SEPTEMBER, 189%, my Contributors Me COUNTESS OF CORK El WY HALL CAINE SARAH GRAND W. L. ALDEN Se ROBERT BARR 4 i | \ = Mas. LYNN LINTON §f } Sin LePe: Grirrin [i ~ NORMAN ‘a, GAte /(@&>/ es S\ <<) Yj RAYMOND \ » 4 A, J Y “, BLATHWAYT WS = y Y = 4 I. ZANGWILL NN .S 4 Nae = AND OTHERS {s ¥ f da Ta) © ZA lis 4 5 s 4 > See chs i SN = = : . ‘ a Slee ONE- SHILLING arias = = ———s —————— ined ditertial | Offices: 18; CHARING CROSS ROAD,!/ W.c reas oa 2ae,~s, Pata ££ IS | GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LimiITED, ee sn LONDON MANCHESTER and NEW YORK. FF ee i - = i Be te com, oy > a ‘ “3 oe i Py a te Birt EVERYONE wants a tonie to brace them up at some time or another; the difficulty to get people to persevere when a hened ‘course of treatment is neces- Bi = Of ce tonic preparations are EA Te i become nauseous FOR THE FRAME AND THE BRAIN, TO ENRICH THE BLOOD AND G00D LOOKS TO RETAIN. 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Consider first what a weary spell of waiting this fragile younger one of four had undergone, while his two robust elder brothers were working their reckless wills on, about, and around earth, sea, and sky. That blustering bully from the North had wrought havoc among brave ships, toppled avalanches upon lowly cottages, and had scattcred destruction far and wide ; that relentless venom-breather of the East had instilled poison into human lungs, and infused tortures dire into human limbs for many a dreary week, while our Zephyr pined unheeded for the dawning of 47s long-deferred day. But when it came at last, oh! with what glorious promise it rose! Fragrance and radiance permeating the air, warmth, beauty, and charm pervading all things: was noi this a day of all others to bear unclouded happiness in its train? So deemed at least young Zephyr, as, requiting with a soft caress the jsunbeam on which he had been resting, he glided swiftly down it to visit the gardens of Earth. ¢ For in a secluded nook of one such garden, sheltered from public gaze, fand, as he fondly hoped, awaiting in maidenly expectation his coming, Vou. I.—No. 5s. 615 4 616 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. was enshrined the long, though ___ secretly, worshipped object of his adoration, in the form of ay wd budding rose on the verge of develop- ment into flowerhood. Though \ her eventual hue was still unrevealed, and her exquisite outline imper- fectly indicated, the existing suggestions of latent sur- passing beauty had sufficed to excite all dormant emotions in this susceptible Zephyr and arouse his ardent aspirations. An occasional gently- breathed whisper, while’ her vigilant thorny guardians were engaged in perforating intrusive caterpillars, had hitherto constituted the only i possible expression of his feelings ; but, encouraged : x by a slight bashful droop of greeting, or a momentary swaying of her graceful figure in the light flutter he sometimes ventured to create he believed his suit to be not altogether with- and bided in hope, scarcely tem- ‘anxiety, the moment, now at emancipation from spinaceous {, acceptance of his homage. _ gaily onward, weighted with » than how best to @ into the fair pre- * divinity, he caught now a breath of \) Mignonette, now the Violet perfumed “a: 'y Bells, all round her, out response, »ered with. cael, of her ue “ah thraldom and final \ As he floated 7 \ A no greater care ¢ 4 grace his advent eN sence of his®% up on either wing, | freshly-blown a delicate waft from Bed, and anon a richly- tinkle of the Hyacinth % freely bestowed on this //7A gay young wooer so / palpably hasting towards “% his Lady Love. The stately Lily, too, as he rust!ed by, half 4 bent her classical neck to. bid him good speed; for no speck ‘of envy could taint that spot- less bosom, though the il dark Gilly Flower from her® enforced station on the wall muttered her discontent at being always overlooked for pert unfledged blossoms, while the Lady’s Smock and Columbine exchanged coinciding views on the superiority of fine garments over fine looks, and the London Pride, in a toss of haughty disdain at the bare idea of a rustic beauty, nearly snapped off the head of an unfortunate Bachelor’s Button, who had rashly ventured to differ in opinion. ier THE TRUE LEGEND OF THE ZEPHYR AND THE ROSE. 617 Unheeding these clashings and clangs, on sped our Zephyr to his enchanted ground, which he had nearly reached when his progress was suddenly disturbed by the eruption into its current of an indignant and portly Bumble Bee, who, too incensed to be conscious of his rudeness, bounced about, humming loud denunciations of some indecorous flirtation carried on close by. As neither apology nor explanation seemed forthcoming from this irate patriarch of more highly-trained morals than manners, the Zephyr placidly shook him off, but was incontinently arrested by the shrill ejaculations of an excited Painted Lady Butterfly appealing loudly to his sympathies on the score of the abrupt desertion of her own particular Butterfly swain, so foolishly infatuated by a chit of a baby Bud ; but ere the Zephyr had mastered the details of this hard case, his vivacious interlocutor darted off in chase of a Purple Emperor, descried by her keen glance in the distance ; and, while pondering with involuntary misgivings over her meaning, he was startled by a sinister chuckle from a Death’s Head Moth who had come up unperceived. A more than usually fiendish grin overspread this ghastly cynic’s countenance, but vouchsafing no enlightenment, v4 he flitted away, leaving the Zephyr, perplexed and tremulous with e vague apprehension, to pursue his course and arrive at his desti- ‘a nation only to find his dim forebodings all too sadly realised. J Perched jauntily upon a neighbouring twig, with foppishly 4-y curled horns, and wings rakishly flopped in languid alternation, ; “ swaggered a huge Butterfly of the commonest yellow order, a laying siege with familiar admiration to the Bud of buds, who, | ina poise of unstudied elegance, and with still enfolded petals, gave ear, half shrinking, half wondering, but all demurely, to his extravagant compliments. On them, with the fierceness of a tornado, burst the exasperated Zephyr, and sweeping this unworthy rival with one blast to the ground, he turned upon his idol, in wild forgetfulness alike of propriety and good breeding, to hiss out the deplorably low anathema recorded by these pages . and by tradition. w? THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. If. What did the Rase say to the Zephyr ? THE insulted Bud quivered with anger, astonishment, and, \ it must be owned, ° a slight mixture of fear. For, limited as was her experience of life, and little as she had foreseen the dire re- suits of her thoughtless- ness, an internal whisper hinted that this censure, however crudely expressed, 4/7 might not be altogether unmerited, while the sight of her quondam admirer grovelling in the dust with besmirched wings and limply flattened horns, made her tingle with shame at the thought of having for one moment tolerated his presumptuous addresses ; and a wave of colour stole through her form as she felt how keen a pang must have impelled the gentle Zephyr into so great a solecism of speech and conduct. With the instantaneous resolve to bring back her half-escaped captive, awoke the unerring instinct of her sex to guide her; and, timidly sinking her SQ So ee incomparable head, she suffered her rounded tc ase ~ petals to fall by slow degrees apart, until they but imperfectly veiled the warm hue of her blushes. At such a . sight could the already relenting Zephyr remain unmoved? Ah, no!—transported with penitence and devotion, he hung entranced over her, as, raising for a sccond her lovely face to glance upwards with indescribable softness, she bashfully murmured, “ Blow me, oh! my beloved, blow me!” So, fanned into bloom by the breath of Love, and filling all space with ineffable sweetness, one by one her glowing leaves expanded into the adorable proportions of the Coupe d’Hébé, and the fairest of buds stood forth the Qucen of Flowers ! ith ide for eS ; she tle ind her t of her ded but iain ung ince slow with the tood THE TRUE LEGEND OF THE ZEPHYR AND THE ROSE. 619 I11.—Ghe Seyuet, WOULD that we could take our leave of them in this phase of supreme happiness, believing that it so continued without lapse or change! Would that the all-compelling Spirit of Truth did not enforce the completion of this idyllic episode, and lead us, albeit reluctantly, to the contemplation of its latter state ! It were pleasant, were it not? to ignore for once the inevitable tendency \ of earthly beauty and freshness to earthly decay and destruction, and to imagine that Time’s not all-relentless strokes spare here a one and there a one in his resistless course. Alas! too transparently vain must prove such fiction. All know, or have yet to know, otherwise ; and therefore none will marvel to learn that the bright summer days which flew so swiftly for the unheeding lovers, after ripening into grand maturity the early charms of the Rose, proceeded no less rapidly, though impcrceptibly, to impress on her fair countenance the stamp of Mortality. The marks were at first so slight,—a little paling of her glorious tints, a faint creasing of her lovely leaves, a gentle deflection of the crect head,—that even the devoted Zephyr failed to Ls observe them. But as they waxed gradually stronger the change could not remain undetected by the broad , , stare of the Sunflower, and was eagerly Yj» written down by. the many-quilled Dahlia, Next came with gossiping avidity a string hey of buzzing idlers, headcd by the Gadfly i. and closed by the trumpeting Mos- » quito ; then, as the ye evil tidings .., spread afar, \ | the meaner \ horde of | crawlers— fat | slugs, vora- | clous cater- q pillars and B| greedy snails \ —crept silently near, 620 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. waiting with loathsome patience for the downfall of Perfection and the gorging of their foul maws. In the midst of this malignant throng the brave Rose bore herself gallantly, while the hard touches that day by day marred her loveliness were powerless to taint her perfume ; for the sweetness of true love endures to the end, and the consciousness of a few remaining loyal friends was not denied her ; but the Heart’s Ease strove in vain to struggle within reach, the little Forget-me-not lost power to make its comforting message heard, and the , mourning Rue could only grieve in silence. Unweariedly did the faithful | Zephyr attend upon his loved one, but his strength too was gradually waning in an unbroken spell of drought and sultriness, insomuch that even his skill | in fanning seemed departing, while her steady supporters, the Night Dews, found themselves in too sorry plight to continue their refreshing visits. Thus, with her vitality ebbing slowly, down floated, first singly, next by twos and threes, and, at length, in one countless odoriferous shower— shedding fragrance alike upon friends and foes to the last—the final store of her shrivelled but still balmy petals; and as the last leaf of her Book of Life dropped into nothingness, with one long-drawn sigh the stricken Zephyr died—away ! E. C. Cork. VW | Wi) | { Wi | UAT LNN ALU | Wi] I LVN ASTUTE 7 TMT (Engraved by W. Biscombe Gardner. A STUDY. [From an original painting by Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A.)J ‘*For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” i 2 HERE will be no one to see you off to-day, as I cannot go myself,” my mother said; “but I suppose if I send you to the station in the carriage you will be able to manage; and, now that you are out, the sooner you learn to look after yourself the better.” *¢ All right,” I replied confidently, under the impression that I had very little to learn. And so it happened that, on this particular occasion in my early girlhood, I found myself, with the most delightful sense of importance, travelling from London seawards, alone. The sensation was more than agreeable—it was ecstatic. On the way to the station I felt as if I had never been in a carriage before. I was looking at life from a new point of view, and the people in the streets seemed to see me as I saw myself —at least I fancied that their eyes expressed a different feeling for me from any that had ever shone on me before; but I did not try to translate it. Being pleased and happy myself, it seemed only natural that a pleased and happy expression should come into every face that was turned towards me. Having arrived at the station, found my train, and secured a seat, I began to loiter up and down the long platform, ostensibly watching the people, but really, with the happy conceit of youth, absorbed in myself, as it appears to me now; yet it was not altogether conceit, but rather the blissful absence of that sense of comparison which comes later on with chastening effect to show us our own unimportance. The sudden sense of freedom had revealed me to myself all out of focus, as it were, and magni- fied, as objects appear at first to one who has just recovered his sight; and I believe if | had done a portrait of myself at that moment I should have made myself seven feet high. But pride goeth before a fall, and I was brought up out of this happy state with a jerk which effectually upset the dignity of my demeanour. I had perceived that the train was in motion, and it flashed through my mind that it was being inconsiderate enough to depart without me. As it was the last one in the day that would suit my purpose, I made a desperate dash for a carriage door, and scrambled in, regardless of the howling officials on the platform who would have hindered me. In doing so I became aware of exactly the same performance taking place at the farther end of the compartment ; it was as if I had caught a flying glimpse of myself in a mirror as I jumped on to the footboard, opened the door, and swung myself in, after the deliberate manner peculiar to guards on the Underground. But, as often happens, although I 621 622 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE had seen the thing done, the fact did not rise from my sub-consciousness to the surface of my thoughts, in order to present itself for my consideration, for some time after I had taken my seat. The train slid out of the dingy station, and now everything was of interest. I even strained my eyes to read the advertisements paraded on blank brick walls, corners of squalid houses, parapets and arches of railway bridges, any- and everywhere, till my brain reeled. But then came a glimpse of the river. The unpolluted summer air streamed in upon me. The summer sunshine, unthinned by smoke, lit up the landscape, sparkled on the water, brightened the blue of the sky, whitened the clouds, reddened the roofs, intensified the green, and flooded my whole soul with another kind of joy in life, very different from that which I had just been experiencing. ‘There had been excitement in the crowd, but here alone there was supreme content. It was a torrid day ; but Fate had befriended me, for it was a cushionless third-class compartment I had stormed, all open and airy, and also empty, as I at first supposed ; but in this I was mistaken. There had been nobody visible to begin with, but, on looking across after a while, I was surprised to see a pair of bright dark eyes just appearing above the backs of the seats, at the farther end of the compartment. These eyes were fixed upon me in a confident way; and involuntarily I felt, the moment they met mine, that a flash of intelligence had passed between us. The immediate consequence was, that the owner of the eyes, a lanky, dark girl, got up, fixed a struggling bull pup under her arm, where she held it firmly in spite of its kicks and yelps and snaps, clambered clumsily over the backs of the seats from her end of the compartment to mine, regardless of any display she might make of lean legs by the way, and sat down opposite to me. “Two’s company,” she remarked oracularly. “Quite so; but you were two to begin with,” I answered. “Counting the bull pup,” she said, drawing the creature from under her arm as she spoke. “Isn’t he a beauty?” She held him up by his forelegs, and shook him playfully, addressing him the while in tender tones: “ Look at um’s chin, and um’s legs how um bows ; and look at um’s werry magnificent nose ! ” But the puppy, evidently not appreciating these compliments, began again to kick and growl and snap impatiently, exercises which drew from his delighted mistress assurances that “he was a game un, den!” as she settled him comfortably upon her lap. He was already a formidable-looking creature, a brindle of exceptional beauty, judged, of course, by his own standard of excellence. * T bought him,” the young lady proceeded, “to draw Aunt Marsh. I want to make her believe that the outcome of Woman’s Rights is bull pups. But now I’m beginning to love him—‘a beauty, den!’