Chapter III: Part III (3)

There is, we repeat, no modern school among us; art is pursued to an extent unprecedented, but without any fixed serious purpose, in all its multifarious forms, and with an ability sufficient to show that some moving cause is alone wanted. We progress in skill, in precision and clearness; but the hand is little directed by the mind. Our exhibition walls abound with talent, but are for the most part barren of genius: and surely this must continue to be the case, while the public mind is in its unpoetic, its utilitarian state, and shall look to art for its passing charm only as a gentle recreation, an idle amusement. If there is any tendency to a school, it is unfortunately to one which is most in opposition to that pure school which found, and cherished, and idealised the sanctity of female beauty.

We know not if it should be considered an escape or not; but certainly there was, in the earlier period of English art, one man of extraordinary genius, who, vigorously striking out a great moral idea, might have been the founder of a new school. We mean Hogarth. He was, however, too adventurously new for the age, and left no successor; nor is even now the greatness of his genius generally understood. He has been classed with "painters of drolls;" yet was he the most tragic painter this country--we were about to say, any country--has produced. We are not prepared to say it is a school we should wish to have been established; but we assert that the genius of Hogarth incurred for us the danger. His works stand unique in art--that which can be said, perhaps, of the works of no other painter that ever existed, and obtained a name. We had written so far, when we were willing to see what a modern writer says of this great man; and we are happy to find his views in so great a degree coincide with our own. We make the follow-extract from Cleghorn's 2d volume of _Ancient and Modern Art_; a work, indeed, that, when we took up the pen, it was our purpose to speak of more largely, and to which we mean to devote what further space may be allowed for this paper:--

"To Hogarth, on the other hand, M. Passavant awards that justice which has been denied to him by his countrymen. Hogarth is of all English painters, and, perhaps, of all others, the one who knew how to represent the events of common life with the most humour, and, at the same time, with rare and profound truth. This truth of character is, however, visible not only in his conception of a subject, but is varied throughout in the form and colour of his figures in a no less masterly manner." "Hogarth [continues Mr Cleghorn] stands alone as an artist, having had no predecessors, rivals, nor successors. He is the more interesting, too, as being the first native English artist of celebrity. Yet a tasteless public was unable to appreciate his merits; and he was driven to the necessity of raffling his pictures for small sums, which only partially succeeded. In spite of the sneers of Horace Walpole that he was "more a writer of comedy with his pencil than a painter," and the epigrammatic saying of Augustus Von Schlegel, that 'he painted ugliness, wrote on beauty, and was a thorough bad painter,' he was a great and original artist, both painter and engraver, whose works, coming home to every man's understanding and feelings, and applicable to every age and country, can never lose their relish and interest. They are chiefly known to the public by his etchings and engravings, which, however, convey a very imperfect idea of the beauty and expression of the original paintings." We only object to stress laid upon his humour, which is not his, or at least his only, characteristic. He was a great dramatist of human life; humour was the incidental gift, tragedy the more essential. Who had more humour, more wit than Shakspeare, and who was ever so tragic, or so employed his humour as to set it beside his most tragic scenes, with an effect that made the pathos deeper? In such a sense was Hogarth "comic." His "Marriage à la Mode" is the deepest of tragedies.

We turn to Mr Cleghorn's two interesting and very useful volumes. They give a compendious, yet, for general use and information, sufficiently elaborate view of architecture, sculpture, and painting, from their very origin to their present condition. We know of no work containing so complete a view. If we are disposed at all to quarrel with his plan, it is that in every branch he comes down to too late a time. And as it is always the case with writers who find themselves committed to the present age, he evidently finds himself encumbered with the detail which this part of his plan has forced upon him. In matter it will be often found that the present age overpowers all preceding, when even it is vastly inferior in importance. Nor is it very easy to avoid a bias in speaking of contemporaries; nor can a writer safely depend upon his own judgment when he looks too nearly and intimately on men and their works, and fears the giving offence by omissions, or by too qualified praise. His divisions into schools, with general remarks on each at the end, give a very clear view, when taken together, of the history of these arts; and we are rejoiced to see them--architecture, sculpture, and painting--thus in a manner linked in history, as they were formerly in the minds and genius of the greatest men. In this he follows the good course led by Vasari. In his account of the Flemish and Dutch schools, there is a strange omission of the early Flemish painters preceding and subsequent to the Van Eycks, to the time of Rubens; nor is the influence which the brothers Van Eyck had upon art sufficiently discussed. We propose at some future day to treat more at length on this subject, and to make extracts from Michiel's very interesting little volume, his "Peintres Brugeois." Even in the short account of Van Eyck's invention, Mr Cleghorn is somewhat careless, in the omission of one important little word, _sue_, in his extract from Vasari, who does not exactly describe the invention as "the result of a mixture or vehicle composed of linseed oil or nut oil, _boiled up with other mixtures_," but "_with other mixtures of his own_." Vasari says, "e aggiuntevi altre _sue_ misture fece la vernice," &c.

