Chapter II: Part 2

Laura frequently sent Sally small presents of money, but Isabel, though not so regular as her sister, surprised every one by the splendour of her presents, when they did come. As Bella entered her second year, she received from her godmother a beautiful little carriage, which Thomas said must have “spoilt a five pound note.” This was Isabel’s last gift, for it was at about this time that she accepted an offer from a French count, and became so absorbed in her own affairs, that she forgot Fanny and Bella too. Poor Bella grew more and more sickly every month; the apothecary ordered her beef tea, arrowroot, and other strengthening diet, but work was slack with Thomas, and it was with difficulty that he could procure her the commonest food. “I am sure,” said Fanny to her cousin, as little Bella was whining on her knee, “that if only Miss Isabel were here, she would set us all right. She never could bear to see even a stranger in distress.”

“I wish,” said Thomas, “that great folks would think a little of what they don’t see. I’ll lay anything Miss Isabel gives away a deal of money, more than enough to save our little one, to a set of French impostors that cry after her in the street, and yet, when she knows our child is ill, she never cares, because she can’t see it grow thin, or hear it cry.”

“For shame, Thomas,” said his wife, “do not speak so rudely of the young lady. Have you forgotten the pretty carriage she sent Bella, and how pleased we were when it came?”

“I don’t mean any harm,” answered her husband; “only it strikes me that Miss was pleased to buy the carriage because it was pretty, and seemed a great thing to send us, and that she would ’nt have cared a straw to give us a little each, that would have served us every bit as well.”

“I never heard you so ungrateful, Thomas. Of course she would ’nt, because she wished to please us.”

“Or herself, as John said; but may be I am wrong; only it goes to my heart to see the child want food while there is a filagree carriage in the yard that cost more than would keep her for six months.”

“Well, cheer up,” said Sally; “Miss Laura will be coming home soon, and I’ll lay anything she won’t let Bella die of want.”

“I’m afraid she won’t think of giving to me, Sally,” said Fanny despondingly; “I was never her maid, you know.”

“You would ’nt fear, if you knew Miss Laura as I do, Fanny; she never cares who she helps so long as the person is deserving, and in want. She has no pride of that sort.”

Isabel’s marriage was put off, and Laura’s return, consequently, postponed. As Bella grew worse every day, and yet no help came, the unselfish Sally wrote to her patroness, telling her of poor Fanny’s distress, and begging her either to send her help, or speak on her behalf to her sister.

Isabel was dressing for a party when Laura showed her Sally’s letter. “Poor Fanny,” said she, “I wish I had known it before I bought this wreath. I have, absolutely, not a half-franc in the world. Will you buy the wreath of me at half-price, it has not even been taken from its box.”

“I do not want it,” said Laura, “but I will lend you some money.”

“No, I cannot borrow more,” said her sister despondingly. “I owe you already for the flowers, the brooch, the bill you paid yesterday, and I know not what else besides; but I will tell Eugène there is a poor Englishwoman in distress, I am sure he will send her something.”

Eugène gave a five-franc piece.

It was late one frosty evening when Sally ran across to her cousin’s cottage, delighted to be the bearer of the long hoped-for letter. Fanny was sitting on the fender before a small fire, hugging her darling to her breast, and breathing on its little face to make the air warmer. “I’m afraid,” said she, in answer to Sally’s inquiries, “that the child won’t be here long;” and she wiped away a few hot tears that had forced their way as she sat listening to the low moans of the little sufferer.

“But I have good news for you,” said her cousin, cheerfully. “Here is a letter from Miss Isabel at last. I would not tell you before, but I wrote to Miss Laura, saying how you were expecting every week to be put to bed again, and how Bella was wasting away, and see, I was right about her, she has sent you a sovereign, and her sister’s letter, no doubt, contains a pretty sum.”

Fanny started up, and could scarcely breathe as she broke the seal. What was her disappointment on seeing an order for five shillings!

“I am very sorry, my good Fanny,” said Isabel, “that just now I have no money. A charitable gentleman sends you five shillings, and as soon as I possibly can, I will let you have a large sum. I have not yet paid for the carriage I sent you, and as the bill has been given me several times, I must discharge it before I send away more money. I hope that by this time, little Bella is better.”

Fanny laid her child upon the bed, and putting her face by its side, shed bitter tears. Sally did not speak, and so both remained till Thomas came in from his work. Fanny would have hidden the letter from him, but he saw and seized it in a moment.

“Five guineas for a carriage, and five shillings for a child’s life,” said he with a sneer, as he laid it down. “Do not look for the large sum, Fanny, you won’t get it; but I will work hard, and bury the child decently.”

Fanny felt no inclination to defend her mistress. For the first time, it occurred to her that Thomas and John might be right in their judgment of her. She raised Bella, as Thomas, who had been twisting up the money order, was about to throw it in the fire. He caught a sight of the child’s wan face, and, advancing to the bed, said, in a softened tone, “Do you know father, pretty one?” and as Bella smiled, faintly, he added, “I will do anything for your sake. Here, Fanny, take the money, and get the child something nourishing.”

