Chapter XV (1)

The next morning Helen was very ill--so ill that, shortly after rising, she was forced to creep back to bed. Her frame shivered--her eyes were heavy--her hand burned like fire. Fever had set in. Perhaps she might have caught cold on the bridge--perhaps her emotions had proved too much for her frame. Leonard, in great alarm, called on the nearest apothecary. The apothecary looked grave, and said there was danger. And danger soon declared itself--Helen became delirious. For several days she lay in this state, between life and death. Leonard then felt that all the sorrows of earth are light, compared with the fear of losing what we love. How valueless the envied laurel seemed beside the dying rose.

Thanks, perhaps, more to his heed and tending than to medical skill, she recovered sense at last--immediate peril was over. But she was very weak and reduced--her ultimate recovery doubtful--convalescence, at best, likely to be very slow.

But when she learned how long she had been thus ill, she looked anxiously at Leonard's face as he bent over her, and faltered forth--"Give me my work! I am strong enough for that now--it would amuse me."

Leonard burst into tears.

Alas! he had no work himself; all their joint money had melted away; the apothecary was not like good Dr. Morgan; the medicines were to be paid for, and the rent. Two days before, Leonard had pawned Riccabocca's watch; and when the last shilling thus raised was gone, how should he support Helen? Nevertheless he conquered his tears, and assured her that he had employment; and that so earnestly that she believed him, and sank into soft sleep. He listened to her breathing, kissed her forehead, and left the room. He turned into his own neighboring garret, and, leaning his face on his hands, collected all his thoughts.

He must be a beggar at last. He must write to Mr. Dale for money--Mr. Dale, too, who knew the secret of his birth. He would rather have begged of a stranger--it served to add a new dishonor to his mother's memory for the child to beg of one who was acquainted with her shame. Had he himself been the only one to want and to starve, he would have sunk inch by inch into the grave of famine, before he would have so subdued his pride. But Helen, there on that bed--Helen needing, for weeks perhaps, all support, and illness making luxuries themselves like necessaries! Beg he must. And when he so resolved, had you but seen the proud bitter soul he conquered, you would have said--"This which he thinks is degradation--this is heroism. Oh, strange human heart!--no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the Beautiful which are graven, unread by human eye, in thy secret leaves," Of whom else should he beg? His mother had nothing, Riccabocca was poor, and the stately Violante, who had exclaimed, "Would that I were a man!"--he could not endure the thought that she should pity him, and despise. The Avenels! No--thrice No. He drew towards him hastily ink and paper, and wrote rapid lines that were wrung from him as from the bleeding strings of life.

But the hour for the post had passed--the letter must wait till the next day; and three days at least would elapse before he could receive an answer. He left the letter on the table, and, stifling as for air, went forth. He crossed the bridge--he passed on mechanically--and was borne along by a crowd pressing towards the doors of Parliament. A debate that excited popular interest was fixed for that evening, and many bystanders collected in the street to see the members pass to and fro, or hear what speakers had yet risen to take part in the debate, or try to get orders for the gallery.

He halted amidst these loiterers, with no interest, indeed, in common with them, but looking over their heads abstractedly towards the tall Funeral Abbey--Imperial Golgotha of Poets, and Chiefs, and Kings.

Suddenly his attention was diverted to those around by the sound of a name--displeasingly known to him. "How are you, Randal Leslie? Coming to hear the debate?" said a member who was passing through the street.

"Yes; Mr. Egerton promised to get me under the gallery. He is to speak himself to-night, and I have never heard him. As you are going into the House, will you remind him?"

"I can't now, for he is speaking already, and well too. I hurried from the Athenaeum, where I was dining, on purpose to be in time, as I heard that his speech was making a great effect."

"This is very unlucky," said Randal, "I had no idea he would speak so early."

"M---- brought him up by a direct personal attack. But follow me; perhaps I can get you into the House; and a man like you, Leslie, of whom we expect great things some day, I can tell you, should not miss any such opportunity of knowing what this House of ours is on a field night. Come on!"

The member hurried towards the door; and as Randal followed him, a bystander cried--"That's the young man who wrote the famous pamphlet--Egerton's relation."

"Oh, indeed!" said another. "Clever man, Egerton--I am waiting for him."

"So am I."

"Why, you are not a constituent, as I am."

"No; but he has been very kind to my nephew, and I must thank him. You are a constituent--he is an honor to your town."

"So he is; enlightened man!"

"And so generous!"

"Brings forward really good measures," quoth the politician.

"And clever young men," said the uncle.

Therewith one or two others joined in the praise of Audley Egerton, and many anecdotes of his liberality were told.

Leonard listened at first listlessly, at last with thoughtful attention. He had heard Burley, too, speak highly of this generous statesman, who, without pretending to genius himself, appreciated it in others. He suddenly remembered, too, that Egerton was half-brother to the Squire. Vague notions of some appeal to this eminent person, not for charity, but employ to his mind, gleamed across him--inexperienced boy that he yet was! And while thus meditating, the door of the House opened, and out came Audley Egerton himself. A partial cheering, followed by a general murmur, apprised Leonard of the presence of the popular statesman. Egerton was caught hold of by some five or six persons in succession; a shake of the hand, a nod, a brief whispered word or two, sufficed the practised member for graceful escape; and soon, free from the crowd, his tall erect figure passed on, and turned towards the bridge. He paused at the angle and took out his watch, looking at it by the lamp-light.

