Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 425, March, 1851

by Various

CHAPTER XII.

Lansmere was situated in the county adjoining, that which contained the village of Hazeldean. Late at noon the Parson crossed the little stream which divided the two shires, and came to an inn, which was placed at an angle, where the great main road branched off into two directions—the one leading towards Lansmere, the other going more direct to London. At this inn the pad stopped, and put down both ears with the air of a pad who has made up her mind to bait. And the Parson himself, feeling very warm and somewhat sore, said to the pad benignly, "It is just—thou shalt have corn and water!"

Dismounting therefore, and finding himself very stiff, as soon as he had reached terra firma, the Parson consigned the pad to the ostler, and walked into the sanded parlour of the inn, to repose himself on a very hard Windsor chair.

He had been alone rather more than half-an-hour, reading a county newspaper which smelt much of tobacco, and trying to keep off the flies that gathered round him in swarms, as if they had never before seen a Parson, and were anxious to ascertain how the flesh of him tasted,—when a stage-coach stopped at the inn. A traveller got out with his carpet-bag in his hand, and was shown into the sanded parlour.

The, Parson rose politely, and made a bow.

The traveller touched his hat, without taking it off—looked at Mr Dale from top to toe—then walked to the window, and whistled a lively impatient tune, then strode towards the fire-place and rang the bell; then stared again at the Parson; and that gentleman having courteously laid down the newspaper, the traveller seized it, threw himself on a chair, flung one of his legs over the table, tossed the other up on the mantelpiece, and began reading the paper, while he tilted the chair on its hind legs with so daring a disregard to the ordinary position of chairs and their occupants, that the shuddering Parson expected every moment to see him come down on the back of his skull.

Moved, therefore, to compassion, Mr Dale said mildly—

"Those chairs are very treacherous, sir. I'm afraid you'll be down."

"Eh," said the traveller, looking, up much astonished. "Eh, down?—oh, you're satirical, sir."

"Satirical, sir? upon my word, no!" exclaimed the parson earnestly.

"I think every free-born man has a right to sit as he pleases in his own house," resumed the traveller with warmth; "and an inn is his own house, I guess, so long as he pays his score. Betty, my dear."

For the chambermaid had now replied to the bell.

"I han't Betty, sir; do you want she?"

"No, Sally—cold brandy and water—and a biscuit."

"I han't Sally either," muttered the chambermaid; but the traveller turning round, showed so smart a neckcloth and so comely a face, that she smiled, coloured, and went her way.

The traveller now rose, and flung down the paper. He took out a penknife, and began paring his nails. Suddenly desisting from this elegant occupation, his eye caught sight of the Parson's shovel-hat, which lay on a chair in the corner.

"You're a clergyman, I reckon, sir," said the traveller, with a slight sneer.

Again Mr Dale bowed—bowed in part deprecatingly—in part with dignity. It was a bow that said, "No offence, sir, but I am a clergyman, and I'm not ashamed of it."

"Going far?" asked the traveller.

Parson.—"Not very."

Traveller.—"In a chaise or fly? If so, and we are going the same way—halves."

Parson.—"Halves?"

Traveller.—"Yes, I'll pay half the damage—pikes inclusive."

Parson.—"You are very good, sir. But," (spoken with pride) "I am, on horseback."

Traveller.—"On horseback! Well, I should not have guessed that! You don't look like it. Where did you say you were going?"

"I did not say where I was going, sir," said the Parson drily, for he was much offended at that vague and ungrammatical remark applicable to his horsemanship, that "he did not look like it."

"Close!" said the traveller laughing; "an old traveller, I reckon."

The Parson made no reply, but he took up his shovel-hat, and, with a bow more majestic than the previous one, walked out to see if his pad had finished her corn.

The animal had indeed finished all the corn afforded to her, which was not much, and in a few minutes more Mr Dale resumed his journey. He had performed about three miles, when the sound of wheels behind made him turn his head, and he perceived a chaise driven very fast, while out of the windows thereof dangled strangely a pair of human legs. The pad began to curvet as the post horses rattled behind, and the Parson had only an indistinct vision of a human face supplanting these human legs. The traveller peered out at him as he whirled by—saw Mr Dale tossed up and down on the saddle, and cried out, "How's the leather?"

"Leather!" soliloquised the Parson, as the pad recomposed herself. "What does he mean by that? Leather! a very vulgar man. But I got rid of him cleverly."

Mr Dale arrived without farther adventure at Lansmere. He put up at the principal inn—refreshed himself by a general ablution-and sate down with good appetite to his beef-steak and pint of port.

The Parson was a better judge of the physiognomy of man than that of the horse; and after a satisfactory glance at the civil smirking landlord, who removed the cover and set on the wine, he ventured on an attempt at conversation. "Is my lord at the park?"

Landlord, still more civilly than before: "No, sir, his lordship and my lady have gone to town to meet Lord L'Estrange."

"Lord L'Estrange! He is in England, then?"

"Why, so I heard," replied the landlord, "but we never see him here now. I remember him a very pretty young man. Every one was fond of him, and proud of him. But what pranks he did play when he was a lad! We hoped he would come in for our boro' some of these days, but he has taken to foren parts—more's the pity. I am a reg'lar Blue, sir, as I ought to be. The Blue candidate always does me the honour to come to the Lansmere Arms. 'Tis only the low party puts up with The Boar," added the landlord with a look of ineffable disgust. "I hope you like the wine, sir?"

"Very good, and seems old."

"Bottled these eighteen years, sir. I had in the cask for the great election of Dashmore and Egerton. I have little left of it, and I never give it but to old friends like—for, I think, sir, though you be grown stout, and look more grand, I may say that I've had the pleasure of seeing you before.

"That's true, I daresay, though I fear was never a very good customer."

Landlord.—"Ah, it is Mr Dale, then! I thought so when you came into the hall. I hope your lady is quite well, and the Squire too; fine pleasant-spoken gentleman; no fault of his if Mr Egerton went wrong. Well, we have never seen him—I mean Mr Egerton—since that time. I don't wonder he stays away; but my lord's son, who was brought up here,—it an't nat'ral like that he should turn his back on us!"

Mr Dale made no reply, and the landlord was about to retire, when the Parson, pouring out another glass of the port, said,—"There must be great changes in the parish. Is Mr Morgan, the medical man, still here?"

"No, indeed; he took out his ploma after you left, and became a real doctor; and a pretty practice he had too, when he took, all of a sudden, to some new-fangled way of physicking—I think they calls it homy-something—"

"Homœpathy!"

"That's it—something against all reason: and so he lost his practice here and went up to Lunnun. I've not heard of him since."

"Do the Avenels keep their old house?"

"Oh yes!—and are pretty well off, I hear say. John is always poorly; though he still goes now and then to the Odd Fellows, and takes his glass; but his wife comes and fetches him away before he can do himself any harm."

"Mrs Avenel is the same as ever?"

"She holds her head higher, I think," said the landlord, smiling. "She was always—not exactly proud like, but what I calls gumptious."

"I never heard that word before," said the Parson, laying down his knife and fork. "Bumptious, indeed, though I believe it is not in the dictionary, has crept into familiar parlance, especially amongst young folks at school and college."

"Bumptious is bumptious, and gumptious is gumptious," said the landlord, delighted to puzzle a Parson. "Now the town beadle is bumptious, and Mrs Avenel is gumptious."

"She is a very respectable woman," said Mr Dale, somewhat rebukingly.

"In course, sir, all gumptious folks are; they value themselves on their respectability, and looks down on their neighbours."

Parson, still philologically occupied.—"Gumptious—gumptious. I think I remember the substantive at school—not that my master taught it to me. 'Gumption,' it means cleverness."

Landlord, (doggedly.)—"There's gumption and gumptious! Gumption is knowing; but when I say that sum un is gumptious, I mean—though that's more vulgar like—sum un who does not think small beer of hisself. You take me, sir?"

"I think I do," said the Parson, half-smiling. "I believe the Avenels have only two of their children alive still—their daughter, who married Mark Fairfield, and a son who went off to America?"

"Ah, but he made his fortune there, and has come back."

"Indeed! I'm very glad to hear it. He has settled at Lansmere?"

"No, sir. I hear as he's bought a property a long way off. But he comes to see his parents pretty often—so John tells me—but I can't say that I ever see him. I fancy Dick doesn't like to be seen by folks who remember him playing in the kennel."

"Not unnatural," said the Parson indulgently; "but he visits his parents: he is a good son, at all events, then?"

"I've nothing to say against him. Dick was a wild chap before he took himself off. I never thought he would make his fortune; but the Avenels are a clever set. Do you remember poor Nora—the Rose of Lansmere, as they called her? Ah, no, I think she went up to Lunnun afore your time, sir."

"Humph!" said the Parson drily. "Well, I think you may take away now. It will be dark soon, and I'll just stroll out and look about me."

"There's a nice tart coming, sir."

"Thank you, I've dined."

The Parson put on his hat and sallied forth into the streets. He eyed the houses on either hand with that melancholy and wistful interest with which, in middle life, we revisit scenes familiar to us in youth—surprised to find either so little change or so much, and recalling, by fits and snatches, old associations and past emotions. The long High Street which he threaded now began to change its bustling character, and slide, as it were gradually, into the high road of a suburb. On the left, the houses gave way to the moss-grown pales of Lansmere Park: to the right, though houses still remained, they were separated from each other by gardens, and took the pleasing appearance of villas—such villas as retired tradesmen or their widows, old maids, and half-pay officers, select for the evening of their days.

Mr Dale looked at these villas with the deliberate attention of a man awakening his power of memory, and at last stopped before one, almost the last on the road, and which faced the broad patch of sward that lay before the lodge of Lansmere Park. An old pollard oak stood near it, and from the oak there came a low discordant sound; it was the hungry cry of young ravens, awaiting the belated return of the parent bird. Mr Dale put his hand to his brow, paused a moment, and then, with a hurried step, passed through the little garden and knocked at the door. A light was burning in the parlour, and Mr Dale's eye caught through the window a vague outline of three forms. There was an evident bustle within at the sound of the knocks. One of the forms rose and disappeared. A very prim, neat, middle-aged maid-servant now appeared at the threshold, and austerely inquired the visitor's business.

"I want to see Mr or Mrs Avenel. Say that I have come many miles to see them; and take in this card."

The maid-servant took the card, and half-closed the door. At least three minutes elapsed before she reappeared.

"Missis says it's late, sir; but walk in."

The Parson accepted the not very gracious invitation, stepped across the little hall, and entered the parlour.

Old John Avenel, a mild-looking man, who seemed slightly paralytic, rose slowly from his arm-chair. Mrs Avenel, in an awfully stiff, clean, and Calvinistical cap, and a gray dress, every fold of which bespoke respectability and staid repute—stood erect on the floor, and, fixing on the Parson a cold and cautious eye, said—

"You do the like of us great honour, Mr Dale—take a chair! You call upon business?"

"Of which I have apprised you by letter, Mr Avenel."

"My husband is very poorly."

"A poor creature!" said John feebly, and as if in compassion of himself. "I can't get about as I used to do. But it ben't near election time, be it, sir?"

"No, John," said Mrs Avenel, placing her husband's arm within her own. "You must lie down a bit, while I talk to the gentleman."

"I'm a real good blue," said poor John; "but I an't quite the man I was;" and, leaning heavily on his wife, he left the room, turning round at the threshold, and saying, with great urbanity—"Anything to oblige, sir?"

Mr Dale was much touched. He had remembered John Avenel the comeliest, the most active, and the most cheerful man in Lansmere; great at glee club and cricket, (though then stricken in years) greater in vestries; reputed greatest in elections.

"Last scene of all," murmured the Parson; "and oh well, turning from the poet, may we cry with the disbelieving philosopher, 'Poor, poor humanity!'"[21]

In a few minutes Mrs Avenel returned. She took a chair at some distance from the Parson's, and, resting one hand on the elbow of the chair, while with the other she stiffly smoothed the stiff gown, she said—

"Now, sir."

That "Now, sir," had in its sound something sinister and warlike. This the shrewd Parson recognised with his usual tact. He edged his chair nearer to Mrs Avenel, and placing his hand on hers—

"Yes, now then, and as friend to friend."

---

LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, AS REPRESENTED IN THE FINE ARTS.[22]

Lovers of the Fine Arts—and they ought to be the whole civilised world—owe an especial regard and reverence to the Monastic Orders, without whom there would have been, and would be now, no Art at all. Taking the Fine Arts at their lowest value, as a mere source of pleasure, from the love of imitation or representation of agreeable objects—the remembrancer of scenes of interest, the elegant accomplishment by which homes are embellished and made more beautifully homely—surely some little gratitude is due, where it has been the fashion to be sparing of any praise, to those good and pious men who in their convents prepared, improved, and invented colours as well as implements of Art; were themselves the early painters, and by their extensive patronage may be called the Fathers of the Arts. Had the world derived from the monastic orders no other good, that one should have insured them a perpetual respect.

But the Arts do not stand alone—are themselves a sisterhood, if we may so speak—many orders, but one religion; one bond binding them together—the culture of humanity.

History has unfortunately too often been the work of infidel hands and hearts. Whatever is of religion has been viewed with a prejudice; the vices of mankind at large have been tenderly treated; while such as could with truth or untruth be charged upon religious orders, have met with little mercy, and have been exempted from the common apology of the age. In this, little candour has been shown. It would be fairer, speaking of any class of men, to inquire whether they were worse or better than others—a benefit or a plague-spot on society; and it would be fairer to see what efforts they made for their own and for the general improvement, and rather to estimate their success, where few but themselves struggled for amelioration, than to single out every fault, every corruption, and of every age, and to bring the accumulation to bear upon the head, as it were, of one generation. The monastic orders have been the theme of general abuse by many a flippant writer, as if they lived but at one particular period, and were but examples of ignorance and vice—the encouragers of superstition for their own selfish ends. The "dark ages" have been indeed dark to those who have shut their eyes to the light which, small and glimmering though it appeared from our broad and open way of life, might, if followed with a gentle curiosity, have led into undreamt-of recesses, found to contain great treasures; and as the bodily, so the mental eye would have accommodated its vision to the degree of light given, and would have seen distinctly both form and beauty, which would have burst with a kind of glory upon them through the gloom, and met them as goodness would meet willing seekers.

"Virtue makes herself light, through darkness for to wade."

"I know nothing," says one writer, "of those ages that knew nothing." As it has been justly retorted—how did he, knowing nothing of them, know that they knew nothing? It might be more easy to show that, if he knew anything about anything, he was mainly indebted to those very ages which kept within them the light of knowledge, preserved and cherished from utterly going out with the sanctity of a vestal fire. Turn where we will, we see the monuments of the labour of the monastic orders—wonderful monuments. And surely if any age may be said with truth to be dark, dark were those of the two last centuries which, with the wondrous edifices before their eyes, saw not their beauty mutilated, and with most unwarrantable conceit thought they had improved upon them. Whose was the ignorance? Look at our architecture. Great advancement has been made, and is making daily; and what is the consequence of this revived taste? A proper appreciation of the architecture of the "dark ages." Our best hope is, to imitate successfully. Who were they who designed these miracles of art? Devout men—the monastic orders! Who furnished every species of decoration—the sculpture, the painted glass, the pictures, that were a language? Men who themselves lived humbly and sparingly, that they might devote themselves, their talents, and their possessions to make an exalted and visible religion upon earth, as the one thing needful for future generations of men. Such, undoubtedly, was the one mind of the great religious orders—we speak of their purpose and of their doings. It was their mission over every land: we say not that corruption did not find them out, that there was no canker in their fruit. The enemy knew where to sow his tares; but perverse people tore, uprooted and cast from them the wheat, and loved to lay waste; and, as is ever the case, hating whom they injure, they vilified per fas et nefas; and, upon the plea of others' corruption, became themselves robbers, plunderers, and, too often, assassins.

It has been charged against these orders, that from the extreme of poverty they became rich. Hinc illæ lachrymæ. But how did they so increase? Because toil and labour were their law: they brought wealth out of lands chosen for their sterility, that their rule of toil might be the more continually exercised. Industry had its natural fruits, and spread its influence: they taught as well as practised; and their object, how they disposed of that which they gained, is now well known. The monuments, long unheeded, are before us. That we may not be unjustly thought, in what we have said, to favour Romish institutions, we would make a distinction, too little observed,—we would not confound the retired, the benevolent, the religious lives of those benefactors in the monastic orders, with the political tyrannical Papacy in Rome itself. There was ambition and avarice—a worldliness, at the instigation of the "Prince of this world," working out a system whose necessities begot the vilest superstitions and idolatries for unholy gain, and disseminated corruption instead of life. The history of the Popes is not the history of the devout and laborious of the monastic orders at all times. They were indeed within the pale of the Church of Rome, for there was then no other; but they who cultivated wastes, taught the people, and preserved and invented arts and literature, were far other men. The evil of Papacy had not reached them at once in their wildernesses. When the corrupt system did reach them, it bore its fruit. But even then, and among such, be it remembered, arose those who were still pure, and above the corruptions—and from them originated the Reformation. In reasoning upon past institutions, consideration must be had of the peculiar phase of the world when they arose. The whole altered condition of society would make that a positive evil which was once a positive good. Monastic institutions have done their work;—they cannot be restored, in a healthy state, in a Protestant country, whose constitution, and the laws that both make and support it, and the habits, manners, and feelings of the people, are entirely repugnant to them. Romanism is antagonistic with everything that is not of it. It demands at all times and everywhere to be the dominant power. To give it more than toleration, is to put into its hands that fulcrum which will be incessantly employed to subvert every institution that cannot be resolved into itself. Neither governments nor homes can escape its snares and its tyranny.

"Inspectum domos venturaque desuper urbi."

And here we would offer a quotation from Mrs Jameson's introduction to this her third volume of the Series on Religious Art; and we cannot but think that the scrutiny her subject has led her to make, into the real character of the religions orders of the middle ages, has given a more serious, we would say solemn, respect for them than was perceptible in the two former volumes. Not that we would charge any levity upon her in them: the reverse; but we do think that the reverence and respect for the subjects generally have fallen advantageously upon the "orders" themselves.

"In the first place, then, monachism in art, taken in a large sense, is historically interesting, as the expression of a most important era of human culture. We are outliving the gross prejudices which once represented the life of the cloister as being from first to last a life of laziness and imposture. We know that, but for the monks, the light of liberty and literature and science had been for ever extinguished, and that for six centuries there existed for the thoughtful, the gentle, the inquiring, the devout spirit no peace, no security, no home but the cloister. There learning trimmed her lamp, there contemplation 'pruned her wings;' there the traditions of art, preserved from age to age by lonely studious men, kept alive in form and colour the idea of a beauty beyond that of earth—of a might beyond that of the spear and the shield—of a Divine sympathy with suffering humanity. To this we may add another and a stronger claim on our respect and moral sympathies. The protection and the better education given to women in these early communities—the venerable and distinguished rank assigned to them when, as governesses of their order, they became in a manner dignitaries of the church—the introduction of their beautiful and saintly effigies, clothed with all the insignia of sanctity and authority, into the decoration of places of worship and books of devotion—did more, perhaps, for the general cause of womanhood than all the boasted institutions of chivalry."

Now, be it remembered that all this was effected in the midst of a hostile and turbulent world, whom they thus subdued by their sanctity to an awe and respect, without which there would have been no peace to them, no shelter to the pure and the weak from injury and wrong. Do we not see here the strongest proof of their earnestness, their piety, their charity, and that they were, under Heaven, the ministers of blessings to mankind? There was a period, however, when the entire seclusion of the cloister ceased to be beneficial—the contemplative life must be succeeded by the active. From that period must we date the promise of all that is great and good in art, science, and every effort of human genius, which burst winged out of darkness into day, with the rise of the Mendicant orders.

"If the three great divisions of the regular ecclesiastics seem to have had each a distinct vocation, there was at least one vocation common to all. The Benedictine monks instituted schools of learning; the Augustines built noble cathedrals; the Mendicant orders founded hospitals: all became patrons of the fine arts, on such a scale of munificence that the protection of the most renowned princes has been mean and insignificant in comparison. Yet, in their relation to art, this splendid patronage was the least of their merits. The earliest artists of the middle ages were the monks of the Benedictine orders. In their convents were preserved, from age to age, the traditional treatment of sacred subjects, and that pure unworldly sentiment which in later times was ill exchanged for the learning of schools and the competition of academies; and as they were the only depositories of chemical and medical knowledge, and the only compounders of drugs, we owe to them also the discovery and preparation of some of the finest colours, and the invention or the improvement of the implements used in painting: for the monks not only prepared their own colours, but when they employed secular painters in decorating their convents, the materials furnished from their own laboratories were consequently of the best and most durable kind. As architects, as glass-painters, as mosaic workers, as carvers in wood and metal, they were the precursors of all that has since been achieved in Christian art; and if so few of these admirable and gifted men are known to us individually and by name, it is because they worked for the honour of God and their community—not for profit, nor for reputation."

Mutability is written upon the face of all earthly things, whether they be good or evil in themselves. We progress and we retrograde according as influences act upon us. If we would judge in candour, we cannot take any class of facts of things or persons by themselves—all are parts of one whole; but how made one, is a speculation of a deep philosophy. It is hard to place upon the map of understanding the hidden causes, and their relation to each other, which make up the general social aspect at any one period. However we may advance, in knowledge, however that knowledge may operate as a check, mankind are in heart intrinsically the same they ever were—they have within them the same passions, the same instincts; and though we are daily pronouncing, as we look back upon past ages, that such and such things never can be again, that we cannot have the same superstitions, nor exercise the same cruelties, whatever we may hope, we do in fact say but this, that the identical facts and identical personages will not come again upon the stage of life. Of this we may be sure, that under certain influences, always within the sphere of our liabilities, the passions of men will lead them to the same excesses, the same fanaticism, the same crimes. The plot of the drama may be somewhat varied, or even new, but tragedy and comedy will still designate the play of human actions. We may have crusades without a Holy Land to recover—as we have had a Bartholomew massacre; we have had, and may have again, in civilised Europe, the political massacres which, in reading history in our closets in our own peaceful homes, we had fondly deemed passed away for ever. Fanaticism in religion and politics is still a human instinct—the sleeping volcano in every man's breast, though he knows it not, believes it not. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Who can answer for himself? It is wiser, far better to bow the head in humility—"Lead us not into temptation." As the times are, as people are, in peace or in suffering, will be their religious hopes or their religious fears—a gloom or a comfort, a wholesome practical virtue or a feverish excitement, a personal selfishness, a frenzy of despair—intolerance and persecution the result. The civil troubles of England made our religion, or that which passes for religion among the masses, gloomy and morose on the one hand, and, on the other, an awful conceit of self-righteousness. There was the asceticism of the early ages, but in a new form: there were no deserts, no dens into which fanatics could fly from worldly pleasure: compelled to live in its sight, they persecuted it to the death, and took their own insane pleasure in denying pleasure to others. General distress will naturally engender unwholesome excitement, and it will infect invariably the religious mind. These remarks are not superfluous—they arise out of the subject. Mrs Jameson herself sees analogies of times, which it may be worth our while to pause and consider.

"It seems to me that in the movement of the thirteenth century there was something analogous to the times through which we of this present generation have lived. There had been nearly a hundred years of desolating wars. The Crusades had upheaved society from its depths, as a storm upheaves the ocean, and changed the condition of men and nations.... A generation sprang up physically predisposed to a sort of morbid exaltation, and powerfully acted on by the revelation of a hitherto unseen, unfelt world of woe. In the words of Scripture 'men could not stop their ears from hearing of blood, nor shut their eyes from seeing of evil.' There was a deep, almost universal, feeling of the pressure and burden of sorrow—an awakening of the conscience to wrong, a blind anxious groping for the right, a sense that what had hitherto sufficed to humanity, would suffice no longer. But in the uneasy ferment of men's minds, religious fear took the place of religious hope, and the religious sympathies and aspirations assumed, in their excess, a disordered and exaggerated form.... But what was dark misery and bewilderment in the weak and ignorant, assumed in the more highly endowed a higher form; and to St Francis and his order we owe what has been happily called the mystic school in poetry and painting—that school which so strangely combined the spiritual with the sensual, the beautiful with the terrible, and the tender with the inexorable—which first found utterance in the works of Dante and of the ancient painters of Tuscany and Umbria. It has been disputed often whether the suggestions of Dante influenced Giotto, or the creations of Giotto inspired Dante; but the true influence and inspiration were around both, and dominant over both, when the two greatest men of their age united to celebrate a religion of retribution and suffering—to solemnise the espousals of sanctity with the self-abnegation which despises all things, rather than with the love that pardons and the hope that rejoices—and which, in closing the gates of pleasure, 'would have shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'"

Dante himself, the great man of his age, the deep in soul and intellect, but individualises the character of an age; and, as far as individual character can portray a general, tends to confirm the observations into which the nature of our subject led us. Dante lived a whole life of injury and wrong, of sorrow, of persecution, which doubtless darkened and embrowned every faculty of his consummate genius. The persecutions of the early Christians drove men into solitudes, where the tumult and fear of the world was exchanged for tumult and fear within; for they were where nature, ordaining every man to work for a common good, never intended them to be, and therefore would not give them peace. No wonder, if, in their bewildered fancies, they were haunted by demons, and took their fevered visions for realities. No wonder if they enacted the extravagant vagaries of insanity, and their faith (still faith) became mixed with a fabulous superstition. The anchorite was sought as a holy man; people believed in his miraculous powers as people have believed since—and people believe now, though no longer in anchorites. There are even Protestant miracle-workers, and thousands who have a kind of belief in their hearts which they will not acknowledge in words; and, while they ridicule the Romish calendar, have their own Protestant saints, and worship them, too, with an idolatry perhaps not less in reality than that which they so vehemently condemn in others. It is well to discountenance seriously and gravely the lying legends of Rome, and to sift from the fables the evil purpose with which they are fabricated or propagated, to expose the hidden design—a dominant power over minds and persons. But, to be candid, there was a time when legends of miracles were household words, and yet had nothing to do with priestcraft and Popery. Such things were before Popery; and that corrupt Church but took advantage of a human propensity, which they could not hope to eradicate. It would indeed be wonderful if there was not at all times a ready belief in them, as long as people believed anything, and that there might be powers above the human. And be it remembered, that many legends of miracles are of that early date which may be said to have begun ere miracles had ceased—ere the belief, not in the possibility, but in the present existence, could be well worn out. The necessity of keeping up the show of them has indeed been the crime, and is the crying disgrace, of the Romish Church. All we mean to assert is, that, considering the contiguity of the true and the false, in point of time, there is at least a great diminution of disparagement of intellect in those who, in the earliest times, took visions and dreams for facts, and events, that happened to be simultaneous, for miracles. Then, again, we know that many of these legends were but repetitions, and in their origin not intended to pass for truth. The lives of saints were the school-themes in convents—the only, schools. The names and a few leading lines of life of saints given, scholars were to fill up, as their imaginations could supply detail; consequently we see many of them to be of a puerile and even infantine fancy, and taken from nursery tales enlarged—a kind of 'raw-head and bloody-bones'—children boiled in a pot, the Thyestean supper, and the children leaping whole out of the dish. And here we would ask the Romish clergy, who certainly in their accredited books propagate fables scarcely less ridiculous, if the being ridiculous is not a test of their falsity? We cannot, while we are reasonable, suppose otherwise than that the Author of miracles would at least guard them from contempt of this kind; that, as they are intended for the conversion of mankind, they should not present themselves in a ridiculous posture, or under ridiculous coincidences. Such was not the pattern of the Scripture miracles. We would, however, make a great distinction between the fraudulent (that is, having a fraudulent purpose) legends, and those which are merely exaggerations or repetitions, readily and naturally applied under congenial circumstances, and for the most part allegorical of the Christian charities, and inculcating Christian virtues. Shall we shock the reader if we add, too, that there may be a very innocent superstition? Since bloody persecution has ceased, superstition in the eyes of this wise-growing age is like the dog that the member of a Peace Society rebuked thus, "Friend, I won't beat thee, but I'll cry mad dog." Should a child, now-a-days, on lying down in bed, say, as children did say in our younger days—

"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on,"

there may be grounds for fear that, should ever the Government inspectors of schools hear of it, the poor innocents would be put to an inconvenient questioning; and it is possible that these inspectors, or multitudes of men equally learned, discreet, and wise, may, after lecturing the school teachers and scholars on superstition, go directly, with as great credulity, to a lecture of another kind, and to witness mesmeric experiments, which assume powers far beyond those of any miracles whatever. Those who would smile at the tale of a holy man healing the sick by a word, will credit a somnambulist who, upon a physician's fee, professes to look blindfolded into the inside of his credulous patient, and, without knowing anything whatever about medicine, say what drug will effect a cure; who advertises to be at home for consultation upon people's most private affairs—to tell them of unknown, unsuspected, important papers and documents—to tell the past, the present, and, more wonderful, the future. And, with a wonderful inconsistency, there are men who, having entire faith in these assumptions, and on the infallibility of their science, have no belief whatever in a soul, scoff at spirituality, and boldly pronounce the phenomena of seeing without eyes, travelling without feet, bidding doors, whether of mansion or of cabinets, open to them, and, being obeyed, of knowing all secrets which were never told; of knowing what is passing thousands of miles off with persons never before seen, by holding any person's hand; of entering into that person; of prophesying; of knowing thoughts and their consequences, as to be shown in events;—audaciously, we say, pronouncing these phenomena to arise from materialism.

