Chapter I: Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”--SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^o. 26.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREIGNERS’ PORTRAITS OF ENGLISHMEN. 2
THE STEAM PLOUGH. 8
A SACRED GROVE. 15
“CAPE” SKETCHES. 15
“BATTLE WITH LIFE!” 22
SPY POLICE. 22
CHIPS. 28
TWO CHAPTERS ON BANK NOTE FORGERIES. 31

FOREIGNERS’ PORTRAITS OF ENGLISHMEN.

The extraordinary being, conjured up in the minds of most foreigners under the generic term Englishman, seems to be something more uncommon than the veracious Gulliver ever encountered, and more heterogeneous than John Bulwer in his _Artificiall Changeling_ pourtrayed. As a Spanish _olla podrida_ and a Devonshire squab-pie are said to be made up of all the contradictory edibles that can be conceivably assembled in one dish; so is the hash, cooked up by the French or German novelist and dramatist to represent a true born Briton, an incarnation of every unlikely extravagance it is possible to assemble in one character.

The true expression of what is popularly believed of us abroad is not to be found so distinctly set forth in novels, as in plays. The novelist is restricted in a measure within the not narrow bounds of probability; but the dramatist may first revel at will in the rankest breadths of impossible absurdity; and then the actor may intensify the enormity by dress, gait, and unmeasured foolery. The amount of instruction on the manners, habits, feelings, modes of expression, gesture, dress, and general demeanour of his compatriots which an Englishman may glean in some of the foreign Theatres, when an Englishman is being represented on the stage, is perfectly astounding. We have in this way become acquainted with English characteristics of which the most comically inclined maniac could never dream after the most dyspeptic of suppers.

It is not long since the mirror held up to Nature--that is, English nature reflected by the French--revealed to us, at the Ambigû Comique and at the Théâtre des Variétés, in Paris, “that of ourselves which yet we knew not of”--dreamt not of. One gentleman who supported not only the character of a Prefect, but an enormous cocked-hat, assured us that when we were at home, we groaned under the tyranny of a feudal government, which ground us to the dust; that our Commonality was overridden and harrowed by tax-exacting aristocrats; that they died of starvation in heaps; that if they dared to call their souls their own, the latter were summarily released from their bodies by a perambulating police disguised as members of the Royal Humane Society. In another scene the same public instructor told us, that all Englishmen (of course including the starved Commonality) possess enormous wealth, which they usually employ in the purchase of “_Le titre de Lord_;”--an unnecessary outlay, as every person not a tradesman receives the title as a matter of course. Yet this avails them little, as the different orders of our nobility hold no communication with persons of higher or lower rank; our national pride preventing the one, and the best of all reasons--“because they can’t--” the other. Our patricians ride abroad followed by armed retainers; nor is any vulgar person allowed to come between the wind and their nobility: the streets being expressly cleared for them by constables. When at home, however, seated in a golden chair in company with the Spleen, the “jeune Miss,” his wife, and a “boulle-dog,” a native of our kingdom passes his time chiefly in drinking tea with lemon in it, and saying, “Hoh!--Hah!--Yeeas!--Gottam!--and ver gut!”

Our ladies are a little too much given to fighting, and a little too lightly won. We sell our wives. This is a very common mercantile transaction indeed. A “pen” of no mean dimensions is appropriated in Smithfield for the interesting periodical auction. Our Queen makes away with many millions a year, and cuts off the heads of any persons to whom she may take a dislike, or hangs them, without the intervention of judge, jury, or any other functionary than the executioner, who--another Tristan the Hermit--is a regular member of the Royal Household. We are, however, for the most part, a harmless and ridiculous race, affording excellent sport to innkeepers and adventurers. We eat prodigiously. Indeed so great is our love for good cheer, that we name our children after our favourite dishes. If a person in good society is not called Sir Rosbif, he will probably answer to the name of Lord Bifstek--in honor of the two great national dishes, which we have spelt in that manner from time immemorial.

In a pretty piece at the Gymnase in Paris, where the Prime Minister of England unfortunately ruined himself by speculating in Railway shares, a thorough-going English servant appeared under that thorough-going English name Tom Bob--the honest fellow having been christened Tom, and born the lawful son of Mr. and Mrs. Bob. In an Italian adaptation of Dumas’ preposterous play of “KEAN,” which we once saw at the great Theatre of Genoa, the curtain rose upon that celebrated Tragedian, drunk and fast asleep in a chair, attired in a dark blouse fastened round the waist with a broad belt and a most prodigious buckle, and wearing a dark red hat of the sugar-loaf shape, nearly three feet high. He bore in his hand a champagne-bottle, with the label RHUM, in large capital letters, carefully turned towards the audience; and two or three dozen of the same popular liquor which we are nationally accustomed to drink neat as imported by the half-gallon, ornamented the floor of the apartment. Every frequenter of the Coal Hole Tavern in the Strand, on that occasion, wore a sword and a beard.

Every English lady presented on the stage in Italy, wears a green veil; and almost every such specimen of our fair countrywomen carries a bright red reticule, made in the form of a monstrous heart. We do not remember to have ever seen an Englishman on the Italian stage, or in the Italian Circus, without a stomach like Daniel Lambert, an immense shirt-frill, and a bunch of watch-seals, each several times larger than his watch, though the watch itself was an impossible engine. And we have rarely beheld this mimic Englishman, without seeing present, then and there, a score of real Englishmen, sufficiently characteristic and unlike the rest of the audience, to whom he bore no shadow of resemblance.

