CHAPTER VI.
Lord L'Estrange threw himself on a sofa, and leant his cheek on his hand thoughtfully. Audley Egerton sate near him, with his arms folded, and gazed on his friend's face with a soft expression of aspect, which was very unusual to the firm outline of his handsome features. The two men were as dissimilar in person as the reader will have divined that they were in character. All about Egerton was so rigid, all about L'Estrange so easy. In every posture of Harley's there was the unconscious grace of a child. The very fashion of his garments showed his abhorrence of restraint. His clothes were wide and loose; his neckcloth, tied carelessly, left his throat half bare. You could see that he had lived much in warm and southern lands, and contracted a contempt for conventionalities; there was as little in his dress as in his talk of the formal precision of the north. He was three or four years younger than Audley, but he looked at least twelve years younger. In fact, he was one of those men to whom old age seems impossible—voice, look, figure, had all the charm of youth; and, perhaps it was from this gracious youthfulness—at all events, it was characteristic of the kind of love he inspired—that neither his parents, nor the few friends admitted into his intimacy, ever called him, in their habitual intercourse, by the name of his title. He was not L'Estrange with them, he was Harley; and by that familiar baptismal I will usually designate him. He was not one of those men whom author or reader wish to view at a distance, and remember as "my Lord"—it was so rarely that he remembered it himself. For the rest, it had been said of him by a shrewd wit—"He is so natural that every one calls him affected." Harley L'Estrange was not so critically handsome as Audley Egerton; to a commonplace observer he was, at best, rather goodlooking than otherwise. But women said that he had "a beautiful countenance," and they were not wrong. He wore his hair, which was of a fair chestnut, long, and in loose curls; and instead of the Englishman's whiskers, indulged in the foreigner's moustache. His complexion was delicate, though not effeminate: it was rather the delicacy of a student, than of a woman. But in his clear grey eye there was wonderful vigour of life. A skilful physiologist, looking only into that eye, would have recognised rare stamina of constitution—a nature so rich that, while easily disturbed, it would require all the effects of time, or all the fell combinations of passion and grief, to exhaust it. Even now, though so thoughtful, and even so sad, the rays of that eye were as concentred and steadfast as the light of the diamond.
"You were only, then, in jest," said Audley, after a long silence, "when you spoke of this mission to Florence. You have still no idea of entering into public life."
"None."
"I had hoped better things when I got your promise to pass one season in London. But, indeed, you have kept your promise to the ear to break it to the spirit. I could not presuppose that you would shun all society, and be as much of a hermit here as under the vines of Como."
"I have sate in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers; I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have walked your streets, I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her wrinkles with rouge."
"Of what dowager do you speak?" asked the matter-of-fact Audley.
"She has a great many titles. Some people call her fashion, you busy men, politics: it is all one—tricked out and artificial. I mean London life. No, I can't fall in love with her, fawning old harridan!"
"I wish you could fall in love with something."
"I wish I could, with all my heart."
"But you are so blasé."
"On the contrary, I am so fresh. Look out of the window—what do you see?"
"Nothing!"
"Nothing—"
"Nothing but houses and dusty lilacs, my coachman dozing on his box, and two women in pattens crossing the kennel."
"I see none of that where I lie on the sofa. I see but the stars. And I feel for them as I did when I was a schoolboy at Eton. It is you who are blasé, not I—enough of this. You do not forget my commission, with respect to the exile who has married into your brother's family?"
"No; but here you set me a task more difficult than that of saddling your cornet on the War Office."
"I know it is difficult, for the counter influence is vigilant and strong; but, on the other hand, the enemy is so damnable a traitor that one must have the Fates and the household gods on one's side."
"Nevertheless," said the practical Audley, bending over a book on the table, "I think that the best plan would be to attempt a compromise with the traitor."
"To judge of others by myself," answered Harley with spirit, "it were less bitter to put up with wrong than to palter with it for compensation. And such wrong! Compromise with the open foe—that may be done with honour; but with the perjured friend—that were to forgive the perjury!"
"You are too vindictive," said Egerton; "there may be excuses for the friend, which palliate even"—
"Hush! Audley, hush! or I shall think the world has indeed corrupted you. Excuse for the friend who deceives, who betrays! No, such is the true outlaw of Humanity; and the Furies surround him even while he sleeps in the temple."
The man of the world lifted his eyes slowly on the animated face of one still natural enough for the passions. He then once more returned to his book, and said, after a pause, "It is time you should marry, Harley."
"No," answered L'Estrange, with a smile at this sudden turn in the conversation—"not time yet; for my chief objection to that change in life is, that all the women now-a-days are too old for me, or I am too young for them. A few, indeed are so infantine that one is ashamed to be their toy; but most are so knowing that one is a fool to be their dupe. The first, if they condescend to love you, love you as the biggest doll they have yet dandled, and for a doll's good qualities—your pretty blue eyes, and your exquisite millinery. The last, if they prudently accept you, do so on algebraical principles; you are but the X or the Y that represents a certain aggregate of goods matrimonial—pedigree, title, rent-roll, diamonds, pin-money, opera-box. They cast you up with the help of mamma, and you wake some morning to find that plus wife minus affection equals—the Devil!"
"Nonsense," said Audley, with his quiet grave laugh. "I grant that it is often the misfortune of a man in your station to be married rather for what he has, than for what he is; but you are tolerably penetrating, and not likely to be deceived in the character of the woman you court."
"Of the woman I court?—No! But of the woman I marry, very likely indeed. Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at school; but her change par excellence is from the fairy you woo to the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite, it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments. She paints charmingly, or plays like St Cecilia. Clap a ring on her finger, and she never draws again—except perhaps your caricature on the back of a letter, and never opens a piano after the honeymoon. You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her nerves are so shattered that you can't contradict her but you are whirled into a storm of hysterics. You marry her because she declares she hates balls and likes quiet; and ten to one but what she becomes a patroness at Almacks, or a lady in waiting."
"Yet most men marry, and most men survive the operation."
"If it were only necessary to live, that would be a consolatory and encouraging reflection. But to live with peace, to live with dignity, to live with freedom, to live in harmony with your thoughts, your habits, your aspirations—and this in the perpetual companionship of a person to whom you have given the power to wound your peace, to assail your dignity, to cripple your freedom, to jar on each thought and each habit, and bring you down to the meanest details of earth, when you invite her, poor soul, to soar to the spheres—that makes the to be, or not to be, which is the question."
"If I were you, Harley, I would do as I have heard the author of Sandford and Merton did—choose out a child and educate her yourself after your own heart."
"You have hit it," answered Harley seriously. "That has long been my idea—a very vague one, I confess. But I fear I shall be an old man before I find even the child.
"Ah!" he continued, yet more earnestly, while the whole character of his varying countenance changed again—"ah! if indeed I could discover what I seek—one who with the heart of a child has the mind of a woman; one who beholds in nature the variety, the charm, the never feverish, ever healthful excitement that others vainly seek in the bastard sentimentalities of a life false with artificial forms; one who can comprehend, as by intuition, the rich poetry with which creation is clothed—poetry so clear to the child when enraptured with the flower, or when wondering at the star! If on me such exquisite companionship were bestowed—why, then"—He paused, sighed deeply, and, covering his face with his hand, resumed, in faltering accents,—
"But once—but once only, did such vision of the Beautiful made human rise before me—rise amidst 'golden exhalations of the dawn.' It beggared my life in vanishing. You know only—you only—how—how"—
He bowed his head, and the tears forced themselves through his clenched fingers.
"So long ago!" said Audley, sharing his friend's emotion. "Years so long and so weary, yet still thus tenacious of a mere boyish memory."
"Away with it, then!" cried Harley, springing to his feet, and with a laugh of strange merriment. "Your carriage still waits: set me home before you go to the House."
Then laying his hand lightly on his friend's shoulder, he said, "Is it for you, Audley Egerton, to speak sneeringly of boyish memories? What else is it that binds us together? What else warms my heart when I meet you? What else draws your thoughts from blue-books and beer-bills, to waste them on a vagrant like me? Shake hands. Oh, friend of my boyhood! recollect the oars that we plied and the bats that we wielded in the old time, or the murmured talk on the moss-grown bank, as we sate together, building in the summer air castles mightier than Windsor. Ah! they are strong ties, those boyish memories, believe me! I remember as if it were yesterday my translation of that lovely passage in Persius, beginning—let me see—ah!—
"Quum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit,"
that passage on friendship which gushes out so livingly from the stern heart of the satirist. And when old —— complimented me on my verses, my eye sought yours. Verily, I now say as then,
"Nescio quod, certe est quod me tibi temperet astrum."[2]
Audley turned away his head as he returned the grasp of his friend's hand; and while Harley, with his light elastic footstep, descended the stairs, Egerton lingered behind, and there was no trace of the worldly man upon his countenance when he took his place in the carriage by his companion's side.
Two hours afterwards, weary cries of "Question, question!" "Divide, divide!" sank into reluctant silence as Audley Egerton rose to conclude the debate—the man of men to speak late at night, and to impatient benches: a man who would be heard; whom a Bedlam broke loose would not have roared down; with voice clear and sound as a bell, and form as firmly set on the ground as church-tower. And while, on the dullest of dull questions, Audley Egerton thus, not too lively himself, enforced attention, where was Harley L'Estrange? Standing alone by the river at Richmond, and murmuring low fantastic thoughts as he gazed on the moonlit tide.
When Audley left him at home, he had joined his parents, made them gay with his careless gaiety, seen the old-fashioned folks retire to rest, and then—while they, perhaps, deemed him once more the hero of ball-rooms and the cynosure of clubs—he drove slowly through the soft summer night, amidst the perfumes of many a garden and many a gleaming chestnut grove, with no other aim before him than to reach the loveliest margin of England's loveliest river, at the hour the moon was fullest and the song of the nightingale most sweet. And so eccentric a humourist was this man, that I believe, as he there loitered—no one near to cry "How affected!" or "How romantic!"—he enjoyed himself more than if he had been exchanging the politest "how-d'ye-do's" in the hottest of London drawing-rooms, or betting his hundreds on the odd trick with Lord De R—— for his partner.
TRANSATLANTIC TOURISTS.[3]
Books of European travel beyond the Atlantic, of rare appearance only a few years ago, bid fair to become plentiful as snags in the Mississippi or buffaloes on the prairies of the West. Emigration, Californian gold, and the perfection of steam-navigation, have brought America to our door. The falls of Niagara now behold as many European visitors as did those of Schaffhausen half a century since; and Broadway is as familiar a word as were the Boulevards before the Peace. Even amidst her own revolutions, embroilments, and alarms, the eyes of Europe have of late been fixed with unusual attention upon the New World. Mexico, California, Cuba—aggrandising wars, treasure-seeking enterprise, piratical aggression—in turn have filled the columns of our newspapers and occupied a large share of our thoughts.
Mr X. Marmier is a French gentleman who has devoted his life to wandering in foreign lands, and writing narratives of his peregrinations. North and south, east and west, nothing is too hot or too cold for him. To-day, in frozen Iceland, he studies Scandinavian history; to-morrow, on Algerine sands, he rambles in the footsteps of Bugeaud. Behold him, in the sweet springtime, strolling beneath blossoms on the sunny banks of Rhine: autumn comes, and he pensively roams by the mystical waters of Nile. Russia, Sweden and Holland, Lapland and Poland, have in turn had the happiness to possess him. Europe, to him, is thrice-trodden ground, and Asia bears the print of his foot. His travels are reckoned by thousands of leagues, his writings by dozens of volumes. No wonder that his erratic tastes have at last driven him across the Atlantic. There he adheres to his magnificent contempt of space. His is no limited excursion to Boston and New York, Washington and New Orleans: the St Lawrence and the Mississippi are boundaries too narrow for his aspiring soul and many-leagued boots. One vast continent is insufficient to satisfy his craving after locomotion. North America explored, Cuba visited, he pauses and hesitates. The quay of the Havana is the last place where a professed wanderer can be expected to cut short his rambles and go home. There sea and sky are both so bright and calm, that recollections of past tempests and less hospitable shores fade into indistinctness. There, too, are facilities of departure for almost any part of the globe. "Thence," says M. Marmier, in an ecstasy of perplexity, "sail the English packets which coast, in their rapid course, the whole emerald chain of the Antilles; thence, the American steamers, transporting to Chagres the legions of pilgrims attracted by the worship of gold to the Californian shrine; thence, French and English vessels, which in a few weeks convey their passengers to the noble city of Nantes or the spacious harbour of Cadiz." Beset by so many seductions, M. Marmier could not be expected to choose the nearest way to Paris. Nor did he; and therefore is it that, upon the title-page of his book, Rio de la Plata succeeds the names of Canada, United States, Havana.