In the following remarks on Greek sculpture we find something consonant to the ideas we have ventured to express:--

"A remarkable difference is observable in the female ideal, the result of that refined delicacy and purity of taste evinced on all occasions by the Greeks. They neither increased the stature, nor heightened the contours of their heroines and goddesses, convinced that in so doing they must have sensibly impaired the beauty, modesty, and delicacy of the sex. In this the Greek sculptors conformed to the rule inculcated by Aristotle, and uniformly observed in the Greek tragedy, never to make woman overstep the modesty of the female character. The Medicean Venus is but a woman, though perhaps more beautiful than ever woman appeared on earth. Another peculiarity is very striking. While a great proportion of the male statues, whether men, heroes, or gods, were naked, or nearly so, those of the other sex, with the exception of the Venuses, Graces, and Hours, were uniformly draped from head to foot. Even the three Graces by Socrates, described by Pausanias as decorating the entrance to the Acropolis, were clothed in imitation of the more ancient Graces." As to this exception of the Venuses and Graces, Mr Cleghorn seems to have in some degree misapprehended the passage relating thereto in Pausanias, who distinctly says that he knows not who first sculptured or painted them naked, but it was after the time of Socrates. These Graces of Socrates, by the bye, may be the φιλαι, of whom he speaks in his dialogue with Theodota, who, he says, will not let him rest day nor night.

The number of nude Venuses would, it may be suspected, scarcely justify the elegant compliment in the epigram in the Anthologia--

"Γυμνην ειδε Παρις με και Ανχισης και
Αδωνις,
Τους τρεις οιδα μονους; Πραξιτελης δε
ποθεν?"

Paris, Anchises, and Adonis--Three,
Three only, did me ever naked see:
But this Praxiteles--when, where did He?

Our author censures the school of Bernini, we should have thought justly, remembering much that has been said on the subject of the unfitness of the ponderous material to represent light action, if we had not seen the Xanthian marbles brought to this country by Sir Charles Fellowes, and now deposited in the British Museum. The female statues that stood in the Tomb Temple are exquisite, and perhaps equal to any Grecian art, yet are they represented with flying drapery. It is difficult to make a rule which some bold genius shall not subvert.

Most authors on art think it necessary to descant upon liberty, as most favourable to its advancement. It is difficult to define what liberty is, so that every example may be disputed. If we take the age of Pericles, when the wonders of Phidias were achieved, we must not forget that Phidias himself was treated by the Athenians with such indignity that he left them, and deposited his finest work at Corinth. The republic suspected him of thieving the gold, and he had the precaution, knowing his men, to weigh the metal, and work it so as to be removable. We must not forget that Pericles, who fortunately in a manner governed Athens, was obliged to plead on his knees for the life of Aspasia, whose offence was her superior endowments. When Alexander subjugated Greece, art still flourished. Nor was it crushed even in the wars and revolts and subjugations by Cassander, after the death of Alexander. We should not say that the Augustan age was exactly the age of liberty, but it was the age of literature. The easier solution may be, "Sint Mæcenates, non deerunt Marones." Munificent patronage will often raise what that state which passes under the name of liberty will often destroy.

"In the most favoured periods of the fine arts, we find patronage either dispensed by the sovereign, the state, or the priesthood; or, if a commonwealth, by the rulers who had the revenues at their command. Possessing taste and knowledge themselves, and appreciating the importance and dignity of art, they selected the artists whom they deemed best fitted for the purpose. The artists, again, respected and consulted their patrons, between whom there reigned a mutual enthusiasm, good understanding, and respect. Such were Pericles, Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Hadrian, Francis I. of France, Julius II., Lorenzo and Leo X. of the Medici, the nobles and rulers of the different Italian cities and commonwealths, the Roman Catholic church and clergy, Charles I. of England, Louis XIV. of France--and in our own times the late and present kings of Prussia, the King of Bavaria, Louis Philippe of France, and--it is gratifying to add--Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Great Britain. But, indispensable as national patronage is, it can have no sure or permanent foundation, unless it be likewise supported by the aristocracy and wealthy classes. Instead of emanating, as in the continental states, from the sovereign and government, patronage in Great Britain may be said to have originated with the middle ranks, and to have forced its way up to the higher classes, and even to the government itself."