These edifying pictures of the English are not complete without the finishing touches of grotesque absurdity vouchsafed by the actors. A few winters ago we were enticed into the little theatre of Coblentz by the information paraded in large placards on the doors that it was “very well warmed;” that Auber’s opera of Fra Diavolo was to be played; and that the part of Lord Allcash was to be personated by a distinguished comic actor. Even while we write, his lordship is before our mind’s eye, blazingly costumed in a green coat, blue inexpressibles, top-boots, a brace of yellow handkerchiefs sticking out of either pocket, a couple of watches, and a hat with a feather in it! Yet, if they do not know something of the ordinary appearance of an English traveller in Coblentz, where should they? He must be at least as well known there, as in Devonshire or the Isle of Wight.

So, in Brussels, where the English almost outnumber the native population, the audiences relish a curious amount of ignorance respecting England and the English; as the dramatis personæ of a piece exhibited so recently as last May at the Théâtre St Hubert, will show. It was called “_La Lectrice, ou une folie de jeune homme. Comédie Vaudeville en 2 actes_, par M. Bazard.” It must have had a considerable run; for the play-bill states that M. Ferville had created a great sensation in the character of “Sir Cobridge,” at Paris. We have some idea that “Sir Cobridge” must be intended for the Sleeping Partner in a Porter-Brewery, and that the name is a dreamy reminiscence of the popular individual Sir Co, made easy of remembrance by sign-boards. But the first personage we have occasion to mention is, “Sir Arthur” (jeune officier), who has no other name, and who has no occasion for one, everybody calling him “my lord,” according (as he observed) to the usual form of address in England. Sir Arthur considers it the first duty of a British officer to insult a respectable blind old gentleman--who is moreover his guest--because the blind old gentleman ventures to insinuate something against one of the officers of Sir Arthur’s regiment, through whom he has suffered severely. This chivalrous young nobleman, disdaining all inquiry into the circumstances, at once constitutes himself champion of every individual belonging to the entire British army. The next personage is a young gentleman possessing (as _he_ observed) a name extremely common in Britain, to wit, “Clac-Own.” The actor of this part was fitted up with a wig of violently red hair, like a carriage-rug, and was dressed in a kind of fusion of an English jockey with a French Field-Marshal. Expecting to inherit the vast possession of his uncle, Sir Cobridge, Clac-Own passed his time, according to the custom of Anglican nephews in such cases, in giving his uncle to understand how extremely inconvenient he finds his society, and in informing him that “Shak-es-pair”--who, being Sir Cobridge’s favourite author, is naturally the avowed bugbear of Clac-Own,--is an insufferable bore. This is going too far; and the wealthy old gentleman (who has quietly submitted to every other species of personal insult from his intended heir,) is so shocked by this contempt for “Shak-es-pair,” that he feels himself compelled to sing a song; wherein he demonstrates, in the most lucid tira-lal-a-la logic, that Clac-Own is very decidedly in the wrong. The scena concludes by Sir Cobridge ordering Clac-Own off, in some very deep bass notes, to “Le Lincoln!”--an idiomatic place of banishment, that would appear to be very popular among us, though whether it stands for Coventry, Bath, Jericho, Halifax, or any other such place, we are unable to report. Clac-Own, Sir Arthur, and several others having assembled at a later stage of the proceedings to go out hunting, the Belgian public perceive that our usual equipment for that sport is a white tailed coat, light blue breeches, patent leather hessian boots with brass spurs, a red neckerchief--such as one may see whispering to the gale in Field Lane or Wapping,--a turned-down shirt-collar, a gun, a cutlas, and an enormous game pouch. Thus arrayed and mounted on the “chevaux fougueux” of our island, we pursue and capture the crafty fox.--When we add that Monsieur Bazard, who is the author of this singular production, is of the opinion of Boiardo, that the English have an especial talent for falling off their horses--and no wonder, riding across the country in such trim!--we have described the leading points of this accurate picture.

Most of these distorted views of English life originate with the French with whom we have had most intercourse, and who ought to know us best; but our German and Austrian friends, the dramatic caricaturists, have a very hard hit at us now and then. Only last month we were attracted to the Carl Theatre, in Vienna, by one little line in a play-bill, which announced a new piece, the English title of which is, “The Benefit Night.” Here is the line:--

~=Lord Pudding, ein reisender Englander Hr. Heese.=~ Lord Pudding, a Travelling Englishman Mr. Heese.

In rigid obedience to the law, which has impressed the names of eatables upon the eaters thereof, the author had christened his “pock-pudding-Englisher” (to borrow a pleasant periphrasis from Scotland), out of the pot. Nevertheless “The Benefit Night”--in which we think we descry some reflection of a very good French vaudeville--is written with considerable cleverness and wit. The plot was chiefly evolved from the endeavours of a manager to obtain the assistance of certain eminent “stars” of the profession for his benefit. He first presented himself to a great singer, who was, of course, afflicted with a cold, but who was at length frightened into voice by hearing that a rival had already agreed to sing his part, and by an assurance from the manager that the new singer had already taken everybody by storm at the rehearsal. A great tragedian the manager won by flattery; “the food of gods” being the only thing worthy the acceptance of so august a personage; and a dancer he bribed by assuring her that the wealthy Englishman, “Lord Pudding,” would be in the house, especially to fall in love with her. He also promised a troop of experienced claqueurs to applaud her new “pas.”