—for his own sake. What a nuisance it is metaphors will mix! I was just going to remark that Aunt Marsh is the kind of bull you must take by the horns if you would get on with her; and that’s what I mean, only it isn’t quite right, somehow. Now, my mother is sixty thousand times cleverer than Aunt Marsh, yet she gives in to her—they’re sisters-in-law, you know—but I’m a generation in advance of my mother, thank goodness !” “T ought to tell you,” I observed, “ that I believe I know your Aunt: Lady Marsh, is she not ?” She looked at me with a pitying smile. “ Yes, that’s the person,”\she answered. “ But, now, do you suppose that I’m quite such an idiot as to express myself so freely to a stranger of whom I know nothing ?” “Well, you have the advantage of me, for I am quite sure I have never seen you before, nor have I ever heard of anything like you,” 2 ee es THE SERE, THE YELLOW LEAT. 623 “ Anything like me! Now, that’s delicious. But you mean who amI? I can’t abide that roundabout way of asking who a body is. But I'll tell you who I am, just because you’re not egotistical.” “ How have you discovered that I’m not egotistical ?” I asked. “ Because you thought first of me rather-than of what concerned yourself. Most people would have wanted to find out what I knew about them, and until I told them they wouldn’t have taken any interest in me.” * But you haven’t told me——” “Oh, I’m Adalesa Shutt,” she interrupted offhand. “Adalesa Shutt-up is the form it generally takes with the impolite. I may mention that my parents are responsible for the name. They still survive.” There was a pause after this, during which she hugged her brindle bull dog absently, with her dark eyes fixed on a far-away point of the horizon. While under the influence of her bright, sharp, slangy manner as she talked, I had supposed her to be about fifteen. She wore her dress short, and her hair hanging down her back in a thick plait, as girls of that age generally do; but now, as she sat silently contemplative, she looked older. “But why should you ‘draw’ your aunt, as you call it?” burst from me involuntarily, as I watched her. She turned upon me with her infectious smile.. “It is the only possible attitude for me in her abode,” she said—“ a don’t-care-came-to-be-hanged kind of attitude. I daren’t be docile or affectionate, because I have to keep her at a distance, otherwise t \. ‘ she would give me good advice. She did make me \\ suffer the first time I stayed with her!” \ ” MK * But—— “Oh yes, I know all that,” she put in impatiently. ‘‘She’s the kindest woman in the world, you were going to say. Everybody says so. But just you observe! I would rather have a termagant to fight. One wouldn’t be afraid of hurting her. But these soft, sweet women bruise so easily, they make you suffer all round. ‘There are your nerves and your better nature both on the alert, while your good sense is being outraged, and your worst self is fighting to be up in opposition. Heaven help me from having to encounter a feather-bed woman ! ” fey “But how did she make Sf you suffer'?,” *Oh—I'll show you when we arrive.” “How do you know I am going there?” I asked in surprise. Again she looked at me, and laughed, but only repeated: “T’ll show you when we get there. Mind you, I don’t suffer now.” The train pulled up at a little country station as she spoke, and we both alighted. An open carriage was waiting outside for us, '**You and John oa must go inside. ” 3 624 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. “Ah, there is my friend Barkins,” Adalesa exclaimed, meaning the coachman. “]’m going to drive, Barkins—Barkins bein’ willin’,” she added aside to me. “You and John must go inside,” she further insisted, “because Mademoiselle here only sits on the box. She always travels third class, and sits on the box. Those are her ladyship’s orders. I have them here in my pocket”—-and she slapped that receptacle. The coachman hesitated, and looked at me as if for confirmation, but I preserved my gravity. The misstatement Adalesa had made with regard to my usual mode of travelling led me to infer that the rest of the story was rather more facetious than accurate; but I would not have betrayed her for the world. I wanted to see what next. The coachman slowly descended from his box, keeping a wary eye on Adalesa all the time, as if he were seeking a sign for his guidance, or suspected firearms. As he descended on the one side, however, she scrambled up on the other, and when she had seated herself he handed her the reins. I had followed her on to the box, so that there was nothing now but for him and the footman to get into the carriage. “You'd better put the luggage in too,” Adalesa suggested ; and it was with a look of relief that the men complied. “ Otherwise,” she whispered to me, “ any one meeting the carriage, and seeing you and me on the box, driving the servants, might have mistaken us for a travelling lunatic asylum.” “Not such a very great mistake, perhaps, after all,” I ventured. “Oh, my dear, speak for yourself,” she promptly rejoined; “as for me, there’s a method, you know.” She put the bull pup between her feet as she spoke, and tightened the reins ; and then we were off—not at a wild gallop, as I quite expected, but at that rapid, exhilarating trot at which only a good whip can keep a good pair of horses, I understood the coachman’s easy acquiescence better now. It was evident that the girl was accustomed to drive. She had that negligent look and attitude, and apparently careless way of holding the reins, which betoken mastery of the art. The road itself she scarcely seemed to see. Her eyes wandered away from it on all sides, and at that moment one would have said they.were dreamy eyes, seeking sharp contrasts of sunshine and shadow less than mystical effects of dimness and distance. The drive left impressions in my mind of a dusty road with heavy frondage of ferns by the wayside, all drooping, as though wearied and reposing from the ardent summer heat. ‘Then there came a fertile land, well wooded; the sheen of a copper beech; low hills lifting a belt of sombre pines up to the azure of the sky; the grey-white wool of sheep against the green of grass; the reflection of indolent cattle standing ankle-deep in a pool; the heavy foliage on overhanging boughs; bracken on the banks, and wild flowers everywhere. Adalesa pointed out two objects of interest with her whip: “ Those chimneys there in the wood—you can see the smoke above the trees—that is the house. And there, beyond, don’t you see? that shining line, that is the sea—the sea!” She drew in her breath as if the very word were a joy to her. But presently she burst out again in her usual way : “T should think you feel like a figure in a farce,” she said, on seeing me glance behind at the servants sitting solemnly with folded arms and their backs to the horses, opposite our trunks, which arrogantly occupied the other seat. Then we entered the chase, and began to catch glimpses of a great house among the trees. Some places have an aspect of self-denial impressed upon every feature : as you approach they seem to insist that you shall observe the economies they have oe - G8 (= THE SERE, THE YELLOW LEAF. 625 had to practise ; but this was just the opposite. ‘There was a self-indulgent, spick-and- span, affluent air about everything. “Oh!” Adalesa exclaimed, “I begin to feel feather bedding about, don’t you ? Nasty unwholesome stuffy thing, feather bedding. Aunt Marsh is by way of softening me, rubbing off the rough edges, don’t you know. Just you watch !” II. Lapy MarsH must have heard the crunch of carriage wheels as we drew up at the door, for she came hurrying down to meet us ; but the men-servants had hopped out alertly, and we ourselves had descended from the box before she appeared, so that I doubt if she ever knew how we had come. “ Do come in, dears!” she exclaimed. ‘Come to the drawing-room and have some tea. Evangeline is out. She will be so sorry. She had to go for a ride, but of course she expected to be*back in time, only one can’t always calculate. Dear children! I am so glad to see you. Why, you seem to have grown, Adalesa. You are certainly taller and—and slimmer.” “ Longer and lankier,” Adalesa translated, cheerfully. “ But isn’t your dress ‘just a little short, dearest, for your age?” Lady Marsh ventured in the gentlest way, when we were seated. She was known as “a szeet woman,” “one of those whom it is restful to recall”; and I was not at all pleased to find that that seed of corruption, the trick of absurdly associating her with feather beds, had taken root in my mind ; but it had, and there it remains. “ Long dresses!” Adalesa ejaculated: “no, thank you! I know what is expected of long dresses.” “Dignity, is it not, dear?” her aunt ventured, with a deprecating smile. “ Yes,” Adalesa groaned; “and dignity, they say, is a mysterious carriage of the body to cover defects of the mind.” Iady Marsh sat down at the tea-table, and began to pour out tea. “ But, you see, dear, men say such things,” she replied, in her gentle way. “Ah—men!” Adalesa drawled. “ You see, I haven’t made up my mind to like men yet—a man, perhaps, eventually—but men / too conceited, you know.” “ Dear child ! what do you know about men ?” “ Absolutely nothing,” was the frank rejoinder ; “and that’s why I wear short dresses. I want to study man, and he only shows himself to short frocks. He’s off guard with them. But I'll find him out! My angles fit me for the task. Thank heaven for my angles! No man who looks at me will think of me as a young lady, that most awful of human weaknesses.” “T don’t like to hear you speak in that flippant way, dear,” her aunt deprecated. “The man is the head of the woman, you know.” “Yes, sometimes,” said Adalesa, judicially ; “and sometimes he isn’t, because the woman is a leng way ahead of him. But the rule is much of a muchness, I believe.” “Well, then, it would be a case of two heads are better than one in a household,” her aunt answered, good-humouredly. “Or too many cooks spoil the broth—you never know,” came the ready response. “ But where’s my pup?” she broke off; then rushed from the room, exclaiming that she’d forgotten him. “That child’s sharpness is quite uncanny,” Lady Marsh remarked when she had disappeared. “ But, oh dear, it is all so terrible—so very wrong-headed, you know! And”—stooping over to speak in an undertone, as if the matter were not quite 626 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. delicate—“I am afraid it is all my poor sister’s fault. She is so sadly what they call ‘advanced ’—woman’s rights, the suffrage, short hair, and all that, you know.” Lady Marsh spoke in a confidential tone, very flattering to a young girl from a woman of her age and station, and also flattering in that it was natural to infer from it that she thought I had been brought up in a superior manner. Adalesa returned with the bull pup under her arm. “Isn’t he saee¢?” she demanded, putting him down, and making him run towards her aunt. “No!” Lady Marsh exclaimed, drawing her skirts together lest he should touch her—“anything but sweet. Oh!—do take him away! How could you bring such a dreadful creature here ?” “* Dreadful creature !’” Adalesa repeated in an injured tone ; then picking up her a ee * Adalesa returned with the bull pup. ‘Isn't he sweet?’ she demanded.” grotesque pet she hugged him like a mother whose babe has just been insulted. “And I thought—— Well, if it is womanly to be so hard-hearted, I’d rather not be womanly.” “My dear child,” Lady Marsh cried in consternation, “what have I done? You don’t expect me to like that dreadful creature? I should be ashamed to have it seen about the house. Who ever heard of a gentlewoman petting such a——” Adalesa uttered a little scream. ‘“Don’t—don’t say nasty things about him. I shall hate—any one—who doesn’t appreciate him.” She drew herself up, glanced at me, and walked haughtily out of the room. “Well!” Lady Marsh exclaimed for the second time. “Now, you see, my dear, what comes of this nonsense—taking women out of their sphere and all that !” “Do you mean,” I began, “that you think a fondness for bull pups——-” But THE SERE, THE YELLOW LEAF, 627 here I checked myself, for I perceived that I was inadvertently playing into the hands of the wicked Adalesa. On my way upstairs to dress for dinner, I discovered that young person’s dark head inserted in a doorway, round which she was peering. “Come in and kiss my pup,” she said, persuasively, looking at me with languishing eyes. “Tell me,” I said. “ How much of your late misconduct was by way of ‘ drawing’ your aunt, and how much was “Innate cussedness ?” she suggested. “ Innate cussedness !” I gravely repeated. “Oh—you pays your money, e/ cefera,” she answered easily. “ But I’m dressed and you're not,” she proceeded; “and you're late. Let me go to your room and help you.” I led the way, smiling a little to myself as I pictured the sort of help I thought I might expect from her; but I soon found I was utterly mistaken. I had imagined her awkward and inefficient, but found her deftness itself, and, what is more, she was kind. It was loving service that she did me when she laughed at some inartistic arrangement of ornaments I had devised for my hair, threw the artificial things aside, and cleverly replaced them with fresh and fragrant flowers. And all the time she talked! “When I first saw you to-day I thought you were older than I am,” she said, “ but it seems you are younger. You say such wise things, though, and look so grave, it’s easy to be mistaken. But now I see you are only a babe with a big head, and you want a lot of attention. You'll have to go through a period of feather-bedasia, and you'll suffer ; but don’t be disheartened. Just do as Ido. Be vulgar, buy a bull pup, and chatter.” “T don’t in the least