of such ties, engagements are formed in early life, the ratification of which seems ever near, but never actually comes, till both parties have passed their meridian, and the fulfilment takes place, if it is thought worth while that it should take place at all, rather as a matter of course, than because the parties really now desire it. The hope deferred which “maketh the heart sick,” embitters the masculine temper, and withers the feminine frame, even before their natural bloom would have disappeared. The courage which, in earlier life, would have taken a bold step, and dared the world to do its worst, becomes irresolution and timidity; and as it often happens that those who have been kept without food too long, only know the sensation of hunger through a general faintness of the system, so the vacuum of the affections too long kept up by circumstances, becomes at last a chronic disease, which, to the end of life, remains irremediable. At the same time, the life of the common-room, and the extreme ease with which material wants are provided for, acts on the mind as opium acts on the system, till at last it ceases to care for anything but the drug which has become a habit. It may be with some of those who have felt the enduring influence of this soporific regime, as with the lotos-eaters of Tennyson; they even come to dread a change, and cling to the indolence from which at first they would have fled:

“Our island home

Is far beyond the sea, we will no longer roam.”

But, on the other hand, it may be urged that the immediate happiness of those concerned is not so much contemplated in the foundations as their usefulness, and that they must be content to cull the flowers which grow beside the path of duty. This may be answered by urging that, in certain cases, a man’s usefulness is diminished instead of being increased by his being denied certain sources of happiness. The best workman is ever the man who is best fed and clothed, and made most generally comfortable; even so in the great work of human life is that individual most efficient whose legitimate wants, both of body and soul, are satisfied. The motives which actuated the founders of the Roman Catholic colleges were no doubt, as most human motives are, of a mixed nature. On the one hand, they wished their money to fructify and do as much good as possible; on the other hand, they wished it to fructify in such a way as to redeem their own souls from purgatory, by providing a succession of those who should sing masses for them for all time; at the same time, it was the prevailing notion in these times, and is now, among Romanists, that celibacy, if not the happiest, is the holiest state of man.[^[4]] If there be any truth in this, even to the most limited extent, there is something to be said for the system; but if the poor founders have been cheated out of their masses, and may remain, for all the present generation care, boiling and broiling in purgatory to the end of time, it seems purely hypocritical to lean on a notion which has no better foundation than the ruling opinions of founders. All the great and imposing faith is gone which would support a heavy burden with the supernatural sinews of religion, and the burden remains still to be borne as it best may by human muscle alone. But it may be also said, the fellowships of colleges are in themselves eleemosynary institutions, and poverty was in most cases made a condition of the enjoyment of them; and just as, under the new poor-law system, we imagine that a man, though he has a right to existence, has no right to encumbrances which others must support, so some would argue that the charity of the founders ought to be thankfully accepted under all its conditions. But in the first place, the question may be asked, whether apparent necessity, rather than humanity, did not suggest the new poor-law system? In the next place, whether that can strictly be called eleemosynary of which merit is made a condition? We give to a beggar sometimes, although we know him to be utterly worthless, merely because he is destitute; and even the utterly worthless have a certain claim, in right of their Maker’s image; but we give to a good man as a tribute to his virtue, and the application of these foundations to proficiency in knowledge is to those who accept them usually accounted peculiarly honourable, just as a national pension is to the wounded soldier. Besides, it might be said that all bequests are in a manner eleemosynary, because the legacy is not a payment for labour in most cases, but a free gift from the testator to the legatee; nor is its character materially altered by the fact of its having been given under conditions. It appears to some that the college property is as much real property to those who have the use of it, as any property bequeathed subject to conditions; such as, for instance, the law of entail in England. Indeed, a case has been mentioned, in which, for some peculiar reason, a very rich man inherited his estates subject to this very condition of celibacy. And eleemosynary institutions, strictly so called, are commonly administered by trustees, not by those who reap the benefits of them, as is the case with college fellowships. I think I have now, as well as I can, stated the arguments, both pro and con, though perhaps it is easy for you to see to which side I lean. I confess that I should regard the repeal of celibacy as a conservative change, because it would give individuals a more enduring interest in their University. I dread innovation, and especially from profane hands; at the same time, I feel the necessity of such wholesome repairs in the constitution of Alma Mater as shall secure for her, as far as possible, a perpetuity of youth, or at least a green old age. How other changes, such as the admission of Dissenters, can be brought about without ignoring the entire history, associations, and character of the University, I do not well see. If Dissenters are admitted at all, Roman Catholics must be admitted with the rest; and they may perhaps lay claim to a participation in the good things of the University, seeing that the ancient foundations were undoubtedly made in their favour; and if this participation be allowed, the rights of the foundation will be again disturbed; and they may push their claim to the entire exclusion of all other communities, for, unless there be a reason for disfranchising them, they will ask why others should share advantages originally intended for them alone. They are not like the Jews, a sect who keep to themselves, and seek not to domineer over others; but universal dominion is as much the policy of pontifical as of imperial Rome. Thus they will be sure to take every advantage. Thus there is a primâ facie danger in mooting any integral question concerning the constitution of the University, lest an opening should be unwarily made which would destroy everything on which its existence depends; and this is, in my opinion, the most plausible argument in favour of continuing the celibacy of Fellows. But averse as all well-wishers to Oxford would be to any change in the way of subtraction or diminution of her privileges, no such one could look with coldness on any proposed additions to her area of efficiency, and especially on extensions which seem suggested by her natural aptitudes. As Cambridge seems to possess the soil in which everything connected, however remotely, with science, is destined especially to thrive, such as natural history in its various branches, so does Oxford appear to be that University which should assume a prominently artistic character. The foundations of a new museum have been laid, which is to be built on a grand and imposing scale. Is its chief attraction, when completed, to consist in a collection of dried beetles and stuffed humming-birds, or even a complete skeleton of the megatherium, if such a thing is to be had; or is an attempt to be made to bring together, by every possible means, a collection of works of art which would really do credit to the University? It must be remembered that we have in England no national gallery worthy of the name; not that the pictures composing the collection in Trafalgar Square are to be despised—far from it; but the building which contains them shows them to so little advantage, and is altogether so inadequate, that it presents few temptations to large additions, either by purchase, gift, or bequest. The very atmosphere of London is an argument against building a new national gallery in the neighbourhood of any of the centres of metropolitan life. Trees may be blackened, but flourish under the soot; but the purity of the marble, and the freshness of the canvass, are liable to be permanently discoloured by the constant action of an air impregnated with smoke, in a manner far other than that in which they receive the mere mellowness of age. This would be conclusive against a central situation, and if such a building is to be placed in the suburb, to arrive at it would cost a sacrifice of time and effort little short of that necessary to arrive at a site at a moderate railroad distance from the metropolis. As it is, Oxford is a great point of attraction to all strangers, and no Englishman who had not seen it, could pretend to an average knowledge of his own country. It is even placed within reach of the working-classes of London by excursion-trains, who are thus led in the pursuit of pure air to a place full of associations, which are in every way likely to do them good. It seems to me that it is worth considering whether the national gallery of England might not with advantage be placed at Oxford, and combined in some way with the scheme of the new museum. A school of art would probably spring up around it, to which the University would naturally present many advantages, and to which it might well extend peculiar privileges. The present is not the worst time to consider this matter, when the existence of a great war postpones the execution of all plans of subordinate importance. It is quite certain that everything cannot be concentrated in London; and this being the case, it is well to consider what other places are calculated, in their own way, to become capital cities. Oxford has already received some of the Muses as its inmates, and it is abundantly spacious to receive them all. With respect to the natural scenery of its environs, very much might be said in favour of its being suited as a residence for an artist. The banks of its rivers are especially fertile in subjects for the brush, and though its upland scenery is generally stamped with that mediocrity which seems peculiar to the central counties of England, there are spots here and there which, from their wildness or woodiness, are well adapted for the sketcher. I am sorry to see many of the wild places round Oxford either already enclosed, or in course of enclosure; but what I saw with most regret was, that Bagley Wood had been surrounded with a fence, and placed under a most rigorous taboo to the public in general. Now, there is some excuse for bringing land into cultivation which may be made available for the wants of the community, and can only become so if enclosed; but when the better preservation of game is the only object, to exclude the public from a place where they have been accustomed for years to expatiate and “recreate themselves,” and an intelligent public, such as that of the University;—to exclude them from one of the spots which Arnold mentioned as giving him especial delight on his return to Oxford, and as being one of its chief glories,—this, though perfectly justifiable according to law, is scarcely consistent with that Aristotelian equity which ought to be above law, especially in the neighbourhood of those brought up in his precepts, and whose philanthropy might naturally be expected to be more expansive than that of other men. It appears, however, that this mischief has been done for some time; and the only compensation the public gain is that a fine wide road has been made, which certainly makes the walk round the wood complete—a poor consolation, indeed, to those who, like myself, look upon walking along a road as one of the dreariest duties imaginable, and have an irreclaimable vein of the savage in their composition. Why, to me the sight of the stiff hedges and mathematical drains of Bagley Wood would spoil half the pleasure of shooting there; but, of course, those who have that privilege may say that the grapes are sour. I may mention that on the walk which crosses the railway, and cuts across into the Abingdon road, which leads through Bagley Wood, a large reservoir has lately been made, which in one place is crossed by a bridge, that seems as if it had been put there on purpose to give the best near view of the city. The best distant views I consider to be those about the Hinksey fields, near the spot where Turner, with singular ignorance of the customs of the University, painted gownsmen in their academicals among the haycocks; and at a place near Elstree, called Stow Wood, well known as a fox-cover. But perhaps the most characteristic view of all is that of the towers of Oxford, seen reflected in the flooded surface of Christchurch meadow under a red sky. This view is suggestive of Venice, especially if the boats are magnified by a slight effort of the imagination into sea-going ships, or softened into gondolas. I have mentioned the advantages which an artist might derive from residence in Oxford, alike from the models that might be placed there, the architectural beauties of the place, and the natural scenery. To the second of these advantages would belong the excellent studies of interiors that some of the rooms present. The rooms of one of my friends, which were those at first intended for the Head of the College, are quite a gem in the profuseness of decoration, especially as applied to the ceiling. The halls of many of the colleges are also remarkably fine, as presenting studies of interiors of peculiar magnificence. Occasionally the internal decoration of the rooms themselves, in which individual taste has perhaps taken a wider range than in any other place I know, would assist a painter in his composition. Pictures and engravings, profuse in quantity, if not always good in quality, decorate the rooms of most of the junior members, and a marked improvement has of late years taken place in this matter, engravings from good masters, and really good original pictures by modern artists, having taken the place of trumpery hunting-prints and portraits of the nymphs of the ballet. Other rooms are hung round “with pikes, and guns, and bows,” now obsolete, and seemingly made, at the time of their construction, for this ulterior object of ornamenting a room, which they fulfil so much better than any modern invention. But perhaps the most extraordinary rooms of all are those of a friend of mine, in one of the most picturesque colleges. The whole centre of his room is taken up by a kind of immense Christmas tree, formed by his own labour and ingenuity, on which is hung every imaginable article that would be chosen in an old curiosity-shop from mere oddness in form or nature. It is a rare collection of what the French call specimens of “bêtises,” ironically, as I suppose, considering the extreme cleverness which imagined them all. There are, if I rightly remember, gods from the Sandwich Islands and fetishes from Africa, clubs from New Zealand and bows from Tartary, stuffed birds, pipes of all kinds and sizes, skins of snakes and crocodiles, skulls of men and animals, and everything, in fact, that ever entered into a skull to devise. The walls are papered with engravings, and engravings are hung from the ceiling because there is no room for them on the walls. There is a collection of divers plants, native or exotic, flourishing in stands or trailing over the windows, in each of which is a kind of caravanserai for wild birds (not aviary), for the amiable proprietor does not detain them there longer than they wish to stay, but invites them in by abundant proffers of their peculiar kinds of food; and as he sits or reclines by his fire (for he has abundant facilities for assuming either position) by the motionless silence which he purposely observes—has constant opportunities of watching their flittings and hearing their twitterings, and studying their little habits with the gusto of a naturalist. That such an inventory, which entirely passes my memory to describe, should have been amassed in a single room by any amount of time and trouble, is a marvel to me, only to be explained by the perfect and lotos-eating repose of a college life. Long may our friend enjoy his quaint and instructive rooms! Travellers see strange things, but few can say that they have seen stranger than those that are enshrined in the colleges of Oxford.