We were introduced to Lord Pudding, as he appeared while indulging in the singular fancy of taking a lesson in Elocution from a German actor! His personal appearance was wonderful to behold. He was much stuffed out with wadding to increase his natural proportions, and his dress was such as the tailors--not only of Pall-Mall and St. James’s Street, but of any English extraction or habitation whatsoever--would see with amaze. It was composed of a blue dress coat, with white buttons, a red waistcoat, nankeen tights, shoes of polished leather, and long brass spurs. His neck-kerchief was a bright blue, carrying the eye pleasantly up to a very white hat with an imperceptible brim. The author appeared to have studied the manners of our aristocracy with exceeding diligence; for, to the usual peculiarities which may be considered the “stock” of Foreign theatricals, he added some strikingly original features. Lord Pudding was, of course, a lover, and of course an unsuccessful one: he was jilted by the French dancer. When he danced he was made to tumble; when he saluted a lady he gave his lips a loud smack. He entered a room like a whirlwind, and between his paroxysms of “fuss” our usual friendly salutation “_Gottam_” was repeated many times; to the enthusiastic delight of the audience, who believed it to be a polished sort of “How-d’ ye-do?” He was quite the Clown to the Ring; and had the long pockets--in which that gentleman usually searches for the chalk when it is required for the tight-rope--well-filled. Nor was Pudding stingy with his money. Despite his hard usage by the ballet-lady, he was liberal to the manager. Though wrathful, he was of easy faith; being readily imposed upon, and peculiarly sensible to flattery, by which means he was induced to take three boxes for the benefit, viz., one for himself; one for the policeman who had been in constant attendance on him since his arrival, to restrain his inveterate propensity for knocking down the lieges of the city (so intense was his love for “the boaks;”) the third for the exclusive occupation of ----, his boulle-dog! One or two little touches, which distinguished his lordship, showed that the actor was, at least, an observer. Such were, the hat pushed back from the crimson forehead, the heavy rolling walk, and a strenuous objection to be kissed--all particularly English.

Other specimens of the genus we had previously seen, however, showed that Lord Pudding was a very fair example of an English gentleman on the German stage.

We cannot but believe that though amusing, these caricatures--exhibited as they are to ignorant and prejudiced minds--tend to confound the just relations between one people and another. Perhaps friendly Excursions on both sides of the channel may do much to lessen these absurdities. Unfortunately--as recent publications too well prove--the mistaken estimate of the English is by no means corrected by the graver works now and then put forth by distinguished men. Highly as we esteem M. Guizot and some Frenchmen of real attainments, who have written upon England, we have never taken up a book on the subject without painful disappointment, or without seeing in it errors almost equal to M. Ledru Rollin’s more recent incongruities.

To the honour of our modern English authors be it spoken, they have been zealous to avoid such ridiculous mistakes. It is true that the harmless old legends respecting Foreigners--that nine-tenths of them are Frenchmen; that all are of very slender proportions in figure; that their staple diet is frogs; and that, despite Alison’s and every other History of Europe, they very much prefer to dance than to fight; together with other popular delusions--still linger in the minds of some of our bold peasantry and milder cockneys; but it is to be hoped, after many years of peace and better sense, that we may now claim for the majority of even an under-educated British public, a more correct knowledge of the personnel and manners of our Continental neighbours, than our Continental neighbours manifestly have of us. The very foible of Lord Pudding himself--that of being a _travelling_ Englishman--would defend him from such blunders as the literary Frankenstein who gave life to the monster, has fallen into. Travelling Englishmen are common abroad, who speak foreign languages, and understand foreign customs, extremely well. There are many of our travellers whom we should be very glad to improve: and thanks to railways, and to our possession of some--though not very much--of the wealth which the foreign dramatic and fictionist artists so liberally attribute to us, we are rapidly polishing off the rust of national prejudice, and ignorance of our brethren abroad. Should an English author or actor be guilty of such laughable mistakes about foreigners as those we have pointed out, woe unutterable would alight on his ignorant head.

Every sort of attraction which brings people of different nations, and even of different counties, together--whether it be a German wool fair, a music meeting, or a Swiss shooting-match--smooths away the acerbities of caste, and strengthens the sympathies of individuals. Let us, therefore, hope that the myriads of exotics which will be attracted next year to the Great Industrial Conservatory in Hyde Park, will receive new vigour and fresh intelligence from their temporary transplantation; that they will learn that Englishmen and English women are not quite the monstrosities they at present appear to believe them. Foreigners will then have the advantage of seeing us at home, and in a mass; and will thenceforth cease to judge us by those follies which they observe in a few idle tourists from these islands. They will see us as we are, reciprocating what we believe to be the general desire here, in reference to them.

THE STEAM PLOUGH.

When the first experiments were being made with the Hay-making Machine, now commonly used in some parts of the country, it happened that Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, and Peacock, the author of “Crotchet Castle,” “Headlong Hall,” and other works of pungent erudition, were walking through a field where this strange-looking machine was in operation. Instead of the pleasant sight of the rustic men and women with their forks and rakes--a scene so full of indelible associations, from childhood upwards--they saw this quaint monster rolling round the field over the long swathes of hay, its rotatory forks, or rather fingers on wheels, flinging up the hay on all sides as it went spinning onwards. Meditating on the effect, if successful, this would, some day, have on the vast numbers of poor people in England, to say nothing of the summer invasions of Irish--whose sole dependence for the year is the money they make in the English hay-season--Shelley and the others walked onwards, and left the field. Presently they met a clownish fellow, who was looking intently at the whirling and whisking performance of the round-about machine in the hay-field. Shelley, having no objection to find, in the then adjusted state of society with regard to the labouring classes, that this machine was a failure, said to the clown, in a sort of half contemptuous tone--“Now, tell me,--does that thing answer at all?” The fellow looked Shelley full in the face--“It answers a deuced deal too well,” said he; “I wish it was working in the inside of him that made it!”

