Chapter XVI: Part V (6)

Perhaps, therefore, the crocodile does _not_ change, but all things else _do_: even the shadow of the Pyramids grows less. And often the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath road, makes me too pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the darkness, if I happen to call up the image of Fanny from thirty-five years back, arises suddenly a rose in June; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny. One after the other, like the antiphonies in a choral service, rises Fanny and the rose in June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then come both together, as in a chorus; roses and Fannies, Fannies and roses, without end--thick as blossoms in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, or in a coat with sixteen capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand from the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculptured with the hours, and with the dreadful legend of TOO LATE. Then all at once we are arrived in Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely households[23] of the roe-deer: these retire into the dewy thickets; the thickets are rich with roses; the roses call up (as ever) the sweet countenance of Fanny, who, being the granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful host of wild semi-legendary animals--griffins, dragons, basilisks, sphinxes--till at length the whole vision of fighting images crowds into one towering, armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered heraldically with unutterable horrors of monstrous and demoniac natures; whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with the fore-finger pointing, in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, and having power (which, without experience, I never could have believed) to awaken the pathos that kills in the very bosom of the horrors that madden the grief that gnaws at the heart, together with the monstrous creations of darkness that shock the belief, and make dizzy the reason of man. This is the peculiarity that I wish the reader to notice, as having first been made known to me for a possibility by this early vision of Fanny on the Bath road. The peculiarity consisted in the confluence of two different keys, though apparently repelling each other, into the music and governing principles of the same dream; horror, such as possesses the maniac, and yet, by momentary transitions, grief, such as may be supposed to possess the dying mother when leaving her infant children to the mercies of the cruel. Usually, and perhaps always, in an unshaken nervous system, these two modes of misery exclude each other--here first they met in horrid reconciliation. There was also a separate peculiarity in the quality of the horror. This was afterwards developed into far more revolting complexities of misery and incomprehensible darkness; and perhaps I am wrong in ascribing any value as a _causative_ agency to this particular case on the Bath road--possibly it furnished merely an _occasion_ that accidentally introduced a mode of horrors certain, at any rate, to have grown up, with or without the Bath road, from more advanced stages of the nervous derangement. Yet, as the cubs of tigers or leopards, when domesticated, have been observed to suffer a sudden development of their latent ferocity under too eager an appeal to their playfulness--the gaieties of sport in _them_ being too closely connected with the fiery brightness of their murderous instincts--so I have remarked that the caprices, the gay arabesques, and the lovely floral luxuriations of dreams, betray a shocking tendency to pass into finer maniacal splendours. That gaiety, for instance, (for such at first it was,) in the dreaming faculty, by which one principal point of resemblance to a crocodile in the mail-coachman was soon made to clothe him with the form of a crocodile, and yet was blended with accessory circumstances derived from his _human_ functions, passed rapidly into a further development, no longer gay or playful, but terrific, the most terrific that besieges dreams, viz.--the horrid inoculation upon each other of incompatible natures. This horror has always been secretly felt by man; it was felt even under pagan forms of religion, which offered a very feeble, and also a very limited gamut for giving expression to the human capacities of sublimity or of horror. We read it in the fearful composition of the sphinx. The dragon, again, is the snake inoculated upon the scorpion. The basilisk unites the mysterious malice of the evil eye, unintentional on the part of the unhappy agent, with the intentional venom of some other malignant natures. But these horrid complexities of evil agency are but _objectively_ horrid; they inflict the horror suitable to their compound nature; but there is no insinuation that they _feel_ that horror. Heraldry is so full of these fantastic creatures, that, in some zoologies, we find a separate chapter or a supplement dedicated to what is denominated heraldic zoology. And why not? For these hideous creatures, however visionary,[24] have a real traditionary ground in medieval belief--sincere and partly reasonable, though adulterating with mendacity, blundering, credulity, and intense superstition. But the dream-horror which I speak of is far more frightful. The dreamer finds housed within himself--occupying, as it were, some separate chamber in his brain--holding, perhaps, from that station a secret and detestable commerce with his own heart--some horrid alien nature. What if it were his own nature repeated,--still, if the duality were distinctly perceptible, even _that_--even this mere numerical double of his own consciousness--might be a curse too mighty to be sustained. But how, if the alien nature contradicts his own, fights with it, perplexes, and confounds it? How, again, if not one alien nature, but two, but three, but four, but five, are introduced within what once he thought the inviolable sanctuary of himself? These, however, are horrors from the kingdoms of anarchy and darkness, which, by their very intensity, challenge the sanctity of concealment, and gloomily retire from exposition. Yet it was necessary to mention them, because the first introduction to such appearances (whether causal, or merely casual) lay in the heraldic monsters, which monsters were themselves introduced (though playfully) by the transfigured coachman of the Bath mail.

GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY.

But the grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole mail-coach service, was on those occasions when we went down from London with the news of victory. A period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar to Waterloo: the second and third years of which period (1806 and 1807) were comparatively sterile; but the rest, from 1805 to 1815 inclusively, furnished a long succession of victories; the least of which, in a contest of that portentous nature, had an inappreciable value of position--partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but still more from its keeping alive in central Europe the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of their arrogant armies, repeated from time to time a sullen proclamation of power lodged in a quarter to which the hopes of Christendom turned in secret. How much more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in the audacity[25] of having bearded the _élite_ of their troops, and having beaten them in pitched battles! Five years of life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach, when carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of intelligence, rarely did any unauthorised rumour steal away a prelibation from the aroma of the regular despatches. The government official news was generally the first news.

From eight P.M. to fifteen or twenty minutes later, imagine the mails assembled on parade in Lombard Street, where, at that time, was seated the General Post-Office. In what exact strength we mustered I do not remember; but, from the length of each separate _attelage_, we filled the street, though a long one, and though we were drawn up in double file. On _any_ night the spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the appointments about the carriages and the harness, and the magnificence of the horses, were what might first have fixed the attention. Every carriage, on every morning in the year, was taken down to an inspector for examination--wheels, axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, &c., were all critically probed and tested. Every part of every carriage had been cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much rigour as if they belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. But the night before us is a night of victory; and behold! to the ordinary display, what a heart-shaking addition!--horses, men, carriages--all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak leaves and ribbons. The guards, who are his Majesty's servants, and the coachmen, who are within the privilege of the Post-Office, wear the royal liveries of course; and as it is summer (for all the _land_ victories were won in summer,) they wear, on this fine evening, these liveries exposed to view, without any covering of upper coats. Such a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats, dilated their hearts, by giving to them openly an _official_ connection with the great news, in which already they have the general interest of patriotism. That great national sentiment surmounts and quells all sense of ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen to be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress. The usual reserve of their manner in speaking to the attendants has on this night melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by the transcendent bond of his English blood. The spectators, who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the Post-Office servants the great ancestral names of cities known to history through, a thousand years,--Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Perth, Glasgow--expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing off, which process is the finest part of the entire spectacle. Then come the horses into play;--horses! can these be horses that (unless powerfully reined in) would bound off with the action and gestures of leopards? What stir!--what sea-like ferment!--what a thundering of wheels, what a trampling of horses!--what farewell cheers--what redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting the name of the particular mail--"Liverpool for ever!"--with the name of the particular victory--"Badajoz for ever!" or "Salamanca for ever!" The half-slumbering consciousness that, all night long and all the next day--perhaps for even a longer period--many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, almost without intermission, westwards for three hundred[26] miles--northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by a sort of visionary sympathy with the approaching sympathies, yet unborn, which we were going to evoke.

Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the northern suburbs, we begin to enter upon our natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the summer evening, the sun perhaps only just at the point of setting, we are seen from every storey of every house. Heads of every age crowd to the windows--young and old understand the language of our victorious symbols--and rolling volleys of sympathising cheers run along behind and before our course. The beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets his lameness--real or assumed--thinks not of his whining trade, but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The victory has healed him, and says--Be thou whole! Women and children, from garrets alike and cellars, look down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our martial laurels--sometimes kiss their hands, sometimes hang out, as signals of affection, pocket handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that lies ready to their hands. On the London side of Barnet, to which we draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe that private carriage which is approaching us. The weather being so warm, the glasses are all down; and one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within the carriage. It contains three ladies, one likely to be "mama," and two of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that passes, in these ingenuous girls! By the sudden start and raising of the hands, on first discovering our laurelled equipage--by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them--and by the heightened colour on their animated countenances, we can almost hear them saying--"See, see! Look at their laurels. Oh, mama! there has been a great battle in Spain; and it has been a great victory." In a moment we are on the point of passing them. We passengers--I on the box, and the two on the roof behind me--raise our hats, the coachman makes his professional salute with the whip; the guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies move to us, in return, with a winning graciousness of gesture: all smile on each side in a way that nobody could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. Will these ladies say that we are nothing to _them_? Oh, no; they will not say _that_. They cannot deny--they do not deny--that for this night they are our sisters: gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, for twelve hours to come--we on the outside have the honour to be their brothers. Those poor women again, who stop to gaze upon us with delight at the entrance of Barnet, and seem by their air of weariness to be returning from labour--do you mean to say that they are washerwomen and charwomen? Oh, my poor friend, you are quite mistaken; they are nothing of the kind. I assure you, they stand in a higher rank: for this one night they feel themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, and answer to no humbler title.