There are interesting yet short chapters on mosaic, tapestry, and painted glass; subjects now demanding no little public attention, coming again as we are to the taste for decoration. The ladies of England will be pleased to find their needle-work so seriously considered. Happy will it be if their idleness leads to a better and employed industry. Due praise is bestowed upon Miss Linwood, whose works are ranked with the Gobelin tapestry. We remember seeing many years ago an invention that promised great things--painting, if it may be so called, in wool work. It was the invention of Miss Thompson, and was exhibited, and we believe not quite fairly--much mischief having been done to the pictures by pulling out parts, either for wanton mutilation, or to see the manner of the working. Whether from disgust arising from this circumstance, or at the little encouragement shown to it, the invention seems to have dropped. Yet was the effect most powerful, more to the life than any picture, in whatever material; and from the size of the works produced by the hands of one person, we should judge that it is capable of rapid execution. We have a vivid recollection of a copy from a picture by Northcote, figures size of life, and of the head of Govartius, in the National Gallery. We are not without hope that this slight notice may recall a very effective mode of copying, at least, if not of producing, original works.

Of painted glass, it is remarked,--

"The earliest notice of its existence is in the age of Pope Leo III., about the year 800. It did not, however, come into general use till the lapse of some centuries. The earliest specimens differ entirely from those of a later date, being composed of small pieces stained with colour during the process of manufacture, and thus forming a species of patchwork, or rude mosaic, joined together with lead, after being cut into the proper shapes." Mr Cleghorn omits to say that this more perfect invention of painting on one piece various tints and colours, and regulating gradations of burning, was effected and brought to perfection by the same extraordinary man to whom the world is indebted for the invention of oil painting, Van Eyck. From the discoveries of this extraordinary man, or rather these extraordinary brothers, Van Eyck, must be dated the advance in the arts, both on glass and in oil-colours, which brought to both the perfection of colouring.

The wonderful splendour added to design upon glass, which was so eminently practised at Venice, without doubt supplied to the Venetian school an aim which it could not have had under the old tempera system, but which the new oil invention of Van Eyck sufficiently placed within its reach.

Yet, in one view, we may hence date the corruption of art. The severity of fresco was superseded by the new fascination, and somewhat of dignity was lost as beauty was more decidedly established. As very much of the splendour of glass painting was thus introduced in oil, the greater facility of more correctly representing nature, and embodying ideas by degrees of opacity, so gave the preference to oil-painting, that not only the old tempera and fresco were soon neglected, but painting on glass itself, as if it had done its work, and transferred its peculiar beauty, lost much of its repute, and, in no very long time, the processes to which it owed its former glory.

Mr Cleghorn remarks--"Within a few years it has been much cultivated in Great Britain; and the intended application to the decoration of the Houses of Parliament will materially conduce to its improvement and extension." It is unquestionably an art of the greatest importance in decoration. It has a charm peculiarly its own. It dignifies, it solemnises by its own light, and is capable of affecting the mind so as particularly to predispose it to the purposes of architecture. It encloses a sanctuary, excluding the very atmosphere of the outer world. There is the impression and the awe of truth under the searching and embracing light, that should make the utterance of a falsehood the more mean, even sacrilegious. The art that can have this power, nor is this its only, though its greater power, is surely to be cultivated and encouraged extensively. There is now more attention paid to the architecture and decoration of our churches, and a taste has sprung up for monumental windows. We cannot resist, therefore, the temptation to offer a few remarks upon the subject, now that so many mistaken views are taken as to the proper application of this beautiful art.

There seems to be a false idea abroad that the painted window is to be predominant, not assistant to the general impression which the architecture intends. In reality it loses, not gains, power by setting up for itself. And, even in colours, it is not to vie with shop display of colours "by the piece," nor to set forth all its powers at once in a full glare and blaze, and too often without other object and meaning than to display flags of strong unmixed colours. A painted window should be a whole, and have no one colour predominant, but be of infinite depths and degrees of tint and tone with one tendency. Nor should it aim at picture-making, however it may be adapted to the emblematical. It should never affect the absolutely real--the picture illusion: it is altogether of a world of thought and imagination belonging rather to the inner mind of the spectator than to his ordinary thought or vision. The very difficulty of the early manufacture was an advantage to it, for great brilliancy has resulted from the crossings and hatchings of the leaden fastenings; and now that we are enabled to hang up, as it were, flags of colour, the effect of those subduing subdivisions is gone.