In this very unsophisticated reply, how vast a question is comprised! But into it we cannot now enter; our present business is how to plough by steam; and the smoke from the “nostrils” of a variety of elegant ploughs, of various horse-and-man powers, is already inviting our attention. Truly, it requires one to take one’s breath before commencing the examination!

Old Hesiod, in the second book of his “Works and Days,” after giving particular directions for the selection of the wood, as to its natural qualities and form, and also its suitability to an artificial curve, gravely shakes his venerable head, and says--

“To make a plough, great is the expense and care.”

Virgil, following his great progenitor, enters with still more minute precision into the details of the selection of the wood and its manufacture into a plough, adding, that he can “recite to you many precepts of the ancients--unless you decline them.”

Well, then, to be frank with antiquity, and all its great poets and philosophers, the present age fairly announces by its practices, that it _does_ decline, not only the precepts but the example of the ancients, especially in agricultural matters.

The last and not the least important innovation on agricultural labour has yet to be consummated; and it would seem from two large plates, with explanatory remarks, which have been recently published by Lord Willoughby de Eresby, that a monster innovation is not very distant;--no less than “Ploughing by Steam.” All great inventions are the result of gradual improvement on a first idea; and an examination of these plates naturally induces us to take a cursory view of what has previously been attempted, and done, in this way.

Not wishing to go back to the “dawning idea” of a steam-plough, (for the problem was started some fifty years ago), we will begin with taking a look at Mr. Etzler’s “Iron Slave.” This was invented by a German, and constructed by an Oxfordshire engineer. A public trial of the Iron Slave was made in October 1845. A few signal shots were fired at day-break, the church-bells were set to ring a merry peal, and all the inhabitants of Bicester and Blackthorn came pouring out into the fields to witness the steam-performance of the newly discovered agricultural serf. Booths were erected, and the spectators made a long morning’s holiday while the Slave did his ploughing; and hoped that his success would lead, as it ought, to many other morning holidays. The most important result of this first trial was the establishment of a new mechanical principle, _viz_., “the transmission of power from a fixed point to a moving point, going in arbitrary directions at the will of one man at the steering wheel.” This, it seems, had been thought impossible by many scientific engineers. The engine was intended to move and do its work at the rate of three miles an hour; but whether the Iron Slave had not had his proper breakfast of coals, nor time enough to digest them into steam, or some part of his inside was a little out of order, was not accurately discovered; but certain it is that he could not plough fast enough. In other respects everybody was satisfied that steam-ploughing was a practicable thing.

In 1847, Mr. John T. Osborne, of Demerara, took out a patent for a steam-plough, the chief improvement (or distinguishing peculiarity--we must be cautious in the use of the word improvement,) on all previous attempts, being the employment of two engines and two ploughs, for one course of ploughing. While one plough was working in a given direction, and laying down the chain or rope by which it is to be worked back to the side from which it started--the other plough was performing a similar course in the reverse direction. When both had each traversed the ground once, the engines were removed forward the breadth of one furrow, by means of a chain or rope; one end of which was attached to an anchor fixed in the ground a-head.

Another Mr. Osborn, in 1848, tried some experiments near Stratford, in Essex, with a locomotive steam-engine, constructed for agricultural works in general, and for ploughing more especially. He appears to have taken out his patent in conjunction with Mr. Andrew Smith’s wire-rope--a manufacture of extraordinary strength. In the first trial, a pair of these peculiarly constructed locomotives was placed opposite each other--about one hundred and twenty yards apart--with a sufficient length of wire-rope between them. Although not successful, it demonstrated a novel fact as between the comparative draught by horses, and by a long rope, showing that the condition of the modes differ in a very marked way; the horse draught being upwards, and exercising a direct control by its proximity to the plough; whereas, the draught by steam-power and a rope was downwards, distant, and exercised no direct control over the plough. Hence this experiment, though unsuccessful, was instructive, and therefore to be valued as a good contribution to knowledge. Other trials were subsequently made by Mr. Osborn with a locomotive engine of ten horse power, and the ploughing was well done; fully settling the question of practicability, but leaving doubts in the minds of many on the important question of economy.

“These engines,” says a writer in the Mechanics’ Magazine, “possess great advantages in being applicable to thrashing, and other agricultural purposes, and can be moved from farm to farm, and from field to field, with the greatest facility.” No doubt of it. We see what will soon happen. Thrashing, and _many other_ agricultural purposes! The great farmers, once in possession of the talisman of a steam-plough, will never rest till they make it applicable to all sorts of operations. Already almost every farmer in Scotland is provided with a stationary steam-engine; a locomotive that can turn--not its hands--but its wheels to anything, is now his only other thing needful. In the specification of the very first of these ploughs--Etzler’s Iron Slave--it is distinctly stated that, although the machine is intended for ploughing, yet the Slave will be ready at all times to devote his energies and skill to “sowing, and reaping; and also to making canals, roads, tunnels,” &c. Exactly so! After we have ploughed, sowed, reaped, and thrashed by steam, we shall soon find turnips hoed, carrots drawn, beans plucked up, dried, carted, and stacked; sheep sheared, cows milked, butter churned, cheese pressed, pigs transformed into pork, and pork into gammons, by the same omnipotent agency. Hatching eggs by steam is already an old story.

