Chapter LXXXIII (3)

The news of this bloody business soon got wind, and the very same day it was the talk of all Toulouse. Martial Noell had died upon the spot; his brother expired within forty-eight hours. The seconds got out of the way, till they should see how the thing was likely to go. Dominique's wound prevented his following their example, if he were so disposed; and when it no longer impeded his movements, he was already in the hands of justice. Frantic with grief on learning the fate of his beloved sons, Anthony Noell hurried to Toulouse, and vigorously pushed a prosecution. He hoped for a very severe sentence, and was bitterly disappointed when Dominique escaped, in consideration of his wounds and of his having been the insulted party, with the lenient doom of five years' imprisonment.

FIVE YEARS LATER.

Five years of absence from home may glide rapidly enough away, when passed in pursuit of pleasure or profit; dragged out between prison walls, they appear an eternity, a chasm between the captive and the world. So thought Dominique as he re-entered Montauban, at the expiration of his sentence. During the whole time, not a word of intelligence had reached him from his home, no friendly voice had greeted his ear, no line of familiar handwriting had gladdened his tearless eyes. Arrived in his native town, his first inquiry was for his father. Pascal Lafon was dead. The fate of his wife and son had preyed upon his health; the prison air had poisoned the springs of life in the strong, free-hearted man. The physician declared drugs useless in his case, for that the atmosphere of liberty alone could save him; and he recommended, if unconditional release were impossible, that the prisoner should be guarded in his own house. The recommendation was forwarded to Paris, but the same post took a letter from Anthony Noell, and a few days brought the physician's dismissal and an order for the close confinement of Lafon. Examinations followed each other in rapid succession, but they served only to torment the prisoner, without procuring his release; and after some months he died, his innocence unrecognised. The cause of his death, and the circumstances attending it, were loudly proclaimed by the indignant physician; and Dominique, on his return to Montauban, had no difficulty in obtaining all the details, aggravated probably by the unpopularity of the judge. He heard them with unchanging countenance; none could detect a sign of emotion on that cheek of marble paleness, or in that cold and steadfast eye. He then made inquiries concerning Anthony Noell. That magistrate, he learned, had been promoted, two years previously, and now resided in his native town of Marseilles. At that moment, however, he happened to be at an hotel in Montauban. He had never recovered the loss of his sons, which had aged him twenty years in appearance, and had greatly augmented the harshness and sour severity of his character. He seemed to find his sole consolation in the society of his daughter, now a beautiful girl of seventeen, and in intense application to his professional duties. A tour of inspection, connected with his judicial functions, had now brought him to Montauban. During his compulsory absences from home, which were of annual occurrence and of some duration, his daughter remained in the care of an old female relation, her habitual companion, whose chief faults were her absurd vanity, and her too great indulgence of the caprices of her darling niece.

Dominique showed singular anxiety to learn every particular concerning Anthony Noell's household, informing himself of the minutest details, and especially of the character of his daughter, who was represented to him as warmhearted and naturally amiable, but frivolous and spoiled by over-indulgence. On the death of his sons, Noell renounced his project of sending her from home, and the consequence was, that her education had been greatly neglected. Madame Verlé, the old aunt already mentioned, was a well-meaning, but very weak widow, who, childless herself, had no experience in bringing up young women. In her own youth she had been a great coquette, and frivolity was still a conspicuous feature in her character. As M. Noell, since his sons' death, had shown a sort of aversion for society, the house was dull enough, and Madame Verlé's chief resource was the circulating library, whence she obtained a constant supply of novels. Far from prohibiting to her niece the perusal of this trash, she made her the companion of her unwholesome studies. The false ideas and highflown romance with which these books teemed, might have made little impression on a character fortified by sound principles and a good education, but they sank deep into the ardent and uncultivated imagination of Florinda Noell, to whose father, engrossed by his sorrows and by his professional labours, it never once occurred to check the current of corruption thus permitted to flow into his daughter's artless mind. He saw her gay, happy, and amused, and he inquired no further; well pleased to find her support so cheerfully the want of society to which his morose regrets and gloomy eccentricity condemned her.

One of Dominique's first cares, on his return to Montauban, was to visit his parents' grave. Although his father died in prison, and his memory had never been cleared from the slur of accusation, his friends had obtained permission, with some difficulty, to inter his corpse beside that of his wife. The day was fading into twilight when Dominique entered the cemetery, and it took him some time to find the grave he sought. The sexton would have saved him the trouble, but the idea seemed a profanation; in silence and in solitude he approached the tomb of his affections and happiness. Long he sat upon the mound, plunged in reverie, but with dry eyes, for the source of tears appeared exhausted in his heart. Night came; the white tombstones looked ghastly pale in the moonlight, and cast long black shadows upon the turf. Dominique arose, plucked a wild-flower from his mother's grave, and left the place. He had taken but three steps when he became aware he was not alone in the churchyard. A tall figure rose suddenly from an adjacent grave. Although separated but by one lofty tombstone, the two mourners had been too absorbed and silent in their grief to notice each other's presence. Now they gazed at one another. The moon, for a moment obscured, emerged from behind a cloud, and shone upon their features. The recognition was mutual and instantaneous. Both started back. Between the graves of their respective victims, Anthony Noell and Dominique Lafon confronted each other.