There is such a thing, so to speak, as the genius of a material. That genius, in the case of glass-painting, is not for picture. Surely Sir Joshua Reynolds made a great mistake when, in his window for New College, he designed, as for canvass, a picture, and that for the most part without colour, which the genius of the material required. Nor by the largeness of his figures, and of the whole as a design, did he assist, or indeed at all agree with, the character of the architecture. In such instances many and small parts should make one whole, both for the advantage of the real magnitude of the particular work, and that the magnitude of the architecture be not lessened--a method, indeed, which the Gothic architecture studiously followed, in which even minute design and detail give largeness to all the leading lines. Daylight is never to be seen--an imaginary light is the all in all. In this respect it should be like a precious stone, which is best seen in all its infinite depths, in shade, out of all common glare. In the best specimens of old glass-painting the positive and strong colours were few, and in small spaces, and adjoining them was a frequent aiming at those which were almost opaque,--even black and greens, browns and purples, bordering on black. And if emblematic subjects were represented, they were in many compartments, as if the window were a large history-book with its many pages--a world of curious emblems, no one obtrusive. It is bad taste to fill up a whole window with even Raffaelle's Transfiguration; either a picture or a large design is out of place, and dissonant to the genius of the art. One of the worst specimens of painted window is that in the Temple, all self-glorifying, painted as a savage would paint himself, in flags of colour as crude as possible. The genius of the art is for innumerable subdivisions, none obtruding, lest there be no whole. It should be of the light of a brighter world subduing itself, veiling its glory, and diffusing itself in mystic communication with the inner mind; and like that mind, one in feeling with all its varied depths of thought. Colour and transparency are the means of this beautiful art; but these, as they are very powerful require great judgment and determination of purpose in the use. The interwoven gold in the old tapestries was more effectually to separate the character of the material from the too close imitation of nature or the picture; so on the transparent material of glass, the crossing, and sometimes quaintly formed lead lines, always marked, answer the same purpose. Mr Cleghorn is too sparing of remarks and information on the art of painting on glass, which we the less regret, as we are shortly to have before the public the carefully gathered knowledge upon this subject from the pen and research of Mrs Merrifield. His chapter on tapestry is more full and interesting. We have not seen the specimens of a new kind invented by Miss King. It will be a boon to the public if, in its adoption, it supersedes, with a better richness, the Berlin work, at which ladies are now so unceasingly and so tastelessly employed. The _Art-Union_ speaks highly of the invention. It is curious that, in modern times, a Raffaelle tapestry should be destroyed to get at the gold. The anecdote is characteristic of the equally infidel French of 1798 and of the Jew--excepting that the Jew was ignorant of its value. Mr Cleghorn thus speaks of the celebrated cartoon tapestries--"They were sent to be woven at Arras, under the superintendence of Barnard Van Orlay and Michael Coxes, who had been some years pupils of Raffaelle. Two sets of these interesting tapestries were executed; but the deaths of Raffaelle and the pontiff, and the intestine troubles, prevented them being applied to their intended destination. They were carried off by the Spaniards during the sack of Rome in 1526-7, and restored by the French general, Montmorency. They were first exhibited to the public by Paul IV. in front of the Basilica of St Peter's, on the festival of Corpus Domini, and again at the Beatification: a custom that was continued throughout part of the last century, and has again been resumed. _The French took them in 1798, and sold them to a Jew at Leghorn, who burned one of them--Christ's Descent into Limbus--to extract the gold with which it was interwoven._"

There is so much information in these little volumes, that were we to notice a small part of the passages which we have marked with the pencil, we should unduly lengthen this paper, which we can by no means be allowed to do. We here pause, intending, however, shortly to resume the pen on the subject of art, which now offers so many points of interest.

KAFFIRLAND.[8]

[8] _Five Years in Kaffirland, with Sketches of the Late War in that
Country._ Written on the Spot. By HARRIET WARD. Two vols. London,
1848.

_The Cape and its Colonists, with Hints to Settlers, in 1848._ By GEORGE NICHOLSON, Jun., Esq., a late Resident. London, 1848.

_Three Years' Cruise in the Mozambique Channel, for the Suppression of the Slave Trade._ By LIEUT. BARNARD, R.N. London, 1848.

It is always with fresh interest that we address ourselves to the perusal of books relating to Great Britain's colonial possessions. The subject, daily increasing in importance, has the strongest claims upon our attention. In presence of a rapidly augmenting population, and of the prodigious progress of steam and machinery, the question naturally suggests itself--and more so in England than in any other country--how employment and support shall be found for the additional millions of human beings with which a few years (judging of the future from the past) will throng the surface of a country already densely and superabundantly populated? The problem, often discussed, has not yet been satisfactorily solved. Without broaching the complicated question of over-population and its antidotes, without attempting to decide when a country is to be deemed over-populated, we may assert, without fear of contradiction, that emigration is the simplest and most direct remedy for the state of plethora into which a nation must sooner or later be brought by a steady annual excess of births over deaths. It is a remedy to which more than one European state will ultimately be compelled to resort, however alleviation may previously be sought by temporising and theoretical nostrums, more palatable, perhaps, to the patient, but inadequate, if not wholly inefficacious and charlatanical. And, after all, emigration is no such insupportable prescription for a very ugly malady. Doubtless much may be said upon the cruelty of making exile a condition of existence; but sympathy on this score may also be carried too far, and degenerate into drivel. At first sight the decree appears cruel and tyrannical, until we investigate its source, and find it to proceed from no earthly potentate, but from that omniscient Being whose intention it never was that men should crowd together into nooks and corners, when vast continents and fruitful islands, untenanted save by beasts of the field, or by scanty bands of barbarians, woo to their shores the children of labour and civilisation. Love of country, admirable as an incentive to many virtues, may be pushed beyond reasonable limits. It is so, we apprehend, when it prompts men to pine in penury and idleness upon the soil that gave them birth, rather than seek new fields for their industry and enterprise in uncultivated and vacant lands. What choice of these is afforded by England's vast and magnificent colonies! The emigrant may select almost his degree of latitude. And where Britannia's banner waves, and her laws are paramount, and the honest, kindly Anglo-Saxon tongue is the language of the land, there surely needs no great effort of imagination for a Briton to think himself still at home, though a thousand leagues of ocean roll between him and his native isle.