You see that I have carefully abstained in what I have said from making invidious comparisons between Oxford and the sister university; nor have I spoken of the universities of the north, with which I am but little acquainted, but which I should imagine to hold an intermediate place between the English and the German system. On the whole, it appears to me that the function of education, comprising theology, philosophy, science, and belles lettres, is to impress upon the mind images of Beauty and Truth, and to enable the mind which has received these impressions to act in like manner through life. If education cannot make a man’s actions truthful and beautiful, he remains to the end a savage, or rather, I should say, the scion of a vulgar civilisation, even if he knows all the poets by heart, or can discourse with the acumen of an Erasmus or a Crichton. That Beauty and Truth are one and the same in that perfect sunlight which our eyes cannot see, and from which all lesser lights proceed, few will deny. But here on earth they may be considered as in a measure apart, and as exciting, each for good in its way, separate influences on the moral life of man. Men incline to one or the other light according to their natural bent or the bias of their education. It seems to me that if a distinction is to be made between our universities, the tendency of Oxford studies is to look at Truth through Beauty, while that of Cambridge studies is to look at Beauty through Truth. It is therefore that I have laid so much stress on the capabilities of Oxford as a school of Art. I confess that I am anxious to gain a closer insight into the nature and life of your German universities. Probably they are with us but imperfectly and unfairly understood. If it be true that the Bursch preserves, under his outwardly rough exterior, any remains of that antique chivalry of thought which is so fast dying out in this country, he preserves a treasure which is of inestimable value, and which ought to be secured to him at any price. At the same time, I think you will allow that our system has certain superiorities of its own, which deserve at least careful study, if not active imitation. We, at least, are successful in affixing an ineffaceable stamp to the character of the great majority, while you seem only to succeed in permanently impressing the nature of a few, and impressing only a limited part of that nature. May you live and lecture many years, Herr Professor; and may your brimming Rhine flow on for ever, free and German as of yore; and may the vine-blight spare the clusters that yield that molten gold which, unlike the morbid production of Australia and California, brings nothing but innocent joy to the soul of your Fatherland. Vale! and believe me,

Your loving friend,

Tlepolemus.

THE ANCIENT COINS OF GREECE.[^[5]]

Father Hardouin, a learned French Jesuit of the seventeenth century, lived to the venerable age of eighty-three years, and died, as he had lived, in the full persuasion that the only authentic monuments which we possess of classical antiquity are comprised in coins, a few Greek and Latin inscriptions, with the Georgics of Virgil, the Satires and Epistles of Horace, and the writings of Pliny and Cicero. Out of these materials he held that certain ingenious “falsarii,” in the thirteenth century, whom he styles the “architects of annals,” compiled those multifarious productions of poetry and prose which we have been accustomed to regard as a most precious legacy bequeathed to us by ancient Greece and Rome. This fact we mention to our readers, not with any view to shake them in their old and orthodox convictions upon the subject, but simply to show them what a vast amount of matériel this learned Father had discovered in the study of ancient numismatics. A coin indubitably presents, within the smallest compass, the fullest view of ancient times that we possess. Though silent, it is always waiting to communicate knowledge; though small, it is always ready to teach great things. “Inest sua gratia parvis,” is the motto of the Cabinet. It would be difficult, indeed, to say what department of ancient lore—whether in mythology, or economics, or politics, or chronology, or geography—may not be elucidated and explained by the study of coins. A series of coins are, in fact, a series of illustrative engravings, of contemporaneous date with the literary works of Greece and Rome, and of the noblest school of art. We may realise much of what we read by turning to designs executed by artists who lived in those very countries, and at that very period. The lordly oak is uprooted by the tempest, the lowly willow is spared. While the temples of the gods and their concomitant myriads of statues have been reduced to unintelligible fragments, those coins which formed the medium of ordinary traffic—the tetrobolus, the soldier’s daily pay—the drachma, that of the mariner—and the tetradrachmon, which, by virtue of the archaic visage of Pallas, with her rigid smile, passed current among merchants of every state and province,—these have remained safe in their hiding-places under the soil, and may be found in nearly the same condition in which the Greeks handled them more than two thousand years ago.