A dusky fire gleamed in the eyes of Dominique, and his features, worn and emaciated from captivity, were distorted with the grimace of intense hatred. His heart throbbed as though it would have burst from his bosom.

"May your dying hour be desolate!" he shrieked. "May your end be in misery and despair!"

The magistrate gazed at his inveterate foe with a fixed stare of horror, as though a phantom had suddenly risen before him. Then, slowly raising his hand, till it pointed to the grave of his sons, his eye still fixed, as if by fascination, upon that of Dominique, a single word, uttered in a hollow tone, burst from his quivering lips.

"Murderer!" he exclaimed.

Dominique laughed. It was a hideous sound, a laugh of unquenchable hatred and savage exultation. He approached Noell till their faces were but a few inches apart, and spoke in a voice of suppressed fierceness.

"My father and my mother," he said, "expired in grief, and shame, and misery. By your causeless hate and relentless persecution, I was made an orphan. The debt is but half paid. You have still a child. You still find happiness on earth. But you yet shall lose all--all! Yet shall you know despair and utter solitude, and your death shall be desolate, even as my father's was. Remember! _We shall meet again._"

And passing swiftly before the magistrate, with a gesture of solemn menace, Dominique left the cemetery. Noell sank, pale and trembling, upon his children's grave. His enemy had found him, and security had fled. Dominique's last words, "We shall meet again!" rang in his ears, as if uttered by the threatening voice of hostile and irresistible destiny. Slowly, and in great uneasiness, he returned into the town, which he left early the next day for Marseilles. To his terrified fancy, his daughter was safe only when he watched over her. So great was his alarm, that he would have resigned his lucrative and honourable office sooner than have remained longer absent from the tender flower whom the ruthless spoiler threatened to trample and destroy.

THE HORSE-RIDERS.

Months passed away, and spring returned. On a bright morning of May--in parched Provence the pleasantest season of the year--a motley cavalcade approached Marseilles by the Nice road. It consisted of two large waggons, a score of horses, and about the same number of men and women. The horses were chiefly white, cream-coloured, or piebald, and some of them bore saddles of peculiar make and fantastical colours, velvet-covered and decorated with gilding. One was caparisoned with a tiger-skin, and from his headstall floated streamers of divers-coloured horsehair. The women wore riding-habits, some of gaudy tints, bodices of purple or crimson velvet, with long flaunting robes of green or blue. They were sunburned, boldfaced damsels, with marked features and of dissipated aspect, and they sat firmly on their saddles, jesting as they rode along. Their male companions were of corresponding appearance; lithe vigorous fellows, from fifteen to forty, attired in various hussar and jockey costumes, with beards and mustaches fantastically trimmed, limbs well developed, and long curling hair. Various nations went to the composition of the band. French, Germans, Italians, and Gipsies made up the equestrian troop of Luigi Bartolo, which, after passing the winter in southern Italy, had wandered north on the approach of spring, and now was on its way to give a series of representations at Marseilles.

A little behind his comrades, upon a fine gray horse, rode a young Florentine named Vicenzo, the most skilful rider of the troop. Although but five-and-twenty years old, he had gone through many vicissitudes and occupations. Of respectable family, he had studied at Pisa, had been expelled for misconduct, had then enlisted in an Austrian regiment, whence his friends had procured his discharge, but only to cast him off for his dissolute habits. Alternately a professional gambler, a stage player, and a smuggler on the Italian frontier, he had now followed, for upwards of a year, the vagabond life of a horse-rider. Of handsome person and much natural intelligence, he covered his profligacy and taste for low associations with a certain varnish of good breeding. This had procured him in the troop the nickname of the _Marchese_, and had made him a great favourite with the female portion of the strollers, amongst whom more than one fierce quarrel had arisen for the good graces of the fascinating Vicenzo.

The Florentine was accompanied by a stranger, who had fallen in with the troop at Nice, and had won their hearts by his liberality. He had given them a magnificent supper at their _albergo_, had made them presents of wine and trinkets--all apparently out of pure generosity and love of their society. He it was who had chiefly determined them to visit Marseilles, instead of proceeding north, as they had originally intended, by Avignon to Lyons. He marched with the troop, on horseback, wrapped in a long loose coat, and with a broad hat slouched over his brow, and bestowed his companionship chiefly on Vicenzo, to whom he appeared to have taken a great affection. The strollers thought him a strange eccentric fellow, half cracked, to say the least; but they cared little whether he were sane or mad, so long as his society proved profitable, his purse well filled, and ever in his hand.

The wanderers were within three miles of Marseilles when they came to one of the _bastides_, or country-houses, so thickly scattered around that city. It was of unusual elegance, almost concealed amongst a thick plantation of trees, and having a terrace, in the Italian style, overlooking the road. Upon this terrace, in the cool shade of an arbour, two ladies were seated, enjoying the sweet breath of the lovely spring morning. Books and embroidery were on a table before them, which they left on the appearance of the horse-riders, and, leaning upon the stone parapet, looked down on the unusual spectacle. The elder of the two had nothing remarkable, except the gaudy ribbons that contrasted with her antiquated physiognomy. The younger, in full flush of youth, and seen amongst the bright blossoms of the plants that grew in pots upon the parapet, might have passed for the goddess of spring in her most sportive mood. Her hair hung in rich clusters over her alabaster neck; her blue eyes danced in humid lustre; her coral lips, a little parted, disclosed a range of sparkling pearls. The sole fault to be found with her beauty was its character, which was sensual rather than intellectual. One beheld the beautiful and frivolous child of clay, but the ray of the spirit that elevates and purifies was wanting. It was the beauty of a Bacchante rather than of a Vestal--Aurora disporting herself on the flower banks, and awaiting, in frolic mood, the advent of Cupid.