see what I’m to suffer from,” I protested. “ Your aunt is charming.” “ Yes,” she rejoined ; “didn’t I warn you that she was ?” * And as for your cousin Evangeline ——” “Now, stop,” she interrupted. ‘I won't let you commit yourself to ¢haé stupid fallacy. Evangeline isn’t charming. I am the reaction from feather-bedasia ; she is the consequence of it ; and she’s a pig.” “JT don’t agree with you at all,” I answered decidedly ; “and I should think I know as much about her as you do, for we were at school together ; and she was most popular with all the girls.” “Oh yes,” Adalesa answered, imitating her aunt. “She has such pretty manners, as Aunt Marsh says, ‘so gentle, so refined, so unaffected ’—a whole string of adjectives, a set formula that has been flung at me—no, I should say, gently insisted upon for my benefit so often that Iam not likely to forget it. And then she always promised to be a beauty, I suppose, which must have added greatly to her frestige with girls at school. But all the same, she’s a pig. Why wasn’t she here to receive us to-day?” “ Her mother said she had had to ride——” “Her mother ought to know better than to excuse her. It was a fine day, and Livangeline thought it would be more amusing to go for a ride than to come in the carriage to meet us ; so she went, and she has not yet returned ; and that is Evangeline all over. Oh, I know her! And so would you if you’d ever been here before. Have you, by the way?” “T thought you knew all about me! You seemed to say so in the train to-day.” “T knew your name and address, for 1 read them on the luggage you were looking after when you came into the station,” she answered, with charming candour. “I saw you peacocking about as if you were somebody, and, as your belongings were 628 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. deposited under my eyes, I had the curiosity to look and see. If I hadn’t known that you were coming here you wouldn’t have had the honour of making my acquaintance so early in the day, for, although free with my friends, I am not in the habit of picking up any goodness-knows-who for a travelling companion.” “ Aren’t you ?” I said in surprise. ‘I should have thought—— ”? ***Well, yes,’ she rejoined, ‘1 am sharp, very.’” “You would have thought!” she exclaimed. “You innocent babe! You haven't learnt to think yet. But you are very entertaining. I nearly missed my train watching you. You were so smily and pleased with yourself and everybody else, anybody could see it was the first time you’d ever been on your own hook. My, what a blush! It’s running all down your back. Well, forgive me! I didn’t mean to wound your THE SERE, THE YELLOW LEAF. 629 pride. But you’re too sensitive, my dear—as sensitive as you’re simple, and as trans- parent. ‘Those who run might read your every emotion; and that would be rapid reading too, for you suffer from a singular variety of emotions in a short time.” “You seem to be a singularly acute young person,” I observed, bridling. “Well, yes,” she rejoined, with unvarying cheerfulness, “I am sharp, very.” She stood off as she spoke to see the effect of a big bow she had pinned on my dress ; adding, as she looked, with her head on one side, “So you have never been here before ? ” “No,” I answered. “ Your aunt was a friend of my mother’s, long ago, before either of them was married; but they hadn’t met for years until last season, when Evangeline and I left school, and came out ; and then they renewed their acquaintance. They agreed that Evangeline and I mustn’t consider our education finished simply because we had left school; and as Evangeline is an only child, Lady Marsh entreated my mother to let me come here for awhile to work with her. My mother is great on the question of education. She says she has suffered all her life long from having had hers curtailed, and she is determined therefore that her daughters shall have every advantage that her sons have. If we are not clever enough to profit there will be no harm done; and if we are she expects us to be thankful that we were allowed to experiment and see what we could do, instead of being kept ignorant in deference to a mere theory that we have no mental capacity. But of course we are not coerced. Since I left school I have been allowed to follow my own inclinations, and I have chosen to be taught the same things that my brothers are studying.” “Gracious, how clever the child talks!” Adalesa exclaimed in her irrepressible way. “It’s just like a book. Perhaps you learnt it by heart. I begin to suspect you have a mind. What a terrible thing! But, anyway, what a blessing it is you met me! A few years more, and you would have been unendurable.” She stood off again, with her arms akimbo, and contemplated me from this new point of view, derisively at first, but by degrees her face softened. “And so you have come here to work with Evangeline, you innocent babe!” she said humorously. ‘You must be clever. Only a very clever person would have done such a stupid thing—a book-clever person I mean, not a world-clever person. It isn’t human to be up to everything, and your world-clever people are all out of it in literature, but your book-clever people fail in their knowledge of life. Now, do you really suppose that Evangeline will keep up anything but showy accomplish- ments? And even those she will only do superficially,—a little music, a little drawing, rather more French because of the naughty books, which she reads regularly, but never leaves lying about, for Evangeline is wise in her generation. Yah, Simple Sincerity! Child of Light! Hot water, that’s what’s in store for you here—perpetual hot water. You'll always be putting your foot in it.” “You encourage me,” I said. “Don’t mention it,” she answered. Ill. Havinc dressed me to her satisfaction, much as a nurse does a child without consulting it, Adalesa made me a deep reverence, offered me her arm, and conducted me downstairs in the most gentlemanly manner. She had quite taken me under her wing by this time, and was prepared to pet and patronise me; but somehow I did not resent her assumption of superiority, for her mind was more mature than mine was, and I had to yield of necessity to-her force of character, having no strength of my own at that time to oppose to it. 630 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. “ What a lovely old house!” I exclaimed, on our way to the drawing-room. “Yes, it is like Uncle Henry,” she answered—“ big, solid, comfortable, strong, warm, and good. He’s early English himself, and splendid. You'll see!” He was alone in the drawing-room when we entered, in appearance a typical English country gentleman of the best kind, standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fireplace in the typical attitude. He received us both most kindly, but with few words, contenting himself with looking from one to the other with a benign smile on his face, as if he were sorting our separate attractions, comparing and approving of us. “That pig, Evangeline, has not been near us yet,” Adalesa giumbled. “It’s pretty bad manners to me, but it’s downright rude to——” The door opened as she spoke, and Evangeline herself, all in white tulle, floated towards us, exclaiming: “So sorry. I was afraid you would think me rude ”—she clasped her hands towards me with a little entreating gesture—“ but, oh, pray don’t. I really Zave an excuse.” “‘ Let’s hear what it is, then,” Adalesa answered bluntly. “ My horse—I rode too far,” she commenced, stammering. “That’s no excuse,” Adalesa interrupted. “Dear, do excuse me,” Evangeline said to me; and when I found her so sweetly apologetic I did excuse her at once, and, moreover, felt angry with Adalesa for making such a scene, although the moment before, while under her exclusive influence, I had agreed that Evangeline was rude. Now, however, with Evangeline there to delight my eyes and soothe my senses with her gentleness and grace, I could not believe anything of her that was not altogether lovely and adorable. “You may say what you like,” Adalesa added; “but you have committed a breach of hospitality, and for the honour of the family I take upon myself to reprove you.” “Thanks,” Evangeline said, smiling with unruffled sweetness. Sir Henry sat down in an easy chair, fixed his eyes on some ferns in the grate, and looked as if he had not heard; but when Adalesa went presently and lounged on the arm of his chair, with her elbow on his shoulder, he took her hand and caressed it gently. Lady Marsh came into the room just then, smiling amiably as usual, and dressed in an opulent manner. “ Adalesa, dear,” she said: “do move away. You will make your uncle quite hot.” Adalesa languidly complied, and Sir Henry leant back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. His silence struck me as significant. He seemed to be, either by way of acquiescing in, or of utterly ignoring the sayings and doings of the ladies of his family, a singularly indifferent or singularly neutral person ; and I wondered if he always let Lady Marsh decide whether he was too hot or not, and that sort of thing. There were a few good pictures in the dining-room, and after dinner he showed them to me, and told me anecdotes, also, about some family portraits that hung in the hall, and some ancient armour. ‘The house was several centuries old, with a long, unbroken family history, which was illustrated by most of its contents. ‘The old carved cabinets, and everything else in the way of ornament, had their associations, and even the furniture, some of it, had a history attached to it, to which I listened with an honest interest that satisfied Sir Henry. Lady Marsh and Evangeline had remained at table discussing the details of a dinner-dress they had seen somewhere ; but Adalesa went with us, clinging to her uncle’s arm with both hands. er ee a “JT would have you observe that there are no meaningless feminine {ripperies here, ly fe 1c C, 1e THE SERE, THE YELLOW LEAF. 631 she cried. “This has been the cradle of a sturdy race ; and it looks like it. I’m one of the race,” she added, laughing up at her uncle. “Dear child!” Lady Marsh exclaimed, coming out of the dining-room at that moment, “don’t hang on your uncle so; you will tire him.” Then to me, in her amiable way: “This is but a bare old place at present, but now that Evangeline is old enough to take an interest in it, we must see what can be done.” “Oh dear!” Adalesa groaned ; “if Aunt Marsh and Evangeline are to desecrate the good old oak and ebony will be disguised in down cushions and dimity no time.” “ Dear, is that quite respectful ?” Lady Marsh exclaimed. “No; nor would it be respectful for an alien to alter anything here,” Adaleas rejoined doggedly. it it -~ “‘He showed us miniatures, arms, and ancient gems.” “Tam afraid, dear, your uncle spoils you,” Lady Marsh said in her gentlest way, and then swept on to the drawing-room, arm-in-arm with Evangeline. At the door she looked back over her shoulder, and said to Sir Henry: “ Don’t make that child do too much, dearest. She has had a journey, you know.” “Which child?” he asked in an undertone, looking from one to the other, as soon as the drawing-room door was shut. “Neither,” Adalesa said, scornfully. “Then take an arm each, my dears,” he rejoined, almost in a whisper, “and we'll see what there is to be seen.” From which I perceived that this benign-looking gentleman, seemingly so yielding, was in reality a bold, bad man, capable of opposition, who had put himself in my power ; and I slipped my hand through his arm, and smiled up at him confidently, just as VoL. I.—No. 5. 42 632 THE PALI. MALL MAGAZINE. Adalesa, on the other side, was doing. He beamed down upon us both, and led us away to the library, where he lived as a rule when he was not out of doors; and there he showed us miniatures, arms, and ancient gems of his ancestors, who seemed to fill the great comfortable room as he talked about them, and to be nearer to him than the wife and daughter, with their marvellous charms of manner, whose tastes and interests were all.so modern, of the Society kind, so far removed, if not so utterly opposed, to everything he cherished. IV. EVANGELINE had a sitting-room of her own, a sunny south room, and here we girls were to work. We settled down to it next day, and during the morning Lady Marsh looked in, “just to see how you are getting on, dears! And what are you doing?” meaning me. “ Mathematics,” I answered. “Oh dear!” she exclaimed. ‘“ You must excuse me, dear child, but is it nice for a young lady to study such a very masculine subject? A girl’s manner, you know, should be so very different. ‘The woman’s sphere is to refine and elevate man.” “ But do mathematics make one’s manners masculine?” I asked in alarm. I was diffident in those days, as became my age, and the least shade of disapproval made me unhappy. “Well, they have not done so as yet in your case, dear child,” Lady Marsh answered, with infinite tact. “ But still, you know, dear, they are not womanly pursuits, You will not be fit for the duties of wife and mother by-and-by if you injure your constitution now, I know your mother’s idea, but I cannot agree with her, and I often tell her I am sure she would not now be the dear, sweet, zoman/y woman she is, if she had been taught these new-fangled notions as a girl. I cannot think it is right for young ladies to be educated like their brothers, and go to the university and all that nonsense, getting such ideas! I don’t believe that a woman’s mind is inferior to a man’s, you know—far from it ; and, in fact, in some things ”—she looked round and lowered her voice—“ there can be no doubt as to which is the superior sex, only it doesn’t do to say so, men make such remarks. But, as to professions for women, and that sort of thing, why, fancy me a professional woman! Evangeline, dearest, put your French away, that’s a good child, and get a story book. I am sure you have done enough for to-day.” When she had spoken she patted my shoulder kindly, smiled on us all, and left the room, * Now see what you have brought on yourself, with your mathematics !” Adalesa exclaimed, her dark eyes dancing mischievously. ‘“ Aunt Marsh knew your mother’s idea, and I believe she’s got you down here to cure you of it. That’s the sort of kind thing she’s celebrated for. She suspected mathematics this morning, and came in prepared.” ¢ Evangeline, who had risen with cheerful alacrity to put her books away, in obedience to her mother’s suggestion, turned now from the bookshelf at which she was standing dipping into a novel, and looked at Adalesa indignantly. “I don’t think it is nice of you,” she said, “to speak like that about my mother. She must know better than either you or I. Why, just think! You will own that we were intended to be healthy and happy—that we require to be so in order to be equal to such duties as we have to perform—and how can we be so if we go and injure ourselves with work we are not fit for? It’s only common-sense, if you will think. Men were clearly intended to do rsh nly ure 7 ie | iS, ght all r to ind y it en, rest, you left lesa 1er’s t of ame once ding e of than ulthy ye to not o do THE SERE, THE YELLOW LEAF. 3 all the hard work, and keep us in comfort, and screen us from anything objectionable. My ambition is to be a womanly woman. I think mamma is quite right.” By this time I was feeling very uncomfortable. To be thought unwomanly