Cities have been built with the express intent of perpetuating the glory of a founder, and after all the founder’s intent is achieved, not by the enduring testimony of edifices and streets of marble, but by that of its coins. Thus the Emperor Augustus thought to immortalise the fame of his victory over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, by erecting a city on the shores of the Ambracian Gulf, which city he called by the appropriate name of Nicopolis. It was supplied with the usual complement of public edifices; a gymnasium and a stadium were built in a sacred grove in the suburb; another sanctuary stood on the sacred hill of Apollo, which surmounted the city. It was admitted by the Emperor’s desire into the Amphictyonic council, and was made a Roman colony. Sacred games were instituted, accompanied by a sacrifice and a festival, equal in dignity to the four great games of Greece. Coins of the city were struck: and in commemoration of a favourable omen which had presented itself on the morning of the day of battle, a group of bronze statues, representing an ass and his driver,[^[6]] were placed, among other dedications, in the temple of Apollo Actius.

Such were the forward-looking expedients of the conqueror to perpetuate his fame;—and what has been the result?

“Look, where the second Cæsar’s trophies rose,

Now,—like the hands that made them, withering.”[^[7]]

A long succession of ruined edifices, in one part converted into a sheep-pen. In fact, before four centuries had elapsed, a contemporaneous author tells us that the town of Nicopolis had fallen into lamentable decay. The palaces of the nobles were rent; the aqueducts crushed; everything was smothered with dust and rubbish.—The bronze statues of Eutyches and Nicon, after being removed first to Rome, and then to adorn the Hippodrome at Constantinople, were at last melted down by the barbarous Latins on their capture of the city in A.D. 1204. All is gone of Nicopolis except the coins. The coins may be seen in the cabinet of the numismatist, by time as yet uninjured; and we find upon one of them the head of Augustus himself with the description of Κτίστης or founder, and the appropriate figure of Victory holding a garland in her extended right hand.

In connection with this city of Nicopolis, we may mention the fact that one of the most important transactions in Colonel Leake s diplomatic career—namely, a conference with the celebrated Albanian Vezír, Ali Pasha, which led to the ratification of a peace with the Porte in 1808—took place on the sea-beach, near the ruins of the ancient aqueduct of the city, on a stormy night in the winter of 1807. The crafty Vezír, in order to throw dust into the eyes of the French consul, who was watching the proceedings with much jealousy, had previously got up a sort of scene in his presence,—receiving an English messenger, whom he had himself instructed to ask for permission to purchase provisions, with affected sternness,—haughtily refusing to grant his request,—and declaring that the two nations were still at war;—although he had already made with Colonel Leake a private arrangement to give him the meeting that same evening on the beach. As the day declined, the weather became so threatening that the captain of Colonel Leake’s ship was afraid to anchor off the coast; and so dark was the night, that had not Ali himself caused muskets to be discharged, the appointed place of rendezvous on the beach could not have been discovered. At length the boat neared the land, and the Vezír was found seated under a little cliff attended by one or two of his suite, and a few guards. Dr Johnson might seem to have anticipated this scene, in his tragedy of Irene, where he describes an interview between the Greek Demetrius and the Vezír Cali in these words:—

“He led me to the shore where Cali sate,

Pensive, and listening to the beating surge.

There, in soft hints and in ambiguous phrase,

With all the diffidence of long experience,

That oft had practised fraud, and oft detected,

The veteran courtier half revealed his project.”[^[8]]

During the two hours the conference between Colonel Leake and the Vezír lasted, the surf rose considerably; and it was not without a good drenching from the rain and the sea, and some difficulty also in finding the ship, which they could hardly have done without the aid of the lightning, that the boat returned on board. The ship then stood away from the coast.[^[9]]

But to return to our subject. Every one who feels a thirst for knowledge, must value coins as the medium of acquiring knowledge: every one who has an eye for grace and beauty, must value them as presenting unrivalled specimens of grace and beauty: every one who is susceptible of the charms of fancy, must love to study the hidden meaning of those imaginative devices, which sometimes, as Addison says, contain as much poetry as a canto of Spenser. Let not the study be condemned as dry and crabbed, for Petrarch was a numismatist. Let it not be condemned as connected with only a bygone and obsolete school of art, for Raffaelle and Rubens, Canova, Flaxman, Thorwaldsen, and Chantrey, delighted to refresh their powers by it. Condemn it not as beneath the notice of the philosopher, for Newton and Clarendon were among its votaries. Say not that men of active pursuits can find no time for it, when you hear of the collections of Wren, Mead, and Hunter.

There were numismatists among the ancient Romans. Admirers and collectors, as they were, of the other productions of Greek art, we should conclude that they were admirers and collectors of Greek coins also, even if we had no direct evidence upon the subject. Suetonius, however, expressly informs us that the Emperor Augustus was accustomed—probably at the Saturnalia—to distribute among his guests a variety of valuable and interesting gifts, and, among the rest, pieces of money—not modern money, but of ancient date—not Roman, but foreign; and some of it the coin of ancient kings. May we not recognise in this description the beautiful coins of Greece and her colonies—the coins of Syracuse and of Tarentum—of the Seleucidæ and other Asiatic kings—of the kings of Macedonia, Epirus, and Thrace? A facetious friend of ours professes to enrol Horace also in the list of numismatists; and we have often smiled at the mock solemnity with which he argues his point. He holds, for instance, that the passage,

“Nullus argento color est avaris

Abdito terris”—

refers, not as we have been taught to interpret it, to the unwrought silver lying hidden as yet in the mine, but to those choice productions of ancient art—Syracusan medallions, for instance, or the rarer tetradrachms of the Seleucidæ—which blush unseen in their subterranean lurking-places, and are kept out of our cabinets by that churlish miser the earth. And he holds that the poet very consistently, in the same ode, assigns the regal diadem, and the laurel crown of virtue, not to the man who is simply master enough of himself not to covet his neighbour’s money-bags,

“Quisquis ingentes oculo irretorto

Spectat acervos,”

but rather to the noble self-denial of that numismatist, who can pass from the contemplation of the well-stored cabinet of his rival without one sidelong glance of envy.

And in that well-known passage where Horace says, in a rather boastful strain, that the fame of his lyric poetry will be more durable than bronze, our friend observes that if the poet alluded to the statues of bronze which met his eye at every turn in the city of Rome, it did not follow that his lyric fame would be of any long duration; for of all articles of bronze the statue was doomed to the earliest destruction, and but few, in comparison with the number of marble statues, have come down to our time. Many a graceful figure which Horace had seen and admired in the palace of Mecænas, for instance, ere many centuries had elapsed was melted down by greedy plunderers, and played its part a second time in the brazen caldron of the housewife. But the medal of bronze survives the wear and tear of centuries full a score. The medal it is,

“Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens

Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis

Annorum series, et fuga temporum.”

Our observation has been drawn by some modern writers to the supposed existence of a sacred character or quality in the coin of the ancients. It is the opinion of the most experienced numismatists that the Greek coin was invested with a character of sanctity, arising from the head, or figure, or symbol of some deity which it usually bore; that the ἐικών or image upon it was really and truly an idol. We believe that such a notion prevailed, to a certain extent, both among the Greeks and the Romans. Not that we regard the worship of Juno Moneta as a case in point. We think that the worship of Juno Moneta was the worship of a deity who was supposed to have admonished the Romans that there are other things in the world much better worth attending to than money, and that money would not be wanting to them, so long as the weapons they fought with were the arms of justice. At the same time, there was indubitably a reverence paid to the coin, even down to the Roman times, for the sake of its religious symbol or device. The people of Aspendus, in Pamphylia, professed to hold in such reverence the effigy of the Emperor Tiberius upon his coin, that they found a certain fellow-citizen guilty of impiety, simply on the ground of his having administered a little wholesome chastisement to a refractory slave who happened to have at the time one such coin in his pocket.

It has been thought that the practice which prevailed among the Greeks, of placing a piece of coin in the mouth of the corpse, originated in this notion of its sanctity, inasmuch as it was supposed to insure the protection of the deity, whoever it might be, to whom the coin was attached by the symbol it bore. But we must confess that, for our own part, we still cling to the old story of the fee required by the Stygian ferryman. Hercules informs Bacchus, in the Ranæ of Aristophanes, when he is meditating a visit to the shades below, that he will arrive at a wide unfathomable lake, and that an old man who attends for the purpose will ferry him and his companion across it, on receiving the fee of two oboli. Lucian, too, has a joke about Charon’s complaining that, in consequence of the slackness of his trade, he cannot raise money enough to supply the necessary repairs for his boat. The mouth was so commonly used as a purse by the Greek in his lifetime, that we can scarcely wonder at this method being adopted for his carrying money into the other world with him when dead. Colonel Leake mentions the discovery of a coin of Motya in the mouth of a skeleton in the island of Ithaca, in a tomb of the first century before Christ.

