Chapter XVI: Part 16

An Englishman can scarcely avoid the danger of having his national vanity fed in this La Bourboule. A new hotel is being built on a fine site above the Dordogne, just beyond the new Casino, and I hear on the best authority that the proprietor means to have it furnished from top to bottom by Messrs. Maple. As this will involve paying a duty of from 30 to 50 per cent on the articles imported, it is not easy to see where the profit can come in, as the most prejudiced John Bull will scarcely deny that native French furniture is about as good, and not very much dearer than English. I can only account for it by the desire of all purveyors here--from the chief hotel-keepers to the dealers in the pretty Auvergne jewellery and the donkey-women--to get us as customers,--not, perhaps, so much from love or admiration for us, as because we have so much less power of remonstrance or resistance to their charges. Unless he sees some flagrant overcharge in his hotel bill, the Briton does not care to air his colloquial French in discussing items with the former, who only meet him with polite shrugs; and as for the others, they at once fall back upon an Auvergnese _patois_, at least as different from ordinary French as a Durham miner’s vernacular is from a West countryman’s. What satisfaction can come of remonstrating about 2 fr., even in faultless grammatical French, when it only brings on you a torrent of explanation of which you cannot understand one word in ten?

But the desire to make us feel at home has another--I may almost say a pathetic--side. Thus the _Comité des fêtes_ spares no effort to meet our supposed necessities, and has not only provided tennis-grounds and other conveniences for _le sport_, but for the last ten days has been preparing for a grand _chasse au renard_, as a special compliment, I am told, to the English visitors. The grand feature of the hunt is a _recherché_ luncheon in an attractive spot in the forest, at the end of the run, at which the Mayor presides, and to which the other civic dignitaries go in full costume, accompanied by a chief huntsman and two _chasseurs_ with _tridents_--of all strange equipments for a fox-hunt! For this luncheon the charge is 5 fr.; but, so far as I can learn, you may join the chase without partaking. The question naturally occurs: “How if Renard will not run that way, or consent to die within easy distance of the luncheon?” and the answer of the Mayor would, I suppose, be Dogberry’s: “Let him go, and thank God you are rid of a knave.” But, in any case, the _Comité des fêtes_ are prepared for such a mishap, for they have had four foxes ready for some days, _in a large oven_--of all places in the world! and one of these will surely be induced to take the proper course, which is carefully marked out. As two of them have come from Switzerland, and there cannot be much to occupy or amuse Swiss foxes in an oven, except quarrelling with their French cousins, I should doubt as to the condition of the lot on the day of the hunt, even if all survive to that date. This, I am sorry to say, cannot be fixed as yet, for it seems that no English visitor has been found who will take a ticket; so I fear my “course” may be over before the _chasse_ comes off. In that case I shall always bear a grudge against your lively contemporary, the _Daily Graphic_, who, it seems, printed an illustrated account of the _chasse_ of last summer, to which the present abstinence of the British sportsman to-day is generally attributed. Can we wonder at the want of understanding between the two peoples when one comes across such strange pieces of farce as this, meant, I believe, for a genuine compliment and advance towards good-fellowship?

I wish I could speak hopefully upon more serious things than the _chasse au renard_; but in more than one direction things seem to me to be drifting, or going back, under the Republic. E.g. a friend of mine, who prefers smoking the cigars he is used to, ordered a box from his tobacconist in Manchester, who entrusted them to the Continental Parcels Delivery Company on 15th June. Next day, though notice had been given of payment of all charges on delivery, they were stopped at the Gare du Nord, at Paris, where the station-master refused to forward them until he got an undertaking in writing from my friend to pay all charges. This was sent at once, but produced no effect for three days, when another letter arrived--not now from the station-master, but from a person signing himself “Contributions Agent”--saying that undertaking No. 1 was not in proper form. Thereupon, undertaking No. 2 is sent; but still nothing happens, and my friend had almost given up hope of getting his cigars when he bethought him of advising with a deputy, who was luckily staying here in the same hotel. That gentleman seemed not at all surprised, but offered to write to his secretary in Paris to go to the Gare du Nord and look after the box. The offer was, of course, thankfully accepted, with the result that the cigars were sent on at once, with the following bill: “Droit d’entrée, 38 fr. 77 c.; timbre d’acquit à caution, 7 c.; toile d’emballage--consignation, 40 fr. 27 c.: total, 79 fr. 11 c.”--which about doubled the original cost. This instance of the slovenliness (if not worse) of a railway company and the Customs has been quite eclipsed, however, by the Post Office. Another friend posted a letter here to his sister in England, but unluckily in the forenoon, when the next departure was for Bordeaux. To that town, accordingly, his letter went, and thence to America, whence in due course--i.e. at the end of three weeks--it reached its destination in England. Again, a lady here received several dividends more than a week ago, which she forwarded to her husband in England in a registered letter. This has never reached him; and the Post-Office officials here are making inquiries (very leisurely ones) as to what has become of it. Then the clergyman of the church here, having a payment to make in his parish in England, sent the money, and got the official receipt several posts before he received a reminder from the same official (dated a week earlier than the receipt) that the payment was due; and lastly, _pour comble_, as they say here, a county J.P. has never received at all the formal summons from his High Sheriff, sent some weeks since, to serve on the grand jury at the coming Assizes! Whatever the consequences may be of utterly ignoring such summons, he has thus incurred them, which, for all I know, may be equal to the penalties of præmunire. But seriously, I fear the incubus of the Republican superstition, as you have defined it, is spreading fast and far in this splendid land. The centralisation fostered by the Second Empire, and favoured by the Republic for the last twenty years, seems to have demoralised the national nerve-centre at Paris under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower--which,

Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies,

--and to be spreading its baleful influence through the Departments. At any rate, that is the only explanation I can suggest for the marked deterioration and present flabbiness of all Government departments with which the foreign visitor comes in contact. I am glad to be able, however, to record, before closing this, that the registered letter containing dividend warrants mentioned above has reached its destination in England.

Dogs and Flowers, La Bourboule, 24th July.

During the greater part of our stay, the theatre here was devoted to comic and other operatic performances, which I did not care for, and so scarcely glanced at the play-bills, posted up daily in our hotel; and was not even tempted by the announcement of “une seule représentation extraordinaire” of Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Eté, as I did not like to have my idea of A Midsummer Night’s Dream disordered by a French metrical version. When too late, I sorely regretted it, as, had I even read the caste, I should have gone, and been able to give you a trustworthy report,--for the three principal characters were William Shakespeare--by M. Dereims, of the opera (who would sing his great song of _La Reine de Saba_)--Falstaff, and Queen Elizabeth! Next morning I catechised a young Englishman, whose report was, as near as I can recollect, as follows: “Well, there wasn’t much of our _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ in it, no Oberon and Titania, or Bottom, or all that fairy business. Queen Elizabeth and one of her ladies went out at night disguised, to a sort of Casino or Cremorne Gardens” [what would Secretary Cecil have said to such an escapade?], “and coming away they met Shakespeare and Falstaff, and had a good time; and Falstaff sang a song which brought the house down. Then, as the Queen falls in love with Shakespeare, they get some girl to marry him right away.” One more lost opportunity, and to think that I shall probably never get another chance!--

There is a flower that shines so bright,

They call it marigold-a:

And he that wold not when he might,

He shall not’ when he wold-a.

As you are fond of dog-lore, here is a sample from Auvergne. Just opposite our hotel lives the young Scotch (not Irish, as I think I called him last week) doctor. His wife owns a clever pug, whose friendship any self-respecting dog would be anxious, I should say, to cultivate. One of the rather scratch-pack gathered for the coming fox-chase, who wandered as they pleased about the town, seems to have shared my view, for every morning, between _café_ and _déjeûner_, he came and paid a visit of about five minutes to Mrs. Gilchrist’s pug, in the doctor’s vestibule, always open to man and dog. At the end of his call, he trotted off down the avenue to whatever other business he might have in hand. Now, his visits could not have been amatory, as both are of the masculine sex, nor could they have been gastronomic, for he invariably refused the food which Mrs. Gilchrist offered him. What other conclusion is possible than that he came to talk over the gossip afloat in the dog-world of La Bourboule?

Lastly, as to the excursions. These are numerous, and very interesting in all ways, for you drive through great, sad pine-forests (in which I was astonished to see many of the trees gray with the weeping moss which makes the Louisiana and Texas forests so melancholy) and breezy heaths all aglow with wild flowers, getting every now and then indescribably glorious glimpses of the rich plain which stretches away from this backbone of Central France to the Alps. The flora is quite beyond me, but I recognised many varieties of heart’s-ease, fox-gloves, gentians, amongst them an exquisite blue variety, and the air was often scented with meadow-sweet or wild-thyme. Then almost every mountain-top is crowned by a peculiarly shaped block of dark rock, which looks as if some huge saurian, disgusted with a changing world, had crawled up there to die and get petrified. They must, however, have been even bigger than the _Atlanlosaurus immanis_, the biggest of the family yet found, I believe. I well remember the delight of Dr. Agnew, of New York, when the American geologists came upon its thigh bone, two feet longer than that of any European monster. It had become agate, and I have a scarf-pin made of a polished fragment, and presented to me by the triumphant doctor. I cannot tell you what these rocks really are, as I made no ascent, preferring nowadays, like dear Lowell, “to make my ascents by telescope.”