"Harley will be here soon," he muttered--"he is always punctual; and now that I have spoken, I can give him an hour or so. That is well."

As he replaced his watch in his pocket, and re-buttoned his coat over his firm broad chest, he lifted his eyes, and saw a young man standing before him.

"Do you want me?" asked the statesman, with the direct brevity of his practical character.

"Mr. Egerton," said the young man, with a voice that slightly trembled, and yet was manly amidst emotion, "you have a great name, and great power--I stand here in these streets of London without a friend, and without employ. I believe that I have it in me to do some nobler work than that of bodily labor, had I but one friend--one opening for my thoughts. And now I have said this, I scarcely know how, or why, but from despair, and the sudden impulse which that despair took from the praise that follows your success, I have nothing more to add."

Audley Egerton was silent for a moment, struck by the tone and address of the stranger; but the consummate and wary man of the world, accustomed to all manner of strange applications, and all varieties of imposture, quickly recovered from a passing and slight effect.

"Are you a native of ----?" (naming the town he represented as member.)

"No, sir."

"Well, young man, I am very sorry for you; but the good sense you must possess (for I judge of that by the education you have evidently received) must tell you that a public man, whatever be his patronage, has it too fully absorbed by claimants who have a right to demand it, to be able to listen to strangers."

He paused a moment, and, as Leonard stood silent, added, with more kindness than most public men so accosted would have showed--"You say you are friendless--poor fellow. In early life that happens to many of us, who find friends enough before the close. Be honest, and well-conducted; lean on yourself, not on strangers; work with the body if you can't with the mind; and, believe me, that advice is all I can give you, unless this trifle,"--and the minister held out a crown piece.

Leonard bowed, shook his head sadly, and walked away. Egerton looked after him with a slight pang.

"Pooh!" said he to himself, "there must be thousands in the same state in these streets of London. I cannot redress the necessities of civilization. Well educated! It is not from ignorance henceforth that society will suffer--it is from over-educating the hungry thousands who, thus unfitted for manual toil, and with no career for mental, will some day or other stand like that boy in our streets, and puzzle wiser ministers than I am."

As Egerton thus mused, and passed on to the bridge, a bugle-horn rang merrily from the box of a gay four-in-hand. A drag-coach with superb blood-horses rattled over the causeway, and in the driver Egerton recognised his nephew--Frank Hazeldean.

The young Guardsman was returning, with a lively party of men, from dining at Greenwich; and the careless laughter of these children of pleasure floated far over the still river.

It vexed the ear of the careworn statesman--sad, perhaps, with all his greatness, lonely amidst all his crowd of friends. It reminded him, perhaps, of his own youth, when such parties and companionships were familiar to him, though through them all he bore an ambitious aspiring soul--"_Le jeu vaut-il la chandelle?_" said he, shrugging his shoulders.

The coach rolled rapidly past Leonard, as he stood leaning against the corner of the bridge, and the mire of the kennel splashed over him from the hoofs of the fiery horses. The laughter smote on his ear more discordantly than on the minister's, but it begot no envy.

"Life is a dark riddle," said he, smiting his breast.

And he walked slowly on, gained the recess where he had stood several nights before with Helen; and dizzy with want of food, and worn out for want of sleep, he sank down into the dark corner; while the river that rolled under the arch of stone muttered dirge-like in his ear;--as under the social key-stone wails and rolls on for ever the mystery of Human Discontent. Take comfort, O Thinker by the stream! 'Tis the river that founded and gave pomp to the city; and without the discontent, where were progress--what were Man? Take comfort, O Thinker! wherever the stream over which thou bendest, or beside which thou sinkest, weary and desolate, frets the arch that supports thee;--never dream that, by destroying the bridge, thou canst silence the moan of the wave!

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Continued from page 259.

[19] Fact. In a work by M. GIBERT, a celebrated French physician, on diseases of the skin, he states that that minute troublesome kind of rash, known by the name of _prurigo_, though not dangerous in itself, has often driven the individual afflicted by it to--suicide. I believe that our more varying climate, and our more heating drinks and ailments, render the skin complaint more common in England than in France, yet I doubt if any English physician could state that it had ever driven one of his _English_ patients to suicide.