seemed to me as dreadful as to be thought wicked ; but yet I .felt there was something wrong somewhere, for I could not see sex in a subject of study. Why should one be masculine and another feminine ? Evangeline had departed, and Adalesa was watching me with a grin on her intelligent countenance. “There is no resisting a feather bed, is there?” she asked. “Aunt Marsh is on the war path, I think, this morning. - She’ll go and order Uncle Henry’s day till she’s feather-bedded all the comfort out of it. Let’s go and see!” She jumped up, seized me by the arm, and dragged me away to the library, where we found Sir Henry slowly pacing up and down, deep _ in thought. He looked from one to the other of us almost sadly when we entered, but smiled indulgently at. Adalesa when she dropped my arm and, seizing his in_ her energetic way, squeezed it between both hands, and then worked it up and down like a pump handle, as_ if she could get what she wanted out of him so. “Tell us about education,” she demanded. “ Ah — education,” he answered. “Your aunt has just been talking to me about education. She thinks you have been foolishly over educated, and that has made you rough ; and she fears for this little lady here ”—mean- ing me—“ che is anxious about —_ : you, my dear. She has a “‘Adalesa seized his arm in her energetic way.” great loving heart, and every girl is her daughter. She wants you all to have a good time.” He used this last expression apologetically. “And so do you,” Adalesa exclaimed, on the defensive. She had dropped his arm, and stood frowning intently, and biting one of her fingers between her words. “But, isn’t it nonsense? Of course I’m rough. I’m rough on purpose. I’m rougher here than anywhere. If I lived like Evangeline, in cotton wool, I should grow flabby ; and she says it’s education! When she sees, too, that it hasn’t had that effect in this 634 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. other most notable case ”—looking at me. “‘iell me all over again about education, Uncle Henry. I’m all ruffled. I want to know.” Sir Henry began to walk up and down the room with his hands behind him. “ What we learn is but a small- part of education,” he said, and it sounded as if he were reflecting aloud. “It is what we think of things, not what we know of them— our opinions—that affect our conduct. If you learn the multiplication table by heart, and merely remember that you know it, the knowledge will have no consequence one way or the other ; but if you are taught to think that because you know the multipli- cation table you ought to be a very high-principled person, you'll find yourself insensibly seeking to live up to that idea. If, however, on the other hand, you hear continually that a knowledge of the multiplication table must be lowering in effect upon the character—if it is insinuated that your taste will be corrupted by it and your manners coarsened, until the notion that such a consequence is inevitable takes possession of your mind in spite of yourself—then it is only too probable that that will be the case.” “Now, that is true! of the fact.” Sir Henry stopped a moment to look at us, and then resumed his walk. “ There’s a great deal of cant rife just now ‘on the subject of women and their education,” he observed, “ most of which, being summed up, amounts to a firm conviction that a half-educated girl, a creature who has learnt to live for the pleasure of the moment, to love for the joy of loving, and to'marry in order to secure as many of the good things of this world as she can, is in every way a suitable and congenial companion for an educated man, and an admirable specimen of the ‘woman’s-sphere-is-home’ woman. <A toy—that’s what the creature is, an unreasonable and illogical toy, neither reason nor logic having entered into the curriculum of that kind of ‘womanly woman,’ it having been supposed that a large establishment is most admirably managed by a mistress whose reasoning powers have never been cultivated, and a young family best brought up on the superstitious practices solemnly confided in mysterious whispers by Mrs. Gamp ; The windows stood wide open, and Lady Marsh looked in at one of them. “ Dearest children!” she cried, “don’t you see how fine it is? You ought to be out. Adalesa, what are you worrying your uncle about? I am sure he doesn’t want you here at this time of day.” ” Adalesa exclaimed, “and here are we two in evidence V. In the afternoon I went out for a ride with Adalesa. Evangeline would not accompany us. She had a packet of sweets in her pocket, and was deep in an entrancing novel by that time, from which she could not be induced to separate herself for the rest of the day, and on the next she had a bad headache. “ Which just shows,” her mother protested, with gentle emphasis, “ how very necessary it is to supervise a young girl’s studies, and what it would be if the dear child were being brought up, as too many young ladies are nowadays, alas! learning quite masculine matters: it is really dreadful !” Adalesa looked older and better in her riding dress than I had yet seen her, and perhaps some consciousness of this had its effect upon her manner. So far, while looking like a child, she had talked like a cynical worldly woman ; but now, as she took her horse skilfully down a difficult rutty lane, her face fanned by the balmy country air, heavy with odours of full-blown flowers, and at the same time freshened THE SERE, THE YELLOW LEAF. by the near neighbourhood of the sea, there came a far-away look into the girl’s eyes, an expression of yearning tenderness which culminated, as seemed most natural, in a long-drawn sigh. €. ' See a ' e7 - “ mh a * 4 — : #, @, = The lane we rode in was a steep by-way—a short cut to the shore, she said—only just wide enough for our two horses abreast, and so uneven that we had to look well to their feet. On either hand green banks, bedecked with foxglove and harebell, rose high above us and before us, making the winding way look like a cu/ de sac, and 636 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. shutting out all view save that of the sky above us, a radiant strip of sky, intensely blue—blue like a dark sapphire, and full of colour, which contrasted well with the opaque blue-green of a belt of firs that crowned the summit of the bank and held their heavy plumes up motionless against the brightness. The air was so still that inanimate nature scarcely seemed to breathe ; but all about us a myriad atoms of life buzzed, and chirped, and fluttered, rejoicing to be, making the most of their moment, and claiming a kinship with us in inarticulate murmurs, quite untranslatable, and yet becoming curiously comprehensible to some sense the longer we lingered to listen to them. The horses glanced hither and thither with big sagacious eyes, flipping a long ear swiftly towards each separate sound—now to the croak of a yellow frog in the grass, and now to the cheep of a nestling up on a branch, the bleat of an unseen sheep in the meadow above to its lamb, the low of a cow to her calf; seemingly anxious to understand, nervously glad to know; gathering the import of everything with an intelligence beyond ours, perhaps, that made them more one with the teeming beings about us than we were. But after that sigh Adalesa burst into the midst of my meditation abruptly. “ Did you ever feel a glow in your chest, and have little warm shivers run down your backbone, and all the time keep smiling?” she demanded. “ No, never,” I answered decidedly. “ Ah! then you have never been in love,” she observed in a disappointed tone. thought, perhaps, with those eyes,—and you’re not so plump either.” “T don’t see the connection.” * Why—don’t you know? Oh, I think when girls are plump, like Evangeline, it is because they haven’t felt much. Now, I’m skinny because I have a burning fiery furnace within that consimes me. So many things—interests, passions, affections,—-I don’t know what all! are fuel to my fire; it never goes out.” “But love——?” I said, shy of the subject, yet aglow ona sudden with natuial girlish curiosity about it, newly inspired; for the moment she mentioned love I knew what was in the air. She laughed, whipped up her horse, and rode on ahead recklessly. When I overtook her we were in the open country, on a hard high road, with a long level of fields on either hand, and not a glimpse of the sea. “Where are we?” I asked. “Oh, I had forgotten,” she answered apologetically. “I was leading you away in the wrong direction. I’m sorry—I was thinking. I was thinking of him!” and she flipped at the hedge with her whip, and laughed in a shamefaced way. “Of whom ?” I asked. “Of my man,” she replied. “Oh, you’re obtuse! Don’t you gather? I’m in love. Sometimes I’m sick with love—love-sick. But you don’t know what that is, and you’re a little shocked!” She looked at me keenly. “You think I am committing a breach of decorum. So it would be, perhaps, for most girls ; but, don’t you see—with me—oh, you must let it be different with me!” The high road was taking us towards a belt of wood now, above which the chimneys of the great house appeared, smoking cheerfully. “Why, we're going back!” I exclaimed. “Yes, a little way,” she answered. “I’m sorry. I took the wrong turn. We should have gone to the left through the wood, instead of to the right, down that lane. But here we are. I’d better lead the way. Look out for your hat under the branches ! ” The high road ran through the wood at this point, and was bordered on either side by trees, which looked like a forest of slender masts, canopied and THE SERE, THE YELLOW LEAF. 637 curtained with greenery, through which the sunlight filtered in shining shafts, making mystical pathways of dazzling brightness, beyond which the tender gloom beneath the branches deepened perceptibly. Adalesa had turned off under the trees, taking a diagonal course confidently, although there was no track that I could see; but I followed her, now in sunshine and now in shadow, winding in and out about the tree-stems, watchfully, like a princess in a land of weird enchantment, who goes, with wide-open, wistful eyes, seeking to see deep into the verdant shadows, in timidly glad anticipation of something to come that would satisfy the hunger at her heart, that strange importunate ache. Branches broken by last year’s storms crackled beneath our horses’ feet, or their hoofs sank deep in delicious moss. Rabbits ran at our approach, and the shrill cry or clumsy flight of a startled pheasant sounded oddly insulting, as if uttered to injure the charmed silence. And here again there was life—superabundant, palpitating, generous—a joyous riot, in which we were asked to join by every little living thing that spoke. At first, in the wood, the soothing susurrus of leaves, stirred by light airs, sounded incessantly, a sort of softly whispering sound, all- pervading yet unobtrusive, not the main melody, but a manifold accompaniment. Presently, however, we were seized upon by a mightier voice, muffled at first and murmurous, but growing in distinctness and volume as we advanced; and at the same time we ceased to see sunshafts and shadows through the wood; the green depths disappeared; and now between the trees there sparkled into view the yellow sands and the seas We had come out upon the shore, and both involuntarily drew rein. “Yes,” Adalesa resumed, as if there had been no break, “you must let it be different with me. I take everything so severely—measles, whooping cough, mumps, scarlatina—all infantile diseases. Each in its turn has threatened to kill me, and now comes this new fever—love. I had to tell Evangeline even. I should have died if I hadn’t said something to some one. But now I am sorry. I wish you had come sooner, Simple Sincerity: you are another sort. If only I hadn't told Evangeline that we are engaged !” “Engaged!” I exclaimed. “ Secretly ?” “ Yes : isn’t it dreadful ?” she answered, laughing at my horror. ‘“ But it happened in this way. I was staying with his people, and he and I were always together because we were the only young pair on the premises ; and at last—oh, the usual thing, you know! And I wanted to tell Uncle Henry, but he seemed to dislike the idea. My father and mother are in India, you know—that is why I am here; and Percy said, weren’t they the proper people to be first informed? They are on their way home by this time, I believe, round the Cape—oh the weary time of waiting! months! And I hate to keep Uncle Henry in the dark. I always tell him everything. But then of course there is Aunt Marsh. If I told him he would make me tell her, and then we should have the affair confided to the whole county in solemn confidence. At least,” she corrected herself emphatically, “Z don’t believe he would tell her; he’s too good altogether; and besides, I’ve told him lots of other things, but I can’t make Percy understand, and he says, too, that his knowing would put the affair on quite a different footing—whatever he may mean by that. I hate concealment myself; but perhaps he has finer feelings than I have, for he says something about this being altogether sacred to ourselves— not an ordinary concealment. It sounds all right as he puts it; but I am sadly afraid I don’t feel about it quite what he does, because I want to tell. I must talk. My joy bubbles up and bursts out so that I cannot contain it. There’s a singing at my heart I can’t quite smother; if ‘only Uncle Henry suspected, he 638 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. would hear it and question me, and then I should be glad indeed—satisfied. Now at times it is only a kind of half glad. However, are you relieved? Iam not so sly as you suspected, perhaps.” “T should never have thought you sly,” I declared. “ Well, reckless then,” she replied, “as when I told Evangeline. That was an instance of a bubbling up and a bursting out. If I had had Uncle Henry to talk to— but there! Yet I know Evangeline is not to be trusted, for all her promises.” “Oh, surely she will not betray you if she promised!” I exclaimed, shocked by the accusation. For a moment the cynical expression returned to Adalesa’s face. “Tt just depends upon what will suit her own convenience,” she answered, with her usual downright directness. The horses, tired of standing, sniffed the salt air, tossed their heads, and pawed impatiently. “We'll let them go for a gallop in a minute,” she said; “ but first, just look at the sea, and listen to it. ‘That inarticulate murmur is full of meaning to me now; and so it is with the sough of the breezes in the branches and the rustle of leaves. Since he came into my life I have awakened to full consciousness of a curious kinship with all things, animate and inanimate. ‘The gladness in me, the singing in my heart, is all a part of some great whole, some universal plan, something I 2xow, but can’t express, But wait !