Chapter XIV (6)

I have been exceedingly edified and amused with the manner in which you have expounded the theory of rotation. "The slavish adoption of fixed rules of rotation are suited only to a comparatively low state of agriculture. Nature has no rotation of crops--the plant bursts from the earth, grows, bears its produce, and drops the matured seed to reproduce itself beside the root of the parent stem. The skilful gardener lays none of his land to rest in grass," (p. 17.) This may be fine writing, but it is unmitigated nonsense. Nature _has_ a rotation of crops; and from nature the agriculturist took the hint, and got his teaching. The distribution of that part of the indigenous flora of a country which constitutes its annuals, is ever liable to vary. Nature's annual weeds flourish for a while in the same spot; but, having exhausted the peculiar nutriment in the soil which sustained them, they degenerate and migrate to a fresh locality. The plants which the farmers grow are chiefly annuals. But, in fact, two crops of the same kind of wood on the same soil is not according to the arboriculture which nature teaches. "The plant bursts from the earth, grows, bears its produce, and drops the matured seed to reproduce itself." Well, and what then? Can the farmer take the lesson? Is it not with this very habit of nature that his art must wage an incessant warfare? The skilful gardener has a rotation of crops, although he grows none of the cereal tribes, which especially rejoice in the alternative system of husbandry; and if the skilful gardener does not lay down "his land to rest in grass," his costly substitute is to trench his plot every fourth or fifth year to the depth of three or four feet, and thus to invigorate the wearied soil, by amalgamating it with fresh mould. The exhausted surface, the Auchness experimenter is compelled to remove. It is not very accurate to speak of the farmer "laying his land _to rest_ in grass." He puts it under grass as an improving crop, and one which a _system_ of agriculture cannot dispense with--a crop, too, which in many situations yields a larger free profit than he could otherwise raise from the land.

I do not remember of ever meeting with more ignorance of botany, vegetable physiology, and horticulture, condensed into a shorter space than you have succeeded in cramming into the few sentences just quoted. But, in a brave contempt of what you had written, you tell us, on the very next page, that you "do not mean to say that the system of rotations has been without its use." And you add, that "the average agriculture of Scotland has undoubtedly been improved by it." And it is with such absurd and solemn see-saw that you enlighten the agricultural world. If a rotation of crops has improved the average agriculture of Scotland, that demonstrates the excellence and necessity of the system. It is average results that anything deserving the name of a system can alone secure. Agricultural reformer as you are, I would respectfully suggest that you must, if you wish to effect any good, legislate for an average measure of agricultural character and skill. The farmers of the kingdom are an immensely numerous body, and you cannot expect them to be all men of genius. Let your philanthropy prompt you to stoop for a time from your transcendental height, that you may minister to the wants of average humanity.

I am not surprised that you are angry with Peter Plough. This is very excusable. You had said in your first pamphlet, (p. 28,) that it was demonstrable that, if all the arable land in the same parish were cultivated as the Auchness farm was, immense benefits would accrue to the people. Mr Plough's expansive patriotism was not to be limited by the parochial boundaries, and he determined, if possible, to give the benefits of the system to the whole of the kingdom. With this view, he instituted an inquiry, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the Auchness system was capable of general adoption. Nothing could be more fair. You had, in fact, challenged the inquiry, by representing high farming as the substitute for Protection. Peter Plough, by a cogent and crushing demonstration, proved the utter inapplicability of the Auchness system for general adoption. He has impaled you on the horns of a dilemma, and no wonder that you are writhing in anguish. You try to smile, but, alas! it is too evident that your laugh is like that of the third ruffian in the melodrama, when the skeleton is discovered in the closet, and supplies the last link in the chain of circumstantial evidence. Manifestly the salt tears are seen to trickle over your abashed countenance.

Peter Plough understated his case. Include Ireland in his calculation, and adopt the more recent statistics of Porter, giving the increase in the mercantile navy, and Mr Plough's demonstration remains intact and impregnable. He had shown that, to apply the Auchness system to British husbandry, thirty-eight millions of additional capital would be required by British farmers, for the feeding stuffs and artificial manures; and he naturally asked where this "sum of money was to be got?" "And pray, good Peter, where is it to go?" you respond. Why, certainly, the first question in order of time and of prudence is, where is the money to be got?--unless, indeed, it be part of your system to make your money go before it be got! When you tell us that every ounce of the feeding stuffs used at Auchness was raised on British soil, you forget and misstate. The lintseed, (p. 21, first pamphlet,) and the oilcake, (p. 23, second pamphlet,) are not of British production. The bruised oats and bean meal for the cattle, and the supplemental quantity of oats for the servants and horses, may be indeed of British production--although not grown on the farm of Auchness. But how long, think you, are farmers to grow these grains at a loss, to benefit the Auchness factor? He is dependent upon others for his supplies of these feeding stuffs.

Peter Plough has, in fact, compelled you to eat your leek, for you now tell us that the high farming at Auchness is, "as an example, to be taken in the spirit more than in the letter." What! have you forgotten that you set it forth "as the Substitute for Protection?" and that, if your language had any meaning, you intimated that its virtue would be equipollent and co-extensive with that of the plundered crutch? And now, forsooth, you veer about, with slippery versatility, and tell us that you are to be "read in the spirit more than in the letter." When such grave interests are at stake, this seems to me intolerable trifling, although no doubt it provides a door of escape for you, whatever disaster may attend the adoption of your expedient. In every such case the model will have been copied with a servility too literal, or a liberality too latitudinarian; and there seems nothing for it but that the bewildered husbandman, before he embarks on the career of high farming, and runs the risk of mistaking the letter for the spirit, shall make a pilgrimage to Baldoon and consult the oracle, and ask the author to interpret his impenetrable text.