While such things are, and things as strange, who can hope to expel superstition from the stronghold of man's belief? and who would wish to do it altogether, if the vacant citadel is to be taken possession of by such philosophy as this—the fanaticism of science? And whilst we condemn, as it must be confessed we ought, but duly and discreetly, the greater part of the Romish saintology, their legends and the works of art relating to them, as all belonging to "ages dark" and obsolete, it may not be altogether amiss to turn over some of the old and new pages of the evangelical magazines, where modern saints figure in portraiture and biography—that is, in our enlightened art and literature; and it is more than probable we shall be humbled and disgusted, and be charitably disposed to make some apologies even for the aurea legenda. And should any, in their folly or in their wickedness, desire to set up a new idol, to rival or obliterate the memory of St Johanna Southcote the immaculate, or St Huntingdon, for whom the fishes leaped voluntarily from the ponds into his sanctified hands, and for whose sake sudden death came upon the man who would not receive him as a tenant, let such person or persons not despair of collecting a household of "Latter-day Saints" after the authorised manner of Joe Smith the Mormonist. It may be read in modern biographies, that children almost infants have been miraculously converted whilst in idle play, and have gone back to their homes and converted their great-grandfathers. Poor good John Wesley believed many of these absurd things. He assented to the assertion of the profligate who courted his sister, that it was by "the Lord's directions;" and again, that suddenly "the Lord" had told him to transfer his affections to John's other sister. The published Sancta sanctorum of religious sects are nigh forgotten now-a-days; but they still exist, as did other legends, to be collected in form, should a seeming necessity or a cunning purpose require it: for there are multitudes who credit them now, and many more who might, without much difficulty, be made strenuous to establish them for "their Church."

We must not, however, forget, that the subject of Mrs Jameson's book before us is the legends of the monastic orders in their connection with art. And here modern superstition or fanaticism is at a desperate disadvantage. Modern art itself is far too worldly, too material a thing for spirituality, real or assumed. In those evangelical portraits to which we have already alluded, gross, and, as it would almost seem, studiedly ugly similitudes, lest the flesh should boast, shining with an unction too human, and with the conceit of self-applause escaping from every pore, and redolent of congregational adoration, vulgar personifications of peculiar and hostile sectarianism, the material man has been alone the aim of the artist. There is no tale told—no act of devotion represented—no religious procession, no temple spirituality,—but the man alone; not as he might be seen—humble, devout towards God, but, as it were, with his back to sacred things, and his face towards his people, as if he were the sole or chief recipient of worship. How different in character were the works of Angelico, Il Beato, of Giotto, and those great and pious men, who with their wondrous genius adorned the cloisters of the monastic orders—not with the portraiture of the monks of the day, but with devout and holy processions, acts of their founders, and incidents of sacred history! They taught by the eye; and it possessed, in some respects, a charm above that of the being taught by books. Picture, at once, is able to imbue the spectator with a kind of spirituality ere it touches the understanding; whereas, in reading, it is the uninformed and grosser imagination supplies the portraiture from scenes of a narrow experience, and personages of a homely familiarity.

Yet even in very many of the monastic pictures Mrs Jameson finds a defect, in the too human purpose of the painters and their patrons: she ascribes somewhat of a vain-glorious and exclusive, where the chief object was to exalt a St Benedict, a St Francis, or St Dominick, not as men, but as saints of their respective orders, and for those orders. Still, we think this objection is carried too far. The purpose was, at least, no present portraiture; and surely the subjects did often convey precept, and were calculated to touch the heart, and kindle devotion, and encourage human charities. Undoubtedly, far higher in the poetical scale were those themes of an actual Divinity, of which she treated so enthusiastically in the first part of her former volumes—ascending from angels and archangels, from the heavenly host, to the precincts around the throne of the Divine glory. Yet be it duly weighed, in favour of the patronage of the monastic orders, that this exaltation of art in its theme was not altogether ever abandoned; and upon the whole, we doubt if advantages were not in some degree gained by the admixture of things more comprehensible, and more directly appealing to natural sensibilities. Besides, there was a class of paintings which arose out of our human affections, and which, therefore, led to a pious trust, through our common sympathies: we allude to votive pictures, which were of the earliest and latest date—pervading, indeed, the whole religion; for it was, in truth, a practice continued from the heathen worship.

"The pictures, too," says our authoress, "which are suspended in churches as votive memorials of benefits received, are often very touching. I recollect such a picture in the gallery of Vienna. A youth about fifteen, in the character of Tobias, is led by the hand of his guardian angel Raphael; and on the other side is St Leonard, the patron of captives, holding his broken fetters; Christ the Redeemer appears above; and below in a corner kneels an elderly man, his eyes fixed on the youth. The arrangement of this group leaves us no doubt of its purpose. It was the votive offering of a father whose son had escaped, or had been redeemed from captivity. The picture is very beautiful, and either by Andrea del Sarto, or one of his school. If we could discover where it had been originally placed, we might discover the facts and personages to which it alludes; but, even on the walls of a gallery, we recognise its pathetic significance: we read it as a poem—as a hymn of thanksgiving."

Mrs Jameson makes a very good remark upon a deficiency in catalogues of galleries and collections—the omission of the name of the church or chapel, or the confraternity, whence the pictures were purchased, and such history as might be known respecting them. Our collectors, indeed, are not without their picture-pedigrees; but they are of a curious kind—rather too expressive of a fear of dupery of dealers, and implying but little good foundation of taste in purchasers. Picture-pedigrees refer not to an inherent virtue, visible as the pure blood of the Arabian courser, but to the supposed taste or better known wealth of the last possessor. Few pictures stand on their own merits—they acquire a virtue from the hands or houses they have passed through, more than from the hands that worked them. Indeed, the known collector is generally the only authenticity of the painter, and stamps the value. But to say somewhat of pictures of sacred subjects—and they are by far the finest in known collections—from this deficiency in the catalogues much of their interest is lost; not only so, but we see them in the midst of strange incongruities, as well as injured in their effect by locality, and by light unsuited to them. We cannot judge fairly of their real excellence, nor understand the actual religious power they once possessed. Many of them were painted for private chapels or oratories, and purposely, perhaps, for dim religious light; for an intimate communion of the devout with the one sentiment and with it alone. We have often earnestly wished that, in building national galleries, the large and ostentatious display, at one view, were not the object, and that the particular character of our greatest works were well considered, and fit positions given, and proper lights adjusted. It would be a great thing, for instance, to see the "Raising of Lazarus" of Sebastian del Piombo, in our National Gallery, in a room by itself, and under a studied and arranged light. It is now where it is not all, and at all times, visible; and it is far too important in itself, of too impressive a character, for the look of one passing moment, and the distraction of many things. In the Vatican the Apollo has a room to himself. Picture galleries should not emulate the show-rooms of trade. If the pictures are irrecoverably removed from their own birthplace, from their own home, separated from their local history and interest, much may still be done, in some degree, to preserve for them their general character, and to allow them to make the intended general impression. And it is in fact for this purpose that we highly estimate this work of Mrs Jameson, that, in referring to these legends, we may read the productions to which they have given rise.

"What a lively, living, really religious interest is given to one of these sacred groups when we know the locality, or the community for which it was executed; and how it becomes enriched as a production of mind when it speaks to the mind through a thousand associations, will be felt, I think, after reading the legends which follow."

The Benedictine order stands first in point of time and in interest, not as regards art only, but as the great civilising order of the world. The Benedictines were the early missionaries of the north of Europe; they, banished the impure and inhuman rites of heathenism, by conveying, regardless of peril, the light of the gospel into the wilds of Britain, Gaul, Saxony, and Belgium. They gave security to the oppressed, rescued from the spoiler, and were a refuge to the poor in times of tyranny and barbarism. They were the sole depositaries of learning and of the arts; collected and transcribed books—particularly the Scriptures—which were charitably bestowed or deposited as precious gifts. We owe to them not only the diffusion of the Scriptures, but the preservation of classical literature. To them we owe the recovery of the works of Pliny, Sallust, and Cicero.

"They were the fathers of Gothic architecture; they were the earliest illuminators and limners; and, to crown their deservings under this head, the inventor of the gamut, and the first who instituted a school of music, was a Benedictine monk, Guido d'Arezzo."

They were the great civilisers, by bringing science to bear upon agriculture; the authors of experimental farming and gardening; the cultivators of new fruits and herbs. They cleared and cultivated; science and the plough went with them wherever they planted the cross. We cannot forbear quoting the words of Sir James Stephen:—

"The greatness of the Benedictines did not, however, consist either in their agricultural skill, their prodigies of architecture, or their priceless libraries, but in their parentage of countless men and women illustrious for active piety, for wisdom in the government of mankind, for profound learning, and for that contemplative spirit which discovers, within the soul itself, things beyond the limits of the perceptible creation."

The Benedictines were introduced into England about fifty years after the death of their founder, in A.D. 543. Augustine the monk, however, was not the first Christian missionary to this country, as it has commonly been represented. The Benedictine order was established here by him. The whole Christian world was then divided upon the question, whether the Eastern or Western Patriarch should be acknowledged head of the universal church. Under him England was subjected to Rome. St Benedict was of a noble family, and born at Norcia, in the duchy of Spoleto, about A.D. 480. Sent to Rome to study literature, and disgusted by the profligacy of his companions, at a period when opinions as to the efficacy of solitude and penance were prevalent, he separated himself from vicious contagion in a hermitage, at fifteen years of age. He would probably have died under suffering and privation had not his nurse, doubting, perhaps, between the idea of his inspiration or his insanity, followed him, begged for him, and administered to his wants. Benedict thought to deny himself this comfort—escaped, and hid himself among the rocks of Subiaco, about forty miles from Rome. He here met with a hermit, and lived three years in a cavern, unknown to his family, and shared with the hermit the scanty fare of bread and water. In this solitude he was not without temptations; visions too earthly, and such as well might assault his age, were rendered vain by increased penance. He is said to have rushed from his cave, and to have thrown himself into a thicket of briars and nettles, until the blood flowed. They still show at Subiaco the rose-bushes propagated from those which wounded the saint.

The scenery about Subiaco has even now a monastic charm; it has its lonely recesses, its silent dells. We have ourselves threaded its deep valley, and laying aside the pencil, been the hermit of an hour by the side of its clear mountain river—and then ascended the rocky heights to visit the convents of St Benedict and Santa Scholastica. We well remember to have taken shelter from a land-storm, such as Poussin has painted, and probably from this spot, in a cave which had heretofore doubtless been the home of more than one follower of St Benedict.

He became so holy, in the estimation of the villagers and shepherds, that they brought their sick to his cavern to be healed by him. A neighbouring society of hermits prayed him to put himself at their head. He knew the morals of the monastery, and, with the intention of reforming them, he yielded to their solicitation. The strictness of life required by him alarmed and excited the envy of these men, and poison was given him in a cup of wine. It is told that upon his blessing the cup, it fell from the traitor's hands. Upon this he left them, and again retired to his cave at Subiaco. But the fame of his sanctity brought many to Subiaco, which became crowded with huts and cells. Among those who came to him were two Roman senators, Anicius and Tertullus, who brought their sons, Maurus and Placidus, to be educated by him in the way of salvation. He had now induced his followers to build twelve monasteries, in each of which he placed twelve disciples and a superior. One Florentius, through envy at seeing so many of his own followers drawn away from him, maligned Benedict, and endeavoured to destroy him by means of a poisoned loaf. Not succeeding in this, the same Florentius introduced into one of the monasteries seven young women, in order to corrupt the monks. Benedict now, as was his wont, fled from evil, and left Subiaco; but soon Florentius was crushed by the fall of a gallery of his house. His disciple, Maurus, who sent to acquaint Benedict of the fate of his adversary, was enjoined a severe penance for his too triumphant expression, that a judgment had overtaken his enemy. Here was Christian forgiveness and Christian charity, worthy of imitation in these enlightened days.

Paganism was not yet extinct. Benedict hearing that, while the bishops were extending Christianity in distant regions, idolatry was practised near to the capital of Christendom—the worship of Apollo on Monte Cassino—repaired thither, and by his preaching prevailed upon the people to break their statue and the altar, and burn the consecrated grove; and here he built two chapels in honour of St John the Baptist and St Martin of Tours.

On the same mountain he built the celebrated monastery, the parent institution of his order.

"Hence," (we quote from Mrs Jameson,) "was promulgated the famous rule, which became, from that time forth, the general law of the monks of western Europe, and which gave to monachism its definite form. The rule given to the Cenobites of the East, and which, according to an old tradition, had been revealed to St Pachomius by an angel, comprised the three vows—of poverty, of chastity, and obedience. To these Benedict added two other obligations: the first was manual labour with their hands seven hours in the day: secondly, the vows were perpetual; but he ordained that these perpetual vows should be preceded by a noviciate of a year, during which the entire code was read repeatedly from the beginning to the end, and, at the conclusion, the reader said, in an emphatic voice, 'This is the law under which thou art to live, and strive for salvation; if thou canst observe it, enter; if thou canst not, go in peace—thou art free.' But the vows once taken were irrevocable, and the punishment for breaking them most severe. On the whole, however, and setting apart that which belonged to the superstition of the time, the rule given by St Benedict to his order was humane, moderate, wise, and eminently Christian in spirit."

Towards the close of his long life, Benedict was joined at Subiaco by his sister Scholastica, who had also devoted herself to a religious life. She retired to a cell near his convent, and is generally considered the first Benedictine nun. It is said that Totila, king of the Goths, visited him in the year 540, and, casting himself at his feet, entreated his blessing, but was reproved by Benedict for his cruelties; and it is said that he became from that time more humane. Shortly after, Benedict died of a fever, caught by visiting the poor. In his last illness he ordered his grave to be dug. Supported by his disciples, he stood upon the brink to contemplate his last earthly home—was carried by his desire to the foot of the altar in the church, where he received the last sacrament, and expired on the 20th March 543. It is natural to expect that legends of so remarkable a man should abound; and it is to the credit of the ecclesiastics of his order that they reproach the legendary writers for their improbable stories. Benedict saw his order spread during his life; but so widely did this rule supersede all others, that when Charlemagne made inquiry throughout his empire, if other monks existed, none were found but of the Benedictine order. St Maurus his early disciple, introduced the order into France; the other, St Placidus, was sent into Sicily, where he was joined by his sister Flavia. They were, it is said, massacred at Messina, in front of their convent, with thirty others, by an irruption of pirates. We the more notice the latter statement, because it is the subject of a celebrated picture by Correggio in the gallery at Parma, and of which copies are frequently met with. We dwell at some length on the order of St Benedict, because of its chief importance. All the monasteries already in existence, from the time of St Augustine, accepted the rule; and, during the next six hundred years, the grand ecclesiastical edifices which rose in England were "chiefly founded by or for the members of this magnificent order." The information concerning the works of the Benedictines in our country will be found extremely interesting in this new volume by Mrs Jameson. Space will not allow us to do more than refer the reader to its pages. Mrs Jameson eloquently deplores the mutilation and destruction of so many great memorials of the Benedictines, under the rapacity of Henry VIII. and his minion plunderers; and of the ferocious and degradingly-fanatic Puritans she thus speaks:—

"When I recall the history of the ecclesiastical potentates of Italy in the sixteenth century, I could almost turn Puritan myself; but when I think of the wondrous and beautiful productions of human skill, all the memorials of the great and gifted men of old, the humanisers and civilisers of our country, which once existed, and of which our great cathedrals—noble and glorious as they are even now—are but the remains, it is with a very cordial hatred of the profane savage ignorance which destroyed and desecrated them."

We are not sure that what yet remains is safe. We are surrounded with political fanatics, who hate everything ecclesiastical; and the people are not taught sufficiently to be lovers of art to wish to preserve what belongs to it. We cannot but remember that at the Bristol riots, for the furtherance of the Reform mania, attempts were made to burn down the cathedral, and that the bishop's palace was actually burnt to the ground, and the good bishop was in great hazard of his life. The Bible and all his library were ostentatiously destroyed.

Heterogeneous parliaments grant no money for the building and decorating churches; it were well if they did so, as a public act, that the people might feel that these places of worship are their own, and with that feeling understand and venerate every art which, in the chain of decoration, might receive a sanctity thereby.

To return. One or two noted characters of the English saintology we cannot omit to mention. St Neot and St Swithin had the glory of educating our Alfred. St Neot gave his name to two towns in England.

"He was a monk of Glastonbury; and it is recorded of him, that he visited Rome seven times, was very learned, mild, religious, fond of singing, humble to all, affable in conversation, wise in transacting business, venerable in aspect, severe in countenance, moderate even in his walk, sincere, upright, calm, temperate, and charitable. This good man is said to have reproved Alfred for his faults, and to have consoled him in his misfortunes."

St Swithin still lives in popular superstition; and is perhaps the object of prayer or deprecation among the ignorant, according as they may lack rain for their fields, or dread the pains of rheumatism. He was Bishop of Winchester. He accompanied Alfred to Rome. His character resembled that given of St Neot; he was a devout champion of the church. Perhaps the reader is not acquainted with the origin of the popular superstition with regard to this saint. We give it in Mrs Jameson's words:—

"He had ordered that his body should be buried among the poor, outside the church, 'under the feet of the passengers, and exposed to the droppings of the eaves from above.' When his clergy attempted to remove the body to a more honourable tomb inside the church, there came on such a storm or rain as effectually stopped the procession; and this continued for forty days without intermission, till the project was abandoned, and his remains were suffered to rest in the humble grave he had chosen for himself."

Such is the story of this Jupiter Pluvius of our Saxon ancestors, and of our Protestant calendar.

We cannot be allowed altogether to pass by St Dunstan. Mr Turner, in his Anglo-Saxon history, represents him as having introduced the Benedictine order into England: the fact being that there had been no other order from the time of St Augustine of Canterbury. St Dunstan is chiefly known in popular belief for his treatment of Elgiva. The story of Edwin and Elgiva, is of too romantic a cast to be willingly abandoned. He is quoted also as an object of ridicule, whenever ridicule of ecclesiastical matters or personages is thought desirable. He was, however, as Mrs Jameson justly considers him, "one of the most striking and interesting characters of the times." He was himself an artist, as well as the subject of art. He was born in 925. He gained instruction at the great seminary, Glastonbury, of which he afterwards became a professed monk. A painter, a musician, and a skilful artificer in metal, he followed strictly the industrial rule of his order. Learned in books, he was also an accomplished scribe. He constructed an organ "with brass pipes, filled with air from the bellows, and which uttered," says Bede, "a grand and most sweet melody." He was made successively Bishop of Worcester, of London, and at length Archbishop of Canterbury. If he did not introduce, he at least reformed the Benedictine order in England: he founded monasteries and schools, promoted learning, and a taste for science and the arts. Like other saints, he has his fabulous history of miracles.

"He relates himself a vision in which he beheld the espousals of his mother—for whom he entertained the profoundest love and veneration—with the Saviour of the world, accompanied with all the circumstances of heavenly pomp amid a choir of angels. One of the angels asked Dunstan why he did not join in the song of rejoicing, when he excused himself on account of his ignorance. The angel then taught him the song. The next morning St Dustan assembled his monks around him, and, relating his vision, taught them the very hymn which he had learned in his dream, and commanded them to sing it. Mr Turner calls this an impious story; whereas, it is merely one form of those old allegorical legends which are figurative of the mystic espousals of the soul, or the church (as in the Marriage of St Catherine) and which appear to have been suggested by the language of the Canticles."

In our view, Mrs Jameson might have made quite a more simple solution; for it is altogether offensive if his earthly mother is meant, (as the words "for whom he entertained," &c. would imply); but if he thereby expressed, that he had by his vow but one mother, the Church, and the Canticle was an Evangelical one—and therefore that he was angel-taught—we see nothing in the story but a quaintness belonging to the age, and by no means derogatory to the character for piety of St Dunstan.

Concerning St Thomas-à-Becket, we cannot but quote the eloquent words of our authoress:—

"Lord Campbell, in his recent and admirably written life of Becket, as chancellor and minister of Henry II., tells us that his vituperators are to be found among bigoted Protestants, and his unqualified eulogists among intolerant Catholics. After stating, with the perspicuity of a judge in Equity, their respective arguments and opinions, he sums up in favour of the eulogists, and decides that, setting aside exaggeration, miracle, and religious prejudice, the most merciful view of the character of Becket is also the most just. And is it not pleasant, where the imagination has been so excited by strange vicissitudes and picturesque scenes of his various life—the judgment so dazzled by his brilliant and generous qualities, the sympathies so touched by the tragic circumstances of his death—to have our scruples set at rest, and to be allowed to admire and to venerate with a good conscience; and this, too, on the authority of one accustomed to balance evidence, and not swerved by any bias to extreme religious opinions? But it is not as statesman, chancellor, or prelate that Becket takes his place in sacred art. It is in his character of canonised saint and martyr that I have to speak of him here. He was murdered or martyred because he pertinaciously defended the spiritual against the royal authority; and we must remember, in the eleventh century, the cause of the Church was, in fact, the cause of the weak against the strong, the cause of civilisation and of the people against barbarism and tyranny; and that by his contemporaries he was regarded as the champion of the oppressed Saxon race against the Norman nobility."

Why is the eulogy of the Church confined in this passage to the eleventh century? It was, and is, and ever will be, the cause of the people. We mean the Church as the Church should ever be, cleansed from every superstition, every impurity, the Reformed Church of England, or even that ancient Church which existed in this our land before Popery was—emphatically the Church of England in this our, not a Pope's England, free from superstitious, in principle unpersecuting. With regard to Becket, he was a sincere man, nor did he disparage the Benedictines in his own character. The strong man—the man of vigorous intellect and of direct purpose—will ever find in all minds but the mean a ready reception and excuse for actions which, in their nature distasteful, would not be tolerated in the weak, the vacillating, though even the more virtuous. Becket's history is well adapted to historical art. His mother, daughter to the Emir of Palestine, delivering his father from captivity, seeking him in England, knowing no English words but London and Gilbert, is of the richest tissue of old romance.

From the seventh to the twelfth century almost all the men distinguished as statesmen, or as scholars, or as churchmen, were of the Benedictine order. And when their influence declined, owing to the disorders and neglect of the primitive rule which crept into religions houses, there were not wanting men who conscientiously opposed the corruption. Many retired again to the hermit's cell, the wild and the forest, till numerous communities at length arose to re-establish the strictness of the rule, and constituted the reformed Benedictines.

The origin of the Augustine order lies in much obscurity. We are told that Augustine assembled together persons disposed to a religious and charitable life; but it does not appear that he himself instituted a religious order. About the middle of the ninth century, Pope Leo III. and the Emperor Lothaire incorporated all the various denominations of Christian clergy who had not entered the ranks of monachism, and gave them the rule of discipline promulgated by St Augustine. Under Innocent IV., after much difficulty, and not without the assumption of no less a miracle than the re-appearance of St Augustine himself, all those recluses, and hermits, and fraternities, bound to no discipline, were brought under that rule, and enjoined to wear the habit in which the saint had appeared—the sign of poverty and humility. Such were the "Austin Friars" in England. St Patrick and St Bridget of Ireland were of this order; who, though every vestige of them has been destroyed or mutilated, still live in story and legend in the faith of the people of Ireland.

"To the Augustines belong the two great military orders, the Knights Templars (1118) and the knights of St John of Jerusalem, afterwards styled of Malta (1092.) The first wear the red cross on the white mantle, the second the white cross on the black mantle or cassock. They may thus be recognised in portraits; but in connection with sacred art I have nothing to record of them here."

With us their architecture is still the monument of their greatness and their piety.

Of the Mendicant orders—the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Carmelites—it will be in place to speak only of the two first: the Carmelites, though claiming Elijah himself as their founder, never having been an influential order. The strong religious movement of the thirteenth century exhibited no results more important than the rise of the two great mendicant communities of St Francis and St Dominick.

"In the year 1216, Dominick the Spaniard and Francis of Assise met at Rome. They met and embraced, each recognising in the other the companion predestined to aid the Church in her conflict with the awakening mental energies so long repressed, and in her attempt to guide or crush the aspiring, inquiring, ardent, fervid spirits of the time. Some attempts were made to induce them to unite into one great body their separate institutions. Dominick would have complied: it may be that he thought to find in Francis an instrument as well as an ally. Francis, perhaps from an intuitive perception of the unyielding dogmatic character of his friend, stood aloof. They received from Innocent III. the confirmation of their respective communities, 'and parted,' as it has been well expressed, 'to divide the world between them;' for before the end of the century, nay, in the time of one generation, their followers had spread themselves in thousands and tens of thousands over the whole of Christian Europe, and sent forth their missionaries through every region of the then known world."

The rule of St Augustine was the adoption of both. The stricter Benedictine rule, though as we have seen how departed from, enjoined a seclusion from the world. They had, as Mrs Jameson expresses it, "whereever their influence had worked for good, achieved that good by gathering the people to them, not by lowering themselves to the people." The Franciscans and Dominicans, on the contrary, were to mingle with the people, even in all their domestic concerns and affections: they were, in this more intimate connection with the people, to comfort, to exhort, to rebuke. The ministering the offices of religion was not at first conceded to them. They took the more humble title of brothers and sisters of mankind—frati and suori—instead of that of fathers, padri. The Dominicans called themselves "preaching friars;" the Franciscans, with greater humility, called themselves Frati Minori, "lesser brothers." In England they were known as the black and grey friars; but they never reached the popularity or power of the Benedictines in this country. The remarkable feature in the institution of these communities was their admittance of a third class of members, called "the Tertiary Order, or the Third Order of Penitence." These were of both sexes, and of all ranks: they were not bound by vows, nor required to relinquish their secular employments. They were, however, to be strictly moral, and, as far as they might be, charitable. They were never to take up weapon except against the enemies of Christ. "Could such a brotherhood," says Mrs Jameson, "have been rendered universal, and have agreed on the question, 'Who, among men, Christ himself would have considered as His enemies?' we should have had a heaven upon earth." The Franciscans and Dominicans may be considered as one body, the difference being not in essentials, but in points of discipline and dress.