—wait till you know it too!” She had looked down at the sand as she spoke, frowning intently in the effort to put what she felt into human speech; and her horse, as if waiting upon her words, ceased for the moment to be restive ; the very sea-voice seemed suspended, and the scene itself—sandhills, and shore, and grey-white, green-crowned cliffs, curving arm- like about the bay, passed from my consciousness. I saw and heard her alone till she stopped ; then the waves rang out their merry murmur, the cliffs whitened into view in the sunshine, the breeze sang in my ears, the open space invited, and our horses, with one accord, as though they felt our own fine impulse to fly, to be free, plunged out from amongst the heavy, dry drifts, on to the smooth, hard sand, and carried us off at a gallop into another world. VI, EVANGELINE came to my room late that night. We had not had an houi’s talk together since my arrival. ‘The moon was near the full, and she found me with my window wide open, luxuriating in the sense of stillness, which is peculiar to the exquisite, shadowy, silent night. “Oh!” she exclaimed, with a little shiver. ‘“Won’t you take cold? Isn’t that mist down there on the meadows? and aren’t the trees black? It is all so comfortless I shut the window. “Ah, that’s better!” Evangeline pursued, as she curled herself up in an easy chair. “I love lays of the moon, and the sapphire solitudes one reads about ; but the real thing falls far short of the description. I believe those rhapsodies are written in bed at night, with the curtains drawn, and a big fire blazing. At all events, that’s the best way to read them. One forgets then, as the poet seems to have forgotten, all the unpleasant details—that it is chilly out in the merry moonlight ; fatiguing to linger or loiter long, though it sounds so nice; and too damp to sit, couch, or recline on anything growing or blowing. I love poetry, but preserve me from having to live it! THE SERE, THE YELLOW LEAF. 639 Cushions and comfort are my delight, ease is my ambition, and all things ordered to please me by some competent person as long as I live, my one desire !” She cooed all this so prettily that I began to draw an invidious comparison between the sound of her words and of Adalesa’s. The sense did not impress me. The gentleness of her manner, the sweetness of her voice, and the charm of her appearance disarmed criticism. One felt at rest in her presence ; one did not think. She left the easy chair, and came and sat down beside me. “ Pet me,” she said, putting her arms round me. “TI don't seem to have seen you at all since you came; and oh, I have such lots of things I want to talk to you about. How pretty your neck is !—just like a baby’s. I must kiss it! I could eat you, I think, you're so sweet! But you’re not very responsive, I must say! I believe you like Adalesa best. Tell me, do you? I should be so miserable if I thought you did. But what do you think of her ?” “T think her delightful.” “So she is,” Evangeline answered, returning to her chair. “But isn’t it rather a pity, when she’s so nice, that she shouldn’t be perfect? She does say and do such outrageous things. She has gone and engaged herself secretly.” This breach of confi- dence slipped out so easily and so naturally that I should have hesitated at the moment to apply any harsh epithet to it. “ Yes,” she pursued ; “I met the man in London afterwards, and now he has become quite an ally of mine. When he found I knew all about * the affair, he said he was glad, and would like to discuss it with me. You do believe, don’t you, that men and women can have Platonic friend- ships? I think it so cynical for people not to believe in disinterestedness. He says he loves to talk to me; and of course there can be no harm when it is all about another girl. What do you think ?” “JT think I am inclined to be sorry for the other girl.” “ Oh, now that is not nice of you!” she said reproachfully. “Well, the things that are said about the kind of man who spends all his time with one girl in order to talk about another, are not nice either.” “Oh, but I’m sure you would never judge a man by the unkind things people say!” She said this so earnestly, so caressingly, she made me feel mean. “ And, besides,” she went on gravely, “I don’t think he is quite satisfied, somehow. It is not that he says anything, you know, only he makes me fancy—and I think it just as . a “She came and sat cown beside me.” 640 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. well that the engagement was not announced. If there is any change—if nothing comes of it, you know, nothing can be said. I only tell you about it in confidence, because I know you are safe, and I did so want to consult some one. You see, he confided in me, and asked my advice, and I feel it is such a responsibility. But perhaps Adalesa told you herself. I thought she might, as you get on so well——” She stopped here, and looked at me expectantly, but as I only replied with a steady stare, she demanded, point-blank: “ Did she ?” “ How can you ask ?” I answered without emphasis, so as not to betray my friend ; and I saw that she was baffled, but she did not like to repeat the question. SARAH GRAND. (70 be continued.) 7) ta oc e) ad WN) = oO = pa < a oc Oo a O A f kK <x RUSSIAN JEWRY. SCENES OF HOME LIFE IN POLAND AND THE PALE. ENGLISH VIEW OF THE PERSECUTION. N England. there appears to be only one view of the persecution of the Jew in Russia: that it is a purely religious persecution. “It is scarcely needful for me to say,” writes Mr. Herbert Spencer, “that I condemn in the strongest manner all religious persecutions, be it of Jews or any sect of Christians or adherents to other creeds. An utter reprobation of the course pursued by Russia in this matter is a necessary corollary from the views I am known to hold.” “So far as the Jews are concerned,” says Mr. Huxley, “I do not find it alleged that they are other than industrious, thrifty, sober people, devoid of any political by-ends.” “JT am not well,” wrote Mr. Spurgeon at the end of 1891; “but if I had all the health and strength that could fall to the lot of man, I should be quite unable to express my feelings when I read of Russian intolerance towards Jews and Dissenters. That this conduct should be sanctioned by a Church bearing the name of Christian or Orthodox is as sad as it is strange. The genius of the religion of Jesus is love, not oppression. Surely there must be thousands of Greek churchmen to whom the persecution of other religionists must be shocking.” Mr. Gladstone “hopes that a full and fair exposition of the facts, deplorable as they are, with respect to the Jews in Russia, may gradually form a public opinion favourable to humanity and justice.” THE Russian VIEw. Such, then (as seen in the zealous pages of Darkest Russia), is the English view of the Jewish question in Russia—a view which takes account of the religious aspect only. But the Russian view is a very different thing. It may be summarised as follows :— 1. A religious question. 2. A national question. 3. An economic question. Of these nine-tenths are economic, and no more than one-tenth is national and religious. The grievance of the Russian against the Jew—never yet stated in 641 E THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. England with any precision or fulness—would appear to be capable of classification under six heads :— 1. That he is a voluntary alien—a Jew, not a Russian—separating himself by dress and custom from the people among whom he lives. 2. That his personal character is revolting; that he is dirty, heartless, and impure. 3. That his religious character is hypocritical ; that he uses his religion to hood- wink his God, and to deceive his sovereign. 4. That he is grossly ignorant and fanatical, and has both resisted and misused all efforts to educate him. 5. That he is a bad soldier ; that he flies from military service ; and that he joins himself to the Nihilists and other enemies of the Government. 6. That, above all, he is an immoral trader, a cheat, a base usurer, a friend of the drink traffic, and that he has one morade for his dealings with his Jewish brethren and another for his dealings with Christians. THE RussIAN PEOPLE AND ENGLISH OPINION. It is time we considered the Russo-Jewish question from the Russian standpoint. We have dealt with it from the English point of view again and again, awakening much moral indignation at home, but doing no good abroad. If we are to help to form a public opinion in Russia that shall be “favourable to humanity and justice,” we must begin by showing the Russians that we understand them, that we know the history of their relations with the Jews who live in their midst, that we sympathise with their motives where they are just and right, and only reprobate them where selfish and cruel and mistaken. ‘Thus far, I fear, we have done nothing of that kind. With the best impulses of humanity we have denounced the Russian people and their methods of government, knowing both imperfectly. That has sometimes aroused their wrath, and often provoked their ridicule. I chanced to be in Russia when Mr. Herbert Spencer’s letter was first published, and I shall not easily forget the howl of derision with which it was received. It seemed to the Russians that the best men in England were finding no _ better occupation than that of setting up their own Russian nine-pins merely for the satisfaction of knocking them down. Mr. Gladstone’s “humanity and _ justice,” Mr. Huxley’s “industrious, thrifty, sober people, devoid of political by-ends,” Mr. Spurgeon’s “Greek churchmen,” to whom the doings of the Greek Church “must be shocking,” and Mr. Spencer’s “ religious persecutions,” were all phantoms of the air at which Englishmen might fire away until the crack’ of doom without ever touching a reality which kept very close to the ground. The Russians were not wholly wrong. Our English view of the Russo-Jewish question has been partial and imperfect. This is not to say that the English public has been misled. Still less is it to say that the American public has been so. If there has been any misleading, the people of England and of America have misled themselves. The noble and generous juices of the most unselfish race on earth are more easily touched to pity and to indignation by the sight of oppression for conscience’ sake than by the spectacle of suffering arising out of political or economical differences. What wonder if for once the two nations, whose freedom is the freest in the world, have troubled themselves to learn no more than that an ancient people has been persecuted because it worships Jehovah only and not Christ as well! But the truth is the whole truth, and the whole truth is the mightiest ally of the wronged and the down-trodden. In the conviction that the strong case for the RUSSIAN JEWRY. 643 Russian Jew is strongest in the light of Russian fact, Russian history, and Russian opinion, I could wish to traverse the Russian impeachment point by point, and try to show where the Russians are right and deserve our sympathy (as well as the sympathy of all right-minded and enlightened Jews), and where they are wrong and their argument is their reproach. THE JEWISH CHARACTER. No estimate of the conduct and fate of the Russian Jews would be right that did not begin by taking account of the character of the Jewish people. They are a hot-hearted race and not always a cool-headed one ; they are fanatical; they are liable to extremes ; they are imitative, and they are responsive. This character-chart may be questioned in part by those who know the Jews in one relation only, the relation of business ; but it will be sanctioned by everybody who has seen them under many conditions, in many lands and many Ghettos. The strange paradox which pursues them in all external ways of life, in fortune, in fate, in history, in literature (making them at the same time the masters of the world and its despised servants), follows them into their own inmost characters. They are a nation without a country, a Church without a Jerusalem ; they hold together throughout the ages in the teeth of everything that is calculated to disperse them ; they observe their Sabbaths in spite of commerce, and their habits in the face of progress; and yet they are, man with man, more under the influence of their surroundings than any race that ever lived in the world. If the Jew in Russia is not a Russian, he is most certainly a Russianised Jew. The Jew cannot help but take his colour from the qualities of the people among whom he lives. This is a fact that should never be forgotten. It is so in England, in America, in France, in Germany, and it is even so in Morocco and in Palestine. The Jews of Russia are a subdued race with the faults of a subdued race. They are treated as dogs and cheats, and what wonder if they are developing or acquiring the vices of doz3s and cheats? Persecution always lowers the moral tone of a people, and the Russian Christians may be right when they say that the mora/e of the Russian Jew is going down headlong. Only a race of heroes could have withstood the demoralising effect of the persecution which has been going on since 1882, and heroes are not brought forth in a whole race at a time. Every nation gets the Jews it deserves because it has made them what it deserves to find them. THE Jews As ALIENS. Perhaps the first thing that strikes the eye of the traveller on approaching the frontier of Russia from the countries of Northern Europe is the costume and general appearance of the Jews. These are Polish Jews, for the most part a feeble, sickly, pallid, and often puny race. There are faces of all Jewish types among them, from the noblest to the basest; but the most common is long and thin, with more than the ordinary proportion of aquiline nose, and with a shifty expression in the egg-shaped eyes. The effect of this countenance is intensified in its unpleasantness by a long “candle” curl worn in front of each ear, and often descending “PW to the level of the chin. These curls are called the “peies.” The dress of the Polish Jew 644 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. seems to consist of just two garments and a pair of elastic-side boots. They wear a long kaftan, usually of black cloth, but often of black silk, and sometimes of alpaca, cut on a model that is a compromise between the simple gabardine of the East * and the tailed and collared frock-coat of the West. Their hat is a peaked cap like that of an English yachtsman, but higher in its sides, and always “ concertinaed” to its utmost elevation in the front, and depressed to its greatest level at the back, Now, this costume serves the Russian as a visible sign that the Jew is a voluntary RUSSIAN JEWRY. 