The motley cavalcade moved on, the men assuming their smartish seat in the saddle as they passed under the inspection of the _bella biondina_. When Vicenzo approached the park wall, his companion leaned towards him and spoke something in his ear. At the same moment, as if stung by a gadfly, the spirited gray upon which the Florentine was mounted, sprang with all four feet from the ground, and commenced a series of leaps and curvets that would have unseated a less expert rider. They only served to display to the greatest advantage Vicenzo's excellent horsemanship and slender graceful figure. Disdaining the gaudy equipments of his comrades, the young man was tastefully attired in a dark closely-fitting jacket. Hessian boots and pantaloons exhibited the Antinöus-like proportions of his comely limbs. He rode like a centaur, he and his steed seemingly forming but one body. As he reached, gracefully caracoling, the terrace on whose summit the ladies were stationed, he looked up with a winning smile, and removing his cap, bowed to his horse's mane. The old lady bridled and smiled; the young one blushed as the Florentine's ardent gaze met hers, and in her confusion she let fall a branch of roses she held in her hand. With magical suddenness Vicenzo's fiery horse stood still, as if carved of marble. With one bound the rider was on foot, and had snatched up the flowers; then placing a hand upon the shoulder of his steed, who at once started in a canter, he lightly, and without apparent effort, vaulted into the saddle. With another bow and smile he rode off with his companion.

"'Twas well done, Vicenzo," said the latter.

"What an elegant cavalier!" exclaimed Florinda Noell pensively, following with her eyes the accomplished equestrian.

"And so distinguished in his appearance!" chimed in her silly aunt. "And how he looked up at us! One might fancy him a nobleman in disguise, bent on adventures, or seeking intelligence of a lost lady-love."

Florinda smiled, but the stale platitude, borrowed from the absurd romances that crammed Madame Verlé's brain, abode in her memory. Whilst the handsome horse-rider remained in sight, she continued upon the parapet and gazed after him. On his part, Vicenzo several times looked back, and more than once he pressed to his lips the fragrant flowers of which accident had made him the possessor.

A small theatre, which happened then to be unoccupied, was hired by the equestrians for their performances, the announcement of which was soon placarded from one end to the other of Marseilles. At the first representation, Florinda and her aunt were amongst the audience. They had no one to cheek their inclinations, for Mr Noell, after passing many months with his daughter without molestation from Dominique, who had disappeared from Montauban the day after their meeting in the churchyard, had forgotten his apprehensions, and had departed on his annual tour of professional duty. At the circus, the honours of the night were for Vicenzo. His graceful figure, handsome face, skilful performance, and distinguished air, were the theme of universal admiration. Florinda could not detach her gaze from him as he flew round the circle, standing with easy negligence upon his horse's back; and she could scarcely restrain a cry of horror and alarm at the boldness of some of his feats. Vicenzo had early detected her presence in the theatre; and the expression of his eyes, when he passed before her box, made her conscious that he had done so.

Several days elapsed, during which Florinda and her aunt had more than once again visited the theatre. Vicenzo had become a subject of constant conversation between the superannuated coquette and her niece, the old lady indulging the most extravagant conjectures as to who he could be, for she had made up her mind he was now in an assumed character. Florinda spoke of him less, but thought of him more. Nor were her visits to the theatre her only opportunities of seeing him. Vicenzo, soon after his arrival at Marseilles, had excited his comrades' wonder and envy by appearing in the elegant costume of a private gentleman, and by taking frequent rides out of the town, at first accompanied by Fontaine, the stranger before mentioned, but afterwards more frequently alone. These rides were taken early in the morning, or by moonlight, on evenings when there was no performance. The horse-riders laughed at the airs the _Marchese_ gave himself, attributed his extravagance to the generosity of Fontaine, and twitted him with some secret intrigue, which he, however, did not admit, and they took little pains to penetrate. Had they followed his horse's hoof-track, they would have found that it led, sometimes by one road, sometimes by another, to the _bastide_ of Anthony Noell the magistrate. And after a few days they would have seen Vicenzo, his bridle over his arm, conversing earnestly, at a small postern-gate of the garden, with the charming _biondina_, whose bright countenance had greeted, like a good augury, their first approach to Marseilles.

At last a night came when this stolen conversation lasted longer than usual. Vicenzo was pressing, Florinda irresolute. Fontaine had accompanied his friend, and held his horse in an adjacent lane, whilst the lovers (for such they now were to be considered) sauntered in a shrubbery walk within the park.

"But why this secrecy?" said the young girl, leaning tenderly upon the arm of the handsome stroller. "Why not at once inform your friends you accede to their wishes, in renouncing your present derogatory pursuit? Why not present yourself to my father under your real name and title? He loves his daughter too tenderly to refuse his consent to a union on which her happiness depends."

