PART V.
"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordinance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"
SHAKESPEARE.
I found the Jew in his den as usual, and communicated my object, like a man of business, in as few words as possible, and in that tone which showed that I had made up my mind. To my surprise, and, I must own, a little to the chagrin of my vanity, he made no opposition to it whatever. I afterwards ascertained that, on the day before, he had received a proposal of marriage for his daughter from a German millionaire of his own line; and that, as there could be no comparison between a penniless son-in-law, if he came of the blood of all the Paleologi, and one of the tribe of Issachar with his panniers loaded with guineas, the sooner I took my flight the better.
"You are perfectly right," said he, "in desiring to see the Continent; and in Paris you will find the Continent all gathered into a glance, as a French cook gives you a dozen sauces in compounding one fricassee. It happens, curiously enough, that I can just now furnish you with some opportunities for seeing it in the most convenient manner. A person with whom I have had occasional business in Downing Street, has applied to me to name an individual in my confidence, as an attaché to our embassy in France, though, be it understood, without an actual appointment."
I started at this dubious diplomacy.
"This," said he, "only shows that you have still to learn the trade. Let me then tell you, that it is by such persons that all the real work of diplomacy is carried on. Can you suppose that the perfumed and polished young gentlemen who, under the name of secretaries and sub secretaries, superior and inferior attachés, and so forth, haunt the hotels of the embassy, are the real instruments? It is true, they are necessary to the dinners and balls of the embassy. They are useful to drive out the ambassador's horses to air, escort his wife, and dance with his daughters. But the business is uniformly done by somebody of whom nobody knows any thing, but that he is never seen loitering about the ambassador's drawing-room though he has the entrée of his closet; and that he never makes charades, though he corresponds from day to day with the government at home. Of course you will accept the appointment—and now, let me give you your credentials."
He unlocked a cabinet, which, except for its dust and the coating of cobwebs which time had wrought upon it, might have figured in the saloons of the Medici. The succession of springs which he touched, and of secret drawers which started at the touch, might have supplied a little history of Italian intrigue. At last he found the roll of papers which he sought, and having first thrown a glance round the room, as if a spy sat on every chair, he began to unroll them; with a rapid criticism on each as the few first lines met his eye. Every nerve of his countenance was in full play as he looked over those specimens of the wisdom of the wise; It would have been an invaluable study to a Laveter. He had evidently almost forgotten that I was present; and the alternate ridicule and disdain of his powerful physiognomy were assisted, in my comprehension, by notes from time to time—certainly the antipodes of flattery—"paltry knave"—"pompous fool"—"specious swindler." "Ambassador! ay, if we were to send one to a nation of baboons." "Here," said he, throwing, the bundle on the table, "if I did not despise mankind enough already, I have sufficient evidence to throng the pillory. I deal in gold; well, it is only such that can know the world. Hate, ambition, religion—all have their hypocrisies; but money applies the thumbscrew to them all. Want, sir, want, is the master of mankind. There have been men—ay, and women too—within this dungeon, as you think it, whose names would astonish you. Oh! Father Abraham"—
I finished the quotation.—"What fools these Christians are!" He burst into grim laughter. "Here you have the paper," said he, "and I must therefore send you back to the secretary's office. But there you must not be known. Secrecy is essential even to your life. Stabbing in Paris is growing common, and the knowledge that you had any other purpose than gambling, might be repaid by a poniard."
He now prepared his note, and as he wrote, continued his conversation in fragments. "Three-fourths of mankind are mere blunderers, and the more you know of them the more you will be of my opinion. I am by no means sure that we have not some of them in Whitehall itself. Pitt is a powerful man, and he alone keeps them together; without him they would be potsherds.—Pitt thinks that we can go on without a war: he is mistaken. How is it possible to keep Europe in peace, when the Continent is as rotten as thatch, and France as combustible as gunpowder?—The minister is a man of wonders, but he cannot prevent thirty millions of maniacs from playing their antics until they are cooled by blood-letting; or a hundred millions of Germans, Spaniards, Dutch, and Italians from being pilfered to their last coin!—Old Frederick, the greatest genius that ever sat upon a German throne, saw this fifty years ago. I have him at this moment before my eyes, as he walked with his hands behind his bent back in the little parterre of Sans Souci. I myself heard him utter the words—'If I were King of France, a cannon-shot should not be fired in Europe without my permission.'—France is now governed by fools, and is nothing. But if ever she shall have an able man at her head, she will realize old Frederick's opinion."
As no time was to be lost, I hurried with my note of introduction to Whitehall, was ushered through a succession of dingy offices into a small chamber, where I found, busily employed at an escrutoire, a young man of a heavy and yet not unintelligent countenance. He read my note, asked me whether I had ever been in Paris, from which he had just returned; uttered a sentence or two in the worst possible French, congratulated me on the fluency of my answer, rang his bell, and handed me a small packet, endorsed—most secret and confidential. He then made the most awkward of bows; and our interview was at an end. I saw this man afterwards prime minister.
Till now, the novelty and interest of any new purpose had kept me in a state of excitement; but I now found, to my surprise, my spirits suddenly flag, and a dejection wholly unaccountable seize upon me. Perhaps something like this occurs after all strong excitement; but a cloud seemed actually to draw over my mind. My thoughts sometimes even fell into confusion—I deeply repented having involved myself in a rash design, which required qualities so much more experienced than mine; and in which, if I failed, the consequences might be so ruinous, not merely to my own character, but to noble and even royal lives. I now felt the whole truth of Hamlet's description—the ways of the world "flat, stale, and unprofitable;" the face of nature gloomy; the sky a "congregation of pestilent vapours." It was not the hazard of life; exposed, as it might be, in the midst of scenes of which the horrors were daily deepening; it was a general undefined feeling, of having undertaken a task too difficult for my powers, and of having engaged in a service in which I could neither advance with hope nor retreat with honour.
After a week of this painful fluctuation, I received a note, saying that I had but six hours before me, and that I must leave London at midnight.
I strayed involuntarily towards Devonshire House. It was one of its state dinner-days, and the street rang with the incessant setting down of the guests. As I stood gazing on the crowd, to prevent more uneasy thoughts, Lafontaine stood before me. He was in uniform, and looked showily. He was to be one of the party, and his manner had all the animation which scenes of this order naturally excite in those with whom the world goes well. But my countenance evidently startled him, and he attempted to offer such consolation as was to be found in telling me that if La Comtesse was visible, he should not fail to tell her of the noble manner in which I had volunteered; and the happiness which I had thus secured to him and Mariamne. "You may rely on it," said he, "that I shall make her sick of Monsieur le Marquis and his sulky physiognomy. I shall dance with her, shall talk to her, and you shall be the subject, as you so well deserve."
"But her marriage is inevitable," was my sole answer.
"Oh, true; inevitable! But that makes no possible difference. You cannot marry all the women you may admire, nor they you. So, the only imaginable resource is, to obtain their friendship, to be their pastor fido, their hero, their Amadis. You then have the entrée of their houses, the honour of their confidence, and the favoured seat in their boxes, till you prefer the favoured seat at their firesides, and all grow old together."
The sound of a neighbouring church clock broke off our dialogue. He took out his diamond watch, compared it with the time, found that to delay a moment longer would be a solecism which might lose him a smile or be punished with a frown; repeated a couplet on the pangs of parting with friends; and with an embrace, in the most glowing style of Paris, bounded across the street, and was lost in the crowd which blocked up her grace's portal.
Thus parted the gay lieutenant and myself; he to float along the stream of fashion in its most sparkling current—I to tread the twilight paths of the green park in helplessness and heaviness of soul.
This interview had not the more reconciled me to life. I was vexed with what I regarded the nonchalance of my friend, and began to wish that I had left him to go through his own affairs as he might. But reflection did justice to his gallant spirit, and I mentally thanked him for having relieved me from the life of an idler. At this moment my name was pronounced by a familiar voice; it was Mordecai's. He had brought me some additional letters to the leaders of the party in Paris. We returned to the hotel, and sat down to our final meal together. When the lights were brought in, I saw that he looked at me with some degree of surprise, and even of alarm. "You are ill," said he; "the life of London is too much for you. There are but three things that constitute health in this world—air, exercise, and employment." I acknowledged to him my misgivings as to my fitness for the mission. But he was a man of the world. He asked me, "Do you desire to resign? If so, I have the power to revoke it at this moment. And you can do this without loss of honour, for it is known to but two persons in England—Lafontaine and myself. I have not concealed its danger from you, and I have ascertained that even the personal danger is greater than I thought. In fact, one of my objects in coming to you at this hour was, to apprise you of the state of things, if not to recommend your giving up the mission altogether."
The alternative was now plainly before me; and, stern as was the nature of the Israelite, I saw evidently that he would be gratified by my abandoning the project. But this was suddenly out of the question. The mission, to escape which in the half hour before I should have gladly given up every shilling I ever hoped to possess, was at once fixed in my mind as a peculiar bounty of fortune. There are periods in the human heart like those which we observe in nature—the atmosphere clears up after the tempest. The struggle which had shaken me so long had now passed away, and things assumed as new and distinct an aspect as a hill or a forest in the distance might on the passing away of a cloud. Mordecai argued against my enthusiasm; but when was enthusiasm ever out-argued? I drove him horse and foot from the field. I did more, enthusiasm is contagious—I made him my convert. The feverish fire of my heart lent itself to my tongue, and I talked so loftily of revolutions and counter-revolutions; of the opportunity of seeing humankind pouring, like metal from the forge, into new shapes of society, of millions acting on a new scale of power, of nations summoned to a new order of existence, that I began to melt even the rigid prepossessions of that mass of granite, or iron, or whatever is most intractable—the Jew. I could perceive his countenance changing from a smile to seriousness; and, as I declaimed, I could see his hollow eye sparkle, and his sallow lip quiver, with impressions not unlike my own.
"Whether you are fit for a politician," said he, "I cannot tell; for the trade is of a mingled web, and has its rough side as well as its smooth one. But, young as you are, and old as I am, there are some notions in which we do not differ so much as in our years. I have long seen that the world was about to undergo some extraordinary change. That it should ever come from the rabble of Paris, I must confess, had not entered into my mind; a rope of sand, or a mountain of feathers, would have been as fully within my comprehension. I might have understood it, if it had come from John Bull. But I have lived in France, and I never expected any thing from the people; more than I should expect to see the waterworks of Versailles turned into a canal, or irrigating the thirsty acres round the palace."
"Yes," I observed; "but their sporting and sparkling answers their purpose. They amuse the holiday multitude for a day."
"And are dry for a week.—If France shall have a revolution, it will be as much a matter of mechanism, of show, and of holiday, as the 'grand jet-d'eau.'" He was mistaken. We ended with a parting health to Mariamne, and his promise to attend to my interests at the Horse-guards, on which I was still strongly bent. The Jew was clearly no sentimentalist; but the glass of wine, and the few words of civility and recollection with which I had devoted it to his pretty daughter, evidently touched the father's heart. He lingered on the steps of the hotel, and still held my hand. "You shall not," said he, "be the worse for your good wishes, nor for that glass of wine. I shall attend to your business at Whitehall when you are gone; and you might have worse friends than Mordecai even there." He seemed big with some disclosure of his influence, but suddenly checked himself. "At all events," he added, "your services on the present occasion shall not be forgotten. You have a bold, ay, and a broad career before you. One thing I shall tell you. We shall certainly have war. The government here are blind to it. Even the prime minister—and there is not a more sagacious mind on the face of the earth—is inclined to think that it may be averted. But I tell you, as the first secret which you may insert in your despatches, that it will come—will be sudden, desperate, and universal."
"May I not ask from what source you have your information; it will at least strengthen mine?"
"Undoubtedly. You may tell the minister, or the world, that you had it from Mordecai. I lay on you only one condition—that you shall not mention it within a week. I have received it from our brethren on the Continent, as a matter of business. I give it to you here as a flourish for your first essay in diplomacy."
We had now reached the door of the post-chaise. He drew out another letter. "This," said he, "is from my daughter. Before you come among us again, she will probably be the wife of one of our nation, and the richest among us. But she still values you as the preserver of her life, and sends you a letter to one of our most intimate friends in Paris. If he shall not be frightened out of it by the violence of the mob, you will find him and his family hospitable. Now, farewell!" He turned away.