Every joy, however, even rapturous joy--such is the sad law of earth--may carry with it grief, or fear of grief, to some. Three miles beyond Barnet, we see approaching us another private carriage, nearly repeating the circumstances of the former case. Here also the glasses are all down--here also is an elderly lady seated; but the two amiable daughters are missing; for the single young person, sitting by the lady's side, seems to be an attendant--so I judge from her dress, and her air of respectful reserve. The lady is in mourning; and her countenance expresses sorrow. At first she does not look up; so that I believe she is not aware of our approach, until she bears the measured beating of our horses' hoofs. Then she raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our triumphal equipage. Our decorations explain the case to her at once; but she beholds them with apparent anxiety, or even with terror. Sometime before this, I, finding it difficult to hit a flying mark, when embarrassed by the coachman's person and reins intervening, had given to the guard a _Courier_ evening paper, containing the gazette, for the next carriage that might pass. Accordingly he tossed it in so folded that the huge capitals expressing some such legend as--GLORIOUS VICTORY, might catch the eye at once. To see the paper, however, at all, interpreted as it was by our ensigns of triumph, explained everything; and, if the guard were right in thinking the lady to have received it with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful that she had suffered some deep personal affliction in connexion with this Spanish war.

Here now was the case of one who, having formerly suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be distressing herself with anticipations of another similar suffering. That same night, and hardly three hours later, occurred the reverse case. A poor woman, who too probably would find herself, in a day or two, to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exultation so unmeasured in the news, and its details, as gave to her the appearance which amongst Celtic Highlanders is called _fey_. This was at some little town, I forget what, where we happened to change horses near midnight. Some fair or wake had kept the people up out of their beds. We saw many lights moving about as we drew near; and perhaps the most impressive scene on our route was our reception at this place. The flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance of blue lights (technically Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses; the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination falling upon flowers and glittering laurels, whilst all around the massy darkness seemed to invest us with walls of impenetrable blackness, together with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once scenical and affecting. As we staid for three or four minutes, I alighted. And immediately from a dismantled stall in the street, where perhaps she had been presiding at some part of the evening, advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her attention upon myself. The victory which we were carrying down to the provinces on _this_ occasion was the imperfect one of Talavera. I told her the main outline of the battle. But her agitation, though not the agitation of fear, but of exultation rather, and enthusiasm, had been so conspicuous when listening, and when first applying for information, that I could not but ask her if she had not some relation in the Peninsular army. Oh! yes: her only son was there. In what regiment? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. My heart sank within me as she made that answer. This sublime regiment, which an Englishman should never mention without raising his hat to their memory, had made the most memorable and effective charge recorded in military annals. They leaped their horses--_over_ a trench, where they could _into_ it, and with the result of death or mutilation when they could _not_. What proportion cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those who _did_, closed up and went down upon the enemy with such divinity of fervour--(I use the word _divinity_ by design: the inspiration of God must have prompted this movement to those whom even then he was calling to his presence)--that two results followed. As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe, originally 350 strong, paralysed a French column, 6000 strong, then ascending the hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole French army. As regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at first to have been all but annihilated; but eventually, I believe, not so many as one in four survived. And this, then, was the regiment--a regiment already for some hours known to myself and all London as stretched, by a large majority, upon one bloody aceldama--in which the young trooper served whose mother was now talking with myself in a spirit of such hopeful enthusiasm. Did I tell her the truth? Had I the heart to break up her dream? No. I said to myself, to-morrow, or the next day, she will hear the worst. For this night, wherefore should she not sleep in peace? After to-morrow, the chances are too many that peace will forsake her pillow. This brief respite, let her owe this to _my_ gift and _my_ forbearance. But, if I told her not of the bloody price that had been paid, there was no reason for suppressing the contributions from her son's regiment to the service and glory of the day. For the very few words that I had time for speaking, I governed myself accordingly. I showed her not the funeral banners under which the noble regiment was sleeping. I lifted not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody trench in which horse and rider lay mangled together. But I told her how these dear children of England, privates and officers, had leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily as hunters to the morning's chase. I told her how they rode their horses into the mists of death, (saying to myself, but not saying to _her_,) and laid down their young lives for thee, O mother England! as willingly--poured out their noble blood as cheerfully--as ever, after a long day's sport, when infants, they had rested their wearied heads upon their mothers' knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms. It is singular that she seemed to have no fears, even after this knowledge that the 23d Dragoons had been conspicuously engaged, for her son's safety: but so much was she enraptured by the knowledge that _his_ regiment, and therefore _he_, had rendered eminent service in the trying conflict--a service which had actually made them the foremost topic of conversation in London--that in the mere simplicity of her fervent nature, she threw her arms round my neck, and, poor woman, kissed me.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Lady Madeline Gordon.

