Chapter XCIV (6)

"The danger, however, was not over. The crowd which had been
carried away by his words was met by another crowd which had not
hitherto been able to penetrate into the hall, and which was
more vehement in words and gesticulations. Menacing expressions,
ardent vociferations, cries of suffocation, threatening gestures,
discharges of firearms on the stair, tatters of a red flag waved
by naked arms above the sea of heads, rendered this one of the
most frightful scenes of the Revolution. 'Down with Lamartine!
Death to Lamartine! no Temporising,--the Decree, the Decree,
or the Government of Traitors to the lamp-post!' exclaimed the
assailants. These cries neither caused Lamartine to hesitate, to
retire, nor to turn pale. At the sight of him the fury of the
assailants, instead of being appeased, increased tenfold. Muskets
were directed at his head, the nearest brandished bayonets in his
face, and a savage group of twenty, with brutal drunken visages,
charged forward with their heads down, as if to break through
with an enormous battering-ram the circle which surrounded him.
The foremost appeared bereft of reason. Naked sabres reached
the head of the orator, whose hand was slightly wounded. The
critical moment had arrived; nothing was yet decided. Hazard
determined which should prevail. Lamartine expected momentarily
to be thrown down and trampled under foot. At that instant one
of the populace sprang from the crowd, a ball discharged from
below grazed his face and stained it with blood; while it still
flowed, he stretched out his arms to Lamartine--'Let me see him,
let me touch him,' cried he, 'let me kiss his hand! Listen to him,
oh, my citizens! follow his councils: you shall strike me before
touching him. I will die a thousand times to preserve that good
citizen for my country.' With these words he precipitated himself
into his arms, and held him convulsively embraced. The people were
moved at this scene; and a hundred voices again exclaimed '_Vive
le Gouvernement Provisoire!--Vive Lamartine!_'"--(Vol. i. pp. 393,
402.)

We purposely close our account of Lamartine's personal career with this splendid passage in his life. His subsequent conduct, it is well known, has ill accorded with this beginning. His popularity in Paris fell as rapidly as it had risen; and on occasion of the terrible revolt of June 1848, he retired from the government, with all his colleagues, from acknowledged inability to meet the crisis which had arisen. We have heard different accounts of the real causes of his mysterious alliance with his former opponent, and the head of the Red Republicans, M. Ledru Rollin, to which this fall was owing. Some of these stories are little to his credit. We forbear to mention them, lest we should unwittingly disseminate falsehood in regard to a man of undoubted genius and great acquirements. Perhaps, in some future "Confidences," he may be able to explain much which undoubtedly at present stands in need of explanation. We gladly leave this dubious subject, to give a place to his dramatic account of the dreadful conflict in June, in the streets of Paris, which is the more entitled to credit, as he was an eyewitness of several of its most terrible scenes:--

"Assemblages of eight or ten thousand persons were already formed
on the Place of the Pantheon to attack the Luxembourg. M. Arago
harangued them and persuaded them to disperse; but it was only to
meet again in the quarters adjoining the Seine, in the Faubourg St
Antoine, and on the Boulevards. At the sight of them the faubourgs
turned out--the streets were filled--the _Ateliers Nationaux_
turned out their hordes--the populace, excited by some chief,
began to raise barricades. These chiefs were, for the most part,
brigadiers of the national workshops, the pillars of sedition and
of the clubs, irritated at the disbanding of their corps, the
wages of which, passing through their hands, had been applied,
it is said, to paying the Revolution. From the barriers of
Charenton, Fontainebleau, and Menilmontant, to the heart of Paris,
the entire capital was in the hands of a few thousand men. The
_rappel_ called to their standards 200,000 National Guards, ten
times sufficient to overthrow those assemblages of the seditious,
and to destroy their fortifications. But it must be said, to
the disgrace of that day, and for the instruction of posterity,
that the National Guard at that decisive moment _did not answer
in a body to the appeal of the government_. Their tardiness,
their disinclination, their inertness, left the streets in some
quarters open to sedition. They looked on with calm eyes on the
erection of thousands of barricades, which they had afterwards to
reconquer with torrents of blood. Soon the government quitted the
Luxembourg and took refuge in the National Assembly, where, at the
headquarters of General Cavaignac, was established the supreme
council of the nation.

"Government had reckoned on the support of the National Guard;
but the incessant beating of the _rappel_ failed in bringing it
forth to its standards. In several quarters they were imprisoned
by the insurgents. In fine, be it tardiness, or be it fatality,
the army was far from responding in a body to the imminence and
universality of the peril. Its numerical weakness aggravated the
danger. General Lamoricière, invincible, though soon besieged by
200,000 men, occupied the whole extent from the Rue du Temple to
the Madeleine, from the Rue de Clichy to the Louvre--constantly
on horseback, ever foremost in fire, he had two horses shot under
him--his countenance black with powder, his forehead running down
with sweat, his voice hoarse with giving the word of command, but
his eye serene and calm as a soldier in his native element, he
restored spirit to his men, confidence to the National Guards.
His reports to government breathed the intrepidity of his soul,
but he made no concealment of the imminence of the danger, and
the insufficiency of the troops at his disposal. He painted the
immense multitude of the assailants and the vast network of
barricades which stretched between the Bastile and the Chateau
d'Eau, between the barriers and the Boulevard. Incessantly he
implored reinforcements, which the government as continually
summoned to its support by the telegraph, and officers specially
despatched. At length the National Guards of the neighbourhood of
Paris began to arrive, and, ranging themselves round the Assembly,
furnished an example to those of the capital. Then, and not till
then, confidence began to be felt in the midst of the chances of
the combat."--(Vol. ii., pp. 480-481.)

