Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

The party at the palm-tree at length retired to rest. Sidney, wearing the Egyptian dress, had adopted the native habits in travelling, and attempted to sleep on a single carpet spread on the sand. The attempt was vain. The excitement caused equally by fatigue of body and mind, and the unusual restraint of his clothes, drove sleep from his eyelids; while one train of thought followed another with all the vividness and incoherence of a morning dream. He fancied he saw Mr Lascelles Hamilton rush into the tent of Mr Ringlady and cut off his head, and then, suddenly transformed into a minister of the Prince of Darkness, in full uniform, with a proboscis like an elephant, and a green tail like a boa-constrictor, deliver up the whole party, Fatmeh included, to Mohammed Ali in person.

Jumping up in alarm at this strange vision, he saw to his amazement his companion, Aali, sitting very composedly; while Achmet was engaged in staining his face of a bronze colour, so dark as almost to emulate the ebon hue of El Khindi’s own skin.

“What the d--l are you about, Achmet?” shouted Sidney in emphatic phrase. “Why are you going to make Aali’s face as black as your own?”

Achmet grinned and replied,--“Very good against the sun, Mr Sidney; me make Aali look a true Beddauwee,--neither white like a boiled golgas, (he meant a yellow turnip) nor sooty like them d----n black fellow. You like, me paint you too.” Sidney, who was quite content to look in the desert like a boiled turnip, turned his back on the painter; and the incident having dispersed his dreams, he fell into a profound sleep.

Long before daylight, the whole party was roused by the indefatigable Hassan. After the usual squabbling, yelling, singing, and bellowing of camels, the caravan was put in motion. They left Belbeïs without the literary Mr Campbell putting his foot within the circuit of the renowned city. Daylight found the party moving forward at what is a very rapid rate of travelling in the desert, whenever half-a-dozen dromedaries are together. They were actually proceeding at the rate of four miles an hour; now the average log of a fleet of camels rarely exceeds two and a half under the most favourable circumstances.

The ground over which they advanced was a flat surface of hard clay, covered with round rough brown pebbles, apparently polished by torrents, and flattened into the soil by some superhuman roller. Far to the right, a range of mountains bounded the horizon; in front, the view was terminated by a gradual elevation of the plain marked by drifts of sand; while some miles to the left, the green valley of the Nile, far as the eye could reach, was skirted by a forest of palm-trees, whose feathered leaves were waving in the breeze. The scene offered no great variety, but it was singularly impressive. Few persons find that the deserts, even of Arabia Deserta, are precisely what they figure to be the quintessence of desert scenery. Where there is sand, a few scraggy shrubs are very often to be found; or else a constant succession of high mounds or hills, disposed in various directions and forms, take away from the monotony of the view. Where the plain is flat and extensive, it is generally covered with strange and beautiful pebbles; and when it rises into mountains, they are grand and rugged in form, and coloured with tints which render the memory of Mount Albano, and of Hymettus, like the timid painting of a northern artist, trembling at the critics, who have rarely seen a sunbeam.

The caravan proceeded for a long time in silence. Now and then a camel-driver essayed to commence one of the interminable Arab songs; but after some flourishes of “Ya Beddouwee! Ya Beddouwee!” which seemed to indicate the fear of some passing elfish spirit, they all abandoned the vain attempt.

Mr Lascelles Hamilton at last took the field, shouting in a voice that brought an expression of comic amaze into the features of the attending camel-drivers.

“Campbell! what do you say? You saw old father Nile was a humbug as we were coming up to Cairo. You must now acknowledge that the desert is a humbug as we are going down to Syria. Multiply some acres of gravel walk by two hundred yards of sea beach in Argyleshire, and you have one half of Arabia Deserta; take a rabbit warren and you have the rest. And as to the Nile, it is only the Thames lengthened and the ships extracted.”

Campbell was too much distressed by the motion of his dromedary, the form of his saddle, and the difficulty of keeping his position, to feel inclined to contest any opinion maintained by his voluble companion. So he contented himself with growling to Sidney, who was nearest him--

“That fellow is only a speaking machine; he can’t think.”

Mr Ringlady, however, could not let such opinions pass without notice; so he opened his reply--

“I am not prepared, Mr Lascelles Hamilton, to admit either of your propositions without restrictions.”

“I knew you would be forced to admit them generally, you are so candid,” was the rejoinder of the voluble gentleman; “you can make as many restrictions as you like at leisure--it will be both amusing and instructive.”

“But, sir,” interrupted the lawyer--for Mr Lascelles Hamilton having commenced, might have spoken for half an hour without a pause--“you are aware the Arabs call the Nile El Bahr, or the sea.”

“Perfectly aware of the fact--though they don’t pronounce the word exactly as you do,” exclaimed the speaking machine, “and consider it another proof what a humbug that said Nile is. Why, you may see him at the Vatican with thirty children about him; while after all he has only seven here in Egypt, where you can count their mouths as they kiss the sea.”

“But, sir, you must take into consideration the fertilising effects of the waters of the river, which made Homer say that they descended from heaven.”

“Why, so they do: old Homer laid aside _his_ humbug for once; he knew the effects of a monsoon, and meant to say heavy rain makes rivers swell--so the Nile’s a river and nothing like the sea. Let me ask you now, Mr Ringlady--can you tell me why the Arabs call the Nile the sea, before we proceed?”

The learned Mr Ringlady was not quite prepared to answer this sudden query; so he replied at random--

“The Arabs think it looks like the sea.”