Mr John Glanville Taylor is a traveller of a very different stamp. No amateur wanderer, in quest of novelty or with a view to a book, he crossed the Atlantic (in the spring of 1841) when a lad of eighteen, to seek his fortune—as appears from his own account of the matter—but with mining more particularly in view. Finding nothing to do in the States, he proceeded, after a short sojourn, to Cuba, to investigate the prospects of a newly-discovered gold-vein. This proving unproductive, he entered into partnership with a planter and slave-owner, was ruined by the drought and famine of 1843-4, served as overseer of a sugar plantation, and, finally, after upwards of three years' residence in the island, returned to England via New York. The volume containing such portions of his adventures and observations, during his absence from this country, as he has deemed worth recording, is manly in tone, tolerably interesting in substance, and contains, here and there, scraps of useful information, although the author's opinions are sometimes crude and hastily formed—the fault of a young writer, and yet younger traveller. His downright matter-of-fact views often contrast amusingly with those of the more experienced and literary Frenchman. As a traveller sentimental rather than adventurous—as a writer we have usually found M. Marmier facile rather than fascinating, and oftener insipid than graphic. In his books of European travel there is a lack of the vivid and lively; and his style, correct and not ungraceful, has yet a monotony that acts somniferously on the reader. His work on America is an improvement on his previous publications. The nine hundred pages might perhaps have been compressed, with advantage, into two-thirds of the space; but still, amidst a superabundance of words, we find pointed and interesting passages, and occasionally an original view of men and things Transatlantic.
Frenchmen are very apt to express great sympathy with, and admiration of, the people of the United States. This arises from various causes. Some are smitten with their democratic institutions; some exult in American independence as a triumph over England; others assume a share in that triumph, on account of French auxiliaries in the American War; whilst others, again, suffer their imaginations to be captivated by the wonderfully rapid rise and prodigious development of American wealth and power. It does not require any great amount of sentiment and fancy to get up this kind of love-at-a-distance. Many of our readers remember Miss Edgeworth's clever tale of L'Amie Inconnue, where a romantic young lady conceives a violent attachment for the authoress of a sentimental novel, corresponds with her under the name of Araminta, makes a pilgrimage to Wales to seek her in a cottage amidst honeysuckles, and finally has her illusions destroyed by discovering her in a two-pair-back at Bristol, putting brandy in her tea, and bullying a lover named Nathaniel. This is exactly the sort of disenchantment in store for those Frenchmen who, after picturing to themselves the United States as a democratic Utopia, the very paradise of the worshippers of Liberty, have occasion to visit the unseen land of their affections. On arrival in the States, nineteen out of twenty of them find themselves about as comfortable as a cat in a kennel of terriers. They are not spitefully worried, certainly, but unintentionally they are most awfully annoyed. In fact, no two characters can be more antagonistic than those of the Frenchman and American. However strong his predetermination, the former finds it impossible to be pleased in the country where he had fondly anticipated so much gratification. The most he can do is to laud Yankee energy and enterprise, and to pass lightly over the details of manners and customs that jar with all his notions of propriety and enjoyment of life.
"Before I put foot on shore," says M. Marmier, "I felt disposed to love that American land whose mere aspect makes so many hearts beat, and gives birth to so many hopes." He may love the land, but he very soon lets us see that he does not much like the dwellers upon it. After sketching their busy habits and feverish activity, their unremitting pursuit of lucre and contempt of an intellectual far niente, he thus continues his epistle to the unknown lady-correspondent to whom all the Lettres sur l'Amérique are addressed:
"It would be false to say that such vigorous commercial faculties, and such habits, constitute an amiable people; and truly I would not wish you to live amongst them, nor do I imagine that they will ever leave in my heart one of those tender memories which I still retain of the dear natives of Germany and Scandinavia, and even of the Turks, who are such worthy people."
M. Marmier, we may here observe, is constitutionally tender. A pensive softness is the general characteristic of his writings. He is addicted to moonlight; the sight of a wooden hut in a sunny nook of the Hudson sets him dreaming about love in a cottage, and quoting Tom Moore with indifferent orthography; in his moments of melancholy he loves to muse by the river-side, and repeat to himself a certain ditty about roses, rivulets, and nightingales, which he picked up in Canada. With such gentle tastes, something more than a trifle is needed to betray him into wrath and sarcasm. On the other hand, the delicacy of his organisation evidently makes him peculiarly liable to be shocked by certain Yankee qualities and habits. One of the first annoyances he experiences is from the curiosity of his fellow-passengers on board a Hudson steamboat. He feels it the more that he has just suffered from their taciturnity, and found it impossible to obtain from them other than monosyllabic replies to his questions concerning the places they pass.
"With a phlegm, compared to which British phlegm is jovial vivacity, the American combines an inquisitiveness worthy of a savage; and the attention which was denied me when I sought a few details concerning the scenes we traversed, was soon fixed upon me, to my great discomfort, by various parts of my dress. One of them took hold of my watch-chain, without the least ceremony, turned and twisted it about between his dirty fingers, then, satisfied with the examination, walked away without uttering a word. Another, seated beside me, suddenly exclaimed—'You have got a Paris hat,' and forthwith took it off my head, closed and opened the springs, showed it to one of his neighbours, and, when they had both looked at it inside and out, gave it back into my hands. A moment later, having to pay my bill to the steward, I was so unfortunate as to open my purse—a beautiful little purse of cherry-coloured silk and gold. Forthwith an American fell violently in love with it, pulled out a horrible knitted bag, and proposed a barter. I laughed in his face. I hid my purse, but he still persecuted me. At last I ground between my teeth, Yankee fashion, a d——, which made him step back a pace or two. To avoid being thus beset, I put my hat into its box, and covered my head with a cap; I put my watch-chain into my pocket, buttoned my waistcoat over my breast-pin, and, thanks to these precautions, I could at last walk about and sit on deck without being exposed to stupid importunity."
It may be said that M. Marmier is hardly indulgent enough to the honest Yankees, to whose curiosity the sight of a live Frenchman, in trinkets and a Gibus hat, and 'fresh as imported,' was doubtless a strong stimulant. A countrywoman of his (by connections, habits, and residence, although not by birth) has described, in a very charming work,[4] similar traits in a more tolerant tone. She also was in a steamboat on the Hudson, when she suddenly found herself surrounded, or rather assailed, by a crowd of women, who wonderingly contemplated an embroidery in brilliant colours with which she was occupied.
"After an examination of some minutes' duration," says Madame de Merlin, "they seized upon the tapestry without looking at me or making the least apology, as if the knees on which it rested had been the tray of a work-box; then alternately taking possession of wools, scissors, thimble, they passed them from hand to hand without taking the slightest heed of the person to whom they belonged. At last the boldest amongst them carried off the embroidery and disappeared. I begged my companion to follow her, and ascertain what she meant to do with it. In a few minutes she brought it back, after showing it to her friends, who were below in the cabin. Soon a second group of women accosted me; one of them, without the slightest preamble or polite preface, asked me if I were French. On my reply in the affirmative,—'We never see your countrywomen in these parts,' said she; 'you please us. Do all Frenchwomen resemble you?' Then she ran to fetch her husband, and planted him before me like a sentry, showing me to him as she might have done a curious bird. What think you of this savage curiosity of the women of the West, of these strange manners and artless avowals? They have something confiding and primitive which pleases me."
Lenient to the deficiencies of American women, the amiable and accomplished Countess Merlin expresses plainly and forcibly her disgust at the manners of the men. M. Marmier echoes her complaints. Not so Mr Taylor, who visited America at an age when all that is novel pleases, and who can see no fault in the natives. He reluctantly admits their dress to be a little precise, and their manners rather graver than he likes; in their cities and societies he complains of a lack of cordiality, and of the scarcity of dinner-parties. He thinks tobacco-chewing a nasty habit, although he doubts not that to others it may seem just the reverse. But he totally denies that Americans are at all inquisitive, and refutes, quite to his own satisfaction, the rash assertions of those European travellers who have declared the bulk of them to be coarse and gluttonous feeders. In the enthusiasm of his vindication, he says that, "far from being guilty of gluttony, they appear to eat merely to live, and may be blamed rather for seeming to care too little for the good things of this life." The Englishman, according to Mr Taylor, is the exact opposite of the American in this respect, and the Spaniard has hit the happy medium. Here is what M. Marmier says upon the subject:—
"Whilst I thus gossip with you, as if I were seated in an arm-chair at your chimney corner, I forget the dining-room already noted, the bill of fare printed on vellum paper, the smart waiters in round jackets and white aprons, exactly like those at Vefour's. My fellow-travellers, are far from a similar forgetfulness of one of the chief enjoyments of the steamer. Some of them, as soon as they came on board, paid it a long visit, and soon returned thither for the second time. Is it not Brillat-Savarin who has said—'Elsewhere men eat, at Paris only do they know how to dine.' Had he seen this country, he would have said—'Here men do not eat, they devour.' The word is hardly expressive enough. Better to understand the full force I wish to give it, please to refer to Buffon under the heading Pike and Shark. You will then, perhaps, have some idea of American voracity. Here is the usual order of the daily meals in the United States:—Between seven and eight o'clock in the morning, a bell, a gong, or some other noisy instrument, announces breakfast. This consists of joints of roast-beef, ox-tongues, ducks, and fowls, accompanied with potatoes, bread and butter, and other light dishes. The Americans rush to table like starving animals. It is really the only suitable comparison. Heedless of his neighbours, careless of the most ordinary rules of European politeness, each man draws towards himself every dish within his reach, and piles upon one or two plates enormous pyramids of meat, butter, and vegetables. Then he works away with hands and teeth, as if his moments were numbered, without speaking, almost without drawing breath, but following with haggard eyes the dishes that travel away from him, and harpooning them as soon as they come within reach, to seize upon a fresh supply.
This first operation finished, the American lights a cigar; goes to the place where spirits are sold, which is here called the bar-room; tosses off a glass of whisky or Madeira, and sets himself to ruminate till the hour of noon. Noon is very far off, and many are unable to get through this mortal interval of four hours without a second and third visit to the dear bar-room, after which they ruminate again. The bell announces luncheon, consisting of soup, a box of sardines, cold meat, butter, and a lump of cheese. At three o'clock, another tap on the tom-tom—the best, the most desired of all; it proclaims dinner, of which the two preceding repasts were but the modest preface. This time the table is covered from one end to the other with vast dishes, containing enormous roasted joints, highly-spiced sauces, prodigious puddings. The same appetite as at breakfast, the same universal silence. No sounds but the clatter of knife and fork, and the crunching of bones between impatient jaws. So great is the hurry in which this third repast is got through, that the diners do not even think of wiping their knives before plunging them into the salt or butter, and napkins are habitually thrown aside, for the manifest reason that the use of the napkin entails a loss of time. Yet these people laugh at Turks for using neither spoons nor forks at their meals. I remember to have eaten a few dinners with Turks, and I declare that they were models of cleanliness compared to those at which I have been compelled to assist in American hotels and steamers.
Dinner over, the rest of the day is long to get through. Accordingly, towards seven o'clock, you hear, for the fourth time, the blessed bell inviting the inmates of the building to a cup of tea or coffee, accompanied by cold game or salted meats, after which visits to the bar-room may be recommenced ad libitum.
To see these men of business thus rush to table, and stow away a whole cargo of miscellaneous viands in less time than a Spaniard takes to imbibe a single cup of chocolate, one might imagine that they consider every minute passed in the dining-room as so much time lost, and that they are in desperate haste to return to their counting-house, and bury themselves in ledgers and day-books. Unfortunately, as on leaving the eating-room I have almost invariably found every man of them with his body on one chair, and his feet, raised to a level with his head, on the back of another, I am bound to conclude that it is not business, but an unparalleled voracity, which induces them to feed at steeple-chase pace.
Many travellers who here, in the States, are considered very impertinent, but who nevertheless write with the most amiable intentions, attribute the cold taciturnity of Americans to their preoccupation with commercial combinations or political affairs. I believe that, without doing them injustice, one might very often attribute it to the labour of the digestive organs, put four times a-day to a severe task, and which frequently, in their fatigue, require the employment of soda-water, and almost continually the acrid and hideous mastication of a roll of tobacco. The fact is, that in general the American is much more silent than the Turk. There is also this difference between them—the Turk, seated on a carpet, with his silken vest, his long beard, his large turban, appears nobly indolent or gently meditative, and the stranger's eye may rest with pleasure on his calm and benevolent physiognomy; the silence of the American, on the contrary, is gloomy and uneasy, dry and hard, (sec et dur.) His countenance is pointed, his movements are stiff and angular. His repose is not the happy placidity of the Oriental, or of the southern European—the enjoyment of kief, the pleasure of the siesta; it is a sort of prostration, agitated from time to time by a feverish movement."
The following sketch is certainly not very flattering. After laying down the rather novel proposition, that man is one of the ugliest of created animals, M. Marmier proceeds to prove the American the ugliest of all civilised races of men:—
"Picture to yourself, if you please, a lean figure with bony wrists, feet of dimensions that would for ever tarnish the scutcheon of a gentleman, a hat stuck upon the back of the head, straight hair; a cheek swollen, not by an accidental cold, but from morning till night by a lump of tobacco; lips stained yellow by the juice of the same plant; a black coat with narrow skirts, a tumbled shirt, the gloves of a gendarme,[5] trousers in harmony with the rest of the equipment, and you will have before you the exact portrait of a thoroughbred Yankee."
