"You never had the chance, Hawthorne; pray God you never may."
Such was nearly my last interview, for some years, with my friend John Brown; for I had taken my degree and left college before he came up again to pass his examination. He was subpoenaed, with myself, as a witness on the trial of the man whom we had secured, which took place at the next assizes; but I was informed by the prisoner's attorney of his intention to plead guilty, the case against him being such a strong one; Brown was thus enabled without much risk to remain in the country with Chesterton, and we were both spared being placed in the painful position of important witnesses in a trial of life and death.
The man's confession was full, and apparently honest; and it was a satisfaction to find that the wretch who had fallen was a man of well-known desperate character, and probably, as the prisoner asserted, the concocter of the whole business: while all were murderers in intention. Had they succeeded in effecting their object by plundering the house, Farmer Nutt, whose habits of staying somewhat late from home on fair nights were well known to all the neighbourhood, was to have been waylaid on the towing-path which led to his house, and as, although a quiet man, there was a good deal of resolute spirit about him, and he would have had a heavy purse with him, the proceeds of stock sold at the fair, with which he would not easily have parted, there was no question but that he would have found a grave in the canal. Of Brown's lodging in the house the party were well aware; but they had laid their plans so warily for effecting an entrance without noise, and easily overpowering the women, that they hoped either altogether to avoid disturbing his quarter of the house, or making it evident to him that resistance was useless. Of course, our appearance was wholly unexpected; they had watched for some time, but we had been so quiet for the last hour (being in truth more than half asleep) that they had no suspicion of there being any one stirring in Brown's rooms.
I saw the unfortunate prisoner several times, and found him open and communicative on every subject but one. Any information with regard to his accomplice who had escaped, he always steadily refused; nor did a single unguarded word ever drop from him in conversation with any one by which the slightest clue could be obtained as to his identity. Even the police inspector, the most plausible and unscrupulous of his class, a perfect Machiavel among the Peelers, who could make a prisoner believe he was his only friend while he was doing his best to put the halter round his neck, even his practised policy was unsuccessful here. There was little doubt, however, that it was some person familiar with the premises, from the circumstance that poor Boxer, whose silence on the night of the attack we had all been surprised at, and who was not of a mood to be easily inveigled by strangers, even with the usual attractions of poisoned meat, &c., had disappeared, and was never heard of from that time forth. Suspicion of course fell upon several; but the matter remains to this day, I believe, a mystery. The prisoner, as I have said, pleaded guilty, and received sentence of death; under the circumstances of the crime, and its nearly fatal result, no other could be expected; nor did the judge who tried him hold out the slightest hope of mercy. But his full confession, with regard to himself and the man who had fallen, with honourable silence as to their more fortunate companion, his youth, (he was but a year older than myself,) and his whole bearing since his imprisonment, had impressed myself and others deeply in his favour; a memorial of the case was drawn up representing that justice might well be satisfied with the violent death of one criminal already, and after being signed by all parties of any influence in the neighbourhood, was forwarded for presentation to the crown. But the judge declared that he could not, consistently with his duty, back our application, and, to our extreme disappointment, an answer was returned that the law in this case must take its course. A private and personal interest was at work, however, which for once proved more powerful than judges or home secretaries. Brown had signed our memorial of course; but, dreading an unfavourable reply, had forwarded through other channels a short but strong remonstrance directly to the Queen. He spoke touchingly of his own distressed state of mind at having so young in life been compelled in defence of his friend to take the life of a fellow-creature, and prayed her Majesty "to restore, as she only could, his peace of mind, by giving him a life in exchange for that which he had taken away." A letter accompanied a reprieve by return of post, addressed to John Brown, which he preserves with a care almost superstitious; it contains a few short lines, dictated by a royal spirit and a woman's heart, and signed "Victoria." Victoria! mercy and humanity, the victory was indeed yours!
