Came 1848, with its revolutions, barricades, states of siege, movements of vast armies, great battles and victories, with their multiplied hecatombs of slain even; but they did not belong to us; victors and vanquished were aliens; and I went on envying the people who had heard the Tower guns fire, and joybells ring, who had seen the fireworks, and read the Extraordinary Gazettes during the first fifteen years of the century! Was I never to live in the history of England? Then, as you all remember, came the great millennium or peace year ’51. Did not sages deliberate as to whether it would not be better to exclude warlike weapons from the congress of industry in Hyde Park? By the side of Joseph Paxton with his crystal verge there seemed to stand a more angelic figure, waving wide her myrtle wand, and striking universal peace through sea and land. It was to be, we fondly imagined, as the immortal blind man of Cripplegate sang:—
“No war or battle’s sound
Was heard the world around:
The idle spear and shield were high uphung,
The hookèd chariot stood
Unstain’d with hostile blood,
The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng;
And kings sate still with awful eye,
As if they sorely knew their Sovereign Lord was by.”
O blind man! it was but for an instant. The trodden grass had scarcely begun to grow again where nave and transept had been, when the wicked world was all in a blaze; and then the very minstrels of peace began to sharpen swords and heat shot red-hot about the Holy Places; and then the Guards went to Gallipoli, and farther on to Bulgaria, and farther on to Old Fort; and the news of the Alma, Inkermann, Balaklava, the Redan, the Tchernaya, the Mamelon, the Malakhoff came to us, hot and hot, and we were all living in the history of England. And lo! it was very much like the history of any other day in the year—or in the years that had gone before. The movements of the allied forces were discussed at breakfast, over the sipping of coffee, the munching of muffins, and the chipping of eggs. Newspaper-writers, parliament-men, club-orators took official bungling or military mismanagement as their cue for the smart leader of the morrow, the stinging query to Mr. Secretary at the evening sitting, or the bow-window exordium in the afternoon; and then everything went on pretty much as usual. We had plenty of time and interest to spare for the petty police case, the silly scandal, the sniggering joke of the day. The cut of the coat and the roasting of the mutton, the non-adhesiveness of the postage-stamp, or the misdemeanors of the servant-maid, were matters of as relative importance to us as the great and gloomy news of battle and pestilence from beyond sea. At least I lived in actual history, and my envy was cured for ever.