All this would shock Mr Taylor. Substantially, however, it is true enough. Sealsfield, himself a naturalised American, and a warm admirer of the institutions of his adopted country, has sketched scenes very similar to M. Marmier's delineations of hotel and steamboat life—life in those places of resort being pretty equally divided between the dining-table, the bar, and the spittoon. Hamilton, Marryat, Mrs Trollope, and other keen observers and able writers,[6] have enabled us to dispense with the accounts of foreign travellers in the States. But still the verdict passed upon the citizens of the Great Republic by an educated and intelligent Frenchman must always possess weight and interest. Were M. Marmier an irritable or grumbling traveller, one might think it right to receive his impressions with caution; but, on the contrary, in all his previous books that we have seen, he has shown himself so indulgent and easy to please, that it is impossible to refuse him credit when he adopts a different tone, and abandons his habitual suavity for such severity of sarcasm as he may have at command. We have seen him annoyed and disgusted on board the steamers; presently we find him put to the torture in an American stage:—
"The railway left me at Cumberland, and handed me over to the stage-coach. Probably you do not know what a stage-coach is in this country. It is a wooden box placed on four wheels, and intended to convey travellers along roads which the locomotive has not yet favoured with its visits. But what a box, and what a road! We were nine, packed together like herrings in a barrel, jolting through the ruts and bounding over the stones as if we had been afflicted with St Vitus's dance. Add to these comforts the delightful society of seven graceful Americans, chewing, spitting, and (in order to be more at their ease) taking off their boots. A timid, delicate young girl, seated in one of the corners of this infamous box, suffered in silence, and the next morning we found her in a swoon. For my part, I passed the night in tossing to one side or the other an enormous dirty body which constantly fell back upon me, and two enormous legs which seemed determined to crush mine. Assuredly, if a severe penance can, according to expiatory dogmas, cleanse us from our sins, my soul ought, after these twenty-four hours of coaching, to be as pure as that of the newborn child; and if ever I meet an Indian fakeer in quest of a new torture wherewith to propitiate the goddess Siwa, I will send him to America, to travel by the Cumberland stage."
Madame de Merlin, certainly a very amiable and hardy traveller, slow to feel small annoyances or to censure foreign habits, is unable to conceal her disgust at some of the practices which so shocked M. Marmier. She went out to New York in the same vessel with Fanny Elssler, and was present at her first appearance in that city.
"The enthusiasm," she says, "was immense; I thought myself at Rome, and had difficulty in recognising the nation that talks by measure and walks by springs. But soon these men, with hat on head and coat off, lying down upon their seats, and who, after placing their heavy-nailed shoes on the ground, carelessly rested their woollen-stockinged feet on the back of their neighbours' chairs, reminded me that I was in the United States."
On entering the railway between New York and Philadelphia, the Countess found it—
"Full of men and newspapers, the former carrying the latter. There were sixty-five travellers. When I went in, every place seemed full, and no one stirred. I had a right to my place, for which I had paid beforehand. The conductor addressed a few words to one of the occupants of a bench intended for four persons, but which was then occupied but by three. The traveller continued to read, and paid not the least attention to what was said to him. Second appeal, same insensibility. Then the conductor pushed him. He yielded to this third and energetic summons, but without raising his head from his newspaper, and as if he had been displaced by a jolt of the carriage. This passenger was the only one who wore gloves. One must see this nation to form an idea of its manners. Here a man lets himself be pushed, elbowed, hustled, and suffers his toes to be trodden upon, without wincing; what is still more astonishing, he sees people lean upon his wife before his eyes, and endures all these insults with stoical tranquillity—the contrary would appear absurd or ridiculous.... During the journey, my neighbour thought proper to rest his back against my shoulder. I gently told him of it. He took no heed, and preserved his position—not with any impertinent intention, but because he found himself comfortable. At sight of this, my young companion, a Spaniard by blood, a Frenchman by education, turned red and pale alternately; his lips were compressed, his eyes flashed. I was frightened; but suddenly, assuming an air of calmness, he extended his hands, placed them on the back of my boorish neighbour, and pushed him quietly into his place.
'If I had put myself in a passion with him,' he afterwards said to me, 'he would never have understood why.'
'And you would have been wrong,' added Mr W—n; 'how can one be angry with people who would think it quite natural that you should behave in the same way to their wives and daughters?'"
It is not surprising that Mr Taylor, at his age, and in his superficial glance at the United States, should have overlooked a point of American character which particularly strikes M. Marmier, the poet and dilettante, and Madame de Merlin, the high-bred and intellectual woman. This is, the general sacrifice, to the positively and materially useful, of those pursuits and refinements which are the grace, and embellishment of human existence. The neglect of the fine arts, the absence of feeling for the beautiful, are there the result of the ardour for speculation and the all-absorbing pursuit of dollars.
"The artist," says Madame de Merlin, "is assimilated to the artisan, and art is measured by the yard, like merchandise. They do not cultivate music or painting, or even flowers. Do you wish to inhale the perfume of a flower? you must buy it at a high price: it is an article of trade, and only to be found at the nurseryman's. I am not aware of a single picture in the United States, unless it be in the Pantheon, where several memorable epochs of the American Revolution are rudely represented upon some old panels of wall. In this country, all that is beautiful is forbidden: the beautiful is not useful. The grace of the human form, music, poetry, painting, flowers, are blessings vouchsafed by Providence to man to soften the bitterness of his days of mourning, to alleviate the burthen of his chains; they are gleams of joy amidst long years of struggle, brilliant flashes through the gloom of night; they are the luxury of human life."
Less elegant and eloquent than Madame de Merlin, M. Marmier resumes in greater detail, but with equal force, nearly the same idea:—
"The Americans may say to me, 'We are not a polite people it is true; we seek not to be affable or attentive, it must be owned; and the foreigner who comes amongst us may well be shocked by our coldness. But if we disdain, as frivolous, the elegant habits of European society, we have an audacity of enterprise, and a rapidity of action, which must astonish Europe. To start from the spot where we now are (on the Hudson.) In less than forty years, we have covered this desert river with steamers and vessels of every kind, we have cleared and peopled its banks, converted its hamlets into flourishing cities, dug harbours and canals, laid down railroads, given life, movement, and commercial prosperity to the whole district. Before us is Albany, which, in the seventeenth century, was a mere fort, and which now has a population of forty-two thousand souls; and down yonder is the commercial metropolis of New York, the first in the world after Liverpool. Nothing equals the spring of our activity and the boldness of our conceptions. Things that you in France take years to combine, and which you lengthily discuss in the tribune and the newspapers, we accomplish in a turn of the hand. In a couple of months we shall establish a line of steamers to Havre, and another to England. Already we have similar communication with Germany by the port of Bremen, with the Antilles and the Pacific Ocean. Not a corner of the globe is there where our flag does not wave. How many projects have there not been elaborated in your old Europe for cutting through the Isthmus of Panama? England and France sent thither their engineers, who published long reports—reports which were examined by councils of ministers, submitted to commissions, and finally shelved in public offices. At New York, two or three merchants formed an association, which decided, in two or three days, that the Isthmus of Panama should be crossed by a railroad. No sooner said than done. Already the workmen are on the ground; another year, and the United States' steam-engine will connect the two oceans.'
I recognise," says M. Marmier, "the justice of such reasoning, and I bow my head before this power of human genius applied to the wonders of industry. But, O worthy Yankees, Scripture says that 'man shall not live by bread alone,'—the heart and the mind have other requirements. Unless our mind be absorbed in the movements of a high-pressure steam-engine, and our heart changed into a bank-note, there will always remain to us pleasing reveries, thoughts of art and poetry, the enjoyments of social life and of expansive affections, which all the efforts of your courage and the success of your toil can never replace."
Appositely to Madame de Merlin's slighting mention of the pictures of Revolutionary scenes, comes in a passage from M. Marmier's first volume, relating to the Americans' exaggerated estimate of their military glories.
"At Plattsburg, situated where the Saranac enters Lake Champlain, there is a chance that the American, who has passed whole hours without heeding you, and who has hitherto received your advances like a dog in a bad humour, will suddenly embellish his metallic physiognomy with a jovial smile, and approach you with a complaisant air. For he longs to tell you of the victory gained near this town by the Americans, in the year 1814, commanded by Commodore Macdonough, over the English troops; and he narrates the story with so many details, and such an emphasis, that you at last wish he would relapse into his habitual silence.
The Americans, like the Russians, have a national pride surpassing all expression. They cannot, like the Russians, talk of their old traditions; nor have they, like them, ancient monuments of a venerable character, and modern ones of grand aspect. They have not, like the soldiers of Suwarrow and Alexander, conquered a valiant reputation upon the chief battle-fields of Europe. Neither have they the literature of Russia, so artless in its popular poetry, so original in the compositions of Pushkin and Gogol. But little do they care what exists in other countries. They have the happiness to believe all other nations very inferior to them, and all the imagination that the perpetual use of figures has left them is agreeably employed in raising the airy edifice of their glory. Their least success is an event which must occupy the thoughts of the whole world. A battle in which they have taken a banner And slain thirty men is a second Marengo. The name of their General Scott is to be transmitted to posterity with the same lustre as that of Alexander or Cæsar; and not a soldier who served in the war against Mexico but is a Napoleon on a small scale. When they talk of their country and of its progress, the ordinary vocabulary is too weak for their enthusiasm. They are fain to seek extraordinary epithets, words which the learned Johnson never admitted into his dictionary. They remind me of the Italian cicerone who exclaimed, when showing a picture of Albano to a traveller, 'Ah, Signor! questo è un maestro, e un grande pittore, e un pittorissimo!'
I accordingly heard, from one end to the other, the story of the battle of Plattsburg, after which my officious American, satisfied probably with my attention, made me a bow—a rare circumstance! I even believe—a still rarer event—that he made a motion as if to raise his hand to his hat. Then, having no other Homeric epic to narrate, he took himself off, and left me opposite to the shores of the Champlain, at liberty to indulge in meditation."
Thus left to his reflections, M. Marmier grows pathetic—as is not unfrequently the case with him—and feels his heart oppressed with an unspeakable sadness, and gives us a French prose version of some German verses by Tieck, which he might just as well have omitted, as also some gossip about the moon and other analogous matters, which merely serves to swell his book, and will inevitably be passed unread by every sane reader. However, we must take the gentleman as we find him, and sift, as well as we can, the wheat from the chaff, when the latter occasionally predominates. Presently he relapses from the pathetic into the sarcastic, on occasion of a visit to the Legislative Assembly of the United States, which reminded him a good deal of that of France. There were certain points of difference, however. "The American deputies, he says, chewed tobacco very agreeably, and spat with remarkable dexterity to a distance of fifteen paces,"—through a keyhole at that distance, we have heard it asserted, but do not guarantee the fact. Even Mr Taylor but imperfectly conceals his disgust at the "antique vases, vulgarly called spittoons," placed beside the desk of each member of Congress. From the senate-house to the President's levee is but a step. It is taken by M. Marmier under the guidance and protection of a lady, to do honour to whose introduction he put on, he tells us, his whitest cravat and his blackest coat. But soon he perceived that this garb of ceremony formed a striking contrast with the motley costumes that thronged the White House at Washington. Frocks of every colour were there, and vests of every cut, but of coats very few.
"There was no servant at the door or in the antechamber. We walked at once into the saloon, where the President was on his legs, fulfilling the arduous duty imposed upon him, without respect for his age and for the dignity of his military services, by the arrogant republic. My amiable conductress advanced towards him. He held out his hand and said, 'How do you do?' She named me, he turned towards me, holding out his hand, and saying 'How do you do?' A crowd of visitors came up; he shook hands with them all, repeating 'How do you do?' These amiable salutations bidding fair to be indefinitely prolonged, my charming introductress thought I had enough of it, and took me up to the President's daughter, who welcomed me with the never-failing 'How do you do?' After which we went to walk about another saloon with a crowd of individuals who were parading it in pairs in silent procession; women, such as exist nowhere but in Henri Monnier's comedies, and men to whom you would fear to grant admittance into your anteroom. For opening his marble palace once a-week to this plebeian crowd, for courteously saluting all these ladies who keep stalls, for shaking hands with some hundreds of unclean citizens, the republic gives its President only one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs a year. It is poor pay!"
The pittance certainly appears paltry, contrasted with the more ample allowance of a French president; but the two cases will hardly admit of a comparison, nor does M. Marmier draw one. There is evidently very little of the republican in his composition; we should rather take him for one of the class which M. Louis Blanc's followers designate, in picturesque abbreviation, as aristos; and indeed he makes no secret of his aversion to what he terms demagoguery—a word which is probably not to be found either in Boyer or Walker, but which some of our ballad-writing friends may possibly think no bad rhyme to roguery.