645 alien who keeps and guards his peculiarities as no one else does except the gipsy. Certainly you may distinguish it from the costume of the ordinary Pole or Russian of any class at a distance of five hundred yards. Undoubtedly it cuts off the Jew from the people about him, reminding both that there is a difference of race between them. It is at once a little matter and a very great concern. One day I was walking with a Jewish friend from the west in a Jewish cemetery in Galicia, waiting for a funeral of which I was anxious to see the Eastern rites. We were whiling away the time by looking at the inscriptions, and they were nearly all in the Hebrew language, and in the form of acrostics. Presently we came upon a stone which, besides being inscribed in the usual way, was scribbled over with a thousand pencillings on its flat face, and stuck full of little pellets of white paper in its carved places. It was the grave of some Doctor of the Talmud, and the pencillings and the pellets were the names of sick and dying people written on the tomb by sorrowing friends in the hope that God would spare the lives of their dear ones for sake of the good man who lay below. While we stood looking, a Jewish boy came up. He wore kaftan and cap, but no elastic-side boots, and he had the roguish face of a goat. “That was my old schoolmaster,” he said, and he slapped the stone with the familiar and affectionate slap which the gravedigger gives to the skull of Yorick. And then he laughed and chuckled and crowed, as if with the memory of tricks played on the good old man; or perhaps with the thought of spankings administered by him whereof the smart and sting were gone. “Well,” said my Jewish friend, “can you read his acrostic ?” The goat face lengthened and the lips pursed out. No, he could not. He knew enough holy language to follow the prayers in schu/e, but that was the end of his Hebrew. “Then listen to this,” said my companion, and he read the schoolmaster’s in- scription aloud. The goat face became very grave, and then took a look of bewilderment. Slowly the boy’s eyes gazed at my friend’s barbered hair, and traversed his garments from head to foot. Here was a mystery. A man come from goodness-knows-what region who could read holy language and yet wore no peies, and was dressed like the common gojim in a tweed suit of jacket and trousers! The amazement of that Jewish boy in a Galician cemetery is the straw that tells how the wind blows. For the Polish Jew, the accidental things of kaftan and peies are wrapped up with the fundamental things of custom and religion. He knows they cut him off from his Christian neighbours, but they are a part of all that is sacred to him, and therefore he clings to them. Little and foolish as the whole matter may be, the costume and the curl of the Russian Jew have played their part in the Russo- Jewish question. Let me tell their story. STORY OF THE KAFTAN AND PEIES. The costume was not Jewish in its origin, and, so far as I am aware, it has nothing to do with Jewish faith. I understand that it was originally the Polish peasant costume, and was imitated from the Poles. But towards the end of the last century it had become the distinctive costume of the Jewish people. When in 1792 Catherine annexed Poland, her first intention was to leave the laws and customs of the Jews as she found them. The Jews under Catherine were allowed to live wherever they liked, and to dress as they pleased. Then came Alexander I., and he left things as they 646 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. were, except that he limited the Jews to the towns. The Church was tolerant in his day,—it would be nearer the truth to say indifferent, for Russia, like France, was under the influence of Voltaire and Diderot, and at a time when popular preachers in both countries had dropped the name of Christ in their sermons and spoke only of the “legislator of the Christians,” it was not worth while to trouble about the fashions of an insignificant people who merely wore their hair and their coats a few inches longer than their neighbours. But in 1825 came Nicholas, and his first thought was to make his people one. No longer were they to be merely Jews and Christians. They were first of all to be Russians and good subjects of the Czar. There were to be no outward distinctions. So the Jews were ordered to abandon their national costume. . It was a good idea (good from the point of an absolute monarch), but it was cruelly carried out. Nicholas was a fiery and impetuous soul, whose intentions were nearly always good and whose methods were nearly always brutal. He wished to do everything in a hurry, and in this matter of the costume of the Jews he was true to his infirmity of over-haste. Nevertheless he punished some of his own officials who carried out his wishes too brutally. The kaftan was sometimes stripped off the backs of the Jews in the open streets, and their curls were often cut in public. The Jews were terrified at such meddling with their national costume, and thought it the forerunner of religious attacks. Then came Alexander II., and he introduced measures of toleration. His aim also was to make of the Jews good Russian subjects, who should be distinguished from the Christians by their beliefs alone. But his methods were humane. He once said to a member of his Privy Council that the Jewish question in Russia was to be solved by the same means as in England and France. There were two periods in his dealings with the Jews. The first period, a liberal period, began with his accession in 1856, and ended in 1872; the second period, a reactionary period, began in 1872 and ended with his death. He was perhaps the warmest friend, and at the same time (though unwittingly), the deadliest foe of the Jew that ever sat on the Russian throne. He began by permitting the Jewish people to wear the kaftan and peies, though the law against these things was allowed to remain. Then the external distinction of Jew from Christian became again more marked. But year by year the difference disappeared by voluntary action of the Jews. At present the old law of Nicholas is practically inoperative, yet in South Russia the peies is no more to be seen, and the kaftan is becoming rare. Indeed, you may recognise the Polish Jew in the southern provinces by those marks alone. The greater part of the Jews in Russia.are now reconciled to the shortening of their coats and the cutting of their hair. They see that the kaftan does not constitute the Jew, and that the absence of peies does not make the Christian. But the Polish Jew has not yet advanced so far. We who live in an entirely free country can think of no proper limitations of costume except the limitations of decency—that a man shall not wear the garments of a woman, or a woman the garments of a man. But where from political reasons, as in Russia, or from religious reasons, as in Morocco, a distinctive manner of dress makes a man an alien, who parades and proclaims his foreign nationality as loudly as the town-crier in the streets, it constitutes an offence, and almost an outrage, and ought to be put away. I say this reluctantly, for as an observer of life I should be sorry to miss the variety which the Jewish costume gives. The average “ Pollack,” the uncultured Polish Jew, can badly spare the one thing that makes him worth a second glance. Poverty and oppression have already crushed out of his poor featureless body nearly all sense of the picturesque. RUSSIAN JEWRY. 647 THE JEW AND HIS COUNTRY. As to the deeper matter of the alien spirit that is said by the Russians to lie beneath the foreign dress, I would say emphatically that I have never seen it, and I do not believe that it exists. The Russian Christian will tell you that while in Germany, in England, in France, and in America the Jew is sometimes truly outraged when you speak of him as a foreigner, in Russia such indignation is never felt. I believe in my heart that this is a mistake. ‘The Russian Jew loves Russia and is sorry to leave it. In the way of a grown-up child he is proud of it,—proud of it as an Empire, that it is big and great, and a terror throughout Europe. There is nothing more curious, perplexing, amusing, and even pathetic, than this love of Russia in the poor miserable creature who has been kicked out of it. You hear his story of official corruption and tyranny, of expulsion and privation on the way, and your teeth gnash together, and you say, “If this is true of Russia, if it is not a wicked subterfuge and a lie, how does God suffer such a country to exist?” But the Jew does not share your anger. It is not Russia that he hates, because it has wronged him, or the Czar because he is the enemy of the Jewish people ; least of all ‘is it his Christian neighbours because they have badgered him ;—it is only the Inspector General whom he could not conciliate, the “Antonoviches” whom he could not bribe, the “ Tchitchikoffs” who could buy him up, bag and baggage, body and soul. On the frontier of Russia, within a mile of a frontier station, in clear sight of its yellow-and-black posts and its soldiers on guard, an old Jewish woman who had just crossed by help of a bcrrowed passport was brought up to me that I might hear her story. The poor creature mistook me for a Russian officer sent to arrest her. She trembled and wept, hastened to excuse herself, then tried to steal away, and when escape seemed hopeless, she flung herself at my feet and prayed of me not to send her back to Russia. It was a terrible scene while it lasted, and it lasted too long, for I knew little or nothing of her language and could not reassure her instantly. * This was my first experience of Russia, and I was appalled. What a country it must be from which poor helpless women had to fly in terror such as this! All the world says that the Czar himself is a good and noble man. Does he hear the cry of his people? If he does not, then why has he created a thing that stifles that cry, a thing that buries it as in a sepulchre and rolls over it the stone? Let evil men and tyrants shut themselves up from the voice of their subjects, but for the good father of his people there should be no sound more sweet. Such were my feelings while that poor subject of the great Czar grovelled before me, but I had imperfectly understood both her and her country. She was in fear of being sent back home, but that was not because she hated Russia. She had been born in it, and her people lay buried there. But she was going to rejoin her two sons, one of them a discharged Russian soldier who had been expelled. Thus her emotion was only a struggle between love of country and love of kin, wherein blood was thicker than water. And this is the case with half the Jewish women who leave Russia for the Argentine. THE Hope or ISRAEL. There is a sense in which the poorer Jew is not at home in Russia, but that is only the sense in which he is not at home in Europe. Always before him there is the dream of a day and a land to come, the day and the land of his restoration to the place and power of his fathers. Prosperity may help him to put by the thought of it, VoL. I.—No. 5. 43 648 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. culture may tempt him to deride the chance of it, but poverty and persecution keep it fresh in his memory. If there is any difference between the patriotism of the English Jew and the patriotism of the Russian Jew, that is the only ground of it. The English Jew is rich and happy, or, at least, /vee, and he may be content to put by the haunting thought of the glories that his race has known; but the Russian Jew is poor and oppressed, and he cannot help. but dream his dreams of a time foretold when he shall A Jewish Funeral. be poor and oppressed no more. He may see no light before him, but his hope lives on. His fathers have lived as he is living, but still he waits and trusts ; his comrades are melting like wax under persecution, but nevertheless he will not despair. He is like the convict doomed to imprisonment for life, yet looking for his release after twenty, thirty, even forty years. He is sure that his time will come. He may be an old man then, fifty, sixty, even seventy, but he will be still young. “TI shall live to see it yet,” he thinks. Palestine is before him ; after all, he is a stranger in Russia. This is the only sense in which the Russian Jew is an alien, RUSSIAN JEWRY. 649 THE LAND OF THE RusSIAN JEw. To know the personal character ‘of the Russian Jew it is necessary to see him at home. This is a course attended by difficulty, and even some danger. ‘The next best thing is to see him in the frontier towns and villages of Austrian Galicia, where he is exactly the same man under a more liberal government, and therefore betrays more freely his racial qualities. It was there (though I saw the Jew in Russia also) that I made my own acquaintance with his character and ways of life. The region to which the Russian Jew is confined, the Pale of Jewish settlement, wherein alone, since the time of Catherine, he has had a legal right of residence, is a district of about 800 miles long by 400 miles broad, stretching from the shores of the Baltic on the north to the shores of the Black Sea on the south, and from the eastern margin of Poltava to the western line of Podolia. But this large tract is not all free to the Jew. ‘There is a Pale within the Pale. The Jew may not live within fifty versts (about thirty-five miles) of the Russian frontier of Austria. He may not live in a village, meaning by that a locality of indefinite size, ranging downward from a thousand or five hundred inhabitants. Also, he may not live in the holy city of Kief. Thus there are left to him about three towns with an ordinary population of upwards of 100,000 people ; about four of upwards of 50,000 ; about fifteen of upwards of 20,000; about fifty of 1o,ooo; about a hundred of 5000, and a vast number of .2000 or less. If these towns were occupied by the Russian Jews exclusively there would be shelter and perhaps livelihood for about three and a-half millions of their number. But there are nearly six millions of Russian Jews, and if the law were strictly enforced (which it is not, never has been, never will be, and never can be) there would be neither bed nor board for at least a million and a half of the Jewish subjects of the Czar, who might as properly be shot down and pitched into the sea as subjected to the full rigour of enactments which were intended to fit the conditions, not of to-day, but of nearly a hundred years ago. GALICIA AND THE PALE. The Pale is not a region enriched by nature. Having seen something of the world, I should say, without much fear, that there is hardly in all the earth a land less favoured of God. From the point of the picturesque it is flat and featureless. Swampy and ague-stricken plain, stretching for miles on miles, unbroken by trees or hedges. Roads like canals dissect it; black in the south (where black loam lies), light in the north. Rivers without banks fray off into ponds and broads and marshes. Fields in formal stripes, like the patches of a patchwork quilt. -At long distances, villages of log-houses, each with the cemetery within stone walls a little apart, and the wooden cross, like a gibbet (generally leaning to the wind), at a space beyond. In summer, green with the grass, and yellow with the crops, and red and crimson with the poppy, the geranium, and the hollyhock ; but always drowsy with hot haze and a palpitating vapour that rises up before the sun. In winter, white with snow and grey with frozen water, which goes on and on like the surface of an unbroken sea. Such is the steppe, the country of Galicia, Volhynia, and Podolia—a weary waste, not so dead as the beds of lava in Iceland, for at least the birds sing and the bees hum in it; but more disheartening, more sickening, and almost more tempting to the blasphemy that this is a place where God is not. The true child of the open air can see beauty wheresoever the sun shines and the green blade grows ; he can find joy in all seasons, for every day has its own delight. But oh the oppression of those marshy plains !