The characters of these two founders of their communities have the distinguishing stamp of Dante's genius,—

"Hath two ordained, who should on either hand
In chief escort her; one seraphic all
In fervency; for wisdom upon earth
The other, splendour of cherubic light!
I but of one will tell: he tells of both
Who one commandeth, which of them soe'er
Be taken; for their deeds were to one end."

Of Dante's description of St Dominick, that he was—

"Benigno ai suoi ed ai nemici erudo,"

we think Mrs Jameson's paraphrastic translation a little unwarrantable—"unscrupulous, inaccessible to pity, and wise as a serpent in carrying out his religious views and purposes."

Shakspeare was more true,—

"Lofty and sour to those that loved him not,
But, to those men that sought him, sweet as summer."

Greater learning and energy characterised the Dominicans; sanctity and humility and self-denial the Franciscans. The good of both communities is eloquently set forth by Sir James Stephen, and quoted in this volume:—

"So reiterated and so just have been the assaults on the Mendicant friars, that we usually forget that, till the days of Martin Luther, the Church had never seen so great and effectual reform as theirs.... Nothing in the histories of Wesley or of Whitfield can be compared with the enthusiasm which everywhere welcomed them, or with the immediate and visible result of their labours. In an age of oligarchal tyranny, they were the protectors of the weak; in an age of ignorance, the instructors of mankind; and in an age of profligacy, the stern vindicators of the holiness of the sacerdotal character and the virtues of domestic life."

Two remarkable things are spoken of both. One, that after fasting, and being rapt in a vision, St Francis was seen with the "Stigmata," (the miracle of the present day,) the wounds of the Saviour in his hands, his feet, and his side. St Dominick invented the Rosary; which, like most inventions of the Romish Church, and from the nature of its claim, is perpetuated to this day. Of the artistic treatment of the mysteries of the rosary, Mrs Jameson professes to have much to say, when she comes to the legends of the Madonna. The cruelties towards the Albigenses—ascribed apparently with too much reason to St Dominick—shows that when religion descends to fanaticism, persecution becomes a tenet; and in this, politics and religion, when both lose their reliance on Providence to guide all things to an end, are of one character, and make the interference of man's oppressive and bloody hand the only instrument.

One of the order of St Dominick has been immortalised by Titian, in perhaps the finest work of his hands—St Peter Martyr. Fra Bartolomeo, in painting this martyr, took the portrait of that extraordinary fanatic, his friend, Jerome Savonarola, who, too successful in the destruction of works of art that did not come up to his religious mark, met with a terrible fate—being strangled, and then burned in the great square at Florence, in 1498. The face is striking, and indicative of the impetuosity of a fanatic and religious demagogue. We should be glad to treat of many of the characters, members of these communities; but space, and the difficulty of selection, where there is so much of interest, will not allow us. We therefore pass on to the Jesuits.

This most remarkable order have had little influence on art. They neglected it as a means of teaching. Their great wealth was lavished in gorgeous ornament: but few pictures, and they not of the best, are to be found in their churches. Nor, though they can justly boast of men of science, classical learning, mathematicians, astronomers, antiquarians, have they produced one painter. The Jesuits' perspective is still a standing work; but Father Pozzi can scarcely merit the name of artist,—"who used his skill less as an artist than a conjuror, to produce such illusions as make the vulgar stare." The fact is, art had long declined before the canonisation of their saint. Mrs Jameson thinks them unfortunate in this; yet it may be doubted if the genius of their order is not in a degree adverse to art, and would not at all times have disregarded it. The secret working of their system—the depositing their influence in every house, in every bosom—their ubiquity, their universal aim, required neither the particular circumstances and incidents, nor the localities of art. It was the insidious "teaching through the ear, and by their books, upon which they relied for success." Nor can it be said of them that they have been doomed to a long night of forgetfulness: in this their lack of sacred art they have not perished—Carent quia vate sacro—for they are indestructible, intangible. They have been nominally suppressed, but spring up in full vigour at the first call, and everywhere; for they exist everywhere, known and unknown. And one clause in their regulations greatly favours them in this, that they are permitted to assume the dress of the country in which they may be, whenever they shall deem it expedient. And it has been asserted that they are at liberty to assume much more than the dress, and that Jesuits are to be found among the functionaries in Protestant countries, and at Protestant courts. We have only to see the nature of their vows; and if we give them credit for zeal and honesty in fulfilling them, certainly we must be alive to the danger of such a society, whose movements are secret, and whose conscience is in implicit obedience organised throughout the body.

"They were to take, besides, a vow of special obedience to the head of the Church for the time being, devoting themselves, without condition or remuneration, to do his pleasure, and to go to any part of the world to which he should see fit to send them.... The essential duties of the new order were to be three: preaching in the first place; secondly, the guidance of souls through confession; and thirdly, the education of the young."

Surely this is a wise scheme, to prepare the kingdoms of the earth and subdue them, not to their Divine master, but to their temporal, and, through their temporal, to themselves. Their founder, Ignatius Loyola, was one of the most remarkable men of the world. His life is too well known to admit of our dwelling upon any of its incidents. He died first General of his order, 1556, and was canonised by Gregory XV. in 1622. Although the Jesuits were not conspicuous as patrons of art—nor has sacred art done much for them—yet the gorgeous pencil of Rubens, of a more material than spiritual splendour, has to a considerable degree brought them within pictorial notice and celebrity. Mrs Jameson thinks that no portrait was taken of their founder during his life. We are surprised she does not notice that wondrously fine portrait at Hampton Court, by Titian.

In the histories of religious orders, it is a striking fact that the founders never failed to unite themselves with one or more congenial spirit, ready to co-operate with them, and doubtless, as they thought, by a Divine appointment. As St Francis and St Dominick, different as they were in individual character, had the one great sympathy under which they met, embraced, and then parted—as for one end to divide the world between them—so did Ignatius Loyola find in Francis Xavier a friend and associate, and subsequently in Francis Borgia, a no less willing disciple. One is perfectly astonished at reading accounts of the entire devotion of the whole man to the law of obedience, and the more than satisfaction, the joy, at being selected to suffering and death. It had been the dream of Francis Xavier to die a martyr in the Indies for the conversion of mankind; and when chosen to that end by Ignatius,—

"When the clearer sense and approaching accomplishment of those dark intimations were disclosed to him, passionate sobs attested the rapture which his tongue was unable to speak. He fell on his knees before Ignatius, kissed the feet of the holy father, repaired his tattered cassock, and, with no other provision than his breviary, left Rome on the 15th March 1540, for Lisbon, his destined port of embarkation for the East."

Nor is the story of St Francis Borgia less strange, showing the sudden impulse, yet continued purpose, executed after many years—never for a moment lost sight of. A grandee of Spain, high in honour and office, in his twenty-ninth year, as her master of horse he attends the funeral of the Empress Isabella, first wife of Charles V. The ceremonial required that he should raise the lid of the coffin, remove the covering, and see the face, to swear to the identity of the royal remains committed to his charge. He beheld in the solemn paleness of death the face of his beautiful and benign empress, and from that hour made a vow to dedicate himself to the service of God. Nevertheless, he repaired to his active duties—conscientiously performed them—and after the death of his wife, and six years spent in settling his affairs and providing for his children, and "bidding a farewell to every worldly care and domestic affection, departed for Rome, to place himself, and every faculty of his being, at the feet of St Ignatius." It was in the character of the humble Father Francis he visited his cousin Charles V., soon after his abdication.

How unlike are times and personages at various periods! Yet, doubtless, what man does at any time is in the man to do at all times. The influences set in in various directions: now we sail in another current and under trade-winds—and must go that course; but while we look back upon the history of our own and other countries, and read the doings of men, we marvel, and for a moment ask if they were of our flesh and blood.

A personal security has given us the experience of ease. It is not the temple but the home is in every man's thought. Let security be removed, our god Mammon be dethroned, and poverty be upon us—not as a vow, but an enforcement of the times—distress bring violence and persecution, and persecution the fever of excitement—the now sleeping capabilities of our nature would be roused to an energy which would make another generation as unlike the present as ours is to that which has been under contemplation.

The whole subject of this volume belongs to ecclesiastical history, and it is a strange one—how difficult to read to our actual knowledge, and to receive with candour. How much is there to condemn, to abhor—how much to admire, to love, to venerate. Sincerity, zeal, piety, and charity ought always to claim our sympathies, when our understandings reject a creed. If rising from contemplative communion with the saints and martyrs of the Romish calendar, with such mixed feelings, yet in which, we confess, a loving admiration preponderates, let us not come under a suspicion, so common in these days, of "tendencies to Rome." We have not the shadow of a thought that way—we utterly abominate and abhor Popery as a system, its frauds, its idolatry, or idolatries—for they are many—and the bondage which it would impose upon the necks of all people. But forbid it, charity—Christian charity above all—that we should join in a bestial persecution, and sit, as we were gods, and as some do, in severe judgment on, and denounce as children of perdition, and as doomed, all simple and innocent, virtuous and pious, members of that Church. To do this would, we conceive, be the part of a bad Protestant, for it is not the part of a Christian. But to return. It is remarkable of the Jesuits that they have no female saint. Yet, if there be truth in history, they have dealt cunningly and widely in female agencies.

We have too hastily passed by the Carmelites, and without noticing that extraordinary woman St Theresa—at a very early age a candidate for martyrdom—who with her brother, when they were children of eight and nine years of age, went begging into the country of the Moors, in hopes of being martyred for their faith at the hands of the infidels. At her death she had founded fifteen convents for men, and seventeen for women. We refer to the volume of Mrs Jameson for a larger notice of this saintly and sainted woman. We merely mention her slightly ourselves, that we may pass to her eulogy from the pens of two eloquent writers of her own sex—Mrs Jameson and Miss Martineau.

"It is impossible," says the former, "to consider, in a just and philosophic spirit, either her character or her history, without feeling that what was strong, and beautiful, and true, and earnest, and holy, was in herself, and what was morbid, miserable, and mistaken, was the result of the influences around her."

Oh, how does this eloquent apology cover with the mantle of charity, and embrace with the arms of love, many more personages than poor St Theresa, whose effigies may be seen in this volume.

We must not forget, before we lay down the pen, that not only the religious orders, but art also is a main object of this work.

We have said much to the credit of many pious, zealous, charitable, and good personages of the several orders, and will conclude with an anecdote creditable to Art; and the more willingly, as it brings us gently down to our own times—for we believe anecdotes of similar generosity may be told of many living men of the profession.

Annibal Caracci, suffering from illness and disappointment, and tempted by the promise of two thousand crowns, accepted an order from a certain Don Diego Herrera, to paint a picture in honour of a saint, in a church. He was, however, so ill that he could not perform the task. His pupil Albano nursed him, comforted him, cheered him; and between his attendances on his sick master, ran backward and forward to the church, and painted the frescoes with the greatest care—as they were to pass for the work of the master. Annibal every now and then rose from his bed and retouched and in part finished the painting. Don Diego refused the payment, as the work was not all by Annibal's hand. But the work being greatly admired, he consented to pay the two thousand crowns. And here a generous contest arose between the master and pupil; and this we give in the words of Mrs Jameson:—

"Annibal insisted on giving twelve hundred crowns to Albano, and keeping only four hundred for himself, which he said overpaid him for the little he had executed, and a few sorry drawings, (miseri disegni) not worth the money. Albano, not to be outdone in generosity, absolutely refused to take anything; saying, that he was only his master's creature and disciple, working under his orders, and profiting by his instructions. At length they agreed to submit to the arbitration of Herrera, who decided that the sixteen hundred crowns (four hundred had been paid,) should be divided between them. Even then it was with the greatest difficulty that Annibal could be persuaded to receive his share; and when he did, it was with a certain air of timidity and bashfulness—mostrando in certo modo temersene e vergognarsene."

In taking leave of Mrs Jameson's volume, the third of her series, we do so with the hope that she will speedily fulfil her promise and bring out the fourth part, relating to the Madonna, as connected with art.

The whole series we strongly recommend to the connoisseur at home as to the traveller abroad; for as the best pictures in the world are of subjects treated of by her, it is most desirable to have such a key to them as she has given, and promises further to give. The woodcuts and etchings are excellent, and maintain her reputation for judgment shown in the selection, and her skill as an artist.

---

LAVENGRO.[23]

We are glad to observe, from sundry symptoms which have of late been manifested, that the taste for the supernatural is again reviving amongst us. It is not safe now to deny miracles, to sneer at stories of winking images, or to speak lightly of the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius. Cardinal Wiseman, in his future attempts to familiarise us with the doctrines of saintly interference, will find a good deal of work already cut and dry for his hand. Pious young noblemen, whose perversion is only of a few weeks' standing, have already laid in such a stock of exuberant faith, that all Europe rings with the fame of their pilgrimages; and the chain in the church of St Peter ad Vincula has already been suspended around more than one English neck, in token of the entire submission of the proselytes to the spiritual yoke of Rome.

Nor is the hankering after the supernatural confined only to the sphere of religious belief. Were it so, we should not have ventured even to allude to the subject; for it matters nothing to us what amount of pilgrims may choose to press forward to Loretto, with or without the salutary but inconvenient impediment of pease. But we are going a great deal faster and farther. We have renewed some of the popular beliefs of bygone centuries; and in a short time we may hope to discover a few of the lost secrets of the Chaldeans and the Magi. Astrology, never wholly extinguished as a science, is again beginning to look up. Raphael and Zadkiel—we ask pardon of the latter gentleman if we have mistaken his name, for we quote merely from memory, and have none of his invaluable treatises lying on our table—will calculate your nativity for a trifle, and give you in January a shrewd hint as to the aspect of public matters at the ensuing Christmas. Reichenbach will tell you all about ghosts, luminous children, and suchlike apparitions as seem perpetually to have disturbed the repose of the gifted Lady Fanshawe. By a little fasting and maceration, and possibly a course of purgatives, you may even succeed in reducing yourself to a state of clairvoyance, in which case your curiosity will be amply gratified by a visit to the nearest churchyard. You will then thoroughly understand the occult theory of corpse-candles, and various other things undreamed of in your philosophy, so long as you adhere to your present gross diet of beef-steaks and porter, and pride yourself on your Particular Madeira. Almost any lubberly boy can now discover you a spring by means of the divining-rod. Travelling is no longer a luxury confined to the rich. If you wish to be transported to any known part of the earth with a rapidity greater than that of Malagigi's flying demon, who conveyed Charlemagne on his back from Pampeluna to Paris in the course of a summer's night, you have only to go to a biologist, and your desires are at once accomplished. He will request you to sit down and favour him for a few minutes with the inspection of a button which he places in your fist—a strange sensation of drowsiness steals over your brain—and you are instantly in the power of the sorcerer. He will set you down wherever you please. You may either gather grapes in the vineyards of sunny Tuscany, or take an airing, on the top of the Pyramids, or wander in a buffalo prairie, or study the habits of the walrus and white bear on the frozen shores of Nova Zembla. We have ourselves seen an enthusiastic sportsman, whilst under the influence of this magical delusion, stalk an imaginary red-deer with considerable effect through the midst of a crowded lecture-room; and, had he been armed with a proper couteau-de-chasse, we entertain little doubt that he would have gralloched a gaping urchin who happened to be standing in real flesh and blood close to the spot where the spectral stag rolled over at the discharge of his walking-stick. After this, who shall deny magic? James VI. was right after all, and we ought to be put in possession of a cheap reprint of his treatise on Demonology. Everybody recollects Lord Prudhoe's account of the wonder-working magician of Cairo, who required nothing more than a few drops of ink, and the aid of a child, to conjure up the phantoms of living persons from any quarter of the globe. The necessity of resorting to Cairo for a repetition of that phenomenon is now superseded. One of the magic crystals, known to Albertus Magnus and Cornelius Agrippa, has lately been recovered, and is now preserved in London. It has its legendary history, known to Horace Walpole, who kept it among his other curiosities at Strawberry Hill; but its miraculous powers seem to have been dormant, or, at all events, to have been unobserved, until a very recent date. In short, we are gradually working our way to a region which lies beyond the ken of science—a circumstance which cannot fail to give intense gratification to poets and novelists, who have been grievously trammelled for a long time in their legitimate functions, by the priggish scrupulousness and materialism of the votaries of exact science and analysis. Laud we the gods therefor! We may hope once more to see poetry disentangled from the thraldom of the Philosophical Institutions.

We have made this preface less in application to the work which we are about to notice, than from a certain feeling of disappointment which came over us during its perusal. It is not at all the kind of book which we expected from Mr Borrow. His previous writings had prepared us for a work of extraordinary interest, and the preliminary advertisement stimulated our curiosity to the highest pitch. Lavengro; the Scholar—the Gipsy—the Priest! Not for years have our eyes lighted on a more fascinating or mysterious title. Who, in the name of Mumbo Jumbo, we thought, can this Lavengro be? Cagliostro we know, and Katterfelto we have heard of, but Lavengro is altogether a new name for a conjuror. From what country does he come—in what favoured land is laid the scene of his exploits? Is he a Moldavian, a Wallachian, a Hungarian, a Bohemian, a Copt, an Armenian, or a Spaniard? The mystery grew deeper as we pondered: we could hardly sleep of nights for thinking of this Lavengro. Then what a field for cogitation was presented by the remainder of the suggestive title! The Scholar—the Gipsy—the Priest! Dr Faustus—Johnnie Faa—and Friar Bacon! Why, the whole title was as redolent of magic as a meadow in summer-time of myrrh! Then we thought over the hints which Mr Borrow had thrown out in his earliest volume. We recollected his mysterious intercourse with the gipsies, and his reception by that fraternity in Spain. We were aware that he had not yet explicitly accounted for his trafficking with the outcasts of Egypt, and we looked for some new revelations on the subjects of fortune-telling, hocus-pocus, and glamour. Lavengro, with his three attributes like those of Vishnu, might possibly be the Grand Cazique, the supreme prince of the nation of tinkers!

We have read the book, and we are disappointed. The performance bears no adequate relation to the promise. The story—if that can be designated as a story which the author describes as "a dream, partly of study, partly of adventure," is in the form of an autobiography, in which we recognise Mr Borrow in the characters of Lavengro and the Scholar. The Gipsy is a horse-couper, with a tolerable taste for the ring; and the Priest a Romish Jesuit, with a decided taste for gin and water. The scene is laid in the British islands; and the adventures, though interesting in their way, neither bear the impress of the stamp of truth, nor are they so arranged as to make the work valuable, if we consider it in the light of fiction.

Of Mr Borrow personally we know nothing. In common with many others, we admired the lively style and freshness of his earlier book, The Bible in Spain; and, without altogether swallowing as genuine the whole of its details, we were willing to believe, that the author was a person of uncommon attainments, energy, and perseverance; a good philologer, and an intimate acquaintance of the gipsies. This much we were ready to concede. But ever and anon there occurred oblique hints and obscure inuendoes, which seemed to point at some secret or mystery pertinent to the author, just as, in a melodrama, it is common for an individual in a slouched hat and russet mantle to insinuate that he is somebody in disguise, without condescending to favour us with a glimpse of his visage. These we set down at their proper value—that is, we considered them, sheer humbug. It was Mr Borrow's own fault if we did him wrong. He may be, for aught we know, as notable a personage as Paracelsus; but if so, he ought to claim his honours boldly, not copy a trick which is now somewhat stale through repetition.

In Lavengro the same thing occurs, and even more conspicuously. We cannot, by possibility, separate the ingredients of fact from those of fiction. Mr Borrow will not permit us to know whether it is an autobiography or a pure romance. In all probability it partakes of the nature of both. Enough of reality is retained to identify it with the actual author; enough of fiction introduced to make that author appear a most singularly gifted being. If Apollonius of Tyana had undertaken the task of compiling his own memoirs, instead of trusting to the pen of Damis, he could not have hit upon a better plan. Benvenuto Cellini and Vidocq, by adopting this method, have each of them earned a very fair portion of celebrity; and we do not in the least degree doubt that Mr Borrow will be equally successful. His situations are often striking; the characters which he introduces must have the charm of novelty to the great majority of readers; his descriptive powers are above the common mark; and his ideas are frequently original. If, in the more ambitious passages, his style is occasionally turgid, we are inclined to overlook that blemish in consideration of his other accomplishments; if the humour of his characters is sometimes forced and tiresome, we are ever and anon repaid by sketches which would do credit to the skill of a more refined artist. Yet, with all this, the original fault remains. We cannot yield to Mr Borrow that implicit credence which is the right of a veracious autobiographer; we cannot accord him that conventional credence which we give to the avowed romancer. The fact destroys the fiction; and the fiction neutralises the fact.

Is it fact or fiction that Mr Borrow is a snake-tamer, a horse-charmer, and something more? These qualities certainly are claimed by the hero of this autobiography, who, before he was three years of age, could handle a viper without injury, and even, as the following extract will show, caused a Jew to stand aghast at the superhuman extent of his acquirements.

"One day a Jew—I have quite forgotten the circumstance, but I was long subsequently informed of it—one day a travelling Jew knocked at the door of a farm-house in which we had taken apartments; I was near at hand sitting in the bright sunshine, drawing strange lines on the dust with my fingers, an ape and dog were my companions; the Jew looked at me and asked me some questions, to which, though I was quite able to speak, I returned no answer. On the door being opened, the Jew, after a few words, probably relating to pedlery, demanded who the child was, sitting in the sun; the maid replied that I was her mistress's younger son, a child weak here, pointing to her forehead. The Jew looked at me again, and then said: 'Pon my conscience, my dear, I believe that you must be troubled there yourself to tell me any such thing. It is not my habit to speak to children, inasmuch as I hate them, because they often follow me and fling stones after me; but I no sooner looked at that child than I was forced to speak to it—his not answering shows his sense, for it has never been the custom of the wise to fling away their words in indifferent talk and conversation; the child is a sweet child, and has all the look of one of our people's children. Fool, indeed! did I not see his eyes sparkle just now when the monkey seized the dog by the ear?—they shone like my own diamonds—does your good lady want any—real and fine? Were it not for what you tell me, I should say it was a prophet's child. Fool, indeed! he can write already, or I'll forfeit the box which I carry on my back, and for which I would be loth to take two hundred pounds!" He then leaned forward to inspect the lines which I had traced. All of a sudden he started back and grew white as a sheet; then, taking off his hat, he made some strange gestures to me, cringing, chattering, and showing his teeth, and shortly departed, muttering something about 'holy letters,' and talking to himself in a strange tongue. The words of the Jew were in due course of time reported to my mother, who treasured them in her heart, and from that moment began to entertain brighter hopes of her youngest born than she had ever before ventured to foster."

This beats Benvenuto hollow! Nay, we are not quite certain that it does not distance the celebrated experiment of Psammetichus, king of Egypt, who, in order to ascertain which was the original language of the world, separated two infants from their mothers, intrusting them to the care of a dumb person, who daily fed them with milk. The first word which they uttered, and perseveringly reiterated, was "Beccos," which in the Phœnician language signified bread; and as nothing could be more natural than that children should clamour for their porridge, the speech of the Phœnicians was acknowledged as the native dialect of mankind. Wee Georgy Borrow, however, in company with Jocko and Snap, seems to have outstripped in precocity the Psammetichian foundlings. What "holy letters" from the Talmud the "prophet's child" inscribed, which had such a marvellous effect upon the mind and conscience of Ikey Solomons we know not, and perhaps ought not even to guess. Perhaps it was some sentence from Rabbi Jehuda Hakkadosh, bearing upon the real value of the diamonds which the impostor was proffering for sale.

A few years afterwards he becomes acquainted with an old man, whose principal occupation consisted in catching snakes, and who, upon one occasion, had enjoyed the inestimable privilege of an interview with "the king of the vipers." Practised as he was at pouching the vermin, old Adderley could teach nothing to his pupil, who, from the hour of his birth, was privileged to take a cockatrice by the tail, and seize on a cobra with impunity. He gifts him, however, with a pet viper, a fellow of infinite fancy, who nestles in Georgy's bosom, and whose timely apparition from beneath the folds of the vest not only saves him from a threatened drubbing at the hands of a Herculean gipsy, but introduces him to the acquaintance of a young gentleman of that nomad persuasion, one Jasper Petulengro, who is also the representative of the Pharaohs! More unmingled rubbish than is contained in this part of the book, it never was our fortune to turn over; and Mr Borrow must have a low estimate indeed of the public taste, when he ventures to put forward such twaddle. Fancy the intrepid snake-charming urchin of some nine or ten years' standing, thus defying Gipsy Cooper.

"Myself. I tell you what, my chap, you had better put down that thing of yours; my father lies concealed within my tepid breast, and if to me you offer any harm or wrong, I'll call him forth to, help me with his forked tongue!"

Ancient Pistol could not have spoken more magnanimously; indeed, both in rythm and rhyme, this challenge is conceived in the style of Pistol's strophe. But we shall skip this absurd passage, with all its accompaniments of candied nutmegs, and the dispersion of the Egyptian encampment.

Mr Borrow was the younger son of an officer in a marching regiment; and in the course of the peregrinations of the corps, found himself located in Edinburgh Castle. His father, though somewhat appalled at the notion of his children acquiring the fatal taint of a Scottish dialect, determined, very wisely, to send both his boys to the High School; which circumstance calls forth the following magnificent apostrophe:—

"Let me call thee up before my mind's eye, High School, to which every morning the two English brothers took their way from the proud old Castle, through the lofty streets of the Old Town. High School!—called so, I scarcely know why; neither lofty in thyself nor by position, being situated in a flat bottom; oblong structure of tawny-stone, with many windows fenced with iron-netting—with thy long hall below, and thy five chambers above, for the reception of the five classes, into which the eight hundred urchins, who styled thee instructress, were divided. Thy learned rector and his four subordinate dominies; thy strange old porter of the tall form and grizzled hair, hight Boee, and doubtless of Norse ancestry, as his name declares; perhaps of the blood of Bui hin Digri, the hero of northern song—the Jomsborg Viking, who clove Thorsteinn Midlangr asunder in the dread sea-battle of Horunga Vog, and who, when the fight was lost, and his own two hands smitten off, seized two chests of gold with his bloody stumps, and, springing with them into the sea, cried to the scanty relics of his crew, 'Overboard, now, all Bui's lads!' Yes, I remember all about thee, and how at eight of every morn we were all gathered together with one accord in the long hall, from which, after the litanies had been read, (for so I will call them, being an Episcopalian,) the five classes from the five sets of benches trotted off in long files, one boy after the other, up the five spiral staircases of stone, each class to its destination; and well do I remember how we of the third sat hushed and still, watched by the eye of the dux, until the door opened, and in walked that model of a good Scotchman, the shrewd, intelligent, but warm-hearted and kind dominie, the respectable Carson."