Whether it pleases you or not, this question must be agitated and tested, and sifted and probed to the very bottom--namely, Is the mode of farm management pursued by Mr M'Culloch upon Auchness capable of being adopted in the general cultivation of the land of the country? This is the only question at all interesting to the agriculturists of the kingdom--the only question at all germane to their present position. If this is not meant, your high farming is a childish bauble. Its value, not only as a substitute for Protection, but as an instructive lesson in husbandry, must be determined by a correct solution of the preceding query. We find, then, upon a farm of 260 acres, that crops 1848 and 1849 give an average extent of 81 acres under grain, 48 acres in grass, and 131 acres in green crops; and of the latter, 78½ acres are potatoes all to be sold off.

We also find that 130 cattle, and about 190 sheep, are annually fattened upon the farm. The large extent of the green crop, and the quantity of cattle fed, are the salient and prominent features of the system. This you admit, I am therefore taking you in the spirit more than in the letter. Is a system, embracing such a disproportion between its root and grain crops, adapted for extension? Try its effects upon a small scale--extend it over a district of the average extent of Scotch counties, and inquire what would be the result. You will find that there would be a produce of about 301,417 tons of potatoes, 114,845 fat cattle, and 167,788 sheep--a produce more than equivalent to supply every town in Scotland with potatoes and butcher meat. Or, to indulge your parochial partialities, let us inquire what would be the results if _one farm_ in _every parish_ in the kingdom were farmed according to the Auchness fashion. In England, Wales, and Scotland, there are 11,583 parishes. We would have of "edible roots" _i. e._ potatoes, 4,633,200 tons, after allowing an equal quantity to be destroyed by the rot, as apparently happened at Auchness last year. Of wheat, 2,782,816 qrs. Of fat cattle, 1,505,790. Of fat sheep, 2,409,264--and a snug little money profit from hoggets and cows, young horses and ewes, of some ten millions. A small model farm in each parish of the island can supply its present population with beef and potatoes, and leave of the latter a liberal supply to the Rector's "generous pigs." Double our population, and add another model farm to each parish, and the wants of "the million" are forthwith supplied. Avaunt Malthus! all hail, Caird! "A plethora of beef, a plethora of vegetables," you facetiously exclaim. You have not considered that there may be a plethora of food, with concomitant destitution, nay starvation, amongst the poor and unemployed. Read the Irish correspondence of the _Morning Chronicle_, and the _Clare Journal_ for February, and you will find that the two things actually co-exist at this moment in some parts of Ireland. But the next inquiry is, Would there be a plethora of profit as well as of food? Would the balance-sheet do, and would "change the figure" not be the instant cry? Suppose the potato epidemic to pass away, or allow even the present supplies of that root and of butcher-meat from other sources to be continued, would potatoes bring 30s. per ton, and beef 4d. per lb? It is not in the least degree probable. Is it not certain, too, that there would be such a demand for foreign manures as would raise their price beyond the possibility of profitably using them?

But perhaps this is copying the model too servilely. Well, modify it to such an extent as to preserve in operation the leading principles of the system--which is based upon cattle-feeding and potato culture to an extent wholly out of proportion with the other products of the farm--and the system will still prove self-destructive, inasmuch as its tendency must be to increase the cost of production, and to lower the value of the produce raised. With regard to the cost of production, Table ii. in your "addition" (4th ed. p. 40,) enables us readily to test the question. It appears that Mr M'Culloch's "expenditure per acre for labour, artificial manures, purchased food, and expenses of management," exceeded the average expenditure of Messrs Watson, Dudgeon, and Christopher by £3, 11s. 7¾d. Now you tell us from Porter that, of garden and tillage lands in Great Britain, there are 13,637,320 acres. To bring up these--which, however, include Auchness--to the mark of the Auchness system at a farther expenditure of £3, 11s. 7¾d. per acre, an additional capital of £48,852,857, would be required by British farmers. And this is "High Farming farther illustrated!" and you correct Peter Plough by adding eleven millions to his estimate of the new capital required! I am here stealing a leaf from the book of Peter Plough; but, if you will not allow us to look at your case in this light, it is not worth a moment's notice. If the system cannot be reduced to practice, why tantalise the farmer by bringing the cup to his lips, but denying him the power of slaking his thirst?

You seem to think that you have communicated new and invaluable information to the practical farmer, and you "challenge Mr Stephens, within the whole compass of his two thousand pages of letterpress, to exhibit an instance equally instructive," (p. 27.) What is it that is so new? Is it the value of manure and its extensive application that constitutes the novelty, now for the first time made known? The ancient Romans anxiously collected their manure from as many sources as the moderns do. They liberally employed liquid manure and pigeons' droppings, (your guano,) then esteemed of inestimable value. Or, is it the stall-feeding system that you publish as something so new and instructive? Why, the _Metayers_ of Lombardy have long fed their cattle in a somewhat similar fashion, but with more extraordinary care. They feed them in stalls--they bleed them--they brush them twice a-day, whether with "a dandy brush" or not is not recorded, and they rub them over with oil. The oleaginous application is something more exquisite than the Auchness system administers. There is, in truth, nothing new in what you have written, as every educated agriculturist knows; and you might have found your "instructive instances" almost in any history of agriculture in any one of our Cyclopedias. When I consider this, I have been forcibly reminded of the valorous exploits of the immortal hero of one of Sir Walter Scott's best poems, which the bard thus commemorates,--

"Donald Caird finds orra things,
Whare Alan Grigor fand the tings."

You apparently now stand alone and unsupported in your advocacy of high farming, foolishly so called, as the substitute for Protection, and as a source of profitable investment under the depressed prices of agricultural produce. "The leading organ of the Protectionists," is so heterodox in your estimation, that one cannot expect you to imbibe wisdom from such a source. But perhaps you may listen more benevolently to the other powerful and accredited organ of political opinion in North Britain on the question of high farming, and the possibility of its adoption as a _present remedy_ for the clamant evils under which the agricultural community now labours. You will do well, before you write again, to ponder over and inwardly to digest the following pregnant sentences, which embody an admirable synopsis of the truth. The italics are mine.