But the human interest of the excursions, as usual, far exceeds the botanical or geological. The chief of these is the “Tour d’Auvergne,” the seat of the Count who enlisted to repel invasion, but never would take a commission from Republic or Napoleon, and died in battle, the “premier grenadier de la France.” There is nothing left of his tower except the foundations, and a dungeon on the high rock, on which a native woman sells photographs and relics, quite as genuine, I should say, as most such. Opposite, across a deep valley, rises another rock crowned by a chapel, which is approached by a steep path, up which once a year goes a procession, past the seven stations, at each of which there is a crucifix, and on the lowest a figure the size of life. Christianity, they say, has died down very low in Auvergne. I should doubt it, as I saw no sign of defacement, either here or on any of the roadside crosses, which are everywhere. I fear we could hardly say as much if we had them--as I wish we had--on every English high-road. On the walls of the village which clusters round the side of the keep, a placard (of which I enclose a copy) interested me much. The three Municipal Councillors there give their reasons for resigning their seats on the Council. On the whole, I think they were wrong, and should have stayed and “toughed it out.” I should like to know how it strikes you. You will see that the poster bears a stamp. Might not our Chancellor of the Exchequer raise a tidy sum that way? What a lump Pears, Hudson, Epps, or Van Houten and Co. would have to pay, and earn the thanks of a grateful country too! But I must not try your patience or space further, so will only note the Roman remains at Mont Dore, another health-resort of the Dordogne Valley, four miles above La Bourboule, which are worth going all the way to see, as I would advise any of your readers to do who are looking out for an interesting countryside, with as fine air as any in the world, in which to spend their coming holidays.

Dutch Boys, The Hague, 1st May 1894.

Much may be said both for and against breaking one’s good resolutions, but no one, I should think, will deny the merit of making them. Well, sir, before starting for my Whitsuntide jaunt this year, I resolved firmly that nothing should induce me to send you any more letters over this signature. Have I not been trying your patience, and the long-suffering of your readers any time these thirty years, with my crude first impressions of cities and their inhabitants, from Constantinople to the Upper Missouri? “Surely,” I said to myself, “sat prata biberunt.” What can young England in the last decade of the century--who enjoy, or at any rate read, _Dodo, and The Fabian Essays, and The Heavenly Twins_--care or want to know about the notions of an old fogey, whose faiths--or fads, as they would call them--on social and political problems were formed, if not stereotyped, in the first half? What, then, has shaken this wise resolve? You might guess for a week and never come within miles of the answer. It was the sight of a group of Dutch boys playing leap-frog in front of this hotel, and the contrast which came unbidden into my head between the chances of Dutch and English boys in this matter, and the different use they make of them.

In front of this hotel lies the large open space, now planted with trees, and about the size of Grosvenor Square, which is called “Tournooiveld,” and was in the Middle Ages the tilt-yard of the doughty young Dutch candidates for knighthood. The portion of this square immediately in front of the hotel, about 40 yards deep and 150 broad, is marked off from the rest by a semicircular row of granite posts, rather over three feet in height, and three to four yards apart, two of them being close to lampposts, but the line otherwise unbroken. No chain connects these posts, and they have no spike on the top of them. As I stood at the door the morning after my arrival, admiring the fine linden-trees in full foliage, enter four Dutch boys from the left, who, without a word, broke at once into single file, and did “follow my leader” over all the posts till they got to the end on the extreme right, and disappeared quietly down a side street. Well, you will say, wouldn’t four English boys have done just the same % and I answer, Yes, certainly, so far as playing leap-frog over the posts goes; but they would have to come out here to find such a row of posts in the middle of a city. At any rate, in the city with which I am best acquainted in England, the few posts there fit for leap-frog are connected with chains and have spikes on their tops. Moreover, do I not pass daily up a flight of steps, fenced on either side by a broad iron banister, which was obviously intended by Providence for passing boys to get a delicious slide down 1 But, sir, no English boy on his way to school or on an errand has ever slid down those banisters, for the British Bumble has had prohibitory knobs placed on them at short intervals for no possible reason except to prevent boys sliding down. The faith that all material things should be made to serve the greatest good of the greatest number is surely as widely held in England as in Holland, and yet, here are the tops of these Dutch posts _culotté_, if I may say so, worn smooth and polished by the many generations of boys who have enjoyed leap-frog over them, while the British posts and banisters have given pleasure to no human being but Bumble from the day they were put up.

But it was not of the Dutch posts but the Dutch boys that I intended to write, for they certainly struck me as differing in two particulars from our boys, thus. Two of the posts, as I have said, are so close to the lamp-posts that you can’t vault over them without coming full butt against the lamp-post on the other side. When the leader came to the first of them he did not pass it, as I expected, but just vaulted on to the top, and sat there while he passed his leg between the-post and the lamp-post, and then jumped down and went on to the next. Every one of the rest followed his example gravely and without a word; whereas, had they been English boys, there would have been a bolt past the leader as soon as he was seated, and a race with much shouting for the lead over the remaining pillars. I have been studying the Dutch boy ever since, and am convinced that he is the most silent and most “thorough” of any of his species I have ever come across; and the boy is father to the man in both qualities. On Whit-Monday this city was crowded, all the citizens and country-folk from the suburbs being in the streets and gardens; the galleries and museums, oddly enough, being closed for the day. Walking about amongst them the silence was really rather provoking. At last I took to counting the couples we met who were obviously just married, or courting, and ought at any rate to have had something to say to each other. Out of eleven couples in one street, only one were talking, though all looked quite happy and content. It is the same everywhere. As we neared the landing-place at the Hook of Holland, our steamer’s bows were too far out, and a rope had to be thrown from the shore. There were at least twenty licensed porters waiting for us, in clean white jackets,--one of these, without a word, just coiled a rope and flung it. It was missed twice by the sailor in our bows, and fell into the water, out of which the thrower drew it, and just coiled and threw it again without a word of objurgation or remonstrance, and the third time successfully. Not one of the white-jacketed men who stood round had uttered a syllable of advice or comment; but what a Babel would have arisen in like case at the pier-heads of Calais or Dieppe, or for that matter at Dover or Liverpool. No wonder that William the Silent is the typical hero of Dutchmen; there are two statues of him in the best sites in this city, and half a dozen portraits in the best places in the galleries. Hosea Biglow’s--