Generally we abominate apostrophes; but this is not so bad. We are glad to observe a tribute, even lightly paid, from an old pupil to the merits of that excellent and thoroughly learned man, Dr Carson, whose memory is still green amongst us, and on that subject we shall say nothing farther. But old Bowie! ye gods! how he would have stared at the magnificent pedigree chalked out for him by the enthusiastic Borrow! Little did the worthy janitor think, when exchanging squares of "lick" or "gib,"—condiments for the manufacture of which the excellent man was renowned—for the coppers of the urchins in high-lows, that in future years, after he was borne to his honoured rest in the Canongate churchyard, the "gyte," or rather "cowley," whose jaws he had seen so often aggluminated together by the adhesive force of his saccharine preparations, should proclaim his descent from one of the starkest of the Norse Berserkars! Great is the power of gib—irresistible the reminiscence of lick! We remember no instance of gratitude like to this, except, indeed, Sir Epicure Mammon's gratuitous offer to his cook, of knighthood in return for the preparation of a dish of sow's teats,

"Dressed with a delicate and poignant sauce!"

But enough of old Bowie, the representative of the Jomsborg Vikings!

During his residence in Edinburgh, Master Borrow became acquainted with a young man, who afterwards attained considerable though unenvied notoriety. He appears to have been tolerably hand-in-glove with David Haggart, and to have fought side by side with him in sundry "bickers," which at that time were prevalent on the salubrious margin of the Nor' Loch. We never enjoyed the advantage of an interview with David, and consequently cannot speak to the accuracy of Mr Borrow's portrait of him; but we are not in the least surprised at the almost affectionate terms which our author uses in regard to the grand evader of the Tolbooths; having been assured by several of our legal friends, who knew him well, that he was a person of considerable accomplishment and rather fascinating manners, a little eccentric perhaps in his habits, but decidedly a favourite with the bar. Some of our readers may possibly think that Mr Borrow's comparative estimate of the merits of Tamerlane and Haggart is slightly overwrought; and that his early prepossessions in favour of David may have led him to exalt that personage unduly. The bias, however is pardonable; and, sooth to say, were it not for the Dumfries murder, which was a bad business, we also should be inclined to rank Haggart rather high in the scale of criminals. He is still regarded as the Achilles of the Caledonian cracksmen, and legends of his daring, prowess, and ingenuity, are even yet current in the northern jails. During the literary epidemic which raged in this country some ten years back, occasioning such a demand for tales of robbery and assault, we remember to have received a MS. drama, in which Haggart was honourably mentioned. In that play, a prejudiced and narrow-minded burglar expressed his conviction that

"There never yet was cracksman worth a curse,
But he was English bred from top to toe!"

To which injurious assertion Ephraim the resetter, a more diligent student of history than his customer, thus replied—

"All honour to the brave, whate'er their birth!
I question not the greatness of the soil
That bred Dick Turpin, and the wondrous boy
Sheppard, whom iron bars could ne'er contain;
Yet other lands can boast their heroes too:
Keen David Haggart was of Scottish blood,
Left-handed Morgan was a Welshman born,
And kindred France claims honour for her own,
That young Iulus of the road, Duval!"

We hardly know which most to applaud—the total freedom from prejudice, or the poetry of this exquisite passage.

We have not space to insert a dialogue touching the merits of Sir William Wallace held between the two promising youths, Borrow and Haggart, in the airy vicinity of the "kittle nine-steps." Suffice it to say, that the former uttered such heterodox opinions regarding the great deliverer of Scotland, that Haggart threatened to pitch him over; and if he should ever chance to revisit Edinburgh, and drop into the studio of our friend Patric Park, who has just completed his magnificent and classic model of Wallace—a work which would confer honour upon any age or country—we would earnestly caution him, for his own sake, to avoid a repetition of the offence. The scene is then transferred to Ireland, and we have some rough-riding and horse-taming, with a glimpse of a rapparee; all which is exceedingly commonplace. Back again to England goes young Borrow, and at a horse-fair he encounters his old acquaintance Jasper Petulengro, now fairly installed and acknowledged as the reigning Pharaoh, his father and mother having been "bitchadey pawdel." This, in the Rommany or gipsy tongue, corresponds to, the emphatic term of "herring-ponded," by which facetious malefactors are wont to indicate the compulsory voyages of their friends. Mr Borrow is always great upon the subject of the gipsies, who, in fact, constitute nine-tenths of his stock in trade; and, if we are to believe him, such lapses as popular song attributes to a former Countess of Cassilis are by no means unusual at the present day. Here is a sketch of a fascinating horse-stealer.

"'And that tall handsome man on the hill, whom you whispered? I suppose he's one of ye. What is his name?'

'Tawno Chikno,' said Jasper, 'which means the Small One; we call him such because he is the biggest man of all our nation. You say he is handsome; that is not the word, brother; he's the beauty of the world. Women run wild at the sight of Tawno. An earl's daughter, near London—a fine young lady with diamonds round her neck—fell in love with Tawno. I have seen that lass on a heath, as this may be, kneel down to Tawno, clasp his feet, begging to be his wife—or anything else—if she might go with him. But Tawno would have nothing to do with her.'"

A shrewd, sensible, and well-behaved fellow, this Tawno, in so far at least as the ladies are concerned. When a horse was to be picked up on the sly, he does not seem to have been so particular. The gipsies being encamped near the town where the author was then residing, an intimacy is struck up between them; Mr Borrow takes lessons in Rommany from the respectable Jasper, very much to the disgust of his mother-in-law, a certain Mrs Herne, who "comes of the hairy ones," and who ultimately secedes from the kraal, rather than receive the stranger into the tribe. The others entertain no such scruples.

"I went on studying the language, and, at the same time, the manners of these strange people. My rapid progress in the former astonished while it delighted Jasper. 'We'll no longer call you Sap-engro, brother,' said he, 'but rather Lavengro, which in the language of the gorgios meaneth Word-master.' 'Nay, brother,' said Tawno Chikno, with whom I had become very intimate, 'you had better call him Cooro-mengro; I have put on the gloves with him, and find him a pure fist-master; I like him for that, for I am a a Cooro-mengro myself, and was born at Brummagem.'"

There is a deal more of the same talk, tending to the laudation of the author. Our taste may be perverted and unusual, but we really cannot discover any merit whatever in the gipsy dialogues which occur throughout these volumes. Mr Borrow ought to reflect that he has already treated the public to a sufficiency of this jargon. What on earth are we to make of "dukkeripens," "chabos," "poknees," "chiving wafado dloova," "drabbing bawlor," "kekaubies," "drows," and "dinelos?" Possibly these terms may be used in the most refined Rommany circles, and enliven the conversation around the kettle in which the wired hare or pilfered capon is simmering but such exotics can hardly be considered as worth the pains of transplantation. When Mr Borrow, in a moral reflection of his own, observes, "softly, friend; when thou wouldst speak harshly of the dead, remember that thou hast not yet fulfilled thy own dukkeripen!"—he is penning absolute nonsense, and rendering himself supremely ridiculous. Then, as to the scraps of song which are here and there interspersed, we cannot aver that they either stir our bosoms like the call of a trumpet, or excite the tears of pity. However, as we said already, our taste may be in fault; and it is just possible that we may hear the following ditty warbled in many a drawing-room:—

"The Rommany chi
And the Rommany chal,
Shall jaw basaulor
To drab the bawlor,
And dook the gry
Of the farming rye.

"The Rommany chi
And the Rommany chal,
Love Luripen,
And dukkeripen,
And hokkeripen,
And every pen
But Lachipen,
And Tatchipen."

Certainly we never had, on any previous occasion, the dukkeripen to copy such jargon.

However pleasant it may be—and proverbs tell us that it is so—to go a-gipsying, it is manifest that this mode of life, unless professionally adopted, cannot keep the pot boiling. It is one thing to be an amateur, and another to be a thorough-paced practitioner. Mr Borrow, though tempted by his associates to adopt the latter course, and ally himself in marriage with a young fortune-teller of the name of Ursula, had the firmness and good sense to decline the proposal; and, accordingly, we presently find him ostensibly engaged in the study of law under the tutelage of an attorney. Young gentlemen so situated, are, we fear, but too apt to overlook the advantages within their reach, and to cultivate the Belles Lettres secretly when they should be immersed in Blackstone. If they do nothing worse, we may indulge the charitable hope that there is mercy for them in this world and the next. Mr Borrow did like his neighbours; with this difference that, instead of concealing the last new novel in his desk, he began manfully to master the difficulties of the Welsh language, and became an enthusiastic admirer of the poetry of Ab Gwilym. This, at all events, was a step in the right direction. Next, by one of those extraordinary accidents which, somehow or other, never occur except in novels, he became possessed of a copy of the Danish ballad-book—we presume the Kjœmpeviser—and mastered the language by means of a Danish bible. To this he added afterwards a knowledge of German, and German literature; so that, when compelled to go forth and struggle, single-handed with the world, his accomplishments were of a varied, if not a very marketable kind.

We are here treated to a description of a prize-fight, which, if we recollect has been already sketched by Mr Borrow in his "Gipsies in Spain." It is rather too bombastic for our taste, though it is worked up with considerable effect, both as regards action and accessories. It is introduced, we presume, principally on account of an individual who was present, and who took a prominent part in the proceedings of the day—we mean the notorious Thurtell. That Mr Borrow should have added Thurtell to the list of his acquaintances,—for it seems the grim murderer of Weare was wont to bestow upon him a nod of recognition,—after having known Haggart, is certainly remarkable, and testifies, at all events, his superiority to vulgar prejudice. There is a clever scene at the house of a magistrate, where Thurtell introduces a prize-fighter to the notice of the Custos Rotulorum, a portion of which we are tempted to quote:—

"'In what can I oblige you, sir?' said the magistrate.

'Well, sir, the soul of wit is brevity; we want a place for an approaching combat between my friend here and a brave from town. Passing by your broad acres this fine morning, we saw a pightle, which we deemed would suit. Lend us that pightle, and receive our thanks; 'twould be a favour, though not much to grant: we neither ask for Stonehenge nor for Tempe.'

My friend looked somewhat perplexed; after a moment, however, he said, with a firm but gentlemanly air, 'Sir, I am sorry that I cannot comply with your request.'

'Not comply!' said the man, his brow becoming dark as midnight; and with a hoarse and savage tone, 'Not comply! why not?'

'It is impossible, sir; utterly impossible.'

'Why so?'

'I am not compelled to give my reasons to you, sir, nor to any man.'

'Let me beg of you to alter your decision,' said the man in a tone of profound respect.

'Utterly impossible, sir; I am a magistrate.'

'Magistrate! then fare-ye-well, for a green-coated buffer and a Harmanbeck!'"

Lavengro—our fine fellow—it is not a thing to boast of, that you have, occasionally put on the gloves with Jack Thurtell!

Rejecting the profession of the law, our author, after the death of his father, started for London, in the hopes of a literary engagement; his sole credentials being a letter to a publisher from an eccentric German teacher, and two bundles of manuscript—being translations respectively from the Welsh and the Danish. Of course nobody would publish them; and the bookseller to whom he had been recommended would do nothing better for him than give him an order to compile a new series of the Newgate Calendar, at worse than hodman's wages. This portion of the story is very dull, and abounds in silly caricature. The struggles of the aspirant to literary distinction fail to excite in us the slightest degree of commiseration, because they are manifestly unreal; and the episodes of London life, though intended to be startling, are simply stupid. Thus, we have an Armenian merchant, whose acquaintance Mr Borrow makes by apprehending a thief while making free with his pocket-book—a merchant, only less sordid and fond of money than a Jew, whom, nevertheless, the author persuades to employ the whole of his realised fortune in making war upon the Persians! It is to be regretted that Mr Borrow does not favour us with his dukkeripen. Then there is the aforesaid thief, whom Mr Borrow again encounters at Greenwich fair, in the possession of a thimble-rig table, and who makes confidential proposals to him to act the subsidiary part of "bonnet." It was perhaps as well that Tawno Chikno's idea of investing the author with the honorary and fistic title of Cooro-mengro was not adopted, seeing that Mr Borrow abstained from doubling-up the scoundrel at the first hint of the kind. Then there is an applewoman who kept a stall on London Bridge, at which stall the aforesaid Armenian was wont to eat apples, and to which Mr Borrow occasionally repaired—for what purpose, does the reader think? Why—simply to read the history of Moll Flanders, a copy of which enticing work the old woman had in her possession!! This excellent creature, when Mr Borrow first knew her, was a receiver of stolen goods, and, in fact, hinted that, if Lavengro could pick up in the course of his peregrinations any stray handkerchiefs, she would be happy to give the highest available price for the same. There is some awful trash about her conversion having taken place in consequence of this copy of Moll being filched from her stall; but we have neither stomach nor patience to dwell upon this maudlin episode. The extract or essence of the whole, in so far as we can understand it, appears to be this—that by the perusal of Moll Flanders, Mr Borrow acquires a knowledge of the artistical skill of Defoe, and avails himself of that knowledge by writing an entire work of fiction within a week! We have never happened to fall in with this book, which is funnily entitled "The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell," and therefore we cannot say whether or not it was limited to a single volume. In charity, we shall assume the smallest bulk; and if it be indeed true that Mr Borrow accomplished this task within the above time, feeding, moreover, all the while on nothing stronger than bread and water, we are ready, for the honour of our country, to back him for a heavy sum, not only against Fenimore Cooper, but even against the redoubted and hitherto unvanquished Dumas. We shall merely stipulate that the respective authors shall be securely and properly locked up, so that all communication from without may be effectually prevented. Cooper shall have as many sherry-cobblers, and Dumas as many bottles of Pomard or Chambertin, as they please. Lavengro shall be supplied with ale by the pitcherful; and we have no fears of the result. Only—let him establish his antecedents; and the challenge may be given, and the contest fixed, in time for the approaching "Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations."

These women are the very devil at driving bargains! The bookseller, to whom Lavengro sent the manuscript, might easily have been persuaded to come down with a cool five-and-twenty for the adventure; but his wife asked the author to tea, and between the relays of butter and toast, buttered the original Sap-engro so effectually, that he accepted the twenty, minus the five. And with this plentiful supply—from which the payment of accounts past due had to be deducted—Lavengro valorously determined to cut the trade of authorship, on the eve of his first success, and follow out his dukkeripen among scenes and sounds which were more congenial to his taste than the crowded streets and busy din of London.

Somehow or other an author always falls upon his feet. If you, dear reader, without any other recommendation than the figure and countenance which nature has bestowed upon you—even though you have never been solicited to join a gipsy encampment, or to participate in the mysteries of thimble-rig—should start upon a pedestrian expedition through these islands, rather shabbily attired, and carrying your bundle on the end of your stick, the odds are that you do not meet at every turn with a beneficent squire of considerable fortune, but eccentric literary habits, to invite you to make his house your home so long as you may please to honour it. This may be a reflection on modern hospitality; however, try the experiment for yourself, and you will find that we are right in our assumption. But, if you are an author, the case is very different—at least it will be different when you print. The mens divinior will have come out in some way which passes human understanding. You may have been standing flattening your nose against an alehouse window, thinking perhaps intently on the means of liquidating your reckoning, when a chariot shall arrest itself at the door; a metaphysical gentleman steps out, for the apparent purpose of regaling himself with a glass of bitters; and in the course of five minutes' conversation, you so gain his heart, that you are whirled off to the mansion-house or the lodge, and forced to submit, for the next fortnight, to a regimen of turtle, venison, and claret. Such are the horrid but unavoidable nuisances of superior mental cultivation. It is no use struggling against the stream—you must perforce submit to it. And accordingly, when you publish, you enter a proper protest against the violence which has been done to your feelings, by removing you from a damp truckle-bed to a couch of eider down; and by forcing down your throat abhorred foreign luxuries, in place of that bread-and-cheese which you patriotically preferred as your nutriment.

No long time elapses before our friend Lavengro encounters his predestined squire. In the interim, however, he visits Stonehenge, and encounters a returned convict, who of course is the son of the applewoman. Shortly afterwards Amphytrion appears, just as Lavengro is sitting down to a buttock of beef and accompaniments in a cheerful inn. The character has been so often drawn, that it is rather difficult to chalk out a new branch of eccentricity for the gentleman who is about to convey the author to his house, in order that he may confide to him the details of his personal history: we are bound, however, to confess that Mr Borrow has managed this very cleverly. The new comer is afflicted with the mania of "touching"—not for any pleasurable sensation conveyed to the sensorium through the medium of the tips of the fingers, but for luck, or as a charm against the influence of the evil eye! For example, his mother being extremely ill, he finds himself irresistibly impelled to climb a large elm-tree and touch the topmost branch, as the means of averting the crisis. He does so, and sustains a severe fall, to the detriment of his nether-man, but is rewarded by finding that his filial piety has saved his mother, for the fever departed the moment that he clutched the gifted twig! Genius has no limits. After this it is not impossible that a gooseberry bush may be found available machinery for adding to the interest of a tale.

The story is told at the Squire's house during a thunder-storm; and another character, a certain Rev. Mr Platitude, is introduced solely, we presume, to lay a foundation for the subsequent appearance of a Roman Jesuit, to whom the said Platitude is in bondage. Having delivered himself of his touching history, the Squire, like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, feels himself considerably easier in his mind, and Lavengro takes his leave. Led by his dukkeripen, he next falls in with a disconsolate tinker, Jack Slingsby by name, whom he finds with his wife and children sitting over an empty mug, "which, when filled, might contain half-a-pint." Lavengro is perfectly orthodox on the subject of malt liquor. He understands, appreciates, and even venerates its virtues; so, like a kind Christian, he orders a double jorum, and requests the woe-begone Jack to insinuate his whiskers therein. Slingsby complies, nothing loath; for grief is notoriously dry: and we are presently informed that he is sore at heart, in consequence of having been beaten off his bent by a rival, ycleped the Flaming Tinman, who travels the country, accompanied by his wife, Grey Moll, and a young woman of more than amazonian proportions. This Ajax having conceived an intense hatred of the pacific Slingsby, has first given him an unmerciful hiding; and, secondly, compelled him to take his Bible-oath that he will immediately vacate the country. Cause enough of sorrow, to be sure, the district being rife in frying-pans, and the kettles, generally speaking, of reasonable antiquity. Having delivered himself of this tale, the soft-hearted Slingsby weeps once more, and refuses to be comforted.

"'Myself.—Take another draught—stout liquor.'

'Tinker.—I can't, young man, my heart's too full, and, what's more, the pitcher is empty.'"

Nature! thou art always the same. Under whatever garb—but we crave pardon. We have already condemned apostrophes.

An idea occurs to Lavengro. What if he were to become the proprietor, by purchasing Slingsby's stock in trade, and the goodwill of the district, and start on his own account as a regenerator of fractured pans? Of course he must be prepared to encounter the opposition of the Flying Tinman; but that was only a contingent hazard; and should it occur, why—our friend flattered himself that he had not looked upon the "terrible Randall" for nothing. In days of old, his sire had encountered Big Ben Brain the Bruiser "in single combat for one hour, at the end of which time the champions shook hands and retired, each having experienced quite enough of the other's prowess;" and the memory of that glorious deed was glowing in the bosom of the son. Free of the forge also was he, as one of Tubal Cain's apprentices; and if not quite an adept in the mysteries of solder, likely enough to become so with the help of a little practice. So Slingsby sold his cart, pony, and apparatus, for the sum of five pounds ten shillings, and our author was metamorphosed into a tinker. The account of his first night encampment is rather picturesque, and we shall insert it here, as a good specimen of Mr Borrow's powers of description.

"How long I continued in that state I am unable to say, but I believe for a considerable time. I was suddenly awakened by the ceasing of the jolting to which I had become accustomed, and of which I was perfectly sensible in my sleep. I started up and looked around me; the moon was still shining, and the face of the heaven was studded with stars. I found myself amidst a maze of bushes of various kinds, but principally hazel and holly, through which was a path or driftway, with grass growing on either side, upon which the pony was already diligently browsing. I conjectured that this place had been one of the haunts of his former master; and, on dismounting and looking about, was strengthened in that opinion by finding a spot under an ash-tree, which, from its burnt and blackened appearance, seemed to have been frequently used as a fire-place. I will take up my quarters here, thought I; it is an excellent spot for me to commence my new profession in; I was quite right to trust myself to the guidance of the pony. Unharnessing the animal without delay, I permitted him to browse at free will on the grass, convinced that he would not wander far from a place to which he was so much attached; I then pitched the little tent close beside the ash-tree to which I have alluded, and conveyed two or three articles into it, and instantly felt that I had commenced housekeeping for the first time in my life. Housekeeping, however, without a fire is a very sorry affair, something like the housekeeping of children in their toy-houses. Of this I was the more sensible from feeling very cold and shivering, owing to my late exposure to the rain, and sleeping in the night air. Collecting, therefore, all the dry sticks and furze I could find, I placed them upon the fire-place, adding certain chips and a billet which I found in the cart, it having apparently been the habit of Slingsby to carry with him a small stock of fuel. Having then struck a spark in a tinder-box, and lighted a match, I set fire to the combustible heap, and was not slow in raising a cheerful blaze. I then drew my cart near the fire, and, seating myself on one of the shafts, hung over the warmth with feelings of intense pleasure and satisfaction. Having continued in this posture for a considerable time, I turned my eyes to the heaven in the direction of a particular star; I, however, could not find the star, nor indeed many of the starry train, the greater number having fled, from which circumstance, and from the appearance of the sky, I concluded that morning was nigh. About this time I again began to feel drowsy; I therefore arose, and having prepared for myself a kind of couch in the tent, I flung myself upon it and went to sleep.

I will not say that I was awakened in the morning by the carolling of birds, as I perhaps might if I were writing a novel. I awoke because, to use vulgar language, I had slept my sleep out—not because the birds were carolling around me in numbers, as they probably had been for hours without my hearing them. I got up and left my tent; the morning was yet more bright than that of the preceding day. Impelled by curiosity, I walked about, endeavouring to ascertain to what place chance, or rather the pony, had brought me. Following the drift-way for some time, amidst bushes and stunted trees, I came to a grove of dark pines, through which it appeared to lead. I tracked it a few hundred yards; but, seeing nothing but trees, and the way being wet and sloughy, owing to the recent rain, I returned on my steps, and, pursuing the path in another direction, came to a sandy road leading over a common, doubtless the one I had traversed the preceding night. My curiosity satisfied, I returned to my little encampment, and on the way beheld a small footpath on the left, winding through the bushes, which had before escaped my observation. Having reached my tent and cart, I breakfasted on some of the provisions which I had purchased the day before, and then proceeded to take a regular account of the stock formerly possessed by Slingsby the tinker, but now become my own by right of lawful purchase.

Besides the pony, the cart, and the tent, I found I was possessed of a mattress stuffed with straw, on which to lie, and a blanket to cover me—the last quite clean, and nearly new. Then there was a frying-pan and a kettle—the first for cooking any food which required cooking, and the second for heating any water which I might wish to heat. I likewise found an earthen tea-pot and two or three cups. Of the first, I should rather say I found the remains, it being broken in three parts, no doubt since it came into my possession, which would have precluded the possibility of my asking anybody to tea for the present, should anybody visit me—even supposing I had tea and sugar, which was not the case. I then overhauled what might more strictly be called the stock in trade. This consisted of various tools, an iron ladle, a chafing-pan and small bellows, sundry pans and kettles—the latter being of tin, with the exception of one which was of copper—all in a state of considerable dilapidation, if I may use the term. Of these first Slingsby had spoken in particular, advising me to mend them as soon as possible, and to endeavour to sell them, in order that I might have the satisfaction of receiving some return upon the outlay which I had made. There was likewise a small quantity of block-tin, sheet-tin, and solder. 'This Slingsby,' said I, 'is certainly a very honest man; he has sold me more than my money's worth; I believe, however, there is something more in the cart.' Thereupon I rummaged the further end of the cart, and, amidst a quantity of straw, I found a small anvil, and bellows of that kind which are used in forges, and two hammers, such as smiths use—one great and the other small."

Here the author remains for a few days tinkering at his kettles, and wholly uninterrupted, until he is surprised by the visit of a young gipsy girl. The scene which follows is sufficiently absurd. The girl wants to get a kettle from him, and patters Rommany, which choice dialect Mr Borrow pretends not to understand. At last, however, he presents her with the culinary implement, and astonishes her by singing a part of that dainty ditty about dukkeripen, hokkeripen, and lachipen, which we have inserted above. He had much better have kept his accomplishments to himself; but we suppose the temptation was irresistible. Indeed, judging from the various instances which are chronicled in this book, it would appear that Lavengro made a regular practice, in his intercourse with every one, to maintain the semblance of considerable ignorance and simplicity, until some opportunity occurred, when he could let off his bottled knowledge with astounding effect. We question the wisdom of this method in any point of view, and under any circumstance. In the present case he paid dear for the untimely exhibition of his lore.

"The girl, who had given a slight start when I began, remained for some time after I had concluded the song, standing motionless as a statue, with the kettle in her hand. At length she came towards me, and stared me full in the face. 'Grey, tall, and talks Rommany,' said she to herself. In her countenance there was an expression which I had not seen before—an expression which struck me as being composed of fear, curiosity, and the deepest hate. It was momentary, however, and was succeeded by one smiling, frank, and open. 'Ha, ha, brother,' said she, 'well, I like you all the better for talking Rommany; it is a sweet language, isn't it?—especially as you sing it. How did you pick it up? But you picked it up on the roads, no doubt? Ha, it was funny in you to pretend not to know it, and you so flush with it all the time; it was not kind in you, however, to frighten the poor person's child so by screaming out; but it was kind in you to give the rikkeni kekaubi to the child of the poor person. She will be grateful to you—she will bring you her little dog to show you—her pretty juggal; the poor person's child will come and see you again; you are not going away to-day, I hope, or to-morrow, pretty brother, grey-haired brother—you are not going away to-morrow, I hope?'

'Nor the next day,' said I; 'only to take a stroll to see if I can sell a kettle. Good-bye, little sister, Rommany sister, dingy sister.'

'Good-bye, tall brother,' said the girl as she departed, singing—

"The Rommany chi," &c.

'There's something about that girl that I don't understand,' said I to myself—'something mysterious. However, it is nothing to me; she knows not who I am; and if she did, what then?'"

Lavengro, however, was doomed to become the victim of misplaced confidence. The young lady in question was the grand-daughter of Mrs Herne "of the hairy ones," who, as the reader will recollect, abandoned the society of her kin rather than associate with the gorgio, as, we presume, we ought to call Mr Borrow. This old woman, who was resolved to have her revenge should any opportunity occur, was encamped somewhere in the neighbourhood; and in the dusk of the evening Lavengro beheld "a face wild and strange, half-covered with grey hair," glaring at him through a gap in the bushes. It disappeared, and Lavengro went to bed. A day or two afterwards he received a second visit from the gipsy girl, who presented him with a species of bun, prepared, as she said, by her "grandbebee," for the express consumption of the "harko mescro" who had been so liberal of the "kekaubi." His evil dukkeripen induced the author to eat, and, as the reader must have already anticipated, the cake proves to have been poisoned.

Lavengro, in great agony, crawls into his tent, and has just sunk into a kind of heavy swoon, when he is aroused by a violent thump upon the canvass; and, opening his eyes, beholds Mrs Herne and the girl standing without. They have come to gloat over his dying pangs.

It has been our fortune to peruse several of the romances of M. Eugene Sue, and of his followers, as also divers of those interesting and improving fictions which issue, in a serial form, from Holywell Street; but we are not sure that we can recall to our memory any passage culled from these various sources, which is more unnatural, distorted, and purely disgusting, than the conversation between the two females. We give a very small portion of it—for it extends to ten or twelve pages—and what we do quote is, perhaps, the most natural of the whole:—

"'Halloo, sir! are you sleeping? you have taken drows. The gentleman makes no answer. God give me patience!'