"It is true, that high farming can maintain a large labouring population; but high farming requires, not only that high scientific knowledge which is of _slow growth_, but also a _large expenditure of capital_. It is the possession of _great skill_, _habitual energy_, and _vast capital_, which alone renders possible such a system of farming, horticultural rather than agricultural, as has grown up in Belgium in the midst of abundant markets, wealthy towns, and flourishing manufactures,--a system the _origin and growth of which has been favoured by every circumstance that can promote industry and protect its fruits_."--_Edinburgh Review_, January 1850, (p. 18.) Mr Mechi speaks problematically of the profit of high farming; that amiable experimenter, Mr Huxtable, ingenuously confesses his losses, and allows that last year he was _minus_ £32 of his rent; Mr M'Culloch even seems half disposed to leave you in the lurch. He is reported, in the _Scotsman_ of the 13th February last, to have said at a public meeting in Newton-Stewart, on the 1st February,--"That, before the improved system could be properly carried out, the landlords must give encouragement particularly in draining and buildings." Millions of money, which the proprietors have not, must be expended; and millions of additional capital must be at the command of the farmers, which they have not, before the system can be carried out. Enthusiast although he be, Mr M'Culloch begins to see the impracticable nature of the scheme. Moreover, before the improvements could be effected, supposing the requisite capital to be had, and before any profit could accrue from them, years would elapse. For the improvements and profits of agriculture, unlike those in manufactures, cannot be realised in a few months. The farmers, with a continuation of the present prices, will in the mean time be ruined, unless rents are diminished one-third, and, on the poorer soils, extinguished altogether--in which event, again, two-thirds of the proprietors of the kingdom would be ruined. These are the immediate accompaniments attending your cheap food for the people, your plethora of potatoes, and your plethora of beef. The ultimate issue will speedily reach the people whom you delude, and the Manchester Free-traders whose sweet voices you court.

But you have further shown us, that there is a necessity for the compulsitor of an act of Parliament to nullify existing leases, and to establish the conditions of the liberal covenant, and that a change of the figure in the rent is imperiously called for. In other words, you prescribe not for the existing condition of agriculture, but for an imaginary case of your own construction. Your views are based on hopes and contingencies vague and visionary. Your theory, as further illustrated, avowedly contemplates a possible case, which not only does not exist, but which is a moral impossibility. That such views should have attracted any notice, and raised any serious discussion, the critical emergency of the times, as already stated, sufficiently explains. Drowning men catch at straws; and, during the prevalence of an inscrutable pestilence, the afflicted and excited sufferer, loth to relinquish the hope of life, flees to any doctor, however quackish and empirical. The practical agriculturists of the kingdom have made up their mind upon the practicability and general utility of your schemes; and, while frankly allowing that much remains to be done for the further advancement of agriculture, and that high farming, in any profitable or practicable sense, is indispensable, they unanimously repudiate the utopianism of your theory as a cure for the dire evils into which, by no fault of their own, they have been plunged. The Perthshire farmer, the only brother tenant of whom you have spoken in the language of civility, and who, in his judicious pamphlet, had shown that Mr M'Culloch, in 1848, must have lost by his farm, repels your advances, and scorns your supercilious compliments. He writes, that "he would far rather have received Mr Caird's buffet than his embrace." (_Stirling Journal_, 15th February.)

You are now "left alone in your glory;" but that glory is neither small nor contemptible. By that portion of the press who are fired with a hatred of landlordism, and who have taken a vow to sacrifice the agricultural classes to the cupidity of the master manufacturers, you are praised and flattered as the only man of mark and likelihood in North Britain. Although Adam Smith, and more recently M. de Tocqueville, have given it as their opinion that the agricultural classes are more intelligent and intellectual than the manufacturing, yet there is a section of "the fourth estate" in the realm, who cannot speak of farmers without employing insulting epithets derogatory to their intelligence and education. With this fraternity you are an especial favourite; and not without cause. They are wise in their generation, and they see well enough that your speculations, as those of a farmer, serve their purpose better than any of their own could possibly do. They perceive that your Georgical essays are raising delusions in the minds of the ignorant, and bolstering up the vain hopes of Free-trade proprietors, and pandering to the agrarian passions of the unprincipled, and are thus admirably calculated to divert attention from the clamant sufferings of the agricultural community, and to stifle any attempt to devise a real remedy for them. I am sure that, in your heart, you mean none of these things; but it is surprising that the fulsome praises of such parties, and their enlistment of you into their ranks, have not raised a suspicion in your mind regarding the tendency of your writings, and the somewhat dubious and equivocal position which you now occupy.

That powerful print, the _Times_, disparages the intelligence of farmers, and writes with levity on the subject of their present sufferings. If landlords and tenants cannot prosper under present prices, it tells them cavalierly to sell off, and to emigrate. Surveying them and their fields, it kindly intimates--

"Hæc mea sunt; veteres migrate coloni."