I sprang into the post-chaise, in which was already seated a French courier, with despatches from his minister; whose attendance the Jew had secured, to lighten the first inconveniences to a young traveller. The word was given—we dashed along the Dover road, and I soon gave my last gaze to London, with its fiery haze hanging over it, like the flame of a conflagration.
My mind was still in a whirl as rapid as my wheels. Hope, doubt, and determination passed through my brain in quick succession, yet there was one thought that came, like Shakspeare's "delicate spirit," in all the tumult of soul, of which, like Ariel in the storm, it was the chief cause, to soothe and subdue me. Hastily as I had driven from the door of my hotel, I had time to cast my eye along the front of Devonshire House. All the windows of its principal apartments shone with almost noonday brightness—uniforms glittered, and plumes waved in the momentary view. But in the range above, all was dark; except one window—the window of the boudoir—and there the light was of the dim and melancholy hue that instinctively gives the impression of the sick-chamber. Was Clotilde still there, feebly counting the hours of pain, while all within her hearing was festivity? The answers which I had received to my daily enquiries were cheerless. "She had not quitted the apartment where she had been first conveyed."—"The duchess insisted on her not being removed."—"Madame was inconsolable, but the doctor had hopes." Those, and other commonplaces of information, were all that I could glean from either the complacent chamberlains or the formal physician. And now I was to give up even this meagre knowledge, and plunge into scenes which might separate us for ever. But were we not separated already? If she recovered, must she not be in the power of a task-master? If she sank under her feebleness, what was earth to me?
In those reveries I passed the hours until daybreak, when the sun and the sea rose together on my wearied eyes.
The bustle of Dover aroused me to a sense of the world. All was animation on sea and shore. The emigration was now in full flow, and France was pouring down her terrified thousands on the nearest shore. The harbour was crowded with vessels of every kind, which had just disgorged themselves of their living cargoes; the streets were blocked up with foreign carriages; the foreign population had completely overpowered the native, and the town swarmed with strangers of every rank and dress, with the hurried look of escaped fugitives. As I drove to the harbour, my ear rang with foreign accents, and my eyes were filled with foreign physiognomies. From time to time the band of a regiment, which had furnished a guard to one of the French blood-royal, mingled its drums and trumpets with the swell of sea and shore; and, as I gazed on the moving multitude from my window, the thunder of the guns from the castle, for the arrival of some ambassador, grandly completed the general mass and power of the uproar.
Three hours carried me to the French shore. Free from all the vulgar vexations of the road, I had the full enjoyment of one of the most pleasant of all enjoyments—moving at one's ease through a new and interesting country. The road to Paris is now like the road to Windsor, to all the higher portions of my countrymen; but then it was much less known even to them than in later days, and the circumstances of the time gave it a totally new character. It was the difference between travelling through a country in a state of peace and in a state of war; between going to visit some superb palace for the purpose of viewing its paintings and curiosities, and hurrying to see what part of its magnificence had escaped an earthquake. The landscape had literally the look of war; troops were seen encamped in the neighbourhood of the principal towns; the national guards were exercising in the fields; mimic processions of children were beating drums and displaying banners in the streets, and the popular songs were all for the conquest of every thing beneath the moon.
But I was to have a higher spectacle. And I shall never forget the mixture of wonder and awe which I felt at the first distant sight of the capital.
It was at the close of a long day's journey, while the twilight gave a mysterious hue to a scene in itself singular and stately.—Glistening spire on spire; massive piles, which in the deepening haze might be either prisons or palaces; vast ranges of buildings, gloomy or glittering as the partial ray fell on them; with the solemn beauty of the Invalides on one wing, the light and lovely elegance of the St Genevieve on the other, and the frowning majesty of Notre-Dame in the midst, filled the plain with a vision such as I had imaged only in an Arabian tale. Yet the moral reality was even greater than the visible. I felt that I was within reach of the chief seat of all the leading events of the Continent since the birth of monarchy; every step which I might tread among those piles was historical; within that clouded circumference, like the circle of a necromancer, had been raised all the dazzling and all the disturbing spirits of the world. There was the grand display of statesmanship, pomp, ambition, pleasure, and each the most subtle, splendid, daring, and prodigal ever seen among men. And, was it not now to assume even a more powerful influence on the fates of mankind? Was not the falling of the monarchical forest of so many centuries, about to lay the land open to a new, and perhaps a more powerful produce; where the free blasts of nature were to rear new forms, and demand new arts of cultivation? The monarchy was falling—but was not the space, cleared of its ruins, to be filled with some new structure, statelier still? Or, if the government of the Bourbons were to sink for ever from the eyes of men, were there to be no discoveries made in the gulf itself in which it went down; were there to be no treasures found in the recesses thus thrown open to the eye for the first time; no mines in the dissevered strata—no founts of inexhaustible freshness and flow opened by thus piercing into the bowels of the land?
There are moments on which the destiny of a nation, perhaps of an age, turns. I had reached Paris at one of those moments. As my calèche wound its slow way round the base of Montmartre, I perceived, through the deepening twilight, a long train of flame, spreading from the horizon to the gates of the city. Shouts were heard, with now and then the heavy sounds of cannon. This produced a dead stop in my progress. My postilion stoutly protested against venturing his calèche, his horses, and, what he probably regarded much more than either, himself, into the very heart of what he pronounced a counter-revolution. My courier, freighted with despatches, which might have been high treason to the majesty of the mob, and who saw nothing less than suspension from the first lamp-post in their discovery, protested, with about the same number of sacres; and my diplomatic beams seemed in a fair way to be shorn.
But this was the actual thing which I had come to see: Paris in its new existence; the capital of the populace; the headquarters of the grand army of insurgency; the living centre of all those flashes of fantasy, fury, and fire, which were already darting out towards every throne of Europe. I determined to have a voice on the occasion, and I exerted it with such vigour, that I roused the inmates of a blockhouse, a party of the National Guard, who, early as it was, had been as fast asleep as if they had been a posse of city watchmen. They clustered round us, applauded my resolve, to see what was to be seen, as perfectly national, vraiment Français; kicked my postilion till he mounted his horse, beat my sulky courier with the flats of their little swords, and would have bastinadoed, or probably hanged him, if I had not interposed; and, finally, hoisting me into the calèche, which they loaded with half a dozen of their number before and behind, commenced our march into Paris. This was evidently not the age of discipline.
It may have been owing to this curious escort that I got in at all; for at the gate I found a strong guard of the regular troops, who drove back a long succession of carriages which had preceded me. But my cortège were so thoroughly in the new fashion, they danced the "carmagnole" so boisterously, and sang patriotic rhymes with such strength of lungs, that it was impossible to refuse admission to patriots of such sonorousness. The popular conjectures, too, which fell to my share, vastly increased my importance. In the course of the five minutes spent in wading through the crowd of the rejected, I bore fifty different characters—I was a state prisoner—a deputy from Marseilles, a part of the kingdom then in peculiar favour; an ex-general; a captain of banditti, and an ambassador from England or America; in either case, an especially honoured missionary, for England was then pronounced by all the Parisian authorities to be on the verge of a revolution. Though, I believe, Jonathan had the preference, for the double reason, that the love of Jean Français for John Bull is of a rather precarious order, and that the American Revolution was an egg hatched by the warmth of the Gallic bird itself; a secondary sort of parentage.
As we advanced through the streets, my noisy "compagnons de voyage" dropped off one by one, some to the lowest places of entertainment, and some tired of the jest; and I proceeded to the Place de Vendome, where was my hotel, at my leisure. The streets were now solitary; to a degree that was almost startling. As I wound my way through long lines of houses, tortuous, narrow, and dark as Erebus, I saw the cause of the singular success which had attended all Parisian insurrections. A chain across one of these dismal streets, an overturned cart, a pile of stones, would convert it at once into an impassable defile. Walls and windows, massive, lofty, and nearly touching each other from above afforded a perpetual fortification; lanes innumerable, and extending from one depth of darkness and intricacy into another, a network of attack and ambush, obviously gave an extraordinary advantage to the irregular daring of men accustomed to thread those wretched and dismal dens, crowded with one of the fiercest and most capricious populations in the world. Times have strikingly changed since. The "fifteen fortresses" are but so many strong bars of the great cage, and they are neither too strong nor too many. Paris is now the only city on earth which is defended against itself, garrisoned on its outside, and protected by a perpetual Praetorian band against a national mania of insurrection.
But, on turning into the Boulevards, the scene changed with the rapidity of magic. Before me were raging thousands, the multitude which I had seen advancing to the gates. The houses, as far as the eye could reach, were lighted up with lamps, torches, and every kind of hurried illumination. Banners of all hues were waving from the casements, and borne along by the people; and in the midst of the wild procession were seen at a distance a train of travelling carriages, loaded on the roofs with the basest of the rabble. A mixed crowd of National Guards, covered with dust, and drooping under the fatigue of the road, poissardes drunk, dancing, screaming the most horrid blasphemies, and a still wider circle, which seemed to me recruited from all the jails of Paris, surrounded the carriages, which I at length understood to be those of the royal family. They had attempted to escape to the frontier, had been arrested, and were now returning as prisoners. I caught a glimpse, by the torchlight, of the illustrious sufferers, as they passed the spot where I stood. The Queen was pale, but exhibited that stateliness of countenance for which she was memorable to the last; she sat with the Dauphiness pressed in her arms. The King looked overcome with exhaustion; the Dauphin gazed at the populace with a child's curiosity.
At the moment when the carriages were passing, an incident occurred terribly characteristic of the time. A man of a noble presence, and with an order of St Louis at his breast, who had been giving me a hurried and anxious explanation of the scene, excited by sudden feeling, rushed forward through the escort, and laying one hand on the royal carriage, with the other waved his hat, and shouted, "Vive le Roi!" In another instant I saw him stagger; a pike was darted into his bosom, and he fell dead under the wheel. Before the confusion of this frightful catastrophe had subsided, a casement was opened immediately above my head, and a woman, superbly dressed, rushed out on the balcony waving a white scarf, and crying, "Vive Marie Antoinette!" The muskets of the escort were turned upon her, and a volley was fired at the balcony. She started back at the shock, and a long gush of blood down her white robe showed that she had been wounded. But she again waved the scarf, and again uttered the loyal cry. Successive shots were fired at her by the monsters beneath; but she still stood. At length she received the mortal blow; she tottered and fell; yet, still clinging to the front of the balcony, she waved the scarf, and constantly attempted to pronounce the words of her generous and devoted heart, until she expired. I saw this scene with an emotion beyond my power to describe; all the enthusiasm of popular change was chilled within me; my boyish imaginations of republicanism were extinguished by this plunge into innocent blood; and I never felt more relieved, than when the whole fearful procession at length moved on, and I was left to make my way once more, through dim and silent streets, to my dwelling.
I pass by a considerable portion of the time which followed. The Revolution was like the tiger, it advanced couching; though, when it sprang, its bound was sudden and irresistible. My time was occupied in my official functions, which became constantly more important, and of which I received flattering opinions from Downing Street. I mingled extensively in general society, and it was never more animated, or more characteristic, than at that period in Paris. The leaders of faction and the leaders of fashion, classes so different in every other part of the world, were there often the same. The woman who dazzled the ball-room, was frequently the confidente of the deepest designs of party. The coterie in a salon, covered with gilding, and filled with chefs-d'oeuvre of the arts, was often as subtle as a conspiracy in the cells of the Jacobins; and the dance or the masquerade only the preliminary to an outbreak which shattered a ministry into fragments All the remarkable men of France passed before me, and I acknowledge that I was frequently delighted and surprised by their extra ordinary attainments. The age of the Encyclopédie was in its wane, but some of its brilliant names still illustrated the Parisian salons. I recognised the style of Buffon and Rousseau in a crowd of their successors; and the most important knowledge was frequently communicated in language the most eloquent and captivating. Even the mixture of society which had been created by the Revolution, gave an original force and freshness to these assemblies, infinitely more attractive than the most elaborate polish of the old régime. Brissot, the common printer, but a man of singular strength of thought, there figured by Condorcet, the noble and the man of profound science. St Etienne, the little bustling partizan, yet the man of talent, mingled with the chief advocates of the Parisian courts; or Servan fenced with his subtle knowledge of the world against Vergniaud, the romantic Girondist, but the most Ciceronian of orators. Talleyrand, already known as the most sarcastic of men, and Maury, by far the most powerful debater of France since Mirabeau—figured among the chief ornaments of the salons of De Staël. Roland, and the showy and witty Theresa Cabarrus, and even the flutter of La Fayette, the most tinsel of heroes, and the sullen sententiousness of Robespierre, then known only as a provincial deputy, furnished a background which increased the prominence of the grouping.