It was a most fortunate event for the cause of order, and, with it, of real freedom throughout the world, that this great revolt was so completely suppressed, though at the cost of a greater number of lives, particularly in general officers, than fell in many a bloody battle, by the efforts of General Cavaignac and his brave companions in arms. It is said that their measures, at first, were not skilfully taken--that they lost time, and occasioned unnecessary bloodshed at the outset, by neglecting to attack the barricades when they began to be formed; and certainly the easy and bloodless suppression of the late revolt against the government of Prince Louis Napoleon, by General Changarnier, seems to favour this opinion. It must be recollected, however, that the revolt of May 1849 occurred when the memory of the popular overthrow of June 1848 was still fresh in the minds of the people; and it is not easy to overestimate the effect of that decisive defeat in paralysing revolt on the one side, and adding nerve to resistance on the other. It is evident that Louis Napoleon is not a Duc de Montpensier--he will not surrender his authority without a fight. But supposing that there was some tardiness in adopting decisive measures on occasion of the June revolt, that only makes the lesson more complete, by demonstrating the inability of the bravest and most determined populace to contend with a regular military force, when the troops are steady to their duty, and bravely led by their chiefs. The subsequent suppression of the revolts in Prague, Vienna, Madrid, and Rome, have confirmed the same important truth. Henceforth, it is evident, the horrors of revolution may always be averted, when government is firm, and the military are faithful.

And these horrors are in truth such, that it becomes evidently the first of political and social duties for the rulers of men to justify the eminence of their rank by their courage, and the troops to vindicate the trust reposed in them by their fidelity. Passing by the woful _exposé_ of the almost hopeless state of the French finances, with a deficit of above TWELVE MILLIONS sterling, despite an addition of forty-five per cent to the direct taxes, made by Prince Louis Napoleon to the National Assembly, we rest on the following curious and important details taken from the _Times_ of July 12, in regard to the effect of the revolution of 1848 upon the comforts and condition of the labouring classes in France:--

"It appears it is the middle class of tradesmen that are now most
suffering from the effects of revolution. The funds on which this
class had been living, in the hope that better days would soon
arrive, and which amongst some of the small tradesmen formed their
capital, have become exhausted. Those who had no money had, at all
events, some credit; but both money and credit are now gone. The
result is, that even in this period of comparative tranquillity
more shops are closed than in the days of turbulence.

"The following statement of the fluctuations of the revenues of
the city of Paris, occasioned also by revolution, and which goes
back to 1826, is taken from the _Débats_:--

"'The returns of the produce of indirect impost is the unfailing
testimony to the progress or decrease of public tranquillity. We
proved this truth yesterday in publishing, on the authority of a
well-informed journal, the comparative state of the receipts of
the Paris _octroi_ for the first six months of the years 1847,
1848, and 1849. It is still further proved by valuable documents
which we have at this moment before us. Thus, the produce of
the _octroi_ was, in 1847, 34,511,389 francs; and in 1848, only
26,519,627 francs, showing a difference of 7,991,762 francs. This
decrease is enormous, in relation to the immense necessities
created by the political and social crisis, the works undertaken
by the city, and the previous expenses it had to provide for. We
could analyse the different chapters of this municipal revenue,
which affords life to so many branches of Parisian industry;
but it is useless to inquire, for each of these chapters, the
particular causes of diminution. With the great event of 1848
before us, all details disappear. One sole cause has produced a
decrease in the receipts, and that is the revolution of February;
which, at first menacing society itself by the voice of democratic
orators and the pens of demagogue writers, frightened away capital
and annihilated industry of all kinds. In order to be able to
judge of the influence of great political events on the receipts
of the Paris _octroi_, it will be sufficient to recur to the years
which preceded and followed the revolution of 1830:--

Francs.
In 1826 the produce was 31,057,000

In 1827 (the first shock in consequence
of the progress of the
opposition in the country, and
the dissolution of the national
guard) 29,215,000

In 1828 (fall of the Villèle ministry--continuation
of the political
movement notwithstanding
the Montignac ministry) 28,927,000

In 1829 (ministry of the 8th
August--presentiments of a
struggle between the crown and
country) 27,695,000

In 1830 (July Revolution) 26,240,000

In 1831 (incessant agitation--repeated
outbreaks) 24,035,000

In 1832 (continuation of revolutionary
movement--events of
the 5th and 6th June) 22,798,000

In 1833 (progressive establishment
of tranquillity) 26,667,000

In 1834 (the situation becomes
better, with the exception of the
events of the 13th and 14th
April, which, however, were
brief) 27,458,000

From 1835 to 1838 (calm--cabinet
of 15th April--the produce
in the latter year) 31,518,000

In 1839 (Parliamentary coalition,
12th May) 30,654,000

In 1840 (fears of war--rupture of
the English Alliance, &c.) 29,906,000

From 1841 to 1845 (calm--progressive
increase in the latter
year) 34,165,000

In 1846 (notwithstanding the
dearness of food, the receipts
were) 33,990,000

In 1847 (commercial crisis, &c.) 33,033,000

In 1848 (revolution of February) 26,519,000

"The following from _La Patrie_ gives a good idea of the effects
of an unquiet state of society:--