Bella seemed to revive from getting better food; and the apothecary held out great hope of her ultimate recovery, if the improved diet could be continued; but expenses fell heavily on Thomas, Fanny was put to bed with a fine strong little boy, and, though Sally and Mrs. Maythorn devoted themselves to her and Bella, the anxiety she suffered from being separated from her invalid child, added to her former constant uneasiness, and want of proper food, brought on a fever that threatened her life. In a few days she became quite delirious. During this time Isabel was married, and Laura returned to England.

When Fanny regained her consciousness she was in the dark, but she could see someone standing by the window. On her speaking the person advanced to her side. “Do not be startled to find me here,” said a sweet soft voice. “Sally has watched by your side for three nights, and when I came this evening she looked so ill that I insisted on her going to bed; then, as we could find no one on whose care and watchfulness we could depend, I took her place. You have been in a sound sleep Dr. Hart said you would wake up much better. Are you better?”

“Yes, ma’am, a deal better; but where am I, and who is it with me?”

“You are in your own pretty cottage, and Miss Laura is with you. You expected me home, did you not?”

“Oh thank God; who sent you, dear Miss Laura? How is—but may be I had best not ask just while I am so weak. Is the dear boy well?”

“Yes, quite well; and Bella is much better. I have sent her for a few days to L——, with Mrs. Maythorn; the sea air will do her good.”

“Oh, thank you—thank you—dear young lady for the thought. I seem so bound up in that dear child, that nothing could comfort me for her loss. How good and kind you are, Miss—you do all so well and so quietly!”

“Yes, Fanny, dear,” said Thomas, coming from behind the curtain and stooping to kiss his wife. “Miss Laura has saved you and Bella, and me too, for I could’nt have lived if you had died; and has found me work; and all without making one great present, or doing anything one could speak about. I’ll tell you what it is, wife, dear, Miss Isabel does all for the best, but it is just as she feels at the moment. Now Miss Laura—if I may be so bold to speak, Miss—Miss Laura does not give to please her own feelings, but to do good. I can’t say it well, but do you say it for me, Miss; I want Fanny to know the right words, to teach the little ones by-and-bye. You know what I wish to say, Miss Laura.”

“Yes Thomas,” said Laura, blushing, “but I do not say you are right. You mean, I think, that my sister acts from impulse, and I from principle. Is that it?”

“I suppose that’s it, Miss,” said Thomas, considering, and apparently not quite satisfied.

“You have no harder meaning, I am sure,” said Laura, quietly, “because I love my sister very much.”

“Certainly not, Miss,” returned Thomas. “But, myself, if I may take the liberty of gratefully saying so, I prefer to be acted to on principle, and think it a good deal better than impulse.”

CHIPS.

TORTURE IN THE WAY OF BUSINESS.

The mention in a recent number of the extreme cruelty practised on calves, has drawn forth the following statement from a correspondent,—a clergyman in Bedfordshire:—

“A member of my family was witness to the following act of barbarity, viz., that of plucking the feathers from a duck while yet alive. Upon being expostulated with, the man replied that it was a common practice,—‘we _half_ break their necks, then pluck them while they are warm, and then finish them off.’ This act of cruelty was witnessed in Brighton Market. If the above will at all assist you in exposing the atrocities which are practised on the brute creation, I shall be thankful. The public generally (save a few gross sensualists) have only, it is to be hoped, to be told what is practised on many articles of consumption, to make them protest against such wanton insults on God’s workmanship.”

The only means of accounting for such irrational cruelty, is the supposition that the offending poulterers imagine ducks to be endowed by nature with no more feeling than feather-beds.

The savage indifference with which unappreciable agonies are systematically inflicted upon sentient creatures, strikes us occasionally with wonder. The police reports have lately revealed a case which nothing but the best testimony could render credible. A correspondent of the Times Newspaper was some weeks since walking in the Walworth Road, when he saw several persons assembled round the shop of a butcher; half a dozen men were endeavouring to force two bullocks into a slaughter-house. The butcher’s journeyman struck one of the animals on the legs with a broom handle, which had a sharp pointed spike. The door of the slaughter-house was very narrow; the man got a rope and fixed it tightly round the horns of the bullock, and some of them then pulled this from the inside of the slaughter-house; the others were beating the brute behind and pushing it on. He saw one of the butchers twisting the animal’s tail till he doubled it up, and the bones were dislocated—at least, he was led to think so by the right angle formed by the two portions of the tail. The man’s hands were covered with blood which flowed from the tail; and he rubbed the dislocated parts together, which caused the poor animal to moan most piteously. Several of the bystanders expressed their disgust.

The fellows were brought before the Lambeth magistrate by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; but unfortunately the principal witness mistook one of the offenders for another person—his brother. The complaint, therefore, from that legal informality, broke down.

The defendants appeared to treat the mere pulling a bullock through a passage too small for its comfortable admission, with ropes tied to its horns; the pushing it with goads from behind; the agonising twisting of its tail; as matters of the most perfect indifference. In his exultation at getting off, one of them facetiously promised the magistrate, in answer to an expostulation as to the narrowness of the passage, “that, to oblige his Worship, he would make the place big enough to admit a full-grown elephant, or a hippopotamus.”

We have in former articles shown that this sort of brutality is of everyday occurrence, and perpetrated in the regular way of business. Use begets insensibility. We have no doubt that the poulterer and butchers concerned in the atrocities we have detailed, are worthy men enough in their families. They would not tear the hair out of the head of a child, or goad a wife with a broomstick, for the world. They are most likely tender fathers and affectionate husbands; but in the way of business, as poulterers, and butchers, what can exceed, or what censure can be too sharp for, their cruelty? Exposure is the only cure; and this we will always do our part in administering.