From the London Art-Journal.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

The recent judgment of Lord Campbell in Boosey _v._ Jeffreys, which has settled finally the much litigated question of the right of a foreigner to copyright in this country, whether of books, pictures, or music, has been alleged as an excuse for a public meeting of authors and publishers, to appeal against the concession of such a right, and to procure a reversal of the decision, should his lordship be disposed to overrule his own judgment in the House of Lords. The direct impulse to the present agitation, however, appears to have been certain proceedings commenced against Mr. Bohn and others, by Mr. Murray, for their alleged invasion of his copyrights in the works of Washington Irving; of which cheap editions have been issued, on the faith of a recent opinion of Lord Cranworth, wholly at variance with that which has lately been pronounced by the Court of Error, by no fewer than four publishers. The defendants in these cases are of course the leading instigators of this movement, and appear to have prevailed upon Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to take the chair at a public meeting of Authors and Publishers, at the Hanover Square Rooms, for the purpose of discussing the question in all its bearings. Although the authors and publishers of England were but slenderly represented on the occasion, and even those who were present were far from unanimous, several ingenious and even brilliant speeches were delivered, and resolutions were carried, tending to support the Chairman's view of the subject; viz., to procure a revision of the law which declares foreign authors resident abroad, to be entitled to copyright in this country; to form a society to consider the steps necessary to obtain the proposed readjustment of the law; and lastly, to collect subscriptions to indemnify the gentlemen now acting on the defensive, in the various actions for the alleged invasion of copyright, in the expensive process of appealing against Lord Campbell's decision to the House of Lords. We confess that we have not been convinced by any of the arguments adduced on this occasion, able and plausible as many of them were, that we should violate that great principle of justice, which forbids that we should do evil that good may come; and that because foreign nations cannot be brought to a sense of the dishonesty of their habitual invasions of British Copyright, we should make reprisals upon their authors, and deny them that protection which they so dishonestly withhold to us. Still less can we affirm a proposition which would go back from twenty five to thirty years, and deprive English booksellers of copyrights for which, on the faith of the law as it then stood, they have paid very considerable sums of money. The impression, that if we deprive American authors of the copyright they have hitherto enjoyed in England, we shall force them and their readers to agree to an international arrangement, we believe to be entirely fallacious. There are very few American authors whose copyrights have proved of any material value to English publishers; and even of that few, the majority have retired for some years past, almost wholly from the field of literature. Washington Irving, Cooper, and Prescott, are almost the only authors who have a marketable value in this country; and two out of the three have written little that is worthy of their genius for many years. Besides, the American buccaneer knows full well that the chief weight of the sacrifice, if American copyrights were to be declared null and void in this country, would fall upon neither Mr. Irving, Mr. Cooper, nor Mr. Prescott, but upon Messrs. Murray and Bentley, the British possessors of their copyrights. If, therefore, the question be mooted at all, it should not be with a view to a retrospective operation. But we more than doubt, if America, uninfluenced by worthier motives, will ever be driven to a recognition of the rights of British authors, for the sake of protecting the interests of the very few of its native writers who look to England for the chief reward of their literary labor. America, in her rage for cheap editions, has almost annihilated her own literature, and her unwarrantable piracy of our best authors, does but react on those of her own. If unable to understand the impolicy of her present course, will mulcting Mr. Murray and Mr. Bentley induce her to abandon her wholesale appropriations of English literary property? or, will our becoming robbers ourselves diminish the wholesale piracy of our neighbors? We think not. The arguments of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, which apply to the conduct of America in refusing to entertain the question of international copyright, are unanswerable; but if she prefers the selfish demands of the million to the interests of her own writers, she is not likely to be deterred from continuing the work of spoliation because we, at length, determine to follow her example. It cannot be doubted, for one moment, that it was the _intention_ of the act at present in force, to recognize the copyright of foreigners whose works were first published in this country, and it is equally clear that the law for the protection of the patents of foreigners in England, was conceived in the same spirit. Why should we refuse protection to the writings of a foreign author, and concede it to his scientific discoveries? If we are to interpret the law as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Bohn would have us do, why should we grant to any foreign inventor the patent by which his property is secured in this country? More than twenty years ago the late Mr. Murray paid Washington Irving 1500_l._ for his Tales of a Traveller; 3000_l._ for his Columbus; 1000_l._, for his Granada; and 1000_l._ for his Bracebridge Hall. Is it to be endured, that because American booksellers are engaged in an unauthorized republication of every English book which they consider worth reprinting, we should, after so long a forbearance, become pirates in our turn; and thus despoil, not the foreign aggressor, but our own respectable publishers, of a right in which so large an amount of capital and enterprise has been embarked.

Whatever difference of opinion, therefore, there may be as to the measures which are most likely to force upon our neighbors a fair recognition of the rights of our authors, by a system of reprisal which we could never be brought to admire, and which we consider beneath the dignity of our national character, there can be none as to the absurdity of attempting so to do, by a retrospective operation which has neither justice nor common honesty to recommend it. We are far from desiring to attach any moral blame to the gentlemen whose reprints, in this country, of the works of Irving and others, have given occasion for the present controversy. The state of the law, as interpreted by Lord Cranworth, and other of our eminent jurists, appears to have warranted their belief that they were perfectly authorized in so doing. There are, however, considerations of courtesy which ought always to be observed by persons of the same profession towards each other, which should prevent them from doing all that even the law entitles them to do, where, by such a course, they are prejudicing the interests of their respectable brother tradesmen, on occasions on which they had good ground to believe that they have done every thing they could to secure the rights to which they lay claim. Neither is the position of the author to be wholly overlooked. So far back as 1813 or 1814, Washington Irving was a resident in this country, engaged in mercantile pursuits, as a partner in a British firm, and was as much an Englishman as either Mr. Leslie or Mr. Stuart Newton. He was, indeed, a resident in England at the date of the publication of several of his works. But the principle, if carried out fairly, would compromise the interests of painters and print-publishers, as well as of litterateurs and booksellers. If the arguments employed at the late meeting, are at all tenable, the valuable copyrights of Messrs. Moon, Graves & Co., Colnaghi, or Hogarth, and other printsellers, in the engravings executed from the works of Leslie, Newton, Ohalon, and others, are completely at the mercy of any one who may think it worth his while to reproduce them. The sort of retaliation, therefore, which is now suggested, would be equivalent to that of cutting off the nose for the purpose of being revenged upon the face.