Talk, if you keep it, pays its keep,

But gabble’s the short road to ruin.

’Tis gratis (gals half price), but cheap

At no price when it hinders doing,--

ought to be put into Dutch as the national motto. Then as to thoroughness. Take the most notable example of it first. We have been driving all round for some days, and have only once come to a slope up which our horse had to walk. When we got to the top, there was the sea on the other side, obviously even to the untrained eye at a considerably higher level than the green fields through which we had just been driving. Of course it is an old story, the Dutchman’s long war with the German Ocean, but one never realises it till one comes to drive uphill to the sea, and then it fairly takes one’s breath away. I was deeply impressed, and took advantage of a chance that offered of talking the subject over with an expert, who, like most Dutchmen, happily speaks English fluently. Far from expressing any anxiety as to the land already won, he informed me that they are seriously contemplating operations against the Zuider Zee, and driving him permanently out of Holland! And I declare I believe they will do it, and so win the right, alone, so far as I know, amongst the nations, of saying to the sea: “Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” One more example,--their thoroughness as to cleanliness. Not only the pavements of the main thoroughfares, but all the side-streets are thoroughly well washed and cleansed daily. When you walk out in the early morning you might eat your breakfast anywhere with perfect comfort on the sidewalks. We had to look for more than a quarter of an hour to find a bit of paper in the streets, and the windows in the back streets, even of houses to let, are rubbed bright and polished to a point which must be the despair of the passing English housewife. Why are Dutch house-maidens so incomparably more diligent and clean than English? Can it be their Puritan bringing-up? In short, ten days’ residence here--I have never before done anything but rush through the country on my way east--seems likely to make me review old prejudices, and to exclaim, “If I were not an Englishman, I would be a Dutchman!” One may read and enjoy Motley without really appreciating this silent and “thorough” people, or understanding how it came to pass that by them, in this tiny and precarious corner of Europe, “the great deliverance was wrought out.”

“Poor Paddy-Land!”--I--6th Oct. 1894.

Six weeks ago, when I was considering where I should go for my autumn holiday, some remarks of yours decided me “to give poor Paddy-land a turn” (the phrase is not mine, but that of the first housemaid I came across in Dublin). When one has been talking and thinking for the last eight years of little else than that “distressful country,” it certainly seemed a fair suggestion that one might as well go and look at it when one got the chance. So I have scrambled round from Dublin to Kerry, and from Cork to the Giant’s Causeway, and can bear hearty witness to the soundness of your advice. For a flying visit of a few weeks, though insufficient for any serious study of a people or country, may greatly help one in judging both of them from one’s ordinary standpoint at home.

Of course, the first object of an Englishman who has not lost his head must be to ascertain whether the Irish people really long for a separate Parliament, and a severance of all connection with the rest of the Empire. Well, sir, I was prepared to find that the men in the street--car-drivers, boatmen, waiters, and fellow-travellers on the railways--would, to a great extent, adapt their opinions to whatever they might think would please their questioner, but certainly was quite unprepared for the absolute unanimity with which I was assured that Home Rule is dead. It is only the American-Irish, and especially the “Biddys of New York,” so my informants protested, “who want to break up the Union.” I was warned, however, as to the man in the street. “You must remember that our people are full of imagination, and you must take off a large discount from all they tell you; but you’ll always find a groundwork of fact at the bottom of their stories.” A good piece of advice, which a professional friend in Dublin started me with, and which I found to be true enough, except that where local politics or the land came in, the groundwork of fact was apt to be too minute to be easily discerned. Take, as an example, a story which was told me on the spot by a thoroughly trustworthy witness. Towards the end of Mr. Forster’s Chief-Secretaryship a sensation message was flashed to New York that a Government stronghold had been taken by the Invincibles, the garrison having surrendered with all the guns and stores. This announcement produced a liberal response in dollars from the other side, particularly from “the Biddys of New York.” Now for the “groundwork of fact” underlying this superstructure. The Government have, it seems, on their hands a number of Martello towers on the southern coast which are useless for military purposes. A band of some dozen “bhoys,” headed by a notorious Invincible, came out of Cork one summer evening and summoned the garrison of one of these Martello towers. The garrison (an elderly pensioner), who was at tea with his wife and children, wisely surrendered at discretion; whereupon the patriots took possession of the single cannon and some old muskets and ammunition, which latter they carried off next morning, when they abandoned the tower and cannon on the approach of the police. But though the groundwork of fact as to the condition of the Home Rule agitation may be infinitesimal, there is very serious apprehension still on the Land Question, upon which I found it difficult to draw the man in the street. I was fortunate enough, however, to come across several resident landlords and professional men, both Catholic and Protestant, who, one and all, look with the gravest distrust at the operation of recent land legislation. The Commissioners who administer these Acts have, unfortunately, the strongest interest in prolonging the present state of uncertainty. Their appointments will end with the cessation of appeals by tenants for further reductions of rent, which, under the circumstances, does not seem likely to come about before the landlords’ interest has been pared down bit by bit till it touches prairie-value. The present utter confusion and uncertainty is at any rate a striking object-lesson as to the dangers of meddling with freedom of contract by Acts of Parliament.