“Not a bit of it. They call it the sea because it is not the least like the sea. Just as you call Britain Great because it is not enormously big, and France _la belle_, because it’s ugly _par excellence_.”

The travellers at last reached the valley called the Wadi Tomlat, which is an oasis running into the desert to the eastward at right angles to the course of the Nile. In ancient times, the waters of the river, overflowing into this valley, and filtering through the sand into the low lands which extend over a considerable part of the Isthmus of Suez, formed the rich pastures called in Scripture the land of Goshen. In this district, the Jewish people multiplied from a family to a nation. Our travellers skirted this singular valley on its southern side, in order to avoid passing through the town in its centre, called Tel el Wadi. And after leaving behind them the utmost boundary of the cultivated fields, they crossed a stream of fresh water even at that season of the year, which, however, soon disappears in a small stagnant lake.

Here the travellers rested to breakfast. But after a short halt, they pursued their way until they reached the ruins of an ancient city. The spot was called Abou Kesheed: here the intolerable heat compelled them again to stop for a couple of hours. Sidney and Campbell, sheltered from the sun by an old carpet hung on three lances, reclined beside an immense block of granite, which had been transported from its native quarry at Syene, a distance of five hundred miles, to be sculptured into three strange figures, and covered with signs and symbols of strange import. Sidney, who had paid some attention to the researches of Champollion and Sir Gardner Wilkinson, considered their authority decisive that the figures were those of Rameses the Great, the Sesostris of the Greeks, placed between the two deities Re and Atmoo. He pointed out the hieroglyphic signet of the mighty monarch, and maintained that the ruins around were the relics of one of the treasure cities, built by Pharaoh to secure the tribute paid by the children of Israel when they dwelt in the land of Goshen.

The banks of the great canal which once joined the Nile and the Red Sea, were visible near the ruins in two long ranges of sandy mounds. This mighty work was said by the Greeks to have been constructed by Sesostris, or Rameses--the very monarch who now sat before them turned into granite with his immortal name wrought into an enigma beside him. Sidney argued that this spot was the Raamses of Exodus; and Campbell declared that as it was only two days’ march from Suez, it was a military point which he thought himself bound to occupy, in a dissertation on the invasion of Egypt by an Indian army from the Red Sea. Mr Lascelles Hamilton, who was very impatient during these discussions, could not lay claim to the poetic lines that may now be seen issuing from the mouth of a magnificent ram-headed god, in Belzoni’s tomb at Thebes--for neither the lines, nor the guide-book which suggested them, were then in existence--

“I am, and always have been, Ammon,
In spite of all Sir Gardner’s gammon;”

but the speaking machine expressed a similar sentiment a dozen times, clothed in language partaking less of what he himself called humbug.

All these learned cogitations were interrupted by Aali, who came to inform them that Hassan had found that the horses were waiting for them at a neighbouring well. This well, though said to be in the neighbourhood, it took them more than two long hours to reach. The party grew excessively impatient. Mr Ringlady entered into a violent altercation with his accomplished dragoman Mohammed, accusing him of ignorance of the route, and of deception concerning the distance. Campbell declared he could go no farther, saying, “that he did not see why they should mak a tile o’ a pleesure.” His pronunciation certified his fatigue; nature got the better of art at this crisis, as happened with Dante’s cat, which, though taught to sit on the table with a candle in its paw, dropped the light on Dante’s fingers when it saw a mouse. The loquacious Mr Lascelles Hamilton was silent, and apparently asleep. Sidney endeavoured to keep up the courage of Campbell, and keep down the wrath of Ringlady, by complaining of his own sufferings.

The well of Saba Biar was not reached until it was dark. Indeed Sidney had all along suspected that Hassan would not approach it by daylight, in order to conceal their movements as much as possible. He had kept the party for two long hours moving in the hollow of the ancient canal, without a breath of air, and suffering the intolerable heat of a bright sun reflected from two parallel lines of sand-hills.

At Saba Biar, it became necessary to hold a council of war; in order to admit all the party into the secret of the flight of Aali and his bride, and propose that they should join in taking horses, and flying all together into Syria. It was therefore announced to Mr Ringlady, that his advice was required concerning the movements of the caravan next day. Pleased with the deference thus shown to his mellifluous voice and large tent, he invited the whole party to discuss the matter over tchibooks and Mocha. The party assembled. Ringlady, Campbell, and Lascelles Hamilton seated on stools, Sidney, Aali, and Hassan squatting on the ground, formed a circle.

Hassan began by a very long speech, which it was needless for Sidney to translate, as it gave them no idea of what he intended to communicate. Aali followed in one quite as long, in what appeared, from the words of which it was composed, to be Italian; but the interminable length of the sentences, and the flowery nature of the diction, rendered it as unintelligible to every one present, as if it had really been in the Farsee of the Ottoman chancery, of which it was a copy. Sidney then stated shortly in English, that the consent of the travellers was wanted to aid in the escape of Aali and his bride from the power of Mohammed Ali, and that it was proposed that they should have horses ready waiting for them and ride all together to Gaza. He treated it as the simplest thing in the world, just as if their pursuit, capture, and murder, in the midst of the desert, by some party of wild Bedoweens despatched from Cairo was not an event to excite a moment’s hesitation.

Mr Ringlady began now to perceive that he was not on the route he had bargained to take, and of which he had, with the assistance of his faithful dragoman Mohammed, compiled a very minute itinerary and description before leaving Cairo. Instead of being at El Gran, he was in the centre of the Isthmus of Suez. He called the faithful Mohammed into the tent, and inquired with desperate calmness the name of the place where they were.