But the greatest wonder of France still escaped the general eye. At a ball at the Hotel de Staël, I remember to have been struck with the energetic denunciation of some rabble insult to the Royal family, by an officer whom nobody knew. As a circle were standing in conversation on the topic of the day, the little officer started from his seat, pushed into the group, and expressed his utter contempt for the supineness of the Government on those occasions, so strongly, as to turn all eyes upon him. "Where were the troops, where the guns?" he exclaimed. "If such things are suffered, all is over with royalty; a squadron of horse, and a couple of six pounders, would have swept away the whole swarm of scoundrels like so many flies." Having thus discharged his soul, he started back again, flung himself into a chair, and did not utter another word through the evening. I little dreamed that in that meagre frame, and long, thin physiognomy, I saw Napoleon.
I must hasten to other things. Yet I still cast many a lingering glance over these times. The vividness of the collision was incomparable. The wit, the eccentricity, the anecdote, the eloquence of those assemblages, were of a character wholly their own. They had, too, a substantial nutriment, the want of which had made the conversation of the preceding age vapid, with all its elegance.—Public events of the most powerful order fed the flame. It was the creation of a vast national excitement; the rush of sparks from the great electrical machine, turned by the hands of thirty millions. The flashes were still but matters of sport and surprise. The time was nigh when those flashes were to be fatal, and that gay lustre was to do the work of conflagration.
I had now been a year in Paris, without returning, or wishing to return, to London. A letter now and then informed me of the state of those who still drew my feelings towards England. But I was in the centre of all that awoke, agitated, or alarmed Europe; and, compared with the glow and rapidity of events in France, the rest of Europe appeared asleep, or to open its eyes solely when some new explosion shook it from its slumber.
My position, too, was a matchless school for the learner in diplomacy. France shaped the politics of the Continent; and I was present in the furnace where the casting was performed. France was the stage to which every eye in Europe was turned, whether for comedy or tragedy; and I was behind the scenes. But the change was at hand.
One night I found an individual, of a very marked appearance, waiting for me at my hotel. His countenance was evidently Jewish, and he introduced himself as one of the secret police of the ministry. The man handed me a letter—it was from Mordecai, and directed to be given with the utmost secrecy. It was in his usual succinct and rapid style.
"I write this in the midst of a tumult of business. My friend Mendoza will give you such knowledge and assistance as may be necessary. France is on the point of an explosion. Every thing is prepared. It is impossible that it can be delayed above a week or two, and the only origin of the delay is in the determination to make the overthrow final. Acquaint your English officials with this. The monarchy of the Bourbons has signed its death-warrant. By suffering a legislature to be formed by the votes of the mere multitude, it has put property within the power of all beggars; rank has been left at the mercy of the rabble; and the church has been sacrificed to please a faction. Thus the true pillars of society have been cut away; and the throne is left in the air. Mendoza will tell you more. The train is already laid. A letter from a confidential agent tells us that the day is fixed. At all events, avoid the mine. There is no pleasure in being blown up, even in company with kings."
A postscript briefly told me—that his daughter sent her recollections; that Clotilde was still indisposed; La Fontaine giddier than ever; and, as the proof of his own confidence in his views, that he had just sold out 100,000 three per cent consols.
My first visit next morning was to the British embassy. But the ambassador was absent in the country, and the functionary who had been left in charge was taking lessons on the guitar, and extremely unwilling to be disturbed by matters comparatively so trifling as the fate of dynasties. I explained, but explained in vain. The hour was at hand when his horses were to be at the door for a ride in the Bois de Boulogne. I recommended a ride after the ambassador. It was impossible. He was to be the escort of a duchess; then to go to a dinner at the Russian embassy, and was under engagements to three balls in the course of the evening. Nothing could be clearer than that such duties must supersede the slight concerns of office. I left him under the hands of his valet, curling his ringlets, and preparing him to be the admiration of mankind.
I saw Mendoza secretly again; received from him additional intelligence; and, as I was not inclined to make a second experiment on the "elegant extract" of diplomacy, and escort of duchesses, I went, as soon as the nightfall concealed my visit, to the hotel of the Foreign Minister. This was my first interview with the celebrated Dumourier.
He received me with the courtesy of a man accustomed to high life; and I entered on the purport of my visit at once. He was perfectly astonished at my tidings. He had known that strong resolutions had been adopted by the party opposed to the Cabinet; but was startled by the distinct avowal of its intention to overthrow the monarchy. I was struck with his appearance, his quickness of conception, and that mixture of sportiveness and depth, which I had found characteristic of the higher orders of French society. He was short in stature, but proportioned for activity; his countenance bold, but with smiling lips and a most penetrating grey eye. His name as a soldier was at this period wholly unknown, but I could imagine in him a leader equally subtle and daring;—he soon realized my conjecture.
We sat together until midnight; and over the supper-table, and cheered by all the good things which French taste provides and enjoys more than any other on earth, he gave full flow to his spirit of communication. The Frenchman's sentences are like sabre-cuts—they have succession, but no connexion.
"I shall always converse with you, M. Marston," said he, "with ease; for you are of the noblesse of your own great country, and I am tired of roturiers already.—The government has committed dangerous faults. The king is an excellent man, but his heart is where his head ought to be, and his head where his heart.—His flight was a terrible affair, but it was a blunder on both sides; he ought never to have gone, or the government ought never to have brought him back.—However, I have no cause to complain of its epitaph. The blunder dissolved that government. I have to thank it for bringing me and my colleagues into power. Our business now is to preserve the monarchy, but this becomes more difficult from day to day."
I adverted to the personal character of the royal family.
"Nothing can be better. But chance has placed them in false position.—If the king were but the first prince of the blood, his benevolence without his responsibility would make him the most popular man in France.—If the queen were still but the dauphiness, she would be, as she was then, all but worshipped. As the leader of fashion in France, she would be the leader of taste in Europe.—Elegant, animated, and high-minded, she would have charmed every one, without power. If she could but continue to move along the ground, all would admire the grace of her steps; but, sitting on a throne, she loses the spell of motion."
"Yet, can France ever forget her old allegiance, and adopt the fierce follies of a republic?"
"I think not. And yet we are dealing with agencies of which we know nothing but the tremendous force. We are breathing a new atmosphere, which may at first excite only to kill.—We have let out the waters of a new river-head, which continues pouring from hour to hour, with a fulness sufficient to terrify us already, and threatening to swell over the ancient landmarks of the soil.—It is even now a torrent—what can prevent it from being a lake? what hand of man can prevent that lake from being an ocean? or what power of human council can say to that ocean in its rage—Thus far shalt thou go?"
"But the great institutions of France, will they not form a barrier? Is not their ancient firmness proof against the loose and desultory assaults of a populace like that of Paris?"
"I shall answer by an image which occurred to me on my late tour of inspection to the ports in the west. At Cherbourg, millions of francs have been spent in attempting to make a harbour. When I was there one stormy day, the ocean rose, and the first thing swept away was the great caisson which formed the principal defence against the tide,—its wrecks were carried up the harbour, heaped against the piers, which they swept away; hurled against the fortifications, which they broke down; and finally working ten times more damage than if the affair had been left to the surges alone. The thought struck me at the moment, that this caisson was the emblem of a government assailed by an irresistible force. The firmer the foundations, and the loftier the superstructure, the surer it was to be ultimately carried away, and to carry away with it all that the mere popular outburst would have spared.—The massiveness of the obstacle increased the spread of the ruin. Few Asiatic kingdoms would be overthrown with less effort, and perish with less public injury, than the monarchy of the Bourbons, if it is to fall. Yet, your monarchy is firmer. It is less a vast building than a mighty tree, not fixed on foundations which can never widen, but growing from roots which continually extend. But, if that tree perish, it will not be thrown down, but torn up; it will not leave a space clear to receive a new work of man, but a pit, which no successor can fill for a thousand years."
"But the insurrection; I fear the attack on the palace."
"It will not take place. Your information shall be forwarded to the court; where, however, I doubt whether it will be received with much credence. The Austrian declaration of war has put the flatterers of royalty into such spirits, that if the tocsin were sounding at this instant, they would not believe in the danger. We have been unfortunately forced to send the chief part of the garrison of Paris towards the frontier. But we have three battalions of the Swiss guard within call at Courbevoie, and they can be ready on the first emergency. Rely upon it, all will go well."
With this assurance I was forced to be content; but I relied much more upon Mordecai and his Jewish intelligence. A despatch to London gave a minute of this conversation before I laid my head on my pillow; and I flung myself down, not without a glance at the tall roofs of the Tuileries, and a reflection on how much the man escapes whose forehead has no wrinkle from the diadem.
Within twenty four hours of this interview the ministry was dissolved! Dumourier was gone posthaste to the command of one of the armies on the frontier, merely to save his life from the mob, and I went to bed, in the Place Vendôme, by the light of Lafayette burned in effigy in the centre of the square. So much for popularity.
At dusk, on the memorable ninth of August, as I was sitting in a café of the Palais Royal, listening to the mountain songs of a party of Swiss minstrels in front of the door, Mendoza, passing through the crowd, made me a signal; I immediately followed him to an obscure corner of one of the galleries.
"The insurrection is fixed for to-night," was his startling announcement. "At twelve by the clock of Notre-Dame, all the sections will be under arms. The Jacobin club, the club of the Cordeliers, and the Faubourg St Antoine, are the alarm posts. The Marseillais are posted at the Cordeliers, and are to head the attack. Danton is already among them, and has published this address.
He gave me the placard. It was brief and bold.
"Citizens—The country is betrayed. France is in the hands of her enemies. The Austrians are advancing. Our troops are retreating, and Paris must be defended by her brave sons alone. But we have traitors in the camp. Our legislators are their accomplices: Lafayette, the slave of kings, has been suffered to escape; but the nation must be avenged. The perfidious Louis is about to follow his example and fly, after having devoted the capital to conflagration. Delay a moment, and you will have to fight by the flame of your houses, and to bleed over the ashes of your wives and children. March, and victory is yours. To arms! To arms!! To arms!!!"
"Does Danton lead the insurrection?"
"No—for two reasons: he is an incendiary but no soldier; and they cannot trust him in case of success. A secret meeting of the heads of the party was held two days since, to decide on a leader of the sections. It was difficult, and had nearly been finished by the dagger. Billaud de Varennes, Vanquelin, St Angely, and Danton, were successively proposed. Robespierre objected to them all. At length an old German refugee, a beggar, but a soldier, was fixed on; and Westerman is to take the command. By one o'clock the tocsin is to be rung, and the insurgents are instantly to move from all points on the Tuileries."
"What is the object?"
"The seizure, or death, of the King and Royal Family!"
"And the result of that object?"
"The proclamation of a Republic!"
"Is this known at the palace?"
"Not a syllable. All there are in perfect security; to communicate intelligence there is not in my department."
As I looked at the keen eye and dark physiognomy of my informant, there was an expression of surprise in mine at this extraordinary coolness, which saved me the trouble of asking the question.
"You doubt me," said he, "you feel distrust of information unpaid and voluntary. But I have been ordered by Mordecai, the chief of our tribe in England, to watch over you; and this information is a part of my obedience to the command." He suddenly darted away.