Soon after his visit to the President, we find our errant Frenchman steaming down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. At Cincinnati, when about to embark on a steamer pompously advertised as "The splendid and fast-running John Hancock," he is somewhat startled by a conversation between two Americans, from which he gathers that the said "Hancock" is a worthless boat, whose boilers have been condemned by the inspector, and which the insurance companies refuse to take, but out of whose rotten hull and rickety engines the considerate proprietors propose to squeeze a little more passage-money at risk of the passengers' lives. So M. Marmier takes his place by the "Western World," also announced as "splendid and fast-running," but which, he flatters himself, is more sea, or at least river worthy, and devotes a few pages to the perils of the West, the recklessness of steamboat captains in America, and the unpaternal nature of a Government which imposes no check on the employment of damaged steamers. Explosions, conflagrations, inundations, snags, sawyers, and races—he makes out a terrible list of dangers, and estimates at thirty or forty per annum the number of steamers lost in the Western waters.
"The average existence of a boat is here about four years. In four years it must have brought in its cost, with interest. If it lasts longer, it is by unhoped-for good luck. But the American does not trouble his head about difficulties or perils. He must travel, and he travels at all risks. You have doubtless read the account of that terrible explosion of the "Louisiana," which, about a month ago, discharged the fragments of her boilers and some hundreds of corpses upon the quay of New Orleans. Next day, not a steamer had a passenger the less. Go ahead is the American motto. Is there a new territory to explore at three hundred leagues distance, a sale of goods to be effected north or south—go ahead! The weather may be bad, the roads covered with snow, the journey long and difficult, no matter—go ahead. The steamer by which they are to go is of bad repute, is ill organised and worse commanded; there is danger of its sinking at the very first casualty; never mind—go ahead. Fatigue and danger are nothing—movement before everything. I ought to admire such intrepidity; but, with my old-fashioned European notions, I regret to think that the seductions of fortune can inspire as great courage as the chivalrous sentiments of glory, religion, and love."
M. Marmier is manifestly of too romantic a turn to travel in the States with gratification to himself, or to write about them in a manner likely to satisfy their inhabitants. He humbly confesses his deficiencies, and implores indulgence. A poor tourist, he says, incapable of correctly adding up a column of figures, and ignorant of the very first principles of mechanical science, he prefers the fresh morning breeze to the roar of a locomotive, and would never dream of putting a railway in competition with a hawthorn-hedged footpath. And although, before starting on his Transatlantic expedition, he assiduously studied the works on America of Michel Chevalier, De Tocqueville, and Miss Martineau, even they had not sufficiently guarded him against disappointments. At the bottom of his heart there still lingered fanciful dreams of vast forests, Indian traditions, and deep silent savannahs. He had dreamed of New York as "rising like an enchanted isle between the waves of ocean and the azure current of the Hudson, in the poetical prestige of a world decked in all the charms of youth." We feel that our imperfect translation but feebly renders the elevation of M. Marmier's style and sentiments; but it may suffice to give the reader an idea of that gentleman's bitter disappointment on finding the city of his dreams a vast focus of speculation, cupidity, and roguery; where "the stranger is every moment exposed to find himself gently duped or audaciously robbed;" where the proportion of knaves and adventurers to the mass of the population exceeds that in any other city of the world; and where the religion, even of the most honest, is the blind and unbounded worship of the Golden Calf. The most ungallant of Frenchmen, he spares not even the ladies, but imagines that the gay swarm which daily flutters in Broadway, between the hours of twelve and two, laden to excess with silks and velvets, shawls and laces, collars and jewellery, do not repair thither solely for their amusement, nor yet for the more important business of shopping; but that they are intended as sauntering advertisements of the wealth of their houses, "and to announce, perhaps, by an increased display of plumes and diamonds, each new victory achieved in the campaigns of speculation." In America, according to M. Marmier, and particularly in New York, everything is reducible into dollars and cents, and is duly reduced accordingly.
"To understand the ardour with which they toil in this reproduction, (of dollars,) we must bear in mind that, in their virtuous democracy, there is no other real sign of distinction, neither birth nor titles of nobility, nor artistic and literary talent. Here everything must be reckoned by figures, or weighed in the goldsmith's balance. A captain of a vessel has distinguished himself by a voyage of discovery, and you take pleasure in quoting the interesting places he has seen, and the observations he has made. You are interrupted by an inquiry of how much he was paid. A painter has been successful at the Exhibition, and has received the most encouraging eulogiums, accompanied with a gold medal. They overlook the eulogiums, but desire to know the weight of the medal. Tell an American that Murray gave Lord Byron sixteen hundred guineas for a canto of Childe Harold, he opens his eyes, and exclaims, with poetic enthusiasm, that he should like to have written Childe Harold. But if you add, that Béranger lives in a cottage at Passy, and that his whole fortune consists of a slender annuity, he ridicules Béranger's glory, and reckons he would have done better to take to trade. With such ideas, you will understand that here literature takes no very high flight. Cooper, Washington Irving, and the learned historian Prescott, have certainly acquired much more fame in Europe than in the United States. For there the merit of their works is alone thought of; but here it is gravely remarked that, with all their writings, they have not made their fortunes.
Nevertheless, standing in a New York library, and reckoning up the immense number of newspapers published in America, one might suppose that a more literary country did not exist on the globe's surface. But those publishers do but reprint, in a compact form, and at the lowest possible price, the feuilletons of France, and the elegant octavos of England. Alexander Dumas gives employment to more printing-presses, papermakers, and stitchers here than in France. As to the two thousand four hundred newspapers of which the United States boast, as of a sign of the diffusion of enlightenment, it is impossible, until one has held them in one's hand, and read them with one's own eyes, to form an idea of such a mass of personal diatribes, coarse chronicles, puerile anecdotes—of such a confused medley of political and commercial notices, mingled with shopkeepers' puffs in prose and verse, and smothered in an ocean of advertisements. Nothing that you see in France can give you an idea of these advertisements. They are a daily inventory of all imaginable merchandise, heaped up, pêle-mêle, as in an immense arena—a register of all the inventions possible, and of every conceivable trade.... With the exception of the New Orleans Bee, and of the Courier of the United States, (both published in the French language,) I do not know an American paper—not even the best of all, that of a distinguished poet, Mr Bryant—which can be compared, for the order of its contents, and its general getting-up, to the most unpretending of our provincial newspapers. As every considerable city publishes at least a dozen papers, and every little town two or three, the consequence is, that none attain sufficient circulation to afford fair remuneration to a body of able writers. Some are sustained by the funds of partymen, whose organs they are; and the majority exist only by the proceeds of their advertisements."
Arrived at New Orleans, M. Marmier makes his moan over the fair and broad territories once possessed by France in the Western Hemisphere, and predicts the loss of nearly all that she still retains in those latitudes, the Islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique, as a natural consequence of that decree of the Provisional Government which liberated, at one blow, the whole of the blacks, thereby ruining the white proprietors. The slaves had cost three or four thousand francs a-piece; four hundred francs was the indemnity granted to their owners. The negroes, thus suddenly emancipated, at once took to idleness, and would work only when they pleased, and as they pleased, and on their own terms. The sugar-fields were deserted, and the Creoles, abandoning their plantations, worthless for want of hands to cultivate them, were emigrating in numbers to the United States. M. Marmier met a great many of these unfortunate men, ruined and exiled by the mad precipitation of one of the most worthless and despicable Governments that ever swayed, even for a brief space, the destinies of a great country and its colonies.
"Some day," he says, "the negroes will no longer be satisfied to receive wages. With the ideas of equality preached to them by their apostles, they will grow indignant at their condition of hired labourers. They will desire to possess lands. The sooner to have them, they will seize them by force. All the emigrants from Guadaloupe and Martinique with whom I conversed respecting the present condition of the two islands, foresaw a bloody and terrible catastrophe. Failing energetic repression, those islands, like that of St Domingo, will be lost to us. But we shall have the satisfaction, perhaps, of witnessing the foundation of a new kingdom of blacks, and of manufacturing at Paris the crown and sceptre of another Faustin I."
Such gloomy accounts of their condition and prospects were not calculated to encourage M. Marmier in any design he may have entertained of a visit to the French West-Indian colonies. He preferred Cuba—previously, however, abiding some days in New Orleans, where, as in Canada, he fondly traced the lingering habits and traditions of his native land. The gay, urbane, and sociable Creoles contrasted most favourably with the dry, taciturn, tobacco-chewing men of business of the Northern States. M. Marmier was no less surprised than pleased at the striking difference, having expected to find the people of New Orleans already "vitrified by the American furnace."
"For of all the things," he says, "which astonish the stranger in the United States, the most astonishing, perhaps, is the power of absorption of the American character. Suppose a skilful chemist throwing five or six different ingredients into his crucible, mingling and crushing them with a view to the extraction of one homogeneous essence, and you have the image of the moral and intellectual chemistry which continually acts upon this country. What we call the American people is but an agglomeration of emigrants from various regions and races. The first came from England; others have come from Germany, Ireland, France, the mountains of Switzerland, the shores of the Baltic—in short, from all the countries of Europe. At first this agglomeration was effected slowly, by small detachments. Now it annually consists of whole armies of artisans and tillers of the soil, and of thousands upon thousands of families. All these foreigners naturally take with them to the United States their particular predilections, their national habits, doubtless also their prejudices. At first the character of the American displeases them, and they are disagreeably surprised by his habits. They resolve to keep aloof from him, to live apart with their own countrymen, to preserve, upon that distant continent, the manners of their native land, and in their mother tongue they energetically protest that they never will become Americans. Vain is the project! useless the protestation! The American atmosphere envelopes them, and by its constant action weakens their recollections, dissolves their prejudices, decomposes their primitive elements. Little by little, by insensible modifications, they change their views and mode of living, adopt the usages and language of the Americans, and end by being absorbed in the American nation, as are the streamlets from the valleys in the great rivers that bear them onward to the ocean. How many are the honest Germans, who, after cursing the rudeness of American manners, and bitterly regretting their good kindly Germany, have come at last to stick their hat, Yankee fashion, on the back of their head, to stiffen themselves, like the Yankee, in a coat buttoned up to the chin, to disdain all the rules of European courtesy, and to use no other language but the consecrated dialect of business."
Fearing a like transformation in the French population of New Orleans, M. Marmier, delighted to find himself mistaken, thanks Heaven for his escape from the frigid zone of Yankee-land, and for once more finding himself, for the first time since he left Canada, amongst people with hearts as well as heads, whose commercial pursuits do not preclude social enjoyments and friendly attentions to a stranger. He notes a vast difference between the aspect of New Orleans and that of the other cities of the Union. In the Louisianian capital there is more of holidaymaking, and less of unremitting money-seeking; there are to be found gay dinners, agreeable pastimes, music in the streets and coffee-houses, manners more courtly and dress more elegant, an opera and a vaudeville. This, at least, is the case in the French portion of the city; and the inhabitants of the American quarter have benefited, our traveller assures us, by the contact and intercourse of their lively and amiable neighbours. Even in New Orleans, however, he finds things to blame, or at least to deplore. The principal of these is the fatal practice of duelling, which has brought desolation into so many Creole families. A. N., victime de l'honneur à 24 ans, is the brief but significant inscription upon a plain tombstone, before which he pauses during his ramble amidst the flower garlands and green shrubberies of the carefully kept cemetery. Duels in Louisiana are much less frequent since the passing of a law which deprives the duellist of his civil rights for a space of five years, and which closes to him the profession of the bar, and the avenues to certain public employments. No law, however, can tame the fierce passions of the men of the Southern States, or prevent those extempore duels, fought out on the instant of quarrel, with revolver and Arkansas toothpick—a Gargantuan toothpick, M. Marmier shudderingly explains, having a two-edged blade, a foot long and two or three inches wide.
Before quitting the Union, whose inhabitants and institutions have certainly met with little favour at his hands, M. Marmier apologises for any undue severity into which he may possibly have been betrayed.
"If," he says, "in my remarks on the social relations of the Americans, I have been unjust towards them, I sincerely ask their pardon. In towns and cities one feels a desire to meet benevolent glances and friendly words from our fellow-men; and this, with some rare exceptions, which I gladly treasure up, is what I sought in vain in the great cities of the United States. Whether my search was unskilful, I know not; or whether, like an impatient miner, I too hastily abandoned a bed of rocks which concealed a precious vein. It is possible I may have done so. The one thing certain is, that in Canada and at New Orleans the sympathetic vein was revealed to me at once, and I had but to extend my hands to be met on all sides with a friendly grasp."
Finally, M. Marmier, who, whatever his faults of style or occasional flimsiness of substance, must be admitted to form his own opinions and to speak them out frankly and boldly, whether right or wrong—prophesies the rupture of the Union as a consequence of the slavery question.
"When the two halves of this immense country shall have taken a greater development, when each of them shall have grown strong enough to need no longer the other's support, the consciousness of its power will give keenness to its susceptibilities, and it will repel with anger what it now with difficulty tolerates. A fortuitous circumstance will cause a long-repressed animosity to burst forth; and slavery is, perhaps, the straw that shall break the steel bar of the United States."