A patent for a new steam-plough was taken out in January of the present year by Mr. James Usher of Edinburgh; and another in June, by Messrs. Calloway and Purkiss. The peculiarity of the former consists in mounting “a series of ploughs in the same plane round an axis, so that the ploughs shall successively come into action;” and secondly, in applying power to give a rotary motion to the series, “so that the resistance of the earth to the ploughs, as they enter and travel through the earth, shall _cause the machine_ to be _propelled_”--instead of motion being communicated to the machine from the wheels which run on the land. The other invention--that of Messrs. Calloway and Purkiss--mainly consists of a number of chains working round a wheel, and fitted on the outside with ploughshares. Rotary motion is communicated by a locomotive.

“I consider,” says Sir Abel Handy, in the comedy of Speed the Plough, “that a healthy young man between the handles of a plough, is one of the noblest illustrations of the prosperity of Britain.” But shortly after saying this, Sir Abel invents a splendid curricle plough drawn by high-bred Leicestershire horses; who set off at full gallop with the plough at their heels over hill and dale, and instead of doing the allotted work a-field, they rush about at random, ploughing up Salisbury Plain. What would Sir Abel have said to Sir Willoughby de Eresby’s snorting steam-horse, perfectly under control?

His machinery consists of a locomotive engine, weighing only three-and-a-half tons, and of a twenty-six horse power. It was designed by Mr. Gooch. It has a double capstan attached, “removable, when the engine is required for other purposes.” His lordship does not indicate any of these; but we may fairly imagine that his farm-engine will possess the same versatile genius as the inventions which have preceded it. His description of this machinery is very brief, clear, and without the use of any technical terms.

“The engine moves across the centre of the field on a light, portable railway. The ploughs advance and recede on either side of the railway, at right angles to it.

“The ploughs employed consist of four ordinary, and four subsoil ploughs, fixed in a frame. It is directed by a person standing upon a small platform.

“Two such ploughs, one on either side the railway, alternately advance and recede; the advancing plough working, the other idle until it regains its proper position for ploughing the next four furrows. On the completion of the four furrows both ways, the engine and side frames advance each three feet.

“The ploughs are attached to an endless chain, one hundred and fifty yards in length. They can be detached at pleasure, or shifted from one side of the chain to the other. They travel at the rate of _five miles an hour_. Provision is made in case they strike against any impediment.”

Arrangements are also made to suit irregularly shaped fields. The full power of the engine is not exerted with the ploughs, as thus described; and the number of blades can be increased if desirable. And now for the next statement, which brings us to a most important consideration.

“In the present state of things, it is difficult to form a correct estimate of the value of the invention in a commercial point of view. I will only say that a machine of the power, and with the arrangement described, would perform the work usually done by _sixteen_ ploughs, driven by as many men, and drawn by thirty-two horses. Requiring itself the attendance of eight men, and a horse to draw the water for the engine, it would thus save the labour of thirty-one horses and eight men. Against this must be set an expense of five shillings a day for coals.”

In examining the question of economy in the use of steam-power instead of horses, we shall obtain valuable assistance from a paper addressed to Mr. J. T. Osborne, of Demerara, by the Council of the Highland Society. This paper sets the period of the productive labour of a horse against the unproductive period necessary for its rest, and exhibits results of a startling kind. Horses are fed and tended three hundred and sixty-five days of twenty-four hours, or eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours in the year. But they work only three hundred days, of about eight hours, taking the average, or two thousand four hundred hours a year. Thus we have a clear loss of six thousand three hundred and sixty hours of unproductive feeding and tending. It may be argued, that they are not fed and tended throughout the night, and therefore there is no such loss as the figures displayed by the Highland Society; but they are fed and tended enough to suffice them during the night, for which no compensating work is performed, so that it comes, we think, to nearly the same thing.

According to McCulloch, there are about one million two hundred thousand agricultural horses employed in Great Britain, which, at twenty-five pounds per head for maintenance, amounts to thirty millions sterling per annum for their keep. The unproductive portion, therefore, he finds amounting to the enormous sum of twenty-one millions seven hundred and eighty-five thousand three hundred and six pounds. It will be seen that this estimate is founded on the previous figures displaying the number of hours of feeding and tendence, compared with the number of hours’ work, and the consequent loss of six thousand three hundred and sixty hours. The only compensation for this loss of hours, represented by the above sum of upwards of twenty-one millions sterling, is in the value of the manure, which is thus produced at too great a cost.

“There are insuperable difficulties,” writes the Council of the Highland Society, “attending the employment of vital power; but mechanical power puts forth its energy when called for--it can be regulated, and, at pleasure, stopped. If it is desired to occupy the entire hours of daylight--to extend the field of operations--to work up more raw material--the energy of the animal ceases after a time; but not so that of the machine. The longest hours of summer may be advantageously employed.” And why not in the shortest nights of winter also? Could not steam-ploughs be made to carry their own lights with Hale Thomson’s patent silvered-glass reflectors, like other locomotives?