Mohammed replied with the same calm--“El Gran.”

“Is it El Gran?” repeated Mr Ringlady.

Aali, who thought the inquiry was dictated by the eagerness Mr Ringlady usually displayed in the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, innocently said the place was called Saba Biar.

Ringlady sprang from his chair in a paroxysm of rage, and shouted to Mohammed--“How dare you tell a lie, sir? How dare you tell a lie, sir? to me who can dismiss you without a certificate. You have been in my service, sir, and without my certificate no Englishman of rank or fortune would ever employ you.” To all this, the faithful Mohammed listened with perfect nonchalance: his expression seemed to say--My dear sir, when a demand for certificates manifests itself, there are numerous manufactories from which I can obtain an ample supply of the quality required. Mr Ringlady’s rage was very much augmented by the seeming indifference of his dragoman, who evidently considered a master only as a convenience for filling the pockets of his servant.

Mr Campbell, however, gave the discussion another turn, by informing them that he was too much fatigued to attempt mounting on horseback. Besides, he had an invincible aversion to that mode of conveyance, not being more expert at it than King Louis of Bavaria. The fact of Campbell’s incapacity to keep his saddle having been established, and Mr Ringlady’s rage having been mitigated, it was determined that Hassan, Aali, Sidney, and Lascelles Hamilton, should ride forward and escort the harem; while Ringlady and Campbell proceeded with the empty takterwan and the baggage on dromedaries to Gaza, where Sidney and Lascelles Hamilton were to wait for them.

Before daybreak the horsemen were in motion. As it grew light, three figures in the group excited the attention of Sidney. Two of these figures were composed, to all appearance, of huge bundles of clothing without any definite form. One of the bundles was of prodigious breadth, and was mounted on a beautiful and powerful bay horse. The third figure was close to Sidney’s elbow, clad in a black bornoos, with a head enveloped in an enormous yellow silk shawl. As the figure looked like any thing rather than an Arab of the desert, Sidney recognised his companion. It was evident that the other two bundles concealed the bride of Aali and her mother; and Sidney fancied that Aali was conjecturing in fear and trembling which was the bride and which the mother. If the enormous breadth of cloth on the bay horse concealed the bride, there could be no doubt she was a young lady of great and powerful charms.

Mr Lascelles Hamilton soon addressed Sidney. “You took me for an Arab, I see; this is the way we move in Moultan.”

“I thought it was some Indian fashion--for it is neither the Arab of the Desert, nor of Algiers, nor of Paris,” replied Sidney. “The turban came from Khan Khaleel of Misr, but the bornoos is from the Boulevard des Italiens. However, it may be a good enough disguise for some Europeans.”

For once the voluble Mr Lascelles Hamilton became dumb; and Sidney wondered what charm there could have been in his criticism to arrest the movements of a speaking machine.

The rate at which the travellers moved was rapid, generally consisting of a quick amble. A short halt was called at the well of Aboulronkh; and another at a second well, under a mountain of sand, at Haras. Here, as the well had been freshly cleared out, the water, though brackish, was potable. After a halt of a few hours, during the heat of the day, the party again mounted, and some hours after dark reached the palm grove at Ghatieh. The distance they had accomplished was not fifty miles.

Next day they proceeded at the same rate, leaving Bir el Abt and Djanadoul to the left: they watered their horses at a miserable well, and stopped for the night considerably to the south-east of El Massar. Here it was necessary to refresh the horses in order to be prepared for pursuit from El Arish, where Mohammed Ali had a body of Bedoween cavalry.

The journey was resumed two hours after midnight, and El Arish was left behind before the morning dawned. In the forenoon a Khamseen wind set in with a degree of fury that rendered it impossible for the horses to proceed. After repeated attempts to renew the march, both men and horses at last gave it up in despair, and sought shelter from the clouds of dust and parching heat under a low ridge of sand-hills. The hope of the fugitives was, that no pursuers could brave the hurricane they were unable to face. Still there was no saying what a Beddouwee, mounted on a dromedary, could accomplish under the excitement of the promise of a large bakshish from Mohammed Ali. Aali was evidently alarmed, Hassan showed symptoms of anxiety, and even the two bundles appeared to be restless. The larger one took great interest in the feelings of the powerful bay horse, which remained close beside its mistress, and gave the lady evident signs of recognition and of gratitude for her attention. The mouths of the horses were washed with vinegar and water, and they then champed a few shrubs growing in the sand, which, though in appearance very like dry sticks, afforded a considerable supply of moisture.

In this painful position the party remained all day; and it was not till sunset that a lull in the storm enabled them to proceed to the well at Sheikh Zuaideh to water their horses. Here they did not venture to sleep, and at dawn next morning the Khamseen again blew with redoubled violence. The horses staggered along; and the ladies diminished the mass of the envelopes about their bodies to augment the volume about their heads. It was fortunate the whole party was well mounted; for had any one been compelled to lag behind he might have perished in the desert, for it is impossible to see one hundred yards in advance: the sand pervaded the air with the orange-coloured mist of a London fog in an illumination.

With the greatest exertions they reached Hannunis; but before they could seek shelter in the village, both Sidney and Aali fell from their horses utterly exhausted. Next day, however, the violence of the Khamseen rendering it utterly impossible to proceed, Sidney and Aali had time to recruit their strength.