A COTTAGE MEMORY.

In that far foreign country, the dream of old days
And old haunts often bears me to Anthony Wray’s;
The white little cottage with nest-crowded eaves,
Peeping out half the year from an ambush of leaves.

And now once again have my footsteps been there,
And have found it—deserted, dismantled, and bare;
Except where the wall-flow’rs still cluster and wave
On the gable: they now are like flow’rs on a grave.

At that window, I thought as I passed through the door,
Where the late sunbeam strikes down the weed-covered floor,
How often the sunlight and moonlight have shone
Upon bright, living faces, that now are all gone.

In the choice ingle-nook stood no Martha’s arm-chair,
But a heap of dead leaves which the wind had swept there;
The low-talking wind that breathed thoughts of the time
When young voices rang round like a holiday chime.

And the hearth had become like a cold churchyard stone,
Encrusted with mould and with moss overgrown,
That had glowed through so many a long winter night,
The heart of the cottage, a core of warm light.

What talk and what mirth there! what tales told or read
To the children that listened in joy tinged with dread!
A storm shakes the window; they solemnly gaze
On each other, and draw their stools nearer the blaze.

Their father is drowsy with labour gone through,
And the deep satisfaction of nothing to do;
The woof of light sleep in its network has bound him,
And home mildly shines through the mist that’s around him.

The mother sits knitting and smiling fond praise;
The cheek of the youngest shines warm in the blaze
As he rests his white head on his grandmother’s knee;
Alas! that these pictures mere phantoms should be.

As ghosts of burnt roses cloud up from their ashes,
Rise scenes from the past in these transient flashes;
Thin visions, soon melted, which leave the heart sore,
By half-showing that which they will not restore.

Could it be that this Household was gone, and for ever?
The wood looked unchanged, and the fields, and the river;
Co-tenants of time, even part did these seem
Of beings who now are but shapes of a dream.

The broad-leaved horse-chesnut my thoughts used to wed
With those for whose shelter its boughs seemed to spread,
Dipped slowly in sunlight its fans as of old,
But beneath, all had passed “like a tale that is told.”

Long I stood, and had no word of comfort to say
Yet not unconsoled did I turn me away:
Thank God for the faith that is stronger than grief,
The fountain that springs to the parched soul’s relief.

The whispered assurance which raises and soothes,
That these are the phantoms, and those still the truths;
And their trials and virtues, their tears and their mirth
_Not_ faded like yesterday’s light from the earth!

“CAPE” SKETCHES.

There is a peculiarity evinced by such of the advocates of colonisation as have acquainted themselves personally with colonial life, which puts in a strong light the adaptability of most of our territories beyond sea for bettering the condition of enterprising emigrants. It is this:—each man vaunts loudly the superiority of the colony he has visited over all the others. “How is it possible,” writes a settler in New Zealand to us, “that people will be so blind as to risk their capital in Australia while there is New Zealand, the finest country, with the finest climate in the world!” The friend, who occasionally amuses and instructs us with his vivid sketches of Australian life, exclaims—“New Zealand!—Where are its markets?—What is a farmer to do with his produce when he has got it?—No, no; my advice is Sydney.” “By no means,” ejaculates a third, just home from Port Philip, “South Australia is the country for an energetic man to gain independence and wealth.” A successful emigrant, hot from Hobart Town, vaunts the advantages of Van Dieman’s Land. Our friend from Canada over-rides all these opinions. “Why,” he argues, “go to uncivilised, uncultivated, and far-off countries, when you can, at once, join established communities, and enjoy regular British institutions, only a three weeks’ sail distant; where markets are regular, food cheap, and where (on account of the intense cold) there is nothing to do for one-third of the year?” Lastly, we are favoured with the opinion of a five years’ resident in South Africa:—“Truly,” he says, “people who brave the regions of a northern climate, who expose their lives in dangerous proximity to savages, who heed not agues in swamps, nor thirst in deserts, forget there is such a place as the Cape of Good Hope.”

Although all this one-sided enthusiasm does not prove either of the respective cases argued by the different advocates; yet it shows in a broad light the certain advantages of emigration in general. To whatever quarter of the globe the observer turns, he sees, amidst occasional instances of disappointment and loss, that emigration has, in general, answered the expectations of the emigrants. But this general success he does not attribute to the soundness of the principle in the abstract, but to the advantages of the particular country in which he has witnessed the most prosperity.

In, therefore, sifting and comparing with other evidence the numerous papers which we receive from, and relative to, the various colonies, it is our aim to give such true pictures of colonial life as enable the reader to judge fairly of the pains, pleasures, losses and gains of all the new homes which have been established by and for Englishmen in various parts of the globe.