"'Revolutions cost dear. They, in the first place, augment the
public expenses and diminish the general resources. Occasionally
they yield something, but before gathering in the profits the bill
must be paid. M. Audiganne, _chef de bureau_ at the department
of commerce and agriculture, has published a curious work on
the industrial crisis brought on by the revolution of February.
M. Audiganne has examined all branches of manufactures, and
has shown that the crisis affected every one. In the Nord, at
Lisle, cotton-spinning, which occupied thirty-four considerable
establishments, employing a capital of 7,000,000f. or 8,000,000f.;
and tulle making, employing 195 looms, were obliged to reduce
their production one-half. At Turcoing and Roubaix, where cloth
and carpet manufactories occupied 12,000 workmen, the produce went
down two-thirds, and 8000 men were thrown out of work. In the
Pas-de-Calais the fabrication of lace and cambrics was obliged
to stop before a fall of twenty-five per cent. The linen factory
of Capecure, founded in 1836, and which employed 1800 men, was
in vain aided by the Municipal Council of Boulogne and the local
banks; it at last succumbed to the crisis. In the department of
the Somme, 142,000 workmen, who were employed in the woollen,
cotton, stocking, and velvet manufactories, were reduced to
idleness. In the arrondissement of Abbeville, where the business,
known by the name of 'lockwork' of Picardy, yielded an annual
produce of 4,000,000f., the orders stopped completely, and the
unfortunate workmen were obliged to go and beg their bread in the
environs. At Rouen, where the cotton trade gave an annual produce
of more than 250,000,000f., there were the same disasters; yet
the common goods continued to find purchasers, owing to their
low price. At Caen, the lace manufacture, which in 1847 employed
upwards of 50,000 persons, or one-eighth of the population of
Calvados, was totally paralysed. At St Quentin, tulle embroidery,
which gave a living to 1500 women, received just as severe a
blow as in March and April, 1848; almost all the workshops were
obliged to close. In the east the loss was not less considerable.
Rheims was obliged to close its woollen-thread factories during
the months of March, April, and May, 1848. The communal workshop
absorbed in some weeks an extraordinary loan of 430,000f.
Fortunately, an order for 1,500,000f. of merinos, from New York,
allowed the interrupted factories to reopen, and spared the town
fresh sacrifices. The revolutionary tempest penetrated into Alsace
and there swept away two-thirds of the production. Muhlhausen
stopped for several months the greater number of its looms, and
diminished one-half the length of labour in the workshops, which
remained open. Lyons also felt all the horrors of the crisis.
In the same way as muslin and lace, silk found its consumption
stopped. For several months the unfortunate Lyons' workmen had for
sole subsistence the produce of the colours and scarfs ordered
by the Provisional Government. At St Etienne and St Chamond,
the principal points of our ribbon and velvet manufacture, and
where 85,000 workmen were employed, the production went down
two-thirds. At Paris M. Audiganne estimates the loss in what is
called Paris goods at nine-tenths of the production. The loss on
other articles, he considers, on the contrary, to have been only
two-thirds on the sale, and a little more than one-half on the
amount of the produce. We only touch in these remarks on the most
striking points of the calculation; the total loss, according
to M. Audiganne, amounts, for the workmen alone, to upwards of
300,000,000f.'"

Such have been the consequences to the people of listening to the voice of their demagogues, who impelled them into the revolution of 1848--to the national guards, of hanging back at the decisive moment, and forgetting their oaths in the intoxication of popular enthusiasm.

And if any one supposes that these effects were only temporary, and that lasting freedom is to be won for France by these sacrifices, we recommend him to consider the present state of France, a year and a half after the revolution of 1848, as painted by one of its ablest supporters, M. Louis Blanc.

PROTEST.

"While Paris is in a state of siege, and when most of the journals
which represent our opinions are by violence condemned to silence,
we believe it to be a duty owing to our party to convey to it, if
possible, the public expression of our sentiments.

"It is with profound astonishment that we see the organs of the
counter-revolution triumph over the events of the 13th of June.

"Where there has been no contest, how can there have been a
victory?

"What is then proved by the 13th of June?

"That under the pressure of 100,000 soldiers, Paris is not free in
her movements? We have known this more than enough.

"Now, as it has always been, the question is, if by crowding Paris
with soldiers and with cannon, by stifling with violent hands
the liberty of the press, by suppressing individual freedom,
by invading private domiciles, by substituting the reign of
Terror for that of Reason, by unceasingly repressing furious
despair--that which there is wanting a capacity to prevent, the
end will be attained of reanimating confidence, or re-establishing
credit, of diminishing taxes, of correcting the vices of the
administration, of chasing away the spectre of the deficit, of
developing industry, of cutting short the disasters attendant
upon unlimited competition, of suppressing those revolts which
have their source in the deep recesses of human feeling, of
tranquillising resentments, of calming all hearts? The state of
siege of 1848 has engendered that of 1849. The question is, if
the amiable perspective of Paris in a state of siege every eight
or ten months will restore to commerce its elastic movements, to
the industrious their markets, and to the middle classes their
repose."--_L. Blanc._

It is frequently asked what is to be the end of all these changes, and under what form of government are the people of France ultimately to settle? Difficult as it is to predict anything with certainty of a people with whom nothing seems to be fixed but the disposition to change, we have no hesitation in stating our opinion that the future government of France will be what that of imperial Rome was, an ELECTIVE MILITARY DESPOTISM. In fact, with the exception of the fifteen years of the Restoration, when a free constitutional monarchy was imposed on its inhabitants by the bayonets of the Allies, it has ever since the Revolution of 1789 been nothing else. The Orleans dynasty has, to all appearance, expired with a disgrace even greater than that which attended its birth: the Bourbons can scarcely expect, in a country so deeply imbued with the love of change, to re-establish their hereditary throne. Popular passion and national vanity call for that favourite object in democratic societies--a rotation of governors: popular violence and general suffering will never fail to re-establish, after a brief period of anarchy, the empire of the sword. The successive election of military despots seems the only popular compromise between revolutionary passion and the social necessities of mankind; and as a similar compromise took place, after eighty years of bloodshed and confusion, in the Roman commonwealth, so, after a similar period of suffering, it will probably be repeated, from the influence of the same cause, in the French nation.

Dies Boreales.

No. III.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

SCENE--_Gutta Percha._

TIME--_Early Evening._

NORTH--BULLER--SEWARD--TALBOYS.

* * * * *

NORTH.

Trim--trim--trim--

TALBOYS.

Gentlemen, are you all seated?

NORTH.

Why into such strange vagaries fall as you would dance, Longfellow! Seize his skirts, Seward. Buller, cling to his knees. Billy, the boat-hook--he will be--he is--overboard.

TALBOYS.

Not at all. Gutta Percha is somewhat crank--and I am steadying her, sir.

NORTH.

What is that round your waist?

TALBOYS.

My Air-girdle.