Notwithstanding the steadiness of his assertions I still doubted their probability, and, to examine the point for myself, I strayed towards the palace. All there was tranquil; a few lights were scattered through the galleries, but every sound of life, much less of watchfulness and preparation, was still. The only human beings in sight were some dismounted cavalry, and a battalion of the national guard, lounging: about the square. As I found it impossible to think of rest until the truth or falsehood of my information was settled, I next wandered along the Boulevarde, in the direction of the Faubourg St Antoine, the focus of all the tumults of Paris; but all along this fine avenue was hushed as if a general slumber had fallen over the city. The night was calm, and the air was a delicious substitute for the hot and reeking atmosphere of this populous quarter in the day. I saw no gathering of the populace; no hurrying torches. I heard no clash of arms, nor tramp of marching men; all lay beneath the young moon, which, near her setting, touched the whole scene with a look of soft and almost melancholy quietude. The character of my Israelite friend began to fall rapidly in the scale, and I had made up my mind that insurrection had gone to its slumbers for that night; when, as I was returning by the Place de Bastile, and was passing under the shadow of one of the huge old houses that then surrounded that scene of hereditary terror, two men, who had been loitering beside the parapet of the fosse, suddenly started forward and planted themselves in my way. I flung one of them aside, but the other grasped my arm, and, drawing a dagger, told me that my life was at his mercy. His companion giving a signal, a group of fierce-looking fellows started from their lurking-places; and of course further resistance was out of the question. I was ordered to follow them, and regarding myself as having nothing to fear, yet uneasy at the idea of compulsion, I remonstrated, but in vain; and was finally led through a labyrinth of horrid alleys, to what I now found to be the headquarters of the insurrection. It was an immense building, which had probably been a manufactory, but was now filled with the leaders of the mob. The few torches which were its only light, and which scarcely showed the roof and extremity of the building, were, however, enough to show heaps of weapons of every kind—muskets, sabres, pikes, and even pitchforks and scythes, thrown on the floor. On one side, raised on a sort of desk, was a ruffianly figure flinging placards to the crowd below, and often adding some savage comment on their meaning, which produced a general laugh. Flags inscribed with "Liberty Bread or Blood—Down with the Tyrant"—and that comprehensive and peculiarly favourite motto of the mob—"May the last of the kings be strangled with the entrails of the last of the priests," were hung from the walls in all quarters; and in the centre of the floor were ranged three pieces of artillery surrounded by their gunners. I now fully acknowledged the exactness of Mendoza's information; and began to feel considerable uncertainty about my own fate in the midst of a horde of armed ruffians, who came pouring in more thickly every moment, and seemed continually more ferocious. At length I was ordered to go forward to a sort of platform at the head of the hall, where some candles were still burning, and the remnants of a supper gave signs that there had been gathered the chief persons of this tremendous assemblage. A brief interrogatory from one of them armed to the teeth, and with a red cap so low down on his bushy brows as almost wholly to disguise his physiognomy, enquired my name, my business in Paris, and especially what I had to allege against my being shot as a spy in the pay of the Tuileries. My answers were drowned in the roar of the multitude. Still, I protested firmly against this summary trial, and at length threatened them with the vengeance of my country. This might be heroic, but it was injudicious. Patriotism is a fiery affair, and a circle of pistols and daggers ready prepared for action, and roused by the word to execute popular justice on me, waited but the signal from the platform. Their leader rose with some solemnity, and taking off his cap, to give the ceremonial a more authentic aspect, declared me to have forfeited the right to live, by acting the part of an espion, and ordered me to be shot in "front of the leading battalion of the army of vengeance." The decree was so unexpected, that for the instant I felt absolutely paralyzed. The sight left my eyes, my ears tingled with strange sounds, and I almost felt as if I had received the shots of the ruffians, who now, incontrollable in their first triumph, were firing their pistols in all directions in the air. But at the moment, so formidable to my future career, I heard the sound of the clock of Notre Dame. I felt a sudden return of my powers and recollections, but the hands of my assassins were already upon me. The sound of the general signal for their march produced a rush of the crowd towards the gate, I took advantage of the confusion, struck down one of my captors, shook off the other, and plunged into the living torrent that was now pouring and struggling before me.
But even when I reached the open air—and never did I feel its freshness with a stronger sense of revival—I was still in the midst of the multitude, and any attempt to make my way alone would have obviously been death. Thus was I carried on along the Boulevarde, in the heart of a column of a hundred thousand maniacs, trampled, driven, bruised by the rabble, and deafened with shouts, yells, and cries of vengeance, until my frame was a fever and my brain scarcely less than a frenzy.
That terrible morning gave the deathblow to the mighty monarchy of the Bourbons. The throne was so shaken by the popular arm, that though it preserved a semblance of its original shape, a breath was sufficient to cast it to the ground. I have no heart for the recital. Even now I can scarcely think of that tremendous pageant of popular fantasy, fury, and the very passion of crime; or bring to my mind's eye that column, which seemed then to be boundless and endless, with the glare of its torches, the rattle of its drums, the grinding of its cannon-wheels, as we rushed along the causeway, from time to time stopping to fire, as a summons to the other districts, and as a note of exultation; or the perpetual, sullen, and deep roar of the populace—without a thrilling sense of perplexity and pain.
Long before daybreak we had swept all minor resistance before us, plundered the arsenal of its arms, and taken possession of the Hotel de Ville. The few troops who had kept guard at the different posts on our way, had been captured without an effort, or joined the insurgents. But intelligence now came that the palace was roused at last, that troops were ordered from the country for its defence, and that the noblesse remaining in the capital were crowding to the Tuileries. I stood beside Danton when those tidings were brought to him. He flung up his cap in the air, with a burst of laughter. "So much the better!" he exclaimed; "the closer the preserve, the thicker the game." I had now a complete view of this hero of democracy. His figure was herculean; his countenance, which possibly, in his younger days, had been handsome, was now marked with the lines of every passion and profligacy, but it was still commanding. His costume was one which he had chosen for himself, and which was worn by his peculiar troop; a short brown mantle, an under-robe with the arms naked to the shoulder, a broad leathern belt loaded with pistols, a huge sabre in hand, rusted from hilt to point, which he declared to have been stained with the blood of aristocrats, and the republican red cap, which he frequently waved in the air, or lifted on the point of his sabre as a standard. Yet, in the midst of all this savage disorder of costume, I observed every hair of his enormous whiskers to be curled with the care of a Parisian merveilleux. It was the most curious specimen of the ruling passion that I remember to have seen.
At the Hotel de Ville, Danton entered the hall with several of the insurgents; and the crowd, unwilling to waste time, began to fire at the little statues and insignia of the French kings, which ornamented this old building. When this amusement palled—the French are easily ennuied—they formed circles, and danced the Carmagnole. Rum and brandy, largely introduced among them, gave them animation after their night's watching, and they were fit for any atrocity. But the beating of drums, and a rush to the balconies of the Hotel de Ville, told us that something of importance was at hand; and, in the midst of a group of municipal officers, Petion, the mayor of Paris, arrived. No man in France wore a milder visage, or hid a blacker heart under it. He was received with shouts, and after a show of resistance, just sufficient to confirm his character for hypocrisy, suffered himself to be led to the front of the grand balcony, bowing as the man of the people. Another followed, a prodigious patriot, who had been placed at the head of the National Guard for his popular sycophancy, but who, on being called on by the mob to swear "death to the King;" and hesitating, felt the penalty of being unprepared to go all lengths on the spot. I saw his throat cut, and his body flung from the balcony. A cannon-shot gave the signal for the march, and we advanced to the grand prize of the day. I can describe but little more of the assault on the Tuileries, than that it was a scene of desperate confusion on both sides. The front of the palace continually covered with the smoke of fire-arms of all kinds, from all the casements; and the front of the mob a similar cloud of smoke, under which men fired, fled, fell, got drunk, and danced. Nothing could be more ferocious, or more feeble. Some of the Sections utterly ran away on the first fire; but, as they were unpursued, they returned by degrees, and joined the fray. It may be presumed that I made many an effort to escape; but I was in the midst of a battalion of the Faubourg St Antoine. I had already been suspected, from having dropped several muskets in succession, which had been thrust into my hands by the zeal of my begrimed comrades; and a sabre-cut, which I had received from one of our mounted ruffians as he saw me stepping to the rear, warned me that my time was not yet come to get rid of the scene of revolt and bloodshed.
At length the struggle drew to a close. A rumour spread that the King had left the palace, and gone to the Assembly. The cry was now on all sides—"Advance, the day is our own!" The whole multitude rushed forward, clashing their pikes and muskets, and firing their cannon, which were worked by deserters from the royal troops; the Marseillais, a band of the most desperate-looking ruffians that eye was ever set upon, chiefly galley-slaves and the profligate banditti of a sea-port, led the column of assault; and the sudden and extraordinary cessation of the fire from the palace windows, seemed to promise a sure conquest. But, as the smoke subsided, I saw a long line of troops, three deep, drawn up in front of the chief entrance. Their scarlet uniforms showed that they were the Swiss. The gendarmerie, the National Guard, the regular battalions, had abandoned them, and their fate seemed inevitable. But there they stood, firm as iron. Their assailants evidently recoiled; but the discharge of some cannon-shots, which told upon the ranks of those brave and unfortunate men, gave them new courage, and they poured onward. The voice of the Swiss commandant giving the word to fire was heard, and it was followed by a rolling discharge, from flank to flank, of the whole battalion. It was my first experience of the effect of fire; and I was astonished at its precision, rapidity, and deadly power. In an instant, almost the whole troop of the Marseillais, in our front, were stretched upon the ground, and every third man in the first line of the Sections was killed or wounded. Before this shock could be recovered, we heard the word "fire" again from the Swiss officer, and a second shower of bullets burst upon our ranks. The Sections turned and fled in all directions, some by the Pont Neuf, some by the Place Carrousel. The rout was complete; the terror, the confusion, and the yelling of the wounded were horrible. The havoc was increased by a party of the defenders of the palace, who descended into the court and fell with desperation on the fugitives. I felt that now was my time to escape, and darted behind one of the buttresses of a royal porte cachere, to let the crowd pass me. The skirmishing continued at intervals, and an officer in the uniform of the Royal Guard was struck down by a shot close to my feet. As he rolled over, I recognised his features. He was my young friend Lafontaine! With an inconceivable shudder I looked on his pale countenance, and with the thought that he was killed was mingled the thought of the misery which the tidings would bring to fond ears in England. But as I drew the body within the shelter of the gate, I found that he still breathed; he opened his eyes, and I had the happiness, after waiting in suspense till the dusk covered our movements, of conveying him to my hotel.
Of the remaining events of this most calamitous day, I know but what all the world knows. It broke down the monarchy. It was the last struggle in which a possibility existed of saving the throne. The gentlest of the Bourbons was within sight of the scaffold. He had now only to retrieve his character for personal virtue by laying down his head patiently under the blade of the guillotine. His royal character was gone beyond hope, and all henceforth was to be the trial of the legislature and the nation. Even that trial was to be immediate, comprehensive, and condign. No people in the history of rebellion ever suffered, so keenly or so rapidly, the vengeance which belongs to national crimes. The saturnalia was followed by massacre. A new and darker spirit of ferocity displayed itself, in a darker and more degraded form, from hour to hour, until the democracy was extinguished. Like the Scripture miracle of the demoniac—the spirits which had once exhibited the shape of man, were transmitted into the shape of the brute; and even the swine ran down by instinct, and perished in the waters.
CEYLON[12]
There is in the science and process of colonization, as in every complex act of man, a secret philosophy—which is first suspected through results, and first expounded by experience. Here, almost more than any where else, nature works in fellowship with man. Yet all nature is not alike suited to the purposes of the early colonist; and all men are not alike qualified for giving effect to the hidden capacities of nature. One system of natural advantages is designed to have a long precedency of others; and one race of men is selected and sealed for an eternal preference in this function of colonizing to the very noblest of their brethren. As colonization advances, that ground becomes eligible for culture—that nature becomes full of promise—which in earlier stages of the science was not so; because the dreadful solitude becomes continually narrower under the accelerated diffusion of men, which shortens the space of distance—under the strides of nautical science, which shortens the time of distance—and under the eternal discoveries of civilization, which combat with elementary nature. Again, in the other element of colonization, races of men become known for what they are; the furnace has tried them all; the truth has justified itself; and if, as at some great memorial review of armies, some solemn armilustrum, the colonizing nations, since 1500, were now by name called up—France would answer not at all; Portugal and Holland would stand apart with dejected eyes—dimly revealing the legend of Fuit Ilium; Spain would be seen sitting in the distance, and, like Judæa on the Roman coins, weeping under her palm-tree in the vast regions of the Orellana; whilst the British race would be heard upon every wind, coming on with mighty hurrahs, full of power and tumult, as some "hail-stone chorus,"[13] and crying aloud to the five hundred millions of Burmah, China, Japan, and the infinite islands, to make ready their paths before them. Already a ground-plan, or ichnography, has been laid down of the future colonial empire. In three centuries, already some outline has been sketched, rudely adumbrating the future settlement destined for the planet, some infant castrametation has been marked out for the future encampment of nations. Enough has been already done to show the course by which the tide is to flow, to prefigure for languages their proportions, and for nations to trace their distribution.