"Dearest Florinda!" replied Vicenzo, "how could my ardent love abide the delays this course would entail? How can you so cruelly urge me thus to postpone my happiness? See you not how many obstacles to our union the step you advise would raise up? Your father, unwilling to part with his only daughter, (and such a daughter!) would assuredly object to our immediate marriage--would make your youth, my roving disposition, fifty other circumstances, pretexts for putting it off. And did we succeed in overruling these, there still would be a thousand tedious formalities to encounter, correspondence between your father and my family, who are proud as Lucifer of their ancient name and title, and would be wearisomely punctilious. By my plan, we would avoid all long-winded negotiations. Before daylight we are across the frontier; and before that excellent Madame Verlé has adjusted her smart cap, and buttered her first roll, my adored Florinda is Marchioness of Monteleane. A letter to papa explains all; then away to Florence, and in a month back to Marseilles, where you shall duly present me to my respected father-in-law, and I, as in humility bound, will drop upon my knees and crave pardon for running off with his treasure. Papa gives his benediction, and curtain drops, leaving all parties happy."

How often, with the feeble and irresolute, does a sorry jest pass for a good argument! As Vicenzo rattled on, his victim looked up in his face, and smiled at his soft and insidious words. Fascinated by silvery tones and gaudy scales, the woman, as of old, gave ear to the serpent.

"'Tis done," said the stroller, with a heartless smile, as he rode off with Fontaine, half an hour later--"done. A post-chaise at midnight. She brings her jewels--all the fortune she will ever bring me, I suppose. No chance of drawing anything from the old gentleman?"

"Not much," replied Fontaine drily.

"Well, I must have another thousand from you, besides expenses. And little enough too. Fifty yellow-boys for abandoning my place in the troop. I was never in better cue for the ring. They are going to Paris, and I should have joined Franconi."

"Oh!" said Fontaine, with a slight sneer, "a man of your abilities will never lack employment. But we have no time to lose, if you are to be back at midnight."

The two men spurred their horses, and galloped back to Marseilles.

A few minutes before twelve o'clock, a light posting-carriage was drawn up, by the road-side, about a hundred yards beyond Anthony Noell's garden. Vicenzo tapped thrice with his knuckles at the postern door, which opened gently, and a trembling female form emerged from the gloom of the shrubbery into the broad moonlight without. Through the veil covering her head and face, a tear might be seen glistening upon her cheek. She faltered, hesitated; her good genius whispered her to pause. But an evil spirit was at hand, luring her to destruction. Taking in one hand a casket, the real object of his base desires, and with the other arm encircling her waist, the seducer, murmuring soft flatteries in her ear, hurried Florinda down the slope leading to the road. Confused and fascinated, the poor weak girl had no power to resist. She reached the carriage, cast one look back at her father's house, whose white walls shone amidst the dark masses of foliage; the Florentine lifted her in, spoke a word to the postilion, and the vehicle dashed away in the direction of the Italian frontier.

So long as the carriage was in sight, Fontaine, who had accompanied Vicenzo, sat motionless upon his saddle, watching its career as it sped, like a large black insect, along the moonlit road. Then, when distance hid it from his view, he turned his horse's head and rode rapidly into Marseilles.

FOES AND FRIENDS.

Upon the second day after Florinda's elopement with her worthless suitor, the large coffee-room of the Hotel de France, at Montauban, was deserted, save by two guests. One of these was a man of about fifty-five, but older in appearance, whose thin gray hair and stooping figure, as well as the deep, anxious wrinkles and mournful expression of his countenance, told a tale of cares and troubles, borne with a rebellious rather than with a resigned spirit. The other occupant of the apartment, who sat at its opposite extremity, and was concealed, except upon near approach, by a sort of high projecting counter, was much younger, for his age could hardly exceed thirty years. A certain sober reserved expression, (hardly amounting to austerity,) frequently observable in Roman Catholic priests, and which sat becomingly enough upon his open intelligent countenance, betrayed his profession as surely as some slight clerical peculiarities of costume.

Suddenly a waiter entered the room, and approaching the old man with an air of great respect, informed him that a gentleman, seemingly just come off a journey, desired particularly to speak with him. The person addressed raised his eyes, whose melancholy expression corresponded with the furrows of his cheek, from the Paris newspaper he was reading, and, in a voice at once harsh and feeble, desired the stranger should be shown in. The order was obeyed; and a person entered, wrapped in a cloak, whose collar was turned up, concealing great part of his face. His countenance was further obscured by the vizard of a travelling-cap, from beneath which his long hair hung in disorder. Splashed and unshaven, he had all the appearance of having travelled far and fast. The gentleman whom he had asked to see rose from his seat on his approach, and looked at him keenly, even uneasily, but evidently without recognition. The waiter left the room. The stranger advanced to within three paces of him he sought, and stood still and silent, his features still masked by his cloak collar.

"Your business with me, sir?" said the old man quickly. "Whom have I the honour to address?"

"I am an old acquaintance, Mr Anthony Noell," said the traveller, in a sharp ironical tone, as he turned down his collar and displayed a pale countenance, distorted by a malignant smile. "An old debtor come to discharge the balance due. My errand to-day is to tell you that you are childless. Your daughter Florinda, your last remaining darling, has fled to Italy with a nameless vagabond and stroller."