[18] "_Vast distances._"--One case was familiar to mail-coach travellers, where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a particular bridge which exactly bisected the total distance.

[19] "_Resident._"--The number on the books was far greater, many of whom kept up an intermitting communication with Oxford. But I speak of those only who were steadily pursuing their academic studies, and of those who resided constantly as _fellows_.

[20] "Snobs," an its antithesis, "nobs," arose among the internal factions of shoe-makers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the public attention.

[21] "False echoes"--yes, false! for the words ascribed to Napoleon, as breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at all. They stand in the same category of theatrical inventions as the cry of the foundering _Vengeur_, as the vaunt of General Cambronne at Waterloo, "_La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas_," as the repartees of Talleyrand.

[22] "Privileged few." The general impression was that this splendid costume belonged of right to the mail coachmen as their professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it _did_ belong as a matter of course, and was essential as an official warrant, and a means of instant identification for his person, in the discharge of his important public duties. But the coachman, and especially if his place in the series did not connect him immediately with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet coat only as an honorary distinction after long or special service.

[23] "_Households._"--Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the fallow or the red deer, but by separate families, parents, and children; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and graceful proportions, conciliate to them an interest of a peculiarly tender character, if less dignified by the grandeurs of savage and forest life.

[24] "_However visionary._"--But _are_ they always visionary? The unicorn, the kraken, the sea-serpent, are all, perhaps, zoological facts. The unicorn, for instance, so far from being a lie, is rather _too_ true; for, simply as a _monokeras_, he is found in the Himalaya, in Africa, and elsewhere, rather too often for the peace of what in Scotland would be called the _intending_ traveller. That which really _is_ a lie in the account of the unicorn--viz., his legendary rivalship with the lion--which lie may God preserve, in preserving the mighty imperial shield that embalms it--cannot be more destructive to the zoological pretensions of the unicorn, than are to the same pretensions in the lion our many popular crazes about his goodness and magnanimity, or the old fancy (adopted by Spenser, and noticed by so many among our elder poets) of his graciousness to maiden innocence. The wretch is the basest and most cowardly among the forest tribes; nor has the sublime courage of the English bull-dog ever been so memorably exhibited as in his hopeless fight at Warwick with the cowardly and cruel lion called Wallace. Another of the traditional creatures, still doubtful, is the mermaid, upon which Southey once remarked to me, that, if it had been differently named, (as, suppose, a mer-ape) nobody would have questioned its existence any more than that of sea-cows, sea-lions, &c. The mermaid has been discredited by her human name and her legendary human habits. If she would not coquette so much with melancholy sailors, and brush her hair so assiduously upon solitary rocks, she would be carried on our books for as honest a reality, as decent a female, as many that are assessed to the poor-rates.

[25] "_Audacity!_" Such the French accounted it, and it has struck me that Soult would not have been so popular in London, at the period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it had been mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said more than once--"Here are the English--we have them: they are caught _en flagrant delit_." Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had in the north of Portugal, during his flight from an English army, and subsequently at Albuera, in the bloodiest of recorded battles.

[26] "_Three hundred._" Of necessity this scale of measurement, to an American, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little lying, by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in something like these terms:--"And, sir, arriving at London, this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, having, in its winding course, traversed the astonishing distance of 170 miles." And this the candid American thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer a pure falsehood gravely, else one might say that no Englishman out of Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a continent; nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of soil which it drains: yet, if he _had_ been so absurd, the American might have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the Thames even as to volume of water--viz. the Tiber--has contrived to make itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached, nor likely to be reached very soon, by any river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the density of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce which it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not by a transfer of Columbian standards, is the course of our English mails to be valued. The American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our English ears, by supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in these terms:--"Those rascals, sir, in France and England, cannot march half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and lodging: whereas, such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country, that in many a direction for a thousand miles, I will engage a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast."

DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.[27]

Lord Braybrooke has established a strong claim to the gratitude of the literary world for his present elegant, improved, and augmented edition of the _Diary of Samuel Pepys_. The work may now, we presume, be regarded as complete, for there is little chance that any future editor will consider himself entitled to supply the _lacunæ_ or omissions which still confessedly exist. Lord Braybrooke informs us that, after carefully re-perusing the whole of the manuscript, he had arrived at the conclusion, "that a literal transcript of the Diary was absolutely inadmissible; and he more than hints that most of the excluded passages have been withheld from print on account of their strong indelicacy." We cannot blame the noble editor for having thus exercised his judgment, though we could wish that he had been a little more explicit as to the general tenor and application of the proscribed entries. The Diary of Pepys is a very remarkable one, comprehending both a history or sketch of the times in which he lived, and an accurate record of his own private transactions and affairs. He chronicles not only the faults of others, as these were reported to him or fell under his personal observation, but he notes his own frailties and backslidings with a candour, a minuteness, and even occasionally a satisfaction, which is at once amusing and uncommon. The one division of his subject is a political and social--the other a psychological curiosity. We are naturally desirous to hear all about Charles and his courtiers, and not averse to the general run of gossip regarding that train of beautiful women whose portraits, from the luxuriant pencil of Lely, still adorn the walls of Hampton Court. But not less remarkable are the quaint confessions of the autobiographer, whether he be recording, in conscious pride, the items of the dinner and the plate with which he appeased the appetite and excited the envy of some less prosperous guest, or junketing with Mrs Pierce and equivocal Mrs Knipp the actress, whilst poor Mrs Pepys was absent on a fortnight's visit to the country. Far are we from excusing or even palliating the propensities of Pepys. We have enough before us to show that he was a sad flirt, and a good deal of a domestic hypocrite: all this he admits, and even exhibits at times a certain amount of penitence and compunction. But we confess that we should be glad to know from which section of the Diary the objectionable matter has been expunged. If from the public part, or rather that disconnected with the personality of Pepys, we acquiesce without further comment in the taste and judgment of the editor. We do not want to have any minute details, even though Pepys may have written them down, of the drunken and disgraceful exhibitions of Sir Charles Sedley and his comrades, or even of the private actings of the Maids (by courtesy) of Honour. We have enough, and more than enough, of this in the _Memoirs of Grammont_, and no one would wish to see augmented that repertory of antiquated scandal. History, and the products of the stage as it then existed, speak quite unequivocally as to the general demoralisation of those unhappy times, and it cannot serve any manner of use to multiply or magnify instances. But whilst we so far freely concede the right of omission to Lord Braybrooke, we must own that we are not a little jealous lest, out of respect to the individual memory of Pepys, he should have concealed some personal confessions, which may have been really requisite in order to form an accurate estimate of the man. We cannot read the Diary without strong suspicions that something of the kind has taken place. Mere flirtation on the part of her husband could hardly have driven Mrs Pepys to the desperate extremity of heating the tongs in the fire, and approaching the nuptial couch therewith, obviously for no good purpose, to the infinite dismay of Samuel. Pepys might perhaps be excused for a reciprocated oscillation of the eyelid, when Mrs Knipp winked at him from the stage; but why, if his motives for frequenting her company were strictly virtuous and artistical, did he go to kiss her in her tireing-room? why should she have pulled his hair, when she sat behind him in the pit? or why should he have been sorely troubled "that Knipp sent by Moll (an orange-woman, whose basket was her character) to desire to speak to me after the play, and I promised to come; but it was so late, and I forced to step to Mrs Williams' lodgings with my Lord Brouncker and her, where I did not stay, however, for fear of her showing me her closet, and thereby forcing me to give her something; and it was so late, that, for fear of my wife's coming home before me, I was forced to go straight home, which troubled me"? If Pepys was really innocent in deed, and but culpable in thought and inclination, his escape was a mighty narrow one, and Mrs Pepys may well stand excused for the strength and frequency of her suspicions. The truth is, that Pepys, at least in the earlier part of his life, was a very odious specimen of the Cockney, and would upon many occasions have been justly punished by a sound kicking, or an ample dose of the cudgel. It seems to us perfectly inexplicable how the coxcomb--who, by the way, was a regular church-goer, and rather zealous religionist--could have prevailed upon himself to make such entries as the following in his journal: "_August 18, 1667._--I walked towards Whitehall, but, being wearied, turned into St Dunstan's church, where I heard an able sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got further and further from me; and at last I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again, which seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design. And then I fell to gaze upon another pretty maid in a pew close to me, and she on me; and I did go about to take her by the hand, which she suffered a little, and then withdrew. So the sermon ended, and the church broke up, and my amours ended also." What a pity that the first maid in question had not been more nimble with her fingers! The poisoned bodkin which the goblin page shoved into the knee of Wat Tinlinn, would have been well bestowed, if buried to the very head, on this occasion, in the hip of Pepys; and charity does not forbid us from indulging ourselves in fancy with the startling hideousness of his howl! No wonder that Mrs Pepys not only made hot the tongs, but incoherently insisted, at times, on the necessity of a separate maintenance.