In this movement, so far as it regards man, in this machinery for sifting and winnowing the merits of races, there is a system of marvellous means, which by its very simplicity masks and hides from us the wise profundity of its purpose. Often-times, in wandering amongst the inanimate world, the philosopher is disposed to say—this plant, this mineral, this fruit, is met with so often, not because it is better than others of the same family, perhaps it is worse, but because its resources for spreading and naturalizing itself, are, by accident, greater than theirs. That same analogy he finds repeated in the great drama of colonization. It is not, says he pensively to himself, the success which measures the merit. It is not that nature, or that providence, has any final cause at work in disseminating these British children over every zone and climate of the earth. Oh, no! far from it! But it is the unfair advantages of these islanders, which carry them thus potently a-head. Is it so, indeed? Philosopher, you are wrong. Philosopher, you are envious. You speak Spanish, philosopher, or even French. Those advantages, which you suppose to disturb the equities of the case—were they not products of British energy? Those twenty-five thousand of ships, whose graceful shadows darken the blue waters in every climate—did they build themselves? That myriad of acres, laid out in the watery cities of docks—were they sown by the rain, as the fungus or the daisy? Britain has advantages at this stage of the race, which make the competition no longer equal—henceforwards it has become gloriously "unfair"—but at starting we were all equal. Take this truth from us, philosopher; that in such contests the power constitutes the title, the man that has the ability to go a-head, is the man entitled to go a-head; and the nation that can win the place of leader, is the nation that ought to do so.
This colonizing genius of the British people appears upon a grand scale in Australia, Canada, and, as we may remind the else forgetful world, in the United States of America; which States are our children, prosper by our blood, and have ascended to an overshadowing altitude from an infancy tended by ourselves. But on the fields of India it is, that our aptitudes for colonization have displayed themselves most illustriously, because they were strengthened by violent resistance. We found many kingdoms established, and to these we have given unity; and in process of doing so, by the necessities of the general welfare, or the mere instincts of self-preservation, we have transformed them to an empire, rising like an exhalation, of our own—a mighty monument of our own superior civilization.
Ceylon, as a virtual dependency of India, ranks in the same category. There also we have prospered by resistance; there also we have succeeded memorably where other nations memorably failed. Of Ceylon, therefore, now rising annually into importance, let us now (on occasion of this splendid book, the work of one officially connected with the island, bound to it also by affectionate ties of services rendered, not less than of unmerited persecutions suffered) offer a brief, but rememberable account; of Ceylon in itself, and of Ceylon in its relations historical or economic, to ourselves.
Mr Bennett says of it, with more and less of doubt, three things—of which any one would be sufficient to detain a reader's attention; viz., 1. That it is the Taprobane of the Romans; 2. That it was, or has been thought to be, the Paradise of Scripture; 3. That it is "the most magnificent of the British insular possessions," or in yet wider language, that it is an "incomparable colony." This last count in the pretensions of Ceylon is quite indisputable; Ceylon is in fact already, Ceylon is at this moment, a gorgeous jewel in the imperial crown; and yet, compared with what it may be, with what it will be, with what it ought to be, Ceylon is but that grain of mustard-seed which hereafter is destined to become the stately tree,[14] where the fowls of heaven will lodge for generations. Great are the promises of Ceylon; great already her performances. Great are the possessions of Ceylon, far greater her reversions. Rich she is by her developments, richer by her endowments. She combines the luxury of the tropics with the sterner gifts of our own climate. She is hot; she is cold. She is civilized; she is barbarous. She has the resources of the rich; and she has the energies of the poor.
But for Taprobane, but for Paradise, we have a word of dissent. Mr Bennett is well aware that many men in many ages have protested against the possibility that Ceylon could realize all the conditions involved in the ancient Taprobane. Milton, it is true, with other excellent scholars, has insinuated his belief that probably Taprobane is Ceylon; when our Saviour in the wilderness sees the great vision of Roman power, expressed, inter alia, by high officers of the Republic flocking to, or from, the gates of Rome, and "embassies from regions far remote," crowding the Appian or the Emilian roads, some
"From the Asian kings, and Parthian amongst these;
From India and the golden Chersonese,
And utmost Indian isle Taprobane
Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed;"
it is probable, from the mention of this island Taprobane following so closely after that of the Malabar peninsula, that Milton held it to be the island of Ceylon, and not of Sumatra. In this he does but follow the stream of geographical critics; and, upon the whole, if any one island exclusively is to be received for the Roman Taprobane, doubt there can be none that Ceylon has the superior title. But, as we know that, in regions less remote from Rome, Mona did not always mean the Isle of Man, nor Ultima Thule uniformly the Isle of Skye or of St Kilda—so it is pretty evident that features belonging to Sumatra, and probably to other oriental islands, blended (through mutual misconceptions of the parties, questioned and questioning) into one semi-fabulous object not entirely realized in any locality whatever. The case is precisely as if Cosmas Indicopleustes, visiting Scotland in the sixth century, should have placed the scene of any adventure in a town distant six miles from Glasgow and eight miles from Edinburgh. These we know to be irreconcilable conditions, such as cannot meet in any town whatever, past or present. But in such a case many circumstances might, notwithstanding, combine to throw a current of very strong suspicion upon Hamilton as the town concerned. On the same principle, it is easy to see that most of those Romans who spoke of Taprobane had Ceylon in their eye. But that all had not, and of those who really had, that some indicated by their facts very different islands, whilst designing to indicate Ceylon, is undeniable; since, amongst other imaginary characteristics of Taprobane, they make it extend considerably to the south of the line. Now, with respect to Ceylon, this is notoriously false; that island lies entirely in the northern tropic, and does not come within five (hardly more than six) degrees of the equator. Plain it is, therefore, that Taprobane, it construed very strictly, is an ens rationis, made up by fanciful composition from various sources, and much like our own mediæval conceit of Prester John's country, or the fancies (which have but recently vanished) of the African river Niger, and the golden city Tombuctoo. These were lies; and yet also, in a limited sense, they were truths. They were expansions, often fabulous and impossible, engrafted upon some basis of fact by the credulity of the traveller, or subsequently by misconception of the scholar. For instance, as to Tombuctoo, Leo Africanus had authorized men to believe in some vast African city, central to that great continent, and a focus to some mighty system of civilization. Others, improving on that chimera, asserted, that this glorious city represented an inheritance derived from ancient Carthage; here, it was said, survived the arts and arms of that injured state; hither, across Bilidulgerid, had the children of Phoenicia fled from the wrath of Rome; and the mighty phantom of him whose uplifted truncheon had pointed its path to the carnage of Cannæ, was still the tutelary genius watching over a vast posterity worthy of himself. Here was a wilderness of lies; yet, after all, the lies were but so many voluminous fasciæ, enveloping the mummy of an original truth. Mungo Park came, and the city of Tombuctoo was shown to be a real existence. Seeing was believing. And yet, if, before the time of Park, you had avowed a belief in Tombuctoo, you would have made yourself an indorser of that huge forgery which had so long circulated through the forum of Europe, and, in fact, a party to the total fraud.
We have thought it right to direct the reader's eye upon this correction of the common problem as to this or that place—Ceylon for example—answering to this or that classical name—because, in fact, the problem is more subtle than it appears to be. If you are asked whether you believe in the unicorn, undoubtedly you are within the letter of the truth in replying that you do; for there are several varieties of large animals which carry a single horn in the forehead.[15] But, virtually, by such an answer you would countenance a falsehood or a doubtful legend, since you are well aware that, in the idea of an unicorn, your questioner included the whole traditionary character of the unicorn, as an antagonist and emulator of the lion, &c.; under which fanciful description, this animal is properly ranked with the griffin, the mermaid, the basilisk, the dragon—and sometimes discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal natural history. When asked, therefore, whether Ceylon is Taprobane, the true answer is, not by affirmation simply, nor by negation simply, but by both at once; it is, and it is not. Taprobane includes much of what belongs to Ceylon, but also more, and also less. And this case is a type of many others standing in the same logical circumstances.
But, secondly, as to Ceylon being the local representative of Paradise, we may say, as the courteous Frenchman did to Dr Moore, upon the Doctor's apologetically remarking of a word which he had used, that he feared it was not good French—"Non, Monsieur, il n'est pas; mais il mérite bien l'être." Certainly, if Ceylon was not, at least it ought to have been, Paradise; for at this day there is no place on earth which better supports the paradisiacal character (always excepting Lapland, as an Upsal professor observes, and Wapping, as an old seaman reminds us) than this Pandora of islands, which the Hindoos call Lanka, and Europe calls Ceylon. We style it the "Pandora" of islands, because, as all the gods of the heathen clubbed their powers in creating that ideal woman—clothing her with perfections, and each separate deity subscribing to her dowery some separate gift—not less conspicuous, and not less comprehensive, has been the bounty of Providence, running through the whole diapason of possibilities, to this all-gorgeous island. Whatsoever it is that God has given by separate allotment and partition to other sections of the planet, all this he has given cumulatively and redundantly to Ceylon. Was she therefore happy, was Ceylon happier than other regions, through this hyper-tropical munificence of her Creator? No, she was not; and the reason was, because idolatrous darkness had planted curses where Heaven had planted blessings; because the insanity of man had defeated the graciousness of God. But another era is dawning for Ceylon; God will now countersign his other blessings, and ripen his possibilities into great harvests of realization, by superadding the one blessing of a dovelike religion; light is thickening apace, the horrid altars of Moloch are growing dim; woman will no more consent to forego her birthright as the daughter of God; man will cease to be the tiger-cat that, in the noblest chamber of Ceylon, he has ever been; and with the new hopes that will now blossom amidst the ancient beauties of this lovely island, Ceylon will but too deeply fulfill the functions of a paradise. Too subtly she will lay fascinations upon man; and it will need all the anguish of disease, and the stings of death, to unloose the ties which, in coming ages, must bind the hearts of her children to this Eden of the terraqueous globe.
Yet if, apart from all bravuras of rhetoric, Mr Bennett seriously presses the question regarding Paradise as a question in geography, we are sorry that we must vote against Ceylon, for the reason that heretofore we have pledged ourselves in print to vote in favour of Cashmeer; which beautiful vale, by the way, is omitted in Mr Bennett's list of the candidates for that distinction already entered upon the roll. Supposing the Paradise of Scripture to have had a local settlement upon our earth, and not in some extra-terrene orb, even in that case we cannot imagine that any thing could now survive, even so much as an angle or a curve, of its original outline. All rivers have altered their channels; many are altering them for ever.[16] Longitude and latitude might be assigned, at the most, if even those are not substantially defeated by the Miltonic "pushing askance" of the poles with regard to the equinoctial. But, finally, we remark, that whereas human nature has ever been prone to the superstition of local consecrations and personal idolatries, by means of memorial relics, apparently it is the usage of God to hallow such remembrances by removing, abolishing, and confounding all traces of their punctual identities. That raises them to shadowy powers. By that process such remembrances pass from the state of base sensual signs, ministering only to a sensual servitude, into the state of great ideas—mysterious as spirituality is mysterious, and permanent as truth is permanent. Thus it is, and therefore it is, that Paradise has vanished; Luz is gone; Jacob's ladder is found only as an apparition in the clouds; the true cross survives no more among the Roman Catholics than the true ark is mouldering upon Ararat; no scholar can lay his hand upon Gethsemane; and for the grave of Moses the son of Amram, mightiest of lawgivers, though it is somewhere near Mount Nebo, and in a valley of Moab, yet eye has not been suffered to behold it, and "no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."[17]
If, however as to Paradise in connexion with Ceylon we are forced to say "No," if as to Taprobane in connexion with Ceylon we say both "Yes" and "No,"—not the less we come back with a reiterated "Yes, yes, yes," upon Ceylon as the crest and eagle's plume of the Indies, as the priceless pearl, the ruby without a flaw, and (once again we say it) as the Pandora of oriental islands.