'And what if he doesn't, bebee; isn't he poisoned like a hog? Gentleman! indeed; why call him gentleman? if he ever was one he's broke, and is now a tinker—a worker of blue metal!'

'That's his way, child; to-day a tinker, to-morrow something else: and as for being drabbed, I don't know what to say about it.'

'Not drabbed! what do you mean, bebee? But look there, bebee—ha, ha—look at the gentleman's motions.'

'He is sick, child, sure enough. Ho, ho! sir, you have taken drows; what, another throe! writhe, sir, writhe, the hog died by the drow of gipsies; I saw him stretched at evening. That's yourself, sir. There is no hope, sir, no help; you have taken drow. Shall I tell your fortune, sir—your dukkerin? God bless you, young gentleman, much trouble will you have to suffer, and much water to cross; but never mind, pretty gentleman, you shall be fortunate at the end, and those who hate shall take off their hats to you.'

'Hey, bebee!' cried the girl, 'what is this? what do you mean? you have blessed the gorgio!'

'Blessed him! no, sure; what did I say? Oh, I remember; I'm mad. Well, I can't help it; I said what the dukkerin dook told me. Woe's me! he'll get up yet.'

'Nonsense, bebee! look at his motions; he's drabbed, spite of dukkerin.'

'Don't say so, child; he's sick, 'tis true: but don't laugh at dukkerin; only folks do that that know no better; I, for one, will never laugh at the dukkerin dook. Sick again; I wish he was gone.'

'He'll soon be gone, bebee; let's leave him. He's as good as gone; look there—he's dead!'

'No, he's not; he'll get up—I feel it. Can't we hasten him?'

'Hasten him? yes, to be sure; set the dog upon him. Here, Juggal, look in there, my dog.'

The dog made its appearance at the door of the tent, and began to bark and tear up the ground.

'At him, Juggal, at him; he wished to poison, to drab you. Halloo!'

The dog barked violently, and seemed about to spring at my face, but retreated.

'The dog won't fly at him, child; he flashed at the dog with his eye, and scared him. He'll get up.'

'Nonsense, bebee! you make me angry. How should he get up?'

'The dook tells me so; and what's more, I had a dream.'"

But the gentle Leonora—which was the name of the girl—has a strong tendency towards the practical. She would have been an invaluable assistant at the inn of Terracina—which hostelry the dramatic writers of the Surrey side used to select as the scene of their most appalling tragedies; representing the landlord as an unhappy misanthrope, who could never sleep unless he had poniarded his man; and the head-waiter as a merry creature, who wore two brace of stilettoes in his girdle, and lurked at the bottom of the pit, to receive the visitors when the bed tumbled through the trap-door. Miss Leonora, we say, becomes impatient at the exceeding dilatoriness of Lavengro in giving up the ghost, and entreats her bebee, notwithstanding the dukkerin, to finish him at once by poking her stick into his eye! The venerable descendant of the hairy ones attempts to carry this humane advice into effect, but, at the second lounge, the pole of the tent gives way, and she is sent sprawling under the canvass.

At this juncture, the sound of wheels is heard, and the girl has work enough to extricate her bebee, and hurry her off, before a car arrives. It is pulled up by the fallen tent. Lavengro hears a sound of voices; but the language is neither Rommany nor English: it is Welsh.

The Samaritan—who immediately doctors Lavengro with oil, and relieves him from the effect of the poison—is a Methodist preacher, who, in company with his wife, pays an annual visit to certain stations, where his ministry is greatly prized. The portrayment of this family—Peter, and his helpmate Winifred—would have been nearly perfect, had Mr Borrow not chosen to represent the man as haunted by the most horrible and overwhelming remorse for an imaginary sin of childhood. The idea is evidently taken from a melancholy passage in the life of Cowper, who, as every one knows, was, owing to constitutional hypochondria, the victim of hideous delusions. To select such themes wantonly and unnecessarily, argues the worst possible taste. They ought not, on any account, to have been introduced in a work of this kind; and Mr Borrow must not be surprised if very grave objections should be urged against his book, arising from the manner in which he has chosen to treat of so awful and inscrutable a dispensation. It will be no apology to say that the thing actually occurred, and that the writer is merely relating what passed under his own observation. No man is bound to set down and publish everything which he hears or sees. On the contrary, he is bound to use a just discretion, in order that he may not profanely enter on forbidden ground, or cruelly parade confessions and doubts which, surely, were never intended for the public ear.

But, as we have already indicated, we have no belief in the reality of the preacher's story. Even had the main incidents of the episode been true, it is not only improbable, but incredible, that a person, such as the preacher is represented to be, would have confided his history to Lavengro, who had certainly few recommendations as a spiritual adviser. We are thoroughly convinced that our hypothesis is correct, and that Mr Borrow—whose birth-place was Dereham, the town in which Cowper was buried—has been led, through a diseased and vicious taste, to reproduce a picture which no one can contemplate without a shudder. But enough on this painful subject. There is, however, a point of minor morals which we must notice. Is Mr Borrow aware that the conduct of his hero in concealing his knowledge of the Welsh language from the people who had just rescued him from death, so as to induce them to utter their most private thoughts and feelings within his hearing, was, to say the least of it, a very ungrateful return for all their kindness? It would appear not. However, we are tolerably certain that no one who peruses the book will differ from us in this opinion.

The preacher and his wife persuade Lavengro to travel with them as far as the boundary of Wales, where he stops, refusing to set foot on the land of Cadwallader. According to his usual custom, he petrifies them at parting by exhibiting his intimate knowledge of the Welsh language and literature. Just as they are taking leave, Petulengro makes his appearance, emerging from Wales, and Lavengro turns with him. Now, what does the reader think the respectable Jasper had been doing? Neither more nor less than assisting at the interment of Mrs Herne, who had herself anticipated the last tender offices of the executioner! The fraternal pair jog on for a while amicably, Petulengro beguiling the way by a sprightly narrative of blackguardism, until they reach a convenient piece of turf, when he expresses a strong desire to have a turn-up with the rather reluctant Lavengro. As the Rommany code of honour is but little understood, we may as well give Petulengro's reasons for defying his brother to the combat:—

"There is a point at present between us. There can be no doubt that you are the cause of Mrs Herne's death—innocently, you will say; but still the cause. Now, I shouldn't like it to be known that I went up and down the country with a pal who was the cause of my mother-in-law's death—that's to say, unless he gave me satisfaction. Now, if I and my pal have a tussle, he gives me satisfaction; and if he knocks my eyes out—which I know you can't do—it makes no difference at all; he gives me satisfaction: and he who says to the contrary knows nothing of gipsy law, and is a dinelo into the bargain."

So, there being no other mode of adjustment, a stand-up fight took place, in which it would appear that Lavengro received the largest share of pepper. Petulengro at last declared himself satisfied, and the affiliated couple set forward as if nothing had happened to disturb the harmony of the afternoon. When they separate, Lavengro takes his way in a secluded dingle, five miles distant from the nearest village, and there encamps, makes horse-shoes, and has a fit of the horrors. Just as he is recovering from this attack, who should appear in the dingle but the Flying Tinman, with Grey Moll, and the amazon whom Slingsby had mentioned—"an exceedingly tall woman, or rather girl, for she could scarcely have been above eighteen." The Tinman himself was no beauty.

"I do not remember ever to have seen a more ruffianly-looking fellow. He was about six feet high, with an immensely athletic frame; his face was black and bluff, and sported an immense pair of whiskers, but with here and there a grey hair; for his age could not be much under fifty. He wore a faded blue frock-coat, corduroys, and high-lows; on his black head was a kind of red nightcap, round his bull-neck a Barcelona handkerchief. I did not like the look of the man at all."

Two bulls are as likely to be amicable on one pasture as two tinkers on the same beat. There is some surly chaffing. Lavengro tries to conciliate the big girl by telling her that she is like Ingeborg, Queen of Norway—which must have been an exceedingly intelligible compliment—and then by pouring into her ear the following Orphean strain:—

"As I was jawing to the gav yeck divvers,
I met on the drom miro Rommany chi."

The minstrel's reward was a thundering douse on the chops. Then stood forth the Tinman in his ire, and a battle-royal commenced. Belle—for such was the name of the big girl—was, however, an admirer of fair play, and though she had been the first to strike him, volunteered her services as Lavengro's second—Grey Moll doing the needful for her spouse. After several sharp rounds, the Tinman misses a blow, smashes himself against a tree, and goes down like a ninepin, insensible to the call of time. There is honour among the tinkers, as there was law among the cutters. The defeated warrior retires with his mort, leaving Belle, whom he now abandons, to the protection of the victorious Lavengro.

And what follows? No sniggering, young gentleman, if you please. You never were more entirely mistaken in your life. It is true that Belle—or to give her her proper title—Miss Isopel Berners, was a young lady of doubtful origin, who had been educated in the workhouse. Why not? The only three noble names in the county were to be found there. "Mine was one, the other two were Devereux and Bohun." And she was independent as she was strong. Being apprenticed out at fourteen years of age to a small farmer and his wife, she knocked down her mistress for ill-using her, and, at sixteen, knocked down her master for taking improper liberties. Shortly afterwards, having taken service with a lady who travelled the country selling silks and linen, Belle thrashed two sailors who wanted to rob the cart; so that, upon the whole, she was by no means the Neæra with the tangles of whose hair it was safe to play, unless with her entire consent. Therefore the twain tarried in all amity and honour together in the dingle, making themselves, upon the whole, remarkably comfortable. An occasional visit to an alehouse, where politics and polemics were discussed, relieved Lavengro from the vapours; and of an evening in the dingle, he occupied himself by adding to the stock of accomplishments possessed by Miss Isopel Berners. The reader will naturally be anxious to know the nature of the lessons. Did he teach her ciphering, or French, or cross-stitch, or cooking according to the method of Mrs Glass, or philosophy, divinity, or calisthenics? Nothing of the kind. Lavengro gave her "lessons in Armenian!"

Nor were they altogether without visitors. The priest appears upon the stage, or rather comes to the dingle—a red-haired, squinting Jesuit, who, very unnecessarily, expounds his method for converting England to the faith of Rome, over several tumblers of Hollands-and-water, sweetened with a lump of sugar. It is a curious fact, that he preferred the water cold. Then, during a thunder-storm, a postilion makes his appearance in consequence of a capsize of his postchaise, and relates the history of his travels to Rome, where it appears that he also had known the red-haired Jesuit. The said postilion, by the way, is an accomplished rhetorician, for he divides his discourse into the three parts of exordium, argument, and peroration. And so the book ends; Lavengro and Miss Berners still remaining in the dingle, the latter having evidently conceived a tender interest for her teacher in Armenian lore.

Such are the contents of the book, which, most assuredly, will add but little to Mr Borrow's reputation. That he has seen a great deal of strange vagabond life, is certain; and it is equally plain that he is gifted with adequate powers for depicting it. But he is no artist as respects arrangement, and his anxiety to represent himself, or Lavengro, as a character altogether without a parallel, has led him into the most gross exaggerations and the most absurd positions. We were willing to accept his former works as valuable contributions to philology, and as containing sketches, vivid, if not true, of gipsy life and manners. But this must have a limit somewhere. We are sick of the Petulengros and their jargon, and Mr Borrow ought now to be aware that he has thoroughly exhausted that quarry. He is mistaken if he supposes that he has caught the secret of Defoe, who, like him, introduced the reader to scenes and characters which were not usually selected for portraiture and illustration. Defoe's excellence lies in his extreme truthfulness, his homely manner, and his total freedom from exaggeration; and until Mr Borrow is master of these qualities, he can never hope to succeed in this line of composition. We strongly suspect that, in the course of the composition of this book, which, unless our memory strangely deceives us, was announced more than two years ago, considerable changes have taken place in its plan and disposition. We cannot read the preface in connection with the latter part of the third volume, without thinking that much has been added and interpolated to suit the occasion of the recent Papal aggression; and that we are indebted to that circumstance for the introduction of the Jesuit, and the rhetorical postilion's story, so strangely dragged in as an episode to conclude the narrative. If we are right in this conjecture, a great deal of the incongruity which is apparent throughout the work is explained. But the faults still remain; and, while it is impossible to deny that Lavengro contains some spirited passages and many indications of talent, we cannot pronounce such a general verdict in its favour as would be at all satisfactory either to the author or his admirers.

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THE ARTS IN PORTUGAL.[24]

This portly volume, by the accomplished author of Modern Art in Germany, is not so wise as it looks. Its bulk, like that of Minerva's bird, of much feather and little weight, proves delusive when it comes to be handled. This is not a history of the arts in Portugal, but an accumulation of materials, whereof nine-tenths are either extraneous to the subject or indirectly connected with it. A glance at the contents may give an idea of the incongruity and unmethodical arrangement of the book, in reference to its professed object. It consists of twenty-nine letters. The second and third, occupying seventy-five pages, are extracts from a MS., dated 1549, and chiefly relating to Italian art, by Francisco de Hollanda, an architect and illuminator, a Dutchman by race, but by birth a Portuguese, who resided for some time at Rome. Highly interesting these extracts are; for the writer was intimate with Michael Angelo, and gives a lively though somewhat showy report of conversations with him on painting and sculpture, in the presence of Victoria Colonna. But of the state of art in Portugal, Francisco de Hollanda affords the scantiest information; he complains much, indeed, that art was there disregarded. From his laboured and tedious remonstrance on this neglect, addressed to the young King Sebastian in 1571, Count Raczynski has been over-liberal in citation. Among the reasons urged by the memorialist for royal encouragement of the science of design and colouring, one is that the king might be thereby instructed "how to choose hares, partridges, sporting-dogs, camels, lions, tigers, and other domestic animals." Both MSS. are in the library of the Academy of Sciences at Lisbon. In the fifth letter, an extract from The Lisbon Nosegay, O Ramalhete, introduces us to an old history of the order of Dominic, and to its editor, Frei Luiz de Sousa, a Portuguese classic, who is thus singularly recommended to notice,—"You will perceive that the extracts which I have taken from him do not mention a single fact that can throw light upon the history of the arts in Portugal: not a name, and few interesting particulars."

In default of the information wanted, we find, however, an anecdote of Sousa, which might be no mean subject for the pencil. Manuel de Sousa-Coutinho, a nobleman, proud of his talents and jealous of his dignity, having set fire to his residence at Almada, to get rid of importunate visitors from Lisbon during the plague, withdrew into Spain. On his return he rebuilt his house, and married Magdalen, the widow of Don John de Portugal, who had been reported among the slain with Sebastian in Africa. Don Manuel had a daughter by this union, and his domestic content was untroubled for some years, till a stranger presented himself at Almada, and obtained an interview with the Lady Magdalen. "I am a Portuguese," he said, "just returned from captivity in Palestine. At the moment of my departure, one of my countrymen charged me to seek you out, and to inform you that a person who had not forgotten you was still in existence." The alarmed matron demanded a minute description of that person, and the answer strengthened a terrible suspicion. To remove all doubt, she led the stranger to a room where the likeness of her first husband was suspended among many other family portraits. The messenger at once recognised the portrait of Don John of Portugal as that of the individual on whose errand he had come. Manuel de Sousa was no sooner apprised of the fact, than he resolved to take the cowl. He assumed the name of Luiz, and became a friar in the Dominican convent at Bemfica. The lady also retired into a religious house, and never saw him more.[25] The story would have been as satisfactory if the captive husband had been ransomed by those who had so unwittingly wronged him.

In the next letter we find Monsieur Raczynski, catalogue in hand, giving an account of his visit to a triennal exhibition of modern paintings. On those or any other productions of art, even out of their turn, we willingly listen to him; though his opinion only leads us to the conclusion that revolutionary turmoils do not make painters. But we protest against his budget of extravagancies from the Lisbon Diary, and flowery tropes from The Universal Review, which is or was edited by an ingenious poet, A. F. Castilho, who has the misfortune to be blind, and has been so from his youth, and is nevertheless a critic on art, who resents "the presumption of frivolous and impertinent foreigners!" We might have been spared, too, the dull discourse pronounced before their Majesties, by the late venerable Director of the Academy. As a specimen of Senhor Loureiro's oration, in which the glories of the German easel are the main topic of panegyric, take the following compliment to King Ferdinand Saxe Kohary:—"After Louis XIV., who bowed to all the ladies he met on his ride, and after Frederick II., no king nor prince in Europe returns the salute of by-passers, except our much esteemed king, Don Ferdinand, as you all must have often witnessed." This delicate flattery is insinuated à propos of a portrait by Frank, in the Berlin Cabinet, of "Frederick the Great passing on horseback, and lifting his hand to his classical hat, garnished with feathers, to salute the inhabitants of Potsdam, who offer him their tribute of homage." Then follow ten letters, full of capital blunders, for which M. Raczynski is no otherwise responsible than that he has printed them; for these letters are principally made up of communications from respectable but most inaccurate correspondents, and of gatherings from more obscure and not less questionable sources. That such a mass of absurdities, especially those on Gran Vasco—the great name among Portuguese artists—should have been retained is the more remarkable, because the Count, by his laudable diligence, timely discovered that he had been misled on many particulars, and finally tells us so himself. As to Gran Vasco, in search of whose disputed identity his blind guides had led him floundering through a weary morass—now after one will-o'-the wisp, now after another—he at last finds himself on terra firma at Vizeu, whither he had repaired on the sensible advice of Viscount Juromenha, and thus announces his success (Letter 16,)—"Fica revogada toda a legislação em contrario!—that is to say, I retract all that I have said or cited about Gran Vasco, and whatever is contrary to what I am now going to tell you!" From Vizeu we are conducted, by shocking bad roads, to Lamego and Regoa, and hence down the Douro to Oporto. The 20th Letter is a postscript to the 11th, and we are again among objects of art at Lisbon. Here the modesty of the king-consort is put to the blush by one of those awkward compliments which personages of the highest rank are born to suffer, and to which they become callous in time. But the Prince is young, and courtiers should be merciful. We have just heard the president of the Academy proclaiming him as the only mannerly prince in Europe since the days of the Great Frederick of Prussia. M. Raczynski throws the strong light of his admiration on another and a greater excellence in the German husband of Donna Maria da Gloria, though, inferentially, it is no compliment either to Her Faithful Majesty or her subjects,—"The King is, to my knowledge, endowed with more taste than any other person in this country; beyond every other individual, he possesses true feeling for the arts. He is the owner of a pleasing collection of paintings, besides a rich album of drawings and water-colours, pretty pictures in German, French, and English!" The 21st Letter is "the continuation of my letter the 14th," that is, a resumption of the subject of Portuguese architecture. The 22d Letter is a corollary to the 10th, "to serve as a sequel to my 10th letter;" and so, throughout the work the reader is fiddled to and fro, down the middle and up again—now at Coimbra, now at Marseilles, back again to Barcelona and Seville, and other places where he has no business—and at last sits down to cool in a printing-office at Paris. In short, if only what fairly relates to the arts in Portugal had been admitted into this publication, with a due regard to method, five score pages would have served the purpose of above five times that number, and Monsieur Renouard's types would have been more profitably employed—for the reader at least, if not for the printer. Even as it is, however, the book is an improvement on Taborda and Cyrillo, the latter of whom the Portuguese have hitherto been contented to take for their Vasari. There is no reasonable doubt that attempts at the revived art of painting were practised in Portugal as early as in Spain, though so vastly in favour of the latter nation is the balance of pictorial wealth. Rudiments of the art seem faintly discernible in the very infancy of the Portuguese monarchy. There is a tradition of a portrait of Count Henry, who died in 1112. In the Lisbon duplicate of the Livro-preto—the Black-Book of Coimbra cathedral, a collection of ancient documents—there is one dated 1168, setting forth sundry payments to artificers in the church; and in that memorandum, mention is made of an altar-picture, The Annunciation to the Virgin. Among the royal archives at Lisbon is a book of charters, one page of which is wholly occupied by a drawing of our Saviour, coloured in red and blue. This MS. bears date 1277. That Portugal was early rich in illuminated manuscripts, is proved by the existence of many very old bibles, missals, breviaries, books of armorial blazonry, and other gorgeous quaintnesses, on much and long enduring vellum. Garcia de Resende, in his Chronicle of John II., at whose court he was brought up, says that he employed much of his leisure in painting, to the great satisfaction of his royal master, who often suggested subjects for his pencil, and would frequently sit by him watching the progress of his pleasant labours. The Castle of Belem, as it stands at this day, was constructed, in the following reign, from a plan designed by Garcia for John II., in whose time also, as we learn from that chronicler, and from Ruy de Pina—both eye-witnesses—scene-painting was executed on a large scale, for the court pantomimes and spectacles, before a stage for the written drama was known in the kingdom. It was by John II. that the Florentine Andrea Contucci, called Il Sansovino, was invited to Portugal, where he remained nine years—chiefly employed, however, in architecture and wood-sculpture—although his example as a painter is supposed to have had some corrective influence on the rudeness of pictorial notions in this country.

In the reigns of Emanuel and John III., 1495 to 1557, artists both native and foreign were numerous in the land; and hagiologies were ransacked for appropriate subjects of decoration for the churches and monasteries, and other important edifices. Most of those painters are forgotten. Few of their names have been preserved in connection with their works; so that these, of which many are still extant, and might bear honourable testimony to their skill, have incurred the singular fate of being, almost universally attributed to one artist, who was five years old at the decease of John III., and who ought to have lived to more than twice the age of man, and have been a Proteus in varieties of style, to make it possible that he should have completed one-half the number of the works imputed to him. Every Gothic picture of any pretension found in Portugal is called a Gran Vasco. Even that fine painting, The Fountain of Mercy, in the sacristy of the Misericordia at Oporto, has been pronounced a Gran Vasco. It was indeed painted thirty years only before he was born; it has some historical features that pretty nearly fix the date. King Emanuel gave that picture to the brotherhood of the Misericordia at Oporto. It contains portraits of himself, his third wife, several of his children by his second wife, and other personages of his family and court. He died in 1521. Vasco Fernandez, the true Gran Vasco, was baptised at Vizeu in 1552. Senhor J. Berardo has the honour of this discovery. After many a weary research among piles of records in the Vizeu Cathedral, he there detected a document which destroys delusions that had become national, leaves scores of old pictures fatherless, and yet detracts but little, if at all, from the reputation of the great master. In the very church where he was christened, several of the best compositions of Fernandez remain as vouchers for the integrity of his genius. The antiquary of Vizeu, Ribeiro Pereira, whose MS. is dated 1630, and who might have personally known him, and must have well known the principal works executed by him for their native town, specifies the large picture of Calvary, in the Jesus Chapel of the cathedral, as by Gran Vasco. The pictures in the sacristy are by the same hand; and, though the cathedral is of very ancient foundation, this sacristy, in its present form, was not finished till 1574, as we learn from the inscription "Georgius Ataide Episcopus vicensus faciendum curavit MDLXXIIII;" and by the position of the pictures, in regard to the light from the windows, it is evident that they were prepared for the places they occupy. M. Raczynski has not only seen and scrutinised those paintings, but he has examined the baptismal entry above spoken of, and he has likewise inspected a copy of the MS. of the Vizeu antiquary. Of the register of baptism he says,—"M. Berardo has shown me the voucher, which is almost in tatters. Nothing can be more authentic, more incontestable. You have no idea of the vividness of tradition, among all the inhabitants at Vizeu, respecting Gran Vasco. One would say that all the world here has been personally acquainted with him, that every man in the place has had some heritable share in him. For me, the question is decided." On the extract, first communicated to him by the Visconde de Juromenha, from the MS. of the Vizeu antiquary, Vasco's contemporary and fellow-townsman, he observes, after comparing it with the original in the Oporto Library,—"The extract is perfectly accurate. M. Gandra, Librarian of Oporto, has given me a sight of the MS., which is as genuine as the register of Vizeu. In the MS., the painter is once styled 'The Great Vasco Fernandez;' and the second time, 'Vasco Fernandez.'" It is curious that the celebrity of a quiet artist should have been of such speedy growth as to obtain for his name the popular prefix of "Great" during his lifetime. The Count's judgment on the Vizeu paintings is as follows:—"The picture of 'Calvary' is of high merit, but in bad condition. I should have supposed it older; but, in fine, documents are a stronger authority than my impressions. Moreover, the draperies and the architecture in the paintings of Gran Vasco are of a style that well accords with the epoch to which we are now certain they belong. Not only is the large, picture of 'Calvary' of great merit, but as much must be said of those that form the predella," (that is, those on each side of the steps to the altar,) "representing the sufferings of our Lord. The pictures in the sacristy are—The Baptism of Christ, The Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, St Peter, The Martyrdom of St Sebastian, and thirteen smaller pieces, half-length portraits of various saints. Nothing can be more magnificent than the St Peter. Attitude, drapery, composition, drawing, touch, colouring, architecture, accessories, landscape, the small figures in the distance—all are fine, all faultless. I cannot express to you what joy I felt when, on entering the sacristy, I at once beheld, fronting the door, this superb painting of St Peter. The effect on me was decisive; all doubt was over. Every work by Gran Vasco has a solemn and elevated character, which I do not recognise to the same extent in any of the Gothic pictures that I have seen in Portugal. The style of Gran Vasco is not ascribable, as I had imagined it to be, to Italian influence, but, very peremptorily, to that of Albert Durer; and it is plain that this influence had continued to inspire Portuguese artists, though working side by side with the imitators of Gaspar Diaz and Campello," (two of the several Portuguese painters who were sent by King Emanuel to study at Rome,) "who had imported into their country the Italian style and tendencies of the classic era. I will even affirm, that the influence of Flanders and Germany produced better results than that of the classic painting of Italy." This notion of the superior efficacy of Flemish and German over Italian influence on Portuguese art, in the first half of the sixteenth century, is a favourite one with our author; and not unreasonably so, for the palmy days of Emanuel and his successor were also the days of Charles V., the kinsman of those princes. Many Flemish and German subjects of the great emperor found ready access to the court of Portugal, and a favourable reception there; and their manner must have been pretty generally adopted, and very closely imitated too, for in multiplied instances it perplexed connoisseurs to distinguish the native from the northern workmanship of that period.

Between Vasco Fernandez of Vizeu and any legitimate successor to his supremacy as a Portuguese artist, the interregnum is far longer than the duration of the Spanish tyranny. After the death of Sebastian, no Portuguese painter of any recognised eminence appears for nearly a century and a half. During all that time, producers of pictures were numerous; there was plenty of artists, but little or no art. At last, about 1715, John V., the mighty builder, willing to hope that his projected temples and palaces were destined to be worthily adorned by native talent, if stimulated by the best models, sent several youths to the schools of art in Italy; herein repeating the experiment of the old kings of the race of Avis, but without much success. The only very distinguished painter of this reign and the next, "O Insigne Pintor," Vieira Lusitano, owed his opportunities Of professional instruction at Rome to the patronage of a nobleman rather than to that of the King himself, though he was afterwards much employed both by John V. and his successor Joseph.

