THE LIGHT OF DAY.
It was day-break; not that I could perceive the light of heaven, for the shoulders of my expiring friend impeded my view, but I inferred so from the bustle in the street below. I heard the footsteps and voices of men in the room; I could not make out the subject of their conversation, as they talked in Polish, but I remarked that they were busy about the coffin. Now, beyond a doubt, thought I, they are looking for the dead man, and my deliverance is at hand; and so it proved, although it happened after a fashion for which I was but little prepared.
One of the exploring party smote so lustily with a stout bamboo upon the extended form of the dead or dying, that he started up, and stood erect. Some of the blows lighted upon my hapless person with such effect as to make me yell out most vigorously, and take up a position directly in the rear of the defunct. This old Polish and New East Prussian method of restoring the dead to life proved, certainly, so efficacious in the present instance, that I doubt whether the impassibility of death were not preferable to the acute perceptions of the living.
I now perceived that the room was filled by men, for the most part Poles. The timely castigation had been administered by a police-officer appointed to superintend the funeral. The Tax-collector still slept the sleep of death in his coffin, which stood in the ante-chamber, whither it had been transported by the drunken Poles, who had been ordered to convey it to what had been formerly the porter's lodge. They had, however, been pleased to select my ante-chamber as a fitting resting-place for their charge, whom they confided to the watch of one of their besotted comrades, who had slumbered at his post, and, awakened probably by my entrance, had groped his way, with all the instinct of one far gone in liquor, to my bed, and there slept off the fumes of his potations.
The preceding incidents had so thoroughly unmanned me as to bring on a severe attack of fever, and for seven long weeks did I lie raving about the horrors of that fearful night; and even now, albeit, thanks to the Polish insurrection, I am no longer judge-commissary at Brczwezmcisl, I can scarce think on my adventure in New East Prussia without a shudder. However, I am always glad to relate it, as it contains a sort of moral—to wit, that we ought not to fear that which we profess to disbelieve.
ENGLAND IN 1850.
BY LAMARTINE.
When a man is strongly preoccupied with the crisis under which his country labors, every opportunity that arises is caught at to turn to the profit of his compatriots the sights with which he is struck, and the reflections with which those sights inspire him. Called by circumstances of an entirely private nature to revisit England for some time, after an absence of twenty years, it was impossible for me not to be dazzled by the immense progress made by England during that lapse of time, not only in population, in riches, industry, navigation, railroads, extent, edifices, embellishments, and the health of the capital, but also, and more especially, in charitable institutions for the people, and in associations of real religious, conservative, and fraternal socialism, between classes, to prevent explosions by the evaporation of the causes which produce them, to stifle the murmurs from below by incalculable benefits from above, and to close the mouths of the people, not by the brutalities of the police, but by the arm of public virtue. Very far from feeling afflicted or humiliated at this fine spectacle of the operation of so many really popular works, which give to England at the present moment an incontestable pre-eminence in this respect over the rest of Europe, and over us, I rejoiced at it. To asperse one's neighbor is to lower one's self. The rivalries between nations are paltry and shameful when they consist in denying or in hating the good that is done by our neighbors. These rivalries, on the contrary, are noble and fruitful when they consist in acknowledging, in glorifying, and in imitating the good which is done every where; instead of being jealousies, these rivalries become emulation. What does it signify whether a thing be English or French, provided it be a benefit? Virtues have no country, or, rather, they are of every country; it is God who inspires them, and humanity which profits by them. Let us then learn, for one, how to admire.
But I am told that these practical virtues of the English to the poorer, the proletaire, the suffering classes, are nothing but the prudence of selfishness! Even if that were the case, we ought still to applaud, for a selfishness so prudent and so provident, a selfishness which could do itself justice by so well imitating virtue, a selfishness which would corrupt the people by charity and prosperity—such a selfishness as that would be the most profound and most admirable of policies, it would be the Machiavelism of virtue. But it is not given to selfishness alone to transform itself so well into an appearance of charity; selfishness restricts itself, while charity diffuses itself; without doubt there is prudence in it, but there is also virtue, without doubt Old England, the veritable patrician republic under her frontispiece of monarchy, feels that the stones of her feudal edifice are becoming disjoined, and might tumble under the blast of the age, if she did not bind them together every day by the cement of her institutions in favor of her people. That is good sense, but under that good sense there is virtue; and it is impossible to remain in England for any length of time without discovering it. The source of that public virtue is the religious feeling with which that people is endowed more than many others; a divine feeling of practical religious liberty, has developed at the present moment, under a hundred forms, among them. Every one has a temple to God, where every one can recognize the light of reason, and adore that God, and serve him with his brothers in the sincerity, and in the independence of his faith. Yes, there is, if you will, at the same time, prudence, well-understood selfishness, and public virtue in the acts of England, in order to prevent a social war. Let it be whatever you like; but would that it pleased God that plebeian and proprietary France could also see and comprehend its duty to the people! Would that it pleased God that she could take a lesson from that intelligent aristocracy! Would that she could, once for all, say to herself, "I perish, I tremble, I swoon in my panics. I call at one time on the Monarchy, at another on the Republic, at another on legitimacy, now on illegitimacy—then on the Empire, now on the Inquisition—then on the police, now on the sabre, and then on eloquence to save me, and no one can save me but myself. I will save myself by my own virtue."