Yet ends so glorious imply means of corresponding power; and advantages so comprehensive cannot be sustained unless by a machinery proportionately elaborate. Part of this machinery lies in the miraculous climate of Ceylon. Climate? She has all climates. Like some rare human favourite of nature, scattered at intervals along the line of a thousand years, who has been gifted so variously as to seem
"Not one, but all mankind's epitome,"
Ceylon, in order that she might become capable of products without end, has been made an abstract of the whole earth, and fitted up as a panorganon for modulating through the whole diatonic scale of climates. This is accomplished in part by her mountains. No island has mountains so high. It was the hideous oversight of a famous infidel in the last century, that, in supposing an Eastern prince of necessity to deny frost and ice as things impossible to his experience, he betrayed too palpably his own non-acquaintance with the grand economies of nature. To make acquaintance with cold, and the products of cold, obviously he fancied it requisite to travel northwards; to taste of polar power, he supposed it indispensable to have advanced towards the pole. Narrow was the knowledge in those days, when a master in Israel might have leave to err thus grossly. Whereas, at present, few are the people, amongst those not openly making profession of illiteracy, who do not know that a sultan of the tropics—ay, though his throne were screwed down by exquisite geometry to the very centre of the equator—might as surely become familiar with winter by ascending three miles in altitude, as by travelling three thousand horizontally. In that way of ascent, it is that Ceylon has her regions of winter and her Arctic districts. She has her Alps, and she has her alpine tracts for supporting human life and useful vegetation. Adam's Peak, which of itself is more than seven thousand feet high, (and by repute the highest range within her shores,) has been found to rank only fifth in the mountain scale. The highest is a thousand feet higher. The maritime district, which runs round the island for a course of nine hundred miles, fanned by the sea-breezes, makes, with these varying elevations, a vast cycle of secondary combinations for altering the temperature and for adapting the weather. The central region has a separate climate of its own. And an inner belt of country, neither central nor maritime, which from the sea belt is regarded as inland, but from the centre is regarded as maritime, composes another chamber of climates: whilst these again, each individually within its class, are modified into minor varieties by local circumstances as to wind, by local accidents of position, and by shifting stages of altitude.
With all this compass of power, however, (obtained from its hills and its varying scale of hills,) Ceylon has not much of waste ground, in the sense of being irreclaimable—for of waste ground, in the sense of being unoccupied, she has an infinity. What are the dimensions of Ceylon? Of all islands in this world which we know, in respect of size it most resembles Ireland, being about one-sixth part less. But, for a particular reason, we choose to compare it with Scotland, which is very little different in dimensions from Ireland, having (by some hundred or two of square miles) a trifling advantage in extent. Now, say that Scotland contains a trifle more than thirty thousand square miles, the relation of Ceylon to Scotland will become apparent when we mention that this Indian island contains about twenty-four thousand five hundred of similar square miles.
Twenty-four and a half to thirty—or forty-nine to sixty—there lies the ratio of Ceylon to Scotland. The ratio in population is not less easily remembered: Scotland has now (October 1843) hard upon three millions of people: Ceylon, by a late census, has just three half millions. But strange indeed, where every thing seems strange, is the arrangement of this Ceylonese territory and people. Take a peach: what you call the flesh of the peach, the substance which you eat, is massed orbicularly around a central stone—often as large as a pretty large strawberry. Now in Ceylon, the central district, answering to this peach-stone, constitutes a fierce little Liliputian kingdom, quite independent, through many centuries, of the lazy belt, the peach-flesh, which swathes and enfolds it, and perfectly distinct by the character and origin of its population. The peach-stone is called Kandy, and the people Kandyans. These are a desperate variety of the tiger-man, agile and fierce as he is, though smooth, insinuating, and full of subtlety as a snake, even to the moment of crouching for their last fatal spring. On the other hand the people of the engirdling zone are called the Cinghalese, spelled according to fancy of us authors and compositors, who legislate for the spelling of the British empire, with an S or a C. As to moral virtue, in the sense of integrity or fixed principle, there is not much lost upon either race: in that point they are "much of a muchness." They are also both respectable for their attainments in cowardice; but with this difference, that the Cinghalese are soft, inert, passive cowards: but your Kandyan is a ferocious little bloody coward, full of mischief as a monkey, grinning with desperation, laughing like a hyena, or chattering if you vex him, and never to be trusted for a moment. The reader now understands why we described the Ceylonese man as a tiger-cat in his noblest division: for, after all, these dangerous gentlemen in the peach-stone are a more promising race than the silky and nerveless population surrounding them. You can strike no fire out of the Cinghalese: but the Kandyans show fight continually, and would even persist in fighting, if there were in this world no gunpowder, (which exceedingly they dislike,) and if their allowance of arrack were greater.
Surely this is the very strangest spectacle exhibited on earth: a kingdom within a kingdom, an imperium in imperio, settled and maintaining itself for centuries in defiance of all that Pagan, that Mahommedan, that Jew, or that Christian, could do. The reader will remember the case of the British envoy to Geneva, who being ordered in great wrath to "quit the territories of the republic in twenty-four hours," replied, "By all means: in ten minutes." And here was a little bantam kingdom, not much bigger than the irate republic, having its separate sultan, with full-mounted establishment of peacock's feathers, white elephants, Moorish eunuchs, armies, cymbals, dulcimers, and all kinds of music, tormentors, and executioners; whilst his majesty crowed defiance across the ocean to all other kings, rajahs, soldans, kesars, "flowery" emperors, and "golden-feet," east or west, be the same more or less; and really with some reason. For though it certainly is amusing to hear of a kingdom no bigger than Stirlingshire with the half of Perthshire, standing erect and maintaining perpetual war with all the rest of Scotland, a little nucleus of pugnacity, sixty miles by twenty-four, rather more than a match for the lazy lubber, nine hundred miles long, that dandled it in its arms; yet, as the trick was done, we cease to find it ridiculous.
For the trick was done: and that reminds us to give the history of Ceylon in its two sections, which will not prove much longer than the history of Tom Thumb. Precisely three centuries before Waterloo, viz. Anno Domini 1515, a Portuguese admiral hoisted his sovereign's flag, and formed a durable settlement at Columbo, which was, and is, considered the maritime capital of the island. Very nearly halfway on the interval of time between this event and Waterloo, viz. in 1656 (ante-penultimate year of Cromwell,) the Portuguese nation made over, by treaty, this settlement to the Dutch; which, of itself, seems to mark that the sun of the former people was now declining to the west. In 1796, now forty-seven years ago, it arose out of the French revolutionary war—so disastrous for Holland—that the Dutch surrendered it per force to the British, who are not very likely to surrender it in their turn on any terms, or at any gentleman's request. Up to this time, when Ceylon passed under our flag, it is to be observed that no progress whatever, not the least, had been made in mastering the peach-stone, that old central nuisance of the island. The little monster still crowed, and flapped his wings on his dunghill, as had been his custom always in the afternoon for certain centuries. But nothing on earth is immortal: even mighty bantams must have their decline and fall; and omens began to show out that soon there would be a dust with the new master at Columbo. Seven years after our debut on that stage, the dust began. By the way, it is perhaps an impertinence to remark it, but there certainly is a sympathy between the motions of the Kandyan potentate and our European enemy Napoleon. Both pitched into us in 1803, and we pitched into both in 1815. That we call a coincidence. How the row began was thus: some incomprehensible intrigues had been proceeding for a time between the British governor or commandant, or whatever he might be, and the Kandyan prime minister. This minister, who was a noticeable man, with large grey eyes, was called Pilamé Tilawé. We write his name after Mr Bennett: but it is quite useless to study the pronunciation of it, seeing that he was hanged in 1812 (the year of Moscow)—a fact for which we are thankful as often as we think of it. Pil. (surely Tilawé cannot be pronounced Garlic?) managed to get the king's head into Chancery, and then fibbed him. Why Major-General M'Dowall (then commanding our forces) should collude with Pil Garlic, is past our understanding. But so it was. Pil. said that a certain prince, collaterally connected with the royal house, by name Mootto Sawmé, who had fled to our protection, was, or might be thought to be, the lawful king. Upon which the British general proclaimed him. What followed is too shocking to dwell upon. Scarcely had Mootto, apparently a good creature, been inaugurated, when Pil. proposed his deposition, to which General M'Dowall consented, and his own (Pil.'s) elevation to the throne. It is like a dream to say, that this also was agreed to. King Pil. the First, and, God be thanked! the last, was raised to the—musnud, we suppose, or whatsoever they call it in Pil.'s jargon. So far there was little but farce; now comes the tragedy. A certain Major Davie was placed with a very inconsiderable garrison in the capital of the Kandyan empire, called by name Kandy. This officer, whom Mr Bennett somewhere calls the "gallant," capitulated upon terms, and had the inconceivable folly to imagine that a base Kandyan chief would think himself bound by these terms. One of them was—that he (Major Davie) and his troops should be allowed to retreat unmolested upon Columbo. Accordingly, fully armed and accoutred, the British troops began their march. At Wattépolowa a proposal was made to Major Davie, that Mootto Sawmé (our protégé and instrument) should be delivered up to the Kandyan tiger. Oh! sorrow for the British name! he was delivered. Soon after a second proposal came, that the British soldiers should deliver up their arms, and should march back to Kandy. It makes an Englishman shiver with indignation to hear that even this demand was complied with. Let us pause for one moment. Wherefore is it, that in all similar cases, in this Ceylonese case, in Major Baillie's Mysore case, in the Cabool case, uniformly the privates are wiser than their officers? In a case of delicacy or doubtful policy, certainly the officers would have been the party best able to solve the difficulties; but in a case of elementary danger, where manners disappear, and great passions come upon the stage, strange it is that poor men, labouring men, men without education, always judge more truly of the crisis than men of high refinement. But this was seen by Wordsworth—thus spoke he, thirty-six years ago, of Germany, contrasted with the Tyrol:—
"Her haughty schools
Shall blush; and may not we with sorrow say—
A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules,
Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought
More for mankind at this unhappy day
Than all the pride of intellect and thought."
The regiment chiefly concerned was the 19th, (for which regiment the word Wattépolowa, the scene of their martyrdom, became afterwards a memorial war-cry.) Still, to this hour, it forces tears of wrath into our eyes when we read the recital of the case. A dozen years ago we first read it in a very interesting book, published by the late Mr Blackwood—the Life of Alexander. This Alexander was not personally present at the bloody catastrophe; but he was in Ceylon at the time, and knew the one sole fugitive[18] from that fatal day. The soldiers of the 19th, not even in that hour of horror, forgot their discipline, or their duty, or their respectful attachment to their officers. When they were ordered to ground their arms, (oh, base idiot that could issue such an order!) they remonstrated most earnestly, but most respectfully. Major Davie, agitated and distracted by the scene, himself recalled the order. The men resumed their arms. Alas! again the fatal order was issued; again it was recalled; but finally, it was issued peremptorily. The men sorrowfully obeyed. We hurry to the odious conclusion. In parties of twos and of threes, our brave countrymen were called out by the horrid Kandyan tiger cats. Disarmed by the frenzy of their moonstruck commander, what resistance could they make? One after one the parties, called out to suffer, were decapitated by the executioner. The officers, who had refused to give up their pistols, finding what was going on, blew out their brains with their own hands, now too bitterly feeling how much wiser had been the poor privates than themselves. At length there was stillness on the field. Night had come on. All were gone—
"And darkness was the buryer of the dead."
The reader may recollect a most picturesque murder near Manchester, about thirteen or fourteen years ago, perpetrated by two brothers named McKean, where a servant woman, whose throat had been effectually cut, rose up, after an interval, from the ground at a most critical moment, (so critical, that, by that act, and at that second of time, she drew off the murderer's hand from the throat of a second victim,) staggered, in her delirium, to the door of a room where sometime a club had been held, doubtless under some idea of obtaining aid, and at the door, after walking some fifty feet, dropped down dead. Not less astonishing was the resurrection, as it might be called, of an English corporal, cut, mangled, remangled, and left without sign of life. Suddenly he rose up, stiff and gory; dying and delirious, as he felt himself, with misery from exhaustion and wounds, he swam rivers, threaded enemies, and moving day and night, came suddenly upon an army of Kandyans; here he prepared himself with pleasure for the death that now seemed inevitable, when, by a fortunate accident, for want of a fitter man, he was selected as an ambassador to the English officer commanding a Kandyan garrison—and thus once more escaped miraculously.
Sometimes, when we are thinking over the great scenes of tragedy through which Europe passed from 1805 to 1815, suddenly, from the bosom of utter darkness, a blaze of light arises; a curtain is drawn up; a saloon is revealed. We see a man sitting there alone, in an attitude of alarm and expectation. What does he expect? What is it that he fears? He is listening for the chariot-wheels of a fugitive army. At intervals he raises his head—and we know him now for the Abbé de Pradt—the place, Warsaw—the time, early in December 1812. All at once the rushing of cavalry is heard; the door is thrown open; a stranger enters. We see, as in Cornelius Agrippa's mirror, his haggard features; it is a momentary king, having the sign of a felon's death written secretly on his brow; it is Murat; he raises his hands with a gesture of horror as he advances to M. l'Abbé. We hear his words—"L'Abbé, all is lost!"