We have been led into these remarks by a communication now before us from the gentleman already mentioned who has passed five active years in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope. His characteristic preface to the amusing and instructive sketches of Cape Life is as follows:—

“I cannot but think, that, in the present rage for promoting
emigration, too much attention is paid to new and untried countries
whose resources are as yet doubtful and undeveloped, to the detriment
of the old established colonies, whose constant cry is for ‘labour,
labour, labour.’ Amongst the least popular of our old colonies is the
Cape of Good Hope. Yet I think, that most, if not all, the objections
usually raised against it are erroneous; while many of its undoubted
advantages are overlooked. It is my desire, if possible, to remove
some of the prejudices entertained against a land where I spent five
happy years of my life. My intention is simply to give a few
travelling sketches, and to portray some of the characteristic
features of the country and its inhabitants.”

Cape Wine enjoys a very unenviable notoriety in England. Order a glass of sherry at a fourth-rate tavern: taste it—it is _very_ bad—you turn up your nose and cry “Cape!” Mr. Lazarus, a Hebrew dealer in wine and money, “does a little bill” for you, and sends you home as part payment a few dozen of “excellent Madeira.” Are you rash enough to taste it? If so, as soon as you have recovered from the sputtering caused by its fearful acidity, you mutter a phrase never mentioned to ears polite, and say again—“Cape!” In fact, whenever you drink any vile compound, under the name of wine, to which you are at a loss to ascribe a native land, you cry—“Cape!”

The old adage of “give a dog a bad name and hang him,” is fully exemplified here. Still it must be admitted that the dog must first have _earned_ his bad name. So it is with Cape Wine. It _was_ very bad, and a great part of it is so still; while decidedly the worst of it is sent to England. I have often endeavoured to persuade the wine farmers that this is bad policy on their part; but they will not be convinced. They say that Cape Wine has a bad name in the market; that it is bought only as “Cape Wine,” without any distinction of vintage or class; and that the worst of it brings them as good a price as the best. And yet there is a vast difference in the various qualities; and even the best of them are still susceptible of wonderful improvement.

There is a similarity between the Cape and the Madeira grape. Both are cultivated very much in the same manner, but the grand point of difference between the two is the time of gathering the grapes. In Madeira they are not gathered till so ripe that many begin to fall, and many are withered from over ripeness; these are of course rejected. By this means a smaller amount of wine is obtained from a vineyard than would have been produced had the grapes been gathered earlier: but the quality of the wine is improved beyond conception. Every grape is full, ripe, and luscious, and the wine partakes of its quality. Nothing can prove more clearly the necessity of the grape being fully, and rather _over_ ripe, than the difference of the wine produced on the north side of the Island of Madeira, where this perfection of the grape can scarcely be attained, and that grown on the south side: the latter is Nectar; the former Cape; or little better.

Now at _the_ Cape the object of the farmer is always to get the greatest _quantity_ of wine from his vineyard; and consequently he gathers his grapes when they are barely ripe, and none have fallen or withered; whereby he fills his storehouses with wine full of acidity and of that vile twang which all who have tasted shudder to recal.

Some of the wine-growers in the colony have lately pursued a different plan, and with vast success. This has been chiefly among the English colonists; for a Dutch boor at the Cape is a very intractable animal, and not easily induced to swerve from old systems, be they ever so bad. Probably, the principal reason why the colony produced from the very first such bad wines, was its having been colonised by Dutchmen, who could have had no experience at home in wine-growing.

Who knows what might have been the case had a colony from the plains of Champagne or Bordeaux first settled there? Apropos of this, I may mention that a fellow passenger of mine was a Frenchman from Champagne. At the Cape he entered into partnership with a young Englishman (also a fellow passenger), and agreed to take a wine farm. The Englishman was to supply capital—the Frenchman knowledge. Monsieur had determined to make “Cape Champagne;” and remarkably well he succeeded. Often at public and even at private dinners, when swallowing something dignified with the name of that right-royal wine, have I sighed to think how far more palatable would be a bottle of Monsieur L——’s vintage.

It perhaps requires a greater outlay of capital to be a successful wine-grower than almost anything else in the colony. There are, in addition to the purchase of land and vines, the expenses of storehouses, casks, and, above all, that most difficult commodity to attain—labour. So great is the want of the latter, and so uncertain the supply of even that which is attainable, that he is a bold man who ventures on wine-farming at the Cape.

The wine-growers are generally wealthy men, for, in spite of all obstacles, their profits are very large. Few people who even touch at the Cape fail to visit the Constantia wine farms, producing the delicious sweet wine of that name. It is grown on a mountain named after the wife of one of the former Governors of the Cape—whether in compliment to the lady’s sweetness of disposition, or her love for the wine then produced, I know not. Three farms monopolise this mountain. Even half a mile from them, the wine produced is of a very inferior flavour. They live in excellent style, these Constantia wine-growers. When first I visited one of them, a carriage-and-four and two buggies, conveying a party of Indian visitors, had just drawn up at the door. A _déjeûner_ was spread in a long, handsome, and elegantly-furnished apartment, for the entertainment of any one who might chance to come and visit the farm. Two or three superintendents were ready to show the “lions” of the place to visitors, and to give them samples of the wine to taste. There are many varieties of it. And, oh, how seductive that same Constantia is! Who can resist it in all its delicious varieties?

I recollect that as I rode towards the farm I passed a toll-gate, and looking, I suppose, extremely like a “griffin” (for I had only been a week in the colony), the “pikeman” observed, as he took my twopence, and handed me the ticket, “Hopes you’ll be able to read it as you comes back, Sir!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“No offence, Sir,” said the man with a grin; “only I’ve seed a many as _couldn’t_—that’s all.”