NORTH.

I insist upon you dropping it, Longman. It makes you reckless. I did not think you were such a selfish character.

TALBOYS.

Alas! in this world, how are our noblest intentions misunderstood! I put it on, sir, that, in case of a capsize, I might more buoyantly bear you ashore.

NORTH.

Forgive me, my friend. But--be seated. Our craft is but indifferently well adapted for the gallopade. Be seated, I beseech you! Or, if you will stand, do plant both feet--do not--do not alternate so--and above all, do not, I implore you--show off on one, as if you were composing and reciting verses.--There, down you are--and if there be not a hole in her bottom, Gutta Percha is safe against all the hidden rocks in Loch Awe.

TALBOYS.

Let me take the stroke oar.

NORTH.

For sake of the ancient houses of the Sewards and the Bullers, sit where you are. We are already in four fathom water.

TALBOYS.

The Lines?

BILLY.

Nea, nea--Mister Talboys. Nane shall steer Perch when He's afloat but t' auld commodore.

NORTH.

Shove off, lads.

TALBOYS.

Are we on earth or in heaven?

BILLY.

On t' watter.

NORTH.

Billy--mum.

TALBOYS.

The Heavens are high--and they are deep. Fear would rise up from that Profound, if fear there could be in the perfectly Beautiful!

SEWARD.

Perhaps there is--though it wants a name.

NORTH.

We know there is no danger--and therefore we should feel no fear. But we cannot wholly disencumber ourselves of the emotions that ordinarily great depth inspires--and verily I hold with Seward, while thus we hang over the sky-abyss below with suspended oars.

SEWARD.

The Ideal rests on the Real--Imagination on Memory--and the Visionary, at its utmost, still retains relations with Truth.

BULLER.

Pray you to look at our Encampment. Nothing visionary there--

TALBOYS.

Which Encampment?

BULLER.

On the hill-side--up yonder--at Cladich.

TALBOYS.

You should have said so at first. I thought you meant that other down--

BULLER.

When I speak to you, I mean the _bona fide_ flesh and blood Talboys, sitting by the side of the _bona fide_ flesh and blood Christopher North, in Gutta Percha, and not that somewhat absurd, and, I trust, ideal personage, standing on his head in the water, or it may be the air, some fathoms below her keel--like a pearl-diver.

TALBOYS.

Put up your hands--so--my dear Mr North, and frame the picture.

NORTH.

And Maculloch not here! Why the hills behind Cladich, that people call tame, make a background that no art might meliorate. Cultivation climbs the green slopes, and overlays the green hill-ridges, while higher up all is rough, brown, heathery, rocky--and behind that undulating line, for the first time in my life, I see the peaks of mountains. From afar they are looking at the Tents. And far off as they are, the power of that Sycamore Grove connects them with our Encampment.

TALBOYS.

Are you sure, sir, they are not clouds?

NORTH.

If clouds, so much the better. If mountains, they deserve to be clouds; and if clouds, they deserve to be mountains.

SEWARD.

The long broad shadow of the Grove tames the white of the Tents--tones it--reduces it into harmony with the surrounding colour--into keeping with the brown huts of the villagers, clustering on bank and brae on both sides of the hollow river.

NORTH.

The cozey Inn itself from its position is picturesque.

TALBOYS.

The Swiss Giantess looks imposing--

BULLER.

So does the Van. But Deeside is the Pandemonium--

TALBOYS.

Well translated by Paterson in his Notes on Milton, "All-Devil's-Hall."

NORTH.

Hush. And how lovely the foreground! Sloping upland--with single trees standing one by one, at distances wide enough to allow to each its own little grassy domain--with its circle of bracken or broom--or its own golden gorse grove--divided by the sylvan course of the hidden river itself, visible only when it glimpses into the Loch--Here, friends, we seem to see the united occupations of pastoral, agricultural--and--

BULLER.

Pardon me, sir, I have a proposition to make.

NORTH.

You might have waited a moment till--

BULLER.

Not a moment. We all Four see the background--and the middle-ground and the foreground--and all the ground round and about--and all the islands and their shadows--and all the mountains and theirs--and, towering high above all, that Cruachan of yours, who, I firmly believe, is behind us--though 'twould twist my neck now to get a vizzy of him. No use then in describing all that lies within the visible horizon--there it is--let us enjoy it and be thankful--and let us talk this evening of whatever may happen to come into our respective heads--and I beg leave to add, sir, with all reverence, let's have fair play--let no single man--young or old--take more than his own lawful share--

NORTH.

Sir?

BULLER.

And let the subject of angling be tabooed--and all its endless botheration about baskets and rods, and reels and tackle--salmon, sea-trout, yellow-fin, perch, pike, and the Ferox--and no drivel about Deer and Eagles--

NORTH.

Sir? What's the meaning of all this--Seward, say--tell, Talboys.

BULLER.

And let each man on opening his mouth be _timed_--and let it be two-minute time--and let me be time-keeper--but, in consideration of your years and habits, and presidency, let time to you, sir, be extended to two minutes and thirty seconds--and let us all talk time about--and let no man seek to nullify the law by talking at railway rate--and let no man who waives his right of turn, however often, think to make up for the loss by claiming quarter of an hour afterwards--and that, too, perhaps at the smartest of the soiree--and let there be no contradiction, either round, flat, or angular--and let no man speak about what he understands--that is, has long studied and made himself master of--for that would be giving him an unfair--I had almost said--would be taking a mean advantage--and let no man--

NORTH.

Why, the mutiny at the Nore was nothing to this!

BULLER.

Lord High Admiral though you be, sir, you must obey the laws of the service--

NORTH.

I see how it is.

BULLER.

How is it?

NORTH.

But it will soon wear off--that's the saving virtue of Champagne.

BULLER.

Champagne indeed! Small Beer, smaller than the smallest size. You have not the heart, sir, to give Champagne.

NORTH.

We had better put about, gentlemen, and go ashore.