The great charm of the book is its utter freedom from disguise. The zeal of antiquaries, and the patriotic exertions of the literary clubs, have, of late years, put the public in possession of various diaries, which are most valuable, as throwing light upon the political incidents and social manners of the times in which the authors lived. Thus we have the journals of honest John Nicholl, writer to the signet in Edinburgh, who saw the great Marquis of Montrose go down from his prison to the scaffold; of the shrewd and cautious Fountainhall; of the high-minded and accomplished Evelyn, and many others--the manuscripts of which had lain for years undisturbed on the shelf or in the charter-chest. But it cannot be said of any one of those diaries, that it was kept solely for the use and reference of the writer. Some of them may not have been intended for publication; and it is very likely that the thoughts of posthumous renown never crossed the mind of the chronicler, as he set down his daily jotting and observation. Nevertheless those were family documents, such as a father, if he had no wider aim, might have bequeathed for the information of his children. Diaries of more modern date have, we suspect, been kept principally with a view to publication; or, at least, the writers of them seem never to have been altogether devoid of a kind of consciousness that their lucubrations might one day see the light. Owing to that feeling, the veil of domestic privacy is seldom withdrawn, and seldomer still are we treated to a faithful record of the deeds and thoughts of the diarist. But Pepys framed his journal with no such intention. He durst not, for dear life, have submitted a single page of it to the inspection of the wife of his bosom--had he been as fruitful as Jacob, no son of his would have been intrusted with the key which could unlock the mysterious cipher in which the most private passages of his life were written. No clerk was allowed to continue it in a clear, legible hand, when failing eyesight rendered the task irksome or impossible to himself. There is something of pathos in his last entry, when the doors of the daily confessional were just closing for ever. "And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear; and therefore resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people in long hand, and must be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be anything, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add now and then a note in short-hand, with my own hand." Perhaps it is as well that the marginal continuation so hinted at was withheld; for, in the process of decanting, the wine would have lost its flavour, and must have suffered terribly in contrast with the raciness of the earlier cooper.

The position in life which Pepys occupied renders his Diary doubly interesting. Had he been only a hanger-on of the court, we might have heard more minute and personal scandal, conveyed through the medium of Bab May, or Chiffinch, or other unscrupulous satellites of a very profligate monarch. Had he been a mere private citizen or merchant, his knowledge of or interest in public events would probably have been so small, as to assist us but little in unravelling the intricate history of the time. But, standing as he did between two classes of society, then separated by a far stronger line of demarcation than now,--a citizen of London by birth and connexion, by occupation a government official, and through instinct an intense admirer of the great--he had access to more sources of information, and could interpret general opinion better, than the professional courtier or tradesman. Shrewd, sharp, and not very scrupulous, he readily seized all opportunities of making his way in the world; and though privately a censor of the more open vices of the great, he never was so truly happy as when admitted by accident to their society. Lord Braybrooke, we think, is too partial in his estimate of Pepys' character. If we are to judge of him by his own confessions, he was largely imbued with that spirit of meanness, arrogance, and vanity, which dramatic writers have always seized on as illustrative of the parvenu, but which is never apparent in the conversation, or discernible in the dealings, of a true and perfect gentleman.