Seated beside the Thunderer, you are to dispense the award to agricultural mortals. Have pity on your frail and erring brethren, and wield not the giant's strength tyrannically. But your faculties are as great as your fame; and as Julius Cæsar, in the midst of preparations for battle, marked the revolutions of the stars, so you, in the interval that elapses betwixt the publication of your high farming essays, take a glance at Ireland, and solve the enigma that had puzzled all preceding statesmen, and prescribe the cure for the chronic ailments of our unhappy neighbour. With a few flourishes of your pen, you have slain _Blackwood_ and all his allies. The mind is proud of its triumphs in proportion to the reputed greatness of what it has overcome. Plutarch, in his life of Artaxerxes, tells us of a soldier who wounded King Cyrus in battle, and who grew thereupon so arrogant that in a short space after he lost his wits. I fear for you, even in the midst of your triumphs, for you are manifestly perturbed. At a time when every one had treated you with unexampled gentleness and courtesy, you complain of being upbraided, and of having lost the smiles of men of rank. Can it be that the monitor within is pricking you for your left-handed advocacy of the farmers' interest? The taint of a _green_ and yellow melancholy is on you. That curious old writer, Felix Plater, tells us, with high humour, of a certain one who fancied that he had some of Aristophanes' frogs in his belly, and who studied physic seven years, and took the tour of Europe, with a view of relieving himself. Your itinerancy may be salubrious, and tend to evacuate the croaker. But if not, happy are you to have such a doctor--the crutch-destroyer, I mean--as your "guide, philosopher, and friend." By his nimble manipulations, he will easily effect the happy exorcism of every obstruction; and, having him as your Mæcenas, well may you feel

"Divinity within you breeding wings,
Wherewith to scorn the earth."

If I have contributed in any degree, by this agreeable epistle, to abate and dissolve your present flatulency, it will be a source of delightful reflection to me in the evening of life.

CATO.

THE CLEARING OF THE GLENS.

I.

They'll speak of him for many a year,
In Britain's sad decline,
In other lands, perchance, than this,
Across the weltering brine.
They'll speak of him who drove them forth
In alien fields to toil,
Who forced them from their fathers' hearths,
The children of the soil!

II.

Amidst the deserts of the West
When evening shadows fall,
Around their aged grandsire's knees
The babes will gather all--
And "Tell us, grandsire," thus they'll speak,
"O tell us yet again,
Of that dear native land of yours
That lies beyond the main.

III.

"Why did you leave that happy land,
And seek a shelter here,
Where keenly sweeps the northern wind
Through frozen forests drear?
And why forsake the purple hills
Where Scotland's heather grows,
To shudder in this dreary waste
Of cold Canadian snows?"

IV.

"Ah, children--Ye recall the time
When I was young and strong;
When never roebuck on the brae
More swiftly raced along.
I dwelt within a bieldy hut
Far up a Highland glen,
With forty more, our name that bore,
All true and loyal men.

V.

"We sowed the seed, and reaped the grain,
With thankful hearts and kind;
Our cattle grazed upon the hill
That rose our homes behind.
Each Sabbath-day we worshipped God
Within the homely fane,
All circled by the blessed graves
I ne'er shall see again.

VI.

"Our chief--ah, me! how proud were we
That honoured name to hail,
Was, like his fathers, true and just--
In heart and soul, a Gael.
His lands were narrowed in their range
Since dark Culloden's day,
But o'er our hearts the ancient name
Still bore its ancient sway.

VII.

"He loved us: Ay! he did not leave
His old ancestral home,
As many did, with stranger friends
In foreign lands to roam.
God's blessing rest upon his head,
Alive or dead, say I;
For 'midst his clan, though dwindled sore,
He looked to live and die!

VIII.

"And so we dwelt, in peace and rest,
For many a changing year:
Not rich; but riches never made
A home so doubly dear.
From kindly earth, from verdant hill,
From river, loch, and wood,
We drew the stores that kept us still
In raiment and in food.

IX.

"One year--I know not which it was,
For it was long ago,--
The summer had been cold and wet,
And early fell the snow;
A heavy blight came down from heaven
On plant, and root, and grain,
And what the pestilence had touched,
Ne'er rose to life again.

X.

"It was an awful winter. Want
And famine raged around;
Yet little felt we of their power,
Within our master's ground.
Our debts were few, our rents were small,
And these were all forgiven--
No heavier burden did we bear
Than that which fell from heaven!

XI.

"The spring came round--the primrose bloomed
Upon the bank and brae,
And blythesome looked the bonny glen
Within the light of May.
The lowing of a hundred herds,
The voices of the rills,
The bleat of flocks, the glad bird's song
Rang o'er our Highland hills.

XII.

"The blade was springing in the field
Right healthily and green,
With promise of the fairest yield
That eye had ever seen.
And joy rose up within our hearts,
We feared no more decay,
But thanked our Maker--who had ta'en
The grievous curse away.

XIII.

"O little knew we of the men
Who ruled within the land;
The days were gone when Scottish hearts
O'er Scotland held command.
The days were gone when valiant souls,
Who knew their country's right,
Stood foremost at the council board
As they were first in fight.

XIV.

"The spirit of the olden time,
That blazed so bright of yore,
Had died away, and no one spoke
Of faith or honour more.
They deemed this glorious earth was made,
And vaulted with the sky,
For nothing but to gather gold--
To traffic, fawn, and lie!

XV.

"And so they reared the chimney-stalk,
And so they laid the keel,
And trampled on the labouring poor
With hard and heavy heel.
A cold and crafty Southron carle
Was lord and master there:
No gentle blood had he who stood
Beside the monarch's chair.

XVI.

"He made his laws--I wot not how--
But this I know full well,
That ruin like a biting frost
Upon the country fell.
It mattered not how bright the sun,
How bountiful the rain,
The wickedness of man had made
The gifts of God in vain.

XVII.

"These were sore days. Within the towns
Was naught but foreign bread;
By foreign serfs beyond the seas
The people now were fed.
No work was there for us to do,
No labour far or near;
We dared not render thanks to Him
Who sent a fruitful year.

XVIII.

"The plough lay rusting in the field:
We drove our cattle down,
We sold them--'twas our last resource,
Within a distant town.
The poor dumb creatures! when they went
I knew the hour must come
For the like woeful journey next,
To those that were not dumb.

XIX.