With which ominous valediction M. Marmier closes his first volume, and embarks on board the "Ohio," the leviathan of American steamboats, constructed for the express purpose of conveying Californian gold-seekers to Chagres, and boasting, according to advertisement, engines each of a thousand horse power, and cabins for five hundred and fifty passengers—figures which the incredulous Marmier, long since initiated in the mysteries of Yankee puffery, inclines to think exaggerated. The vessel, however, is undeniably both fine and fast, and on the fourth morning after her departure from New Orleans, (four-and-twenty hours having been lost getting over the bar,) she flashes past the walls of the castle of the Moro. A narrow passage between rocks, fortresses right and left, frowning batteries of cannon—the entrance to the port of Havana is a menacing introduction to the delightful panorama that presents itself within. A vast semi-circular basin, which no tempest ever ruffles, envelops the city with its azure waters. So gay and bright is the aspect of the city itself, that the enthusiastic Marmier is at the gangway in an instant; his carpet-bag in one hand, his pilgrim's staff in the other, shouting for a boat to convey him ashore. He forgets that he is no longer in the States, where passports are unknown and all may come and go unquestioned. Cuba is the paradise of police and custom-house officers, the purgatory of tourists. Before embarking at a foreign port, your passport must receive the visa of the Spanish consul. Two dollars for that. On arriving at Cuba, the authorities take your passport and give in exchange a document of their own fabrication. Eight dollars for that. Still you are not allowed to land till an inhabitant of the island has guaranteed your respectability. It is a puzzle how to obtain this guarantee whilst you are forcibly detained on ship-board. The difficulty is removed by the appearance alongside of a number of obliging individuals, offering to certify your morality and orthodoxy; in return for which service you cannot do less than offer them a four-dollar bit. So that on summing up, and including boat-hire and porterage, it costs the humblest traveller something like twenty dollars to cross the quay of the Havana and reach his hotel.
But it is worth while to pay a good price for leave to land upon the enchanting shores of the Queen of the Antilles, to roam in forests of orange trees, to repose beneath the broad shade of the banana, and to enjoy, in their delightful quintas, the hospitality of the kindly Havanese. Besides, as M. Marmier exclaims, what are a hundred francs in a country whose soil produces golden harvests! There are none of your coarse copper coins, or dirty Yankee bank-notes. A silver medio (about threepence) is the smallest current coin, dollars are spent like francs in France, and a Cuban thinks no more of a portly golden ounce than a Paris dandy of a light napoleon. In that beauteous and luxurious isle, now almost the last colony remaining to the Sovereign of "Spain and the Indies," whilst the rich have abundant facilities for squandering their wealth, the man of humble fortune is at no loss for enjoyments. The bright sky, the glorious scenery, the gorgeous flowers, the cooling fruits of the tropics, are as free to him as to the millionnaire. And both alike are subject to the perils and annoyances of those sultry regions, where venomous plants and reptiles, offensive vermin, and the relentless vomito, the terrible Yellow Jack, are more than equivalent, as evils, to the grey skies and chilling blasts, snow-drifts and long winters of Northern Europe. It was in the month of January that M. Marmier reached the Havana, and by aid of open doors and windows, of curtains, mosquito nets, and a bed composed of two sheets and a sackcloth stretched on a frame, the heat was rendered very endurable. He scarcely dared imagine what it might be in the dog-days, when the demon of fever stalks abroad, invisible but fatal. In some years, however, the vomito, even at the most unhealthy season, commits few ravages, its virulence seems impaired, and the rejoicing Cubans almost imagine it is dying out upon their shores. The delightful dream of security is soon dispelled. Suddenly the grim phantom reappears, more deadly than ever, smiting alike the stranger and the native, the rough European mariner, and the graceful daughter of the tropics.
"Last year, in the month of August, the ships in harbour resembled those which are deserted by their sailors in the port of San Francisco. But it was not to hurry to the dazzling placer that sailors and officers abandoned the national flag. It was to seek in the hospital a remedy for their tortures, to be buried in a foreign graveyard, far away from their pleasant Scheldt and beautiful Gironde."
As if the isle itself did not harbour enough disease, the winds of heaven and the ocean tides wafted it thither from other climes, from the fever-ridden shores of Tampico and Vera Cruz.
"One day the watcher on the Moro saw an English brig pass at the foot of the ramparts, steered by a woman, whom a pale skeleton-like man strove to assist in her task. Captain Jackson, who commanded this brig, had left Tampico with his wife, two young children, and seven sailors. A few days after they sailed, the seven sailors sickened of the fever and died, one after the other; the captain and his children, attacked by the same malady, lay in bed, unable to move. The woman, with a superhuman courage, inspired by her trust in God, threw the corpses into the sea, furled a part of the sails, took charge of the wheel, nursed her husband and children, and, thanks to a favourable wind which seconded her resolution, directed the ship towards the island of Cuba, until such time as her husband, rising from his sick bed, was able to give her some assistance. And thus she came into port, after forty days' navigation, timid and modest, casting down her eyes when lauded for her heroic energy, and seemingly unconscious of having achieved that from which the imagination of the most resolute man might well recoil with terror."
All who have read Tom Cringle's Log, will call to mind its glorious descriptions of Cuban scenery, its graphic and thrilling sketches of tropical sports and perils. We think all the better of Mr Taylor, that he has attentively studied Captain Cringle's admirable work, and refers to it with the respect due from a tyro to a master of the art. At St Jago de Cuba he became acquainted with the original of Don Ricardo Campana, the Spanish Scotchman who accompanied Cringle and Captain Transom on their memorable expedition into the interior of the island. Who has forgotten that exquisite chapter of the Log, "The Pirate's Leman"? Mr Richard Maxwell Bell, the gentleman whose name Cringle has humorously translated, is not a Scotchman, (as he is stated to be in the Log,) but is every bit as hospitable, sensible, and kind-hearted as he is there represented. By his good offices, Mr Taylor obtained a companion in the person of a young Spanish officer, proceeding up the country to join his regiment, for the journey to Gibara, a small town on the north shore of the island, five and forty leagues from St Jago. In the district of Holguin, whose capital is Gibara, the promised gold vein was said to exist, and that was Mr Taylor's destination.
"After seven days' delay, I received intimation that my fellow-traveller, Don Carlos Saldivar, was now ready, and awaited my joining forces with him at eleven that night, so as to get a long cool march by moonlight. About half-an-hour after the appointed time, we filed off down the street, the cavalcade consisting of about twenty-four horses, the head of one being tied to the tail of the other; and Don Carlos and myself brought up the rear. I have met with very few, even old residents, who have ever crossed the island by the road we took. It leads all the way over highlands, rocky passes, and through mountainous streams, except where it crosses some immense savanas; whereas the main road is mostly all the way on the banks of the Cauto, the principal river of Cuba. But the main road, though short and level, is dreadfully muddy and clayey in rainy weather, and for that reason our arrieros chose the other. After passing a small ingenio or sugar-mill, worked by oxen, which Don Carlos pointed out on the side of the road, we entered a perfect forest of orange trees, whose ripe and tempting fruit hung in profusion from every tree, and lay also on the ground by cart-loads. I let the party get ahead some distance, and then, quietly dismounting, eagerly clutched the finest and ripest I could see. My mind misgave me a little on applying the test of smell, although that was very refreshing; but my worst fears came out on removing the peel, when I found my orange was both bitter and sour, being of the kind called in England "Seville," indigenous to and abundant in all the forests of Cuba, as well as the lime. I rode up to my friends, feeling considerably "sold," and now began to be aware that good fruit, although abundant enough in Cuba, is not to be had on every tree. We had accommodation, none of the best, the four nights we passed on the road. One of them saw us in a small rancho, the dwelling of a solitary negro, who, it seemed, was a tailor, and where the only place I could find for passing the night was on a barbacoa, or platform of small round sticks; and of all the beds I ever tried to sleep on, this was the most hopeless! I suffered much on this journey for want of a hammock, and seriously counsel all who may have to make a journey, long or short, in Cuba, to travel always with one. But how different the mode of travelling in Cuba, where Coolies are not to be had for a song, as they are here where I am writing, (Ceylon.) A Ceylon planter or merchant cannot move through the jungle or take any trip at all, without the attendance of six or eight of these poor creatures, toiling under a weight of baggage, bedding, &c. A Spaniard will travel seven or eight hundred miles, suppose from the Havana, to Holguin, on one and the same horse, and carry all he requires with him. Folded partly over the cantle of his saddle, and hanging on each side, the two capacious pockets of his seron hold his coffee-pot, bread, and provisions on one side, and several changes of garments on the other. In front are strapped his cloak and holsters; behind, his hammock; and his trusty machete hangs by his side. He is a perfectly independent man—a man after Sir Charles Napier's own heart; can carry two or three days' provisions in his seron, and cares not a fig where night overtakes him. To be sure there are, fortunately, no venomous reptiles or wild beasts in Cuba. Here, in Ceylon, perhaps it would not do to try on that 'dodge' too far. You might find a cobra de capello alongside of you in your hammock, or be unceremoniously ejected therefrom by an inquisitive elephant, a playful cheetah or an affectionate bear."
The above extracts, culled from half-a-dozen pages of Mr Taylor, give a fair idea of the texture of the earlier portion of his book, which, it will be seen, is slight but agreeable. He is not strictly correct in stating Cuba to be exempt from the plague of venomous reptiles. The island certainly produces nothing to compare to the cobra, but it has varieties of the serpent tribe that would be found anything but pleasant bedfellows—to say nothing of most formidable scorpions, and of gigantic spiders whose sting brings on fever. In his later chapters, Mr Taylor grapples with graver subjects—gives us a few statistics, describes the culture and preparation of sugar, and argues the question of slavery, for the gradual extinction of which he propounds a project. Although he passed upwards of three years in Cuba, the greater portion of the time was spent in the plantations; and he saw nothing of the great towns, except St Jago, where he slept through an earthquake, in the next room to a man with the yellow fever, and where he was duly impressed with the merits of Madame Sauce's boardinghouse and Bordeaux wine. For sketches of Cuba's capital, the gay coquettish city of the Havana, we must revert to M. Marmier, whom we find, with his national versatility, driving in volantes, (the light cabriolets which are almost the only equipages used in Cuba,) quoting Horace, Byron, and Lamartine, lauding Havanese courtesy, glancing at Hegel's philosophy, criticising Spanish colonial government, telling anecdotes of General Tacon, (the stern but efficient governor to whom Cuba is indebted for many reforms,) admiring the Creole beauties in the theatre, and cooling his heated interior in the vast coffee-houses, where the delicious fruits of the island—the orange, the pine, the guava, and many others for which English names are wanting—are transformed into preserves, ices, and frozen drinks. At one of these coffee-houses, an ingenious French glacier had so multiplied his refreshing inventions, that he had exhausted his Spanish vocabulary, and was driven to politics and the Anglo-Saxon. "Waiter!" cried a thirsty customer, within hearing of M. Marmier, "bring me a President Taylor!" "A President Jackson for me!" exclaimed another voice. M. Marmier, with praiseworthy curiosity, tried both Taylor and Jackson. The ingenious confectioner, he declares, had had due regard to the characters of the two venerable Presidents, when he gave their names to his cunningly compounded liquors: Taylor was a sweetish and cooling draught, Jackson an energetic punch. At the theatre, where an Italian company performed Lucia in most creditable style, M. Marmier was struck with the elegance of the house and the aristocratic appearance of the audience. The pit was full of men in white waistcoats and trousers; the three ranges of boxes, instead of wainscoting at the back, and a heavy wooden balustrade halfway up the front, had Venetian blinds in the one place, admitting air and light, and in the other a light trelliswork, which afforded a full view of the fair inmates from their luxuriant hair down to their fairy feet.
"Above the boxes is the place allotted to the negroes, who seem stationed there that their thickset figures and black faces may serve as a foil to the white doves in the boxes. Ladies' fashions have here no resemblance to those of Paris. Velvet is not to be thought of; even satin is too heavy and inflexible for those delicate forms, and Cinderella's slipper would be too heavy a load for those bird-like feet. A flower in the hair, a flood of gauze and lace on the body, a silk ribbon, with an imperceptible sole, for a shoe, and another ribbon of the same colour round the instep,—this is all that these lilies of the tropics can support. One might take them for those Northern elves, who formerly, in the forest glades, wove themselves garments out of moonbeams."
Lavish and luxurious in dress, the Havanese lady does not long retain the fresh and delicate tissues that drape her slender person, but transfers them, often scarcely worn, to her black waiting-maids, who turn out upon the Sunday, like so many African princesses, in all the glory of satin shoes, lace mantilla, and muslin robes. At the Havana, as at New Orleans, and even to a still greater extent, the lot of the domestic slaves might be envied, as far as material comforts go, by most of the lower classes of free Europeans. They form part of the family in which they are brought up, enjoy great kindness and indulgence, and frequently grow rich by hoarding the presents they receive.
"Many economical negroes," says M. Marmier, "especially those of the tribe of Caravalis, amass in service a sum which they well know how to employ. The law of Cuba obliges the proprietor to liberate his slave when he repays the sum he cost, either at once or by instalments. There is a lottery at the Havana, similar to those of Germany, which has already contributed to the enfranchisement of many negroes. There are tickets at twenty francs and at five francs, and prizes of forty thousand, eighty thousand, and a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Once there was a prize of five hundred thousand francs, which was won by a negro, unluckily for him; for when he saw the mass of gold spread upon the table, the excitement killed him. Once free, the negro opens a workshop or warehouse, and buys other slaves. Unhappy those who call him master. They are worse treated by the man of their own colour than by the most merciless of the whites."