At the very first word uttered by that voice, Noell had started and shuddered, as at the sudden pang of exquisite torture. Then his glassy eyes were horribly distended, his mouth opened, his whole face was convulsed, and with a yell like that of some savage denizen of the forest suddenly despoiled of its young, he sprang upon his enemy and seized him by the throat.

"Murderer!" he cried. "Help! help!"

The waiters rushed into the room, and with difficulty freed the stranger from the vice-like grasp of the old man, to whose feeble hands frenzy gave strength. When at last they were separated, Noell uttered one shriek of impotent fury and despair, and fell back senseless in the servants' arms. The stranger, who himself seemed weak and ailing, and who had sunk upon a chair, looked curiously into his antagonist's face.

"He is mad," said he, with horrible composure and complacency; "quite mad. Take him to his bed."

The waiters lifted up the insensible body, and carried it away. The stranger leaned his elbows upon a table, and, covering his face with his hands, remained for some minutes absorbed in thought. A slight noise made him look up. The priest stood opposite to him, and uttered his name.

"Dominique Lafon," he said, calmly but severely, "what is this thing you have done? But you need not tell me. I know much, and can conjecture the rest. Wretched man, know you not the word of God, to whom is all vengeance, and who repayeth in his own good time?"

Dominique seemed surprised at hearing his name pronounced by a stranger. He looked hard at the priest. And presently a name connected with days of happiness and innocence broke from the lips of the vindictive and pitiless man.

"Henry la Chapelle!"

It was indeed his former fellow-student, whom circumstances and disposition had induced to abandon the study of the law and enter the church. They had not met since Dominique departed from Paris to receive the last sigh of his dying mother.

Who shall trace the secret springs whence flow the fountains of the heart? For seven years Dominique Lafon had not wept. His captivity and many sufferings, his father's death, all had been borne with a bitter heart, but with dry eyes. But now, at sight of the comrade of his youth, some hidden chord, long entombed, suddenly vibrated. A sob burst from his bosom, and was succeeded by a gush of tears.

Henry la Chapelle looked sadly and kindly at his boyhood's friend.

"He who trusteth in himself," he said in low and gentle tones, "let him take heed, lest his feet fall into the snares they despise. Alas! Dominique, that you so soon forgot our last conversation! Alas! that you have laid this sin to your soul! But those tears give me hope: they are the early dew of penitence. Come, my friend, and seek comfort where alone it may be found. Verily there is joy in heaven over one repentant sinner, more than over many just men."

And the good priest drew his friend's arm through his, and led him from the room.

Dominique's exclamation was prophetic. When Anthony Noell rose from the bed of sickness to which grief consigned him, his intellects were gone. He never recovered them, but passed the rest of his life in helpless idiocy at his country-house, near Marseilles. There he was sedulously and tenderly watched by the unhappy Florinda, who, after a few miserable months passed with her reprobate seducer, was released from farther ill-usage by the death of Vicenzo, stabbed in Italy in a gambling brawl.

Not long after 1830, there died in a Sardinian convent, noted for its ascetic observances and for the piety of its inmates, a French monk, who went by the name of brother Ambrose. His death was considered to be accelerated by the strictness with which he followed the rigid rules of the order, from some of which his failing health would have justified deviation, and by the frequency and severity of his self-imposed penances. His body, feeble when first he entered the convent, was no match for his courageous spirit. In accordance with his dying request, his beads and breviary were sent to a vicar named la Chapelle, then resident at Lyons. When that excellent priest opened the book, he found the following words inscribed upon a blank page:--

"Blessed be the Lord, for in Him have I peace and hope!"

And Henry la Chapelle kneeled down, and breathed a prayer for the soul of his departed friend, Dominique Lafon.

PESTALOZZIANA.

"Etiam illud adjungo, sæpius ad laudem atque virtutem _naturam
sine doctrinâ_, quam sine naturâ valuisse doctrinam."--CICERO,
_pro. Arch._, 7.

"Que vous ai-je donc fait, O mes jeunes années!
Pour m'avoir fui si vite, me croyant satisfait?"

VICTOR HUGO, _Odes_.