BULLER.

My ever-honoured, long-revered sir! I have got intoxicated on our Teetotal debauchery. The fumes of the water have gone to my head--and I need but a few drops of brandy to set me all right. Billy--the flask. There--I am as sober as a Judge.

NORTH.

Ay, 'tis thus, Buller, you wise wag, that you would let the "old man garrulous" into the secret of his own tendencies--too often unconscious he of the powers that have set so many asleep. I accept the law--but let it--do let it be three-minute time.

BULLER.

Five--ten--twenty--"with thee conversing I forget all time."

NORTH.

Strike medium--Ten.

BULLER.

My dear sir, for a moment let me have that Spy-glass.

NORTH.

I must lay it down--for a Bevy of Fair Women are on the Mount--and are brought so near that I hear them laughing--especially the Prima Donna, whose Glass is in dangerous proximity with my nose.

BULLER.

Fling her a kiss, sir.

NORTH.

There--and how prettily she returns it!

BULLER.

Happy old man! Go where you will--

TALBOYS.

Ulysses and the Syrens. Had he my air-girdle, he would swim ashore.

NORTH.

"Oh, mihi præteritos referat si Jupiter annos!"

TALBOYS.

The words are regretful--but there is no regret in the voice that syllables them--it is clear as a bell, and as gladsome.

NORTH.

Talking of kissing, I hear one of the most melodious songs that ever flowed from lady's lip--

"The current that with gentle motion glides,
Thou knowest, being stopped, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with th' enamelled stones,
_Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge_
_He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;_
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport to the wild ocean."

Is it not perfect?

SEWARD.

It is. Music--Painting, and Poetry--

BULLER.

Sculpture and architecture.

NORTH.

Buller, you're a blockhead. Dear Mr Alison, in his charming _Essays on Taste_, finds a little fault in what seems to me a great beauty in this, one of the sweetest passages in Shakspeare.

BULLER.

Sweetest. That's a miss-mollyish word.

NORTH.

Ass. One of the sweetest passages in Shakspeare. He finds fault with the Current kissing the Sedges. "The pleasing personification which we attribute to a brook is founded upon the faint belief of voluntary motion, and is immediately checked when the Poet _descends_ to any minute or particular resemblance."

SEWARD.

Descends!

NORTH.

The word, to my ear, does sound strangely; and though his expression, "faint belief," is a true and a fine one, yet here the doctrine does not apply. Nay, here we have a true notion inconsiderately misapplied. Without doubt Poets of more wit than sensibility do follow on a similitude beyond the suggestion of the contemplated subject. But the rippling of water against a sedge suggests a kiss--is, I believe, a kiss--liquid, soft, loving, _lipped_.

BULLER.

Beautiful.

NORTH.

Buller, you are a fellow of fine taste. Compare the whole catalogue of metaphorical kisses--admitted and claimable--and you will find this one of the most natural of them all. Pilgrimage, in Shakspeare's day, had dropt, in the speech of our Poets, from its early religious propriety, of seeking a holy place under a vow, into a roving of the region. See his "Passionate Pilgrim." If Shakspeare found the word so far generalised, then "wanderer through the woods," or plains, or through anything else, is the suggestion of the beholding. The river is more, indeed; being, like the pilgrim, on his way to a term, and an obliged way--"the wild ocean."

SEWARD.

The "faint belief of voluntary motion"--Mr Alison's fine phrase--is one, and possibly the grounding incentive to impersonating the "current" here; but other elements enter in; liquidity--transparency--which suggest a spiritual nature, and Beauty which moves Love.

NORTH.

Ay, and the Poets of that age, in the fresher alacrity of their fancy, had a justification of comparisons, which do not occur as promptly to us, nor, when presented to us, delight so much as they would, were our fancy as alive as theirs. You might suspect _a priori_ Ovid, Cowley, and Dryden, as likely to be led by indulgence of their ingenuity into passionless similitudes--and you may misdoubt even that Shakspeare was in danger of being so run away with. But let us have clear and unequivocal instances. This one assuredly is not of the number. It is exquisite.

TALBOYS.

Mr Alison, I presume to think, sir, should either have quoted the whole speech, or kept the whole in view, when animadverting on those two lines about the kissing Pilgrim. Julia, a Lady of Verona, beloved by Proteus, is only half-done--and now she comes--to herself.

"Then let me go, and hinder not my course;
I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,
And make a pastime of each weary step,
Till the last step have brought me to my love;
And there I'll rest, as, after much turmoil,
A blessed soul doth in Elysium."

The language of Shakspeare's Ladies is not the language we hear in real life. I wish it were. Real life would then be delightful indeed. Julia is privileged to be poetical far beyond the usage of the very best circles--far beyond that of any mortal creatures. For the God Shakspeare has made her and all her kin poetical--and if you object to any of the lines, you must object to them all. Eminently beautiful, sir, they are; and their beauty lies in the passionate, imaginative spirit that pervades the whole, and sustains the Similitude throughout, without a moment's flagging of the fancy, without a moment's departure from the truthfulness of the heart.

NORTH.

Talboys, I thank you--you are at the root.

SEWARD.

A wonderful thing--altogether--is Impersonation.

NORTH.

It is indeed. If we would know the magnitude of the dominion which the disposition constraining us to impersonate has exercised over the human mind, we should have to go back unto those ages of the world when it exerted itself, uncontrolled by philosophy, and in obedience to religious impulses--when Impersonations of Natural Objects and Powers, of Moral Powers and of Notions entertained by the Understanding, filled the Temples of the Nations with visible Deities, and were worshipped with altars and incense, hymns and sacrifices.

BULLER.

Was ever before such disquisition begotten by--an imaginary kiss among the Sedges!

NORTH.

Hold your tongue, Buller. But if you would see how hard this dominion is to eradicate, look to the most civilised and enlightened times, when severe Truth has to the utmost cleansed the Understanding of illusion--and observe how tenaciously these imaginary Beings, endowed with imaginary life, hold their place in our Sculpture, Painting, and Poetry, and Eloquence--nay, in our common and quiet speech.