—unlike the desert, for they touch your imagination with no visions and no sense of awe; unlike the sea, for they fill your 650 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. inner eye with no pictures of a giant asleep; but like both when known too long at a time, and your heart hungers for the sight of a mountain, and your blood rushes to it at the first glimpse of something that has come at last between you and the dominating and everlasting sky. THE TOWNS OF THE PALE. If it is little that God has done to cheer the spirits and brighten the minds of His poor people in the Pale, that which man has done is nothing, or worse than nothing. It must be partly the fault of the Jew himself that an entirely Jewish town is often a disgustingly ugly, foul, and filthy place. If I had found the habitations of the Jew only thus in the Ghettos of Russia, I should be tempted to lay the blame to the account of his masters. But in the Ghettos of Galicia, where the Jews are not always poor, and in the mellahs of Morocco, where they are frequently rich, I saw uncleanness greater than anything of the kind round about. Let us not blink the manifest fact—the poor and ignorant Jew is not a cleanly person, whether he lives in the streets of Berdechief or in the slums of Whitechapel. His quarter is often the most squalid and abject in the town—-squalid with a squalor and abject with an abjectness which have little or nothing to do with his poverty. In many districts of Russia, however, he does not suffer by comparison with his neighbours. Neither in his home nor his person can any soapless son of Adam be dirtier than the average Russian moujik. Putting Odessa out of the question, and not considering Kief,—for the Jew who is rich enough (always a powerful consideration in Russia) may live in the Krashtshatik, the Christian district, as well as the Podol, the Jewish quarter,—the larger Jewish towns of the Pale are, as far as I know, neither picturesque nor comfortable. They give the effect of an interminable line of streets resembling the streets of old Clare Market. The prevailing colour is yellow, the dominant odour is noxious, the ways are narrow and often unpaved. In the busier quarters the shops are sometimes spacious, but more frequently only chambers like passages, with no opening but the doorways. The doors are generally colossal structures two inches thick, and clamped with iron. When closed, as on Saturday, they give the street the appearance of a line of prison cells. When open, they always display some rude pictorial sign on the inner face. These are frescoes in red, and yellow, and blue, of corsets, trousers, and caps, wigs and crinolines in skeleton. Such typology is necessary to a people that have not, as a whole, been taught to read. The shops are of many kinds, for the Jew at home cannot always be a broker or a butcher. But the word koscher, in Hebrew characters, seems to shine out on the doorpost of every tenth tradesman in every street! The food displayed within does not always tempt one by its cleanliness, but the Jew has faith in it. THE JEWISH SATURDAY NIGHT. There can be no scene more full of life than an ordinary business thoroughfare in one of the poorer Jewish towns in Russia on Saturday night. The eating-houses are full, and the pathways are choked. There is a face at every open window up to three stories high ; the air is full of the smell of fried fish, and of the nasal cries of the butchers as they call on their customers to “buy! buy! buy!” There are screaming, and shrieking, and bellowing, and every note of vociferation as Jew threatens to fight Jew or to bring down on him “the curse of the Rabbi,” and then, like a true son of Israel, repents of his purpose and weeps over his adversary and kisses him. And there are laughter and much playful banter, and some public love-making that does not dream Tis ng. fen the not UW the ves ten ith icts rin age vho tik, rish hey lare ays nes the ped » of sign ets, r to any ‘ord nth : by e in are hree the ing, ight n of here eam RUSSIAN JEWRY. 651 of being ashamed. One observes by the flare of the street lamps that nearly every face has the Hebrew stamp on it, and that many of them are pitted with small-pox. THE DRINKING CELLARS. There is next to no outward sign of drunkenness, but here and there, not usually in hw * In a Polish Synagogue. Jewish quarters, one comes across a Jewish drinking cellar. You go down some half- dozen steps to it from the street, and find it like an inverted honey-comb, built of brick, and lighted both day and night by lamps or candles. It is like the comb of the bee-hive, too, in the low hum and drone that pervades it. In each of the alcoves there is a table, and around it sit people drinking. Usually they are little friendly groups of Russians, often car-drivers or porters, sometimes tradesmen, sometimes students, and all 652 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. cordial in their cups, for liquor makes the Russ convivial. ‘There are few Jews among them, for the Jew wastes no time as a drinker, but occasionally in a corner there is a keen-eyed Israelite of the baser sort sipping his half glass of corn brandy, and listening in silence to the unwise disclosures that are being made about him. And always the Jewish tavern-keeper behind his counter lifts his tiny glass of vodki as you pass in or out, and drinks his fraction of a thimbleful “To Peace!” or “To Life!” MarkKET Day IN A LITTLE JEwisH Town. The smaller Jewish town usually differs from the larger one in being more openly squalid, dirty, and foully drained. It has the advantage of showing the Jew at closer quarters. If he is a butcher you may find him slaughtering his beasts according to the strict ritual of the law (a merciful ordinance as well as a cleanly one) by the side of the town’s river—usually a reeking .open sewer, smelling horribly. If he is a confectioner you may see him kneading his little twisted loaves, peppered with aniseed, in a bakehouse that is cheek-by-jowl with an unwashed stable. If he is an artisan (a tailor or shoemaker, a tinman or a locksmith) his workshop is usually the lower storey of a square court, the middle space whereof is the manure-pit, ash-pit, and general cesspool for the tenements that are built above. If he is a tradesman, a dealer in left-off clothes, a hardware dealer, a dealer in crudely-coloured religious pictures and almanacks, a dealer in odds and ends, or any other species of curator to the ragbasket of humanity, he may by chance have a shop under a roof-tree, but more likely he has a stall in the open town “ Ring,” which is nearly always a square. ‘To this public market-place once, twice, or three times a week he brings his goods for sale, hanging them on the nails of his wooden frames if they are coats or trousers, setting them in a rising gallery on the unpaved ground if they are pots and pans, and swinging them across his shoulders if they are long-legged boots, and he is so poor that he must needs make his own back his perambulating stall. It is high fair with him at mid-day,:and then his mart is a various and animated scene. Crowds of people cover the ground—the Russian in his belted shirt, the Pole in his kantoucher, the long yellow coat with red facings (the red conferatka he may not wear), the Polish Jew in his silk kaftan, and the married Jewess in her shaitel. Women fumbling the clothes and cheapening them, dealers snatching them away and praising them ; dogs prowling through the throng and snarling, and the itinerant pedlars with boots on their backs, and cataracts of shoe laces hanging from their button-holes, ploughing along and shouting, “ How much! How much I say? What will you give? A rouble? Mercy on my soul! But take it, take it in God’s name. I am giving it away. You are starving me to death! My wife will be a widow, and my children fatherless! You are shedding my blood in public! But take it, take it !” Around and about are the toppling storeys of lofty, ill-built, yellow houses, and at one corner stands the ancient synagogue, a dilapidated place, with flagged floor, coarse unpainted seats, the women’s gallery behind gratings, covered by linen cloths, and looking like the bars of a prison, frayed and greasy prayer-book, and rude altar burning the unwaning oil. In the midst of the bustling scene, lying quiet within its high walls, and rank under its long grass and nettles, is the little space that was once the Jewish cemetery, but is now disused, its gates taken off, its gateway bricked up, and its pencilled gravestones seen no more by man, but only by the birds and the stars. And under foot, running through and along, are channels of rain and filth, the refuse of horses and houses, rotten, reeking, and slimy, sending up in the rays of the hot sun of summer a dazzling haze of noxious vapour. RUSSIAN JEWRY. 653 THE JEW ABROAD. It must be allowed that in these scenes the Russian Jew does not show to advantage. That even amid such surroundings he is capable of heroism the records of persecution abundantly prove. But it is not the hero that usually appears; it is (if I may say so without unkindness) the half-famished human wolf fighting for food for himself and for his offspring. Let us not blink the truth—the Russian Jew can bear his great troubles of eviction and expulsion and even death with fortitude that is thrilling, and patience that is profoundly touching; but in his fight with the lesser difficulties of life, the difficulties of livelihood, of trade rivalry, of money-getting and saving, he cannot be called a noble creature. He can be small and mean and capable of deceit and over-reaching. In these respects he is not a whit worse than his average Christian competitors, but if he were found to be baser beyond comparison it would have to be remembered that, unlike his rivals, he has only the money outlook, that he knows he is an alien who may be turned out of house and country, and can claim no succour from the State in his hour of penury and destitution. It is said that the Russian Jew is often cruel to his animals. ‘That may perhaps be true. Certainly he has not the big, soft, tender, flabby, stupid, generous heart of the Russian moujik, who will lie on the stove all winter, and drink in the vodki shops half the summer, and,then feed his horse on the thatch of his roof when the famine comes, and weep on its neck when he has to part with it. The Jew is a thriftier and less affectionate soul. He may be capable of breaking the wind of his horse with a heavy load going up hill, and straightway selling it at the top for a sound animal. He may whip his mule on the sore flank, and kick his dog on the limping leg. ‘These charges are made against him, and, taken broadly and generally, not too literally, as typical instances of inhumanity, they may be just. The faults are the faults of a subdued race, and it would be marvellous if the uncultured Russian Jew were free from them. Just as he deals (so far as he can or dare) with the world and the creatures of the world, even so has the world dealt with him and his children. As the world deals with him so may he deal with the world. Such has been the natural logic of the oppressed in all countries and in all ages. THE JEW AT Home. The Russian Jew may be dirty, he may even be cruel, but he is not impure. When he crosses his threshold he leaves his vices behind him.. All day long in the market-place he may scheme like a conspirator to take his great enemy, Life itself, unawares; but when night comes he returns as a child to his children, and as a woman to the side of his wife. A man may ask no credit for love and care of his own offspring. If he does not feel an instinct that calls him to cherish them, or if he feels it and resists it, he is not only not a man but less than the meanest of the creatures of God. Neither can a man ask credit for fidelity to the wife he has married. If he knows nothing of a law of the human heart which demands that he should do to the woman as he would have the woman do to him he is a moral idiot, and, outside the domain of intellect, no better than a beast of the field. But the fidelity of the Russian Jew amounts to a virtue, and his paternal love to a heroism. He does not marry his wife; in a sense more strict than that of Leonato, he is married fo her. She is never, or next to never, a woman of his own choice, and he has neither “nay” nor “yea” in her adoption. His parents MAGAZINE. 654 THE PALL MALL purchase her by aid of a schatchen, a match-maker, who arranges the terms of the transaction and is paid for his intervention, It would be more exact to say that his parents sell their son, for it is the father of the bride who pays the dowry. This part of the transaction is only a crude version of the farcical comedy that is enacted in more enlightened communities, but the marriage of the Jew in the Pale is no mere marriage of convenience. In five cases out of ten the Jew never sets eyes on his bride until he looks at her through her veil under the wedding canopy. It may even happen (as Mr. Zangwill shows in the profoundly touching episode of old Haman and his old wife-sweetheart) that the Jew beholds his wife for the first time when he sees a strange face on the pillow beside him in the morning. She may be revolting to him, and his parents may have been deceived as to the value of her fortune, but he is expected to be true to her. And she on her part must submit to whatsoever misrepresentations have been adopted to dispose of her, and to take the consequences in cold looks or dislike or hatred, or even blows. _ IIl-favour heightens her price, but kinship with a great Rabbi moderates it. She cuts off her hair when she marries her husband, and makes herself hideous to all other men in a scheitel, a married woman’s wig, or perhaps only a band of black alpaca bound across her brow. ‘Thus, body and possessions, she belongs to him, and is for ever after at his mercy. THE MARRIAGE-MAKER. The marriage-maker is a despised person even in the Pale; but he is thought to be a necessary one, for nobody whatever marries without his aid. There are both male and female marriage-makers ; the competition between them is keen; their fees are small, and always dependent on results. Therefore, the professional schatchen is a professional liar, whose lying has far-reaching results, such as affect the chastity of women, the fidelity of men, and even the love and tending that is the right of all children. MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. I regret to find another argument for Count Tolstoi against the marriages of romantic love ; but it is a fact that in spite of this powerful machinery of fanaticism for the making of immorality, the Jew of the Pale, of Poland, and of Galicia is a faithful husband and a devoted father. He has many temptations to be otherwise. Marriage among the poorer Russian Jews is a marvellously simple ceremony. ‘The patriarchal process whereby Jacob “took” Rachel was not more primitive. No Scotch marriage of the irregular order can ever be more swift. In the presence of ten witnesses, of whom the Rabbi is generally one, the man puts a ring on the first finger of the woman’s right hand and says, “I take you to be my wife according to the laws of Israel and Moses.” This is all that is essential. The woman’s consent is not needful. Of course the law of Russia does not consider such marriages sufficient. The State Rabbi keeps a civil register, and gives marriage lines; but that is a thing superadded to the moral code of the Jew. And the ceremony of divorce is yet more simple and speedy. The man can divorce a woman if he gives her a written paper saying, “I divorce you.” No offence on the woman’s part is necessary to be proved, no consent to their separation, no knowledge of the man’s intention. If she takes the document out of his hand into hers, she is instantly a divorced woman. All this is a rough-and-ready rendering of Mosaic law, unilluminated by thought. Enlightened Hebrew congregations demand an ordeal less liable to the abuses of caprice. But it is a proper ceremony nevertheless, and parents and guardians of girls with beauty or large possessions have been known to adopt RUSSIAN JEWRY. 