Excepting that they all more or less refer to the British possessions at the Cape of Good Hope, it were difficult to find three books more distinct from each other in character than those whose titles we have assembled at the foot of last page. An ex-settler, an accomplished lady, and a shrewd sailor, have selected the same moment for the publication of their African experiences. As in gallantry bound, we give the precedence to the lady. Mrs Harriet Ward, wife of a captain of the 91st regiment of foot, is a keen-witted, high-spirited person; and, like most of her sex when they espouse a cause, a warm partisan of the feelings and opinions of those she loves and admires. She is an uncompromising assailant of the system pursued at the Cape, especially as regards our treaties with the Kaffirs, whom she very justly denounces as perfidious, bloody, and unclean savages, untameable, she fully believes, and with whom Whig officials and negotiators have been ridiculously lenient and confiding. Although some of her views are rather sweeping and severe, she is certainly right in the main. And we honour her for her heartiness in denouncing the nauseous humbug of the pseudo-philanthropists, whose manœuvres have had a most prejudicial effect upon our South African possessions, and have given to persons in this country notions completely erroneous concerning the rights and wrongs of the Kaffir question. But whilst blaming the administration of the colony, she finds the country itself fair and excellent and of great resource. Herein she differs from her contemporary, Mr George Nicholson, junior. This gentleman, lately a settler at the Cape, cannot be too highly lauded for the volume with which he has favoured the public. We are not quite sure, however, that the public will think as highly of it as we do. Our admiration is founded on the consistency of its tone; upon the steady, well-sustained grumble kept up throughout. The preface at once prepossessed us in favour of what was to follow. Intended, doubtless, as a dram of bitters to assist in the digestion of the subsequent sour repast, it consists of general depreciation of other works regarding the Cape, and especially of one by "a Mr Chase"--of sneers at "stay-at-home wiseacres" and hollow theorists--and of a vague accusation brought against certain colonial residents of "fomenting the warlike propensities of the neighbouring barbarians, to secure their own ends," grievously to the detriment and prejudice of their fellow-colonists. "The peculiar bent," says Mr Nicholson, "of each author's mind has, in general, been so far allowed to predominate as to exclude the hope of forming a correct estimate of the capabilities of the soil, climate, and other interesting features of this extensive country, by a perusal of their works." Could the author of "The Cape and its Colonists" read his book with somebody else's eyes, he would discover that his own "peculiar bent has been allowed to predominate," and that the consequences have been of the most gloomy description. Mr Nicholson is evidently a disappointed, man. Either by his fault or misfortune, by the force of circumstances or his own bad management, his attempt to establish himself thrivingly at the Cape resulted unsatisfactorily; and this sufficiently accounts for the general tint of blue so conspicuous in his retrospective sketch of the scene of his mishaps. The particular spot where these occurred was a considerable tract of land (called a farm) in the district of Graaf Reinet, to arrive at which he steamed from Cape Town, where he had landed from England, to Port Elizabeth in Algoa Bay. The dismal aspect of this bay painfully affected him. He "had read some of the glowing descriptions given of this part of the country, by persons whose interest it is to entice over settlers by any means, even the most dishonest, in order to have the benefit of plucking them afterwards. It is true that I had not believed the El Dorado stories so current of this and other colonies, but my expectations had been raised sufficiently high to make the disappointment at the really desolate appearance of the place, perfect." The apparent desolation is accompanied by substantial disadvantages, which Mr Nicholson complacently enumerates. Water is scarce and brackish; there are no vegetables or fruit within twenty miles; hardly forage for a team of oxen; the town is built on sand, of which unceasing clouds are hurled by prevalent strong winds in the face of all comers. No wonder that the new settler, evidently indisposed to be easily pleased, made his escape as quickly as possible from so dreary a neighbourhood. Shipping himself, family, and chattels in an ox-waggon, he joyfully quitted Port Elizabeth on a splendid morning of the African autumn--that is to say, about the end of March or beginning of April, and set out for his property, over a road which he describes as a fair sample of Cape causeways, "nothing more than a series of parallel tracks made by the passage of waggons, from time to time, through the sand and jungle." Finding little to notice on his way, he takes the opportunity of having a fling at the missionaries, whom he describes as doing much harm, although actuated, as he is willing to believe, by the best of intentions. The stations serve as the headquarters of the idlest and most vagabond portion of the coloured population, who have only to affect a Christian disposition to find ready acceptance and refuge. "No sooner is a Hottentot, or other coloured servant, discontented or hopelessly lazy, than off he flies to the nearest station, where he can indulge in the greatest luxury he knows of--that of sleeping either in the sun or shade as his inclination may lead him, with the occasional variation of participating in the singing and praying exercises of the regular inhabitants of the place." If the zealous propagators of Christianity, who thus encourage the natural idleness of the natives, were successful in their attempts at conversion, it might be accepted as some compensation for the temporal evils and inconvenience they aid to inflict on a colony where servants are scarce and bad. But this is far from being the case. Mr Nicholson assures us (and we readily believe him) that it is very rare to find an individual whose moral conduct has been improved by a residence at a missionary station, and that for his part he prefers the downright heathen to the imperfect convert. Few of these coloured Christians have any distinct idea of the creed they profess; when able, which is seldom, to answer questions concerning its first principles, their replies are parrot-like and unintelligent. Against the general character of the missionaries nothing can be said; but they are throwing away time, and their employers are wasting money which might be employed to far greater advantage in England, or in other countries whose inhabitants, equally in want of religious instruction, are more capable of receiving and comprehending it than are the stolid aborigines of the Cape of Good Hope. Mr Nicholson does not dwell upon the subject of missionary labours in Africa, but compresses at the close of a chapter his opinions, which are sound and to the purpose. Mrs Ward says nothing on the matter, and we ourselves are not disposed to dilate upon it, having already often taken occasion to expose the folly of the system that sends preachers and biblemongers to the remotest corners of the earth when such scope for their labours exists at home. Let us return to George Nicholson, his trials and tribulations.