SEWARD.

It is all full of them. The most prosaic of prosers uses poetical language without knowing it--and Poets without knowing to what extent and degree.

NORTH.

Ay, Seward, and were we to expatiate in the walks of the profounder emotions, we should sometimes be startled by the sudden apparitions of boldly impersonated Thoughts, upon occasions that did not seem to promise them--where you might have thought that interests of overwhelming moment would have effectually banished the play of imagination.

TALBOYS.

Shakspeare is justified, then--and the Lady Julia spoke like a Lady in Love with all nature--and with Proteus.

BULLER.

A most beautiful day is this indeed--but it is a Puzzler.

"The Swan on still St Mary's Lake
Floats double, Swan and Shadow;"

But here all the islands float double--and all the castles and abbeys--and all the hills and mountains--and all the clouds and boats and men,--double, did I say--triple--quadruple,--we are here, and there, and everywhere, and nowhere, all at the same moment. Inishail, I have you--no--Gutta Percha slides over you, and you have no material existence. Very well.

SEWARD.

Is there no house on Inishail?

NORTH.

Not one--but the house appointed for all living. A Burial-place. I see it--but not one of you--for it is little noticeable, and seldom used--on an average, one funeral in the year. Forty years ago I stepped into a small snuff-shop in the Saltmarket, Glasgow, to replenish my shell--and found my friend was from Lochawe-side. I asked him if he often revisited his native shore, and he answered--seldom, and had not for a long time--but that though his lot did not allow him to live there, he hoped to be buried in Inishail. We struck up a friendship--his snuff was good, and so was his whisky, for it was unexcised. A few years ago, trolling for Feroces, I met a boat with a coffin, and in it the body of the old tobacconist.

SEWARD.

"The Churchyard among the Mountains," in Wordsworth's _Excursion_, is alone sufficient for his immortality on earth.

NORTH.

It is. So for Gray's is his Elegy. But some hundred and forty lines in all--no more--yet how comprehensive--how complete! "In a Country Churchyard!" Every generation there buries the whole hamlet--which is much the same as burying the whole world--or a whole world.

SEWARD.

"The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep!"

All Peasants--diers and mourners! Utmost simplicity of all belonging to life--utmost simplicity of all belonging to death. Therefore, universally affecting.

NORTH.

Then the--Grayishness.

BULLER.

The what, sir?

NORTH.

The Grayishness. The exquisite scholarship, and the high artifice of the words and music--yet all in perfect adaptation to the scene and its essential character. Is there not in that union and communion of the solemn-profound, and the delicate-exquisite, something Cathedral-like? Which has the awe and infinitude of Deity and Eternity, and the prostrations and aspirations of adoration for its basis--expressed in the general structure and forms; and all this meeting and blent into the minute and fine elaboration of the ornaments? Like the odours that steal and creep on the soft, moist, evening air, whilst the dim hush of the Universal Temple dilates and elates. The least and the greatest in one. Why not? Is not that spiritual--angelical--divine! The least is not too exiguous for apprehension--the amplest exceeds not comprehension--and their united power is felt when not understood. I speak, Seward, of that which might be suggested for a primary fault in the Elegy--the contrast of the most artful, scholarly style, and the simple, rude, lowly, homely matter. But you shall see that every fancy seizes, and every memory holds especially those verses and wordings which bring out this contrast--that richest line--

"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn!"

is felt to be soon followed well by that simplest--

"No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed"----

where--I take "lowly" to imply low in earth--humbly turfed or flowered--and of the lowly.

SEWARD.

And so, sir, the pomp of a Cathedral is described, though a village Church alone is in presence. So Milton, Cromwell, and other great powers are set in array--that which these were not, against that which those were.

NORTH.

Yet hear Dr Thomas Brown--an acute metaphysician--but an obtuse critic--and no Poet at all. "The two images in this stanza ('Full many a gem,' &c.,) certainly produce very different degrees of poetical delight. That which is borrowed from the rose blooming in solitude pleases in a very high degree, both as it contains a just and beautiful similitude, and still more as the similitude is one of the most likely to have arisen in such a situation. But the simile in the two first lines of the stanza, though it may perhaps philosophically be as just, has no other charm, and strikes us immediately as not the natural suggestion of such a moment and such a scene. To a person moralising amid a simple Churchyard, there is perhaps no object that would not sooner have occurred than this piece of minute jewellery--'a gem of purest ray serene, in the unfathomed caves of ocean.'"

SEWARD.

A person moralising! He forgot that person was Thomas Gray. And he never knew what you have told us now.

NORTH.

Why, my dear Seward, the Gem is the recognised most intense expression, from the natural world, of worth--inestimable priceless price--dependent on rarity and beauty. The Flower is a like intense expression, from the same world, of the power to call forth love. The first image is _felt_ by every reader to be high, and _exalting_ its object; the second to be tender, and openly _pathetic_. Of course it moves more, and of course it comes last. The Poet has just before spoken of Milton and Cromwell--of bards and kings--and history with all her wealth. Is the transition violent from these objects to Gems? He is moved by, but he is not bound to, the scene and time. His own thoughts emancipate. Brown seems utterly to have forgotten that the Poet himself is the Dramatic person of the Monologue. Shall he be restricted from using the richness and splendour of his own thoughts? That one stanza sums up the two or three preceding--and is perfectly attuned to the reigning mood, temper, or pathos.

BULLER.

Thank you, gentlemen. The Doctor is done brown.

NORTH.

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave!"

Methinks I could read you a homily on that Text.

BULLER.

To-morrow, sir, if you please. To-morrow is Sunday--and you may read it to us as we glide to Divine Service at Dalmally--two of us to the Established, and two of us to the Free Kirk.

NORTH.