Even so, when the English soldier, reeling from his anguish and weariness, was admitted into the beleaguered fortress, his first words, more homely in expression than Murat's, were to the same dreadful purpose—"Your honour," he said, "all is dished;" and this being uttered by way of prologue, he then delivered himself of the message with which he had been charged, and that was a challenge from the Kandyan general to come out and fight without aid from his artillery. The dismal report was just in time; darkness was then coming on. The English officer spiked his guns; and, with his garrison, fled by night from a fort in which else he would have perished by starvation or by storm, had Kandyan forces been equal to such an effort. This corporal was, strictly speaking, the only man who escaped, one or two other survivors having been reserved as captives, for some special reasons. Of this captive party was Major Davie, the commander, whom Mr Bennett salutes by the title of "gallant," and regrets that "the strong arm of death" had intercepted his apology.
He could have made no apology. Plea or palliation he had none. To have polluted the British honour in treacherously yielding up to murder (and absolutely for nothing in return) a prince, whom we ourselves had seduced into rebellion—to have forced his men and officers into laying down their arms, and sueing for the mercy of wretches the most perfidious on earth; these were acts as to which atonement or explanation was hopeless for him, forgiveness impossible for England. So this man is to be called "the gallant"—is he? We will thank Mr Bennett to tell us, who was that officer subsequently seen walking about in Ceylon, no matter whether in Western Columbo, or in Eastern Trincomalé, long enough for reaping his dishonour, though, by accident, not for a court-martial? Behold, what a curse rests in this British island upon those men, who, when the clock of honour has sounded the hour for their departure, cannot turn their dying eyes nobly to the land of their nativity—stretch out their hands to the glorious island in farewell homage, and say with military pride—as even the poor gladiators (who were but slaves) said to Cæsar, when they passed his chair to their death "Morituri te salutamus!" This man and Mr Bennett knows it, because he was incrusted with the leprosy of cowardice, and because upon him lay the blood of those to whom he should have been in loco parentis, made a solitude wherever he appeared, men ran from him as from an incarnation of pestilence; and between him and free intercourse with his countrymen, from the hour of his dishonour in the field, to the hour of his death, there flowed a river of separation—there were stretched lines of interdict heavier than ever Pope ordained—there brooded a schism like that of death, a silence like that of the grave; making known for ever the deep damnation of the infamy, which on this earth settles upon the troubled resting-place of him, who, through cowardice, has shrunk away from his duty, and, on the day of trial, has broken the bond which bound him to his country.
Surely there needed no arrear of sorrow to consummate this disaster. Yet two aggravations there were, which afterwards transpired, irritating the British soldiers to madness. One was soon reported, viz. that 120 sick or wounded men, lying in an hospital, had been massacred without a motive, by the children of hell with whom we were contending. The other was not discovered until 1815. Then first it became known, that in the whole stores of the Kandyan government, (à fortiori then in the particular section of the Kandyan forces which we faced,) there had not been more gunpowder remaining at the hour of Major Davie's infamous capitulation than 750 lbs. avoirdupois; other munitions of war having been in the same state of bankruptcy. Five minutes more of resistance, one inspiration of English pluck, would have placed the Kandyan army in our power—would have saved the honour of the country—would have redeemed our noble soldiers—and to Major Davie, would have made the total difference between lying in a traitor's grave, and lying in Westminster Abbey.
Was there no vengeance, no retribution, for these things? Vengeance there was, but by accident. Retribution there was, but partial and remote. Infamous it was for the English government at Columbo, as Mr Bennett insinuates, that having a large fund disposable annually for secret service, between 1796 and 1803, such a rupture could have happened and have found us unprepared. Equally infamous it was, that summary chastisement was not inflicted upon the perfidious court of Kandy. What real power it had, when unaided by villainy amongst ourselves, was shown in 1804, in the course of which year, one brave officer, Lieutenant Johnstone of the 19th, with no more than 150 men, including officers, marched right through the country, in the teeth of all opposition from the king, and resolutely took[19] Kandy in his route. However, for the present, without a shadow of a reason, since all reasons ran in the other direction, we ate our leek in silence; once again, but now for the last time, the bloody little bantam crowed defiance from his dunghill, and tore the British flag with his spurs. What caused his ruin at last, was literally the profundity of our own British humiliation; had that been less, had it not been for the natural reaction of that spectacle, equally hateful and incredible, upon barbarian chief, as ignorant as he was fiendish, he would have returned a civil answer to our subsequent remonstrances. In that case, our government would have been conciliated; and the monster's son, who yet lives in Malabar, would now be reigning in his stead. But Diis aliter visum est—earth was weary of this Kandyan nuisance, and the infatuation, which precipitated its doom, took the following shape. In 1814, certain traders, ten in number, not British but Cinghalese, and therefore British subjects, entitled to British protection, were wantonly molested in their peaceable occupations by this Kandyan king. Three of these traders one day returned to our frontier wearing upon necklaces, inextricably attached to their throats, their own ears, noses, and other parts of their own persons, torn away by the pincers of the Kandyan executioners. The seven others had sunk under their sufferings. Observe that there had been no charge or imputation against these men, more or less: stet proratione voluntas. This was too much even for our all-suffering[20] English administration. They sent off a kind of expostulation, which amounted to this—"How now, my good sir? What are you up to?" Fortunately for his miserable subjects, (and, as this case showed, by possibility for many who were not such,) the vain-glorious animal returned no answer; not because he found any diplomatic difficulty to surmount, but in mere self glorification, and in pure disdain of us. What a commentary was that upon our unspeakable folly up to that hour!
We are anxious that the reader should go along with the short remainder of this story, because it bears strongly upon the true moral of our Eastern policy, of which, hereafter, we shall attempt to unfold the casuistry, in a way that will be little agreeable to the calumniators of Clive and Hastings. We do not intend that these men shall have it all their own way in times to come. Our Eastern rulers have erred always, and erred deeply, by doing too little rather than too much. They have been too long-suffering; and have tolerated many nuisances, and many miscreants, when their duty was—when their power was—to have destroyed them for ever. And the capital fault of the East India Company—that greatest benefactor for the East that ever yet has arisen—has been in not publishing to the world the grounds and details of their policy. Let this one chapter in that policy, this Kandyan chapter, proclaim how great must have been the evils from which our "usurpations" (as they are called) have liberated the earth. For let no man dwell on the rarity, or on the limited sphere, of such atrocities, even in Eastern despotisms. If the act be rare, is not the anxiety eternal? If the personal suffering be transitory, is not the outrage upon human sensibilities, upon the majesty of human nature, upon the possibilities of light, order, commerce, civilization, of a duration and a compass to make the total difference between man viler than the brutes, and man a little lower than the angels?
It happened that the first noble, or "Adikar," of the Kandyan king, being charged with treason at this time, had fled to our protection. That was enough. Vengeance on him, in his proper person, had become impossible: and the following was the vicarious vengeance adopted by God's vicegerent upon earth, whose pastime it had long been to study the ingenuities of malice, and the possible refinements in the arts of tormenting. Here follows the published report on this one case:—"The ferocious miscreant determined to be fully revenged, and immediately sentenced the Adikar's wife and children, together with his brother and the brother's wife, to death after the following fashion. The children were ordered to be decapitated before their mother's face, and their heads to be pounded in a rice-mortar by their mother's hands; which, to save herself from a diabolical torture and exposure," (concealments are here properly practised in the report, for the sake of mere human decency,) "she submitted to attempt. The eldest boy shrunk (shrank) from the dread ordeal, and clung to his agonized parent for safety; but his younger brother stepped forward, and encouraged him to submit to his fate, placing himself before the executioner by way of setting an example. The last of the children to be beheaded was an infant at the breast, from which it was forcibly torn away, and its mother's milk was dripping from its innocent mouth as it was put into the hands of the grim executioner." Finally, the Adikar's brother was executed, having no connexion (so much as alleged) with his brother's flight; and then the two sisters-in-law, having stones attached to their feet, were thrown into a tank. These be thy gods, O Egypt! such are the processes of Kandyan law, such is its horrid religion, and such the morality which it generates! And let it not be said, these were the excesses of a tyrant. Man does not brutalize, by possibility, in pure insulation. He gives, and he receives. It is by sympathy, by the contagion of example, by reverberation of feelings, that every man's heart is moulded. A prince, to have been such as this monster, must been bred amongst a cruel people: a cruel people, as by other experience we know them to be, naturally produce an inhuman prince, and such a prince reproduces his own corrupters.
Vengeance, however, was now at hand: a better and more martial governor, Sir Robert Brownrigg, was in the field since 1812. On finding that no answer was forthcoming, he marched with all his forces. But again these were inadequate to the service; and once again, as in 1803, we were on the brink of being sacrificed to the very lunacies of retrenchment. By a mere godsend, more troops happened to arrive from the Indian continent. We marched in triumphal ease to the capital city of Kandy. The wicked prince fled: Major Kelly pursued him—to pursue was to overtake—to overtake was to conquer. Thirty-seven ladies of his zenana, and his mother, were captured elsewhere: and finally the whole kingdom capitulated by a solemn act, in which we secured to it what we had no true liberty to secure, viz. the inviolability of their horrid idolatries. Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's—but this was not Cæsar's. Whether in some other concessions, whether in volunteering certain civil privileges of which the conquered had never dreamed, and which, for many a long year they will not understand, our policy were right or wrong—may admit of much debate. Often-times, but not always, it is wise and long-sighted policy to presume in nations higher qualities than they have, and developments beyond what really exist. But as to religion, there can be no doubt, and no debate at all. To exterminate their filthy and bloody abominations of creed and of ritual practice, is the first step to any serious improvement of the Kandyan people: it is the conditio sine quâ non of all regeneration for this demoralized race. And what we ought to have promised, all that in mere civil equity we had the right to promise; was—that we would tolerate such follies, would make no war upon such superstitions as should not be openly immoral. One word more than this covenant was equally beyond the powers of one party to that covenant, and the highest interests of all parties.
Philosophically speaking, this great revolution may not close perhaps for centuries: historically, it closed about the opening of the Hundred Days in the annus mirabilis of Waterloo. On the 13th of February 1815, Kandy, the town, was occupied by the British troops, never again to be resigned. In March, followed the solemn treaty by which all parties assumed their constitutional stations. In April, occurred the ceremonial part of the revolution, its public notification and celebration, by means of a grand processional entry into the capital, stretching for upwards of a mile; and in January 1816, the late king, now formally deposed, "a stout, good-looking Malabar, with a peculiarly keen and roving eye, and a restlessness of manner, marking unbridled passions," was conveyed in the governor's carriage to the jetty at Trincomalee, from which port H.M.S. Mexico conveyed him to the Indian continent: he was there confined in the fortress of Vellore, famous for the bloody mutiny amongst the Company's sepoy troops, so bloodily suppressed. In Vellore, this cruel prince, whose name was Sree Wickremé Rajah Singha, died some years after; and one son whom he left behind him, born during his father's captivity, may still be living. But his ambitious instincts, if any such are working within him, are likely to be seriously baffled in the very outset by the precautions of our diplomacy; for one article of the treaty proscribes the descendants of this prince as enemies of Ceylon, if found within its precincts. In this exclusion, pointed against a single family, we are reminded of the Stuart dynasty in England, and the Bonaparte dynasty in France. We cannot, however, agree with Mr Bennett's view of this parallelism—either in so far as it points our pity towards Napoleon, or in so far as it points the regrets of disappointed vengeance to the similar transportation of Sree.
Pity is misplaced upon Napoleon, and anger is wasted upon Sree. He ought to have been hanged, says Mr Bennett; and so said many of Napoleon. But it was not our mission to punish either. The Malabar prince had broken no faith with us: he acted under the cursed usages of a cruel people and a bloody religion. These influences had trained a bad heart to corresponding atrocities. Courtesy we did right to pay him, for our own sakes as a high and noble nation. What we could not punish judicially, it did not become us to revile. And finally, we much doubt whether hanging upon a tree, either in Napoleon's case or Sree's, would not practically have been found by both a happy liberation from that bitter cup of mortification which both drank off in their latter years.