The three Constantia wine-growers are Dutchmen; and so, in fact, are nearly all the wine farmers throughout the colony. Englishmen who go out there generally take to trade or sheep-farming; and they are right,—for it requires far less experience, less capital, and less labour, to follow almost any calling at the Cape than that of a wine-grower. I think, however, that a Company might be profitably established here or in the colony, for cultivating the vine there and importing its produce to Europe. For this purpose, they should send out labourers and superintendents, carefully selected from the wine districts of France and Germany; and take care that the Madeira plan of gathering the grapes be adopted. They should agitate, too, for a reduction of the duty on the wine: at present it is far too high. Perhaps the profits would not at first be great, for there is a serious obstacle to be overcome,—a bad name in the market; but eventually I believe that the speculation would be a lucrative one, and that it would in time remove the unfortunate stigma now affixed to Cape wine.

In these days of railroad travelling, when twenty miles an hour would be considered slow enough to justify a letter of complaint from “Viator” to the editor of the Times, it may rather astonish my readers to learn that twenty miles is considered a fair day’s journey at the Cape. Yet so it is.

Unless you amble on horseback, which only men and _young_ men can undertake, the sole and universal method of travelling is by an ox-wagon. Just go and see the wagon exhibited by Cumming in his South-African Exhibition, at Hyde Park corner! Imagine such a machine, with twelve or fourteen oxen attached to it by a long rope of plaited hide (called a treck-tow) attached to the pole, and to which are fastened the yokes of the oxen. Then fancy a little Hottentot lad, very much like one of the Bushmen lately exhibited in London (but, perhaps, hardly so handsome,) leading the two front oxen by a strip of hide fastened to their horns (called a reim), and a full-grown Hottentot seated on the driving-seat, in the front of the wagon, with an enormous whip in his hands formed of a long bamboo handle and a lash of plaited thongs, with which he can, from his seat, reach the leaders of his team; and you have the “travelling carriage” of South Africa complete before your eyes.

The same team (or “span” in South-African phraseology) of oxen take you the whole journey, whether it be twenty or two hundred miles; and as they have no other food on the way, nor indeed at any other time, than the grass and water on the roadside, you may imagine that twenty or twenty-five miles a day is quite work enough for them. The journey is, however, by no means so tedious or uninteresting an affair as might be supposed. It is like so many days of pic-nic-ing, with new scenery each day, and in a glorious climate. The wagon is of course well furnished with tea, sugar, coffee, wine, flour, eggs, fresh and preserved meat, vegetables, and in fact all that refreshes and cheers the inward man: for, be it recollected, that there are no inns, or at least the very few there are are scattered at such great distances apart over the country that no wagon traveller thinks of visiting them. The wagon in fact becomes your home and your store-house as well as your travelling carriage. A long stretcher is slung in it, on which is placed your bed, which serves for a lounging couch by day. Some people travel with a tent, but this is unnecessary when the party does not exceed two or three, besides the Hottentots, who sleep under the wagon, or under a bush or anywhere else on the ground, as soundly as their masters in their beds.

Travellers generally take their guns with them, as they may chance to get a little sport on the road. At six in the morning we will suppose the carriage to start; at about ten you will “outspan”—that is, take out the oxen and let them feed, and prepare for breakfast. Your Hottentots soon collect fuel, the wagon is drawn up close by a mimosa or some other bush, a fire is lighted, the kettle set to boil, the coffee prepared, the steaks cooked in a frying-pan, and perhaps some hot cakes made of meal baked for you; and with a beautiful country round you, and a magnificent sky above you, if you cannot make a good breakfast, and feel a light heart, I fear that you must be terribly “used up.”

Then comes a stroll through the bush with your double-barrel on your shoulder, in search of a partridge or a Guinea fowl, or a stray antelope; and back to the wagon, now ready for another start.

Forward, again, till dinner-time, when the same process is gone through. After dinner, perhaps you will go forward another four or five miles, and then “outspan” for the night.

The nights of the Cape climate are glorious! I can scarcely imagine anything more beautiful. The sky of that deep, dark blue, which we never see in northern climates; the moon shining as she only can in such a sky, the stars so bright and distinct, with the beautiful southern cross in all its brilliancy, among them; the perfect stillness of everything around; the lofty and rugged mountains where the foot of man has never trodden; the thick dark bush, penetrable only by the wild beast or the savage; the broad plain covered with Aloes, Cape Heaths, Wild Stocks, and the ten thousand variegated shrubs which make a carpet beneath your feet as beautiful as the canopy of heaven above your head; and that little spot worthy the pencil of Salvator Rosa—the dark foliage of the bush lighted up by your fire, and around it the dusky forms of your Hottentots stretched at their ease, and enjoying, as none but a half savage knows how thoroughly to enjoy, the requisite delight of the “Dolce far niente.”

No doubt railroads are glorious inventions. All honour, too, to Macadam, and to stagecoaches and post-chaises; all praise to the comforts and convenience of a good English Inn. But if you have a spark of native poetry in your composition, in spite of bad roads, slow travelling, rough fare, and a bed “al fresco,” you will enjoy one of these South African journeys more than any trip you ever took in Europe. You have no other travelling companions than the beauties of Nature’s works around you, fresh as from the hands of their Creator, and the thoughts and reflections high and holy, as such scenes and such companionship will not fail to call forth.