Be it so. But you will not be displeased with me for quoting now, from heart-memory, a single sentence on the great line, from Beattie, and from Adam Fergusson. "It presents to the imagination a wide plain, where several roads appear, crowded with glittering multitudes, and issuing from different quarters, but drawing nearer and nearer as they advance, till they terminate in the dark and narrow house, where all their glories enter in succession, and disappear for ever."

SEWARD.

Thank you, sir. That is Beattie?

NORTH.

It is. Fergusson's memorable words are--"If from this we are disposed to collect any inference adverse to the pursuits of glory, it may be asked whither do the paths of ignominy lead? If to the grave also, then our choice of a life remains to be made on the grounds of its intrinsic value, without regard to an end which is common to every station of life we can lead, whether illustrious or obscure."

SEWARD.

Very fine. Who says it? Fergusson--who was he?

NORTH.

The best of you Englishers are intolerably ignorant about Scotland. Do you know the Reverend John Mitford?

SEWARD.

I do--and have for him the greatest respect.

NORTH.

So have I. He is one of our best Editors--as Pickering is one of our best Publishers of the Poets. But I am somewhat doubtful of the truthfulness of his remarks on the opening of the Elegy, in the Appendix to his excellent Life of Gray. "The Curfew 'toll' is not the appropriate word--it was not a slow bell tolling for the dead."

SEWARD.

True enough, not for the dead--but Gray then felt as if it were for the dying--and chose to say so--the parting day. Was it quick and "merry as a marriage-bell?" I can't think it--nor did Milton, "swinging _slow_ with sullen roar." Gray was Il Penseroso. Prospero calls it the "solemn curfew." Toll is right.

NORTH.

But, says my friend Mitford, "there is another error, a confusion of time. The curfew tolls, and the ploughman returns from work. Now the ploughman returns two or three hours before the curfew rings; and 'the glimmering landscape' has 'long ceased to fade' before the curfew. The 'parting day' is also incorrect; the day had long finished. But if the word Curfew is taken simply for 'the Evening Bell,' then also is the time incorrect--and a _knell_ is not tolled for the parting, but for the parted--'and leaves the world to darkness and to me.' 'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.' Here the incidents, instead of being progressive, fall back, and make the picture confused and inharmonious; especially as it appears soon after that it was _not_ dark. For 'the moping owl does to the moon complain.'"

SEWARD.

Pardon me, sir, I cannot venture to answer all that--but if Mitford be right, Gray must be very wrong indeed. Let me see--give us it over again--sentence by sentence--

BULLER.

No--no--no. Once is enough--and enough is as good as a feast.

NORTH.

Talboys?

TALBOYS.

Since you have a great respect for Mr Mitford, sir, so have I. But hitherto I have been a stranger to his merits.

SEWARD.

The best of you Scottishers are intolerably ignorant about England.

TALBOYS.

In the first place, Mr North, when does the Curfew toll, or ring?--for hang me if I remember--or rather ever knew. And in the second place, when does the Evening Bell give tongue?--for hang me if I am much better informed as to his motions. Yet I should know something of the family of the Bells. Say--_eight_ o'clock. Well. It is summer-time, I suppose; for you cannot believe that so dainty a person in health and habits, as the Poet Gray, would write an Elegy in a Country churchyard in winter, and well on towards night. True, that is a way of speaking; he did not write it with his crow-quill, in his neat hand, on his neat vellum, on the only horizontal tomb-stone. But in the Churchyard he assumes to sit--probably under a Plane-tree, for sake of the congenial Gloom. Season of the year ascertained--Summer--time of Curfew--eight--then I can find no fault with the Ploughman. He comes in well--either as an image or a man. He must have been an honest, hard-working fellow, and worth the highest wages going between the years 1745 and 1750. At what hour do ploughmen leave the stilts in Cambridgeshire? We must not say at six. Different hours in different counties, Buller.

BULLER.

Go on--all's right, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

It is not too much to believe that Hodge did not grudge, occasionally, a half-hour over, to a good master. Then he had to stable his horses--Star and Smiler--rub them down--bed them--fill rack and manger--water them--make sure their noses were in the oats--lock the stable before the nags were stolen--and then, and not till then,

"The Ploughman homewards plods his weary way."

For he does not sleep on the Farm--he has a wife and small family--that is, a large family of smallish children--in the Hamlet, at least two miles off--and he does not walk for a wager of a flitch of bacon and barrel of beer--but for his accustomed rasher and a jug--and such endearments as will restore his weariness up to the proper pitch for a sound night's sleep. God bless him!

BULLER.

Shorn of your beams, Mr North, eclipsed.

TALBOYS.

The ploughman, then, does not return "two or three hours before the curfew rings." Nor has "the glimmering landscape long ceased to fade before the curfew." Nor is "the parting day incorrect." Nor "has the day long finished." Nor, when it may have finished, or may finish, can any man in the hamlet, during all that gradual subsiding of light and sound, take upon him to give any opinion at all.

NORTH.

My boy, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

"And leave the world to darkness and to me." Ay--into his hut goes the ploughman, and leaves the world and me to darkness--which is coming--but not yet come--the Poet knows it is coming--near at hand its coming glooms; and Darkness shows her divinity as she is preparing to mount her throne.

NORTH.

Nothing can be better.

TALBOYS.

"'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.' Here the incident, instead of being progressive, falls back, and makes the picture confused and inharmonious." Confused and inharmonious! By no manner of means. Nothing of the sort. There is no retrogression--the day has been unwilling to die--cannot believe she is dying--and cannot think 'tis for her the curfew is tolling; but the Poet feels it is even so; the glimmering and the fading, beautiful as they are, are sure symptoms--she is dying into Evening, and Evening will soon be the dying into Night; but to the Poet's eye how beautiful the transmutations! Nor knows he that the Moon has arisen, till, at the voice of the nightbird, he looks up the ivied church-tower, and there she is, whether full, waning, or crescent, there are not data for the Astronomer to declare.