The story of Francisco Vieira, popularly called the Lusitanian, and self-styled "The Admirable," is one of the most curious on record. It is an autobiography in verse, a lyrical poem in quatrains without rhyme. His self-esteem is immense, as may be inferred from his title-page, Viera the Lusitanian, the famous Painter and faithful Husband. In the preface he loads himself with honour; through the fourteen cantos, six hundred pages, of his poem (which is but a portion of what he intended to give to the world, though it was published three years before his death, and he died at the age of eighty-four,) he puffs his own praises with all the simple untiring energy of a boy blowing bubbles; yet it is as clear that he was no fool as that he was a prodigious coxcomb. Measureless vanity does sometimes co-exist with vigorous ability. There is no doubt whatever of the genuineness of the production, for it was published in his lifetime, and he signed his name to the dedication. Being the hero of his own story, he speaks of himself all through in the third person; and it was perhaps his intention, when he composed the work, to publish it anonymously, and let the public suppose that it was written by some friend. But he no doubt thought himself the præclarus vates as well as the pictor insignis, and could not finally make up his mind to lose the honours, poetical and chivalrous, of his work, though it is in truth as wretched a poem as it is a rare and most captivating biography. Robert Southey, a name not to be mentioned without respect, yet a critic by no means to be implicitly followed on questions of Portuguese literature, says that this is the best book of Portugal. If he simply meant that it is the most attractive biographical production, he was probably right, (if we set aside old Mendez Pinto, the marvellous and the delightful,) for we doubt whether a more striking personal narrative of genuine love-adventure is extant in any language. But if Southey intended to say that it was the best Portuguese poem, the eulogy is utterly absurd. There is but little unborrowed poetry in it, and his countrymen, who should be the best judges—justly proud as they are of him as an artist—do not admit him to any rank even among their numerous minor poets. There is, it is true, in one of the volumes of Southey's Life, recently published, a favourable specimen of this poem—a translation by Southey of a few lines, which are pleasing enough; but the version is an improvement on the original. Vieira gave indications of his talent for drawing by chalking figures on the floor before he could walk alone; and he proved his genius for intrigue by winning the heart of a damsel, not less juvenile than himself, but of far higher rank, and by completely hood-winking her parents and his own, before he was eight years old. But the constancy of this infant passion on both sides is the marvel of his life. At ten years of age he gained a patron in the Marquis of Abrantes, who, being appointed ambassador from John V. to Pope Clement XI., took him to Rome, where he resided seven years, always devoted to his art and to the Fidalgo's daughter. He was at first a pupil of Lutti, and afterwards of Trevisani. He mentions the latter with respect and affection. He obtained considerable distinction as a student of painting, and was befriended by Cardinal Barberini. On his return to Lisbon, whither his reputation had preceded him, he was welcomed by none of his friends more cordially than by the parents of Dona Agnes Helen De Lima e Mello, who was now a blooming and beautiful young woman, for whom several offers of suitable marriage had been already made, all of which she had evaded by the plea that it was her intention to take the veil. On his first visit he was followed by a porter with a box full of relics that he had brought from Rome—beads blest by the Pope, bones of saints, a chip of the true cross, and many other inestimable things of the kind, all warranted—tudo com seus diplomas authenticos! These he presented to the father and mother, who were more than delighted with such gifts, and could not but attribute a hopeful measure of sanctity to the young virtuoso who had collected them. He was thenceforward a frequent guest at the Quinta da Luz, the residence of the De Limas, and continued to be encouraged by the elders of the family, till they found out—not by their own wit—that the humble youth whom they had so graciously countenanced fully intended to do them the favour of becoming their son-in-law. The presumption was inconceivable, the humiliation of having been outwitted by two children was intolerable. Vieira had secretly consulted the Judge of Marriages (O Juiz dos Casamentos,) an official as formidable to hard-hearted parents in Portugal as a Gretna Green parson to guardians of heiresses in England. By his advice, the young gentleman had secured his lady-love's signature to a formal declaration of her engagement to him; and, on the strength of this document, the same obliging functionary had easily obtained the Patriarch of Lisbon's certificate of approval, which was necessary to perfect the legality of the contract. A page, in attendance on the Patriarch when the matter was discussed, happened to be acquainted with the family of De Lima, and hastened to reveal to the astonished parents the transaction that he had witnessed. In strict law, they had now no remedy—the parties were betrothed. But the lady's father possessed a power greater than the law in the friendship of the Minister, the formidable Pombal; and before any further communication could pass between her and her lover, she was shut up in a nunnery, the convent of St Anne. As she had avoided marriage by asserting her intention to become a nun, it was now resolved that she should keep her word. She resisted to the uttermost; and even after she was immured in the convent, it was only by main force that the novice's dress was put on her, though her aunt and two other grim duennas assisted in the operation. Vieira appealed to the King; but it was too delicate an affair to be interfered with, even by an absolute monarch. He retired from the royal presence in anything but a loyal mood, and tasked his wits from day to day, but all in vain, to devise some means of communication with the prisoner. That convent, he says, baffled all his approaches, as if it were an enchanted castle. He determined, however, that if she could not see him she should hear him; so he seized his guitar, repaired to the convent walls at midnight, and serenaded her with passionate songs—walking round and round the gloomy den like Blondel round the Fortress Tenebreuse, the cage of Lion Richard; or, as the painter himself expressed it in one of his pictures, like Orpheus at the gates of hell demanding his Eurydice. He was for the third or fourth time turning a corner of the convent chapel when he was pounced upon by the police, and forthwith lodged in prison, and would inevitably have been transported, in a ship ready to depart for one of the Indian settlements, had not one of his patrons, the Conde del Assumar, afterwards Marquis de Alorna, interfered, and procured his release. The noviciate of Agnes expired, and she was compelled to take the veil. Her relations now thought that they had her safely settled for life, and the lady abbess thought so too. Agnes, making a virtue of necessity, pretended to be reconciled to her fate; and thenceforward the restraints on the seemingly submissive nun were far less stringent than those that had been imposed on the rebellious novice. A correspondence between the married nun and her husband was now effected through a third party, who had access to the convent. It was written in a cipher invented by Vieira, as a sure precaution against mischance or impertinent curiosity.

"Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banished lover, or some captive maid."

But this sort of communication only inflamed their impatience for freer intercourse. By the death of one of the sisterhood, a cell became vacant which might be very convenient for a vestal whose heart was unconsecrated. It was in a retired part of the building, and the window was in an outer wall, separated from some of the city gardens by an unfrequented thoroughfare. It was the custom to set a price upon the new tenancy of any void cell, so that the nun who wished to possess it must pay for the privilege. The price set upon this apartment was three hundred milreas, about £70. Vieira procured the money, and passed it to Agnes, who was thus enabled to become mistress of the room; and the superior seems to have had no suspicion that the gold was not supplied by some one of the young lady's wealthy relatives. The window was high, but the spaces between the iron grates were not so narrow as to forbid the passage of a faithful Mercury, in the shape of a basket secured by a string. When it could be prudently let down, a palm branch put out between the bars was a signal. Vieira, taught by his former misadventure, no more approached the walls as an unarmed minstrel, but silently, and furnished with munitions of war—mas munido com seus marciaes petrechos—a good sword at his side, a pair of loaded pistols in his belt, and a cloak of black taffeta over all. After a hundred plans for her rescue had been mutually discussed and abandoned, she thus addressed him,—"My beloved, I am withering here. You must deliver me from this horrid prison, from these dismal rules which I am forced to obey—though I protest that I am no nun, never was, and never will be. Freira nao sou, nem fui, nem ser quero. I am assured that nothing short of a decree by the Pope will avail us. I know that certain immunities may be bought and obtained by deputy from the Holy See; but I would trust no agent in such an affair as ours. I confide in the proverb—'He who wants a thing goes for it; he who would miss it sends for it.'—(Quem quer vai, quem nao quer manda.)" He received the young lady's orders without winking, sem pestenejar; and, leaving two large pictures, commissions from the king, unfinished, he set off on the forlorn hope to the Vatican, with a good chance of ending his career in the Castle of St Angelo. He got to Rome, he says, as if by magic. Cardinal Barberini was dead: this news was a shock to him, for on his protection he had mainly relied. The resolute lover, however, by dint of importunity, obtained from the Pope an order addressed to the Patriarch of Lisbon, requiring him to cause the lady to be interrogated, and to report the result. Months passed away, but no answer came.

He obtained another order, an exact duplicate, also signed by the Pope, and forwarded it with an explanatory letter to the Conde de Assumar. The Count willingly carried the paper to the Patriarch, who was much offended, and refused to receive it, saying, that such matters were not to be disposed of in a hurry. He had received the Supreme Pontiff's first letter, and had, in consequence, personally visited the convent, and questioned Donna Agnes. Further investigations were on foot, and the case could not yet be decided.

A friendly Portuguese Jesuit gave Vieira warning that he was in danger, and that, if he persisted in his appeals to the Pope, he would be quickly and summarily silenced. Baffled at all points, and ashamed to go home, he continued in Italy for six years, during all which time he maintained a correspondence with Agnes, by the aid of a friend at Lisbon, a well-known brother artist, André Gonsalves. He also laboured assiduously in his profession, and became famous as a painter in the land of painters. His works were purchased as fast as he could produce them, and many of them were engraved. Finally, he, was elected member of the Academy of St Luke, and was honoured with a diploma or certificate of especial merit. He now thought he might return to Lisbon, and look after his impounded treasure—his tesouro imprisonado. On the arrival of the ship in the Tagus, he remained on board till he could be smuggled ashore at night. His enemies imagined him to be still at Rome when he was once more plotting under the convent walls, and thus announcing himself to the faithful object of so much constant love—"Here I am again! All the doors of justice are closed against us, and we have nothing but our own wits to help us; yet I am more resolved on your deliverance than ever." He proposed to supply her with files and aqua fortis to cut through the bars of her cell, and a rope-ladder to let her down. But she rejected that expedient. "Through the gate by which I entered, and through that only, will I go out," she said. Pois só pela portaria, por onde entrei, sahir quero. Repairs were going on in the house; many masons were employed there daily. "Get me," said she, "a hodman's dress and a half-mask, and I will walk out of the convent. Do not look so mistrustful; I am not without courage; I know myself well. I rely, too, on higher strength than my own for aid. God does not require violent sacrifices: I am here against my will; my stay in these cloisters is not self-devotion, but sacrilege." Seeing that she had made up her mind to the adventure at all hazards, Vieira lost no time in furnishing her with the required disguise. He prides himself particularly on his skill in the fabrication of the half-mask, which he describes as a miracle of art. It fitted her exactly, and the false nose was provided with hooks to be inserted in the nostrils of the true nose, to prevent it from betraying itself by any eccentric movement,

"Porém no nariz fingido
Lhe armou de arame hum remedio
Para poder segurar-se
Nas ventas do verdadeiro."

The hour was come for the perilous attempt. It was a summer evening, light as noon, when the chapel bell rang for the Ave Maria. Donna Agnes left her cell and gained a covered courtyard, where she passed some of the sisters, who bade the supposed workman good evening. She was a little too soon, for the labourers were not yet assembled to retire. But, being so far committed, she could not retreat; she must proceed alone to the porter's gate. It chanced that several ladies of the city were standing by the lodge, in conversation with the superior. It was therefore requisite, according to custom, that the person going out should ask leave to pass with all respect, licença para passar, com respeito. She did so, and the lady abbess herself answered, "Pass," making way for her. Donna Agnes, in her agitation, stumbled against an angle of the wall, and heard one of the party she had just left behind her, perhaps the abbess, exclaim—"Ah, can't you see, you clumsy fellow?" She moved on into the street, where Vieira, also in disguise, was anxiously waiting. He would not have known her had he not recognised his own handiwork, the mask. He seemed not to notice, her till she had turned down a lane at some distance: he then followed her, and in a few minutes they were out of immediate danger. The commotion in the nunnery, when her flight was known, may be imagined. The king, when informed of an escape which was speedily the talk of the town, applauded the act for its spirit and cleverness, though he had declined to enforce the law on behalf of the aggrieved pair. They proceeded with all despatch to verify the contract made between them before her incarceration. After this formal attestation of the illegality of her enforced vows, they were formally married, and their triumph was complete. Here, according to rule, where connubial bliss begins, the story should end, for it is very like a novel; but it is nevertheless a true tale, huma historia verdadeira, and something darker remains behind. They took a house in the Hortas da Cera, and were happy for some months. But the rage of her family was unappeasable. While the painter was pursuing his professional avocations with honour and profit, they were secretly busy with machinations against his life. On the morning of Whitsunday he had set out from home, to hear mass in the nearest church. His wife, attended by a servant, followed him some minutes later. At the top of an obscure alley, communicating with the street just where it made a bend, stood a man whose face was muffled up in his cloak. Vieira had passed but a little way beyond him, when he was fired at and severely wounded by this person. The pistol had been loaded with slugs, one of which pierced the artist's right cheek, and another was lodged in his shoulder. Turning round, he caught a glimpse of the face of the assassin, in whom he recognised his own brother-in-law, the brother of Donna Agnes. Vieira, supposing himself mortally hurt, called out for a confessor, staggered back to meet his wife, and fell bleeding at her feet. Both were carried half dead into their house. His wounds, though so serious that the last sacraments were administered to him, were skilfully and prosperously treated by Felucci, an Italian leech, and by the king's German surgeon, who was ordered to attend to him. His wife was nearer death from terror and anxiety, than he from his wounds; but no sooner was he declared out of danger than she recovered, and was his best nurse. As soon as he could be safely moved, he proceeded in a chair to the palace, and craved audience of the king, before whom, after he had knelt and kissed hands, he was permitted to produce the clothes in which he had been shot. They were stained with blood that told its own story. The king and the gentlemen present seemed much affected; and an order was given, somewhat late it would seem, for the apprehension and punishment of the assassin. Family interest, nevertheless, smothered up the inquiry, and the criminal was not even imprisoned; but the mark of Cain was on him, and the general odium that he had incurred soon compelled him to leave the kingdom. It is a sort of satisfaction to know that he fell into poverty, and was even at last reduced to the ignominious condition of a pensioner on the bounty of the man whose life he had attempted. The fact is not recorded in the poem, as it ought in poetical justice to have been; but Cyrillo asserts that he had it from Vieira's own mouth, in these words,—"He came at last to beg his bread from me, whom he had outraged so cruelly."

Vieira, soon after his complaint to the king, being apprehensive of further molestation from the family of his wife, placed her with some of his own relations, and took sanctuary, for a while, in the convent of the Paulistas; and there, in 1730 and 1731, he painted his famous Hermits, as appropriate ornaments for the church of their patron, St Paul the Eremite. In 1733, willing to live tranquil, says Cyrillo, he resolved on a third visit to Rome, with the view of ending his days there. Guarienti, the curator of the Dresden Gallery, who came to Lisbon in 1733, and remained there till 1736, was personally acquainted with Vieira, and asserts that his motive for expatriating himself was disgust at an insult that had been put on him through the malice of his rivals, by the removal of one of his works from the recently completed pile of Mafra, and the substitution of a picture by an inferior artist. He got no farther, however, than Madrid or Seville, (Cyrillo names the latter city,) when he was recalled by his sovereign, who well knew his value, and appeased him with honours and a fixed salary as Royal Painter, exclusive of payment for works supplied by command.

Vieira Lusitano lived admired and honoured, to a venerable age, eighty-four; and his constant heroine, the Lady Agnes, also reached a good old age, and shared prosperity which could hardly have been real, or of any value, without her. She died at Mafra in 1775, and from the day of her death he never again touched a pencil. To the last, says Cyrillo, he idolised her memory; and, no doubt, the strength of his affection for her was the governing motive of his publication of their strange history, five years after her decease, and but three before his own. Both his own portrait and hers were often introduced into his paintings. Many of his works perished in the earthquake, with the temples and mansions they adorned. He particularises, as thus destroyed, "his grand picture of the Martyrs—the inestimable portrait of the first Patriarch of Lisbon, Don Thomas Almeida," (who figures as an important influence, for and against him, in the narration of his love adventure;) "the portraits of the Royal Children, and that sublime idea," (the words are his own,) "the Meeting of the Blessed Mother with her Son, after her assumption—the Death of Moses—Pluto and the Court of Hell listening to the suit of Orpheus." He says he designed the last-named performance as an allegorical plea for the restoration of his wife, to whom the convent was a hell. In another composition, which he calls "a stupendous work," and which was also demolished—Perseus exhibiting the Gorgon's head to Phineus—he represented his own effigy as that of the Greek hero, and the image of his cloistered wife, as a winged Victory, hovering over him, and about to drop a laurel wreath on his helm, &c.

But in spite of the earthquake in his own day, and the later razzias of the French in their Pyrennean Algiers,—in spite, too, of civil convulsions, spoliation of convents and convent churches, and all the various causes of dispersion or wanton destruction of works of art in this fair but unhappy land—there is a sufficient number left of those by Vieira Lusitano to show, on better authority than his poetical self-celebration, that he was in truth a fine artist, though not quite a Gran Vasco. The dignity of his St Augustine, and the elegance of his Madonna of the Rosary, both in the Academy of Art at Lisbon, might be evidence enough to prove that the Italians made no great mistake when they conferred a first-class medal on him in his boyhood, nor when they elected him member of the Academy of St Luke after his return, an unprotected emigrant, to Rome. St Augustine is trampling on heresy, while an angel in the foreground burns a pile of heretical writings. This is generally admired as the most powerful of those works by F. Vieira that are in possession of his countrymen. Count Raczynski prefers the other—a Virgin and Child,—in which the infant Jesus stands on a pedestal, surrounded with figures excellently grouped. It must be a fastidious taste that can look coldly upon either. A St Antony in the Church of St Francisco de Paula bears Vieira's signature, and the date 1763. It shows that his hand had lost nothing of its cunning at the age of sixty-four. The Church of St Roque and that of the Paulistas, and some other Lisbon churches, contain important specimens of his skill. They are all more or less remarkable, not only for correctness of drawing, and for breadth of well-harmonised colouring, but for a peculiar grace of touch—a feeling of the versifier and the lover—that seems never to have forsaken him to the last. Even in the countenances of his hermits, the sanctity of expression is heightened, not enfeebled, by a sentiment of human tenderness and regret, as if the day-dreams of their youth in the world were not utterly forgotten. M. Raczynski, though usually chary of commendation in these latitudes—for his predilections are manifestly, and perhaps naturally enough, far north,—has always a good word for this artist, and now and then even grants him a down-feather from the nest of the Black Eagle itself. "As to Vieira Lusitano," says the Count, "he is truly a distinguished artist; and at the time in which he lived we were very poor in Prussia: we were very far from possessing a painter of his value. Wherever I meet with his works, I feel myself attracted by the nature that he infuses into art."

The alphabetical table (which, by-the-by, sadly wants the revision of an index-maker,) gives references to Vieira Lusitano, and Francisco Vieira, as if the two designations did not belong to one and the same person.

There is a second Francisco Vieira, also a historical painter; but, to distinguish him from his predecessor, he is called Vieira Portuense—Vieira of Oporto, the place where he was born, 1765. In 1789 he went to Rome. After about two years' study there, he repaired to Parma, where he was elected one of the directors of the Academy, and gave lessons in drawing to a daughter of the Duke. In 1794 he returned to Rome, where he staid three years more, and then proceeded to Dresden. Few of his works are found in his native city. Mr Allen possesses two or three. There is one at the house of the British Association—Eleanor of Castille extracting the poison from the arm of our Edward the First. The outline of the two figures is not ungraceful, but the effect is tame. The queen looks more asleep than the king; her lips do not touch the wound, yet are so close to it as to seem to express that action. In this, as in most of this artist's productions, the colouring is fluent but weak. Yet some of his church-pictures at Lisbon, and one also of the few at Oporto—St Margaret on her deathbed confessing to a Monk—are stamped with a holy fervour of intention, a deep and unaffected sentiment of piety, that is strength in itself, and not always to be found in religious paintings of higher name. Of his lighter performances, a Cupid and Venus in a landscape, very elegant, and not unworthy of Albani, was engraved at Lisbon by his friend Bartolozzi. His life, it is said, was embittered by the malice of Sequeira his rival. They went to Rome about the same time. Taborda, Fusquini, and Cyrillo, their contemporaries, also studied at Rome. We agree with M. Raczynski in his estimate of Sequeira, whose St Bruno and other ambitious displays are so highly extolled by his countrymen. He is a clever and disagreeable performer on canvass, except in some few of his minor pictures, such as the Translation of St Francis. In his large and finished works he strains at intenseness of effect, and vulgarises his art. But his numerous sketches have quite a contrary character. They appear to have cost him no trouble; and the best of them, if always true to proportion, would be almost as valuable as those of the elder Vieira, the Lusitanian, of which many, in red crayon, are preserved in the library at Evora. As to Taborda, Fusquini, and Cyrillo, and some other recent artists, we would say, to the inquirer, "Go to the palace of Ajuda, and by their works you shall know them! They are as precious there as flies in amber."

M. Raczynski's desultory notices touch on architecture, sculpture, terra-cotta figures, glazed tiles, and many other things besides painting—that portion of his inquiries to which we have of necessity confined our remarks. Of the actual condition of this art in the city of Ulysses, the Academy, instituted in 1780, presents, we fear, no very hopeful indications, though it has many young students as well as many old members. "Numerous are the persons," Count Raczynski observes, "who are enthusiastic in their praise of the Arts in Portugal. But with the honourable exceptions of the Duke of Palmella and the Count de Farrobo, not one will expend a sous, not one will take any trouble for their advancement. It is true, however, that in the actual position of affairs, it would be no easy matter to know how to set about such a service to the nation. The country is in a state of revolution. These few words explain all; and we have only to accuse modern constitution-mongers, and the confusion of ideas and the disorderly spirit that are the consequence of their machinations, here and in Spain, for more than twenty years."

The worthy diplomatist from Prussia, when he wrote the last quoted sentence, seems to have had no notion of the force of pestilent doctrines that were at work on the other side of the Pyrenees, nor how soon the revolutionary mania was to shake the Transmontane thrones, and all but annihilate even his own master's.

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SOUTHEY.[26]

So good, so estimable, so eminent a man as Southey—one whose moral character was perhaps as near to perfection as it is given to humanity to attain, and whose literary works, if not of the very highest order of genius, fall short only when compared with those few which are of the very highest—such a man as Southey, it was not likely we should allow to pass from amongst the living without some tribute bestowed upon his memory, or some attempt made, to appreciate the value of his long and illustrious labours. We have been somewhat tardy, it maybe thought, in fulfilling this duty. But we do not regret the delay. Our topic is not one of an ephemeral nature, and the delay may perhaps have instructed us in those points of view in which it is most needful that our subject should be placed.

There is nothing, for instance, so well known of Southey—if we may be allowed to anticipate a little, and to plunge, like the epic poets, in medias res—nothing so notorious as the change which his political and social opinions underwent; the sentiments of his youth upon government, and the organisation of society, being almost diametrically opposed to those of his maturer years. The contrast is great between the young republican, the ardent communist, the bold experimenter in Pantisocracy, the author of the Book of the Church, and the celebrated champion of Conservative principles in the Quarterly Review. But often as the contrast has been held up to notice, the time has only just arrived when it can be surveyed in the right spirit. The whole life of the man is now before us; and, contradictory as the parts may have appeared as the long picture was slowly unrolled to the eyes of contemporaries, it now becomes possible for us to see the real coherence that existed between the several parts, and to trace throughout their very inconsistencies a unity, and an honourable unity, of character. The enthusiasm of the youth enables us to understand whatever was peculiar in the maturer man. The earlier mind of Southey throws light, we think, upon the later. It was the same mind, it was the same man, young and old.

We learn from the biography before us, that the imagination of Southey had been early and too exclusively developed; and whether from this circumstance, or from natural temperament, a close, systematic, scientific mode of reasoning was the mental quality or mental exercise in which, throughout life, he least distinguished himself. His affections were ardent and generous, his moral sentiments invariably pure and noble, his piety unalterable; his judgment, wherever abstract and general principles were to be dealt with, was, to the last, often hasty, incomplete, vague, uncertain. But if his reasoning was never that "dry light" of which Bacon speaks, it never, in his case, was mingled with other passions or feelings than those which did honour to his nature. Above all, there was throughout his career the utmost sincerity in the expression of his opinion; no taint of hypocrisy, no reserve, no timidity—a want sometimes of caution, never that prudence which is the disguise of cowardice,—you had at all times the genuine unaffected utterance of the man. He was not even the least apprehensive of ridicule. He would have borne martyrdom before a host of jesters, which some have thought to be not the lightest species of martyrdom. If astrology had found favour in his sight, he would have expressed his belief in it before the whole conclave of the Royal Society. Whatever seemed truth to him, had its clear, manly, unhesitating avowal. Of an ardent disposition, impatient of slow thinking or of long and intricate reasoning, eager, confident, somewhat too self-relying, his was not the mind peculiarly fitted for expounding abstract principles;—we note no extraordinary deficiency in this respect, but we can easily conceive of minds better trained and disciplined for the discovery of great elementary truths;—but few men in our age and generation have manifested a warmer or more generous attachment to whatever assumed to them the shape of truth. For this he was ready to do battle to the utmost. No crusader could be more valiant, or go forth with fuller faith, or be more resolved at all hazards to drive out the infidel, and take possession of the Holy City. His geography was once at fault, or the territory and scene curiously shifted, and his Jerusalem was at one time due west, and at another due east; but it was the same devoted uncompromising knight that was seen marching towards it.

Those only who have never thought at all, or who have quite forgotten their past efforts at thinking, will throw blame upon another because the opinions of his his youth were different from those of his manhood. Such difference is almost the necessary attendant upon progress and mental development. The ardour and the candour of Southey's nature made the difference in his case singularly conspicuous. He lived, too, at that epoch when the French Revolution made and unmade so many enthusiasts. This may be thought a sufficient vindication of his memory. But there remains to add one very honourable distinction. Many of those whom the French Revolution had made enthusiasts in the cause of human progress, became cold and dead and utterly indifferent to that cause—selfishly callous, or quite sceptical as to the possible improvements which might be effected in society. Now, Southey changed his opinion on many subjects, but he never deserted the cause of human improvement. He would have promoted very different measures at different periods, but he had the same cause always at heart. He never sank into a cold and selfish indifference; nor was it a mere passive conservatism that he ever advocated. His son has here very justly pointed out that, as a writer in the Quarterly Review, in which character he was thought to have consummated his apostasy, it was the renegade Southey who drew attention to the state of the poor, who called on the Government for a scheme of national education, who pointed out the folly of neglecting our great colonial possessions, and the necessity of adopting some large and judicious plan of emigration. Of the topics which occupy reflective and philanthropic men at this moment, pauperism, national education, and emigration are three of the most conspicuous; and in each of these Southey may claim to have led the way, in drawing towards them that public attention which they so eminently deserve. He is always alive to whatever seems to him a feasible scheme for the improvement of society. If he goes abroad, and visits the Beguinages in Belgium, he thinks whether a like institution might not be introduced into Protestant England, for the benefit of a class of women, whether single or widowed, who with difficulty find any active employment—who are not paupers, but whose poverty condemns them to a cheerless, solitary existence. If Robert Owen of Lanark comes across his path, no fear of having his own early dream of Pantisocracy revived before him, of being reproached for an old abandoned faith, (the constant terror of men who feel themselves apostates,) prevents him from expressing the natural interest which such a man, and the projects he then had in view, naturally excited within him. His Colloquies may not earn him a reputation amongst political economists; but no one will deny the philanthropic spirit which they breathe. In his Life of Wesley, and all his religious or theological publications, however devoted he may show himself to the Church of England, he never fails to inquire how this great institution may be made still more serviceable to the nation at large, and this, too, by embracing within its pale those very sectaries towards whom he was accused of having so bigoted and unfriendly a feeling.

Those of his opponents who, in the later part of his career, were accustomed to represent Southey as the unscrupulous, drilled, formal advocate of a party in Church and State, ready for his pension and his pay, for court honours and the praise of bishops, to espouse its cause to the utmost, never made a greater mistake in their lives. Innumerable proofs are here before us in his letters, if we did not find them in his works, that he retained to the last a certain bold, erratic, independent manner of thinking, quite his own.