At the same time, although we believe that the myth of Charon was more closely connected with this practice in the minds of the common people than any other consideration, we doubt not that the sanctity of the coin was also taken into account. We find that notion of sanctity prevailing, not only among the Greeks and Romans, but among other nations, to a considerable extent. The Mohammedan coin bears invariably a passage from the Koran, or some other religious text, quite sufficient to insure its reverential treatment by the faithful Mussulman; and we read in Marsden’s Numismata Orientalia of a certain class of very rare gold coins of ancient date, to which the Hindoos avowedly paid religious worship. Of this coin the Rajah of Tanjore was so fortunate as to possess two specimens.

Whether the sect of gold-worshippers is yet extinct is a question which we must leave moralists to settle among themselves. It has been remarked by an accomplished scholar and excellent numismatist,[^[10]] that “gold has been worshipped in all ages without hypocrisy.” That there were many in ancient times who held the coin in reverence for the sake of an indwelling sanctity connected with the symbolic representations which it bore, we fully believe; and that there may be some in modern times who hold it in reverence,—ἀισχρου κέρδους χάριν,—we are by no means disposed to deny.

There is no doubt that pieces of antique coin have been frequently carried in the purse or in the pocket as a sort of charm or amulet; but we question whether this notion of their supernatural power has any connection with the supposed sanctity of the legends or symbols with which they are impressed. We should ascribe it rather to the same feeling which induces some old women, and young ones too, to carry a crooked sixpence in their purse—the charm being supposed to reside, not in any device or legend of the coin, but simply in its curvilinear shape. So in the cases we have just alluded to, the charm lies in the mystery of the coin’s unknown and ancient origin—“omne ignotum pro magnifico est.” Stukeley tells us that, in the neighbourhood of one of the ancient Roman sites which he visited in his “Iter Curiosum,” Roman coins were known among the peasantry by the appellation of “swine pennies,” from the fact of their being often turned up by that indefatigable excavator in his search after something more succulent. To the mighty Cæsars this was truly a degradation. But at Dorchester he found the same coins known by the name, assigned with more semblance of respect, of “Dorn pennies,” after some mythical king Dor, whom tradition states to have once resided there. The rustic antiquary is wont to labour under a sad confusion of ideas. The Roman he confounds perpetually with the Roman Catholic. We remember ourselves—after visiting a sort of bi-linguar monument near Hadleigh in Suffolk, which marks the spot of the martyrdom of Dr Rowland Taylor, under Queen Mary—to have asked a passer-by whether a certain antiquated mansion by the road-side had ever been inhabited within his recollection; to which we received the oracular reply that, to the best of our rustic friend’s belief, it had never been inhabited since the Romans occupied it, in the days of Dr Taylor!

This, however, is rather a digression. We learn from Trebellius Pollio that, in the fourth century, the coins of Alexander the Great were supposed to insure prosperity to any person who was prudent enough to carry one of them constantly about his person; and we find this, and all other such notions, strongly condemned by Chrysostom. An Italian traveller tells us that, in 1599, the silver coins found in the fields in a certain district in the island of Crete were called by the people after the name of St Helen; and that the story went that this saint, being in want of money, had made a number of coins of brass, endowing them, at the same time, with such miraculous properties, that the brass, in passing into the hands of another person, was at once changed into silver; and, moreover, that any such silver coin being held fast in the hand, will cure the falling-sickness. Mr Pashley, who visited Crete in 1830, found that the possession of an ancient coin is looked upon as a sovereign charm against maladies of the eyes. In the year 1366, the discovery made by some children at play of a number of ancient coins, at Tourves, near Marseilles, threw the whole community of the district into a state of alarm and consternation. The coins were some that had been struck at Marseilles at that early period when, under the name of Massalia, it ranked among the most thriving colonies of ancient Greece. They bore on the one side a head of Apollo, and on the other a circle divided into quadrants. In the chronicles of Provence, where this discovery is recorded, they are described as bearing on the one side a Saracen’s head, and on the other side a cross. This was interpreted as bearing some portentous allusion to the Crusades. And the devout writer intimates that, while one part of the community look upon it as an omen of good, and the other part as an omen of evil, Heaven only knows how it will turn out.

We believe that some persons, sedulously devoted to other branches of the study of classical antiquity, are deterred from availing themselves of the aid of coins, by a fear of being imposed upon by forgeries. This is an easy, but an idle mode of putting aside that which we have not courage to investigate. We shall add a few remarks upon the subject.

In the first place, we shall venture to ask these anti-numismatic sceptics, whether they think we ought to cease to read and to admire the dramas of Shakespeare, because it is questionable whether one or two of those which pass under his name were really of his composition?—or, whether we shall shut our eyes before all pictures which pass under the names of the Old Masters, because spurious ones have been palmed off upon the self-dubbed connoisseur?—or whether all autographs of illustrious men are to be condemned as trash, because Ireland attempted to impose upon the public with some that were not genuine?—or whether all currency is to come to an end, because clever knaves have succeeded in counterfeiting it? Everything, in short, which is valuable, offers, in proportion to its value, a temptation to ingenious and unscrupulous men to show their cleverness by imposing upon the world with an imitation of it. The Holy Scripture itself has not escaped.

And after all, in regard to coins as well as in regard to the other subjects which we have mentioned, although forgers may be clever, detectors are clever also. The numismatic phalanx of investigators are more than a match for the “falsarii.” The skill of Cavino, Gambello, and Cellini, has been met with equal skill on the part of the numismatist. The eye that has been accustomed to wander over a well-selected cabinet acquires a power of ready discrimination,—a power difficult to teach by theory, but not so difficult to gain by practice. Solitary instances may occur of a solitary numismatist fondly persuading himself that some clever forgery which he possesses is a genuine coin, but we would not give much for his chance of beguiling others into the same belief. Unwilling he may be to have the “gratissimus error” extracted from his own mind, but he never will succeed in engrafting it upon others. Never does the eye of man exert so much jealous vigilance as when it is employed upon the coin of a rival numismatist claiming to be genuine upon insufficient grounds, The House of Lords sitting upon a claim of some peerage in abeyance is nothing to it. We apprehend that scarcely an instance is on record of a forged coin having enjoyed for any length of time, unquestioned, the honours of a genuine one. Nor do we think that there are many instances of a forger’s attempting to falsify history. He generally aims at making his invention tally with historical fact as closely as he can. And if his inventive powers are not at all brought into exercise, but he simply produces a coin which is a fac-simile or reproduction of a genuine one, for purposes of study that fac-simile will be equally available with the genuine coin, and no further harm is done than the abstraction of a few shillings more than its value from the pocket of the unwitting purchaser.

At the same time we would not let the forger go unpunished. Though the evil actually done be small, the intention is bad. We would have him tried by a jury of numismatists. Or if the offence should have been committed in a country where the power of punishing the offence resides in one magistrate, we should say that that one magistrate ought to be a numismatist. It is said that a distinguished archæologist who possessed this power in virtue of his office as Her Majesty’s consul at Bagdad, very recently exercised it by directing that a Jew “falsarius” should be bastinadoed. We applaud his Excellency’s most righteous judgment. The man who had counterfeited the famous sequins of Venice, and had aggravated his crime by doing it badly,—

“Che male aggiusto ’l conio di Vinegia,”

is represented by Dante as worthy of an especial notice among those sinners against laws divine and moral with whom he has peopled the shades of his Inferno.

Seriously, however, we think that any clever work of art is worthy of being preserved, and none the less for its having taken in some who set themselves up as judges. Even in Pliny’s time a counterfeit denarius of superior workmanship was sometimes thought cheap at the price of sundry genuine denarii. The tasteful device of Cellini, or of some cunning artist of Padua, must not be thrown to the dogs, merely because it was produced with the intention of rivalling the work of ancient artists, and of testing the acumen of the cognoscenti. Those figures of Cellini, for instance, which some one brought and exhibited to the artist himself as antiques, and respecting which the nobleman who was their proprietor declared, when he saw a smile playing upon the conscious visage of Cellini, that there had not lived a man for these thousand years who could have wrought such;—would not those figures have been worth preserving? And in like manner a coin which, by the excellence of its workmanship, has raised a doubt whether it may not have been really of ancient origin, ought by no means to be treated with contempt, even though it proves to be modern.