The next sentence brings us full-butt against the corner-stone of our social edifice, and moots the question as to the effect of machinery in increasing the demand for human labour:--“Were the whole period of daylight industriously employed in the most effective manner--that is, by the employment of machinery--the demand for human labour would be augmented in the exact ratio of the increased time, multiplied by the augmented force of the machinery.”

“Be fruitful and multiply,” said the God of Nature;--“You must be starved, if you do!” say the beldame economists. Meantime, an immense proportion of the habitable and fertile earth lies quite uncultivated, the vast seas are full of prolific food, and the land which _is_ cultivated, is not made the most of. The art of tilling has not kept pace with other improvements. Before the wonders of steam appeared in the world there was occasionally a random attempt to introduce some improvement in tillage, but the experiments originated in a wish rather than in any definite plan, and were of course a failure and an absurdity. Dean Swift brought his pungent satire to bear upon these attempts, in his account of the grand Academy of Lagado, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver says he was highly pleased with a projector who had discovered a plan for turning up the ground with hogs, to save the charge of ploughs, cattle, and labour. The method was beautifully simple. In a given field you bury at six inches distance, and eight inches deep, a quantity of acorns in long rows. You then drive six hundred hogs into the field, who, in search of the food they most love, will root or plough up the whole into furrows, with their snouts. The absurdities committed soon led to a cessation of all mere experiments, until at length came steam-engines, and thence, in due course, the dream of a steam-plough. This dream we are peradventure about to see realised in a few months; and then, though our million of agricultural horses will be diminished, our fine breed of Yorkshire and Lancashire ploughmen will not be thinned; any more than spinning and weaving machinery exterminated--as was awfully predicted it would--our army of spinners and weavers.

“I was bred to the plough,” said Robert Burns, when addressing a letter to the wealthy gentlemen of the Ayrshire Hunt:--“I am independent;” but it may turn out that the plough of old will soon be a sorry thing to depend upon. We are rather reminded of the Prologue to Chaucer’s “Ploughman Tale,” though he could have had no anticipation that his cessation from this labour would be final.

“The Ploughman pluckéd up his plough,
When Midsomer moon was comen in,
And saied his beasts should eat ynowe,
And lye in the grasse up to the chin.
He shook off shere, and coulter off drowe,
And hongéd his harnis on a pin.”

“Our strongest hope for the improvement of our social condition,” says Miss Martineau, “lies in the directing of intelligence full upon the cultivation of the soil.” The more the powers of science are brought to bear upon the tillage of the earth, and the production and manufacture of food, the greater will be the number benefited, and the more speedily will Miss Martineau’s axiom be verified. Cordially coinciding with that lady, we wish all success to the important undertaking of Lord Willoughby de Eresby, and shall be glad to find he accomplishes and establishes what has hitherto been confined to experimental trials.

A SACRED GROVE.

Here Silence is the queen of time; her hand
Is raised--and the tide trembles to a pause.
Beauty, too awful to be loved, awakes
And spell-binds Man’s repose. The sunken sun,
Whose mantle’s gold is melted in the tint
Of evening’s purple sadness, near the west
Lingers awhile, as loth to quit the scene.
Yet ’tis not sadness all; for though the trees,
Heavy with cumbrous melancholy, sweep
Their sombre-foliaged boughs close to the grass,
And solemn twilight peers between the trunks,
Tinging the dome of yonder vacant fane--
O’er all a spirit of subdued emotion
Breathes in pathetic sweetness, deep diffused.

In this dim palace of grey Solitude,
Where not a sigh wafts o’er the lily’s urn,
And nought, save marble forms of tenderest grace,
With pensive attitude stand in lone bowers--
The heart, upheaving into the fresh air,
Itself abandons to the scene, and claims
Kindred with placid Death, and those lost hopes
That lived around the loved ones, now no more.
Their tombs smile pale beneath these cypress boughs,
Heavy with memory of all the past.

Moveless I stand before these moveless trees--
Breathless as those broad boughs; and gazing thus,
At the dark foliage imaged in the pools,
Which deepen, as the brooding mind surveys
Their trance and awful beauty; ’tis a scene
That lures us backward to an elder time,
Through ages dim--and, thence, into a realm
Whose secret influence fills us with its soul--
Shadows of things which are not of the world,
And hopes that burn, yet find no vent save tears.

“CAPE” SKETCHES.

Cape Wants are neither peculiar nor numerous. Captain Smoke, in Jerrold’s comedy of “Bubbles of the Day,” confides to his friend, Lord Skindeep, that he is “terribly in want of a thousand pounds.” The reply is “You may take it as a general rule, Captain Smoke, that _every man_ wants a thousand pounds.” As with men so with Colonies. The sun never sets upon one of the dependencies of Great Britain, young or old, which would not be the better for a thousand pounds. Our Colonies feel, however, another want;--it is for something to which the Smokes of the old country show a very marked aversion; and that is labour. “Capital and labour!” is a cry which reaches us from every quarter of the earth. The demand does not resound so loudly perhaps from the Cape as from other and newer Colonies; but the want of the first necessities of enterprise, civilisation, and progress is not the less felt. Any sort of European labour (except convict labour), any kind of capital, is welcome in our South African dependencies; and in the long run “pays.”