On the sixth day after quitting Saba Biar, not long after midnight, the fugitives rode out of Hannunis towards Gaza. The air was still like a furnace, but it was gradually cooling; and as the dawn approached it became delightfully refreshing. A light breath of air from the north-west brought with it the freshness of a sea-breeze. When the sun arose, every one was in high spirits. Hassan displayed his activity by getting constantly at some distance before the party as if in search of the road. Aali, expecting soon to be welcomed by the relations of his bride as a hero, began to exhibit his skill in horsemanship, in order to attract the admiration of the bundles of cotton cloth. His horsemanship was not of a quality to make the display a very choice exhibition in the desert, and both he and his horse were hardly recovered from the exhaustion of the Khamseen.

Either for the purpose of rebuking the vanity of Aali, or for that of indulging his own, Sidney commenced a game of djereed with the Osmanlee dandy. It was rather an awkward exhibition. While it was proceeding with very little effect, the larger bundle of raiment, rendered nervous by the djereeds flying about in its neighbourhood, had allowed the bay horse to approach the tumult. Sidney and Aali had just launched their weapons, and were turning their horses to escape the blows mutually aimed, when the bay horse, making a sudden bound between the rival cavaliers, the lady caught the two djereeds, one in each hand, and rode quietly back to her female companion. Hassan and the attendants set up a most unbecoming laugh, and the smaller bundle joined in a suppressed but very unfeminine giggle. Lascelles Hamilton, to escape the powerful bay horse, had ran up against Aali, and increased his misfortune by laming his steed.

Poor Aali was utterly confounded; Sidney looked mortally foolish; and Lascelles Hamilton muttered apologies for his awkwardness and random, reflections on the lady’s movements, in a half audible tone. This embarrassment of the party was suddenly relieved by the appearance of a considerable body of Arabs of the desert at some distance to the right. If they had any hostile intent, their position enabled them to bar the road to Gaza. There seemed to be some prospect of a fight.

Hassan drew the party together, and recommended them to look to their arms. Aali, forgetting his lame horse, whispered to Sidney that he would let the harem see the difference between an old woman and an Osmanlee in a real fight; for in this irreverent strain did he now begin to speak of his future mamma.

After some cautious manœuvring on both sides, each party contrived to occupy the crest of an eminence with a hollow before it; and from these positions they sent forward single horsemen to reconnoitre the adverse bands. After a considerable interval, a shout was heard from the horsemen in advance, and immediately both parties rushed forward to meet at full gallop. Aali, Sidney, Lascelles Hamilton, and Achmet were soon left far behind, both by the suddenness of the start, and the inferiority of their steeds. The two bundles of raiment were seen in advance, followed pretty closely by Hassan, and at some distance by the attendants.

Aali’s horse soon stumbled from lameness, and Achmet, who placed very little trust in the Arabs of the desert, seeing they had given their friends the worst horses, called out to Sidney and Lascelles Hamilton to stay by Aali and keep their horses as fresh as possible. They pulled up accordingly, at a spot from which they could see the meeting of their companions with the Arabs. The larger bundle arrived first, and jumping from the powerful bay horse with the greatest agility, commenced a kissing scene with the principal figure of the new group: this operation was repeated with every one present. The lesser bundle, on arriving, went through the same formality. Sidney and Achmet turned their eyes on Aali, who raised his up to heaven and exclaimed with great agitation, “Mashallah! Mashallah!”

After Hassan had gone through the kissing operation, a short confabulation was held by a few of the principal figures, who smoked a pipe with the ladies, seated on the ground. The whole party then mounted, and came forward to join Aali and his friends. As they approached, it became evident that the two bundles had undergone a marvellous transformation. They were now converted into two Syrian Sheikhs. The larger made a gallant appearance on his bay horse, and the smaller bundle was now a young man bearing still a certain degree of resemblance to the other. A sigh proceeded from the bottom of Aali’s heart, and his exclamation revealed the whole mystery. “Mashallah! it is Sheikh Salem himself. By the head of the Prophet! and his son Sheikh Abdallah.”

The affair was very simple. Coming events in the East were beginning to cast their shadows before, and Sheikh Salem, anxious to escape into Syria with his son, in order to be in the midst of his tribe at the crisis, had thrown out the bait of the marriage to the vanity of Aali; and thus, with his assistance, and that of his friend Hassan, had contrived to deceive all the spies placed to watch his movements at Cairo, and now found himself safe with his ally, the Sheikh of Hebron. His harem he left under the protection of the old Pasha; for he knew Mohammed Ali was a generous enemy.

The meeting of Salem and Aali was extremely amusing; but Aali was soon consoled for the loss of his bride, by the thanks and promises of both father and son, and the praises of the Sheikh of Hebron. Sidney was pressed to accompany the party immediately to Hebron, for it was not deemed prudent for Salem to trust himself in the power of the Osmanlee governor of Gaza. This invitation he declined, as his own arrangements, and his promise to meet Ringlady and Campbell, compelled him to remain at Gaza. Besides, he could not help recollecting, that in spite of all these warm professions of friendship now uttered by Salem, he had been mounted at Saba Biar in a manner that proved the intention of the Arabs to take care of themselves by abandoning their companions in case of pursuit.