These were manifold; and he makes the most of them. No encouraging signs or omens cheered his progress through the land, bidding his heart beat high with hope. At two days' journey from Port Elizabeth he halted for the night at a farm belonging to an Englishman of independent property, who received him hospitably, but assured him that sheep-breeding was a hopeless speculation, owing to the bad pasturage, to the bushy tangled nature of the country, and to the hyenas, there called wolves, who are most destructive. As he proceeded, pasturage improved, but other plagues were apparent. In some places water was as scarce as in an Arabian desert, and as much prized--collected in pits and husbanded with the utmost care. "The maps of the colony indicate rivers of the most encouraging description in this part of the country. But the district itself presents only a series of dry water-courses, leaving evident traces of their capability of containing water for some hours after storms." These sandy and deceitful gullies intersect "a frightful country, which can only be described as a succession of low undulations, covered with large shingles, between which the most debauched-looking stunted tufts of the poisonous and prickly euphorbia, with here and there a magnificent scarlet-headed aloe, forced their way." We are at a loss to know what the ex-colonist here means by the epithet "debauched-looking," unless he intends some obscure allusion to the thirsty and disreputable aspect of the brambles, remote as they were from the vicinity of any water except one spring of "Harrowgate, which, to judge from the nasty effluvium it produced, must have been possessed of rare healing qualities." The severe droughts are the destruction of the settlers, entailing terrible losses and often total ruin, and their pernicious effects are aggravated by flights of locusts. These the farmers do what they can to keep off by smoky fires and other means, sometimes with success; but even when the insect cloud pass over a field without ravaging it, they leave a memento of their transit in the shape of innumerable eggs. In due time the young generation come forth, and being wingless cannot be driven away, but hop about and ravage every thing till their wings grow, and a gale of wind takes them off to fresh pasturage. Mrs Ward's description of a flight of locusts is remarkably striking, and given with a vigour of phrase not often found in the productions of a female pen.

"The first two years of our sojourn here, the locusts
devastated the land. The prophet Joel describes this
dreadful visitation as 'like the noise of chariots on the
tops of mountains,' 'like the noise of a flame of fire that
devoureth the stubble,' as 'a strong people set in battle
array;' and any one who has ridden through a cloud of
locusts must admit the description to be as true as it is
sublime. On one occasion, at Fort Peddie, the cloud,
flickering between us and the missionary station, half a
mile distant, dazzled our eyes, and veiled the buildings
from our sight; at last it rose, presenting its effects in
some acres of barren stubble, which the sun had lit up in
all the beauty of bright green a few hours before. Verily,
the heavens seemed to tremble, and the sky was darkened by
this 'great army,' which passed on, 'every one on his way,'
neither 'breaking their ranks nor thrusting one another.' So
they swept on, occupying a certain space between the heavens
and the earth, and neither swerving from the path, extending
the mighty phalanx, nor pausing in the course: the noise of
their wings realising the idea of a 'flaming blast,' and
their whole appearance typifying God's terrible threat of a
'besom of destruction.'