When I landed in Ireland, I was under the impression--for which I think you, sir, and perhaps the late Lord Beaconsfield, with his dictum about the “melancholy ocean,” were responsible--that there is a note of sadness underlying the superficial gaiety of the Irish character, as is the case with most Celts. Well, whether it be from natural incapacity, and that each observer only brings with him a limited power of seeing below the surface in such matters, in any case I wholly failed to discern any such characteristic in Central or South Ireland, though there may be a trace of it perhaps in the North, where, by the way, they are not Celts. On the contrary, the remark of a friendly and communicative Killarney carman, “Shure, sir, we always try to get on the sunny side of the bush, like the little birds,” seemed to me transparently true. And next to this desire for the sunny side of the bush, a happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth temper struck me as the prevailing characteristic, as Sir Walter saw it when he wrote “Sultan Solomon’s Search after Happiness.” Look at the national vehicle, the outside car--far more national and popular than our hansom. Did any race ever invent a conveyance so easy to mount and dismount from, or which offers the same chances of being shot off at every street corner or turn in the road? If any reader doubts, let him go over to the next horse-show at Dublin, and watch the crowd breaking up at the end of the show. The roads into the city are certainly unusually broad, but the sight of a dozen jaunting-cars coming along, two or three abreast, as hard as their horses can trot, the driver lolling carelessly, with a loose rein, on one side, and a couple of Irishmen on the other, is a sight to make the Saxon “sit up,” though he may be accustomed to the fastest and most reckless West End hansoms. Like one of your recent correspondents, I could distinguish natives from visitors, as each of the latter had a tight hold of the bar--a precaution which the native scorned. I managed to extract from an enthusiastic admirer--a young Irish subaltern who had ridden on them all his life--the confession that he had left a car involuntarily (or, _Anglid_, had been shot out) three times in the last eighteen months; but then, as he explained, he always fell on his feet! I was touched again and again by the almost pathetic craving for English appreciation,--quite as strong, I think, as, and certainly much pleasanter than, that of our American cousins. I was exploring the Killarney Lakes, in the first-rate four-oared boat of a cadet of the MacGrillicuddy family, who, with his English wife, exercises a very delightful hospitality almost under the shadow of “The Reeks,” which bear his name. It was a perfect day, the changing lights and tints on mountains and woods and lakes being more delicately lovely than any I could recall, except, perhaps, at the head of the Lake of Geneva. We had been talking of the Scotch lakes, and I could not help saying, “Why, this beats Loch Katrine and Ellen’s Isle out of the field.”

“Ah,” said our host, with a sigh, “if only Sir Walter Scott had been an Irishman!” and then he went on to speak of the neglect of Ireland by the Royal Family and English governing people--e.g. Lord Beaconsfield had never set foot in her, and Mr. Gladstone only once, for an hour or two, to receive the freedom of Dublin. But why had the Queen made her favourite home in Scotland, and left poor Ireland out in the cold? Why did the English flock to Scotch rivers and moors and golf-links in crowds every autumn when only a stray sportsman or tourist found his way to Killarney or Connemara or Donegal? It was all owing to the Wizard of the North, who had made Scotland enchanted ground.

Without ignoring other and deeper causes, I think one cannot but feel what a difference it would have made if Sir Walter had been Irish. The Siege of Derry is a more heroic and pathetic story than any in Scotch annals of the struggle for the Stuarts, and the genius which has made us intimate friends of the Baron of Bradwardine and Dugald Dalgetty, of Dandie Dinmont, Edie Ochiltree, Jeanie Deans, Cuddie and Mause Headrigg, and a dozen other Scotch men and women, would surely have found as good materials for character-painting among the Irish peasantry. But the speculation, though interesting, is too big to deal with at the end of a paper.

“Poor Paddy-Land!”--II

I suppose every one expects to find Ireland the land of the unlooked-for. I did, at any rate, but was by no means prepared for several of the surprises which greeted me. For instance, the best arranged, and for its size and scope the most interesting, National Gallery I have ever seen. It is only forty years old (incorporated in 1854), a date since which one would have thought it scarcely possible to get together genuine specimens of all the great schools of art, from the well “picked-over” marts of England and the Continent. But the feat has been accomplished, mainly, I believe, by the entire devotion and fine taste and judgment of the late director, Mr. Henry E. Doyle. His untimely death in the spring of this year has left a blank, social and artistic, which it will be hard to fill; but happily his great work for Irish art was done, and all that his successors will have to do will be to follow his lead faithfully. Irish Art owes much to his family, for he was the son of H. B., and the younger brother of the immortal “Dicky,” while, I believe, Mr. Conan Doyle is his nephew.