For the abnormal, and, we must think, somewhat faulty education of our later boyhood--a few random recollections of which we here purpose to lay before the reader--our obligations, _quantuloecunquoe sint_, are certainly due to prejudices which, though they have now become antiquated and obsolete, were in full force some thirty years ago, against the existing mode of education in England. Not that the public--_quâ_ public--were ever very far misled by the noisy declamations of the Whigs on this their favourite theme: people for the most part paid very little attention to the inuendoes of the peripatetic schoolmaster, so carefully primed and sent "abroad" to disabuse them; while not a few smiled to recognise under that imposing misnomer a small self-opinionated _clique_--free traders in everything else, but absolute monopolists here--who sought by its aid to palm off on society the _jocosa imago_ of their own crotchets, as though in sympathetic response to a sentiment wholly proceeding from itself. When much inflammatory "stuff" had been discharged against the walls of our venerable institutions, not only without setting Isis or Cam on fire, but plainly with some discomfitures to the belligerents engaged, from the opposite party, who returned the salute, John Bull began to open his eyes a little, and, as he opened them, to doubt whether, after all, the promises and _programmes_ he had been reading of a spic-and-span new order of everything, particularly of education, might not turn out a _flam_; and the authors of them, who certainly showed off to most advantage on _Edinburgh Review_ days, prove anything but the best qualified persons to make good their own vaticinations, or to bring in the new golden age they had announced. Still, the crusade against English public seminaries, though abortive in its principal design--that of exciting a _general_ defection from these institutions--was not quite barren of results. It was so far successful, at least, as completely to unsettle for a time the minds of not a few over-anxious parents, who, taught to regard with suspicion the credentials of every schoolmaster "at home," were beginning to make diligent inquiries for his successor among their neighbours "abroad." To all who were in this frame of mind, the first _couleur de rose_ announcements of Pestalozzi's establishment at Yverdun were news indeed! offering as they did--or at least seeming to offer--the complete solution of a problem which could scarcely have been entertained without much painful solicitude and anxiety. "Here, then," for so ran the accounts of several trustworthy eyewitnesses, educational amateurs, who had devoted a _whole morning_ to a most prying and probing dissection of the system within the walls of the chateau itself, and putting down all the results of their carefully conducted autopsy, "here was a school composed of boys gathered from all parts of the habitable globe, where each, by simply carrying over a little of his mother tongue, might, in a short time, become a youthful Mezzofante, and take his choice of many in return; a school which, wisely eschewing the routine service of books, suffered neither dictionary, gradus, grammar, nor spelling-book to be even seen on the premises; a school for morals, where, in educating the head, the right training of the heart was never for a moment neglected; a school for the progress of the mind, where much discernment, blending itself with kindness, fostered the first dawnings of the intellect, and carefully protected the feeble powers of memory from being overtaxed--where delighted Alma, in the progress of her development, might securely enjoy many privileges and immunities wholly denied to her at home--where even philosophy, stooping to conquer, had become _sportive_ the better to _persuade_; where the poet's vow was actually realised--the bodily health being as diligently looked after as that of the mind or the affections; lastly, where they found no fighting nor bullying, as at home, but agriculture and gymnastics instituted in their stead." To such encomiums on the school were added, and with more justice and truth, a commendation on old Pestalozzi himself, the real liberality of whose sentiments, and the overflowings of whose paternal love, could not, it was argued, and did not, fail to prove beneficial to all within the sphere of their influence. The weight of such supposed advantages turned the scale for not a few just entering into the pupillary state, and settled their future destination. Our own training, hitherto auspiciously enough carried on under the birchen discipline of Westminster, was _suddenly_ stopt; the last silver prize-penny had crossed our palm; the last quarterly half-crown tax for birch had been paid into the treasury of the school; we were called on to say an abrupt good-by to our friends, and to take a formal leave of Dr P----. That ceremony was not a pleasing one; and had the choice of a visit to Polyphemus in his cave, or to Dr P---- in his study, been offered to us, the first would certainly have had the preference; but as the case admitted neither evasion nor compromise, necessity gave us courage to bolt into the august presence of the formidable head-master, after lessons; and finding presently that we had somehow managed to emerge again safe from the dreaded interview, we invited several class-fellows to celebrate so remarkable a day at a tuck-shop in the vicinity of Dean's Yard. There, in unrestricted indulgence, did the party get through, there was no telling how many "lady's-fingers," tarts, and cheese-cakes, and drank--there was no counting the corks of empty ginger-beer bottles. When these delicacies had lost their relish--~kai hex heron hento~--the time was come for making a distribution of our personal effects. First went our bag of "taws" and "alleys," _pro bono publico_, in a general scramble, and then a Jew's-harp for whoever could twang it; and out or one pocket came a cricket-ball for A, and out of another a peg-top for B; and then there was a hockey-stick for M, and a red leathern satchel, with book-strap, for N, and three books a-piece to two class-chums, who ended with a toss-up for Virgil. And now, being fairly cleaned out, after reiterated good-bys and shakes of the hand given and taken at the shop door, we parted, (many of us never to meet again,) they to enjoy the remainder of a half-holiday in the hockey-court, while we walked home through the park, stopping in the midst of its ruminating cows, ourself to ruminate a little upon the future, and to wonder, unheard, what sort of a place Switzerland might be, and what sort of a man Pestalozzi!