Sam does not appear to have troubled himself much about his pedigree until he became a person of considerable note and substance. Indeed, the circumstances of his immediate extraction were not such as to have found much favour in the eyes of the professors of Herald's College. His father was a respectable tailor, and, in his own earlier years, Pepys had carried doublets to customers, if not actually handled the goose. The impressions that he received in his boyhood seem to have been indelible through life; prosperity could not make him insensible to the flavour of cucumber. The sight of a new garment invariably kindled in his mind the aspirations of his primitive calling, and very proud, indeed, was he when brother Tom brought him his "jackanapes coat with silver buttons." In his way he was quite a Sir Piercie Shafton, and never formed a complete opinion of any man without due consideration of his clothes. At the outset of his diary we find him married, and in rather indifferent circumstances. He was then a clerk in some public office connected with the Exchequer, at a small salary. But he was diligent in his vocation, and prudent in his habits; so that he and his wife, and servant Jane, fared not much worse, or perhaps rather better, than Andrew Marvell, for we find them living in a garret, and dining on New Year's day on the remains of a turkey, in the dressing whereof Mrs Pepys unfortunately burned her hand. A few days afterwards, they mended their cheer at the house of "cosen Thomas Pepys" the turner, where the dinner "was very good; only the venison pasty was palpable mutton, which was not handsome." But the advent of better banquets was near. In the preceding autumn, the old protector, Oliver Cromwell, had been carried to the grave, and the reins of government, sorely frayed and worn, were given to the weak hands of Richard. In truth, there was hardly any government at all. The military chiefs did not own the second Cromwell as their master; Lambert was attempting to get up a party in his own favour; and Monk, in command of the northern army, was suspected of a similar design. The bulk of the nation, in terror of anarchy, and heartily sick of the consequences of revolution, which, as usual, had terminated in arbitrary rule, longed for the restoration of their legitimate sovereign, as the only means of arresting further calamity; and several of the influential officers, not compromised by regicide, were secretly of the same opinion. Amongst these latter was Sir Edward Montagu, admiral of the fleet, afterwards created Earl of Sandwich, whose mother was a Pepys, and with whom, accordingly, Samuel was proud to reckon kin. Sir Edward had been already very kind to his young relative, and now laid the foundation of his fortunes by employing him as his secretary, during the expedition which ended with the return of Charles II. to his hereditary dominions. Pepys, in his boyish days, had been somewhat tainted with the Roundhead doctrines, but he was now as roaring a royalist as ever danced round a bonfire; and the slight accession of profit which accrued to him for his share in the Restoration, gave him an unbounded appetite for future accumulations. He made himself useful to Montagu, who presently received his earldom, and through his interest Pepys was installed in office as clerk of the Acts of the Navy.

Other snug jobs followed, and Pepys began to thrive apace. It is possible that, if judged by the standard of morality recognised in his time, our friend may have been deemed, on the whole, a tolerably conscientious officer; but, according to our more strict ideas, he hardly could have piqued himself, like a modern statesman, on the superior purity of his palms. If not grossly avaricious, he was decidedly fond of money; he cast up his accounts with great punctuality, and seems to have thought that each additional hundred pounds came into his possession through a special interposition of Providence. Now, although we know well that there is a blessing upon honest industry, it would appear that a good deal of Pepys' money flowed in through crooked channels. Bribes and acknowledgments he received without much compunction or hesitation, only taking care that little evidence should be left of the transaction. The following extract shows that his conscience was by no means of stiff or inflexible material: "I met Captain Grove, who did give me a letter directed to myself from himself. I discerned money to be in it, knowing as I found it to be, the proceeds of the place I have got him to be--the taking up of vessels for Tangier. But I did not open it till I came home--not looking into it until all the money was out, that I might say I saw no money in the paper, if ever I should be questioned about it. There was a piece in gold, and £4 in silver." Pepys made altogether a good thing out of the Tangier settlement, for which he was afterwards secretary, as, besides such small pickings as the above, we read of magnificent silver flagons--"the noblest that ever I saw all the days of my life"--presented to him, in grateful acknowledgment of services to come, by Gauden, victualler of the navy. Samuel had twinges of conscience, but the sight of the plate was too much for him: "Whether I shall keep them or no," saith he, striving to cast dust in his own eyes, "I cannot tell; for it is to oblige me to him in the business of the Tangier victualling, wherein I doubt I shall not; but glad I am to see that I shall be sure to get something on one side or other, have it which will; so with a merry heart I looked upon them, and locked them up." The flagons, however, did the business. Gauden was preferred; and, from an entry in the Diary, made about a year afterwards, we must conclude that his profits were enormous: "All the afternoon to my accounts; and then find myself, to my great joy, a great deal worth--above £4000--for which the Lord be praised! and is principally occasioned by my getting £500 of Cocke for my profit in his bargains of prize goods, and from Mr Gauden's making me a present of £500 more, when I paid him £800 for Tangier. Thus ends this year, to my great joy, in this manner. I have raised my estate from £1300, in this year, to £4400." A pretty accretion: but made, we fear, at the expense of the nation, by means which hardly would have stood the scrutiny of a court of justice. It may be quite true that every man in office, from the highest to the lowest, from the chancellor to the doorkeeper, was then doing the like; still we cannot give Pepys the benefit of a perfect indemnity on the score of the general practice. Even when he tells us elsewhere, with evident satisfaction--"This night I received, by Will, £105, the first-fruits of my endeavours in the late contract for victualling of Tangier, for which God be praised! for I can, with a safe conscience, say that I have therein saved the king £5000 per annum, and yet got myself a hope of £300 per annum, without the least wrong to the king"--it is impossible to reconcile his conduct with the strict rules of morality, or of duty: nor, perhaps, need we do so, seeing that Pepys makes no pretence of being altogether immaculate. He began by taking small fees in a surreptitious way, and ended by pocketing the largest without a single twinge. It is the progress from remuneration to guerdon, as philosophically explained by Costard--"Guerdon!--O sweet guerdon! better than remuneration; eleven-pence farthing better. Most sweet guerdon!--I will do it, sir, in print;--guerdon--remuneration!"