The learned work of Colonel Leake, now before us, has supplied a desideratum in the archæological literature of our country. It is the first work of the kind upon Greek coins which has been published by an Englishman, and those of our readers who are acquainted with his character will agree that no Englishman could have been found to do it so well as Colonel Leake. The vast amount of knowledge which he has been laying up for more than half a century, in regard to the literature, the mythology, the political and social history, and the geography of ancient Greece, supplies an infinity of streams which flow over the pages of his work in the form of notes. No longer shall we blush under the well-grounded reproach that all the standard works upon Greek coinage are written by foreigners. Already, indeed, we observe that Professor L. Müller, in his Numismatique d’Alexandre, just published at Copenhagen, has made ample use of Colonel Leake’s volume, which must necessarily become a text-book in this branch of Greek archæology. For the convenience of those who may consult it, not only is every ordinary variety of index supplied to the coins themselves, but we observe that, in an appendix, an index is added to the valuable information contained in the notes. We observe, also, in the appendix, a very interesting and learned dissertation upon the weights of Greek coins, in which Colonel Leake traces the Attic didrachmon—which seems to have been a sort of standard or unit in the monetary scales of Persia and Lydia, as well as of the cities and colonies of Greece—to Phœnicia, and from Phœnicia to Egypt. It would scarcely be in accordance with our usual practice to enter into the more erudite part of this important subject, and we shall therefore conclude our remarks by making one reference to the work, in order to show how successful its author has been in availing himself of the light which a coin may throw upon the more obscure portions of ancient geography.

In Colonel Leake’s collection there is a coin, recently brought to light, of a people called the Orthians, bearing the Thessalian type of a horse issuing from a rocky cavern, in allusion to the story that Neptune produced the horse originally by a stroke of his trident upon a Thessalian rock. Now a city, called “Orthe,” is mentioned by Homer in the second book of the Iliad.[^[11]] With regard to the site of this city, there was a difference of opinion among geographers even in Strabo’s time; the majority seem to have identified it with the acropolis of a more modern city, which at that time was known by the name of Phalanna. But inasmuch as there are coins now extant of Phalanna, and of a date contemporaneous with that of Colonel Leake’s coin of Orthe, it is evident that Phalanna and Orthe were two separate and distinct places. The appearance, therefore, of this previously unknown coin of Orthe corrects an error which prevailed among geographers as far back as the time of Strabo. It shows that Phalanna and Orthe were not the same place. Out of the five cities mentioned by Homer in this passage, Strabo had well ascertained the position of three; and Colonel Leake is now enabled to fix the probable position of the fourth. In reference to such facts as this, Colonel Leake observes in his preface that they have an important bearing upon the great question as to the origin of the Homeric poems.

“It seems impossible,” he says, “for any impartial reader of the Iliad, who is not seeking for arguments in favour of a preconceived theory; who visits the scene of the poem; and who, when making himself acquainted with the Dramatis Personæ in the second book, identifies the sites of their cities, and thus finds the accuracy of Homer confirmed by existing evidence,—to believe that no such city as Troy ever existed, and that the Trojan war is a mere poetic invention; this, too, in defiance of the traditions of all antiquity, and the belief of intelligent historians, who lived more than two thousand years nearer the event than ourselves. The Iliad differs not from any other poetical history or historical romance, unless it be in the great length of time which appears to have elapsed between the events and the poem; but which time was employed by an intelligent people in improving and perfecting their language and poetry—in committing, by the latter, past occurrences to memory; and the principal subjects of which, therefore, could not have been any other than religious and historical.”

The study of coins has been very much facilitated by recent improvements in the art of electrotype, which now enables the collector to obtain perfect copies of the rarer and more costly specimens, and to render them as useful to art and literature as the originals themselves. For purposes of reference we have a noble collection in the National Museum, as well as another which, although of much more limited extent, is nearer to ourselves, and therefore more accessible to students on this side of the Tweed, at Glasgow. In the concluding paragraph of his preface, Colonel Leake mentions these two collections in connection with each other; and with that paragraph we shall also conclude our remarks upon his valuable work.

“Augmented as our National Collection has been by the bequest of Mr Payne Knight, by the purchase of the Bargon Collection, and by similar acquisitions on the dispersion of the Devonshire, Thomas, and Pembroke cabinets, it now rivals most of those on the Continent. With the addition of the Hunterian at Glasgow, which the Trustees of the British Museum have now, at the end of eighty or ninety years, once more the opportunity of acquiring, with the assistance of Government, it would be the richest in Europe.”

TICKLER AMONG THE THIEVES!
EXTRACT FROM AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, WITH A PREFATORY NOTICE.

Poor Tickler! The thing happened in this wise.—But, by the way, before coming to that, it may not be amiss to give the reader some idea who Tickler is:—to wit, a very Skye of Skyes, with a mouth the roof whereof is dark as midnight: his glittering eyes are black as jet; his ears short, his legs none of the longest, but his body is: his tail is a triumph, when fairly spread out; and as for the strength with which it is attached to his body, you may hold him up by the aforesaid tail as long as you can—with one hand. Then his hair is pepper-and-salt in hue, long and curly, and—if I may so speak (though no one but myself and the family will know exactly what I mean by it)—with a kind of silken wiriness. And as for cleanliness, why, he is washed thoroughly every Friday morning, and carefully combed afterwards; and the recurring day of that jobation (to use a word of his own) he is as perfectly acquainted with as the gentleman who performs the operation, and has come, in process of time, even to like the thing: witness how he jumps into the tub of warm water of his own accord, alike in winter and summer, with a kind of alacrity. He makes no fuss about it, except that sometimes, when the soapy water gets into his eyes, they wink at you in silent suffering, which he unconsciously aggravates, instead of alleviating, by putting up his wet paw to rub them! Through this operation he has gone for now nearly twelve years, and a sweeter dog there is not than Tickler. I may indeed almost say as much in respect of his temper, which is excellent whenever he has everything his own way. I have reflected a good deal on the dog’s idiosyncrasy, and think I now know it well. ’Tis tinctured by a warm regard for himself, with respect to the good things of this life; he says, reasonably enough, that if there are good things to be had, he cannot think why he should not try to get them, and like them, since he is formed for the purpose, if he can get them; and as for huge or little hungry dogs in the street, of the plebeian order, he does not dislike to see them enjoying themselves, by way of giving a zest, as it were, to starvation,—if he have no fancy himself for what they have routed out of the gutter. He says he thinks they must often be sore driven; for he has sometimes seen a gaunt dog crunching a dirty bone till he has actually almost eaten it! I am sure Tickler is not without feeling; for one day he was sitting on a chair, with his paws resting on the top of it, near the window, in a warm dining-room, on a blighting day in February—the dust-laden wind without seeming to cut both man and beast to the very bone: and at the foot of our steps there had presumed to sit a dirty half-starved cur, shivering miserably in every muscle, but uttering no sound—neither whine nor bark.

“He starved, and made no sign!”

Was it necessary for that lout of a fellow that passed, to kick the unoffending brute (which did not belong to him) from our steps, it showing, however, no resentment, but simply sitting and shivering a foot or two farther on? Then Tickler (who is of patrician descent), whose eyes had been for some time fixed wistfully upon his plebeian brother, could hold his peace no longer, but gave a loud, fierce, little bark, jumped down from his chair, and fawned whiningly on me; and when I took two nice chicken-bones from his plate under the sofa, and called the forlorn victim of man’s chance brutality into the hall, and gave him the bones, which he was for a while too cold, and also timid, to eat for fear of another kick,—Tickler stood by, not only without growl or bark, though he knew the victuals were his, but very complacently wagging his tail. He had pity for his poor brother, who seemed such a wretched little outcast! And as for the poor voracious creature before him, crouching guiltily as if he had done wrong in enjoying himself, we could hardly find it in our hearts to put him out again into the street. If he could have carried away sixpence to a tripe-shop, he should have had it to get a complete feast for once in his life. I think the incident made a deep impression on Tickler; for when he returned into the dining-room, he went again to the window, and sate for some time looking through it wistfully, and whining; and then jumped down, went under the sofa, and lay there for upwards of two hours, sighing several times, and without touching his victuals.