These adieus to old Westminster took place on a Saturday; and the following Monday found us already _en route_ with our excellent father for the new settlement at Yverdun. The school to which we were then travelling, and the venerable man who presided over it, have both been long since defunct--_de mortuis nil nisi bonum_; and gratitude itself forbids that we should speak either of one or of the other with harshness or disrespect; of a place where we certainly spent some very happy, if not the happiest, days of life; of him who--rightly named the _father_ of the establishment--ever treated us, and all with whom he had to do, with a uniform gentleness and impartiality. To tell ill-natured tales out of school--of such a school, and after so long a period too--would indeed argue ill for _any one's_ charity, and accordingly _we_ do not intend to try it. But though the feeling of the _alumnus_ may not permit us to think unfavourably of the _Pensionat_ Pestalozzi, we shall not, on that account, suppress the mention of some occasional hardships and inconveniences experienced there, much less allow a word of reproach to escape our pen. The reader, with no such sympathies to restrain his curiosity, will no doubt expect, if not a detailed account, some outline or general ground-plan of the system, which, alas! we cannot give him; our endeavour to comprehend it as a digested _whole_--proceeding on certain data, aiming at certain ends, and pursuing them by certain means--has been entirely unsuccessful; and therefore, if pressed for more than we can tell, our answer must be, in the words of Cicero, _Deprecor ne me tanquam philosophum putet scholam sibi istam, explicaturum_.[14] But though unable to make out--if, indeed, there were any spirit of unity to be made out--in Pestalozzi's scheme, there were certain manifest imperfections in the composition of his plan of education--improprieties to which the longest familiarity could scarcely reconcile, nor the warmest partiality blind even the most determined partisan. In the first place--to state them at once, and have done with the unpleasing office of finding fault--it always struck us as a capital error, in a school where books were not allowed, to suffer almost the whole teaching of the classes to devolve upon some leading member of each; for what, in fact, could self-taught lads be expected to teach, unless it were to make a ring or a row--to fish, to whistle, or to skate? Of course, any graver kind of information, conveyed by an infant prodigy to his gaping pupils, must have lacked the necessary precision to make it available to them: first, because he would very seldom be sufficiently possessed of it himself; and secondly, because a boy's imperfect vocabulary and inexperience render him at all times a decidedly bad interpreter even of what he may really know. In place of proving real lights, these little Jack-o'-Lanterns of ours tended rather to perplex the path of the inquiring, and to impede their progress; and when an appeal was made to the master, as was sometimes done, the master--brought up in the same vague, bookless manner, and knowing nothing more _accurately_, though he might know _more_ than his puzzle-pated pupils--was very seldom able to give them a lift out of the quagmire, where they accordingly would stick, and flounder away till the end of the lesson. It was amusing to see how a boy, so soon as he got but a glimpse of a subject before the class, and could give but the ghost of a reason for what he was eager to prelect upon, became incontinent of the bright discovery, till all his companions had had the full benefit of it, with much that was irrelevant besides. The mischiefs which, it would occur to any one's mind, were likely to result in after life from such desultory habits of application in boyhood, actually did result to many of us a few years later at college. It was at once painful and difficult to indoctrinate indocile minds like ours into the accurate and severe habits of university discipline. On entering the lists for honours with other young aspirants, educated in the usual way at home, we were as a herd of unbroken colts pitted against well-trained racers: neither had yet run for the prize--in that single particular the cases were the same; but when degree and race day came, on whose side lay the odds? On theirs who had been left to try an untutored strength in scampering over a wild common, at will, for years, or with those who, by daily exercise in the _manège_ of a public school, had been trained to bear harness, and were, besides, well acquainted with the ground? _Another_ unquestionable error in the system was the absence of emulation, which, from some strange misconception and worse application of a text in St Paul, was proscribed as an unchristian principle; in lieu of which, we were to be brought--though we never _were_ brought, but that was the object aimed at--to love learning for its own sake, and to prove ourselves anxious of excelling without a motive, or to be _good for nothing_, as Hood has somewhere phrased it.

"Nunquam præponens se aliis, ITA facillime
Sine invidia invenias laudem,"