"And so it fell. One weary day
The bitter news was told,
That the fair land we loved so well
Was to a stranger sold.
The race that for a thousand years
Had dwelt within the glen,
Were rudely summoned from their homes,
To beg as broken men.

XX.

"Some would not leave--the ruffians tore
The crumbling thatch away;
They plucked the rafters from the wall,
And bade them starve and stay!
The old, the bedrid, and the sick,
The wife and new-born child--
I thank my God I did not strike,
Although my heart was wild!

XXI.

"We parted--kinsfolk, clansmen, friends,
With heavy hearts and sore;
We parted by the water-side,
To meet on earth no more.
The sun was sinking to his rest
Amidst a lurid sky,
And from the darkening hill above
We heard the falcon's cry."

XXII.

"O wicked deed, O cruel men!
O sad and woeful day!
But, grandsire, tell us of your friends
And kinsfolk, where are they?"
"They lie within the festering heaps,
Among the city dead--
Scant burial had they for their bones,
No gravestone marks their head;

XXIII.

"Some died of want, of sorrow some,
And some of broken age:
They who lived on were sad as birds
Cooped in a narrow cage.
O children, with the savage beasts
I'd rather lay me down,
Than dwell among the stifling lanes
Within a factory town!

XXIV.

"Sharp hunger forced us to the mills;
We slaved for scanty food
'Midst flashing looms, and buzzing wheels,
And strangers rough and rude.
From morn to night we toiled and spun
Like beasts to labour driven,
And only through the dingy panes
We saw the light of heaven.

XXV.

"Ay, there was room for all! The child
That scarce could walk alone,
The little ones we loved so well,
The stripling and the grown;
The modest maiden forced to bear
The coarse and scurril jest;
The old man with his silver hairs--
The wife with babe at breast.

XXVI.

"All, all might work--for England ne'er
Had borne so high a name,
Though not for Christian chivalry
She strove to keep her fame.
No longer streamed Saint George's cross
The foremost in the air,
Her glory lay in cotton bales
And yards of flimsy ware.

XXVII.

"For this we toiled, for this we span;
For this all round and round
Ten thousand chimney-stalks were reared
Above the blackening ground.
For this they made the reaper's song,
The ploughman's whistle cease;
And 'midst the clanking of the chains
Proclaimed the reign of peace!

XXVIII.

"But we--the Highland-born, the free,
How could we struggle there?
Still in our hearts we felt the breath
Of our fresh mountain air--
We saw the shadows of the hills
Hang in the waters clear,
The purling of the distant rills
Was sounding in our ear.

XXIX.

"We sang the old familiar songs--
We sang them at the loom;
We sang of light, and love, and joy,
When all around was gloom.
O then, O then--the bitter tears
Rose to each aching eye--
O were we but once more at home,
Though only there to die!

XXX.

"Death came, but came not quickly. Pale
And weak my sister grew;
With sharpened pain and wasting sobs
Her heavy breath she drew.
At last I laid her in her bed
When she could work no more.
I kissed her poor, thin, wasted cheek--
I prayed--and all was o'er!

XXXI.

"I laid her in a stranger's grave.
And then I turned and fled,
I cared not whither--anywhere--
To earn my honest bread;
In any land where flesh and blood
Were reckoned more than gain--
Where tyrant masters did not wring
Their wealth from woe and pain."

XXXII.

O England--England! many a heart
Is sad and sore for thee,
Though basely, meanly, falsely driven
To dwell beyond the sea.
O England! if the bonny Rose
Was drooping on your crown,
Why did you stretch a cruel hand
To pluck the Thistle down?

XXXIII.

There's many a name of noble fame
Writ in your ancient roll;
There's many an honest statesman yet
Of free and generous soul:
Why stoop to those who cannot walk
With high and upright head,
Whose living souls no kindred own
With thy time-honoured dead?

XXXIV.

The worst of all--the thrice-forsworn--
The gamester of thy fame--
How dares he deem that aftertimes
Will give him aught but shame?
Let monuments be reared above--
Of marble heap a hill--
The peasant's curse upon his head
Shall weigh the heavier still!

Díes Boreales.

No. VI.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

_Camp at Cladich._

SCENE I.--_The Wren's Nest._

TIME--_Six_ A.M.

NORTH--TALBOYS--SEWARD.

NORTH.

You recollect the words of Edmund in Lear--

"A credulous father, and a brother noble
Whose nature is so far from doing harm,
That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty
One's practices ride easy."

This is exactly Iago with Othello--believing in virtue, using, despising it. These idolators of self think the virtuous worship imaginary, unreal Gods. But they never doubt the sincerity of the worship; and therein show a larger intelligence, a clearer insight, than those other idolators who, shut up in their own character, ascribe their own motives to all; and in virtues can see only different shapes of hypocrisy.

TALBOYS.

The Devil himself knows better, sir. He knows that Virtue exists; only he flatters himself that he can undermine its foundations. "And ofttimes does succeed"--seeking Evil "as contrary to His High Will whom we resist!"

NORTH.

The Evil Principle at war with the Good.

TALBOYS.

In what war soever, sir, you are once engaged, you soon feel yourself pledged to it. A few blows given on both sides settle you fast, and you no longer inquire about the cause.

NORTH.

To an evil soul all good is a reproach; therefore he wars on it. To the self-dissatisfied the happiness of the good is a reproach; therefore, if he be thoroughly selfish, he pulls it down.

TALBOYS.

Every one's impulse is to throw off pain; and if no pity, no awe, no love be there to stay him, he pulls down of course.

NORTH.

My dear Talboys, believe me, that, for a moment, every man has motives fit for a fiend. Perhaps he obeys--perhaps rejects them. The true fiend is constant.

TALBOYS.

Every man has motives fit for a fiend! I beg you to speak for yourself, my dear sir.

NORTH.