Always was he Robert Southey, and no representative of a party. At one time of his life he contemplated the profession of the law, and studied for the bar. What sort of lawyer he might have made, if he had been able to give up his mind to the study, or what the practice of Westminster Hall might have made of him, there is no saying; but there was never any literary men, earning subsistence by his pen, who had less of the spirit of the retained advocate. A self-willed, untamed, quite individual manner of looking at things, is always breaking out. If he had taken that seat in Parliament which, without any consultation of his wishes, was so strangely bestowed upon him, he would, we are persuaded, have greatly disappointed any party that might have relied upon his steady and unswerving co-operation. He would often have deserted them for the cross benches, and as often perplexed them by his uncompromising zeal. No whipper-in would have been quite sure of him, or kept him steady in the ranks. In that position where he was most subject to restraint—as a writer in the Quarterly—it is amusing to see how restive he is, how he rears and plunges at first starting, how he chafes at that harness which each one in such a team must be content to wear, though every steed were a veritable Pegasus, and Apollo himself in the editorial car. He thinks "a sprinkling of my free and fearless way of thinking would win friends" for the Review. "It is my nature and my principle," he says, "to speak and write as earnestly, as plainly, and as straight to the mark as I think and feel. If the editor understands his own interest, he will not restrict me." We must confess, judging by the ebullitions he sometimes gives vent to in these letters, that the most indulgent editor must have been occasionally called upon to "restrict" a certain impetuosity of manner, which, it may be observed, would have embarrassed Mr Gifford almost as much as it would have done Mr Jeffrey.

But from this somewhat rash incursion into the very centre of our subject, it would be wise—since we are not, in fact, epic poets—to effect a timely retreat; let us recommence, after the more legitimate manner of prosaic reviewers, with some account of the work immediately before us.

The Life and Correspondence of Dr Southey, which is here presented to the public, answers fairly to the description which the author, or editor, himself gives of it in his preface. A number of letters are arranged according to their dates, and are connected together with just such intimations of a biographical nature as enable them to tell their own story. The life of Southey, meaning thereby a skilful narrative and analysis of incident and character, remains, of course, to be written; and a very interesting work it will prove, if it falls into fortunate hands. Meanwhile, this collection of letters, many of them delightful compositions, and perfect models of epistolary style, gives us such an insight into, and appreciation of the man Southey, as was previously impossible to any one who did not know him personally and intimately. The editor has performed his part in a very creditable and judicious manner. It would have been very difficult for the son to conduct a rigid and impartial scrutiny into the literary merits of the father, and he has not attempted it; but it would have been the easiest thing in the world for that son, or for any other editor, to have spoilt such a work as this by intrusive panegyric, by constant controversy with old and hostile criticisms, by perpetual contest for place and pre-eminence for his biographical idol. The mere vanity of authorship, or an officious spirit, might have given a repulsive air to what is now a most agreeable book. There are cases, and this is one of them, where, considering the temptations that beset an editor, the absence of cause for censure becomes no slight ground of commendation.

The letters of Southey are preceded by the fragment of an autobiography. Would it were more than a fragment! The author, we are told, had looked forward to this task as one of a very agreeable nature; and, so far as he proceeded with it, appears to have found it such; for he revels in the reminiscences of childhood and his school-days, and describes the old house in Bristol in which he lived when a boy, with a loving minuteness that is in danger of outrunning the interest which any one but himself could feel in such a locality. But even before his school-days are quite over, he drops the pen. To one who had so much necessary employment for that pen, a supererogatory labour of this description ought to be very attractive, and apparently he found in his task, as he advanced, increasing difficulties and decreasing pleasure.

The reminiscences of childhood, of boyhood, and even of the first entrance into youth, have to almost all men an indescribable charm. Up to this time, we look back upon ourselves with a curious feeling, as if it were not altogether ourselves we were contemplating, but rather some other being who preceded us, and whose thoughts and feelings are the sole remembrance of them we have inherited. We look back upon the frailties of that other self with an unlimited indulgence; we smile at his errors, at his passions, at his griefs; we even sport with his absurdities, and can afford to throw a playful ridicule over all the follies he committed. This child that we are playing with is ourself, but still it is only a child; and we have the fuller right to play with it because it is ourself. No sense of responsibility intervenes to disturb this singular amusement, where the adult is seen toying with and holding in his arms the image of his own infancy. But when this early pre-existent state has passed in review, and the real man is summoned forth upon the scene, we begin to feel that this is indeed ourselves; and we become too implicated and too much involved in the part he performs, to enjoy any longer the position of an imaginary spectator. We are sensitive to the errors, and responsible for the faults, of this other self; we cannot treat him with cavalier indifference; we must be his advocate or his censor. The retrospect assumes a quite different character. Formerly we called up a departed self from some half-fabulous region of the past, and questioned it as to its ways of thinking and acting; we now stand ourselves in the witness-box, and give our testimony; and the best of us must occasionally assume the sullen aspect of an unwilling witness. Formerly we sported with the past absurdity, ridiculed and laughed at it; but now the remembered folly, the sentimental effusion of the youth, the absurd oratorical display, the ridiculous exhibition, of whatever kind it may have been, affords us no amusement. It matters not what the distance of time, the cheek tingles with the reminiscence. What is still more to the purpose, the griefs and afflictions which we have now to summon up are the same in character as those we continue to feel, and their recollection is but a renewal of suffering. The affliction of the child rarely revives an affliction in the man—very often calls up a smile at the idea that so much distress had been felt at so trivial a cause. This is one reason why childhood appears, in our review of human life, so much happier than any other portion of it. We find a mirth in its remembered tears which assuredly we never discovered when they were flowing. But the remembrance of the sorrows of a later period is but sorrow itself, and we only taste again the bitterness of grief.

To Southey, whose disposition rendered him peculiarly susceptible to those domestic losses which death occasions, this last appears to have been one chief reason for the distaste he felt for his task as he proceeded in it. Certainly it soon lost its zest. During the early and playful portions of the biography, he holds on his way with alacrity and delight; he ransacks his memory, and brings out with great glee whatever odd and strange things he finds there; but the Westminster boy has not run his career before the theme has changed its aspect. At all events, it has no longer sufficient interest to make a time and leisure for itself amongst the crowded occupations of the author.

In the record of his childhood which Southey has given us, we have no reason, as we have intimated, to complain of the want of detail. Indeed, some circumstances are related which at first we thought might as well have been passed over in silence. It appeared to us that everything which a person can possibly recollect of his own childhood, cannot be interesting to others, although every such effort of recollection may be extremely amusing to the reminiscent himself; and we were prepared to read a lecture to all future autobiographers, and to remind them that they must distinguish between the pleasure of memory, of rescuing the half-forgotten incident from threatened oblivion—a pleasure which must be exclusively their own—and the value which the rescued fact itself may possess in the estimation of the world at large. But while we were preparing this lecture, a little incident occurred which gave us a lesson ourselves, and induced us to withhold this part of our criticism. Such details as we have alluded to, not only give pleasure to the reminiscent, but occasion exactly the same pleasure to those in whom they call up similar recollections; and we had overlooked the extreme difficulty the critic, or any one reader, must have in determining which of such details is absolutely without this species of interest for other readers. What seems to him as really "too absurd" to be worth mentioning, may awaken vivid emotions in another in whom it calls up a similar remembrance from the all-but-forgotten past: he shares in the very pleasure of the original reminiscent. Whilst we were perusing this autobiography, and our pencil was straying down the margin of a passage we intended to quote as an example of a quite superfluous effort of recollection, a friend called in upon us. We read to him this identical passage. To our astonishment, it had thrown him into a perfect ecstasy of delight. It had recalled an image of his schoolboy days which had never once been revived since he left school, and which he was certain would never again have occurred to him but for the paragraph we had read. Here is the passage:—

"One very odd amusement, which I never saw or heard of elsewhere, was greatly in vogue at this school. It was performed with snail shells, by placing them against each other, point to point, and pressing till the one was broken in, or sometimes both. This was called conquering; and the shell that remained unhurt, acquired esteem and value in proportion to the number over which it had triumphed, an accurate account being kept. A great conqueror was prodigiously prized and coveted—so much so indeed, that two of this description would seldom have been brought to contest the palm, if both possessors had not been goaded to it by reproaches and taunts. The victor had the number of its opponent's triumphs added to its own; thus, when one conqueror of fifty conquered another which had been as often victorious, it became conqueror of an hundred and one. Yet, even in this, reputation was sometimes obtained upon false pretences. I found a boy one day who had fallen in with a great number of young snails, so recently hatched that the shells were still transparent, and he was besmearing his fingers by crushing these poor creatures one after another against his conqueror, counting away with the greatest satisfaction at his work. He was a good-natured boy, so that I, who had been bred up to have a sense of humanity, ventured to express some compassion for the snails, and to suggest that he might as well count them and lay them aside unhurt. He hesitated, and seemed inclined to assent, till it struck him as a point of honour, or of conscience, and then he resolutely said, No! that would not do, for he could not then fairly say he had conquered them. There is a surprising difference of strength in these shells, and that not depending on the size or species; I mean whether yellow, brown, or striped. It might partly be estimated by the appearance of the point or top, (I do not know what better term to use;) the strong ones were usually clear and glossy there, and white if the shell were of the large, coarse, mottled brown kind. The top was then said to be petrified; and a good conqueror of this description would triumph for weeks or months. I remember that one of the greatest heroes bore evident marks of having once been conquered. It had been thrown away on some lucky situation, where the poor tenant had leisure to repair his habitation, or rather where the restorative power of nature repaired it for him, and the wall was thus made stronger than it had been before the breach, by an arch of new masonry below. But in general I should think the resisting power of the shell depended upon the geometrical nicety of form."—(Vol. i. p. 55.)

This odd amusement, it seems, was not monopolised by young Southey's school. "Oh, I remember it well!" cried my enraptured auditor. "Yes, conqueror was the word. But Southey is wrong! It was the empty shell only that we used. How distinctly I remember it!—and it must be thirty years ago—and never once till this moment have I thought of it since. How strange a thing is memory! You hold the shell, you see, between your forefinger and thumb, the forefinger being bent to receive it. Your adversary did the like with his shell. Then you applied the boss of your little shield to the boss of his—quite fairly, you understand, boss to boss, otherwise the strongest part of one shell would come in contact with the weaker part of the other. Silently, but with all your might, you pressed them together. The one which broke through its antagonist's was, of course, the conqueror. But Southey is wrong! It was only the empty shell we used. Consider, if the animal was there—what a horrible mess!"

We ventured to suggest to our friend, as soon as his impetuosity permitted us, that Southey was describing his school, and no other school whatever; and as to the horrible mess which boys might delight in, it would be difficult to say, in such a matter, what would pass the bounds of credibility.

After this unintentional experiment, we gave up all idea of determining what might or might not be interesting amongst details of such a description. If this story of the snail-shells found its ardent admirer or sympathiser, what other could possibly be pronounced to be superfluous? or down the margin of what other passage could our critical and expurgatorial pencil have safely strayed? To as little purpose, we apprehend, should we undertake to examine such stories on the grave historic ground of their perfect credibility. When "Uncle William," who is half an idiot, plays a trick upon the servant Thomas, and substitutes a dead mouse for his quid of tobacco, the thought did occur to us, that although a mouse is a very small animal, it would surely make an enormous quid—altogether a most extraordinary substitute for a quid—and that the servant Thomas must have been the greatest idiot of the two to have been deceived by it. But such carping criticism, we repeat, would be altogether out of place; and this fragment of autobiography is really too amusing to excite any other feeling than that of regret at its sudden termination.

We learn from it that Southey was born on the 12th August 1774. His father was a linendraper at Bristol, and by no means prosperous in his calling. He passed his childhood, however, for the most part under the roof of a maiden aunt, Miss Tyler, who resided at Bath. To this house at Bath we must, therefore, betake ourselves, if we would learn the circumstances which assisted in forming the mind of the future poet and historian. To be born the son of a linendraper we hold to be no evil; but to have been bred up in the shop at Bristol would have been to Southey a real calamity. From this he was spared. The linendraper's shop may figure on his shield, if the malicious herald is disposed to place it there; it had nothing to do with his head, or his heart, or his manners; he was bred a gentleman. Moreover, he had exactly that sort of breeding which is calculated to foster the imagination, and develop whatever there was of poetry within him. Miss Tyler had two passions—one for order and cleanliness, the other for the theatre. She had, too, a free admission; and young Southey, at an age when other little boys are fain to content themselves with turning over the leaves of the great picture-book, was seated, night after night, in the front row of the boxes, a delighted spectator of the performances of one of the best companies in England. His first library—and this he possessed as soon as he could read—was a whole set, more than twenty in number, "of Mr Newbury's fairy tales, or other wonderful stories; delectable histories in sixpenny books for children, splendidly bound in flowered and gilt Dutch paper, of former days." This library, and free admission to the theatre, and, for the rest, much idleness, few companions, and a world of dreams,—such is the opening scene of Southey's mental history.

"I had seen more plays before I was seven years old," he says, "than I have seen since I was twenty." Miss Tyler, it seems, was living at one time with some ladies whose property was vested in the theatre. From their house—

"A covered passage led to the play-house, and they very rarely missed a night's performance. I was too old to be put to bed before the performance began, and it was better that I should be taken than left with the servants; therefore I was always of the party; and it is impossible to describe the thorough delight which I received from this habitual indulgence. No after-enjoyment could equal or approach it; I was sensible of no defects either in the dramas or in the representation; better acting, indeed, could nowhere have been found: Mrs Siddons was the heroine; Dimond and Murray would have done credit to any stage; and among the comic actors were Edwin and Blanchard—and Blisset, who, though never known to a London audience, was, of all comic actors whom I have seen, the most perfect. But I was happily insensible to that difference between good and bad acting, which in riper years takes off so much from the pleasure of dramatic representation; everything answered the height of my expectations and desires. And I saw it in perfect comfort, in a small theatre, from the front row of a box, not too far from the centre. The Bath theatre was said to be the most comfortable in England; and no expense was spared in the scenery and decorations."—(Vol. i. p. 71.)

Frequenting the theatre soon introduced him to far other literature than Mr Newbury's publications. Shakespere was in his hands, he says, as soon as he could read. He went through Beaumont and Fletcher before he was eight years old. What hosts of plays beside he may have devoured, it was probably beyond his power to recall. And he early began to imitate what he read. In one passage he leaves us to gather that his first attempts at poetry were so early, that they went beyond the time of memory.

Miss Tyler had all along intended to give her protegé a systematic education, and for this purpose she had purchased a translation of Rousseau's Emilius. The systematic education, however, was never commenced. In 1782 he was placed—for what reason we are not told—as a day-boarder in a school at Bristol. He then necessarily resided with his father. Two years after, Miss Tyler herself removed to Bristol, and again received her nephew. But in this interval of two years, the holidays were always spent with his aunt, wherever she might be. It was in these holidays that his real education was carried on.

At home he was on very short allowance of books. His father read nothing but the Bristol Journal. A small glass cupboard in the back parlour, fastened up against the wall, was sufficient to hold the wine-glasses and all the library. But in the holidays he gets back again to Bath, and to Bull's circulating library. He meets, at his aunt's, people who talk about authors—even sees an author or two—learns that they are greater personages even than the players. In one of these holidays a lady gives him a copy of Hoole's translation of the Jerusalem Delivered. This led him into a new course of poetical reading; it converted the budding dramatist into an epic poet. The Tasso introduced him to the translation of the Orlando Furioso, and this to Spenser's Fairy Queen. How he read, how he revelled in these books!

"The copy of Hoole's version (of Tasso) which Mrs Dolignon sent me, is now," he says, "in my sight upon the shelf, and in excellent preservation, considering that when a schoolboy I perused it so often that I had no small portion of it by heart. Forty years have tarnished the gilding upon its back, but they have not effaced my remembrance of the joy with which I received it, and the delight which I found in its repeated perusal.... Hoole, in his notes, frequently referred to the Orlando Furioso. I saw some volumes thus lettered, on Bull's counter, and my heart leaped for joy. They proved to be the original; but the shopman, Mr Cruett, (a most obliging man he was,) immediately put the translation into my hands; and I do not think any accession of fortune could now give me so much delight as I then derived from that vile version of Hoole's. There, in the notes, I first saw the name of Spenser, and some stanzas of the Fairy Queen. Accordingly, when I returned the last volume, I asked if that work was in the library. My friend Cruett replied that they had it, but it was written in old English, and I should not be able to understand it. This did not appear to me so much a necessary consequence as he supposed, and I therefore requested he would let me look at it. It was the quarto edition of '17, in three volumes, with large prints folded in the middle, equally worthless (like all the prints of that age) in design and execution. There was nothing in the language to impede, for the ear set me right where the uncouth spelling (orthography it cannot be called) might have puzzled the eye; and the few words which are really obsolete were sufficiently explained by the context. No young lady of the present generation falls to a new novel of Sir Walter Scott's with keener relish than I did that morning to the Fairy Queen."—(Vol. i. p. 83.)

He had commenced poet, as we have said, at an earlier age than he can call to mind, so that his first rhymes are utterly lost in the oblivion of childhood. He can only remember that this discovery that he could rhyme gave him great pleasure, and that his mother seemed equally gratified, and still more proud of the achievement. When in the habit of reading and witnessing so many plays, he of course wrote dramas. His first subject was "The Continence of Scipio!" Now that Tasso and Ariosto were his great delight, he commenced the epic or the metrical romance. He would graft a story upon the Orlando Furioso. Arcadia should be the scene and give the title to the poem. There he would bring the Moors, and there should his hero Astolfo, riding on a Hippogriff, &c. &c. This must have been, he says, when he was between nine and ten, for some verses of it were written on the covers of his Phædrus. They were in the heroic couplet.

It is curious to notice that, although writing heroic couplets on the covers of his Phœdrus, his first task in prose composition was accomplished with extreme difficulty. The master, Mr Williams, would sometimes tell the boys to write a letter upon any subject that they pleased. Nothing had ever perplexed our young poet so much as this task. He actually cried for perplexity and vexation. At last he set to work. A Salisbury Guide had fallen in his way; he wrote a long description of Stonehenge, and his master was not less surprised than delighted with it. He himself was unconscious of having done anything extraordinary, till the envy of his schoolfellows made him aware that he had surpassed them all. On coming to school next morning, some half-dozen of them beset him, and demanded "whether he, with all his learning, could tell what the letters i. e. stood for? You have written a description of Stonehenge, now tell us what i. e. stands for." Southey dashed at an answer, "John the Evangelist, I suppose." They shouted with triumph.

In after years, when Southey had written Don Roderick, there were many pedants disposed to ask him what i. e. stands for.

But now his maternal uncle, the Reverend Herbert Hill, always his kind friend and benefactor, determines to send the intelligent lad to Westminster school, and then to the University of Oxford. By way of preparation, he is removed from Mr Williams' academy, and placed under the care and tuition of a clergyman. We have not traced him through the various schools he attended—it would be waste of time; we have seen what was the real process of his education. Here, also, according to his own account, the progress of his mind was very little connected with the formal tuition he received.

"I do not remember," he says, "in any part of my life, to have been so conscious of intellectual improvement as I was during the year and a half before I was placed at Westminster; an improvement derived not from books or instruction, but from constantly exercising myself in English verse; and from the development of mind which that exercise produced, I can distinctly trace my progress by help of a list, made thirty years ago, of all my compositions in verse, which were then in existence, or which I had at that time destroyed."—(Vol. i. p. 117).

Before entering Westminster, our autobiographer takes a retrospective glance at his home in Bristol, and gives a most graphic description of his aunt, Miss Tyler. That lady has earned an immortality which she little dreamt of, and would have hardly coveted. Already every English reader knows Miss Tyler. She will live for ever as a type of that class of ladies, whether spinsters or married, who let their love of order and cleanliness grow into a disease—ladies who keep the best rooms in their house in such a superstitious neatness, that they are no longer habitable. The disorder usually drives people from their pleasant and spacious drawing-room into close back-parlours, deserving of a visit from the Sanitary Commission. In the case of Miss Tyler, it drove her from the parlour to the kitchen, from the best kitchen into what should have been the scullery. We hope those ladies in whom the disease has not yet attained such a height may take warning by the terrible example of Miss Tyler. For the rest, she was a woman of violent temper, and of a proud imperious disposition.

Of course, in a house kept with so much neatness as Miss Tyler's, no other boy was likely to be admitted; no other specimen of that race whose shoes no quantity of mats or matting could have rendered clean, or afforded sufficient protection against; and who might have even placed his corduroys on the lady's own chair—an offence which, we are assured, would have excited the highest indignation. Young Southey, therefore, had few playmates. Shad, a handy lad, kept for all manner of garden or out-of-door work, was his chief companion. He might well say that "few boys were ever less qualified for the discipline of a public school." He had, however, an elastic and buoyant spirit, which, notwithstanding this unsuitable preparation for such a scene, enabled him to meet the trials and the turmoil of Westminster school. It was on the 1st April 1788 that he entered there. A rough apprenticeship to life it seems to have been. One boy holds our epic poet out of window by the leg, to the manifest peril of his skull. Another appoints him, "by the law of fist," to write all his Latin exercises, with the special injunction that they shall be always "bad enough" to pass muster as the composition of the bully and the dunce. We suppose all this has been reformed since Southey's time, and that the following picture is curious only as a record of the past. In this "interior" the Westminster scholars look very much like a buccaneer's crew:—

"Our boarding-house was under the tyranny of W. F——. He was, in Westminster language, a great beast; that is, in plain truth, a great brute—as great a one as ever went upon two legs. But there are two sorts of human brutes; those who partake of wolf nature, or of pig nature; and F—— was of the better breed, if it be better to be wolfish than swinish. He would have made a good prize fighter, a good buccaneer, or, in the days of Cœur de Lion, or of my Cid, a good knight, to have cut down the misbelievers with a strong arm and a hearty good will. Everybody feared and hated him; and yet it was universally felt that he saved the house from the tyranny of a greater beast than himself. This was a fellow by name B——, who was mean and malicious, which F—— was not: I do not know what became of him; his name has not appeared in the Tyburn Calendar, which was the only place to look for it; and if he has been hanged, it must have been under an alias—an observation which is frequently made, when he is spoken of by his schoolfellows. He and F—— were of an age and standing, the giants of the house; but F—— was the braver, and did us the good office of keeping him in order. They hated each other cordially, and the evening before we were rid of 'Butcher B——,' F—— gave the whole house the great satisfaction of giving him a good thrashing."—(Vol. i. p. 150.)

Then follow some other and more amusing accounts of his schoolfellows, and of their after position and fortunes in the world, and the fragment concludes. It does not even relate the history of his expulsion from Westminster—apparently a very severe punishment for the offence he had committed. The boys had set up a paper called The Flagellant. In one of the numbers, which Southey had written, the subject of corporal punishment was handled in a manner which by no means pleased the headmaster; and for this offence he was, as is here expressed, privately expelled. The first appearance in print of our voluminous author was not fortunate.

With this event, therefore, Mr Cuthbert Southey commences the slight thread of biography on which these letters are strung. How far this expulsion from Westminster, by exasperating the mind of our young author, tended to foster a certain democratic and rebellious mode of thinking, we have no accurate means of judging; we can only guess that it would have some such tendency. He was now to proceed to Oxford; but the expelled of Westminster was rejected at Christ Church, in which college his uncle had particularly wished him to enter. He found refuge at Balliol, where he was admitted Nov. 3, 1792.

We have lost our guide, and the only guide that could have traced for us the course of his reading and the progress of his mind. Southey now somewhat abruptly appears before us as the ardent republican, and something verging on the communist. We left him with Tasso and the Fairy Queen, inditing or planning innumerable epics. We find him writing Wat Tyler, that poem whose singular history we shall have, by and by, to allude to. From intimations scattered through these letters, we learn that he had dieted rather freely upon Rousseau; that he had "corrected" this diet by a course of Godwin; and that with Godwin he had united Epictetus and Stoic morality. As aunt Tyler had purchased a translation of Rousseau's Emilie in order to educate her pupil, it is probable that he had heard of the philosopher of Geneva at a very early period. Perhaps it was the Contrat Social that first received him when he stepped from poetry to philosophy. At all events, the captivating ideas of perfect liberty and equality, which are there set forth, had taken full possession of his youthful mind.

At college his industry was still of the same vagrant self-directed description that it had hitherto been. He read much, but he did not distinguish himself in the special studies of the place, nor desired to do so. Now his uncle, the Rev. H. Hill, had designed that his nephew should enter the Church, where only he had the means of assisting his future advancement in life. When Southey first came to Oxford, he contemplated this as his future destination, though probably with no very good will. But it is quite evident that his course of reading and thinking has not been fitting him for the Church; and we are not at all surprised to find that this disinclination to take holy orders amounts at length to a decided and unconquerable repugnance. We might be rather surprised to find, as we do, that, throughout this era of the reign of liberty and equality, he retains his fervent and deep-rooted sentiments of piety. What exactly his theological creed had become, we have no distinct evidence before us: probably it was unsettled enough. But it is quite remarkable how strong a faith he has, throughout the whole of his career, in the great fundamental doctrine of religion—a future state of existence. It is no mere doctrinal belief, no dim and shadowy foreboding; it was such a belief as a European has in the existence of the continent of America. No emigrant can have a stronger conviction that he shall reach the new country he has embarked for, or that he shall meet such of his friends as have preceded him on the same voyage, than Southey has in that future world to which we are sailing over the ocean of time.

Mr Cuthbert Southey very wisely refrains from speaking decidedly upon his father's religious opinions. He leaves the impression on our mind that, according to his view, the Unitarian heresy was the utmost limit of his divergence from the orthodox standard. We doubt if Southey, at this time, had formed any doctrinal system full and precise enough to be classed under the name of Unitarianism. However that may be, it was impossible for him, with his relaxed creed, and his high sense of moral rectitude, to think of entering the Church. Such unhappily being the state of his opinions, he very properly abandoned all idea of taking orders. At a subsequent period of his life, we may remark that his repugnance to subscribe the articles of the Church of England may very fairly be attributed far more to the moral feelings than to the religious opinions of the man, far more to an extreme scrupulosity and the reluctance to fetter himself, than to any absolute heresy. This we may have an opportunity of showing as we advance farther in the correspondence.

But the Church being resigned, it was necessary to look out for some other career. He thinks of physic, and studies anatomy for a short time, but the dissecting-room disgusts him. He thinks, as doubtless many others have thought, and are thinking still, that some official appointment which would occupy his mornings with business, and leave his evenings for philosophy and poetry, would be a very suitable position, and he writes to his friend Bedford for his advice and interest in the matter. His friend bids him reflect whether he, with his burning republicanism, was exactly the person most likely to obtain the much sought for patronage of Government. At last he thinks of emigration. Rousseau and Coleridge convert the scheme of emigration into the project of Pantisocracy. Here is the provision for life, and liberty, and equality. The scheme is perfect. It will be house and home—it will be philosophy put in action.