CHEMICAL CONTRADICTIONS.

Science, whose aim and end is to prove the harmony and “eternal fitness of things,” also proves that we live in a world of paradoxes; and that existence itself, is a whirl of contradictions. Light and darkness, truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, the negative and positive poles of galvanic or magnetic mysteries, are evidences of all-pervading antitheses, which acting like the good and evil genii of Persian Mythology, neutralise each other’s powers when they come into collision. It is the office of science to solve these mysteries. The appropriate symbol of the lecture-room is a Sphinx; for a scientific lecturer is but a better sort of unraveller of riddles.

Who would suppose, for instance, that water—which everybody knows, extinguishes fire—may, under certain circumstances, add fuel to flame, so that the “coming man” who is to “set the Thames on fire,” may not be far off. If we take some mystical grey-looking globules of potassium (which is the metallic basis of common pearl-ash) and lay them upon water, the water will instantly appear to ignite. The globules will swim about in flames, reminding us of the “death-fires” described by the Ancient Mariner, burning “like witches’ oil” on the surface of the stagnant sea. Sometimes even, without any chemical ingredient being added, Fire will appear to spring spontaneously from water; which is not a simple element, as Thales imagined, when he speculated upon the origin of the Creation, but two invisible gases—oxygen and hydrogen, chemically combined. During the electrical changes of the atmosphere in a thunder-storm, these gases frequently combine with explosive violence, and it is this combination which takes place when “the big rain comes dancing to the earth.” These fire-and-water phenomena are thus accounted for; certain substances have peculiar affinities or attractions for one another; the potassium has so inordinate a desire for oxygen, that the moment it touches, it decomposes the water, abstracts all the oxygen, and sets free the hydrogen or inflammable gas. The potassium, when combined with the oxygen, forms that corrosive substance known as caustic potash, and the heat disengaged during this process, ignites the hydrogen. Here the mystery ends; and the contradictions are solved;—Oxygen and hydrogen when combined, become water; when separated the hydrogen gas burns with a pale lambent flame. Many of Nature’s most delicate deceptions are accounted for by a knowledge of these laws.

Your analytical chemist sadly annihilates, with his scientific machinations, all poetry. He bottles up at pleasure the Nine Muses, and proves them—as the fisherman in the Arabian Nights did the Afrite—to be all smoke. Even the Will o’ the Wisp cannot flit across its own morass without being pursued, overtaken, and burnt out by this scientific detective policeman. He claps an extinguisher upon Jack o’ Lanthorn thus:—He says that a certain combination of phosphorus and hydrogen, which rises from watery marshes, produces a gas called phosphuretted hydrogen, which ignites spontaneously the moment it bubbles up to the surface of the water and meets with atmospheric air. Here again, the Ithuriel wand of science dispels all delusion, pointing out to us, that in such places animal and vegetable substances are undergoing constant decomposition; and as phosphorus exists under a variety of forms in these bodies, as phosphate of lime, phosphate of soda, phosphate of magnesia, &c., and as furthermore the decomposition of water itself is the initiatory process in these changes, so we find that phosphorus and hydrogen are supplied from these sources; and we may therefore easily conceive the consequent formation of phosphuretted hydrogen. This gas rises in a thin stream from its watery bed, and the moment it comes in contact with the oxygen of the atmosphere, it bursts into a flame so buoyant, that it flickers with every breath of air, and realises the description of Goëthe’s Mephistopheles, that the course of Jack-o’-lantern is generally “zig-zag.”

Who would suppose that absolute darkness may be derived from two rays of light! Yet such is the fact. If two rays proceed from two luminous points very close to each other, and are so directed as to cross at a given point on a sheet of white paper in a dark room, their united light will be twice as bright as either ray singly would produce. But if the difference in the distance of the two points be diminished only one half, the one light will extinguish the other, and produce absolute darkness. The same curious result may be produced by viewing the flame of a candle through two very fine slits near to each other in a card. So, likewise, strange as it may appear, if two musical strings be so made to vibrate, in a certain succession of degrees, as for the one to gain half a vibration on the other, the two resulting sounds will antagonise each other and produce an interval of perfect silence. How are these mysteries to be explained? The Delphic Oracle of science must again be consulted, and among the high priests who officiate at the shrine, no one possesses more recondite knowledge, or can recal it more instructively, than Sir David Brewster. “The explanation which philosophers have given,” he observes, “of these remarkable phenomena, is very satisfactory, and may easily be understood. When a wave is made on the surface of a still pool of water by plunging a stone into it, the wave advances along the surface, while the water itself is never carried forward, but merely rises into a height and falls into a hollow, each portion of the surface experiencing an elevation and a depression in its turn. If we suppose two waves equal and similar, to be produced by two separate stones, and if they reach the same spot at the same time, that is, if the two elevations should exactly coincide, they would unite their effects, and produce a wave twice the size of either; but if the one wave should be put so far before the other, that the hollow of the one coincided with the elevation of the other, and the elevation of the one with the hollow of the other, the two waves would obliterate or destroy one another; the elevation as it were of the one filling up half the hollow of the other, and the hollow of the one taking away half the elevation of the other, so as to reduce the surface to a level. These effects may be exhibited by throwing two equal stones into a pool of water; and also may be observed in the Port of Batsha, where the two waves arriving by channels of different lengths actually obliterate each other. Now, as light is supposed to be produced by waves or undulations of an ethereal medium filling all nature, and occupying the pores of the transparent bodies; and as sound is produced by undulations or waves in the air: so the successive production of light and darkness by two bright lights, and the production of sound and silence by two loud sounds, may be explained in the very same manner as we have explained the increase and obliteration of waves formed on the surface of water.”