However fortunate the lot of the domestic slaves in Cuba, neither of the books before us gives a very pleasing picture of the life of those on the plantations. Of course much depends on the character of their owner, and whether he resides on his estate or leaves it entirely to an overseer. Mr Taylor, who saw much more of plantation life than M. Marmier, and indeed may be considered excellent authority on that subject, gives quite a pastoral sketch of negro life on one particular estate, partly owned and wholly managed by a kind-hearted friend of his, from whom the slaves had no undue severity to fear; but he significantly hints that cases of this sort are the exception rather than the rule, and, indeed, in more than one place, his italics and suppressions give us gloomy glimpses of the condition of the blacks in Cuba. M. Marmier describes the corporal chastisements inflicted as frequent and cruel, and occasionally leading to suicide and flight. But neither the virgin forests of Cuba, extensive and intricate though they be, nor the lofty and rarely-ascended mountains, secure the fugitive slave from pursuit and capture. As soon as he is missed, the terrible bloodhound is on his trail. Whilst residing on the sugar estate of Santa L., Mr Taylor, sitting one evening in the verandah, happened to fix his eyes on a distant clump of palms, which he had often before admired. Suddenly the tallest of them disappeared.
"Struck by such a strange circumstance, I called to the overseer, who was quietly walking his horse up the avenue, and told him. Quick as lightning, without giving an answer, he struck his spurs into his horse's flank, and quicker than I can write, he was on the spot. A noble palm of eighty feet lay prostrate, cut through with an axe, and already minus its glory, (its crown,) cut off for the cabbage. In vain, however, did he look for the culprit, and shout. But in less than two minutes, behold him back! 'White or black, I have him now!' shouted he, as he and the dog scampered off again. One sniff at the tree was enough for the bloodhound, and in five minutes more the negro, for it was one belonging to the estate, was in custody—uninjured by the dog, for his master was close on his track. He was punished, but, I believe, not very severely."
Madame de Merlin, from whose graceful pages we have already quoted, speaks at some length of these celebrated slave-hunting dogs, whose strength and sagacity are as remarkable as their intense instinctive aversion to runaway negroes. These seldom dare resist them, but when they do, the contest is never long nor the victory doubtful. The dog seizes the man by the ear and pulls him to the ground; having thus daunted him, he suffers him to rise, and takes him home without further injury.
"Yesterday," says Madame de Merlin, "three malefactors who had devastated the environs of Marianao, at a short distance from the Havana, and who had escaped from the pursuit of justice, were brought in by two dogs. On arriving near the town, one of the dogs, his jaws all bloody, his eyes glittering, remained on guard over the prisoners; whilst his comrade, running to the entrance of the town, howled, shook people by their clothes, and indicated, by the most ingenious signs, the spot where the captives were waiting. At last he made himself understood, and guided the police to the place where the other dog, stanch to his post, was guarding the malefactors, who lay half-dead upon the grass. One of the unfortunate wretches had a broken jaw, and all three had been grievously wounded in the conflict."
The greater part of the labour on the sugar-plantations is necessarily of the very severest description, and the hardship is trebled by the burning heat of the climate; the negroes are punished by the whip, twenty-five lashes being the number permitted by law, and which Mr Taylor believes to be seldom exceeded, although there is no security against it not being so, since he admits that the owner or manager, offending in this particular, can evade the fine by a bribe to the Government official. If a slave, weary of stripes and toll, takes to the woods, the bloodhounds are on his track; and if he escapes for a while the keen scent and unwearying pursuit of these sagacious and formidable brutes, it is only at the cost of a life of constant terror and privation amidst the jungles of canas bravas[7], or in the depths of gloomy caverns, strewed with the bones of the aborigines of the island. There exist, however, according to Mr Taylor, colonies of fugitive negroes, dwelling in comparative security on mountain summits of difficult approach.
"At the very eastern end of Cuba, within the triangle between the cities of St Jago and Baracoa and Point Mäysi, is a wild and rugged tract of country, and in the centre of all, an immense mountain, called the Sierra del Cristal, which I have often seen from the sea. Hither no adventurous topographer has yet directed his steps; but, were the proper admeasurements made, I am almost certain the Cristal would be found the highest eminence in Cuba. On this mountain range, every one unites in declaring that the runaway negroes have established a large settlement."
Such collections of wild Indians or negroes are called Palenques, and the men composing it are known as Apalencados. When more than seven are congregated, it is a Palenque. The pursuit and suppression of these is under the superintendence of an official, appointed for the purpose, and of a tribunal called a consulate.
"If the expedition be considered one of extreme danger, special rates of reward are offered. In that case, extirpation is probably determined on; but such cases have rarely happened.... The great Palenque of the Cristal remains as much a mystery as ever; and some even doubt if the Spanish Government does not leave it purposely as a kind of safety valve for the discontented, for no expedition of importance enough to reduce it has ever been undertaken, although small parties are annually formed in Baracoa, who hover about it and capture a great many negroes. Common report says that the settlement is high up on an elevated plateau, only approachable by one pass, which is fortified by overhanging rocks, kept ready to hurl on the invaders, and strictly guarded by wary sentinels; and, that on this plateau, whose inhabitants are said to amount to many hundreds, grain, tobacco, &c. are grown sufficient for their wants. It is further hinted that some whites have more dealings with the Apalencados than they would wish generally known, and supply them with clothes and necessaries unattainable in the Palenque."
Spaniards are generally admitted to be much kinder slave-masters than most Americans. Were we to give implicit credence to the Countess Merlin, which her enthusiasm for her own countrymen and womanly partisanship prevent our doing, we must believe Havana the very paradise of slaves. "The humanity of the generality of the laws and regulations of the Spaniards in the particular of slavery," says Mr Taylor, "contrast favourably with that of some of the States of the American Union." M. Marmier considers the houses of the Havanese to be "the El Dorado of slaves, the plantations their purgatory." But all three authorities agree in preferring the condition of the slaves to that of the emancipados—slaves captured by our cruisers and liberated in the Havana, or confiscated by the Cuban authorities in some rare moment of zeal and good faith. These are hired out to taskmasters with a view of their being taught some trade, which they very seldom manage to learn; and, meanwhile, they drag on in bondage from year to year, often worse treated than slaves, because, as Mr Taylor says, the emancipado belongs to nobody, whilst the slave has an owner who is interested, to a certain extent, in not destroying his animal. It is the free black, in short, in these cases, who gets least victuals, hardest work, and most whip. Mr Taylor is rather good upon this head, and quotes with considerable effect the report of the Sugar and Coffee Planting Committee, printed by order of the House of Commons, and of which he received a copy in Ceylon, just as he was writing his book. The document, he says, singularly confirmed the impressions he had received five to eight years previously, during his residence in Cuba, as to the shameful manner in which the treaties respecting slavery are evaded in that colony. It shows how the emancipados are virtually sold (hired out for terms of years) in an underhand manner, for the profit of the Spanish Government and officials; how his Excellency the captain-general supplied the Gas Company, of which the chaste and tender-hearted Christina is the chief shareholder, with dark-complexioned lamp-lighters at five gold ounces a-head; how Mrs O'Donnell, (now Countess of Lucena) lady of the captain-general of that name, procured herself a snug little income by the labour of four hundred emancipados, transferred to the paternal care of the Marquis de las Delicias, chief judge, of the mixed court(!) and one of the greatest slave-holders in Cuba—all these statements being given upon the undeniable authority of a letter from the British consul-general Crawford, read by the chairman of the Committee above referred to. And there would be no difficulty in producing equally reliable authority for a host of similar iniquities, incredible to persons unacquainted with the atrocious immorality of Spanish colonial administration, with the insatiable greed of certain high personages in Spain, and with the immense fortunes amassed by Cuban captains-general. "It is said," says Consul-general Crawford, as quoted by Mr Taylor, "that upwards of five thousand of those unfortunate wretches (the emancipados) have been resold at rates of from five to nine ounces, by which upwards of six hundred thousand dollars have been made in the government-house, one-sixth of which was divided amongst the underlings, from the colonial secretary downwards." "I heard the other day," says Mr Taylor, "of a grand new ingenio having been set up by Queen Christina, with every latest improvement; behold the secret!" He makes bold to believe that not a few of the five thousand "unfortunate wretches," spoken of by Mr Crawford, might be found doing duty in the queen-mother's plantation and sugar-mill. A very probable hypothesis. There can be no doubt, however, that the means by which the estate is worked, and the gas-lamps lighted, would bear investigation quite as well as the mode of acquisition of the funds invested in them by the enormously wealthy widow of the Well-beloved Ferdinand.
Those recent visitors to Cuba who have written of what they there saw, have in few instances done more than glance at the subject. They have either treated it superficially, like M. Marmier, who, in his love of locomotion and eagerness to get afloat again, dismisses the Pearl of the Antilles in three or four hasty chapters; or, like Mr Taylor, their opportunities of investigation have been limited to a small portion of the island. Mr Madden's little volume is of a special and statistical class; and, as far as it goes, we think well of it, notwithstanding the attack made upon it by Mr Taylor, who is shocked at the faulty spelling of Spanish words and names, and who laughs at Mr Madden for deprecating the annexation of Cuba to the States, which he (Mr Taylor) inclines to advocate. Madame de Merlin's work is much more copious and comprehensive than any of the three above named; but if her sketches of Havanese society and manners are pleasing and characteristic, her descriptions of scenery vivid, and her retrospective historical chapters careful and scholarly, on the other hand she is frequently biassed, when touching on matters of greater practical importance, by the joint prejudices of a Frenchwoman and of a Spanish Creole; whilst her sex necessarily precluded her from acquaintance with various phases of Spanish colonial life, and from exploring those wilder districts, an account of which is essential to the completeness of a work on Cuba professing thoroughly to describe the island and its motley population. For such a work there is abundant room; and of such a one, in this century of intelligent and enterprising travellers, we confidently hope before long to welcome the appearance.
ONWARD TENDENCIES.
TO AUGUSTUS REGINALD DUNSHUNNER, ESQ. OF ST MIRRENS.
My Dear Dunshunner,—Is it too great a liberty to inquire into the nature of your present avocations, or to ask if you are occupied with any magnificent scheme to take the public mind by storm? You have of late maintained so mysterious and obstinate a silence, that your friends are becoming anxious regarding you. Like Achilles, son of Peleus, you seem to be sulking in your tent, whilst all the rest of the Greeks are abroad in the clear sunlight, making head against the Trojan army, and skirmishing in the front of their ships. We miss you, and the public miss you. Your red right arm was wont to be seen far in front of the battle fray, and, at the moment when the political strife is hottest, we cannot afford to lose the countenance of our bravest champion. I hope there is no Briseïs in the case? If so, tell us which of the Free-Traders has wronged you, and the damsel shall be immediately restored, with a corresponding recompense of plunder.
The fact is, Dunshunner, that we are in a devil of a scrape. Matters have not turned out exactly as we anticipated; and, although we are endeavouring to maintain the attitude of perfect confidence, I need not disguise from you my conviction that Free Trade has proved an utter failure. Of course you will keep this to yourself. We cannot venture to let it be publicly known that we have lost faith in our own nostrums; and we are doing all we can, by means of mitigating the tenor of the trade circulars, to keep the great body of the manufacturers, who of late have shown certain symptoms of revolt, at least neutral and reasonably quiet. Our friend Skinflint of the Importationist is fighting a most praiseworthy battle, and every one must admire the pluck which he has exhibited under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. He has had not only to defend the general policy of Free Trade, but to maintain that his own predictions have been fulfilled to the very letter—a task which most men would have considered rather arduous, seeing that figures are entirely against him, and that all the facts which have occurred are directly in the teeth of his prophecies. But Skinflint is an invaluable fellow to lead a forlorn-hope. He can prove to you that an unfulfilled prophecy is quite as good as one which has been accomplished, and he is truly superb upon the subject of the natural limits of capital. Political economy, as you know, has long been my favourite study; but I fairly confess to you that, with all my reading and acquired knowledge, I cannot cope with Skinflint. He has gone so deep into the science—he has dived so profoundly not only through the water but the mud, that to follow him is absolutely impossible; and—to pursue the metaphor—you can only ascertain the whereabouts of this unrivalled professor of the art of sinking, by the dirt which ascends to the surface, and the rising of the fetid bubbles. At present he has as much work on his hands as might stagger the stoutest Stagyrite. The farmers, the millers, the sugar-refiners, the shipowners—yea, the very delegates of the working-men—all are at him! You may conceive what a breadth of buckler and how many folds of brass are necessary to shelter him against such a multitude of weapons; yet still Skinflint combats on. I wonder if he is descended from the Berserkars, who, in consequence of abstaining from ablutions, succeeded at length in rendering their hides invulnerable?