The letters of Southey are not at this time the interesting compositions which some may have expected to find them; neither do they give us much insight into the details of this great scheme (though tried on a small scale) of a community of goods. The earlier letters—say those which, immediately succeeding the autobiography, occupy the remaining part of the first volume of the work—are indeed anything but pleasing or agreeable. The editor himself speaks of them in the following manner: "His letters, which at this time seem to have been exercises in composition, give evidence of his industry, and at the same time indicate a mind imbued with heathen philosophy and Grecian republicanism. They are written often in a style of inflated declamation, which, as we shall see, before many years had passed, subsided into a more natural and tranquil tone under the influence of his matured taste." They are the letters of a clever confident youth, and quite as disagreeable as such effusions usually are; full of flippant absurd judgments on men and things, varied with that affected self-disparagement which never fails to form a conspicuous part of such compositions. Their writers are profound philosophers at one moment, and rail at philosophy the next; full of their future fame, yet despising the only occupation that they love. "I am ready," says Southey, "to quarrel with my friends for not making me a carpenter, and with myself for devoting myself to pursuits certainly unimportant, and of no real utility either to myself or to others." One gets nothing from letters of this description. Our account of Pantisocracy we must take from the words of the editor himself:—

"We have seen," he says, "that in one or two of his early letters my father speaks of emigration to America as having entered his mind; and the failure of the plans I have just mentioned now caused him to turn his thoughts more decidedly in that direction; and the result was a scheme of emigration, to which those who conceived it gave the euphonious name of 'Pantisocracy.' This idea, it appears, was first originated by Mr Coleridge and one or two of his friends; and he mentioned it to my father, on becoming acquainted with him at Oxford. Their plan was to collect as many brother adventurers as they could, and to establish a community in the New World upon the most thoroughly social basis. Land was to be purchased with their common contributions, and to be cultivated by their common labour. Each was to have his portion of work assigned him; and they calculated that a large part of their time would still remain for social converse and literary pursuits. The females of the party—for all were to be married men—were to cook, and perform all domestic affairs; and having even gone so far as to plan the architecture of their cottages, and the form of their settlement, they had pictured as pleasant a Utopia as ever entered an ardent mind."—(P. 211.)

We nowhere gather what provision was made for any other branch of industry than the agricultural. Was each man to be his own tailor, shoemaker, carpenter, &c.? Or was each Pantisocrat to train himself for one special art, to be practised for the benefit of the whole? Or were they to export raw produce, or poetry, the results of their much literary leisure, and so obtain from the old civilised countries the necessary articles for a commodious life? If the last was their plan, their colony, by still being dependent upon other countries, would lose its character as a complete experiment of a new social organisation. The projectors seem to have thought of nothing beyond the cultivation of the soil, (if they had even studied this,) and the building or the architecture of their cottages. Never surely was such a scheme of colonisation devised. Amongst the whole number of emigrants, there were only two who, apparently, had ever handled anything but books. Shad, the servant lad, and one "Heath an apothecary!" They were all students, poets, or scholars; if they had ever reached the banks of the Susquehanna, they would have found, on unpacking their boxes, that they had all brought nothing but books.

Southey having had some notions of emigrating before he became a Pantisocrat, is heard now and then to talk about the price of "blue trousers and cloth jackets;" but Coleridge had a fixed idea, that all was to be done—at least all his part was to be done—by irresistible force of argument. "Pantisocracy!" he exclaims, in a letter which is here quoted; "Oh! I shall have such a scheme of it! My head, my heart, are all alive. I have drawn up my arguments in battle array." His head and his heart! As to what hands could do, that was to be left to others. He, on the banks of the Susquehanna, would still draw up arguments in battle array. "Up I rose," he says a little further on, speaking of one who had ventured to laugh at their project, "up I rose terrible in reasoning!" We can well believe it; and if terrible reasoning would have founded a colony, he would have been the most successful of emigrants. But it is palpable that in no other way, and by no other labour, would he have assisted the new settlement. Yet when Southey, coming to his senses, relinquished the scheme, Coleridge was grievously offended. He might well, indeed, be the last to resign the project. He would have gloriously defended the little band of zealots to the latest hour of their departure; he would have stood upon the beach, and protected their retreat from every logical assailant; he would have seen the last man safely on board; and still he would have stood, and reasoned, till the vessel was out of sight; then would he have returned home, and triumphed in the great Pantisocratic settlement he had founded in America!

Very absurd, indeed, was this scheme—very like what children plan after reading Robinson Crusoe. But we must observe, that there was nothing in it worse than its folly. There was no moral obliquity. If these enthusiasts formed a perilous scheme, they took upon themselves the whole of the peril. In these days, when bold theories of social organisation are more rife than ever, it may be well to remark, that this is the only honest way to put such theories to the test of experiment. It is not fair of the speculative man to sit at home, secure of the enjoyments which the present order of things procures for him, and, from his library-table and his easy-chair, to promulgate doctrines that may be preparing the way for future revolutions of the most disastrous description. Unless he is quite sure of his speculations, such an act is of the nature of a crime. But to go forth, as Southey and Coleridge, and the rest of the fraternal band intended, to the banks of the Susquehanna, and there, unaided and uninterrupted, reduce into practice their own theories, this would be of the nature of heroism. Now, if there are a certain number of thinking intelligent men and women, who have a firm faith in the possibility of a communistic organisation of society, we should much like them to make the experiment in the manner these Pantisocrats designed, but, of course, with vastly better preparations for their undertaking. This would be fair; and the experiment, though it failed, would not be without good result. Let a certain number of such educated men and women, willing and able to work with their hands, as well as with their brains, each one previously trained to some necessary or useful handicraft, club their fortunes together. Let them purchase a track of land on the banks of the Mississippi, or wherever they think fit, and then go forth with all the necessary implements of agriculture and manufacture, and the requisite skill to use them, and abundant store of provision, and there let them put to shame, by their brilliant example of equality and fraternity, the old civilisation of mankind, founded hitherto on the law of individual property and self-reliance. Who would not wish them success? Even those who would prophesy nothing but failure for the experiment, would admire the courage and good faith of those who made it. There are few of us who would not like such an experiment to be made—by others—always presuming, that the worst result to those who embarked in it would be the blundering commencement of a new colony, which would soon mould itself on the pattern of the old societies of Europe.

But to return to the course of our biography. This visionary project, while it lasted, was not without its real results on the career and fortunes of Southey. Funds were to be raised, and therefore a poem was to be written. He composed with redoubled zeal his Joan of Arc, his first epic, and the first performance which rendered him famous in the world. It was not, however, published till after the vision of Pantisocracy had vanished into thin air. The history of its publication is well known, and how Joseph Cottle, who generously purchased the copyright, has for ever linked his name with those of Southey and Coleridge, by this and other good services rendered to the young poets, when as yet the world knew nothing of their greatness.

The next result of his project was of a more serious description. All the Pantisocrats were to be married. Whether, in Southey's case, a previous attachment was thus suddenly matured into a formal engagement, or whether he had been engaged to Miss Fricker even before this notable scheme had been set on foot, we nowhere learn. Nothing is said of the early love of the young poet—how it rose and grew and flourished. This momentous chapter of his life is summed up in the following brief sentence. It was all, we suppose, that the son knew of the matter.

"In the course of this month, (August 1794,) Mr Coleridge having returned from his excursion in Wales, came to Bristol; and my father, who was then at Bath, having gone over to meet him, introduced him to Robert Lovell, (a Pantisocrat,) through whom, it appears, they both, at this time, became known to Mr Cottle; and here also Mr Coleridge first became acquainted with his future wife, Sarah Fricker, the eldest of the three sisters, one of whom was married to Robert Lovell, the other having been engaged for some time to my father. They were the daughters of Stephen Fricker, who had carried on a large manufactory of sugar pans or moulds at Westbury, near Bristol, and who, having fallen into difficulties in consequence of the stoppage of trade by the American war, had lately died, leaving his widow and six children wholly unprovided for."

Whatever was the date or progress of the attachment, Southey was now engaged to be married. But there was one person whose opinion had not yet been consulted in all these momentous enterprises. "Hitherto," says Mr Cuthbert Southey, "all had gone on pretty smoothly; the plan of emigration, as well as my father's engagement to Mary, had been carefully concealed from his aunt Miss Tyler, who, he was perfectly aware, would most violently oppose both; and now, when at last she became acquainted with his intentions, her anger knew no bounds." In fact, she turned him instantly—though it was night, and raining hard—out of her house, and shut the door for ever upon him.

We must quote the letter in which Southey gives an account of this terrible denouement. It introduces us at once into the state of affairs, his enthusiastic project, and the associates with whom it was to be carried out. A rather different account, it will be observed, is here given of its origin, than that which we have quoted from Mr Cuthbert Southey—

"To Thomas Southey.
Bath, Oct. 19, 1794.

My Dear Brother Admiral,—Here's a row! here's a kick up! here's a pretty commence! We have had a revolution in the College Green, and I have been turned out of doors in a wet night. Lo and behold! even like my own brothers, I am penniless. It was late in the evening; the wind blew and the rain fell, and I had walked from Bath in the morning. Luckily, my father's old greatcoat was at Lovell's; I clapt it on, swallowed a glass of brandy, and set off. I met an old drunken man three miles off, and was obliged to drag him all the way to Bath, nine miles! Oh Patience, Patience! thou hast often helped poor Robert Southey, but never didst thou stand him in more need than on Friday the 17th of October 1794.

Well, Tom, here I am. My aunt has declared she will never see my face again, or open a letter of my writing. So be it. I do my duty, and will continue to do it, be the consequences what they may. You are unpleasantly situated, so is my mother, so were we all, till this grand scheme of Pantisocracy flashed upon our minds, and now all is perfectly delightful.

Open war—declared hostilities! The children are to come here on Wednesday, and I meet them at the Long Coach on this evening. My aunt abuses poor Lovell most unmercifully, and attributes the whole scheme to him: you know it was concerted between Burnett and me. But of all the whole catalogue of enormities, nothing enrages my aunt so much as my intended marriage with Mrs Lovell's sister Edith: this will hardly take place till we arrive in America; it rouses the whole army of prejudices in my aunt's breast. Pride leads the fiery host, and a pretty kick-up they must make there....

Everything is in the fairest train. Favell and Le Grice, two young Pantisocrats of nineteen, join us; they possess great genius and energy. I have seen neither of them, yet correspond with both. You may, perhaps, like this sonnet on the subject of our emigration by Favell." [We skip the sonnet. It seems to have been held sufficient testimonial for his qualifications as an emigrant.] "This is a very beautiful piece of poetry; and we may form a very fair opinion of Favell from it. Scott, a brother of your acquaintance, goes with us. So much for news relative to our private politics.

This is the age of revolutions, and a huge one we have had on the College Green. Poor Shadrack is left there, in the burning fiery furnace of her displeasure, and a prime hot berth has he got of it: he saw me depart with astonishment. 'Why, sir, you be'nt going to Bath at this time of night, and in this weather! Do let me see you sometimes, and hear from you, and send for me when you are going.'

We are all well, and all eager to depart. March will soon arrive, and I hope you will be with us before that time.

Why should the man who acts from conviction of rectitude, grieve because the prejudiced are offended? For me, I am fully possessed by the great cause to which I have devoted myself: my conduct has been open, sincere, and just; and though the world were to scorn and neglect me, I should bear their contempt with calmness. Fare thee well.

Yours in brotherly affection,
Robert Southey."

"It might have been hoped," continues the editor, "that this storm would have blown over; and that, when Pantisocracy had died a natural death, and the marriage had taken place, Miss Tyler's angry feelings might have softened down; but it was not so—the aunt and nephew never met again!"

To describe this "natural death of Pantisocracy" is hardly necessary. When the expense of a passage to America presented itself as a serious obstacle, the scene of the experiment was shifted to Wales, evidently a mere stage in the natural process of dissolution. Brought from America to Wales, the scheme looked even still more hopeless, and was finally abandoned. Mr Cuthbert Southey, in the preface to his work, says, speaking of his father—"the even tenor of his life, during its greater portion, affords but little matter for pure biography." That portion of his father's life with which he was personally acquainted, exhibited, no doubt, this even tenor; but there are few men whose lives will, upon the whole, afford more striking materials for the future biographer. He who passed the day so evenly and uniformly at Keswick, amongst his books, and with his ever-busy pen, had experienced some of the most startling vicissitudes of life, and could recall scenes in which the very strongest passions of our nature must have been called into play.

What a singular and dramatic position—how full of agitating emotions—is that which next in order reveals itself! Pantisocracy is relinquished; but he is engaged to be married. Aunt Tyler is unmitigable. What is to be done? His uncle Hill comes to the rescue. He is chaplain to the English Factory at Lisbon; is at present on a visit to England, and will shortly return. Apparently he has never interfered, by any useless remonstrances, with his nephew's proceedings; he now invites him to return with him to Lisbon. Here, at all events, is an asylum for the present; here he may enjoy an interval of quiet thought, may study Portuguese and Spanish if he will, may see a foreign country; above all, may pursue his cogitations remote from republican associates—so thinks the uncle—and from Miss Fricker. Southey accepts the invitation. But whatever may become of his political opinions, he is resolved to put it out of his power to commit any inconsistency towards Edith Fricker. As soon as the day was finally fixed for his departure, he also fixed his marriage-day. On the 14th of November 1795, he was married at Radcliffe Church, Bristol. "Immediately after the ceremony, they parted. Edith wore her wedding-ring hung round her neck, and kept her maiden name till the report of the marriage had spread abroad." Writing to his friend Bedford, he says, with truth and feeling—"Never did man stand at the altar with such strange feelings as I did. Can you, Grosvenor, by any effort of imagination, shadow out my emotion?... She returned the pressure of my hand, and we parted in silence."

We cannot look upon his conduct on this occasion in any other light than as the natural course of a noble and generous nature. There was nothing in it unfair to the uncle. The uncle had speculated on the probability that separation would weaken his attachment; but the nephew had never stipulated that it should have this effect. The uncle had also anticipated that a change of scene would cure him of his democratic politics, but this did not put the nephew under any obligation to renounce his politics, or to submit them as fully as possible to the experiment to be made on them. One motive for his hastened marriage, he tells us, was, that in the event of his death at Lisbon, or on the voyage, his widow might have some claim on the protection of his own relatives, some of whom were wealthy. But on these relatives he threw no unwarrantable burden—no burden whatever—unless such as pure generosity might feel. There was no young family to be provided for. He would have left behind him a widow, whose prospects in life could not have been injured by merely having borne his name for a few months. Southey was of a confident nature, conscious of his own great abilities, of habitual and indomitable industry. Notwithstanding some occasional and very natural fits of depression, he must have felt persuaded that, sooner or later, in one way or the other, he should secure for himself a respectable position in life. He was engaged to Edith Fricker, and he was determined she should share that position with him, and that, in the mean time, she should at all events have no other doubts or fears than what the inconstancy or perversity of fortune might suggest.

Of this, his first visit to Lisbon, very little is recorded. His mind underwent no perceptible change. We have only two letters written by him at this period to his friends in England. From the last of them, he appears to have been impatient to return. It is dated thus—"Feb. 24, 1796, Lisbon, from which God grant me a speedy deliverance!"

He returned the same man, and returned to the same perplexities. Full of his poetry, occupied incessantly with literary projects, he has not yet the courage to trust to his pen for the necessary supplies. He will enter the profession of the law. From this he will extract that needful revenue which shall one day establish him in his country house, with his Edith, and amongst books of every description—except the legal.

Here follows a chapter in his history which, we think, is one of the most instructive of the whole; certainly not the less instructive because many others have been, and many others will be, submitted to the same trials. If Southey had fulfilled his design, and completed his own biography, it is probably upon this interval, between his first and his second visit to Lisbon, that he would have thought it necessary to dwell with the greatest minuteness.

"My father," says the son, "continued to reside in Bristol until the close of the year 1796, chiefly employed in working up the contents of his foreign note-books into Letters from Spain and Portugal, which were published in one volume early in the following year. This task completed, he determined to take up his residence in London, and fairly to commence the study of the law, which he was now enabled to do through the true friendship of Mr C. W. W. Wynn, from whom he received, for some years from this time, an annuity of L.160—the prompt fulfilment of a promise made during their years of college intimacy. This was indeed one of those acts of rare friendship—twice honourable—'to him that gives and him that takes it;' bestowed with pleasure, received without any painful feelings, and often reverted to as the staff and stay of those years when otherwise he must have felt to the full all the manifold evils of being, as he himself expressed it, 'cut adrift upon the ocean of life.'"

He was fairly to commence the study of the law, but he had not the least idea of renouncing his poetical and other literary labours. If the passion of authorship had been felt by Southey only in a slight degree—if it had been a little book he wanted to write, just to "exhale his soul," and then to sober business—this scheme would have been rational enough; but authorship, with its love of fame, had become the master passion of his mind—his second nature. Of "little books" Southey never thought—all his designs were vast, and they were innumerable. His whole life was already pledged. He was then upon Madoc, with Thalaba looming in the horizon. He is writing to his friend Bedford, just before he proceeds to London to commence the study of the law; and only note the sort of impedimenta he carries up with him, and the very auspicious temper in which he enters on the campaign.

"I want to write my tragedies of 'The Banditti.'

Of 'Sebastian.'

Of 'Iñez de Castro.'

Of 'The Revenge of Pedro.'

My Epic poem, in twenty books, of 'Madoc.'

My novel, in three volumes, of 'Edmund Oliver.'

My romance of 'Ancient History of Alcas.'

My Norwegian tale of '—— Harfagne.'

My Oriental poem of 'The destruction of the Dom Daniel.'

And, in case I adopt Rousseau's system, my '—— Pains of Imagination.'

There, Grosvenor, all these I want to write....

The law will neither amuse me, nor ameliorate me, nor instruct me; but the moment it gives me a comfortable independence—and I have but few wants—then farewell to London. I will get me some little house near the sea, and near a country town, for the sake of the post and the bookseller.... And perhaps, Grosvenor, the first Christmas-day you pass with me after I am so settled, we may make a Christmas fire of all my law-books. Amen, so be it."

He goes to London, and is admitted of Gray's Inn, Feb. 7, 1797. A few days afterwards, he writes in a graver mood to his early and staunch friend Joseph Cottle.

"I am now entered on a new way of life, which will lead me to independence. You know that I neither lightly undertake any scheme, nor lightly abandon what I have undertaken....

As to my literary pursuits, after some consideration, I have resolved to postpone every other till I have concluded Madoc. This must be the greatest of all my works. The structure is complete in my mind; and my mind is likewise stored with appropriate images....

On Tuesday we shall be settled; and on Wednesday my legal studies begin in the morning, and I shall begin with Madoc in the evening. Of this it is needless to caution you to say nothing, as I must have the character of a lawyer; and though I can and will unite the two pursuits, no one would credit the possibility of the union."

What follows shows, nevertheless, the folly of attempting to combine things utterly incongruous, and the mischief that may ensue from the attempt. It was very little that Southey could have studied the law, but the effort to force his attention to one subject, while his mind was really absorbed in another, and the perpetually intruding and distracting thought that he ought to be studying the law, was very nearly ruining his health irretrievably, and converting one of the most buoyant hilarious of men into the confirmed hypochondriac.

It was in February he came to London. The spring no sooner appeared than he began to pine for the country; he felt his spirits exhausted; he thought his legal studies could be as well pursued at the sea-side as in the smoke of London; he goes to Burton in Hampshire. There, or elsewhere in the country, he spends the whole summer. In December he returns to London, but "remains there only a very short time." He takes a cottage in the pretty village of Westbury, there to prosecute his legal studies. He stays a twelve-month at Westbury; nor does he again return to London to reside. He had attributed his ill-health to the smoke and confinement of the metropolis, but it is after his escape from London that his health becomes seriously deranged. He had not escaped from his legal studies, or rather from the sense of obligation constantly impending over him to pursue them, and the occasional attempts to compel his attention to the repulsive task.

The law cannot be accused of having encroached seriously on time that would have been else devoted to literature. He took long vacations, when the hated text-book and the detestable reports were banished entirely from his mind. Speaking of his residence at Westbury, he says, "it was one of the happiest portions of his life: he had never before or since produced so much poetry in the same space of time." But still the profession hung over him, urging, from time to time, its distracting obligations. Having escaped from the smoke of London, he now attributes his shattered nerves to the climate of England. But it was as little the climate of England, which his constitution afterwards endured very well in the cold and rainy regions of Cumberland, as it was any fair amount of intellectual labour, that was undermining his health. It was the sense of an unperformed task, and that compulsory and distracted attention, one half hour of which more tries and fatigues the brain than a whole morning spent in willing harmonious effort.

Bearing these observations in mind, the following letter will be read with peculiar interest:—

"TO GROSVENOR C. BEDFORD, ESQ.
Kingsdown, Bristol,
Dec. 21, 1799.

Grosvenor—I think seriously of going abroad. My complaint—so I am told by the opinion of many medical men—is wholly a diseased sensibility, (mind you, physical sensibility,) disordering the functions, now of the heart, now of the intestines, and gradually debilitating me. Climate is the obvious remedy. In my present state, to attempt to undergo the confinement of legal application were actual suicide. I am anxious to be well, and to attempt the profession: much in it I shall never do: sometimes my principles stand in the way, sometimes the want of readiness, which I felt from the first—a want which I always know in company, and never in solitude and silence. Howbeit I will make the attempt; but mark you, if by stage-writing, or any other writing, I can acquire independence, I will not make the sacrifice of happiness it will inevitably cost me. I love the country, I love study—devotedly I love it; but in legal studies it is only the subtlety of the mind that is exercised.

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I am not indolent; I loath indolence; but, indeed, reading law is laborious indolence—it is thrashing straw. I have read, and read, and read; but the devil a bit can I remember. I have given all possible attention, and attempted to command volition. No! The eye read, the lips pronounced, I understood and re-read it; it was very clear; I remembered the page, the sentence—but close the book, and all was gone!

I suffer a good deal from illness, and in a way hardly understandable by those in health. I start from sleep as if death had seized me. I am sensible of every pulsation, and compelled to attend to the motion of my heart till that attention disturbs it. The pain in my side is, I think, lessened, nor do I at all think it is consumption: organic affection it could not have been, else it had been constant; and a heart disease would not have been perceived there. I must go abroad, and recruit under better skies."—(Vol. ii. p. 33.)

He reads and reads, and he comprehends, but he does not remember. It would have been marvellous if he did, reading always with a divided attention. He never could bring all his mind to this task. "I would rather," he says in one place, "write an epic poem than read a brief." And in the most self-congratulatory moment, when he is the most reconciled, or in the least bad humour with the law, he writes thus: "I advance with sufficient rapidity. Blackstone and Madoc! I hope to finish my poem and begin my practice in about two years. I am clearing a farm; I am painting a landscape that shall rival Claude Lorraine!"

Southey had resolved to be poet and lawyer both. If he had really delighted in both studies—as Sir William Jones seems to have done—he might, like Sir William, have attained a certain degree of excellence in both. We have a living example before us of a judge who has written a far more beautiful poem than half-a-dozen Sir Williams could have indited. But with Southey one of these studies was not only indifferent but intolerable, whilst the other was most delectable. Under these circumstances, the attempt to unite them was ruining one of the best constitutions that a student was ever blest with by nature. We have no doubt that, if he had much longer seriously persisted in this attempt, there would have been a general wreck and ruin of mind and body both.

"My health," he says, writing to Mr May, "fluctuates, and the necessity of changing climate is sadly and sufficiently obvious, lest, though my disease should prove of no serious danger, the worst habits of hypochondriasm fasten upon me, and palsy all intellectual power." He took the wisest resolution the circumstances of the case admitted of—he embarked for Lisbon. He threw off entirely—at all events for a season, perhaps, in secret, for ever—the anxious burden of the law. He gave his whole soul to poetry; rode about in the paradise of Cintra, and wrote the concluding books of his Thalaba. So was he rescued from the fate of a nervous hypochondriac patient.

It is a piece of advice we would give to every man, but especially to the student. Harmonise your labours. If ambition prompt you to mingle two conflicting studies that will not accord, that breed perpetual civil war in the mind, we charge you to fling away ambition. If the higher, and more ambitious, and more beloved study—be it science, or poetry, or philosophy—will not yield, then choose at once for it and poverty, if such must be the alternative. Better anything than a ruined disordered mind; or, if you prefer the expression, than a confirmed cerebral disease.

Very pleasant was the life that Southey led at Lisbon and at Cintra, and very agreeable are the letters that he writes to England during this second visit to the Peninsula.

"You would be amused," he says in one of them, "could you see Edith and myself on ass-back—I sitting sideways, gloriously lazy, with a boy to beat my Bayardo, as well adapted to me as ever that wild courser was to Rinaldo. In this climate there is no walking, a little exercise heats so immoderately; but their cork woods, or fir woods, and mountain glens, and rock pyramids, and ever-flowing fountains, and lemon-groves ever in flower and in fruit, want only society to become a paradise. Could I but colonise Cintra with half-a-dozen families, I should never wish to leave it. As it is, I am comfortable, my health establishing itself, my spirits everlastingly partaking the sunshine of the climate. Yet I do hunger after the bread-and-butter, and the fireside comforts, and the intellect of England."—(Vol. ii. p. 109.)

On his return to England we hear no more of the law, or we hear only that it was entirely abandoned. We find him writing to Bedford (p. 159) about one solitary remaining law-book—"my whole proper stock—whom I design to take up to the top of Mount Etna, for the express purpose of throwing him down straight to the devil."

His sojourn in the Continent had led him to think that some foreign consulship would not be unacceptable. No appointment of this kind, however, offered itself. That of private secretary to Mr Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, was proposed to him, and he accepted it. "This had been brought about," says the Editor, "through his friend Mr Rickman, who was at that time secretary to Mr Abbot, and in consequence residing in Dublin—an additional inducement to my father to accept the appointment, as he would have to reside there himself during half the year."

He went to Dublin to take possession of his new office, but soon after returned to London, where the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer was in the habit of residing during the winter portion of the year. Mr Corry is described as a man of mild unassuming manners; and "the Chancellor and his scribe" got on very well together. But the Chancellor discovered that he had nothing to do for his very clever secretary. Having no sufficient official employment, he proposed to him to undertake the tuition of his son. This "was not in the bond," nor at all suited to Southey's habits and inclinations. To use his own words, he therefore resigned "a foolish office, and a good salary."

This was the last serious attempt he made to obtain the necessary supplies from any other source than his pen. He betook himself steadily to reviewing and other literary work. The Annual Register offered him constant employment till the Quarterly was established. For his residence, he thought first of Richmond, on the Thames; then of the Valley of Neath in Wales; finally, he established himself at Keswick.

We have thus brought down his biography to the period when, his political opinions considerably modified, and his literary avocations clearly defined before him, he takes up his residence at that place which will for ever be associated with his name, and assumes that character and position in which he was so long known and honoured by his contemporaries. Before leaving England, on his second voyage to Lisbon, he had written Madoc, (that is, in its rough state,) and had composed the greater part of Thalaba. The concluding books of Thalaba—that charming episode of Laila—were written amongst the hills and the cork forests of Cintra. The completed manuscript was sent to England, and was published soon after his own return. Madoc there received its last corrections and additions. The time is now come when we can take a glance at these and other poetical works, which were, and still are, the basis of his fame. The author is now himself moored safely in still waters, and his life henceforth is little more than the history of his writings, of his mind, his opinions, and his acts of beneficence; for these last occupy no small space in it. No relative can put in a claim to his assistance but it is granted to the utmost of his power, and often beyond such restrictions as prudence, and a regard to nearer claims, would suggest. He is open to the very enthusiasm of friendship, and prepared for any self-sacrifice that the most romantic sense of duty can demand. Nor is there any young poet struggling with that world which his love of letters has made appear so harsh and cruel, to whom Southey does not extend his sympathy, his guidance, and his aid. But as the remaining portion of our task would occupy more space than we could assign to it, and as we have arrived at a fair halting-place, we will here break off for the present.

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