The apparent contradictions in chemistry are, indeed, best exhibited in the lecture-room, where they may be rendered visible and tangible, and brought home to the general comprehension. The Professor of Analytical Chemistry, J. H. Pepper, who demonstrates these things in the Royal Polytechnic Institution, is an expert manipulator in such mysteries; and, taking a leaf out of his own magic-book, we shall conjure him up before us, standing behind his own laboratory, surrounded with all the implements of his art. At our recent visit to this exhibition we witnessed him perform, with much address, the following experiments:—He placed before us a pair of tall glass vessels, each filled, apparently, with water;—he then took two hen’s eggs, one of these he dropped into one of the glass vessels, and, as might have been expected, it immediately sank to the bottom. He then took the other egg, and dropped it into the other vessel of water, but, instead of sinking as the other had done, it descended only half way, and there remained suspended in the midst of the transparent fluid. This, indeed, looked like magic—one of Houdin’s sleight-of-hand performances—for what could interrupt its progress? The water surrounding it appeared as pure below as around and above the egg, yet there it still hung like Mahomet’s coffin, between heaven and earth, contrary to all the well established laws of gravity. The problem, however, was easily solved. Our modern Cagliostro had dissolved in one half of the water in this vessel as much common salt as it would take up, whereby the density of the fluid was so much augmented that it opposed a resistance to the descent of the egg after it had passed through the unadulterated water, which he had carefully poured upon the briny solution, the transparency of which, remaining unimpaired, did not for a moment suggest the suspicion of any such impregnation. The good housewife, upon the same principle, uses an egg to test the strength of her brine for pickling.

Every one has heard of the power which bleaching gas (chlorine) possesses in taking away colour, so that a red rose held over its fumes will become white. The lecturer, referring to this fact, exhibited two pieces of paper; upon one was inscribed, in large letters, the word “PROTEUS;” upon the other no writing was visible; although he assured us the same word was there inscribed. He now dipped both pieces of paper in a solution of bleaching-powder, when the word “Proteus” disappeared from the paper upon which it was before visible; whilst the same word instantly came out, sharp and distinct, upon the paper which was previously a blank. Here there appeared another contradiction: the chlorine in the one case obliterating, and in the other reviving the written word; and how was this mystery explained? Easily enough! Our ingenious philosopher, it seems, had used indigo in penning the one word which had disappeared; and had inscribed the other with a solution of a chemical substance, iodide of potassium and starch; and the action which took place was simply this: the chlorine of the bleaching solution set free the iodine from the potassium, which immediately combined with the starch, and gave colour to the letters which were before invisible. Again—a sheet of white paper was exhibited, which displayed a broad and brilliant stripe of scarlet—(produced by a compound called the bin-iodide of mercury)—when exposed to a slight heat the colour changed immediately to a bright yellow, and, when this yellow stripe was crushed by smartly rubbing the paper, the scarlet colour was restored, with all its former brilliancy. This change of colour was effected entirely by the alteration which the heat, in the one case, and the friction, in the other, produced in the particles which reflected these different colours;—and, upon the same principle, we may understand the change of the colour in the lobster-shell, which burns from black to red in boiling; because the action of the heat produces a new arrangement in the particles which compose the shell.

With the assistance of water and fire, which have befriended the magicians of every age, contradictions of a more marvellous character may be exhibited, and even the secret art revealed of handling red hot metals, and passing through the fiery ordeal. If we take a platinum ladle, and hold it over a furnace until it becomes of a bright red heat, and then project cold water into its bowl, we shall find that the water will remain quiescent and give no sign of ebullition—not so much as a single “fizz;” but, the moment the ladle begins to cool, it will boil up and quickly evaporate. So also, if a mass of metal, heated to whiteness, be plunged in a vessel of cold water, the surrounding fluid will remain tranquil so long as the glowing white heat continues; but, the moment the temperature falls, the water will boil briskly. Again—if water be poured upon an iron sieve, the wires of which are made red hot, it will not run through; but, on the sieve cooling, it will run through rapidly. These contradictory effects are easily accounted for. The repelling power of intense heat keeps the water from immediate contact with the heated metal, and the particles of the water, collectively, retain their globular form; but, when the vessel cools, the repulsive power diminishes, and the water coming into closer contact with the heated surface its particles can no longer retain their globular form, and eventually expand into a state of vapour. This globular condition of the particles of water will account for many very important phenomena; perhaps it is best exhibited in the dew-drop, and so long as these globules retain their form, water will retain its fluid properties. An agglomeration of these globules will carry with them, under certain circumstances, so much force that it is hardly a contradiction to call water itself a solid. The water-hammer, as it is termed, illustrates this apparent contradiction. If we introduce a certain quantity of water into a long glass tube, when it is shaken, we shall hear the ordinary splashing noise as in a bottle; but, if we exhaust the air, and again shake the tube, we shall hear a loud ringing sound, as if the bottom of the tube were struck by some hard substance—like metal or wood—which may fearfully remind us of the blows which a ship’s side will receive from the waves during a storm at sea, which will often carry away her bulwarks.