The farmers—poor devils!—are entirely up the spout. I will admit that I am sorry for that; but my sorrow arises from no maudlin compassion for their misfortunes. You are aware that I never had any sympathy with things bucolic. I always considered the towns as the proper habitations for mankind, and have maintained the opinion that the sooner we could get rid of the country the better. What man of common sense cares one farthing for cows, or buttercups, or sheep? Are we in the nineteenth century to pin our faith to the Georgics, or to babble in senile imbecility about green fields? What care I about purling brooks? They may be useful for a dye-work, or as the means of motive power, but otherwise they are entirely superfluous; and we may thank those idiots, the poets—who, by the way, are perfectly useless, for not one of them pays Income Tax—for having created a false impression about them. I cordially agreed with Cobden, that the sooner we could lay Manchester side by side with the valley of the Mississippi, the better; and, had it not been for the obtuseness of those pig-headed scoundrels, the Yankees, who, forsooth, have got a crotchet in their heads about maintaining their own miserable industry, the job would have been done long ago. Had Jonathan acted by us fairly, as he was in honour bound to do—had he demolished his mills, blown out his furnaces, shut up his mines, and passed an Act of Congress to inflict the penalty of death upon any presumptuous loafer who should attempt to manufacture a single article in the United States, my life upon it that at the present moment we should have been driving a roaring trade! But the infatuated blockhead wont have our goods, and is actually heightening his tariffs to restrict their admission still further! The German ninny-hammers and pragmatical Spaniards are doing the same thing; and, in consequence, our whole anticipations have been violently frustrated. Perhaps you see now why I am sorry for the farmers. My regret is, that their power of purchase has decreased—that they can't buy from us as formerly—and that, in short, the home market is going to the mischief. Personally, I am connected with an exporting house; and yet I must acknowledge candidly that business is anything but brisk. We have overdone the thing in trying to get up an enormous increase of exportations; and the consequence is, that we have caused a glut in many of the foreign markets. It is not impossible that, before a healthy demand is restored, new competitors may step in, and our grand staple of calico, upon which the prosperity of Britain entirely depends, go down to a further discount. These are gloomy anticipations, but I cannot quite banish them from my mind. I look forward with considerable apprehension to the time when we shall fairly have eaten up the farmers. Of course, when that arrives, we must look out for another class to devour; and, according to my view, the Fundholder is the next in order. He will make a hideous row when he finds himself marked out for general mastication, but no doubt we shall, somehow or other, contrive to stifle his cries. His fate is perfectly natural. In all cases of shipwreck, when the supplies of provisions are exhausted, the fattest individual of the crew is selected for the sustenance of the rest. It would be absurd to pitch upon a lean victim; for the amount of suffering is the same in either case, and the economical principle is to secure the largest amount of supply. Of course he must be dealt with gently. We have the high authority of Seneca for supposing that gradual phlebotomy is an easy manner of death; and we shall not put an end to him in a hurry. He is unquestionably a full-blooded animal; and, when tapped, will yield as readily as a barrel of October.
All this, however, is mere anticipation; and doubtless you have already in your own mind maturely considered our prospects. What presses upon us most immediately, is the chance of a speedy dissolution of Parliament, and a new general election. I strongly suspect that the Whigs cannot hope to remain in office long. With all my regard for that party, I must admit that they are a shocking bad set, in so far as business is concerned, and their exclusiveness is really quite insufferable. Had they reconstructed the Cabinet upon a liberal footing, by taking in half-a-dozen of us original Free-Traders, there might have been no occasion for any dissolution until the expiry of the seven years. Our demands were not extravagant. Cobden would have done the business of the War-Office in a highly creditable manner. Bright would have been too happy to go out as Governor-General of India, and look after the growth of cotton. Joseph Hume is at least as fitted for the situation of Chancellor of the Exchequer as Sir Charles Wood; or if Joseph is rather too ancient, why not our undaunted M'Gregor? He is the only man alive who can improvise a budget at a quarter of an hour's notice. I myself should have been happy to have served in a subordinate capacity. Williams, Walmsley, or Kershaw, would gladly have relieved Earl Grey from the trouble of looking after the colonies; and I really think that, with such an infusion of new talent, the Government might have gone on swimmingly. Of course, we should have put an end at once to that ridiculous Protestant howl about Papal aggression, which is directly opposed to the spirit of Free Trade, and to the liberal tendencies of the age. Black cattle are admitted duty free; and I can see no reason why a cardinal should be considered contraband, merely on account of a slight peculiarity in the colour of his legs. Let him call himself anything he pleases—what need we care? Protestantism, my dear Dunshunner, is about the only obstacle in the way of our becoming perfect cosmopolitans. Why should we, of all people on the earth, affect eccentric distinctions? Luther was a sad fool. If he had played his cards properly, he might have been a bishop or a cardinal, or anything else he chose, and we should have been spared the trouble of this hubbub about a matter which seems to me of no earthly consequence. But our friend Lord John is, as you know, as obstinate as a whole drove of pigs, and will always take his own way. And a very nice mess of it he has made this time, to be sure!
However, the Whigs did not choose to come to us, though they were glad enough to make overtures to Graham and Gladstone, and the rest of that lot, who, after all, would have nothing to say to them. In consequence, they now feel themselves more ricketty than ever. The Protectionists are making powerful head, and gaining strength daily; and I cannot look forward to a new general election without feelings of great anxiety. I quite concur in the sentiments expressed by that patriotic creature, Colonel Peyronnet Thompson, that he would as lieve see London occupied by a foreign army, as the Protectionist party in power. I do believe that, in such an event, the cause of Free Trade would be desperate. You see we have no party whatever in the country to fall back upon for support. The artisans are declaring against us; the small traders have been unmercifully rooked; the shopkeepers are making no profits; and, as to Ireland, it is more than beginning to wince under the operation of a system which has destroyed its only product. We have tried to keep the Irish in good humour for a year or so by hinting at an immediate influx of English capital. That idea was mine. It was not by any means a bad dodge while it lasted, and our friends of the press took care to do it full justice. But, after all, it was merely a dodge. As for English capital going to Ireland, where no possible expenditure could insure a penny of rent, the thing is as preposterous as the notion of applying guano, for agricultural purposes, to the island of Ichaboe! Notwithstanding, we have done some good. We have ruined the proprietors, and starved a reasonable portion of the peasantry; and I am glad to see that the same operation is going on in the Hebrides. Labour in the towns will, no doubt, be considerably cheapened in consequence. But we cannot calculate with certainty on the support of Irish members after a new election. They won't work together as formerly. We miss our perished Daniel, who, with all his faults, was a capital ally, if you gave him a sufficient equivalent.
It is no use disguising the truth; the Protectionists are like enough to beat us. There is a vigour and a perseverance about that party which I am quite at a loss to understand. Two or three years ago, when they first began to look really formidable, we took the utmost pains to write them down; and, if good sheer abuse and hard hitting could have accomplished that object, we ought to have succeeded. We worked the old joke about a Protectionist being a spectacle as rare as a mummy in a glass-case, until it was perfectly threadbare. We sneered at and scouted their statistics. We questioned their sanity, and talked with mysterious compassion about Bedlam. We assured them, that to restore protection to native industry was as hopeless as an attempt to re-establish the Heptarchy. We used and abused, in every way, that fine metaphor touching "the winds of heaven and the waves of ocean;" and we pressed poets into our service to celebrate the cheap loaf in dithyrambics. We reviled Disraeli, misrepresented Newdegate, lampooned George Frederick Young, and insinuated that Lord Stanley was a traitor. Finally, we became affectionate, and warned the besotted Protectionists of the danger which was hanging, in a heavy cloud, over their devoted heads. We did everything which ingenuity could suggest to prevent the mummy from being resuscitated; but Cheops has come again to life with a vengeance, and has given us a shrewd blow on the skull as he started full armed from his sarcophagus. We must now deal with him as a reality, not as a shadow; and, for my own part, I cannot aver that I am inordinately eager for the encounter.
Still, something must be done; and our first duty, according to my notion, is to look out for new candidates. To the disgrace of human nature be it spoken, some of our most esteemed veterans have little prospect of being again returned by their present constituencies. There will be changes, and changes too of a most extraordinary kind; and that circumstance renders it the more necessary for us to prevent, at all hazards, a dissolution. You may now, my dear Dunshunner, fathom the real object of this letter. We want you to come into Parliament, on the independent, Ministerial, or any other interest you please, provided that, when returned, you give us the benefit of your vote, and the aid of your powerful eloquence upon any occasion when the cause of Free Trade may be in jeopardy. I know what your own private leanings are, but these are not times to be scrupulous. The League expects every man to go the entire hog. If you want a subscription, or—what would suit us better—the promise of a place, say so at once, and you shall have either. But, if you follow my advice, you will content yourself with a positive promise. We are strong enough to wring anything from the Whigs in case of emergency; and as in all human probability, judging from the past, no single week can pass over without the shadow of a crisis, we shall be able to make terms for you, better and earlier than you might suppose. Some few pickings there are still left, which are well worth a gentleman's acceptance; and it will be your own fault if, after having taken your seat, you do not make your parliamentary position advantageous in more ways than one.
I suppose there is no chance of an immediate vacancy in the Dreepdaily Burghs? Well, then, you must even make up your mind to come south and attack a Saxon garrison. I have one or two places in my eye, either of which you will be sure to carry in a canter, provided some fiery fanatical fellow does not start up to oppose you. They are cotton boroughs under the complete control of the millocracy; and I think you are certain to step in, provided matters are properly managed, at the expense of a small judicious outlay. And here, I know, you will begin to object—You cannot afford the expense, &c. My dear friend, you must afford it, if you wish to cut any figure in life, or to make yourself accounted worthy of purchase. No parsimony is so ill-judged as that which boggles at the outlay of an election. No matter how many firkins of beer may be consumed in the course of the canvass—how many hundred dozen goes of brandy-and-water may lubricate the throats of the thirsty potwallopers and freemen who espouse your cause, and bear your colours—the true principle is to consider these charges as a debt which a grateful Ministry must refund on the first convenient opportunity, with such rate of interest as you are fairly entitled to expect, taking into account the risk which you have run, and the labour which you have performed on their behalf. Altogether independently of this, a seat in Parliament is well worth the expense. It gives you a position in society which is otherwise difficult to attain; and any man who can talk as you do, glibly and off-hand, is certain, before a session is over, to push himself forward into notoriety.