It is quite true that in 1845, in Chappell _v._ Purday, the Court of Exchequer was of opinion that a foreign author residing abroad, who composed a work there, could have no copyright in this country; a decision which was subsequently confirmed in the same Court in Boosey v. Purday. These judgments have, however, been entirely overruled by Lord Campbell, who on a late occasion pronounced an opinion in the teeth of these decisions, and whose impressions on this question are said to be shared by a large majority of the Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench. The point may therefore be considered as settled; and as further litigation in the Court of Chancery can only be productive of ruinous expense and vexation, it is much to be desired that an amicable arrangement of the differences of the respective publishers may be entered into, which, whilst it recognizes the proper principle, will avert the necessity of further contests on the subject. Mr. Colburn was, it appears, in favor of the anti-foreign copyright disputants, and has, therefore, clearly invited the invasion of his own copyrights of the works of American authors. As, however, he is understood to have virtually, if not ostensibly, retired from the publishing trade, he has for the future, at least, but little interest in the matter.

The speeches of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and of Mr. Bohn, at the late meeting, contain many facts and illustrations, which will be found of service in considering the question of international copyright. Mr. Bohn has already done much by the publication of cheap editions of standard authors, at a very moderate price, to render good books accessible to the public, and is placed by his position as a bookseller, beyond the suspicion of having been actuated by mercenary or unworthy motives in the matter. We question however if the general interests of authors and publishers have not suffered materially from his reprints. When Mr. Colburn attributed to American piracy the discouraging fact that for books for which he could once afford to pay 1000_l._, he cannot now give more than from 100_l._ to 150_l._, he appears to have overlooked the prevalence of cheap literature generally in this country; and the ruinous competition which is now going on among rival booksellers. Who is likely to purchase his guinea and a half editions of Cooper's novels, when he can obtain from Mr. Bohn the works of Washington Irving (large and handsomely printed volumes) at two shillings each? Besides, the same system of piracy was at work when he purchased Mr. Cooper's copyrights, as is in operation now. He recommends British publishers not to purchase another copyright from an American author until his government have consented to enter into some international arrangement; and so far we agree with him in his suggestion. It is a remarkable fact, however, that whilst British authors are protesting in their speeches and writings against foreign appropriations of their copyrights, they are often very much flattered by their adoption. The audacious single-volume piracies of Galignani and Baudry of Paris, of the poetry of Byron, Scott, Southey, Moore, Coleridge, Shelley and others, were often looked upon by the parties who might be expected to consider themselves most aggrieved, as conferring a distinction upon their writings calculated to increase their reputation in this country. In several instances within our knowledge, the materials for the biographical notices which prefaced the respective volumes were supplied by the authors themselves! Lord Byron, so far from expressing any indignation at the liberty which Messrs. Galignani had taken with his writings, assisted them in identifying them, and wrote interesting autograph letters to aid in their illustration.

Southey, as we gather from one of his letters, was rather flattered than otherwise at the republication of his poetry in Paris, and if rumor may be credited, Moore corrected the proofs, and furnished materials for the biography of one or more of the foreign editions of his works. Mr. Bowles and several other poets whose writings were included in this series, not only furnished notes for the Biographical Prefaces, but indicated to the editor the publications from which their fugitive writings should be collected. Mrs. Hemans furnished several notes and suggestions for one of the American editions of her works, and sent copies to her friends as evidence of her translantic popularity. In fact we have rarely met with an author whose writings have been deemed worthy of being reprinted abroad, who has not considered himself flattered by the preference. We do not of course profess to believe that their publishers were equally complimented by this unceremonious invasion of their property. So long as the sale of such piracies were limited to the continent, we doubt if they were the means of abstracting a great deal from the pockets of either the author or publisher; but for very many years they were allowed to be imported in single copies, during which period they were introduced into this country in large quantities. They were, however, purchased rather from their compactness than for their cheapness, and the instant Mr. Murray published a handsomely printed single volume edition of the Poetry of Lord Byron at a moderate price, the trade in French and Belgian piracies of British copyrights was almost destroyed. Why should we not print cheap editions for exportation? The drawback on the paper, and the superiority of our printing and binding would be sufficiently obvious to enable us to obtain a better price than would be given for such coarse reprints as are usually hurried into circulation in America. We cannot but believe that such an enterprise might be carried out successfully. There is scarcely an edition, at a moderate price, of any American author, that is worthy of the library; and looking at the quality of the paper and print, we doubt if the American booksellers could afford a volume of similar quality at the price charged by Mr. Bohn for his reprints.