"'They shall walk every one in his path!' Nothing turns them
from it. And if the traveller endeavours to force his way
through them with unwonted rapidity, he is sure to suffer. I
have ridden for miles at a sharp gallop through their
legions, endeavouring to beat them of with my whip, but all
to no purpose! Nothing turns them aside, and the poor horses
bend down their heads as against an advancing storm, and
make their way as best they can, snorting and writhing under
the infliction of sharp blows on the face and eyes, which
their riders endeavour to evade with as little success. You
draw a long breath after escaping from a charge of locusts;
and looking around you, you exclaim with the prophet, 'The
land is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a
desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape
them!'"[9]

[9] _Five Years in Kaffirland_, vol. ii. p. 167-8.

Mr Nicholson's location included a tolerable house with mud floors and reed ceilings, and thirty-five thousand acres of mountain and plain, having the reputation of one of the best farms in the district. The cost of this was about £2000; and the property was calculated to maintain five or six thousand sheep, four hundred oxen, besides horses. There were four small springs, allowing the cultivation of about sixteen acres of good soil. Mr Nicholson, not wishing to overburden the land, bought only three thousand sheep, with cattle in proportion, and began the life (described by him as most discouraging and unprofitable) of a Cape of Good Hope sheep-farmer. Melancholy indeed is the account he gives of the profits and losses of that occupation. In the first place, high wages and good keep are scarcely sufficient inducement to the lazy Hottentots to take service; and when they are prevailed upon, they are scarce worth having. They are sent to the hills with the flocks, which they have to protect from beasts of prey, always on the look-out for a bit of straggling mutton. They themselves, however, are conspicuous for their rapacity, and by no means remarkable for honesty; and doubtless many a stray sheep is debited to the hyenas, of whose disappearance the Hottentots could give a very good account. The wild animals, however--panthers, jackals, hyenas, and, in some districts, lions--are amongst the settler's worst foes. These prowling carnivora preclude the possibility of leaving sheep out of doors after dark; and, even when penned, the fleecy family can hardly be considered safe. "In stormy weather," saith Nicholson, "my walled pens, although well bushed at top, and above six feet high, did not sufficiently protect me from great losses by the hyenas, which, on such occasions, would often jump over and kill sheep, and often carry one off in their mouths." This latter feat is rather astounding; but no matter, let us pass on to the next grievances of the unfortunate settler and sheep-farmer, grievances not peculiar to himself, but shared by all whose evil star guides them to the land of locusts and hyena. The diseases of sheep are numerous and fatal--scab, consumptive wasting, inflammation of the lungs, violent inflammatory epidemics, poisonous bushes and hailstones, drought and thunderbolts. "I recollect one of my neighbours losing upwards of three hundred valuable sheep in a few minutes from the effects of a hailstorm. Another farmer, living at no great distance from me, lost fifteen hundred sheep in one season from drought; and on my own farm, shortly before I became possessed of it, four hundred sheep were destroyed by lightning in a moment." Doubtless such mishaps as these do occur, but there is something particularly painful in Mr Nicholson's lugubrious style of piling them up, without intermixture of the smallest crumb of comfort for any unhappy individuals planning emigration to the Cape. Did he but vaunt the tender haunches and juicy saddles, the fine and profitable wool yielded by the remnant of these afflicted flocks! But touching the mutton he is mute; and as regards the produce of the fleeces, he pledges himself that, under the most favourable circumstances, they never yield more than four per cent on the value of the flock--a small enough remuneration, as it appears to us, unlearned, we confess, in ways of woollen. But we have not yet got to the worst of the story. Supposing a farmer fortunate, and that his flocks escape the multifarious evils above enumerated--that they are spared by the lightning's blast, the big hailstones, the inflammatory epidemic, and all the rest of it. Not upon that account may he rub his hands in jubilation, and reckon upon a good clip and high prices. He gets up one morning and finds his sheep converted into goats, or something little better. "Woolled sheep have a natural tendency to deterioration in this climate; and in a few generations, notwithstanding the greatest care, the wool begins to show a tendency to assimilate itself to the hairy nature of the coat, which, is the natural covering of the indigenous animal." So that, upon the whole, Mr Nicholson inclines to prefer goats to sheep, as stock, if properly attended to, and the utmost possible numbers kept. The profit is made out of the skin, fat, and flesh, and "those carcasses not required for food, might be boiled down for tallow." He perhaps overlooks, in this calculation, "the scarcity and bad quality of the fuel, composed of the dung dug out of the sheep pens, and stacked for the purpose." The present system, however, evidently does not answer, judging from his statement that there is not "one sheep-farmer in the Eastern Province (depending on the profits of his farm) who is either contented with the results of his farming, or is not grievously indebted to his storekeeper, except among the old-established and primitive Dutch families, who spend no money in manufactures, and have but little to spend, had they the habit." Is it unfair to argue, from this paragraph, the absence, on the part of the English colonists, of that frugal simplicity of living essential in a new country? A man settling in a country like the Cape, should be prepared to resign not only luxuries, but many things which in Europe are deemed positive necessaries of life, but which, in the forest and prairie, may well be dispensed with. We infer, from certain passages in Mr Nicholson's book, that he and his fellow-colonists were rather above their position, too addicted to the comforts of England to submit to the privations of Africa, and that they augmented their expenses by procuring alleviations which their primitive Dutch neighbours cheerfully dispensed with. The Dutchmen, Mr Nicholson tells us, spend no money in manufactures. Then the English settlers' wives were evidently quite out of their element in the bush, or as occupants of houses mud-floored and roofed with reeds. "I have never," says Mr Nicholson, "seen an English woman in the colony, at all raised above the very poorest, who did not complain bitterly of the inconvenience she endured when living on a farm; and I really know nothing more affecting than the sight of the often elegant-minded and well-educated sheep-farmer's wife struggling with the drudgery of her situation, and repining fruitlessly at the deceptive accounts which had induced her husband to seek his fortune in South Africa." Here we, perhaps, have a clue to one cause of the jaundiced view the ex-settler takes of things at the Cape. The impossibility of obtaining the requisite domestic servants drove Mrs Nicholson from the sheep-farm in Graaf Reinet to the more agreeable residence of Cape Town, at a distance of eight hundred miles; and thenceforward her husband divided his time, as best he could, between domestic and farming duties. This seems an uncomfortable state of things. The want of the master's eye must have been sadly felt at the farm during his visits to Cape Town, and he must have lost much time and some patience in weary eight-hundred-mile journeys, performed, for the most part, on horseback.