I'll tell you why we want you, and I shall do so with the most perfect frankness and unreserve. Our best men are used up. In the opinion of the Secret Committee, of whose views I am the humble expositor, Cobden is no longer worth his weight in oakum for any practical purpose whatever. We committed a monstrous mistake in subscribing that unlucky fund. We ought to have remembered the story of the soldier who carried with desperate gallantry a redoubt the morning after he had been rooked of his last penny at cribbage, but who invariably declined to volunteer for any subsequent enterprise, in consequence of the injudicious douceur awarded him by the commanding officer. Just so has it been with Cobden. The testimonial turned his head. You remember the awful exhibition he made of himself, when, in attempting to lecture the farmers on the best method of cultivating land, he assumed the character of a country gentleman; and the undying ridicule which was excited by the immediate publication of a lithographed plan of his estate, which, in a good year, might pasture a couple of cows, and afford precarious subsistence besides to a brood of goslings? Then came his Peace platform tomfoolery, just at the very time when war was becoming universal on the Continent, and revolutions were springing like mines under the feet of every government. Then, again, instead of cajoling the bucolics, he chose openly to defy and insult them at Leeds; and the result has been that, from that hour, every man connected in the most remote degree with the landed interest has drawn off from our body. In the House of Commons he can hardly command an audience. The Liberal whippers-in say that a speech of his is equivalent to a dozen votes added to the Opposition minority, and they never see him crossing the threshold without quaking with terror lest he should take it into his head to commence a harangue. Bright's eloquence is usually smothered by cries of "Oh, oh," and derisive cheering. He is a sturdy chap in his way, but woefully injudicious; and he has been so exceedingly rude to Lord John Russell, that the Whigs will have nothing to say to him. Old Joe is rapidly becoming imbecile. He can no longer fumble with figures as he used to do; and his perception, in most cases, is not sufficiently clear to enable him to state the "tottle of the whole" with accuracy. I love and revere the veteran, but I am afraid his best days are gone by. Milner Gibson won't do; and of course we have too much respect for our cause to allow M'Gregor to come down to Westminster without his muzzle. We require, of all things, a new hand with gentlemanly manners, an easy address, some flow of language, and a slight dash of humour—one who will not weary the House with interminable statistics, or get into a passion because he is contradicted, or fasten upon his opponent with the brute ferocity of a bull-dog. We want some fellow not fully committed to Free Trade, who can keep, as it were, on our flanks, and amuse the enemy at times by suggesting articles of condition. He must have no one-sided predilections, no abstract preference for the Cottonocracy over the other interests of Britain. He must appear to be animated by a fine, generous, patriotic spirit—ever ready to listen to distress, and always eager to condole with it. Fine words, you are aware, butter no parsnips, but they are fine words notwithstanding. This is the part which we wish you to undertake, if you consent to come among us. The fact is, that we must do something of the kind if we wish to escape annihilation. I am afraid we have derived no benefit from sneering at the farmers. The proposals which were made in the public prints for their wholesale emigration have excited general disgust, and men are beginning to ask each other what crime the agriculturists have committed, to justify the infliction of such penalties? The question, of course, is a foolish one. Every sound economist knows that the farmers are mere creatures of circumstance, and that their interests cannot be allowed for one moment to stand in the way of the approaching supremacy of Manchester. But, unfortunately, all men are not political economists, and we must, for some time at least, humour their fancies. I should be the last man in the world to admit that any feelings of compassion should have weight in the settlement of a great national question; and you, who know me well, will do me the credit to believe that I could see every farm-house in England made desolate, and the inmates transported to the antipodes, without the weakness of shedding a tear. We cannot, however, expect so much Spartan stoicism from the masses. They are still by far too much under the influence of the clergy; and it will be some time before we can eradicate from their minds the lingering fibres of superstition. I agree in the main with the sentiments expressed the other night by that trump, Joseph Sandars of Yarmouth, that all we have or ought to regard, is the interest of the manufacturers. Did you observe what he said? Excuse me if I quote the passage. "Look at the fearful consequences which would result to the commercial classes of the country, if their powers of competition with foreign nations were weakened or crippled. If that large portion of the community did not spin and weave for the four quarters of the globe, the subsistence and happiness of millions of our population would be destroyed. That competition went on day by day, and year by year, increasing in force and intelligence, and formed the great social question of our times. If adequate provision were not made for that class of the population, there must be danger." Sandars was undeniably right; but what demon could have possessed Sandars to make him say so in as many words? It amounts to a pure and unqualified admission of the real truth, that Free Trade was intended to operate, and must operate, solely for the benefit of the exporting houses, to the ruin of all other interests in the country; but was it in any way necessary to tell the country that? These are the sort of speeches which are playing the mischief with us. How can we attempt to bamboozle the shopkeepers who are losing custom, and the artisans who have little or nothing to do, and the small tradesmen who are verging towards the Gazette, if members of our own party will have the consummate imprudence to tell them that they are merely parts of a general holocaust—infinitesimal faggots of a grand pile of British industry which is to be fired, in order that the aged phœnix of cotton-spinning may be regenerated, and soar, triumphant and alone, from the heart of the smouldering ashes? Our game is to keep all these things in the background. Three years ago, at one of our private Manchester conferences, I indicated the course which we should pursue. My advice was—on no account to break with the farmers. I represented that, when agricultural distress arrived, as it must do immediately, our first business was to attribute that entirely to exceptional causes—such as a good harvest, which we could have little difficulty in doing, considering the deficiency of agricultural statistics. That, I said, would gain us a year. Next, we could fall back upon the subject of rent, and sow dissension in the bucolic ranks, by alleging that the whole loss might be met by a remission on the part of the landlords, and that they were in fact the only parties interested. I explained that this line of policy, if properly and dextrously pursued, could not fail to add enormously to our strength, since, by radicalising the farmers, we must separate them entirely from the landlords, and make them ready tools for our grand final move—which, I need not say, is the repudiation of the National Debt. My advice was not only applauded, but adopted. We surmounted the difficulties of the first year pretty well; and, but for the folly of some of our own men, we should by this time have had the farmers clamouring on our side. Cobden, however, reviled them in all the terms which his choice and polished imagination could suggest; others told them to go to Australia or to the devil, whichever the might think best; and now Sandars deliberately comes forward, and lets the cat out of the bag! I ask you, Dunshunner, if it is not enough to make any man of parts and intellect as rabid as a March hare, when he sees his finest and best-adjusted schemes utterly ruined by such deplorable bungling? Our only chance is to gain time. Give me another year, or eighteen months more, at the utmost, of the present Parliament, and, I trust, the death-warrant of the Fundholder will be sealed. If we can extend the suffrage in the mean time, so much the better. We have managed to get up a tolerable hatred of taxation. The anti-excise party is very powerful, and, by giving them a lift, we might knock off several more millions from the revenue. Cardwell, and some of that soft-headed set, who call themselves Peelites, wish to take the duties off tea, and they ought by all means to be encouraged. Tobacco follows next, of course; and as smoking and snuffing are now almost universal, the repeal of the duties on these articles would be immensely popular. Malt goes, and so does sugar,—and then, my dear friend, where's your revenue, and where the means of paying the interest of the national debt? Don't you see what a beautiful field is open to us, if we can only keep our own men from making premature disclosures, and pander properly to the public appetite for getting rid of taxation? By itself, direct taxation cannot stand six months. That fact in natural history has been ascertained by so many experiments, and consequent revolutions, from the days of Wat Tyler downwards, that I need not fatigue you by recapitulating them. The reimposition of the Income Tax for three years is an immense point in our favour. I never felt so nervous in my life as during the Ministerial crisis, when it appeared possible that Stanley might come in. I knew that, if he succeeded in forming a Government, the Income Tax was doomed, and then, of course, we must have had a revision of the tariff; and probably he would have proposed to levy such duties upon imports as might put the British artisan, labourer, and grower, on a fair level to compete with the foreigner, at least in respect of taxation. Had he succeeded, our game was up. But, most fortunately, we have escaped that danger. I shall ever regard the glass house in Hyde Park with feelings of peculiar gratitude; for I am convinced that, but for that sublime erection, we should have lost the services of Sir Charles Wood, and, with him, lost all chance of carrying into execution those schemes which we consider most important for the entire ascendency of Manchester. Fortunately, Wood is spared to us. He is an excellent confiding creature—as innocent as a lamb who is tempted into the precincts of the slaughter-house by the proffer of a bunch of clover; and if we can manage to keep him in office a little longer, why, between ourselves, I think, Dunshunner, we may look upon the matter as achieved.
Did you ever read old Cobbett's political writings? It is rather funny to refer to these just now. We are precisely in the state which he vaticinated some thirty years ago, when viewing prospectively the effects of Peel's Currency Act of 1819: and I confess that I have lately conceived a wonderful respect for the prescience and sagacity of that queer ill-regulated genius. I call him ill-regulated, because I believe that, were he alive, we should have found him our bitterest opponent in any scheme which involved, as ours does, the expatriation of the British yeomanry. The old fool had a heart—that is, the amount of cellular or medullary tissue, which anatomically answers to that portion of the human frame, was acted upon by natural impulses, which it is the duty of the scientific Free-Trader to control. We of Manchester flatter ourselves that we are above any such deplorable weakness. But, setting his heart entirely aside, Cobbett had a head, and it is perhaps as well for us that that head is mouldering in the grave. He would have broached the grand question too early, and thereby given our booty time to escape; whereas, now, we have the fundholders gone to sleep, like pheasants on a tree at sunset. If no untoward barking—no alarum on the part of our own lurchers unsettles them—they are safe enough. Granting that they are startled for an instant, a very little delay will suffice to put each bird's neck beneath its wing; and then—hey, my fellow countrymen, for the brimstone-match, and the sack to receive the fallen! Let them kick and spur as they like afterwards—it is a mere question of the expenditure of feathers.
Of course you are quite aware of the present state of the colonies. Some of the more enthusiastic of our men were anxious to get rid of them at once, which they thought might be done by a simultaneous withdrawal of the troops. I have seen this plan recommended more than once in respectable quarters, and the arguments in its favour are not without plausibility; still, I think it better that we should abstain from active measures, and allow the colonies to drop off, like blighted fruit, as they must naturally do, without any violent effort on our part. Under the operation of Free Trade, colonies can be of no earthly use to us. We do nothing for them, and they do nothing for us; therefore, the sooner we cut the cable, and let them go, the better. The Whigs are doing all they can to precipitate the crisis with Canada. The removal of the seat of Government to Quebec will give such an impetus to the Annexation party, that the Canadas must go over to the United States, notwithstanding all the scruples which may be preferred by those fools who talk of loyalty as if it were something hereditary, or, indeed, as if loyalty were otherwise than an absolute sham. We know better. Crowns are usually estimated according to the value of the jewels which they contain; and, if certain jewels are detached from their setting, and transferred, it is not difficult to ascertain the value of the remanent bullion circlet. You take me? This involves a point which we don't wish to broach at present, though we have long had it in view. Do you take any interest in the affairs of France? That, now, is a country worth living in! None of your aristocrats there! Why, if England were France, you or I, Dunshunner, might be riding in the royal carriages, with half a squadron of the Guards before and behind us, receiving that homage which is the due of genius, political wisdom, and recondite science, instead of tramping, as we do, on foot, at the perpetual risk of catarrhs. I cannot sufficiently admire the coolness of our little friend Louis Blanc, who, as he was stepping into one of old Louis Philippe's vehicles, specially devoted by the Provisional Government to the service of the Lilliputian patriot, thus addressed, with a graceful wave of his hand, a group of envying ouvriers:—"My friends! one of these days we shall all of us ride in our carriages!" There is a sublimity about this which utterly distances our feebler flights of imagination. We have never been able hitherto to hold out higher expectations to the people than what are inferred by pictures of gigantic pots of beer and dropsical loaves; and we have tried these baits so often that they have now lost something of their freshness, and much of their original significance. We really must have some new device for our banners. I wish you would turn your mind to this, and let me have your opinion what kind of property would be most acceptable to the million.
What do you think of the Girondists? That is the new name we have got for Graham and his party, and it seems to me a very happy one. Hitherto they have played remarkably well into our hands, but they are clearly not to be trusted. As Watt remarks, in his treatise on the steam-engine, there are wheels within wheels; and those gentlemen have been so extremely gyratory in their motions, that it is impossible with the least certainty to predicate the direction of their course. One thing, however, seems to me perfectly clear—they never can join the Protectionists. Two years ago I should have hesitated to say this authoritatively, but they have thrown away so many excellent chances of reconciliation, and invariably manifested such rancour and bitterness towards their former allies, that I do not see how they can possibly return. There is no hatred equal in intensity to that of a deserter. Awake or asleep, he has ever before him the awful apparition of the provost-marshal; his back tingles with the imaginary lash of the cat-of-nine-tails; and, if you watch him in his slumbers, you will hear him moaning something about a file of musketry and a coffin. It is something to be certain of this. You see that the party of the Gironde is very small, and never can act effectively of itself. It is simply useful as a make-weight, and as such we consider it. Now, a glance at the late division-lists will show you that these men, whatever else they may do, are resolutely determined never to go into the same lobby with the Protectionists. They have no abstract affection for the Whigs—which is not wonderful, considering the tenacity and strength of the family alliance; and though they may occasionally seem to help them, they would be sorry to lose any chance of giving them a sly dig with the stiletto. We are by far their most natural allies—indeed, if they had any sense, they would throw themselves into our arms at once. But, unfortunately for them, they are tainted with the aristocratic leaven. They affect to look down upon us, pure democrats, as though they were something infinitely superior, and they will not fraternise with that cordiality which we are surely entitled to expect. You may rely upon it, this will not be forgotten at the proper time. Nothing is, to my mind, so purely offensive as the demeanour of an aristocratic Liberal. His look, his language, and the very tone of his voice, tells you that he considers his support of your principles as an act of magnificent condescension; and that, if you entertained a proper feeling of gratitude, you ought to go down upon your knees and thank him. Now, considering that one-half of the Peelites are little better than pragmatical coxcombs, and the other half, with a few exceptions, venerable serving-men of the Taper and Tadpole school, you may easily conceive that these airs give us infinite disgust, and that we are keeping an accurate account with a view to a future settlement.
And now, Dunshunner, I must conclude. I have thought it best to state to you my views without any reservation, because it is always bad policy to enlist a recruit without making him distinctly aware of the nature of the service which he is expected to perform. Our Committee never forms its conclusions, or takes its measures hastily. We have been long preparing for the great work of national regeneration; and although we may have been, and certainly are, disappointed with the results which in some cases have followed our exertions, we are not less firmly convinced that our cause must progress, and be triumphant. If we can only prevent a legislative return to indirect taxation—if we can maintain for a little longer the struggle of unprotected British industry against foreign competition, we cannot choose but win. The struggle with the earth-born Antæus has been a very severe one. A poet, now, would tell you that the old mythical story of the Greeks had an occult meaning—that Antæus, the son of Terra and Neptune, was a typification of Agriculture and Navigation, which the manufacturing Hercules is attempting to destroy, and that, every time the giant is overthrown, he derives new strength from his contact with his venerable mother. So be it. Hercules, you know, strangled him at last by lifting him up into the air; and there is no reason why we should not repeat the same operation. On second thoughts, you had better not make use of this illustration, happy as it may appear. On consulting Lemprière, I observe that Hercules was finally consumed in consequence of putting on one of his own shirts, and that circumstance might be awkwardly interpreted by some ungenerous enemy.
The sooner you can make up your mind the better. Let me hear from you without delay; and if your answer, as I anticipate, should be affirmative, we shall bring you into the House in time to take part in the debate on the confiscation of the revenues of the Church.
Believe me alway yours,
Robert M'Corkindale.
Manchester, 15th April 1851.