At length, then, the entire island of Ceylon, about a hundred days before Waterloo, had become ours for ever. Hereafter Ceylon must inseparably attend the fortunes of India. Whosoever in the East commands the sea, must command the southern empires of Asia; and he who commands those empires, must for ever command the Oriental islands. One thing only remains to be explained; and the explanation, we fear, will be harder to understand than the problem: it is—how the Portuguese and Dutch failed, through nearly three centuries, to master this little obstinate nucleus of the peach. It seems like a fairy tale to hear the answer: Sinbad has nothing wilder. "They were," says Mr Bennett, "repeatedly masters of the capital." What was it, then, that stopped them from going on? "At one period, the former (i.e. the Portuguese) had conquered all but the impregnable position called Kandi Udda." And what was it then that lived at Kandi Udda? The dragon of Wantley? or the dun cow of Warwick? or the classical Hydra? No; it was thus:—Kandi was "in the centre of the mountainous region, surrounded by impervious jungles, with secret approaches for only one man at a time." Such tricks might have answered in the time of Ali Baba and the forty thieves; but we suspect that, even then, an "open sesame" would have been found for this pestilent defile. Smoking a cigar through it, and dropping the sparks, might have done the business in the dry season. But, in very truth, we imagine that political arrangements were answerable for this long failure in checkmating the king, and not at all the cunning passage which carried only one inside passenger. The Portuguese permitted the Kandyan natives to enter their army; and that one fact gives us a short solution of the case. For, as Mr Bennett observes, the principal features of these Kandyans are merely "human imitations of their own indigenous leopards—treachery and ferocity," as the circumstances may allow them to profit by one or the other. Sugarcandy, however, appears to have given very little trouble to us; and, at all events, it is ours now, together with all that is within its gates. It is proper, however, to add, that since the conquest of this country in 1815, there have been three rebellions, viz. in 1817-18, in 1834, and finally in 1842. This last comes pretty well home to our own times and concerns; so that we naturally become curious as to the causes of such troubles. The two last are said to have been inconsiderable in their extent. But the earlier of the three, which broke out so soon after the conquest as 1817, must, we conceive, have owed something to intrigues promoted on behalf of the exiled king. His direct lineal descendants are excluded, as we have said, from the island for ever; but his relatives, by whom we presume to be meant his cognati or kinspeople in the female line, not his agnati, are allowed to live in Kandy, suffering only the slight restriction of confinement to one street out of five, which compose this ancient metropolis. Meantime, it is most instructive to hear the secret account of those causes which set in motion this unprincipled rebellion. For it will thus be seen how hopeless it is, under the present idolatrous superstition of Ceylon, to think of any attachment in the people, by means of good government, just laws, agriculture promoted, or commerce created. More stress will be laid, by the Ceylonese, on our worshipping a carious tooth two inches long, ascribed to the god Buddha, (but by some to an ourang-outang,) than to every mode of equity, good faith, or kindness. It seems that the Kandyans and we reciprocally misunderstood the ranks, orders, precedencies, titular distinctions, and external honours attached to them in our several nations. But none are so deaf as those that have no mind to hear. And we suspect that our honest fellows of the 19th Regiment, whose comrades had been murdered in their beds by the cursed Kandyan "nobles," neither did nor would understand the claim of such assassins to military salutes, to the presenting of arms, or to the turning out of the guard. Here, it is said, began the ill-blood, and also on the claim of the Buddhist priests to similar honours. To say the simple truth, these soldiers ought not to have been expected to show respect towards the murderers of their brethren. The priests, with their shaven crowns and yellow robes, were objects of mere mockery to the British soldier. "Not to have been kicked," it should have been said, "is gain; not to have been cudgeled, is for you a ground of endless gratitude. Look not for salutes; dream not of honours." For our own part—again we say it—let the government look a-head for endless insurrections. We tax not the rulers of Ceylon with having caused the insurrections. We hold them blameless on that head; for a people so fickle and so unprincipled will never want such matter for rebellion as would be suspected, least of all, by a wise and benevolent man. But we do tax the local government with having ministered to the possibility of rebellion. We British have not sowed the ends and objects of conspiracies; but undoubtedly, by our lax administration, we have sowed the means of conspiracies. We must not transfer to a Pagan island our own mild code of penal laws: the subtle savage will first become capable of these, when he becomes capable of Christianity. And to this we must now bend our attention. Government must make no more offerings of musical clocks to the Pagan temples; for such propitiations are understood by the people to mean—that we admit their god to be naturally stronger than ours. Any mode or measure of excellence but that of power, they understand not, as applying to a deity. Neither must our government any longer wink at such monstrous practices as that of children ejecting their dying parents, in their last struggles, from the shelter of their own roofs, on the plea that death would pollute their dwellings. Such compliances with Paganism, make Pagans of ourselves. Nor, again, ought the professed worship of devils to be tolerated, more than the Fetish worship, or the African witchcraft, was tolerated in the West Indies. Having, at last, obtained secure possession of the entire island, with no reversionary fear over our heads, (as, up to Waterloo, we always had,) that possibly at a general peace we might find it diplomatically prudent to let it return under Dutch possession, we have no excuse for any longer neglecting the jewel in our power. We gave up to Holland, through unwise generosity, already one splendid island, viz. Java. Let one such folly suffice for one century.
For the same reason—namely, the absolute and undivided possession which we now hold of the island—it is at length time that our home government should more distinctly invite colonists, and make known the unrivaled capabilities of this region. So vast are our colonial territories, that for every class in our huge framework of society we have separate and characteristic attractions. In some it is chiefly labour that is wanted, capital being in excess. In others these proportions are reversed. In some it is great capitalists that are wanted for the present; in others almost exclusively small ones. Now, in Ceylon, either class will be welcome. It ought also to be published every where, that immediately after the conquest of Kandy, the government entered upon the Roman career of civilization, and upon that also which may be considered peculiarly British. Military roads were so carried as to pierce and traverse all the guilty fastnesses of disease, and of rebellion by means of disease. Bridges, firmly built of satin-wood, were planted over every important stream. The Kirimé canal was completed in the most eligible situation. The English institution of mail-coaches was perfected in all parts of the island. At this moment there are three separate modes of itinerating through the island—viz., by mail-coach, by buggy, or by palanquin; to say nothing of the opportunities offered at intervals, along the maritime provinces, for coasting by ships or boats. To the botanist, the mineralogist, the naturalist, the sportsman, Ceylon offers almost a virgin Eldorado. To a man wishing to combine the lucrative pursuits of the colonist with the elegances of life, and with the comforts of compatriot society, not (as in Australia, or in American back settlements) to weather the hardships of Robinson Crusoe, the invitations from the infinite resources of Ceylon are past all count or estimate. "For my own part," says Mr Bennett, who is now a party absolutely disinterested, "having visited all but the northern regions of the globe, I have seen nothing to equal this incomparable country." Here a man may purchase land, with secure title, and of a good tenure, at five shillings the acre; this, at least, is the upset price, though in some privileged situations it is known to have reached seventeen shillings. A house may be furnished in the Morotto style, and with luxurious contrivances for moderating the heat in the hotter levels of the island, at fifty pounds sterling. The native furniture is both cheap and excellent in quality, every way superior, intrinsically, to that which, at five times the cost, is imported from abroad. Labour is pretty uniformly at the rate of six-pence English for twelve hours. Provisions of every sort and variety are poured out in Ceylon from an American cornucopia of some Saturnian age. Wheat, potatoes, and many esculent plants, or fruits, were introduced by the British in the great year, (and for this island, in the most literal sense, the era of a new earth and new heavens)—the year of Waterloo. From that year dates, for the Ceylonese, the day of equal laws for rich and poor, the day of development out of infant and yet unimproved advantages; finally—if we are wise, and they are docile—the day of a heavenly religion displacing the avowed worship of devils, and giving to the people a new nature, a new heart, and hopes as yet not dawning upon their dreams. How often has it been said by the vile domestic calumniators of British policy, by our own anti-national deceivers, that if tomorrow we should leave India, no memorial would attest that ever we had been there. Infamous falsehood! damnable slander! Speak, Ceylon, to that. True it is, that the best of our gifts—peace, freedom, security, and a new standard of public morality—these blessings are like sleep, like health, like innocence, like the eternal revolutions of day and night, which sink inaudibly into human hearts, leaving behind (as sweet vernal rains) no flaunting records of ostentation and parade; we are not the nation of triumphal arches and memorial obelisks; but the sleep, the health, the innocence, the grateful vicissitudes of seasons, reproduce themselves in fruits and products enduring for generations, and overlooked by the slanderer only because they are too diffusive to be noticed as extraordinary, and benefiting by no light of contrast, simply because our own beneficence has swept away the ancient wretchedness that could have furnished that contrast. Ceylon, of itself, can reply victoriously to such falsehoods. Not yet fifty years have we held this island; not yet thirty have we had the entire possession of the island; and (what is more important to a point of this nature) not yet thirty have we had that secure possession which results from the consciousness that our government is not meditating to resign it. Previously to Waterloo, our tenure of Ceylon was a provisional tenure. With the era of our Kandyan conquest coincides the era of our absolute appropriation, signed and countersigned for ever. The arrangements, of that day at Paris, and by a few subsequent Congresses of revision, are like the arrangements of Westphalia in 1648—valid until Christendom shall be again convulsed to her foundations. From that date is, therefore, justly to be inaugurated our English career of improvement. Of the roads laid open through the island, we have spoken. The attempts at improvement of the agriculture and horticulture furnish matter already for a romance, if told of any other than this wonderful labyrinth of climates. The openings for commercial improvement are not less splendid. It is a fact infamous to the Ceylonese, that an island, which might easily support twenty millions of people, has been liable to famine, not unfrequently, with a population of fifteen hundred thousand. This has already ceased to be a possibility: is that a blessing of British rule? Not only many new varieties of rice have been introduced, and are now being introduced, adapted to opposite extremes of weather: and soil—some to the low grounds warm and abundantly irrigated, some to the dry grounds demanding far less of moisture—but also other and various substitutes have been presented to Ceylon. Manioc, maize, the potato, the turnip, have all been cultivated. Mr Bennett himself would, in ancient Greece, have had many statues raised to his honour for his exemplary bounties of innovation. The food of the people is now secure. And, as regard their clothing or their exports, there is absolutely no end to the new prospects opened before them by the English. Is cotton a British gift? Is sugar? Is coffee? We are not the men lazily and avariciously to anchor our hopes on a pearl fishery; we rouse the natives to cultivate their salt fish and shark fisheries. Tea will soon be cultivated more hopefully than in Assam. Sugar, coffee, cinnamon, pepper, are all cultivated already. Silk worms and mulberry-trees were tried with success, and opium with virtual success, (though in that instance defeated by an accident,) under the auspices of Mr Bennett. Hemp (and surely it is wanted?) will be introduced abundantly: indigo is not only grown in plenty, but it appears that a beautiful variety of indigo, a violet-coloured indigo, exists as a weed in Ceylon. Finally, in the running over hastily the summa genera of products by which Ceylon will soon make her name known to the ends of the earth, we may add, that salt provisions in every kind, of which hitherto Ceylon did not furnish an ounce, will now be supplied redundantly; the great mart for this will be in the vast bosom of the Indian ocean; and at the same time we shall see the scandal wiped away—that Ceylon, the headquarters of the British navy in the East, could not supply a cock-boat in distress with a week's salt provisions, from her own myriads of cattle, zebus, buffaloes, or cows.
Ceylon has this one disadvantage for purposes of theatrical effect; she is like a star rising heliacally, and hidden in the blaze of the sun: any island, however magnificent, becomes lost in the blaze of India. But that does not affect the realities of the case. She has that within which passes show. Her one calamity is in the laziness of her native population; though in this respect the Kandyans are a more hopeful race than the Cinghalese. But the evil for both is, that they want the motives to exertion. These will be created by a new and higher civilization. Foreign labourers will also be called for; a mixed race will succeed in the following generations; and a mixed breed in man is always an improved breed. Witness every where the people of colour contrasted with the blacks. Then will come the great race between man indefinitely exalted, and glorious tropical nature indefinitely developed. Ceylon will be born again, in our hands she will first answer to the great summons of nature; and will become, in fact, what by Providential destiny, she is—the queen lotus of the Indian seas, and the Pandora of islands.