Any plan is, however, better than that suggested at the late meeting, of becoming pirates ourselves to cure our neighbors of their buccaneering propensities. The comparatively small number of works of mark which are now produced in America (there have been no prose writers of any very great eminence since the heyday of the literary lives of Irving, Cooper, and Channing, if we except Mr. Prescott) goes far to show that national literature is all but annihilated in that country, and that the evil must eventually, in a great measure, correct itself. In a recent American newspaper it is stated that protection is not refused in that country to any British author who will go through the necessary forms by which he becomes qualified for the privilege. Our readers will smile to hear that one of these conditions consists of an oath, by which the candidate for copyright in America is required to "renounce for ever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereign, whatever, and particularly _to the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland!"_ The late Captain Marryat declined to comply with these terms, although another English author, of undeniable reputation, has, it is affirmed, not scrupled to bolt this denationalizing pill. We have not heard if he has turned his privilege to any account.

From Fraser's Magazine.

A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN AT HOME.

BY C. ASTOR BRISTED.

It was a lovely October day; the temperature perfectly Elysian--not half a degree too hot or too cold--and the air moister than is usual in the dry climate of the Northern States, altogether reminding one of Florence in early autumn, only less enervating. Ashburner and the Harry Bensons were gliding up the Hudson in a 'floating palace,' which is American penny-a-liner for a northriver steamboat. Gerard Ludlow was on board, handsome and _distingue_ as ever, but a little thinned and worn by numberless polkas. He had got rid of his wife by a mighty effort, and was going to play _le Mari a la Campagne_--not at Ravenswood, however, but with some of the Van Hornes who lived higher up the river. While the young exquisite was rattling on in a sort of Macaronic French to Mrs. Benson about the mountains of Switzerland and the pictures of Italy, the ascent of the Nile and "that glorious _Clos-Vougeot Blanc Mousseux_ at the _Anglais_"--every topic, in short, that had not the least connection with America--Ashburner was witnessing for the third time, with unabated admiration, the magnificent scenery of the classic American river--for classic it is to a New-Yorker since Washington Irving has immortalized its legends.

"I am glad to see you are not ashamed to show a little enthusiasm," said Benson, as he marked his friend leaning over the forward railing, absorbed in the view before him. "Some people don't care much for this sort of thing. There's my cousin Ludlow, how supremely indifferent he is to it all! He is talking to my wife about the last comic opera he saw in Paris, which represents Shakespeare and Queen Bess getting very jolly together."

"Certainly one would hardly be able to tell what countryman Ludlow was, without previous knowledge. He seems, like many of your fashionables, very much out of place here."

"That's true enough; and the man most out of place among them all is my brother Carl, whom we are just going to visit."

Ashburner's recollection and knowledge of Carl Benson were pretty much comprised in a certain luncheon at Ravenswood, which he had found very much in place, and a very good place for. Henry went on to explain himself.

"He prides himself on a regard for two things--sincerity and equity--two very estimable virtues, no doubt, but capable of being ridden to death like all hobbies."

Benson further proceeded to state that he was afraid they would find his brother in no very genial mood--that, in fact, he had two special reasons at that time for being in bad humor. The anti-rent epidemic had broken out in the vicinity, and his place was threatened with perforation by a railroad. The former, however perilous to some of his acquaintance, was no very terrible danger to Carl himself, he having as many tenants in the country as his brother had in town--to wit, just one. The latter was considerably more serious in itself, and rendered particularly aggravating by attendant circumstances. An equally convenient and much safer inland route for the railway had been originally proposed; but Mr. Jobson, the chief engineer, started the project of a new one close along the shore, running through the beautiful private grounds that lined the whole east bank of the river for a hundred and fifty miles. The true motive for this change was, that the company would thus have to pay less for right of way, since the inland route would have passed through the cornfields and vegetable-grounds of farmers, to whom they must have made full compensation at the market value of the land, whereas by cutting through a private lawn they could take the ground at a merely nominal rate, the damage caused to a gentleman by the destruction of his place for all the purposes of a country-seat being a "fancy value," which jurors and commissioners chosen from the mass of the people, and regarding the aristocratic landholder with an envious eye, would never pay the least attention to. But either from a lingering regard for outward decency, or from some other motive, this, the real reason, met with only a passing allusion in Mr. Jobson's report. He came out boldly, and recommended the river route as calculated to improve the appearance of the shore, by filling up bays and cutting off sharp points.[20] What made it worse was, that the majority of these very gentlemen proprietors had been induced to subscribe largely to the road under the solemn assurance from leading members of the company (which took care not to make itself officially and corporately responsible) that the inland route would be adopted, which assurance was thrown to the winds as soon as the books were filled up. Carl was not to be taken in so; he had refused to subscribe to the road, and opposed it to the extent of his small influence from the first; he might be the victim of such people, but he would not be their dupe. This was one consolation to him. Another was, that the railway, when it did come upon him, which would not be for two years yet, would not absolutely ruin his place. It would not go through his house, or across the lawn in front of it, or break down his terrace, for which Nature was to be thanked, and not Mr. Jobson. Ravenswood was partly within one of the to-be-improved bays, and, consequently, the rails would cut it close along the water under the terraced bank. It merely stopped his access to the river, which, as he did not yacht, and had room for the little boating he wanted in the adjoining bay, was no great deprivation. At any rate, the danger anticipated by Harry turned out all moonshine. When they stopped at Van Burenopolis (the landing nearest Ravenswood), Carl's rockaway was on the ground, and in ten minutes their host received them at his front door, both his hands out-stretched, and his face lighted up with unfeigned pleasure.