But, on proper occasions, Tickler could show a proper spirit. We have a cat; and if there be any force in the new saying, the right cat in the right place, Tickler was the dog to insist on its being observed; for if ever poor Tom presumed to steal up-stairs out of the kitchen (which, it must be owned, was his proper place), there was no end of uproar on the part of Tickler; though Tom would sometimes turn round, on his way down stairs, and, curving up his back, and showing his teeth, glare at his little tyrant with an expression that was perfectly fiendish; and tended, moreover, effectually to keep the right dog in the right place, viz. the dining-room, to which he would on these occasions retreat in good order, perhaps, not without needless delay. Thus Tickler had a notion of fitness.

He was also of a very contemplative character, shown by his long sittings on the chair nearest one of the windows—in fact, always the lefthand side window. He would sit on the chair, with his fore-paws resting on the top of it, and his mouth between them, calmly surveying so much of human nature as passed before our windows. It would have been strange, indeed, if he could have lived so long with us,—growing up with our children, and growing old alas! with ourselves,—without having endeared himself to us all in a hundred different ways, and becoming thoroughly familiar with our ways and habits. Can any one persuade me that the little fellow did not know 6.30 P.M. o’clock, at which hour I pretty regularly returned to dinner, when he used always to take his seat on his chair a quarter of an hour before that time, with his jet-black nose and watchful eyes pointed in the direction in which I always came; and when I approached the steps, he would leap down and bark like mad, till the dining-room door was opened,—and then the front door? And how he jumped up against my legs, when I entered, and scampered wildly to and fro! I know he liked me, and “no mistake,” as the Great Duke said. But besides this, I am morally certain that he always knew the Sunday morning. Even as early as breakfast-time, he was grave and restrained, looking as though he knew that there was something or other in the wind; and when we severally went out, he made no indecent and clamorous attempts to accompany any of us, but lay looking solemnly at us, as we respectively took our departure—and as soon as we had all gone, he invariably went up to his bed, which was under our own, never stirring till we returned; and who shall tell what he was thinking of on such occasions? Did he sleep, dream? That he does dream, no one knows better than I; for he talks—I beg pardon, barks—in his sleep almost every night, often waking me from my own dreams. But what has particularly pleased me in Tickler is, that when I sit up after everybody else is gone to bed, he has, for years, voluntarily remained with me, however long I may remain. I wheel an easy-chair (my wife’s) towards the fire as soon as we are left alone, he waiting for it quite as a matter of course, and jumping into it, immediately turning round, slowly and thoughtfully, three or four times, and then settling down into what he at length, I presume, conceives to be a comfortable position—his mouth resting on his paws, and his eyes fixed on me, till he falls asleep, with one eye open. Bless his little soul (for something of that sort he assuredly has)—how well I recollect one night, soon after Madame and the young ones had retired, taking out of my pocket a hard-hearted and insulting letter received during the day—laying it down after reading it, with a sigh, and then gazing affectionately at my faithful Tickler, whose watchful eyes were fixed all the while on me! Ay, my little friend! this would try your temper; but dogs are mercifully spared such anxieties, although you have your own sensibilities! In a long series of years, I have sate up many hours engaged on my great work, in seventeen folio volumes, entitled, The Essence of Everything from the Beginning; and if it please Heaven to spare my life to finish it, I undertake that it shall finish the reader. Well, it has been such a comfort to me, night after night, every now and then to watch Tickler watching me, as I cannot describe; and I do believe he has contributed, whether consciously or unconsciously, to divers fine ideas of mine—at least I think them fine, and tranquilly await the judgment of the critics, or such of them as shall survive to see my great work, and, above all, survive the reading of it. How snug he has made me feel, with my huge easy-chair exactly opposite his smaller one (which is my wife’s till she goes to bed), my table and one or two chairs covered with books, the crimson curtain drawn close, and the fire crackling briskly; many and many a time have I been inwardly tickled by seeing and hear him dreaming, his breathing quickened, and his bark short and eager, but suppressed. I am certain that he sometimes has nightmare! How pleasantly we used thus to keep one another company in the winter nights! When my work was over, often not till two and even three o’clock in the morning, Tickler had notice thereof by the act of shutting up my desk, till which moment he never stirred; but that done, and before I had extinguished my candles, he descended from his chair in a leisurely way, and yawned and stretched himself; I often holding him up by his tail, just to let him feel that all was right, and that he was really awake. Then we both crept up-stairs to bed, as quietly as possible, lest we should disturb the sleeping folk. And if I should happen to have to go down stairs again to look at a book, or bring up my watch left on the table, Tickler seemed to feel it his duty to get out of his snug bed, and come pattering softly down stairs at my heels.

He was almost as vivacious as ever, though twelve summers had passed over him at the period of that serious adventure which is presently to be laid before the admiring reader. But no amount of vitality has sufficed to prevent Mr Tickler’s face getting white; so that, when he is in his lively humours, he suggests to my mind the funny face of a frolicsome little elderly man, or a dog who had plunged his nose into a flour-bag. I took him with me last autumn to a place which I described, but without specifying, as may be seen in the October and November numbers of Maga,[^[12]] and the trip did him a world of good. Do you recollect something that befell me there? viz., that I lost him for a while, to my grievous discomfiture and painful exertion—finding at last that the sweet little rogue was not lost at all, but squatting comfortably on our drawing-room sofa? How little I dreamed, however, that this might be deemed the shadow cast before, of a coming event—a loss of Tickler!! in right earnest? Only the very midnight before this startling occurrence he was sitting in his old place, about twelve o’clock, opposite to me and the table, whereon lay a portion of the stupendous accumulation of MSS., through which I was patiently distilling off The Essence of Everything. I got up from my seat and yawned with a sense of weariness, when he did the very same thing, and thereby attracted my attention to him. So I sate down beside him, and, tickling his ears, said, “Ah, you little runaway! A pretty wild-goose chase you led me at——!” on which he wagged his tail, and smiled: but no one can tell a dog’s smile that has not studied his countenance as I have Tickler’s. The next morning I lost him in right earnest—in dreary earnest! He left our house at 10 A.M. on Monday the 4th December, in company with a steady middle-aged servant, almost as much attached to him as we were ourselves, and who had come down on an errand to me—but having left with Tickler, he arrived at the place where I pass most of my day-time, without his better half. “I thought,” said I, on my arrival, and finding him sitting in the ante-room, “that you were to bring Tickler with you, for a walk?”

“So I did, sir, but I’ve lost un, sir, I’m afraid,” he replied stolidly.

“Lost Tickler!” I echoed in consternation.

“Yes, sir. Missed un in a moment, like, and couldn’t vind un anywhere!”

“Why, when did you leave our house, sir?”

“Just as the clock struck ten.”