It was arranged, before separating, that the party should ride to a grove of olive-trees, at no great distance from Gaza, where roast lambs stuffed with rice, raisins, and pistachio nuts, large bowls of leban and thin cakes of bread, were prepared for their refreshment. Salem and Sidney had some interesting conversation concerning the state of Syria, and the position of Mohammed Ali; and they parted with mutual expressions of esteem--Salem warning Sidney rather mysteriously against making any stay at Gaza. After Oriental greetings, and long salutations, Salem, Aali, Abdallah, Hassan and the Sheikh of Hebron rode off with their train of followers to the east; while Sidney, Lascelles Hamilton, and Achmet slowly proceeded towards Gaza, to repose after their fatigues in crossing the desert.

LIFE OF JEAN PAUL FREDERICK RICHTER.[3]

If there be a regular German of the Germans beyond the Rhine and be-north the Alps, whom, notwithstanding (perhaps partly by reason of) his faults and eccentricities, we love, and honour, and reverence, and clasp to our true British breast with a genuine feeling of brotherhood,--this man is Jean Paul Frederick Richter. True, his name to the uninitiated is a sort of offence, and a stumbling-block, almost as much as if you were to introduce the gray, leafless image of transcendental logic in the shape of philosopher Hegel, or the super-potentiated energy of transcendental volition in the shape of philosopher Fichte;--but, my dear friends and readers, consider this only,--what thing pre-eminently great and good is there in the world that has not been in its day an offence and a stumbling-block to the uninitiated? “Wo unto you, when all men speak well of you:” this is a text no less applicable to literature than to religion; and howsoever a certain school of critics--unfortunately not yet altogether extinct--may turn up their snub noses, and apply with orthodox deliberation their cool thermometer which never boils, there are occasions when this text may be quoted most appropriately against them. Even Göethe, “many-sided” Göethe, is not free from blame here--he never understood Richter; he judged according to the appearance--not a righteous judgment; his thermometer was too cold. But the great Olympian of Weimar, when with his dark brows he nodded, and from his immortal head the ambrosian locks rolled down in anger against the uprising muse of Frederick Richter, failed of his Homeric parallel in one point--“μεγαν δ' ελελιξεν Ολυμπον”--he did _not_ shake Olympus. He did not cause the eccentric comet-genius of Richter to tame the brilliant lashings of its world-wandering tail--he did not cause Germany, he cannot cause Europe to cease admiring these brilliant coruscations, and that pure lambent play of heaven-licking light. To institute a comparison between Richter and Göethe were merely to repeat again for the millionth time that old folly of critics, by which they will allow nothing to be understood according to its own nature, but must always drag it into a forced and unnatural contrast with things most unlike itself; were merely to reverse the poles of injustice, and apply to Göethe as unequal a measure as he and men of his compact and complete external neatness, apply to Richter. We make no foolish and unprofitable comparisons; a wild wood is a wild wood, and a flower-bed is a flower-bed; which of them is best we know not, but we know that they are both good. We know that Göethe is great, and that Richter is great; which of them is the greater some god, as the Greeks said, may know; but for us mortals it is sufficient to endeavour to sympathise perfectly with the peculiar greatness of each, and appropriate what part of it we may.

We should wish to make this a very long article, and to run a little wild, like Richter himself, if the inspiration would only sustain us; but it may not be. Biographies, even the best, of literary men possess a complete and satisfactory interest only to those who are acquainted in some degree with the works of the author; and Madame de Stael has told us with an authoritative voice that, however great the powers of Richter were, “nothing that he has published can ever extend beyond the limits of Germany.”[4] Now, though this has more the air of a narrow last-century judgment than one of the present day, and is, perhaps, more French than English; yet the fact is, that Richter has not hitherto extended his literary influence, except in the case of a few stray individuals, beyond his native country; and his biography can, of course, not expect to meet with the same extensive welcome from a British public that was given to that of Schiller, and Mrs Austin’s Characteristics of Göethe. Nevertheless, the work from which we shall presently make a few extracts is a most valuable addition to those links that are daily uniting us with more endearing bonds to the Saxon brotherhood beyond the Rhine; it is a step, and a bold one, in advance. We have now almost to satiety made a survey of the neat classical Weimar, and we are plunging at once, with bold fearless swoop, into the very centre of the Fatherland, into the midst of the untrodden fir forests of the _Fichtelgebirge_, where many great hearts billow out sublime thoughts--hearts that never saw that which is most kindred to them in nature--the sea. So it was with Richter literally. Born at the little mountain town of Wunsiedel, between Bayreuth and Bohemia, and shifting about with a migratory elasticity from Bayreuth to Berlin, from Berlin to Coburg, from Coburg to Heidelberg, he died without having ever feasted his eyes (what a feast to a man like him!) on the glowing blue of the Mediterranean, or drunk in with his ears the “ανηριθμον γελασμα” the multitudinous laughter of the Baltic wave. A genuine German!--in this respect certainly, and in how many others! A German in imagination--Oh, Heaven! he literally strikes you blind with skyrockets and sunbeams (almost as madly at times as our own Shelley), and circumnavigates your brain with a dance of nebulous Brocken phantoms, till you seriously doubt whether you are not a phantom yourself: a German for kindliness and simplicity and true-heartedness--a man having his heart always in his hand, and his arms ready to be thrown round every body’s neck; greeting every man with a blessing, and cursing only the devil, and--like Robert Burns--scarcely him heartily: a German for devoutness of heart, and purity of unadulterated evangelic feeling, without the least notion, at the same time, of what in Scotland we call orthodoxy, much less of what in England they call church; a rare Christian; a man whom you cannot read and relish thoroughly unless you are a Christian yourself, any more than you can the gospel of John. For Richter also is a preacher in his own way--a smiling, sporting, nay a jesting preacher at time, but with a deep background of earnestness: his jests being the jests not of rude men, but of innocent children; his earnestness the earnestness not of a sour Presbyterian theologian, but of a strong-sighted seraph that looks the sun in the face, and becomes intensely bright. A German further is Richter, and better than a German, in the profoundness of his philosophy and the subtlety of his speculation: a speculation profound, but not dark; a subtlety nice without being finical, and delicate without being meagre. A German further, and specially, is this man, in his vast and various erudition, and in that quality without which learning was never achieved, hard laboriousness and indefatigable perseverance. It is incredible what books he read: not merely literary books, but also and principally scientific books; natural history especially in all its branches from the star to the star-fish; quarto upon quarto of piously gathered extracts were the well-quarried materials, out of which his most light and fantastic, as well as his most solid and architectural fabrics were raised: a merit of the highest order in our estimation; an offence and a scandal to many; for nothing offends conceited and shallow readers so much as to find in an imaginative work allusions to grave scientific facts, of which their butterfly-spirits are incapable. Then, over and above all this, Richter possesses a virtue which only a few Germans possess: he is a man of infinite humour: humour, too, of the best kind; sportive, sunny, and genial, rather than cutting and sarcastic; broad without being gross, refined without being affected. Then his faults, also--and their name is legion--how German are they! His want of taste, his mingled homeliness and sublimity, his unpruned luxuriance, his sentimental wantonness! But let these pass; he who notices them seriously is not fit to read Richter. It requires a certain delicate tact of finger to pluck the rose on this rich bush without being pricked by the thorn; John Bull especially, with his stone and lime church, his statutable religion, and his direct railroad understanding, is very apt to be exasperated by the capricious jerking electric points of such a genuine German genius as Richter. On the pediment of this strange temple we would place in large letters the cry of the Cumæan Sibyl in Virgil--