I speak of myself, of you, and of Iago. What is the popular apprehension or theory of the malice disclosed in "mine Ancient"--not the Old One, but the Standard-bearer?

TALBOYS.

Why, the prompt, apt, and natural answer will be, he is a Devil.

NORTH.

And pray what is a Devil?

TALBOYS.

Iago.

NORTH.

Don't reason in a circle, sir.

TALBOYS.

I'd rather reason in a circle, sir, than not reason at all. I like reasoning in a circle--it is pleasant pastime in a cold, raw morning--far preferable to ascending Cruachan; for you are never far from home, and when tired can leap out at your own pleasure, and take some reasoning in a straight line.

NORTH.

You are always so pleasant, Talboys, circular or ziz-zag. Whence is the malice in the heart of a Devil?

TALBOYS.

I want data, sir. Milton has given some historical elucidation of it; but the People reason less, and are no philosophers.

NORTH.

Hate in a devil is like Love in an Angel--uncaused, or self-causing; it is his natural function--his Essence, his Being. Herein the seraph is a seraph--the fiend is a fiend.

TALBOYS.

"Evil! be Thou my good! By Thee at least
Divided Empire with Heaven's King I hold,
By Thee, and more perhaps than half will reign."

Reason--Motive--Cause.

NORTH.

Prospero calls Caliban a devil--a born Devil.

TALBOYS.

Also, a demi-Devil--as Othello calls Iago.

NORTH.

The Philosopher knows--_in humanity_--of no born devil. He follows, or tries to follow, the causes which have turned the imperfect nature into the worst. The popular sense takes things as it finds them, and acknowledges "born devils," Iago being one, and "of the prime." The _totality_ of monster in the moral world seems to that unphilosophical, sincere, and much-to-the-purpose intuition, expressed under the image of _a nativity_. The popular sense recognises a temper of man which elects evil for evil's sake--which inflicts pain, because it likes to see pain suffered--which destroys, because it revels in misery.

TALBOYS.

Coleridge calls Iago's "a motiveless malignity." He hated Othello for not promoting him, but Cassio. That seems to me the real, tangible motive--a haunting, goading, fretting preference--an affront--an insult--a curbing of power--wounding him where alone he is sensitive--in self-esteem and pride. See his contempt for Cassio as a book-warrior--and "for a fair life"--simply like our notion of a "milksop." Why Othello, who so prizes him for his honesty as to call him ever "honest Iago," keeps him down, I have not a guess--

NORTH.

Haven't you? And pray what right have you to interfere with the practice of promotion in the army of the Venetian State?

TALBOYS.

I cannot approve of this particular instance--it looks like favouritism. Othello fancied Cassio--Cassio was the genteeler young fellow of the two--the better-born--Iago had risen from the ranks--and was a stout soldier--

NORTH.

You don't take your character of Cassio, from Iago?

TALBOYS.

I do. Iago was a liar--but here I think he spoke truth--there is nothing in the Play indicating that Cassio had seen much service--he had never been at Cyprus--nor anywhere else--he had never seen a Turk--he had never--

NORTH.

Hold your tongue.

TALBOYS.

A more disgraceful Brawl--

NORTH.

Hold your tongue, I say.

TALBOYS.

Don't keep pouring out your excuses for him, sir, with such overwhelming volubility--it won't do. He knew his own wretched head. "I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking," yet drink he would,--"I have drunk but one cup to-night, and that was craftily qualified too"--worse than shirking--"behold what innovation it makes here,"--and yet he would not join the Teetotallers. Out on such a Lieutenant! Iago _was_ an ill-used man.

NORTH.

Talboys--

TALBOYS.

O that ceaseless volubility! Shakspeare afterwards makes Iago say that Cassio "has a daily beauty in his life." Where do we see it? In his _liaison_ with that "fitchew?" From pleading with the Divine Desdemona on a question to him of life or death, to go straight to sup--and sleep with Bianca!

NORTH.

Othello's "Now thou art my Lieutenant," shows the importance meant by Shakspeare to be attached to the previous oppression--or "holding down" of Iago. Alas! how that allocution instigating Iago to murder by more than a promise of promotion, sadly lowers Othello to me--I hardly know why. I feel a descent from his own passion to a sympathy with Iago's desire to step into his superior officer's shoes. I can fancy that Shakspeare meant this. Ay, that he did; for I believe that turbulent passion, in some of its moods, lowers--degrades--debases a great and generous nature.

TALBOYS.

Iago, was jealous of Othello. He says he was, and either believes it, or tries to believe it. His own words intimate the doubt, and the determination to believe. Malignity and hate indulge in giving acceptance to slight grounds--such he says, in his own coarse way, was the rumour--and perhaps it was true--

NORTH.

Certainly it was false. High characters, as Coriolanus, Hotspur, Othello, are, by a native majesty of spirit, saved and exalted from the pursuit of illicit pleasure.

TALBOYS.

They are. But let his jealousy of Othello--sincere or assumed--or mixed or alternating--enter as an element into the hatred.

NORTH.

Let it. Iago was, you said truly, a stout Soldier--and I add, a hard, unfeeling, unprincipled Soldier. Of all trades in the world, that of a Soldier is the worst and the best--witness an Iago--an Othello. The same trade helped to make both. In Othello we almost see Wordsworth's _Happy Warrior_--in Iago one--

"Yet ill he lived, much evil saw,
'Mongst men to whom no better law
Nor better life was known;
Deliberately and undeceived,
Those bad men's vices he received
And gave them back his own!"

You are convinced, without a hint, that he is infidel--atheist: everything shaped like religion, like moral conscience--his mind shakes off and rejects with scorn. He does not, however, as I said, disbelieve in Virtues. He believes in them, and uses them to the destruction of the havers. What he disbelieves is the worth of Virtues. To that savage Idol, Self, the more bleeding and noble victims, the more grateful the sacrifice.