NORTH.

My friend Mr Mitford says of the line, "No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed"--That "here the epithet _lowly_, as applied to _bed_, occasions an ambiguity, as to whether the Poet means the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid;" and he adds, "there can be no greater fault in composition than a doubtful meaning."

TALBOYS.

There cannot be a more touching beauty. Lowly applies to both. From their lowly bed in their lowly dwellings among the quick, those joyous sounds used to awaken them; from their lowly bed in their lowly dwellings among the dead, those joyous sounds will awaken them never more: but a sound will awaken them when He comes to judge both the quick and the dead; and for them there is Christian hope--from

"Many a holy text around them strewed
That teach the rustic moralist to die."

NORTH.

"Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe hath broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!"

This stanza--says Mr Mitford--"is made up of various pieces inlaid. 'Stubborn glebe' is from Gay; 'drive afield' from Milton; 'sturdy stroke' from Spenser. Such is too much the system of Gray's composition, and therefore such the cause of his imperfections. Purity of language, accuracy of thought, and even similarity of rhyme, all give way to the introduction of certain poetical expressions; in fact, the beautiful jewel, when brought, does not fit into the new setting, or socket. Such is the difference between the flower stuck into the ground and those that grow from it." Talboys?

BULLER.

Why not--Buller?

TALBOYS.

I give way to the gentleman.

BULLER.

Not for worlds would I take the word out of any man's mouth.

TALBOYS.

Gray took "stubborn glebe" from Gay. Why from Gay? It has been familiar in men's mouths from the introduction of agriculture into this Island. May not a Saxon gentleman say "drive their teams afield" without charge of theft from Milton, who said "drove afield." Who first said "Gee-ho, Dobbin?" Was Spenser the first--the only man before Milton--who used "sturdy stroke?" and has nobody used it since Gray?

BULLER.

You could give a "sturdy stroke" yourself, Talboys. What's your weight?

TALBOYS.

Gray's style is sometimes too composite--you yourself, sir, would not deny it is so--but Mr Mitford's instances here are absurd, and the charge founded on them false. Gray seldom, if ever--say never, "_sacrifices_ purity of language, and accuracy of thought," for the sake of introducing certain poetical expressions. "All give way" is a gross exaggeration. The beautiful words of the brethren, with which his loving memory was stored, came up in the hour of imagination, and took their place among the words as beautiful of his own congenial inspirations; the flowers he transplanted from poetry "languished not, grew dim, nor died;" for he had taken them up gently by the roots, and with some of the old mould adhering to their tendrils, and, true florist as he was, had prepared for them a richest soil in his own garden, which he held from nature, and which the sun and the dew of nature nourished, and will nourish for ever.

BULLER.

That face is not pleasant, sir. Nothing so disfigures a face as envy. Old Poets at last grow ugly all--but you, sir, are a Philosopher--and on your benign countenance 'twas but a passing cloud. There--you are as beautiful as ever--how comely in critical old age! Any farther fault to find with our friend Mitford?

NORTH.

"On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires,
Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires."

"'Pious drops' is from Ovid--piæ lachrymæ; 'closing eye' is from Pope--'voice of nature' from the Anthologia, and the last line from Chaucer--'Yet on our ashes cold is fire yreken.' _From so many quarries are the stones brought to form this elaborate Mosaic pavement._" I say, for "piæ lachrymæ" all honour to Ovid--for "pious drops" all honour to Gray. "Closing eye" is _not_ from Pope's Elegy; "voice of nature" is _not_ from the Anthologia, but from Nature herself; Chaucer's line may have suggested Gray's, but the reader of Chaucer knows that Gray's has a tender and profound meaning which is not in Chaucer's at all--and he knows, too, that Mr Mitford is not a reader of Chaucer--for were he, he could not have written "ashes" for "ashen." There were _no_ quarries--there is _no_ Mosaic. Mosaic pavement! Worse, if possible--more ostentatiously pedantic--even than stuck in flowers, jewels, settings, and sockets.

TALBOYS.

The Stanza is sacred to sorrow.

NORTH.

"From this Stanza," quoth Mitford, "the style of the composition drops into _a lower key_; the language is plainer, and is not in harmony with the splendid and elaborate diction of the former part." This objection is disposed of by what I said some minutes ago----

BULLER.

Half an hour ago--on _Grayishness_.

NORTH.

And I have only this farther to say, gentlemen, that though the language is plainer--yet it is solemn; nor is it unpoetical--for the hoary-headed swain was moved as he spake; the style, if it drop into a lower key, is accordant with that higher key on which the music was pitched that has not yet left our hearing. An Elegy is not an Ode--the close should be mournful as the opening--with loftier strain between--and it is so; and whatever we might have to say of the Epitaph--its final lines are "awful"--as every man must have felt them to be--whether thought on in our own lonely night-room--in the Churchyard of Grantchester, where it is said Gray mused the Elegy--or by that Burial-ground in Inishail--or here afloat in the joyous sunshine for an hour privileged to be happy in a world of grief.

BULLER.

Let's change the subject, sir. May I ask what author you have in your other hand?

NORTH.

Alison on Taste.

BULLER.

You don't say so! I thought you quoted from memory.

NORTH.

So I did; but I have dog-eared a page or two.

BULLER.

I see no books lying about in the Pavilion--only Newspapers--and Magazines--and Reviews--and trash of that kind----

NORTH.

Without which, you, my good fellow, could not live a week.

BULLER.

The Spirit of the Age! The Age should be ashamed of herself for living from hand to mouth on Periodical Literature. The old Lady should indeed, sir. If the Pensive Public conceits herself to be the Thinking World--

NORTH.

Let us help to make her so. I have a decent little Library of some three hundred select volumes in the Van--my Plate-chest--and a few dozens of choice wines for my friends--of Champagne, which you, Buller, call small beer----

BULLER.

I retracted and apologised. Is that the key of the Van at your watch-chain?

NORTH.