Carl Benson was an unflattered likeness of his brother, with a larger nose, large feet, that got into every one's way, coarser hair, and narrower chest; altogether a rougher and inferior type of form; but he had a fresh and ruddy complexion, and though he was Henry's senior by six years, there did not seem to be more than a twelve-month between them. In dress he was as quiet as Harry was gay; never cared how old his clothes were, so long as he had plenty of clean linen; was often two years behind the fashion; affected black coats and gray trousers; eschewed enamelled chains, jewelled waistcoat-buttons, and other similar fopperies of Young New-York; preferred shoes (not of patent leather) to boots, and usually tied his cravat in the smallest possible bow. Nor was the contrast in manner between the two brothers less marked; the elder was shy and retiring before strangers, and would have been called a very awkward man anywhere but in England. You might easily guess from his way of behaving himself on a first introduction, the uncertain style of his movements, and his "butter-finger" fashion of taking hold of things, that he had none of that dexterity in the little every-day occasions of life which distinguished Harry; who, for instance, could harness a horse about as soon as his groom, while Carl would have been half the day about it, and not have done it well after all; Harry could carry out a complicated affair of business at one interview, without coming off worst; but his elder brother would have pottered about it three days, and probably been cheated in the end. This inaptitude for small business, this want of promptitude and dexterity, of presence of mind and body, so to speak, is not very detrimental in Europe, where a gentleman with a tolerably well-filled purse can have so much done for him; but in America, where the richest man has to do so much for himself, it is a constantly recurring inconvenience, and it struck the Englishman almost immediately that this, though not especially alluded to by Henry, was one of the things that made Carl out of place in his own fatherland.

The mansion at Ravenswood, which had braved the storms of eighty-five winters (a venerable age for an American house), was pitched on a hill commanding a view of the Hudson for forty miles. Without, it was built of rough stone, with an ample wooden _stoop_ running all round it, and a great variety of vines and creepers running round all the pillars of the stoop;--within, it branched off into large halls and spacious rooms, filled with antediluvian furniture, and guiltless of the ambitious upholstery attempts of Young New-York, which in such matters goes ahead of Paris itself. The library alone, in which Carl lived,--that is to say, he did everything but dining and sleeping there,--was fitted up in modern style, furnished with luxurious arm-chairs and sofas, the walls and ceiling neatly painted in oak, and the principal window composed of one oval pane of glass set in a frame, to which the external landscape supplied an exquisite picture. The hill swept down to the water's edge almost, where it terminated abruptly in a lofty terrace, ninety feet above the level of the shore. The woodlands all about--on Benson's place, on the places adjoining, on the opposite bank--would have been beautiful at any time of the year; now, when the foliage was changing color, in anticipation of the coming frost, they were surpassingly so. As the trees change not all at once, but different ones assume different tints successively, the natural kaleidoscope is varied from day to day. The sumach leaf is one of the first to alter; it becomes a vivid scarlet; then the maple assumes a brilliant red and gold; then others put on a rich sienna, and others a warm olive. Here and there were interspersed patches of evergreens, pines looking almost blue, and cedars looking quite black from the contrast of the gorgeous and fiery coloring that surrounded them. The river water was deep blue; in the little bay north of Ravenswood it shaded off into a soft olive from the reflection of the foliage and grass about it; while beyond the further bank of the Hudson rose the Kaatskill[21] chain, richly wooded to their summits, and painted with the myriad dyes of autumn,--a fitting background to the landscape. Of course the finest part of this view was beyond the limits of Ravenswood, but so much of it as belonged to Carl (and his grounds covered some two hundred acres) was cleverly disposed with the help of an ingenious landscape-gardener; the trees were cut into picturesque clumps and vistas, opened at the desirable points. Henry, who bragged for all the family as well as for himself, took care to inform Ashburner how, when the place came into Carl's possession (or rather into his wife's, for by the laws of New-York, the wife's property is absolutely hers, and out of her husband's control) by the demise of his father-in-law, there was hardly a carriage-road on it, and how he had devoted all his spare income to it for seven years, "and made it what you see it."

