Library of the House of Commons, Tuesday Night.
My Dear Pisistratus, ———- is up; we are in for it for two mortal
hours! I take flight to the library, and devote those hours to
you. Don’t be conceited, but that picture of yourself which you
have placed before me has struck me with all the force of an
original. The state of mind which you describe so vividly must be
a very common one in our era of civilization, yet I have never
before seen it made so prominent and life-like. You have been in
my thoughts all day. Yes, how many young men must there be like
you, in this Old World, able, intelligent, active, and persevering
enough, yet not adapted for success in any of our conventional
professions,—“mute, inglorious Raleighs.” Your letter, young
artist, is an illustration of the philosophy of colonizing. I
comprehend better, after reading it, the old Greek colonization,—
the sending out, not only the paupers, the refuse of an over-
populated state, but a large proportion of a better class, fellows
full of pith and sap and exuberant vitality, like yourself,
blending, in those wise cleruchioe, a certain portion of the
aristocratic with the more democratic element; not turning a rabble
loose upon a new soil, but planting in the foreign allotments all
the rudiments of a harmonious state, analogous to that in the
mother country; not only getting rid of hungry, craving mouths, but
furnishing vent for a waste surplus of intelligence and courage,
which at home is really not needed, and more often comes to ill
than to good,—here only menaces our artificial embankments, but
there, carried off in an aqueduct, might give life to a desert.
For my part, in my ideal of colonization I should like that each
exportation of human beings had, as of old, its leaders and
chiefs,—not so appointed from the mere quality of rank (often,
indeed, taken from the humbler classes), but still men to whom a
certain degree of education should give promptitude, quickness,
adaptability; men in whom their followers can confide. The Greeks
understood that. Nay, as the colony makes progress, as its
principal town rises into the dignity of a capital,—a polis that
needs a polity,—I sometimes think it might be wise to go still
further, and not only transplant to it a high standard of
civilization, but draw it more closely into connection with the
parent state, and render the passage of spare intellect, education,
and civility, to and fro, more facile, by drafting off thither the
spare scions of royalty itself. I know that many of my more
“liberal” friends would pooh-pooh this notion; but I am sure that
the colony altogether, when arrived to a state that would bear the
importation, would thrive all the better for it. And when the day
shall come (as to all healthful colonies it must come sooner or
later) in which the settlement has grown an independent state, we
may thereby have laid the seeds of a constitution and a
civilization similar to our own, with self-developed forms of
monarchy and aristocracy, though of a simpler growth than old
societies accept, and not left a strange, motley chaos of
struggling democracy—an uncouth, livid giant, at which the
Frankenstein may well tremble, not because it is a giant, but
because it is a giant half completed. (1) Depend on it, the New
World will be friendly or hostile to the Old, not in proportion to
the kinship of race, but in proportion to the similarity of manners
and institutions,—a mighty truth to which we colonizers have been
blind.
Passing from these more distant speculations to this positive
present before us, you see already, from what I have said, that I
sympathize with your aspirations; that I construe them as you would
have me: looking to your nature and to your objects, I give you my
advice in a word,—Emigrate!
My advice is, however, founded on one hypothesis; namely, that you
are perfectly sincere,—you will be contented with a rough life,
and with a moderate fortune at the end of your probation. Don’t
dream of emigrating if you want to make a million, or the tenth of
a million. Don’t dream of emigrating unless you can enjoy its
hardships,—to bear them is not enough!
Australia is the land for you, as you seem to surmise. Australia
is the land for two classes of emigrants: first, the man who has
nothing but his wits, and plenty of them; secondly, the man who has
a small capital, and who is contented to spend ten years in
trebling it. I assume that you belong to the latter class. Take
out L3,000, and before you are thirty years old you may return with
L10,000 or L12,000. If that satisfies you, think seriously of
Australia. By coach, tomorrow, I will send you down all the best
books and reports on the subject; and I will get you what detailed
information I can from the Colonial Office. Having read these, and
thought over them dispassionately, spend some months yet among the
sheep-walks of Cumberland; learn all you can from all the shepherds
you can find,—from Thyrsis to Menalcas. Do more; fit yourself in
every way for a life in the Bush, where the philosophy of the
division of labor is not yet arrived at. Learn to turn your hand
to everything. Be something of a smith, something of a carpenter
—do the best you can with the fewest tools; make yourself an
excellent shot; break in all the wild horses and ponies you can
borrow and beg. Even if you want to do none of these things when
in your settlement, the having learned to do them will fit you for
many other things not now foreseen. De-fine-gentlemanize yourself
from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot, and become
the greater aristocrat for so doing; for he is more than an
aristocrat, he is a king, who suffices in all things for himself,—
who is his own master, because he wants no valetaille. I think
Seneca has expressed that thought before me; and I would quote the
passage, but the book, I fear, is not in the library of the House
of Commons. But now (cheers, by Jove! I suppose —— is down. Ah!
it is so; and C—- is up, and that cheer followed a sharp hit at me.
How I wish I were your age, and going to Australia with you!)—But
now—to resume my suspended period—but now to the important
point,—capital. You must take that, unless you go as a shepherd,
and then good-by to the idea of L10,000 in ten years. So, you see,
it appears at the first blush that you must still come to your
father; but, you will say, with this difference, that you borrow
the capital with every chance of repaying it instead of frittering
away the income year after year till you are eight and thirty or
forty at least. Still, Pisistratus, you don’t, in this, gain your
object at a leap; and my dear old friend ought not to lose his son
and his money too. You say you write to me as to your own father.