says Terence, and it will be so where envy and conceit have supplanted emulation: yet are the feelings perfectly distinct; and we think it behoves all those who contend that every striving for the mastery is prohibited by the gospel, to show how _communism_ in inferiority, or _socialism_ in dulness, are likely to improve morals or mend society. Take from a schoolboy the motive of rewards and punishments, and you deprive him of that incentive by which your own conduct through life is regulated, and that by which God has thought fit, in the moral government of his rational creatures, to promote the practice of good works, and to discourage and dissuade from evil. Nor did that which sounds thus ominously in theory succeed in its application better than it sounded. In fact, nothing more unfortunate could have been devised for all parties, but especially for such as were by nature of a studious turn or of quicker parts than the rest; who, finding the ordinary stimulus to exertion thus removed, and none other to replace it, no longer cared to do well, (why should they, when they knew that their feeblest efforts would transcend their slow-paced comrades' best?) but, gradually abandoning themselves to the _vis inertiæ_ of sloth, incompetence, and bad example, did no more than they could help; repressing the spirit of rivalry and emulation, which had no issue in the school, to show it in some of those feats of agility or address, which the rigorous enactment of gymnastic exercises imposed on all alike, and in the performance of which we certainly _did_ pride ourselves, and eagerly sought to eclipse each other in exhibiting any natural or acquired superiority we might possess. The absence of all elementary books of instruction throughout the school, presented another barrier in the way of improvement still more formidable than even the _bétise_ of boy pedagogues, the want of sufficient stimulus to exertion, or the absurd respect paid sometimes to natural incapacity, and sometimes even to idleness. Those who had no rules to learn had of course none to apply when they wanted them; no masters could have adequately supplied this deficiency, and those of the chateau were certainly not the men to remedy the evil. As might therefore have been anticipated, the young Pestalozzian's ideas, whether innate or acquired, and on every subject, became sadly vague and confused, and his grammar of a piece with his knowledge. We would have been conspicuous, even amongst other boys, for what _seemed_ almost a studied impropriety of language; but it _was_, in fact, nothing more than the unavoidable result of natural indolence and inattention, uncoerced by proper discipline. The old man's slouching gait and ungraceful attire afforded but too apt an illustration of the intellectual _nonchalance_ of his pupils. As to the modern languages, of which so much has been said by those who knew so little of the matter, they were in parlance, to be sure--but how spoken? Alas! besides an open violation of all the concords, and a general disregard of syntax, they failed where one would have thought them least likely to fail, in correctness of idiom and accent. The French--this was the language of the school--abounded in conventional phrases, woven into its texture from various foreign sources, German, English, or Italian, and in scores of barbarous words--not to be found in the _Dictionnaire de l'Academie_, certainly, but quite current in the many-tongued vernacular of the chateau. Our pronunciation remained unequivocally John Bullish to the end--not one of us ever caught or thought of catching the right intonation; and, whether the fault originated merely in want of ear, or that we could not make the right use of our noses, it is quite certain that all of us had either no accent or a wrong one. The German was as bad as the French: it was a Swiss, not a German, abounding in _patois_ phrases and provincialisms--in short, a most hybrid affair, to say nothing of its being as much over-guttural as the last was sub-nasal. With regard to Spanish and Italian, as the English did not consort with either of these nations, all they ever acquired of their languages were such oaths and _mauvais mots_ as parrots pick up from sailors aboard ship, which they repeated with all the innocence of parrots. Thus, then, the opportunities offered for the acquisition of modern languages were plainly defective; and when it is further considered that the dead languages remained untaught--nay, were literally unknown, except to a small section of the school, for whom a kind Providence had sent a valued friend and preceptor in Dr M----, (whose neat Greek characters were stared at as cabalistical by the other masters of the _Pensionat_,)--and finally, that our very English became at last defiled and corrupted, by the introduction of a variety of foreign idioms, it will be seen that for any advantage likely to accrue from the polyglot character of the institution, the Tower of Babel would, in fact, have furnished every whit as good a school for languages as did our turreted chateau. And now, if candour has compelled this notice of some, it must be admitted, serious blemishes in the system of old Pestalozzi, where is the academy without them?

"Whoever hopes a faultless school to see,
Hopes what ne'er was, nor is, nor is to be."

Meanwhile the Swiss Pension was not without solid advantages, and might justly lay claim to some regard, if not as a school for learning, at least as a _moral_ school; its inmates for the most part spoke truth, respected property, eschewed mischief, were neither puppies, nor bullies, nor talebearers. There were, of course, exceptions to all this, but then they were _exceptions_; nor was the number at any time sufficient to invalidate the general rule, or to corrupt the better principle. Perhaps a ten hours' daily attendance in class, coarse spare diet, hardy and somewhat severe training, may be considered by the reader as offering some explanation of our general propriety of behaviour. It may be so; but we are by no means willing to admit, that the really high moral tone of the school depended either upon gymnastic exercises or short commons, nor yet arose from the want of facilities for getting into scrapes, for here, as elsewhere, where there is the will, there is ever a way. We believe it to have originated from another source--in a word, from the encouragement held out to the study of natural history, and the eagerness with which that study was taken up and pursued by the school in consequence. Though Pestalozzi might not succeed in making his disciples scholars, he certainly succeeded in making many among them _naturalists_; and of the two--let us ask it without offence--whether is he the happier lad (to say nothing of the future man) who can fabricate faultless pentameters and immaculate iambics to order; or he who, already absorbed in scanning the wonders of creation, seeks with unflagging diligence and zeal to know more and more of the visible works of the great _Poet of Nature_? "Sæpius sane ad laudem atque virtutem naturam sine doctrinâ, quam sine naturâ valuisse doctrinam;" which words being Cicero's, deny them, sir, if you please.

The Pension, during the period of our sojourn at Yverdun, contained about a hundred and eighty élèves, natives of every European and of some Oriental states, whose primitive mode of distribution into classes, according to age and acquirements, during school hours, was completely changed in playtime, when the boys, finding it easier to speak their own tongue than to acquire a new one, divided themselves into separate groups according to their respective nations. The English would occasionally admit a German or a Prussian to their coterie; but that was a favour seldom conferred upon any other foreigner: for the Spaniards, who were certainly the least well-conducted of the whole community, did not deserve it: among them were to be found the litigious, the mischief-makers, the quarrellers, and--for, as has been hinted, we were not all honest--the exceptional thieves. The Italians we could never make out, nor they us: we had no sympathy with Pole or Greek; the Swiss we positively did not like, and the French just as positively did not like us; so how could it be otherwise? The ushers, for the most part trained up in the school, were an obliging set of men, with little refinement, less pretension, and wholly without learning. A distich from Crabbe describes them perfectly--

"Men who, 'mid noise and dirt, and play and prate,
Could calmly mend the pen, and wash the slate."

Punishments were rare; indeed, flogging was absolutely prohibited; and the setting an imposition would have been equally against the _genius loci_, had lesson-books existed out of which to hear it afterwards. A short imprisonment in an unfurnished room--a not very formidable black-hole--with the loss of a _goutte_, now and then, and at very long intervals, formed the mild summary of the penal "code Pestalozzi."