And there is a great deal to see. There are many charming pictures, and among the choicest those of which the queen of Spain has stripped her palaces, and sent here. Is there not a hint of many a Velasquez most exquisite, and of Mr. Stirling, which are worth a journey to the Escurial to worship? Here is many a rare Reynolds which Mr. Tom Taylor might find worth making a note of, and here are walls covered with noble cartoons of the severe Munich school. These, with the photographs and water-colors, and mediaeval objects, are common to many [{828}] an exhibition held before; but there is one feature unique—a noble sculpture gallery, artistic, charmingly lighted, sufficient to delight Mr. Gibson, and drive the Royal Academy to despair. A sculpture-hall, on which you can look down from a balustrade in a room overhead, as if into a Pompeiian court. A sculpture-hall, in which you can look up to an arching glass roof, and, half way down again, to the balustrade just mentioned, which is dotted with small statutes. A sculpture-hall, where I can walk round and think myself in a Roman palace, to which these fine objects belong, and not in a temporary shed where some scattered objects that have been lent are shown. For here I see that the Roman studios have been emptied of their treasures; that Miss Hosmer has sent her Faun, in toned yellow marble: a marvellous—if the speech be not impolite— work for a woman. With Story's wonderful Judith, and a Baby Girl by Mogni—a pendant for the now famous Reading Girl. But it is easy to prophesy that this Baby Girl will be photographed, and stereoscoped, and binocularized in a hundred ways, and watched over by policemen specially, and visited by a steady crowd. This hall and its contents—the like of which it is no boast to say has not been yet seen in these kingdoms—is the feature of this exhibition.
Then, having seen all that is most curious and beautiful—in the fashion in which such things must be seen where there is only a quarter of an hour to see them—the stiff' gold and crimson strands, which we call the procession, came back to the pasha's dais. And then, with a crash and a smash, and a thundering of monster drums, and the rattle and rolling of little drums, and the sharp brassy bark of trumpets, the true English national Old Hundredth, in which musical and unmusical—people with ears, and people without, even people with voices, and people without—can join, then God save the Queen is sung. Sung! Rather fired off! Discharged! Salvoed!
And then the glittering mass begins to dissolve and fade away. The stage, which has been laid out under the pasha's canopy, gradually clears. At the door there is a struggle, and the scatter of new gravel, with the frantic leaping up behind carriages of many footmen, and the closing in of mounted soldiers. And then the pageant melts away, and the work of the day is done.
As I walk and wander from the light glass arcades to the darker courts, and from the courts to the open terraces, and hear the hum of Saxons' voices, and from at least every third mouth the sharp "burr" of some Saxon dialect, and when I meet burly shoulders and massive chests which are not of the country, some out-of-place speculations come into my mind, and I am tempted to make suppositions. First, I speculate—of course shrinking away from the dry bones of politics—whether there might not have been some mistake in the old and constant treatment of a people who seem cheerful and grateful for a kind word or a kinder act, and who are "willing" and even clever in their way—and think whether the "want of progress" and want of "capital" and of "self-reliance," and the want of a hundred other things which puzzle and dispirit the political physician, may not in some degree be laid to the account of old mistakes, old laws, old errors, old harsh treatment, old jealousies and restraints, the folly of which is now seen and admitted, but the fruits of which remain to this day?
Just as the fruits of a bad education linger in a grown man, and the marks of early hardship are stamped upon the face and constitution, it will take many years yet, in the life of a nation, before old faults are worked out of its constitution. And I think—still in the walks of the Winter Garden—that if my friendly Briton tell me that his experience of the lower orders of Irish is that "you can't depend upon a word they say," I cannot but recollect that half a century ago they were civilly slaves, without rights; [{829}] and that a century ago they were a proscribed caste, against whom one-half the laws of the land were directed. If we have found them indolent, and disinclined to perseverance and the making of money, have we not dim recollections of seeing acts of parliament passed again and again to cripple their trade? A people must grow up, as a child must grow up; and it is hard to expect that a child whose body has suffered by an unkind or an injudicious nurse, should become at once strong under better treatment. Then I speculate on the mysterious relation of Irishmen to Irish land, through which the "bit" of land is as necessary as the "bit" of bread; where a tenant holds his tiny scrap, on which he pays his thirty-shilling rent; and during the whole year is struggling desperately to work out of this great estate a few potatoes, and fewer clothes for himself and family, beside the miserable thirty-shilling margin for the landlord. I think how some estates have two, four, six, eight thousand tenants of this valuable class—and think beside, in answer to a natural objection, how this miserable system was created for political ends, to multiply voters "to support government," If the Palace and Winter Garden were twice as long and twice as broad, I should not have half time or space enough for the speculations that come crowding on me with reference to this perplexing country.
And having made these speculations, and having gone quite round the garden, I begin—in addition to my speculations—to make some rather wild suppositions. As, suppose that, for a mere experiment, there were a greater spirit of charity of speech introduced into our dealings with this country. Suppose that we gave the people time and reasonable allowance—looked on with encouragement where there was any good attempt made, and with indulgence where there was failure. Suppose that some of our journals gave over writing "slashing" articles, and some men desisted from speeches and bitter epigrams on the "mere Irish," which, being copied in every cheap print, and brought to every cabin door, do incalculable mischief, fatally widening the breach, and causing England and Englishmen to be sometimes almost hated. Suppose that there were some little restraint on the traditional stock ridicule of Irish matters. Suppose that the Englishmen who visited the country carried themselves with a little less of William the Conqueror and Strongbow air, and suppose that—
But here are the umbrellas, and the sticks, and the gate.
From Chambers's Journal.
SPEECH.
Be choice and frugal of thy speech alway:
The arrow from the engine of the thoughts
Once shot, is past recall; for scorn is barbed,
And will not out, but rankles in the wound;
And calumny doth leave a darkening spot
On wounded fame, which, as it would infect,
Marks its sad victim in the eyes of men,
Till no one dare approach and know the truth.