You know I hate professions; and if you did not mean what you say,
you have offended me mortally. As a father, then, I take a
father’s rights, and speak plainly. A friend of mine, Mr. Bolding,
a clergyman, has a son,—a wild fellow, who is likely to get into
all sorts of scrapes in England, but with plenty of good in him
notwithstanding, frank, bold, not wanting in talent, but rather in
prudence, easily tempted and led away into extravagance. He would
make a capital colonist (no such temptations in the Bush!) if tied
to a youth like you. Now I propose, with your leave, that his
father shall advance him L1,500, which shall not, however, be
placed in his hands, but in yours, as head partner in the firm.
You, on your side, shall advance the same sum of L1,500, which you
shall borrow from me for three years without interest. At the end
of that time interest shall commence; and the capital, with the
interest on the said first three years, shall be repaid to me, or
my executors, on your return. After you have been a year or two in
the Bush, and felt your way, and learned your business, you may
then safely borrow L1,500 more from your father; and, in the mean
while, you and your partner will have had together the full sum of
L3,000 to commence with. You see in this proposal I make you no
gift, and I run no risk even by your death. If you die insolvent,
I will promise to come on your father, poor fellow; for small joy
and small care will he have then in what may be left of his
fortune. There—I have said all; and I will never forgive you if
you reject an aid that will serve you so much and cost me so
little.
I accept your congratulations on Fanny’s engagement with Lord
Castleton. When you return from Australia you will still be a
young man, she (though about your own years) almost a middle-aged
woman, with her head full of pomps and vanities. All girls have a
short period of girlhood in common; but when they enter womanhood,
the woman becomes the woman of her class. As for me, and the
office assigned to me by report, you know what I said when we
parted, and—But here J—— comes, and tells me that “I am expected
to speak, and answer N——, who is just up, brimful of malice,”—the
House crowded, and hungering for personalities. So I, the man of
the Old World, gird up my loins, and leave you, with a sigh, to the
fresh youth of the New
“Ne tibi sit duros acuisse in proelia dentes.”
Yours affectionately,
Albert Trevanion.
CHAPTER VII.
So, reader, thou art now at the secret of my heart.
Wonder not that I, a bookman’s son, and at certain periods of my life a bookman myself, though of lowly grade in that venerable class,—wonder not that I should thus, in that transition stage between youth and manhood, have turned impatiently from books. Most students, at one time or other in their existence, have felt the imperious demand of that restless principle in man’s nature which calls upon each son of Adam to contribute his share to the vast treasury of human deeds. And though great scholars are not necessarily, nor usually, men of action, yet the men of action whom History presents to our survey have rarely been without a certain degree of scholarly nurture. For the ideas which books quicken, books cannot always satisfy. And though the royal pupil of Aristotle slept with Homer under his pillow, it was not that he might dream of composing epics, but of conquering new Ilions in the East. Many a man, how little soever resembling Alexander, may still have the conqueror’s aim in an object that action only can achieve, and the book under his pillow may be the strongest antidote to his repose. And how the stern Destinies that shall govern the man weave their first delicate tissues amidst the earliest associations of the child! Those idle tales with which the old credulous nurse had beguiled my infancy,—tales of wonder, knight-errantry, and adventure,—had left behind them seeds long latent, seeds that might never have sprung up above the soil, but that my boyhood was so early put under the burning-glass, and in the quick forcing house, of the London world. There, even amidst books and study, lively observation and petulant ambition broke forth from the lush foliage of romance,—that fruitless leafiness of poetic youth! And there passion, which is a revolution in all the elements of individual man, had called a new state of being, turbulent and eager, out of the old habits and conventional forms it had buried,—ashes that speak where the fire has been. Far from me, as from any mind of some manliness, be the attempt to create interest by dwelling at length on the struggles against a rash and misplaced attachment, which it was my duty to overcome; but all such love, as I have before implied, is a terrible unsettler,—
“Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow.”
To re-enter boyhood, go with meek docility through its disciplined routine—how hard had I found that return, amidst the cloistered monotony of college! My love for my father, and my submission to his wish, had indeed given some animation to objects otherwise distasteful; but now that my return to the University must be attended with positive privation to those at home, the idea became utterly hateful and repugnant. Under pretence that I found myself, on trial, not yet sufficiently prepared to do credit to my father’s name, I had easily obtained leave to lose the ensuing college term and pursue my studies at home. This gave me time to prepare my plans and bring round ——. How shall I ever bring round to my adventurous views those whom I propose to desert? Hard it is to get on in the world,—very hard; but the most painful step in the way is that which starts from the threshold of a beloved home.
How—ah, how indeed! “No, Blanche, you cannot join me to-day; I am going out for many hours. So it will be late before I can be home.”
Home,—the word chokes me! Juba slinks back to his young mistress, disconsolate; Blanche gazes at me ruefully from our favorite hill-top, and the flowers she has been gathering fall unheeded from her basket. I hear my mother’s voice singing low as she sits at work by her open casement. How,—ah, how indeed!
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