The Kaffir war is, of course, a prominent subject in the three books before us. We find least of it in that of Lieutenant Barnard, whose narrative is chiefly of things at sea, and most in Mrs Ward's volumes, which consist principally of details of that unsatisfactory contest. Mrs Ward and Mr Nicholson concur in attributing to Whig mal-administration, and to the unwise treaties of Sir Andries Stockenstrom, the numerous disasters that of late years have afflicted the Cape, and the bloody and inglorious struggle that has cost this country upwards of three millions sterling. Here, again, is to be traced the hand and mischief-making tongue of the pseudo-philanthropists. By those tender-hearted gentry was the original impulse given to the series of changes which have done so much towards the ruin of a prosperous colony. First came a scream about the ill-treated Hottentots. These were certainly often ill-used by their Dutch masters, but that was surely no reason for emancipating them, by one summary ordinance, from every species of restraint. This, however, was the course adopted; and forthwith the Hottentot, by nature one of the most indolent of animals, spurned work, and took to idleness and dram-drinking. Since that fatal day, the race has degenerated and dwindled, and no doubt it will ultimately become extinct. Having thus, greatly to the detriment and inconvenience of the colonists, procured the Hottentots liberty, or rather license, the sympathisers extended their charitable exertions to Kaffirland. What pretext existed for this new crusade does not exactly appear, but its result was even more mischievous than their interference with the Hottentots. The Kaffirs were told of grievances they previously never had dreamed of, they were rendered unsettled and dissatisfied, (greedy and rapacious they already were,) and at last they poured into the colony, sweeping off the flocks and herds, murdering the peaceable settler, and setting the flaming brand to his roof-tree. This incursion, the ruin of thousands, at an end, the colonists set to work to repair damages, hoping for peace and a return of prosperity, when a new calamity came upon them. Mrs Ward shall describe it.

"Suddenly there was a voice, which went through all the
countries of the known earth, crying aloud, 'Let the slave
be free!' Societies sent forth their ragged regiments, with
banners on which the negro was depicted as an interesting
child of nature, chained and emaciated, whilst a ruffian
beside him held the lash over his head. 'The people' really
imagined that the sugar plantations were worked by lanky
negroes, handcuffed one to another. Elderly ladies, who
abused their neighbours over their bohea, rejoiced in the
prospect of 'emancipation and cheap sugar,' and the people,
the dear 'people,' expected to get it for nothing. The Dutch
were quite ready to listen to the voice that cried 'shame'
at the idea of seizing our fellow-creatures, packing them
like herrings in slave-ships, and bartering them in the
market. But how to set about the remedy should have been
considered. The chain was broken, and the people of England
hurraed to their hearts' content. Meanwhile, what became of
the slave? If he was young and vicious, away he went--he was
his own master. He was free--he had the world before him
where to choose. Whether true or false, he was persuaded he
had been ill used. So, whilst his portrait, with a broken
chain, sleek limbs, eyes uplifted to heaven, and hands
clasped in speechless gratitude, was carried about the
streets of our manufacturing towns in England, (where there
was more starvation in one street than among the whole of
the South African slave population,) the original of the
picture was squatted beside the Kaffir's fire, thinking his
meal of parched corn but poor stuff after the palatable
dishes he had been permitted to cook for himself in the
boer's or tradesman's kitchen."[10]

[10] _Five Years in Kaffirland_, vol. i. pp. 35-6.