It is now time to turn to something stronger than water for more instances of chemical contradictions. The chemical action of certain poisons (the most powerful of all agents,) upon the human frame, has plunged the faculty into a maze of paradoxes; indeed there is actually a system of medicine, advancing in reputation, which is founded on the principle of contraries. The famous Doctor Hahnemann, who was born at Massieu in Saxony, was the founder of it, and, strange to say, medical men, who are notorious for entertaining contrary opinions, have not yet agreed among themselves whether he was a very great quack or a very great philosopher. Be this as it may, the founder of this system, which is called HOMŒOPATHY, when translating an article upon bark in Dr. Cullen’s Materia Medica, took some of this medicine, which had for many years been justly celebrated for the cure of ague. He had not long taken it, when he found himself attacked with agueish symptoms, and a light now dawned upon his mind, and led him to the inference that medicines which give rise to the symptoms of a disease, are those which will specifically cure it, and however curious it may appear, several illustrations in confirmation of this principle were speedily found. If a limb be frost-bitten, we are directed to rub it with snow; if the constitution of a man be impaired by the abuse of spirituous liquors, and he be reduced to that miserable state of enervation when the limbs tremble and totter, and the mind itself sinks into a state of low muttering delirium, the physician to cure him must go again to the bottle and administer stimulants and opiates.

It was an old Hippocratic aphorism that two diseases cannot co-exist in the same body; wherefore, gout has actually been cured by the afflicted person going into a fenny country and catching the ague. The fatality of consumption is also said to be retarded by a common catarrh; and upon this very principle depends the truth of the old saying, that ricketty doors hang long on rusty hinges. In other words, the strength of the constitution being impaired by one disease has less power to support the morbid action of another.

We thus live in a world of apparent contradictions; they abound in every department of science, and beset us even in the sanctuary of domestic life. The progress of discovery has reconciled and explained the nature of some of them; but many baffle our ingenuity, and still remain involved in mystery. This much, however, is certain, that the most opposed and conflicting elements so combine together as to produce results, which are strictly in unison with the order and harmony of the universe.

AN IRISH PECULIARITY.

The characteristics attributed by one nation to another are never patented without some foundation in truth; but, in time, by means of successive overlays of jest, constant repetition, and the heaping up of one exaggeration upon another, national portraiture flashes forth into glaring caricature. If we were to believe old plays and old novels, we should suppose that, only a half century since, every Englishman fed exclusively on roast beef and plum-pudding—rattled his guineas in ample pockets, tightened by the portly protuberance of his figure, and rapped out oaths against “frog-eating Mounseers” with the same energy with which, after dinner, he imbibed crusted port to the health and prosperity of Church and State. On Sunday morning we view him, through the same medium, standing upright in his red-cushioned pew, pronouncing the responses with the _ore rotundo_ of Sir Roger de Coverley, and, like that worthy baronet, looking daggers at little boys whom he catches napping.

The Scotchman of the same authorities was invariably a long, lean, raw-boned, hungry, grey-eyed Sawney, with high cheek-bones, reddish hair, and a diffused aroma of brimstone pervading his threadbare garments. Pertaining to him also, by inalienable birth-right, was an insatiable appetite for oaten-cakes, haggis, and singed sheep’s head; of which viands the supply usually fell very far short of the demand. No matter what his rank in life might be, he was forced, as a necessary condition of his existence, to talk “braid scots,” and to look sharply after the “siller.” Somehow, he regularly found his way to London, where a lucrative place, and a rich wife, to whom he continually proclaimed the glories of the “Land o’ Cakes,” gratified and rewarded his cautious persevering endeavours to replenish his “pouch and sporran;” for all Scotchmen were Highlanders, and were supposed only to have abandoned their kilts in deference to decency and English prejudice while in the act of crossing the border.

The Irishman of novel, tale, or comedy, was a Phelim or a Patrick, always either immersed in love or drink and often the victim of both these exciting predicaments:—telling humorous lies, making unheard-of blunders, winning money by his tricking cleverness, and losing it by his unaccountable folly; leading a good-humoured, reckless, rollicking life, breaking the hearts and emptying the purses of maid, wife, and widow; and carrying off every shade of embarrassment with the cut-and-dry exclamation, “By the powers!”—“Arrah, honey!”—or, “Och, my jewel!”

All this served very well to amuse the juvenile minds of our grand parents, but in these days when the wandering jewish propensity to travel over the face of the earth, has attained its full development, we find it to be a well-ascertained fact that there are Englishmen who affect fricassees more than roast beef, drink French wines, and dress in the French fashion; that Scotchmen may be found, even in Scotland, who have neither caution in their heads, avarice in their hearts, nor kilts round their bodies. Facility of intercourse has done this. The ancient prophecy is being daily fulfilled:—“Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Railways have rounded off the sharp angles of national dislikes, by promoting social attrition. The locomotive engine is the steam-plough which tears up local prejudices by the roots.