TALBOYS.

A singular combination in him, sir, is his wily Italian wit--like Iachimo's--and his rough--soldierlike--plain, blunt, jovial manners--the tone of the Camp, and of the wild-living, _reckless_ Camp--plenty of hardihood--fit for toil, peril, privation. You never for a moment doubt his courage--his presence of mind--his resources--he does not once quail in presence of Othello at his utmost fury. He does not stir up the Lion from without, through the bars of his cage, with an invisible rod of iron--that is, a whip of scorpions; he lashes up the Wild Beast, and flinches not an inch from paw that would smite, or tusk that would tear--a veritable Lion Queller and King.

NORTH.

I cannot but believe that the Othello of Shakspeare is black, and all black. I cannot conceive the ethnography of that age drawing--on the stage especially--the finer distinction which we know between a Moor and a Blackamoor or Negro. The opposition, entertained by nature, is between White and Black--not between White and Brown. You want the opposition to tell with all its power. "I saw Othello's visage in his mind" is nothing, unless the visible visage is one to be conquered--to be accepted by losing sight of it. I say again, that I cannot myself imagine the contemporary audience of Shakspeare deciding colour between a Moor and a Negro. The tradition of the Stage, too, seems to have made Othello jet black. Such, I opine, was the notion of the Moor, _then_, to the People, to the Court, to the Stage, to Shakspeare.

TALBOYS.

Woolly-headed?

NORTH.

Why, yes--if you choose--in opposition to the "curled darlings."

TALBOYS.

Yet Coleridge has said it would be "something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl failing in love with a veritable Negro."

NORTH.

Coleridge almost always thought, felt, wrote, and spoke finely, as a Critic--but may I venture, in all love and admiration of that name, to suggest that the removal which the stage makes of a subject from reality must never be forgotten. In life you cannot bear that the White Woman shall marry the Black Man. You could not bear that an English Lady Desdemona--Lady Blanche Howard--should--under any imaginable greatness--marry General Toussaint or the Duke of Marmalade. Your senses revolt with offence and loathing. But on the Stage some consciousness that everything is not as literally meant as it seems--that symbols of humanity, and not actual men and women, are before you--saves the Play.

TALBOYS.

I believe that Wordsworth's line--

"The gentle Lady married to the Moor,"

expresses explicitly the feeling of the general English heart--pity for the contrast, and a thought of the immense love which has overcome it.

NORTH.

White and Black is the utter antithesis--as, at intensity, Night and Day. Yes--Talboys--Every jot of soot you take from his complexion, you take an iota from the signified power of love.

TALBOYS.

As you say, sir, the gap which is between the Stage and Reality must prevent, in our hearts, anything like loathing of the conjunction.

NORTH.

The touch of such an emotion would annul the whole Tragedy. A disparity, or a discrepancy, vast as mysterious--but which love, at the full, is entitled to overlook--overstep! Whether Fate dare allow prosperity to a union containing so mighty an element of disruption, is another question. It seems like an attempt at overruling the "Æterna fœdera rerum."

TALBOYS.

For half an hour after her death, Othello believes her guilty. You must take it for a representation of what his feelings would have been, if she had really been guilty.

NORTH.

Unless the fact of her innocence have a secret potency that reaches, through all appearance and evidence of her guilt, into his innermost soul. Be that as it may, he is, after the deed, perplexed and unmanned, totally unlike a man who has performed a great sacrifice to the offended gods. You may say that the convulsion of uptorn love is too fresh, and that he would in time have regained his strength--that had she been guilty, the first half-hour must have been just what it was. All I know is, that his mind first becomes clear, when he knows her innocent. Then he is, in a measure, himself, and sees his way. Had she been guilty, he would have lived two years with a stern, desolate soul--not harsh, perhaps, to honest folks, though--and have then fallen in battle.

TALBOYS.

But how is Iago affected by the blackness? No doubt, with more hate and aversion at being commanded by and outshone by him. High military rank and command--high favour by the Senate--high power and esteem in the world--high royalty of spirit--happiness in marriage--all these in Othello are proper subjects of envy, and motives of hate in Iago. The Nigger!

NORTH.

Antipathy of bad to good--of base to noble--exacerbated by physical antipathy of colour! But I never could fathom the hate and malice and revenge of Iago.

TALBOYS.

It is unfathomable--and therefore fit agent in Tragedy.

NORTH.

Even so. I don't believe that Shakspeare always means you to be able to lay motives in the balance and weigh them. Far otherwise.

TALBOYS.

Ay--Think how the Murder of Duncan leaps up, Hell-born, into the heart of Macbeth--at the breath of the Weird Sisters!

NORTH.

Perhaps. Poetry shaping out an action, distinguishes herself, amongst other points of distinction herein, from History, that while she shows lucidly, and of her own clear knowledge, the concatenation of Cause and Effect, yet passion and imagination require the indefinite. There is then a conflict of claims and powers; and the part of logic is hence imperfectly rendered. You see the river sweeping by you, without knowing all the springs that have fed it.

TALBOYS.

Say that again, sir.

NORTH.

_There_ IS the hatred--a tragical power, which the Poet is principally concerned to use--less to explain.

TALBOYS.

You said, sir, the noble Moor must have been much disennobled ere he could have cried to Iago, "Now thou art my lieutenant."

NORTH.

I did, and you think so too.

TALBOYS.

I do. Othello and Iago, are joint conspirators to two double murders. Can you conspire to a murder--a private assassination--without lowering yourself--even on the Stage? Othello takes on himself the murder of Desdemona--act, responsibility, consequences; but does he not seem to hire Iago to assassinate Cassio?

NORTH.