“Procul, O procul este, profani!”

Let no mere mathematician, no mere Benthamite, no mere mechanist, no mere “botanist,” no mere man of taste, and trim man of measured syllables, enter here. _Procul, O procul este, profani!_ It is enchanted ground. We have no quarrel with you; we quarrel with nobody: only keep your own ground, in God’s name, and don’t quarrel with us and our German friend Paul.

Richter was born, as we have mentioned, in the little county town of Wunsiedel, in Franconia, and that in the year 1763--about the same time, to use his own words, as the peace of Hubertsburg, which put an end to the famous Seven Years’ War. He was thus four years the junior of Schiller, (born 1759,) and fourteen of Göethe, (born 1749.) He was, like many other famous literary characters, the son of a clergyman, and blesses God frequently both for this, and that he was not born a cockney, (in Berlin or Vienna,) or in a coach-box, like the children of aristocratic parents, driven about over Europe in their early years, and never knowing the pleasure of having a home. A country vicarage amid mountains, forests, village schools and brawling brooks, gave to Richter’s infancy, and through that to his genius, a calm and peaceful background, over which a multiplicity of whimsical figures might, without painful dissipation, be made to play. In early youth the future prose-poet (for he never wrote a line of _metre_) displayed great eagerness to learn, and great aptitude for speculation; he was accordingly, by the fond ambition of a pious mother, dedicated, like so many a bookish youth, to the church. But theology, with its prickly fence of stiff dogmas, had no charms for a youth of his extreme sensibility, mercurial versatility, and sparkling freakishness; besides, speculation and questioning were already abroad in the German church, and amid the loud voices of contending doctors, it was a difficult thing for an active and honest thinker to cut the matter short by help of the devil’s recipe in Faust;

“If you will have a certain clue
To thread the theologic maze,
Hear only one, and swear to every word he says.”

Richter, therefore, finding himself without rudder or compass on the wide sea of German theology, much to the grief of his honest mother, was obliged to forswear theology and become author, his genius being stimulated quite as much by poverty as by Apollo, like old Horace.

“Philippi then dismiss’d me with my wings
Sorrily clipt, without or house or home;
And Need, that ventures all, forced me to try
The pen, and become poet.”

The Philippi which dismissed Richter was the University of Leipsic. He came back to Hof penniless, but not hopeless, to his good mother,--striving with a mind in some respects as narrow as her fortune; and here he studied, and brooded, and dreamed, and began to shoot strange coruscations: let us see how:--

“The darkest period of our hero’s life was when he fled from
Leipsic and went down in disguise to Hof. The lawsuit had
stripped his mother of the little property she inherited from
the cloth-weaver, [her father,] and she had been obliged to part
with the respectable homestead where the honest man had carried
on his labours. She was now living with one or more of Paul’s
brothers, in a small tenement, containing but one apartment,
where cooking, washing, cleaning, spinning, and all the bee-hive
labours of domestic life must go on together.