Of John Brown I have little to add. Like others with whom I was at one time so long and intimately allied, I have seen nothing of him now for years. The Dean was relieved as if from an incubus when he left college, though I believe there was a cessation of all open hostility after his return from Chesterton's. At least the only authenticated mention of any allusion to old grievances on my friend's part is, that when he paid Mr Hodgett the usual fees which fall to the Dean's share, upon taking his B.A., he asked him "whether he allowed discount for ready money?"
Hawthorne.
NELSON'S DESPATCHES AND LETTERS.[[15]]
The common idea of a sailor—whether with a commodore's broad pendant, a lieutenant's wooden leg, or a foremast-man's pigtail—was, at one time, a wild, thoughtless, rollicking man, with very broad shoulders and a very red face, who talked incessantly about shivering his timbers, and thought no more of eating a score or two of Frenchmen than if they had been sprats. Such was the effect of the veracious chronicles of our countryman Tobias, and the lifelike descriptions of old Trunnion, and Tom Bowling, and the rest. The jack-tar, as represented by him—with the addition, perhaps, of a few softening features, but still the man of blood and 'ounds, breathing fire and smoke, and with a constant inclination to luff helms and steer a point or two to windward—has retained possession of the stage to the present time; and Mr T. P. Cooke still shuffles, and rolls, and dances, and fights—the beau-ideal and impersonation of the instrument with which Britannia rules the waves. And that the canvass waves of the Surrey are admirably ruled by such instruments, we have no intention of disputing; nor would it be possible to place visibly before the public the peculiar qualifications that constitute a first-rate sailor, any more than those which form a first-rate lawyer. The freaks of a young templar have as much to do with the triumphs of Lord Eldon, as the dash and vivacity of any fictitious middy have to do with the First of June. Sailors are made of sterner stuff; and of all classes of men, have their highest faculties called earliest into use, and kept most constantly in exercise. Let no man, therefore, think of the navy as a last resource for the stupidest of his sons. He will chew salt-junk, and walk with an easy negligence acquired from a course of practice in the Bay of Biscay; and in due time arrive at his double epaulettes, and be a blockhead to the end of the chapter. But all this stupidity, we humbly conceive, might have found as fitting an arena in Westminster Hall, or even in Westminster Abbey—with reverence be it spoken—as on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war; for we maintain it is of less consequence for a man to be a great pleader or an eloquent divine, (where the utmost extent of evil resulting from the absence of eloquence and acuteness is a law-suit lost or a congregation lulled to sleep,) than that he should be active, energetic, skilful, in one of the "leviathans afloat on the brine." Science, zeal, courage, and self-reliance, are very pretty qualities to find in the fool of the family—and without these, no man can ever be a sailor. But what opportunity is there in the navy for the display of the wonderful abilities of the fool of the family's antipode, the genius? Nothing will do for the surpassing brightness of some Highland star but law or politics; so Donald has Latin and Greek shovelled into him out of the dignified hat of some prebendary or bishop, goes to Oxford, talks on all manner of subjects as if his tongue had discovered the perpetual motion, goes to the bar, where the said motion is the only one he is called upon to make, forces himself into high society, wriggles his way into Parliament—the true Trophonius's cave of aspiring orators—and becomes a silent Demosthenes, as he has long been a lawless Coke; an ends at last in a paroxysm of wonder that his creditors are hard-hearted and his country ungrateful, so that, instead of being promoted to a seat at the Admiralty, he is removed to one in the Fleet—which brings him very nearly to the same position he would have been placed in, if a true estimate had been formed of his powers at first. Oh fathers! if Tom is a donkey, keep him at home or make him an attorney—it is amazing how a few years in "the office" will brighten him—but don't trust the lives of men, and the honour of the flag, to any but the best and wisest of your sons. Such a school for moral training has never been devised as one of the floating colleges that carry guns. The youngest midshipman acquires habits of command, the oldest captain practises the ennobling virtue of obedience; and these, we take it, form the alpha and omega of man's useful existence. Power gives self-respect, responsibility gives caution, and subjection gives humility. With all these united, as they are in every rank in the service, the character has little room left for improvement; tenderness and generosity, in addition, make a man a Collingwood or Pellew—genius and heroism make him a Nelson.