But it is not the general collection of pictures, remarkable as that is, which differentiates the Irish from other national galleries known to me. It is the happy arrangement which has set apart a fourth of the whole space for a collection of portraits, and authentic historical pictorial records, comprising not only the portraits of eminent Irishmen and Irishwomen, but also of statesmen and others who were politically or socially connected with Ireland, or whose lives serve in any way to illustrate her history, or throw light on her social or literary or artistic records. I think I may safely venture the assertion--for I spent the greater part of two afternoons in this historical and portrait department--that there is Scarcely a man or woman, from the time of Elizabeth to that of O’Connell and Lord Melbourne, of whom one would be glad to know more, with whom one does not leave it, feeling far better acquainted. And then they are so admirably and often pathetically grouped, e.g. Charles I., Cromwell, and R. Cromwell, on a line, all full of character, and Strafford hard by, with the look of “thorough” on his brow and mouth as no other portrait I have ever seen has given. Then there are “Erin’s High Ormonde,” Sir Walter Raleigh, by Zuccaro, painted between his two imprisonments, and coming down later, Lords Wellesley and Hastings, and groups of great nobles and Lords-Lieutenant. For fighting men, William III. as a boy; Walker, the defender of Derry; the Duke, the Lawrences, Lord Gough, and a score of other gallant Irishmen. The terrible Dean stands out amongst the literary men, and near him Sir R. Steele and Sterne, and (_longo intervallo_, except on shelves) Tom Moore, Croker, Lever, etc. Then come the “patriots” of all schools: Lord E. Fitzgerald, and Grattan, and E. Hudson, Secretary of the United Irishmen in 1784; Wolfe Tone, and Daniel O’Connell; half a dozen Ponsonbys of different ranks, and several pictures of Burke, one of which especially (said to be by Angelica Kauffmann) is, to my mind, quite invaluable. Burke stands upright, his side-face towards you, sublime, as he looked, I am sure, when he was making his immortal speech at Bristol. By his side, at right angles, so that you get his full face, is Charles Fox, one hand on Burke’s shoulder, the other on a table on which he is leaning. You can hear him saying as plainly as if you were there one hundred years ago, “Now, my dear Edmund, if you say that in the House, you’ll upset the coach.” Fox has evidently dined well, and Burke is fasting from all but indignation. The portraits of women are as interesting, such as Miss Farren, afterwards Lady Derby; Mrs. Norton, by Watts, which is worth a visit to Dublin to see, etc. But I must not run on, and will only note one lesson I carried away. There are two portraits, and three engravings from portraits, by N. Hone, R.A., an Irishman, but one of our original Royal Academicians. You will remember what Peter Pindar says of that painter in his _Odes to the Royal Academicians_”:--

And as for Mr. Nathan Hone,

In portraits he’s as much alone

As in his landscape stands the unrivalled Claude.

Of pictures I have seen enough,

Vile, tawdry, execrable stuff,

But none so bad as thine, I vow to God.

I have always till now maintained that Peter, with all his cynicism, was the best art critic, the Ruskin, shall we say, of his time. Now I give him up. N. Hone was no doubt quarrelsome and disagreeable, but he was a very considerable portrait-painter.

I had noted Derry as one of the places to be seen on account of the siege, and accordingly went there, to get another startling sensation. Like most other folk, I suppose, I had always looked on the story as interesting and heroic, and had wondered in a vague way how some 30,000 men, commanded by a distinguished French soldier, and a considerable part of them at any rate well-equipped regular troops, could have been kept at bay for ten months by a mere handful of regulars, backed by the ’prentice boys of the town and neighbourhood. Religious zeal was no doubt a strong factor on the side of the town, and Parson Walker, a born leader of men, “with a bugle in his throat,” like “Bobs.” But when one remembers that no provision had been made for a siege, that many of the leading men were for opening the gates, and indeed that the French officers and James’s deputy were actually within 300 yards in their boats, to accept the surrender, when the ’prentices rushed down and shut and manned the gates, and then looks at the scene on the spot, one is really dumbfounded, and wanders back in thought to King Hezekiah and Jerusalem. From the Cathedral, which dominates the city, you can trace distinctly the line of the old walls, and can hardly believe your eyes. The space enclosed cannot be more than a quarter of a mile in length, by some 300 yards in breadth (I could not get exact measurements), and in it, including garrison and the country folk who had flocked in, were more than 30,000 people. It was bombarded for eight months, during at least the last four of which famine and pestilence were raging. No wonder that the parish registers tell of more than 9000 burials in consecrated ground, while “the practice of burial in the backyards became unavoidable!” Where can such another story be found in authentic history? Parson Walker, let us say, fairly earned his monument.