“To this small and over-crowded apartment, which henceforth must
be Paul’s only study, he brought his twelve volumes of extracts,
a head that in itself contained a library, a tender and
sympathising heart--a true, high-minded, self-sustaining spirit.
His exact situation was this: The success of the first and
second volumes of his ‘Greenland Lawsuits’ had encouraged him to
write a third--a volume of satires, under the singular name of
‘Selections from the Papers of the Devil;’ but for this we have
seen he had strained every nerve in vain to find a publisher.
This manuscript, therefore, formed part of the little luggage
which his friend Oerthel had smuggled out of Leipsic. It was
winter, and from his window he looked out upon the cold, empty,
frozen street of the little city of Hof, or he was obliged to
be a prisoner, without, as he says, ‘the prisoner’s fare of
bread and water, for he had only the latter; and if a gulden
found its way into the house, the jubilee was such, that the
windows were nearly broken with joy.’ At the same time he was
under the ban of his costume martyrdom: this he could have
laughed at and reformed; but hunger and thirst were actual
evils, and when of prisoner’s food he had only the thinner part,
he could well exclaim, as Carlyle has said--

‘Night it must be e’er Friedland’s star will beam’

“Without was no help, no counsel, but there lay a giant force
within; and so, from the depths of that sorrow and abasement,
his better soul rose purified and invincible, like Hercules from
his long labours.

“‘What is poverty,’ he said, at this time, ‘that a man should
whine under it? It is but like the pain of piercing the ears of
a maiden, and you hang precious jewels in the wound.’”

The “costume martyrdom” here mentioned, is a most characteristic affair; and as a great man’s character is often revealed most strikingly in small matters, we shall give it at length.

Partly from fancy, partly from necessity, Paul had adopted a peculiar style of dress, entirely at variance with the fashion of the day. He writes to his mother:--

“As I can make my vests (from extreme poverty) last no longer, I have determined to do without them; and if you send me some over-shirts, I can dispense with these vests. They must be made with open collars _à la Hamlet_; but this nobody will understand; in short, the breast must be open, so that the bare throat may be seen. My hair, also, I have had cut. [It was the day of queues and powder.] It is pronounced by my friends more becoming, and it spares one the expense of the hair-dresser. I have, still some locks a little curled.”

The young poet was right in suspecting, that “nobody would understand” the right of private judgment in important matters of this kind; but he did not at that time understand himself the extent of torture and martyrdom to which this Hamlet garb was to expose him. Among the good Burgers in Hof the scandal of an unpowdered pate and a bare throat was intolerable; the young author’s firmest friends remonstrated with him, most earnestly and seriously on the subject; but to no purpose: Paul was determined to vindicate his poetical liberty in this matter; however small in itself, there was a principle involved in it of the utmost consequence in social life. See how philosophically the parties argue the point. Pastor Vogel, the earliest prophet of Richter’s future fame, wrote and reasoned as follows:--

“‘You value only the inward, not the outward--the kernel, not
the husk. But, with your permission, is not the _whole_ composed
of the _form_ and the _matter_? Is one disfigured? so is the
other. You condemn probably the philosophy of Diogenes, that
separated its hero so much from other men, that it placed him in
a tub. How can you justify yourself, if your philosophy serves
you in the same way? No, my friend, you must open your eyes and
see that you are not the only son of earth, but, like the ants
in their ant-hills, you live in the tumult of life.

“‘Would you not hold that painter unwise, who should offend in
costume--paint his Romans in sleeves and curled hair; the person
of a man with petticoat and open bosom? Oh! that is not to be
endured! Yet, a couple of proverbs--‘Swim not against the tide.’
‘Among wolves, learn to howl.’ ‘Vulgar proverbs!’ you will say.
Yes, but elevated wisdom. The true philosophy is, not for others
to adapt themselves to us, but for us to adapt ourselves to
others. Whoever forgets this great axiom, advances few steps
without stumbling. But what do you seek? In the midst of Germany
to become a Briton? Do you not in this way say, ‘Put on your
spectacles, ye little people, and behold! see that you cannot be
what I am.’ Ah, to speak thus, your _modesty_ forbids! Avoid
every thing that in the smallest degree lessens your value among
your contemporaries.’

“To this gentle remonstrance, Paul replied:--‘I answer your
letter willingly, for the sake of its argument, which your good
heart rather than your good head has dictated. Your proverbs are
not reasons, or if they are, they prove too much: for if I would
swim with the stream, this stream would often make shipwreck of
my virtue--the kingdom of vice is as great and extensive as the
kingdom of fashion; and if I must howl with the wolves, why
should I not rob with them? If the shell is injured the kernel
suffers also,’ you say. But wherefore? Let us decide what does
injure the shell. You consider that an evil to Diogenes which
others hold an advantage. Did the so-called injury rob this
great man of his philosophy, his good heart, his wit, his
virtue? It robbed him not--but it gave him peace, independence
of outward judgments, freedom from tormenting wants, and the
incapacity of being wounded; and with this consciousness he
could venture upon the punishment of every vice. Great man!
Thank God that thou wert born in a country where they wondered
at thy wisdom, instead of, as at present, punishing it. Fools
would commit the only wise man to a madhouse; but, like
Socrates, he would ennoble his prison.

“‘The painter would be ridiculous in offending against costume.’
This is true, but more witty than applicable to me. I need only
say, that the painter of costume is not the greatest in his art;
he is great whose pencil creates, not after the tailor, but
after God; paints bodies, not dresses. The painter’s creations
can only please through form, which is the shell; and am I
designed for that? Is it my destination, with my organised
ugliness, to please? Scarcely--if I would.

“‘But enough. I hold the constant regard that we pay in all our
actions to the judgments of others as the poison of our peace,
our reason, and our virtue. Upon this slave’s chain have I long
filed, but I scarcely hope ever to break it.’

“This humorous controversy was kept up for some months on paper,
as games of chess are played in Holland, without either party
saying check to the king. At last Paul consented, as he called
it, to _inhull_ his person, and put an end to this tragicomical
affair, by the following circular addressed to his friends:--

‘ADVERTISEMENT.