As to Capital; men with from two thousand pounds to ten thousand pounds will find plenty of most profitable employment for their money. The Colony has innumerable resources--amongst them I may mention her fisheries and her mineral treasures. The former produce a large revenue even now, though carried on, from want of enterprise and capital, in the most unsystematic and slovenly manner. Of minerals there is abundance; ore in many places actually lying on the surface. The assegais (or spears) of the Kafirs are all made of iron, smelted and welded by themselves; while recent travellers from the northernmost extremity of the Colony bring accounts of innumerable implements in use among the savage tribes there, formed of iron of their own manufacture. Copper and lead have been discovered within fifteen miles of Algoa Bay.

But such riches remain utterly unproductive without facile means of transport, and a great want in the Colony is good roads. Of course, want of labour is the cause of this deficiency, which is, however, being slowly remedied by the local government. Whether the Cape Colonists were wise in rejecting the convicts, so kindly proffered to them by Lord Grey, I shall not presume to opine, because I have a notion that everybody knows their own business best; but we must not forget that New South Wales owes the blessing of her good roads to what was, it must be admitted, in other respects, a great curse to her--the bands of convicts the Colonial Office were so obliging as to send her.

Before I dilate on the greatest of all colonial wants, I will mention what the Cape of Good Hope does _not_ want; namely, young gentlemen with white hands and empty pockets, of no profession, and with very extensive notions of refinement. She does not require martinet “half-pays,” who know more of pipe-clay than of soils, and more of killing than of breeding and fattening. Fine ladies, who are proficient pianistes, and do not understand poultry, she is much better without. What she _does_ require, are:--In the towns, mechanics and artisans of all kinds; in the country, good farmers and sturdy dames, shepherds and agricultural labourers; in both, domestic servants, male and female. For all these the Cape is open, and it offers them first-rate livelihoods, abundance of food of the best description, and a climate which the returns taken of the mortality among the troops prove to be amongst the healthiest in all Her Majesty’s world-wide dominions. The Colony has also one great advantage over Australia--it is ten thousand miles nearer to England.

Want the third in point of importance is a change in the present system of selecting Colonial Governors. Were we to choose Generals to lead our armies--not from soldiers trained to arms and distinguished in the field--but from decayed statesmen, who had “never set a squadron in the field,” nor even handled a sword; would not our enemies not only beat us, but laugh at us? Yet conversely we commit precisely this absurdity: we “reward” meritorious Generals by appointing them Governors; of whose duties they are, as a rule, as ignorant as a Lord of the Treasury is of fortification. The Governor of a Colony, as the representative of the highest power in the Empire, is required to fulfil the highest civil functions; to conduct the most difficult and delicate negotiations; and we select a brave old General, who hardly knows the geography of his government; is profoundly ignorant of the habits and requirements of its people; who never even pretended to statesmanship, and either commits himself to something so rash that it makes everybody angry, or to something so silly that it makes everybody laugh.

* * * * *

In Education, England might take a lesson from her South African dependency--it is in the education of the people. Government schools are established in every town, and almost every village of the Colony, open to children of all classes and all creeds, and free of all expense. They are presided over by intelligent teachers, chiefly selected from the Scotch Universities, and truly their pupils do these gentlemen infinite credit. I do not hesitate to say, that the rising generation of the Cape Colony will be the best educated men of their class in all the British Empire. It is to Dr. Jones, the former President of the South African College, in Cape Town, that the colony is indebted for this invaluable boon. Even the population in the far interior are better off in this respect than the children of our English peasantry. Thanks to the energy of Campbell, Latrobe, Moffat, and other energetic, common-sense, as well as pious, members of the Missionary Society; the children of the Hottentots, Griquas, and even of some of the Bechuanas, are fast being brought into the pale of civilisation by attendance at the schools established by those gentlemen. Some of the offspring of English parents in the “interior” of England, have no such schools to attend.

* * * * *

Sheep Farming is, perhaps, the best and most profitable occupation at the Cape. It is far better than agriculture, and better than cattle farming, for the following reasons. The great deficiency of the colony is the want of sufficient water for irrigation. Wherever this want is not felt, all kinds of grain may be raised with profit, and Cape wheat is universally pronounced to be the finest in the world. But the farms, or portions of farms, on which it can be grown are few and far between. Nor is this the only drawback to agriculture; the farmer has two other dire enemies to contend with. The one is the blight or “smut,” which is very common; and frequently destroys whole crops. Two young friends of mine hired a farm in partnership, and, in spite of the warnings of more experienced persons, determined to turn their principal attention to agriculture. They went to great expense in the purchase of agricultural implements, paid the highest wages for labourers, and worked with their own hands as hard as any ploughman in England. They raised a magnificent crop, and began to indulge a sweet reverie on the “Dollars” it was to bring them. Alas, the “smut” came, and the beautiful crop was destroyed, while not one solitary dollar found its way into the young farmers’ pockets. Disappointed, but not disheartened, they set to work again, and next year with precisely the same result. Luckily they were prudent fellows, and had neither been personally extravagant, nor sunk all their money in one enterprise. They, therefore, purchased some sheep, cattle, and horses, and only cultivated a very _small portion_ of their farm; and now they are among the most prosperous farmers in the Colony.