I must own to grievous disappointment as to the farming in Ulster. All through the South and Centre I had seen the hay in the fields in small cocks in September, and the splendid ripe crops of oats and barley uncut, or, if cut, left in sheaf, or being carried in a leisurely fashion, which was quite provoking, while tall, yellow ragweed was growing in most of the pastures in ominous abundance. That will all be altered, I thought, when I cross “Boyne Water.” Not a bit of it! Here and there, indeed, I saw a good rick-yard and clean fields, but scarcely oftener than about Cork or Killarney, and no one seemed to mind any more than the pure southern Celts. One man said, when I mourned over the ragweed three feet or four feet high, that he did not mind it, as it showed the land was good! As to leaving hay in cock, well that was the custom--they would get it into stack after harvest, any way before Christmas; as to dawdling over cutting and carrying, well, with prices at present rates, what use in hurrying? There was a comic song called “Clear the Kitchen,” popular half a century ago, which ran--

I saw an old man come riding by.

Says I, “Old man, your horse will die”;

Says he, “If he dies I’ll tan his skin,

And if he lives I’ll ride him agin.”

It fits the Irish temper, North and South, pleasant enough to travel amongst, but bad, I should think, to live with.

“Panem et Circenses”, Rome, 21 st April 1895.

I have been asking myself at least a dozen times a day during the last fortnight, why Rome should be (to me, at any rate) the city of surprises, far more than Athens or Constantine, for instance, or any other city or scene of world-wide interest in Europe or America. Jerusalem and the Nile cities I have never seen (and fear I never shall now). Surely, to what I take to be the majority of your readers, who have gone through, as I have, the orthodox educational mill--public school and college--precisely the contrary should be true. We spent no small part of from six to ten years of the most impressionable time of our lives in studying the story of the Mistress of the Old World, from Romulus and Remus to the Anto-nines. Even the idlest and most careless of us could scarcely have passed his “greats” without knowing his geography well enough to point out on the map the position of each of the seven hills, the Forum, the Janiculum, the Appian Way, the Arch of Titus, the Colosseum, etc., and must have formed some kind of notion in his own mind of what each of them looked like. At any rate, I had no excuse for not knowing my ancient Rome better than I knew any modern city, both as to its geography and the politics, beliefs, and habits of its citizens; for I was for two years in the pupil-room of a teacher (Bishop Cotton) who spared no pains, not only on the texts of Livy, Horace, Sallust, and Juvenal, and the geography, but in making the Rome of the last years of the Republic and the first Caesars live again for us. For instance, he would collect for us all the best engravings then to be had (it was before the days of photographs) of Rome, and show us what remained of the old buildings and monuments, and where the Papal city had encroached and superseded them; and again, would take infinite pains to explain the changes in the ordinary life of the Roman citizen, which had been creeping on since the end of the third Punic war, when her last formidable rival went down, and the struggle between patrician and plebeian had time and opportunity to develop and work itself out, till it ended in the Augustan age, when the will of the Cæsar remained the sole ultimate law, in Rome, and over the whole Empire. Of course the explanation of the phrase “Panem et circenses,” and the growth of the system, in the shape of public feastings, shows, baths, and other entertainments, with which each successful Tribune or General, as he came to the front, and the Cæsars after them, tried to bribe and sway the mob of the Forum, formed no small part of this instruction. One item of the list will best illustrate my text--that of public baths--which came most directly home to me, as I was devoted to swimming in those days, and so had great sympathy with the poor citizen of Imperial Rome who desired to have baths in the best form and without payment.

I do not know that there is any trustworthy evidence as to the public baths of Rome before Imperial times, but we can estimate pretty accurately how the case stood for the poor Roman in the first and second centuries A.D. The best preserved of these are the Baths of Caracalla, in which sixteen hundred bathers could be accommodated at once. The enclosed area was 360 yards square, or considerably larger than Lincoln’s Inn Fields; but this included a course for foot-races, in which, I suppose, the younger bathers contended when fresh from the delights of hot and cold baths, while their elders looked on from the porticoes adjoining. The bathing establishment proper, however, was 240 yards in length, by 124 yards in width, in which the divisions of the “tepidaria,” “calidaria,” and “frigidaria,” are still confidently pointed out in Baedeker, and attested by guides if you like to hire them. But the part which interested me most, apart from the huge masses of wall still standing, was the depression in the floor, which is said to have been the swimming-bath, and which is at least twice as large as those of the Holborn and Lambeth baths, the two largest in London in my time, put together.