“‘The undersigned begs to give notice, that whereas cropped hair
has as many enemies as red hair, and said enemies of the hair
are likewise enemies of the person it grows upon; whereas,
further, such a fashion is in no respect Christian, since,
otherwise, Christian persons would adopt it; and whereas
especially, the undersigned has suffered no less from his hair
than Absalom did from his, though on contrary grounds; and
whereas it has been notified to him, that the public proposed to
send him into his grave, since the hair grows there without
scissors: he hereby gives notice, that he will not willingly
consent to such extremities. He would, therefore, inform the
noble, learned, and discerning public in general, that the
undersigned proposes on Sunday next to appear in the various
important streets of Hof, with a false, short queue; and with
this queue, as with a magnet, and cord of love, and magic rod,
to possess himself forcibly of the affection of all and sundry,
be they who they may.

“J. P. F. R.’”

Points of this kind have been often argued seriously enough between loving aunts solicitous of propriety, and brisk nephews solicitous of independence, perhaps also affecting singularity; but let it stand here discussed more profoundly and systematically by a sensible German pastor and a profound German poet-philosopher, _in perpetuam rei memoriam_. Right or wrong, nothing could mark the man more decidedly; always independent and original in his principles of action, and ever willing to yield to innocent prejudice when he had once openly vindicated his principle.

To pass from trifles to the serious business of authorship, the following extract is most instructive and full of character:--

“As these years, spent with his mother in Hof, were the most
uninterruptedly studious of Richter’s life, it seems the place
to give some account of the manner in which he pursued his
studies. That plan must be a good one, and of use to others, of
which he could say, ‘Of one thing I am certain; I have made as
much out of myself, as could be made of the _stuff_, and no man
should require more.’

“First in importance, he aimed, in the rules he formed for
himself, at a just division of time and power, and he never
permitted himself, from the first, to spend his strength upon
any thing useless. He so managed his capital, that the future
should pay him all ever-increasing interest on the present. The
nourishment of his mind was drawn from three great
sources--living Nature, in connexion with human life; the world
of books, and the inner world of thought; these he considered
the raw material given him to work up.

“We have already mentioned his manuscript library. In his
fifteenth year, before he entered the Hof gymnasium, he had made
many quarto volumes, containing hundreds of pages of
closely-written extracts from all the celebrated works he could
borrow, and from the periodicals of the day. In this way he had
formed a repertory of all the sciences. For if, in the
beginning, when he thought himself destined to the study of
theology, his extracts were from philosophical theology, the
second volume contained natural history, poetry, and, in
succession, medicine, jurisprudence, and universal science. He
had also anticipated one of the results of modern book-making.
He wrote a collection of what are now called _hand-books_, of
geography, natural history, follies, good and bad names,
interesting facts, comical occurrences, touching incidents, &c.

“He observed Nature as a great book, from which he was to make
extracts, and carefully collected all the facts that bore the
stamp of a contriving mind, whose adaptation he could see, or
only anticipate, and formed a book which bore the simple title
‘_Nature_.’

“When he meditated a new work, the first thing was to stitch
together a blank book, in which he sketched the outlines of his
characters, the principal scenes, thoughts to be worked in, &c.,
and called it ‘_Quarry for Hesperus_,’ ‘_Quarry for Titan_,’ &c.
One of his biographers has given us such a book, containing his
studies for Titan, which occupies seventy closely-printed
duodecimo pages.

“Richter began also in his earliest youth to form a dictionary,
and continued it through the whole of his literary life. In this
he wrote down synonymes, and all the shades of meaning of which
a word was susceptible. For one word he had found more than two
hundred. Add to this mass of writing, that he copied all his
letters, and it is surprising how any time remained. He made it
a rule to give but one half of the day to writing, the other
remained for the invention of his various works, which he
accomplished while walking in the open air.

“These long walks, through valley and over mountain, steeled his
body to bear all vicissitudes of weather, and added to his
science in atmospheric changes, so that he was called by his
townsmen the _weather prophet_. He is described by one who met
him on the hills, with open breast and flying hair, singing as
he went, while he held a book in his hand. Richter at this time
was slender, with a thin pale face, a high nobly-formed brow,
around which curled fine blonde hair. His eyes were a clear soft
blue, but capable of an intense fire, like sudden lightning. He
had a well-formed nose, and, as his biographer expresses it, ‘a
lovely lip-kissing mouth.’ He wore a loose green coat and straw
hat, and was always accompanied by his dog.

“As Richter from every walk returned to the little household
apartment where his mother carried on her never-ceasing female
labours, where half of every day he sat at his desk, he became
acquainted with all the thoughts, all the conversation, the
whole circle of the relations of the humble society in Hof. He
saw the value and significance of the smallest things. The joys,
the sorrows, the loves and aversions, the whole of life, in this
Teniers’ picture passed before him. He himself was a principal
figure in this limited circle. He sat with Plato in his hand,
while his mother scattered fresh sand on the floor for Sunday,
or added some small luxury to the table on days of festival. His
hardly-earned groschen went to purchase the goose for Martinmas,
while he dreamed of his future glory among distinguished men.
Long years he was one of this humble society. He did not
approach it as other poets have done, from time to time, to
study for purposes of art the humbler classes; he felt himself
one of them, and in this school he learned that sympathy with
humanity which has made him emphatically in Germany the ‘poet of
the poor.’”