Another enemy of the agriculturist at the Cape, not less destructive than the former, though less frequent in his attacks, is the locust. Till I went to the Cape, I never had a clear conception of the mischief that could be done by this one of the “Plagues of Egypt.” They came always in clouds, and fly _with_ the wind. I am almost afraid to describe their numbers. I have seen the air as full of these creatures as of the flakes of snow in a heavy snow-storm--in fact, literally “raining locusts.” I have been obliged to turn back on a journey from the impossibility of getting my horse to face them when driven against us by the wind. I have seen immense plains one day covered with grass, corn, and gardens; and the next day left, after a visit of locusts, without one solitary blade of verdure on any part of them. I have seen millions of these insects driven by the wind into the sea at Algoa Bay, and washed on shore in such heaps, that their bodies decaying have become so offensive as to oblige the authorities of the town to employ all the Coolies in the place in burying them. Think of all this, grumbling farmers of England. What corn-laws could afford you “protection” against such an importation? Still, I must add that during my five years’ residence at the Cape, I can only recall three visits of these pests; nor must it be supposed that they at any time spread over the whole Colony. When they visit a sheep or cattle farm, the owner has, of course, no other alternative than to move his stock to some place which they have not visited.

Cattle are profitable stock at the Cape; but no Englishman seems to like them so well as sheep. Besides, it occasionally happens that, in a fit of caprice, every Hottentot labourer on your farm will leave you in a day, and you will have to be your own herdsman. This is comparatively nothing with sheep; but if you had a couple of hundred cows that wanted milking you would be rather in a “fix.”

Horses are also a profitable stock, and far more suited to English taste. But the “returns” are necessarily slow; and few men can afford to wait three years for their profits.

Sheep are the best. Here is one example, by no means extraordinary, but forming an average sample of the fruits of sheep-farming:--A gentleman who was reading for the Church, at Cambridge, found that his health would not allow him to continue his studies; he emigrated to Algoa Bay, with a capital of about two thousand five hundred pounds. He wisely listened to good advice in the selection of a farm and the purchase of his stock of sheep. At the end of three years I visited him, and we talked about sheep-farming, which was then in a bad condition. I was expressing my wonder that so many sheep-farmers had lately been “sold up;” and this was his reply, “What else could you expect? Half of them come out here without one farthing of capital. They hire a farm; buy stock on credit (for two or three years), live on the sale of the wool and also on credit--for they live ‘like fighting-cocks’--and then when pay-day comes at last, they, of course, have not a sixpence. But, look at my own case: I have been here three years; my wool fetches double the price that it did the first year; my stock is just doubled in number and vastly improved in quality; I have lived in as much comfort as I require in the meantime; and I don’t owe a sixpence.”

The life of a Cape farmer is necessarily solitary. His nearest neighbour is probably seven miles off, and his only daily companions are his stock and his labourers. A visitor (especially if he come from one of the Towns) is a veritable Godsend; and is safe to be welcome as long as he chooses to remain. He may ride his host’s horses and shoot or hunt his game, smoke his pipes, and drink his “Cape Smoke,”[A] as long as he pleases. But he must be contented with very rough fare. Mutton and goats’ flesh, meal-cakes (very similar, I fancy, to those which King Alfred burnt), Indian corn, and badly-made coffee, will form the staple articles of his food. He will sleep on a home-made sofa with goatskins for blankets, in a room with a mud floor, and very probably no ceiling but the thatch roof. The house will most likely be built of lath and plaster, and look far more like the stable of a third-rate country inn than a gentleman’s residence. Yet the host is often a highly educated and sensible man, fighting his way to competence, living a comparatively easy life, and, if unblessed with luxuries, at least unharassed by cares, save when an occasional wolf (or rather hyæna) makes a night assault on his homestead.

[A] Cape Brandy.

Of the Cape Trade, the most peculiar and profitable branch is that with the native tribes. At present it is carried on in the most primitive style. A trader will load a couple of waggons with such goods as are likely to sell among savages. Coarse cloth, smart Manchester printed calicoes, blankets, beads, brass curtain-rings (worn by the natives as ornaments on their arms), soldiers’ jackets, wide-awake hats, &c. With this load he will proceed across the colonial boundary, and penetrate as far as he pleases into the interior, calling where experience has shown him he is likely to find customers, and selling his goods like a hawker, or “Cheap Jack,” in England. But he seldom obtains _money_ for his goods,--nor does he wish for it. He gets ivory, ostrich feathers, wild-beast skins, horns, and, in fact, all the rarest trophies of the chase. With these he reloads his waggons for his return home, and reaches the Colony after, perhaps, six or eight months’ absence, with a load which fetches him at once, seven or eight hundred--sometimes a thousand--pounds in exchange for his outlay of one hundred and fifty pounds.

It seems clear that the establishment of trading stations in the interior of Southern Africa would be most profitable to the projectors, and most advantageous to the native tribes, by accustoming them to the sights and habits of a civilised life.

The shopkeepers are rather jealous of the merchants at the Cape. The latter are very often so undignified as to sell a dozen pair of stockings or a single hat, to the exceeding disgust of retailers.

A Cape shop is a curiosity. It strikes a man as odd, to buy his boots and his cheese, or his hat and his sugar, at the same shop,--still more odd to purchase his wife a Chinese shawl and his child a peg-top in the same establishment.

* * * * *

The Wild Sports of South Africa have been celebrated by many a writer, from Major Cornwallis Harris down to Mr. Gordon Cumming. For large game the country is perhaps the finest sporting ground in the world. People come even from India to hunt the lion and the buffalo, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus, the elephant, the giraffe, and the innumerable varieties of wild deer, from the delicate and graceful springbok to the heavy and powerful gnu. Some of the most dreaded amongst them are not nearly so terrible as travellers’ tales would persuade “the gentlemen of England who sit at home at ease.”