What did Othello intend to do--after all was accomplished? Consequences indeed! He was stone-blind to the future. What does he expect? that when he has killed his wife, everything is to go on as smoothly as before? That no notice will be taken of it? or that he will have to make another speech to the Senate? He has told them how he married her--the counterpart will be to relate "a plain unvarnished tale of my whole course" of smothering and stabbing her with bolster and dagger. "Now thou art my lieutenant"--shows--if not stone-blindness--a singular confidence in the future.

TALBOYS.

The Personages who come in at the End look at the matter contrariwise. Othello exalts the killing of his wife into a sacrifice to Justice. But Cassio? That is mere--pure Revenge. "O that the slave had forty thousand lives,--one is too poor, too weak for my revenge."

NORTH.

Upon what pedestal does Othello stand _now_--engaging another to kill Cassio in the dark, for his own revenge? I repeat it, surely the Noble Moor is now very much disennobled.

TALBOYS.

I rejoice, my dear sir, that you have so completely got rid of that nasty cough--your voice is as clear as a bell. Lungs sound--

NORTH.

As those of a prize bagpiper. Talboys, I cannot help thinking that Shakspeare shows up in Othello, foul passions--that you see in him two natures conjoined--the moral Caucasian White, and the animal tropical Black. In the Caucasian, the spiritual or angelical in us attains its manifestation. In the offspring of the tropics, amongst the sands, and under the suns of Africa, the animal nature takes domination. The sands and suns that breed Lions, breed Men with Lion's hearts in them. The Lion is for himself noble, but blood of the Irrational in the veins of the Rational is a contradiction. The noblest moral nature and the hot blind rage of animal blood!

TALBOYS.

Ay, the noblest moral nature, and high above every other evidence of it, his love of HER--which, what it was, and what it would have remained, or become--and what he was and would have been, had Iago not been there--we may imagine! With all the power of a warrior, and a ruler, he has the sensibility of a Lover--with all spontaneous dignity and nobility, he has the self-mastery of reason--before his overthrow.

NORTH.

Wherefore, my dear Sheriff, I prefer Othello as a specimen of the _Ethical Marvellous_. Like, as in another kingdom, a Winged Horse or a Centaur--the meeting of two natures which readily hold asunder. All this has under the Æthiop complexion its full force--less if you mitigate--if not mitigate merely, but take away, where are we all? The innate repugnance of the White Christian to the Black Moorish blood, is the ultimate tragic substratum--the "_must_" of all that follows. Else--_make_ Othello White--and, I say again, _see_ where we are!

TALBOYS.

Shakspeare, sir, is not one to flinch from the utmost severity of a Case.

NORTH.

Not he, indeed--therefore I _swear_ Othello is a Blackamoor.

TALBOYS.

And I take it, sir, that Othello's natural demeanour is one of great gravity, to which the passionate moods induced are in extremity of contrast. I conceive that, by these mixtures and contrasts, he is rendered picturesque and poetical.

NORTH.

I swear Othello was a Blackamoor--and that Desdemona was the Whitest Lady in Europe.

TALBOYS.

Had he lived to be tried for murder, I think his counsel might have successfully set up the plea of insanity.

NORTH.

They might have successfully set it up--but I, the Judge, would have successfully put it down. Honestly, I don't think Othello mad; and for this reason, that the thought never before came into my head. An incident that appears to me most wonderful in dramatic invention is--the Swooning. Look at the precise words preceding his falling down. To me it has no other effect or sense, than that of the blood being driven up into the head, and oppressing with physical pressure that bodily organ--the brain. The soul strikes the body like a hammer, and knocks it down.

TALBOYS.

Ay, how his words waver--"That's not so good now"--from a man believing, or on the point of believing. There is to me a physical faintness in these words, and in the play upon the words "lie with her," &c., intellect reeling to fall.

NORTH.

Good. But I believe body and soul of Othello--or the relation between body and soul--to be physiologically right and sound. The swooning goes soon off--the accident of an hour--the mind is else in full vigour, sound, and misled. You must recollect that a mind of supereminent physical (may one say so?) and moral power--a mind that would have been strong and calm through the Russian Campaign of Napoleon--is not in a day stricken into a state which requires the medical skill and attention of Dr Willis. Othello had an immensely strong physical constitution undoubtedly--had he not, the adventures related would long ago have extinguished him. This is one meaning of that sudden and strange narrative which children are taught by rote, and which men may not have quite fathomed; but a strong body and strong soul conjoined, do not lightly admit of disjunction. Madness, properly so called, is a disjunction, in some way or kind, of the natural union between soul and body. A few days disrupt the ties in the aged Lear. You may think that in Othello--I suppose Ætat. 40 or 45--the ties would bear some wrenching of the rack, ere snapping. I think that they held firm.

TALBOYS.

True, sir, insanity would even detract from the moral majesty and splendour of Othello.

NORTH.

It would. The time comes back to me when I did _not care for the Play or the Man_. The Play now seems to me wonderful, more even than Hamlet or Lear--and the Man, in poetical invention, a match for Achilles or Satan.

TALBOYS.

Sir--sir.

NORTH.

Passion in the blood like that of a Negro--and right in the soul as of Socrates or Epaminondas. Yes, Talboys, the Majesty of the Moral soul in Othello seems to me the most prophetic, or divining, or inconceivable of Shakspeare's conceptions.

TALBOYS.

Nay--nay--my dear sir.

NORTH.

Everything else might seem to offer its own reason--

TALBOYS.

Nay--nay--my dear sir. Compare the gross Hamlet of Saxo Grammaticus with Ours.

NORTH.

Well, do--but Othello--you don't know whence he is derived. He is a tropical animal--kindred to the lion--the tiger--the dragon--and, on the other hand, he has the rational equipoise of the faculties that stamp the Philosopher--and he is everything between the two.

TALBOYS.

An Eloge, indeed--perhaps a _leetle_ too eulogistic.

NORTH.