“And now it’s not quite half-past!! What upon earth were you about not to stop and look for him?”—Suffice it to say, that he described himself as having suddenly missed Tickler, who had been following as usual close at his heels, when at only two streets’ distance from our house,—had consumed five minutes in looking for un—and then came quietly down without him, to me! He said he thought the dog might have returned home “of his-self! as he had done at ——!” I was disposed for a while to entertain a very particular view of this strange transaction, but in the mean time sternly despatched the delinquent back, at top speed, to acquaint our family with the loss of Tickler; and also sent a trusty messenger after him, in the forlorn hope that Tickler might have returned home “of his-self.” Nothing of the kind; he was gone, poor little fellow, in earnest: and as he wore his collar, with my name and address in full engraved thereon, it was plain that unless he quickly made his appearance, he must have experienced the professional attentions of a very vigilant class of London practitioners. Every member of my family spent the rest of the day in scouring the neighbourhood, especially the more dubious (i. e., discreditable or suspicious) portions—but in vain. Our baker, whom Tickler used to visit on business every day, saw him walking past the shopwindow, alone, and at a leisurely pace, within about ten minutes of the time of my servant’s missing him—but supposed, as a matter of course, that he was in attendance upon some member of the family! Inquiries were made of all our tradespeople—only to be answered by exclamations—“What! Tickler gone? poor little thing, we loved him like a child!” “He can’t be far away—you’ll be sure to see him by nighttime, in particular as he had his collar with his master’s name;” “and, ma’am,” added one more sagacious than the rest, in a mysterious whisper—“if you don’t—why, in course! he’s been stole!” “He was the hamiablest of dogs—so petecler well bred!” “Oh, you see, Miss! he’ll be sure to come back!” Then we betook ourselves to the Police Station; where the courteous inspector, having listened to us, said, with a quiet oracular air, “He’s not far away; he’s taken of course for the reward, and as he had his collar on, they know where to find you when they choose. Is he an old or young dog?” “He’s in his thirteenth year!” “Oh, then, you’ll have him back very soon; the dog-stealers are knowing fellows, and he won’t do. But take my advice—advertise him in to-morrow’s Times, and offer only one pound reward, and be sure to add, no further reward will be offered.” This we did; and the next morning appeared the following public indication of our calamity, drawn up by my own masterly pen, and all out of my own head: “Dog Lost. One Sovereign Reward. On Monday the 4th inst., between —— and ——, a pepper-and-salt Skye terrier, answering to the name of Tickler. Collar round his neck with,” &c. “inscribed on it. To be brought to that address. No further reward will be offered.” Having dropped this our little line into the huge water of the Times advertisement sheet, we awaited a nibble with such patience as we could command. But we got no nibble at all, and very dull our house seemed, without our merry and sagacious little Skye friend. Why, there was not a room in the house, or a chair or sofa in it, that did not remind us of him; and as for my wife’s little easy-chair opposite mine, when she had gone to bed, and was no longer succeeded by Tickler, I wheeled it into the corner of the room, and did not write at my Essence with anything like my former satisfaction or spirit. The advertisement in the Times had explained our disaster to all our friends; and no one called on us that did not ask, “Well, any news of Tickler?” or say, “Poor little fellow, how you must miss him!” At length an exceedingly knowing person came, and said, “Have you been to ——’s? You can’t do anything without him; he knows all the respectable dog-stealers in London, and enjoys their confidence.” So my wife and daughter went to him the next day; and following his advice (given after a minutely accurate description of Tickler), I inserted in the particular newspaper which he said was likely to be read by the parties concerned, the following advertisement, which no false modesty shall prevent my owning to be, in my opinion, a choice morsel of expressive pithiness: “Tickler.—One sovereign reward, and no more, will be paid for the recovery of a pepper-and-salt Skye Terrier, answers to the above name, and lost near ——, on Monday the 4th instant. Had on a collar, with the words,” &c. &c. “In its 13th year, and many teeth gone. To be brought to the above address.” It grieved me thus to publish to the world poor Tickler’s age and infirmities; but needs must, when a certain Jehu drives:—and the way in which I vindicated my advertisement against the reclamations of all Tickler’s friends was the following: If I show the thieves that I am quite wide awake to the poor little dog’s age and infirmities, it may certainly be no news to those gentlemen, so experienced in those matters, but will, peradventure, add force to the three pregnant words in italics in the above advertisement, “and no more.” The more candid of my opponents said that there was something in this; but they held that I had, nevertheless, greatly hurt Tickler’s feelings, if ever he came to hear of it. The more long-headed of my friends went so far as to say, besides, that it was, after all, a toss-up whether I ever got him again!

Now comes a remarkable occurrence, and the reader may depend upon its being told him exactly as it occurred, viz., that on my returning to dinner, one day, a strange Skye terrier presented himself to me, on entering our dining-room. He had followed home two young ladies in the neighbourhood, who took him to be our dog, of the loss of whom they had heard. So they brought him to us; and on our saying that it was not Tickler, they left, followed by the stranger, but refused to allow him to enter their house. Now it was a blighty December afternoon, and this poor Waif and Stray sate outside their door shivering in the cold: so our servants got leave to bring the poor thing into our house, to be taken care of as a sort of locum-tenens of poor Tickler. The Stranger behaved so well, and had so many nice little tricks, that we all were satisfied he was a gentleman’s or lady’s dog, and we began, in spite of ourselves, to like him very fast: for his face reminded us of Tickler a good deal; but on a more narrow investigation of Stranger’s pretensions to our affections, it was discovered that he was not thorough-bred, as testified by the mottled roof of his mouth; and also in respect of his configuration, he seemed not like a canine homogeneity, but as it were two dogs joined together—or rather a Skye terrier’s head stuck on a rolled-up door-mat. Still we liked him, and called him Snap, to which distinguished name he soon learned to answer, to our considerable satisfaction, especially in respect of the younger folk. Still, he was by no means Tickler; and besides this, suppose any of us took him out for a walk, and the owner should claim his or her own in a disagreeable kind of way? and threaten to do by us as we should have been quite ready to do by those whom we believed to have been unconscientiously possessed of Tickler? These were delicate matters; and as they impinged on the dividing line between civil and criminal responsibility, what more natural or praiseworthy than that we should have recourse to our old friends at the Police Station? Those to whom we appealed, however, in this our little quandary, seemed qualified to be Under-Secretaries of State, in respect of a prodigious apparent sense of responsibility, and a certain flatulent incertitude. They humm’d and ha’d, and finally said that we had better do as we thought best, for that we must be too respectable to be supposed to be dog-stealers; however, they said they would send some one to us in the evening “to give us directions.” But by that time the following state of things had come to pass.

“O, papa!” said one of my children, on my knocking at the door in the evening, “news of Tickler!” “News of Tickler? Pho!” I exclaimed, half hopefully, however. “But there really is!—A man came here at six o’clock, and says that he really thinks he has heard of a dog that must be ours!”

“Did he, indeed? Why?”

“He says that, from what people have told him, the dog he found some time ago wandering about the suburbs, must most likely be ours! But he’ll call again at half-past seven o’clock.” So, in short, and in due time, we sate down to dinner; I indulging in sundry surmises concerning the probability of our mysterious friend paying us his promised visit. And while we sate at table, the following titillating story was told us, as touching the subject of dogs, then uppermost in our thoughts.

A certain celebrated painter of animals as they never were painted before, and may never be painted again, had painted the portrait of a splendid Newfoundland dog, but he strayed or was stolen as he was returning from his last sitting. His owner was inconsolable; but, knowing the distinguished artist’s large and intimate acquaintance with persons who confidentially concern themselves with other people’s dogs, repaired to him for advice, and authorised him of the magnificent palette to offer ten pounds reward for the recovery of the missing favourite. The artist soon put himself into communication with one of his private friends, who asked him what kind of dog it was? “Why,” says the artist, “look here; this is his picture: should you know him again?” The fellow gazed at the vividly faithful representation for a minute or two intently, and then said, “I thinks I’se got him now; I shall know him if I see him. But what’s the tip?” “Ten pounds.” “Werry ansome, indeed, and worth a little trouble; but such a prime hanimal as that ’ere will cost a deal of trouble to get hold on, such uncommon care is taked on ’em by them as has got ’em. Howse’er, I’ll do my best;” and again he glued his eyes on the pictured dog, and then withdrew. A month elapsed without tidings of the missing Ten Pounder; but at length, in the dusk of the evening, the great artist was summoned into his painting-room, and there found his confidential agent. “Well, Bill,” quoth the former, “any news about the dog? I have given it up.” “O no, don’t, sir,” was the reply, with a wink. “I do rally b’lieve I’ve got him at last. But is the tip all safe still, and no mistake?” “Ay—have it anyway you like.” “It an’t a check” asked his astute companion. “No—a ten-pound note, two fives, or sovereigns.” “Well—and no questions an’t to be asked? lest I should get any friends into trouble?” “Only you bring the dog, my man, and you take the money, and all’s done for ever. Honour!” “Well, sir, where that word’s said by a gent, there’s an end of everything; so the dog will be here in half-an-hour’s time, and a pretty business I’ve had to find him.” Half-an-hour’s lapse saw this little stroke of business complete, and dog and cash exchanged. “Well now, my man,” said the artist, “and it’s all over, though I said I wouldn’t ask you a question, I can’t help it, merely out of curiosity. I give you my honour that I have no other motive, and will take no steps at all, in consequence of what you may tell me. Did I ever deceive you?” “No, sir, you never did.” “Well—do you know who stole him?” “Quite sure you won’t do nothing if I tell you?” “Honour—honour!” “Well, sir, I was the chap as prigg’d him.” “You!”—echoed the artist with expanded eyes, uplifted hands, and a great start. “Yes, me, sir. I took’d the dog, and no mistake.” “Whew!—Well—but now I’m more curious still to know why you chose to be so long out of your money—your ten pounds? Why not have brought him back in a few days and got your £10 at once?” “’Cos, sir, you see, I sold un to another party for seven pounds, who took such a liking to the creature, that I hadn’t the heart to steal un from him, till he’d had a week or two’s comfort out on him; but as soon as he had, I know’d how to prig the dog. I, as could do it once, could do it twice—and now you’ve got what you want; but it sartinly sounds coorious, don’t it?” “Why you consummate scamp,” quoth the artist, almost splitting with laughter—“you’ve got seventeen pounds out of the dog!!” “Yes, sir, that’s the figure, exact,” replied the stolid Man of Dogs. “Well, but, you impudent vagabond—if you could prig a dog, as you say, once, and twice, you may thrice——” “Well, sir, so I may—but this here dog will be looked arter unkimmin close now, and I shan’t run no risk.” “Well, honour among thieves—eh?” “Quite correct, sir,” quoth κυνοκλεπτης.