The remains of the walls are just astounding, eight feet and ten feet thick, and (I should say) in several places fifty feet high; the thin Roman bricks, and the mortar in which they are built, as hard as they were in the second century. I wish I could feel any confidence that any of our London brickwork would show as well even a century hence. When the floors were all covered with mosaic pavement, of which small pieces now carefully preserved still remain, and the brickwork of the walls was faced with marble, and the statues which have been found here and removed to museums, still stood round the central fountain and in the courts, my imagination quite fails to picture what the baths must have looked like. But the Baths of Caracalla, though best preserved, are not by any means the largest. Those of Diocletian, on the Quirinal and partly facing the railway station, were almost twice as big, for the circumference of the bath buildings was about 2000 yards, or half as large again as the Baths of Caracalla, while they would accommodate (it is said) three thousand bathers at once. It is even more impossible, however, to reconstruct these baths in one’s fancy than those of Caracalla, for the church of St. Bernardo occupies one domed corner of the area, and a prison another corner; while a convent, with the Church of St. Maria degli Angeli attached--built by Michael Angelo by order of Pius IV.--stands over what was the “tepidarium.” There is still, however, space enough left for the large square, as big as Bedford Square, and surrounded by cloisters said to be also the work of Michael Angelo, in which stand a number of the most interesting statues and busts, and architectural fragments lately exhumed.

I have by no means exhausted the opportunities enjoyed by the Roman citizen under the Antonines for getting a satisfactory, not to say a luxurious, wash in the Roman summer, but must turn aside for a minute to tell you of an interesting little scene which I saw outside on leaving the Baths of Diocletian. Along the bottom of the old ruined wall still standing, and looking as firm as that of Caracalla, for about fifty yards, earth and rubbish has been allowed to accumulate to the height of twelve or fourteen feet. This dirt-heap covers some twenty feet of the open space between the old wall and the footway, and, the face of it having been trampled hard, forms a steep slope, of which the Roman urchin of to-day seems to have taken possession, and thereon thoroughly to enjoy himself after his own fashion. This is a very different way from that of our street-boys, if I may judge by what I saw in passing. A group of some dozen little ragged urchins--four with bare feet--were at high jinks as I came up; and this was their pastime. The biggest of them, a sturdy boy of (perhaps) eleven or twelve, stood at the bottom of the steep slope, facing the wall, with his feet firmly set, and his arms wide open. The rest, who were at the top of the slope, against the wall, ran down one after another and threw themselves into his arms, clasping him round the neck, and getting a good hug before he dropped them. The object seemed to be (so far as I could see) to throw him over backwards, but he stood his ground firmly, only staggering a little once or twice during the two rounds which I was able to watch. I was obliged then to leave, wondering, and debating in my mind what would be the result of such a game if tried by our street boys in a London suburb.

To go back to the Baths, there are remains of three more which must have been no unworthy rivals of Caracalla’s and Diocletian’s--viz. those of Constantine, Agrippa, and Titus. The first were also on the Quirinal, and are said to have occupied the greater part of the present Piazza del Quirinale, including the site of the Royal Palace. But as all that is left of them is a fragment of the old boundary-wall here and there, one can form no notion of their size or shape. One may, however, judge of their character by magnificent colossal marble statues of the “Horse-tamers,” which are known to have stood one on each side of the principal entrance, and are believed to remain almost in the place where they stand to-day. The Baths of Agrippa lay behind the Pantheon, but a fluted column and ruined dome are all that remain of them in the neighbouring streets, “Pumbella” and “Cumbella.” Lastly, there were the Baths of Titus, begun by him in A.D. 80, on the Esquiline, which included the sites of Mæcenas’ Villa and the Golden Palace of Nero, which (I suppose) he must have demolished to make room for them; but the tradition as to these ruins seems even more vague than that of any of the other baths. I think you must allow that so far I have proved my case, that Rome is the city of surprises.

Ever since my “Roman baths’ round,” the contrast of Imperial Rome and our London has been popping up. Why have not we, at any rate, one or two public baths on something like the old Roman scale? Did they really let any Roman citizen bathe free of charge? Could we possibly do that? and how? Well, after all, it only wants a Cæsar to work the “panem et circenses” trick astutely. And have not we got at last our equivalent for Nero or Titus in our County Council? True, our many-headed Cæsar has not the tribute of a conquered world to draw on, or an unlimited supply of prisoners of war, slaves, and poor Christians to set to the work. But has not he the rates of London at his mercy--not a bad equivalent--and the Collectivist Trade-Unionist, who may possibly be relied on to do as fair a day’s work at the scale-wages as the unpaid slave or Christian did for Titus? Well, I do not know that I should protest vigorously--only I am no longer a London ratepayer.

Rome--Easter Day

We get our London papers here as regularly as you do, only forty-eight hours later, and I see that readers at home have been able to follow the course of the services in St. Peter’s and the Roman Churches during Passion Week about as well as we who are on the spot, and so to appreciate the thoroughness which the priesthood, from cardinals downwards, for I am sorry to say the Pope is still unable to take his usual part, throw into the attempt to reproduce the supreme drama of our race, so far as this can be done, day by day, almost hour by hour. I have not, however, noticed any mention of the “Tenebræ” at St. John Lateran, a service of rather more than an hour, from 4.30 to 5.30, on the afternoon of Good Friday, when the last words have fallen from the cross, and Joseph of Arimathæa, with the faithful women, has borne away the scarred and bleeding body of the Lord of Life to his own grave, in which no man has yet lain--

All the toil, the sorrow done,

All the battle fought and won,