As the Englishman had nothing to do for some days but to ramble about Ravenswood, and talk to the owner of it, he had full opportunity of ascertaining how far his brother's estimate of him was correct, and also how far the difference between the two, particularly in their practical aptitude for business, was attributable to the fact, that one of them had finished his education in England, and the other in America, which, for a New-Yorker, means in Paris, in Germany, half over the continent of Europe, in short. His conclusion was, that some of the qualities which made his host so "out of place" were natural, and that others had been superinduced upon these by his English education.

Harry Benson had truly stated, that his brother's prominent trait of character was sincerity. He used to say of himself, that the fairy had bestowed on him true Thomas's gift, "the tongue that ne'er could lie," and that the consequent incapacities predicted by the Scottish minstrel had fallen upon him; he could neither buy nor sell, nor pay court to prince or peer, (that is, in America, to the sovereign people,) nor win favor of fair lady. Certainly this is a dangerous quality in any country, unless tempered with an exquisite tact, which was not among Carl's possessions; but it is peculiarly dangerous in America, for there is no public (not excepting the French or Irish) that feeds so greedily on pure humbug as the American. _Populus vult decipi_ there with a vengeance; and when the general current of feeling has set towards any show or phantasm, moral, political, literary, or social, woe to the individual who plants himself in its way!

Equally correct was the assertion that equity was a leading idea of his mind. "Give the devil his due," was one of his favorite proverbs; and when he said that a thing "was not fair," it seemed to him a conclusive argument against it. His conception of the virtues was the genuine Aristotelian one--a medium between two extremes. Not that he was a lukewarm partisan on all subjects; but of the people he most disliked--and he was a really "good hater" of some classes, Romanists, for instance, and Frenchmen, and Southern slaveholders--he could not bring himself to take any unfair advantage. Now it is no news to any one who knows anything of the Americans, that they are a nation of violent extremes; the different political parties, theological sects, geographical divisions--the literati of different cities, even--vituperate and assail one another fearfully, hardly respecting the laws of the land, much less the principles of natural justice. Add to all this, that Carl had a naturally elegant and fastidious taste, certain to make him aristocratic in sentiment, however democratic he might be in principle, and it will be seen that he had a tolerable stock of incompatibilities to start with before having anything to do with England.

But, as if to settle his business completely, and prevent him from ever becoming a contented and contenting citizen of his own country, it chanced that just at the period of his youth, when, according to the wont of Young America, dress and billiards formed the main topic of his conversation, and he was aspiring to the possession of a fast trotter, accident took him to England, and a series of accidents kept him there, and caused him to make it his home for several years, and his standpoint for all his continental excursions. He grew up to mature manhood among and along with a generation of Englishmen. He acquired a taste for classical studies, and for that literary society, and those habits of literary and ethical criticism which are nowhere else found in such perfection. His life had always been strictly, even prudishly moral; and while casting off the frivolities and fopperies of his boyhood, he also parted with much of the impulsive and imperfectly understood religion of his younger days, and replaced it by a more sedate and permanent feeling, which never rose to ecstasy of emotion, but was always present to him as a daily habit, and was deeply earnest, with little outward show.

Such a man's tendencies were visibly towards the church; and had Carl been an Englishman, or continued his sojourn in England, he would have taken orders naturally and inevitably, and might have made a tolerable parson. But at home he soon found it impossible to assimilate himself to that Evangelical party which constitutes the great bulk of the American religious community.

The three leading tendencies of his character already alluded to, fostered as they were by his residence abroad, had ended by making him very eclectic and very unconventional. He took what seemed good to him from every quarter, without reference to antecedents; and the fact that all the world about him were going one way, was just the reason to make him go the other. The Puritan denunciations of all who differed from them on points of transcendental theology, or of social institutions, seemed to him illiberal and uncharitable. His religion acted upon him somewhat like the Socratic Daemon; it restrained him from actions, rather than prompted him to them. He abhorred all parade of godliness, and shrunk from disclosing his religious experiences, as he would have done from disclosing his loves to a mixed assemblage. There were many things about these people besides their abhorrence of the fine arts, that shocked his aesthetic sensibility, and their inquisitive censoriousness he deemed ungentlemanly in point of manners, and little short of persecution in point of principle. What most of all repelled him was their unmitigated "seriousness." A certain notorious personage, whom it is no scandal to call the greatest of living charlatans, is reported to have taken for his motto, "Praise God, and be merry." Now this was exactly what Carl wanted to do, to praise God, and be merry; and he did not think the latter clause of the device implied any necessary incompatibility with the former. He held strongly to the "_neque semper arcum_," and thought that a man was all the better man, and better Christian, for an occasional season of healthy enjoyment. He did not think "teetotalism" necessary to prevent gentlemen from becoming drunkards, and he took his regular exercise on Sunday as well as on other days. His sincere nature revolted equally from the idea of dissembling a merriment which he felt, and from that of simulating a religious enthusiasm which he did not feel. With all personal respect for such men, and all reverence for the service they had done to the cause of vital religion, and civil, no less than religious liberty, he very soon found that he could not amalgamate with them, and gave up all intention of going into the church. Thus it came to pass, that letting himself slide into the place which his fortune and connections had marked out for him, he became a man of society, and a gentleman of the world. It proved that he was not entirely free from the national error of quitting one extreme for another: it could only be said in his defence, that his new _role_ rather came to, than was sought for by him. Perhaps his fastidiousness partly led him into it; but this trait of his mind showed itself more in intellectual criticism than in material Sybaritism, and more in the choice of companions than either. Certainly he had no great qualifications for the part, especially in New-York, and very wild work he made of it with his peculiar ideas, some of which were rather English, and all of which were considerably the reverse of American.