The common proverb tells us that money easily got is lightly expended. In one sense Pepys formed no exception to the common rule; for, notwithstanding divers good resolutions, he led rather a dissipated life for a year or two after the Restoration, and was in the constant habit of drinking more wine than altogether agreed with his constitution. This fault he strove to amend by registering sundry vows, which, however, were often broken; and he was finally weaned from the bottle by the pangs of disordered digestion. His expenses kept pace with his income. The "jackanapes coat, with silver buttons," was succeeded by a "fine one of flowered tabby vest, and coloured camelot tunique, made stiff with gold lace at the bands," in which Pepys probably expected to do great execution in the Park, or, at any rate, to astonish Mrs Knipp; but it proved to be so extravagantly fine, that his friends thought it necessary to interfere. "Povy told me of my gold-laced sleeve in the Park yesterday, which vexed me also, so as to resolve never to appear in court with them, but presently to have them taken off, as it is fit I should, and so called at my tailor's for that purpose." Povy's hint might have its origin in envy; but, on the whole, it was wise and judicious. Also Mrs Pepys was indulged with a fair allowance of lace, taffeta, and such trinkets as females affect; and both of them sat for their portraits to Hales, having previously been refused by Lely. Furniture and plate of the most expensive description were ordered; and finally, to his intense delight, Samuel achieved the great object of his own ambition, and set up a carriage of his own. The account of his first public appearance in this vehicle is too characteristic to be lost:--"At noon home to dinner, and there found my wife extraordinary fine, with her flowered gown that she made two years ago, now laced exceeding pretty, and indeed was fine all over; and mighty earnest to go, though the day was very lowering; and she would have me put on my fine suit, which I did. And so anon we went alone through the town with our new liveries of serge, and the horses' manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and the standards gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green reins, that people did mightily look upon us; and, the truth is, I did not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than ours all the day. But we set out, out of humour--I, because Betty, whom I expected, was not come to go with us; and my wife, that I would sit on the same seat with her, which she likes not, being so fine; and she then expected to meet Sheres, which we did in the Pell Mell, and, against my will, I was forced to take him into the coach, but was sullen all day almost, and little complaisant; the day being unpleasing, though the Park full of coaches, but dusty, and windy, and cold, and now and then a little dribbling of rain; and, what made it worse, there were so many hackney coaches as spoiled the sight of the gentlemen's; and so we had little pleasure." The tale of Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia, does not convey a clearer moral. No peacock was prouder than Samuel Pepys, as he stepped that day, in all the luxury of gorgeous apparel, into his coach, and drove through the streets of London, under the distinct impression that, for the moment, he was the most remarked and remarkable man in the whole of his Majesty's dominions. Yet there were drops of bitterness in the cup. Betty Turner was not there to enjoy the triumph, and Sheres, who must needs join the party, was supposed by Samuel to stand rather high in the good graces of Mrs Pepys, insomuch that he mourned not a whit when he heard that the gallant captain was about to set off to Tangier. Add to this, the ungenial weather, and the insolent display of hackney coaches, obscuring somewhat the lustre of his new turn-out, and detracting from the glory of red ribbons, gilt standards, and green reins, and we need hardly wonder if, even in the hour of triumph, Pepys felt that he was mortal. It is to be hoped that, when he returned home, he vented his ill-humour neither upon his wife nor his monkey, both of whom, on other occasions, were made to suffer when anything had gone wrong.