We were laughing at this story, as we sate at dinner, when a single knock came to the front door—and in a trice our servant, the unhappy cause of all our sorrows, whisked out of the room, opened the Hall door, and after a hasty colloquy returned. “He’s come, sir!—the man about Tickler, sir,” said he, re-entering the room, excitedly. In a trice I was in the Hall, followed by my two sons and the servant. My visitor stood, his cap squared in his hands, in the angle formed by the side of the Hall and the door.

“Well, my man, do you really know anything about my dog?”

“Why, sir,” he answered, very respectfully, “I think I do; it must be the same dog.”

“What sort of a dog is it?”

“A Hile of Skye terrier, sir—pepper-and-salt, and rather white about the mouth, and a many teeth gone.”

“Well; but does he answer to the name of Tickler?”

“Can’t say, sir, really. Haven’t seen him myself, sir; only my friend as found him wandering about, a good way off.”

“What! haven’t you seen the advertisement in which he’s called Tickler?” Here was a moment’s embarrassing pause.

“No, sir, can’t say I have; but maybe my friend has.”

“Why, do you mean to say that you’ve never heard him called Tickler?”

“I never see’d him, sir; and never heard the name Tickler.”

“What! not in the advertisement?” At this moment a heavy single knock at the door, against which I was leaning, made me start. I opened it, and a policeman stood there. “Is the inspector come, sir?” he asked. My friend in the corner was instantly aghast, and seemed in the act of squeezing himself into the wall (to avoid being seen by the grizzly visitor), his eyes fixed on me with an expression I shall not soon forget.

“No; and you may tell him he need not come now. I am much obliged to you both; but I now don’t want to part with the dog.” The policeman bowed, descended the steps, and I shut the door. This visit had been paid us in consequence of our application to the station-house for advice how to dispose of Snap. My visitor had grown considerably whiter than so much as was visible of his shirt!

“Don’t be under any apprehension, my man,” said I, with a smile; “it is certainly one of the oddest coincidences I ever saw; but I pledge my word to you that it is purely accidental, and in no way relates to you or my own dog.”

“O no,” he exclaimed, with yet a scared and distrustful look; “in coorse you knew it couldn’t consarn me anyhow, ’cause I an’t done nothing wrong, I know; but it sartinly looked werry peticlar funny, didn’t it now, sir?” wiping his forehead; “but when a gent gives his word, I believe him, sir.”

“Well, but about my dog; you’ve never seen him?”

“Never set these blessed eyes on him yet, sir.”

“Come, come, my man,” I said, good-naturedly, “I have acted honourably by you, and do you so with me. I pledge my word that no harm shall come to you through me. Now tell me—you have seen Tickler!” I added, so suddenly that I took him off his guard.

“Well, sir, you speak so werry ansome—I have seen the dog, and I an’t no manner of doubt it’s your’n.”

“His collar on.”

“Oh, he han’t got any collar on now—least wise, when I picked him up.”

“Why, I thought you told me your friend picked him up?”

“Did I indeed? Well pra’ps he did—but there an’t no collar.”

“Well, as to the Reward—you saw the advertisement offered only a sovereign?”

“O, yes sir, that’s quite correct—” forgetting that he had not seen it—“but I expect to be paid for my two walks up here to-night, sir, beside.”

“And what do you expect? I’ll give you half-a-crown.”

“O, no, that won’t do,” he interrupted me peremptorily—“I always has a five-shilling tip.”

“Always!!”

“Yes, sir—quite regular—ahem!” he suddenly stopped, as though he had caught a glimmering of having committed himself.

“Let the dog die then, sir,” I said sternly, opening the door for him.

“Very well, poor thing!—if it’s your’n, which I’m sartin it is.”

“Well, I suppose I must pay it you!—That will be £1, 5s.?”

“Quite correct sir—and if you’ll let your man come with me, I’ll give him the dog, after he’s given me the money.”

“But the dog must be present before he gives you the money.”

“O, yes, sir—all right—but all’s quite honour in such things as these.”

“How soon will the dog be here?”

“In less than an hour, sir.” With this I directed all three—my two sons and the servant, to put on their greatcoats, and accompany him; first whispering a hint to leave watches behind. After they had been gone five minutes, the servant returned, saying that the man had advised him not to go, as three beside himself looked so suspicious-like, and might prevent us getting the dog. My two sons accompanied their honourable companion till he had got them into Drury Lane! And there he dodged them about, up and down, and in and out of court after court, and alley after alley, till they had reached a very little dirty public-house, into the parlour of which their guide conducted his two companions. Such a parlour! about six feet square, and reeking with odours of gin and tobacco smoke. Another gentleman was sitting there, who had just been discharged out of prison, he said—“And it wasn’t unlikely he might be in again soon, for something or other—for he must live!” He was giving a very lively account of prison life, when my son’s companion returned—after a ten minutes’ absence—with—Tickler! the true identical dear old Tickler, and no mistake whatever about it! But—instead of rushing up to his former patrons and playfellows, he came into the room timidly, and, strange to say, seemed disposed to make the acquaintance of two cats who were in the room, and who seemed quite at home with a dog. When called by his name, he hardly noticed it, and seemed to have forgotten my sons, or to feel no particular interest in them! The money having been given, my sons took poor Tickler in their arms for safety’s sake, quitted the vilest neighbourhood they had ever been in, and carried him nearly all the way home—which he reached in half-an-hour’s time. We were on the look-out at the windows for the poor little fellow—and the moment we saw him, I rushed to the door and opened it, just as Tickler came up the steps; but there stood Snap also—having run up suddenly from the kitchen, whither he had been relegated by my orders, to prevent his encountering Tickler—who, however, immediately spoke to his locum-tenens in a quiet friendly way. Then the latter was carried down bodily into the kitchen, and Tickler whisked into his old quarters in the dining-room. We resolved to take matters very quietly, having been told that dogs had been known to die of joyful excitement under such circumstances. So we all took our seats, eyeing his movements. He ran rapidly to and fro about the room—under the sofa, the tables, the sideboard, as if his scent were gradually reviving old recollections and associations. Then he began to moan, or whine, piteously, but in a very low tone; and finding a little bone which had been left by Snap, he seized on it ravenously. On this we ordered him up a little meat; and, in the mean time, he stood up against each of our chairs, moaning while he looked into our faces, and trembling. “Tickler! Tickler! dear old Tickler, how are you?” quoth I, gently; on which he trembled, looked sorrowfully in my face, and wagged his tail slowly. To aid him in recollecting himself, I resorted to one of my old habits with him—viz. lifting him up gently by his fore-paws; but I almost let him fall again, with concern; for the poor little fellow seemed not half his former weight! And when I felt his backbone, how sharp and bare it was!

“Poor Tickler! what have they been doing with you?” said I. His whine told of starvation. He seemed indeed perfectly blighted: and when we all went up to bed, I following after a little interval with Tickler, it gave me pain to observe the want of his old elasticity in going up-stairs. He was evidently thin and weak. The next day I was anxious to hear his adventures; but I knew that he felt embarrassed if required to speak in the presence of any one beside myself: so I waited till I had a favourable opportunity, which occurred on the next night but one. About an hour after all except myself had ascended to their respective dormitories, and when I was busy distilling off The Essence of Everything, Tickler, who had been lying curled round himself, so to speak, in his usual fashion, suddenly rose, shook himself, and in a sitting posture, thus addressed me.

—But his adventures (for I had asked him to tell them to me) were far too interesting and affecting for me to give them to the world at large, before affording him an opportunity of hearing me read them to him for his correction. That I shall do, and then let the reader form his own judgment—next month:—but I feel it a point of honour to impress upon the reader that he is to make no attempt to identify persons or localities!

[To be concluded in our next.]