The first offence that Carl gave was by getting married in church as quietly as anything can be done in New-York, and going out of the way immediately afterwards, instead of standing his bride up for eight hundred people to look at. He was shamefully negligent of his duties to society in not having given "a reception." Carl said that he married for the present happiness and future comfort of himself and his wife, not for the amusement of society; and that was all the explanation he deigned to give his fashionable acquaintances.

His next eccentricity was refusing to read _The Sewer_, to let it enter his house, or to talk about it. He said, that in Europe, scandalous newspapers were not taken in by respectable families, that even young men read them at their clubs and by stealth, and never mentioned them before ladies; that people making pretensions to superior morality and decency ought not to patronize an immoral and blasphemous print--and more to the same effect. Men and women who referred to France as the standard of half the things they did, taunted him with referring to England. Benson did not think it worth while to discuss the merits of that case, but answered by a quotation from Aristophanes, how "clever folks learn many things from their enemies,"--which he had to translate before his auditors understood it,--and by another of like purport from a Latin bard, which they were less slow to comprehend, as it has become part of the stock in trade of our public speakers, and even the editors know what it means. Then one man liked _The Sewer_ because it had the best reports of trotting matches; and another, because it published the news from Washington half-an-hour sooner than any of its contemporaries; and they all said, that all the papers were so bad, it was merely a question of degree, and not of kind. Nobody agreed with Carl, not even the people who were abused by _The Sewer_, and he made no converts out of his own family--his wife, brother, and sister.

But his great crime was blaspheming the polka, for which I believe Young New-York thought him absolutely insane, and would gladly have put him into a straight-jacket. He thought that a _matinee_ which lasted from noon to midnight was an absurd and wicked waste of time; that even six hours a day was too much for a reasonable being to devote to the Redowa; that at a ball or party there should be some place for people who like to converse, and a non-dancing man should not be stuck into a corner all the evening on pain of being knocked over by the waltzers; that the tipsy excesses of the young gentlemen who lorded it in the ball-room rendered their society not the most edifying for ladies; and as whatever he thought he gave utterance to in pretty plain language, he made himself prodigiously unpopular, and was a great nuisance to the exclusives.

On the other hand, he found things enough to annoy him. He had no like-minded, and it seemed no _like-bodied_ men to associate with; no gentlemen to converse with on classical subjects, no acquaintances to join him in his long walks and drives. He was not over-fond of the French. "They make the best coffee and gloves in the world," he used to say, "but coffee and gloves, after all, are a very small part of life." Therefore it was irksome to him to hear the French always appealed to as the standard of dress, furniture, and manners. Above all, it worried him to find their language the recognized one of the _salon_ and the opera. That two or three persons, whose native tongue was English, should go on talking imperfect French, (for the knowledge acquired by a two years' residence in Paris must be comparatively imperfect,) though no foreigners were present, struck him as a mischievous absurdity, and directly calculated to hinder mental growth. But all these were petty troubles compared to the misery he endured from the gossiping and scandalous propensities of his fashionable acquaintance. He now found his error in supposing that there is any peculiar illiberality and uncharitableness in a religious community, as distinguished from a worldly one; and discovered, that in avoiding the Evangelical connection, he had not escaped the spirit of inquisitive censoriousness. A common error of young men is this: they fancy, that because people of the world talk of their liberality, and parade it ostentatiously, they must possess an extra share of it. And doubtless they are more charitable towards their favorite propensities; the "jolly good fellow" will judge leniently of his bottle companion's trippings, and so on through the calender of vices: though even this proposition is not to be received absolutely. Catiline will sometimes be found complaining of sedition; most offenders have some lingering sense remaining of original right and wrong; not enough to keep them straight, but enough to blame others for the self-same obliquities. But to try the question correctly, we should examine the worldly, not in their judgments of one another, but in their judgments of the religious, and see how much liberality they show them. We should watch the hatred of virtue and purity, and the envy of fair fame, developing themselves in every form of slander and detraction, from the sly innuendo to the open falsehood. All merely fashionable society has a necessary tendency to be scandalous; fashionable people must talk a great deal without any definite purpose, and personal topics are always the readiest at hand for small talk, in a momentary dearth of others--this one's dress and appearance--that one's style of living--who is attentive to whom--and so on; so that besides the gossip which springs from deliberate wickedness, there is a great deal that is the result of mere thoughtlessness and vacuity. And New-York fashionable society is probably more scandalous than any other, because there are fewer public amusements for persons of leisure than in the continental cities of Europe, while the men have not that vent in political life, or the women in outdoor exercise, which Londoners find.