655 precautions against their forcible marriage by casual ruffians in the street, and against their unjustifiable divorce at the hands of mercenary husbands. Yet notwithstanding this fatal facility, this one-sided duel of wrong, this battery for the assault of woman’s chastity and for the protection of man’s immorality, the poor, ignorant Russian Jew lives happily with his purchased wife, grows to love her and to cherish her, looks like a miserable man when he is separated .from her, and is altogether a contrast to some of his censorious Christian neighbours, who seem to get along together with their wives only when they are living apart from them. Jews RETURNING TO Russia. I speak with more than common authority on this point, for I have not only observation to guide me, but most material facts and figures. It is known that several hundreds of the Russian Jews who were sent out by the European Committees to the colony founded by Baron Hirsch in the Argentine, came back home of their own choice after only a brief stay. This circumstance gave occasion for the rumour that the colony had failed. But the voluntary return of the emigrants meant no such mischief. I chanced to be at Hamburg when their ship arrived, and by help of Mr. Henrichsen and Mr. Melchoir (leading Jews of that hapless city) I was able to question them, and to hear their reasons. The reasons were various—-some of them specious and some false; but fully half turned on the domestic affections. Their women and children were in Russia; they could not live without them ; they had tried, but could not do so any longer ; the managers had said that only when they were able to keep their families in the New World would they be allowed to send for them; it would be years and years before they could keep them there, for they had “nothing but the earth and the sky.” So, if they might, they would go back to the Old World after all. Such was the story told in my hearing of nearly a hundred out of a hundred and fifty of the Jews who came back from the Argentine. It may have been false sometimes, and now and then a mere sop for sympathy; but after years spent in observing life, I will not think so meanly of my skill as to belieye that I was mistaken in the heart’s hunger which I saw written on so many faces. HALL CAINE. (To be continued ) AN IMPERIAL CITY. WAS lately reading a paper by Mr. Grant Allen, entitled “Postprandial Philosophy,” the spirit of which disclosed none of that equanimity which Plato held to constitute philosophy’s better part; denouncing London as a squalid village, unworthy of honourable mention with Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Antwerp, Munich, or Turin. In order that postprandial reflections should rise to the level of philosophy it is essential that the dinner be such as to stimulate the imagination and develop the more generous side of the critic’s nature. But our philosopher had undoubtedly dined badly ; and his criticism is deeply tinged with that pessimistic extravagance which is too often associated with an inefficient chef He will allow our poor Capital no virtue. London, he asserts, isn straggling, invertebrate, inchoate, overgrown village : it has no ground plan, no street architecture, no decorations, though it has many “uglifications.” There is not, he affirms, a single street in London worth showing to a foreigner, while the hopeless state of this shapeless, neglected suburb is the fault of the old Corporation, of Gog and Magog, with their attendant Lord Mayors and the vested interests they represent and perpetuate. Now, it cannot be denied that there is some truth in this criticism, unpleasant though it be to our national pride. The Corporation of London no doubt are the least guilty parties, and the portion of the Metropolis which is under their charge is the best ordered, and, from the utilitarian point of view, possesses both stateliness and beauty. But we all allow that the general administration of London is infinitely mean and inefficient, and that vested interests are chiefly to blame for the national disgrace. But what I would suggest, in no spirit of patriotic prejudice, is that the meanness and 656 AN IMPERIAL CITY. 657 the squalor are only associated with the superficial adornment of the capital. Like the beggar-maid in» Mr. Burne Jones’ picture, London is as a beautiful woman, fair of face and noble of form, and only needs the transforming hand of some future King Cophetua to strip off her sordid rags and clothe her in the lustrous raiment which befits a queen. I have seen almost all the famous capitals of the world, Paris, Rome, and St. Petersburg ; Constantinople and Cairo; New York, Washington, and Ottawa ; Kabul, Calcutta, and Mandalay—and I do not know one which possesses more conspicuously than London the necessary and inherent qualities of beauty and splendour. There are doubtless cities, as Edinburgh, Venice, and Stockholm, which are more picturesque in their surroundings, but London can only be compared with her imperial sisters, which may be counted on one hand. Rome, Paris, Constantinople, Vienna and Delhi, and perhaps Moscow, exhaust the list ; for it does not suffice for a From the Ornamental Water, St. James’s Park. city to be the capital of a rich and powerful nation to attain imperial rank. For this, size and population are essential, but count less than antiquity and world interest, and the fact of being to-day, or having been in the past, the centre of national, intellectual, political, and social life. For this imperial rank, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and the cities of America are too new; while, as for the United States, the absence of a Court, and diffusion of political influence and interest, which is the result of democratic and federal institutions, prevent any of the large cities taking indisputably the first place. Washington, which is in some sengSe the capital, is but a small town, of the size of Brighton or Leicester. Other famous cities, such as Florence, Athens, and Jerusalem, are provincial, and their special influence, intellectual or religious, however deep and world- embracing, has not been imperial in its nature. Moscow may perhaps take rank with ruling cities, though it has never represented a free and worthy national life ; THE PALL MALL .MAGAZINE. 658 and Madrid can hardly be disregarded, although it was the home and centre of a gloomy fanaticism which deluged the old and the new world with blood, and which drove its most gifted children—Moors, Jews, and Protestants—to death or exile. Among these famous cities Rome may, by the common assent of mankind, be allowed the first place, while for the second London and Paris may fairly contend. To-day it must be confessed that Paris is infinitely cleaner, brighter, and more suited to the enjoyment of out-of-doors life than London. But these are matters which are susceptible of change and improvement, and Paris has of late years fallen off, while London has steadily advanced. London tends more and more to become the. world- city, and to draw to itself the intellect, wealth, and beauty of other countries. It is, far more than any American city, the metropolis of the United States as of the British Empire, the central home of the two most powerful nations in the world—the united Anglo-Saxon race. It is true that the American colony in Paris is a large and influential one ; but it daily diminishes in favour of London. In Paris Americans live ak ol bere ai PPA casemate Hs- Ri la yaa) a “24 —, ied PO ; oe {kh -- Lincoln's Inn Fields as they might be. apart, in London they are at home ; while the cultured society of London, many times as numerous as that of Paris, makes its social life infinitely more agreeable. If London only possessed a climate it would be a paradise. If the delightful spring of this year were the rule, the English would be the gayest of people, as they are now the most open-handed and hospitable. But to the climate is due not only the gloom of the city, but the anxious and depressed air of the people. What nation can be gay when the possibilities of the weather are its constant preoccupation, and the recollections of popular holidays only recall rainy skies and ruined dresses? The smoke and fog of London are an ancient subject of complaint. In the month of June 1665, the three members of “La Célebre Ambassade ; MM. Comminges, Courtin, and De Veneuil—wrote bitterly of “les vapeurs du charbon,” and in 1713 another-French Ambassador, Le Duc d’Aumont declared: “Tout ce que je désirais serait que le brouillard, lair, et la fumée ne me prisent pas si fort & la gorge.” In the natural and inherent elements of beauty London is superior to Paris. In the first place, there is the noble and historical river, by the side of which the Seine * AN IMPERIAL CITY. 659 is little better than a ditch. Secondly, there is the succession of glorious parks, the lungs of the great city, stretching from Whitehall to Kensington Palace, such as are possessed by no other city in Europe. What view is there in Paris so beautiful as that from the Buckingham Palace end of the artificial water in St. James’s Park, looking towards the Foreign Office, or that from the bridge over the Serpentine. The Bois de Boulogne is altogether charming ; but it is outside the city, and might be rather compared with Richmond Park than Hyde Park. The more notable buildings of London do not compare unfavourably with those of Paris. Westminster Abbey ‘is more beautiful and interesting than Notre Dame, St. Paul’s than the Panthéon ; while, in spite of some grave defects and over-elaboration of detail, there Trafalgar Square as it is. is no modern building in Europe which is superior in dignity, size, and beauty of position to the Houses of Parliament. The Opera House at Paris is a magnificent monument of lavish expenditure, far in excess of the result obtained, by a despotic government with absolute control of the public purse. It would not be possible in London ; nor do we require it, for there are many better ways in which we might spend a couple of millions. With the exception of the Opera House, the London theatres are superior in every particular, except in the important one of the acting, to those of Paris. ‘The only modern building in Paris which I covet for London is the Arc de Triomphe : not on account of its record, for the English have as many victories to chronicle from Crécy and Agincourt to Tel-el-Kebir, but for its simple splendour and completeness. It is indisputably the chief glory of modern Paris. Before discussing the streets and street architecture of the two cities, a few words are necessary on the conditions which have created them. Paris, as we see it to-day, 660 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. with its wide boulevards, and tall, monotonous, stone houses, identical in size and form, is the creation of the Second Empire, and strategical considerations rather than beauty were the chief thought of its designers. Before the time of Napoleon III. the streets of Paris were far narrower and meaner than those of London; so much so that M. Taine, a thoroughly competent observer, suggests that the Emperor only rebuilt Paris so largely and liberally because he had lived in London. Writing of the latter city, in his “ Notes sur Angleterre,” he observes: “ Paris est médiocre & cété de ces $quares, de ces crescents, de ces cercles et de ces files de maisons monumentales en pierre massive, 4 portiques, 4 facades sculptées, de ces rues si larges ; il y en a cinquante aussi vaste que celle de la Paix: certainement Napoléon III. n’a démoli et rebati Paris que parce qu’il a vécu & Londres.” London, as we all know, has grown up naturally, without Government inter- ference, to whose apathy, indeed, its squalor and defects are chiefly due. This gives to many of its principal streets that irregularity of height. and style which is the distinction and charm of London, as compared with the deadly commonplace of the best Parisian streets. If any one thinks this monotony beautiful he can find abundance of it still in London; but from the artistic point of view it is a fault, and we may rejoice that it is slowly disappearing. The reconstruction of London practically commenced when that of Paris was completed, about twenty-five years ago ; and its inauguration was the embankment of the Thames, a magnificent work which, though still incomplete in decoration, is unsurpassed in any European city. Those who remember London in 1860 or 1870 will appreciate the enormous advance which has been made, and which is ‘still continuing with ever-increasing rapidity. Some of the great London landlords, notably the Duke of Westminster and Lord Cadogan, have acknowledged their obligation to the Metropolis in a splendid and _ princely manner; and if all landholders were equally enlightened the reconstruction of London might safely be left in their hands. But this is far from being the case, and some change in the law of freehold is essential, giving to leaseholders the right, under certain conditions, of acquiring the freehold, and themselves improving or rebuilding the property. Whichever political party carries such a measure would probably obtain a long tenure of power in London, so great would be the stimulus given to the building and allied trades. The architecture of new London, in spite of many mistakes and extravagances, is, on the whole, dignified and worthy. As examples, it is sufficient to mention the new buildings in Mount Street, Duke Street, South Audley Street, Grosvenor Place, and Grosvenor Gardens, Cadogan Square, Lennox Gardens, and Pont Street ; while many business premises in the City, in Lombard Street, Broad Street, in Oxford Street, Piccadilly, and the Strand, are models of commodious and splendid street architecture. No city in Europe can surpass the business palaces with which the City is filled ; but the traffic is so great that, to really inspect them satisfactorily and safely, they should be visited on Sunday, or early in the morning before business hours. Even the vast buildings at Albert Gate and on the Victoria Embankment have considerable merit, and their sky line especially adds greatly to the beauty of the view from many directions. A remarkable article on Architecture in last January’s Quarterly Review is well worth perusal, and is as clever as it is suggestive. But the author is so hostile to the Royal Institute of British Architects, that he will allow no goodness or beauty in any work to which its members have put their hand. He even prefers the plain, not to say hideous, houses which used to stand at the top of Grosvenor Place, and which were of the dismal Georgian pattern with which we are too familiar, to the splendid buildings which have taken their place. These have their defects, no doubt, and “ agin Sly it ee = { eh ai sy 3. i bh, ‘ I 7 —e " sy 115 S Wah deeds te " ‘hhh ih 1 : - H wel a - Ay 2 iw Wai 2 FS a i i aioe A.W Brewer. ine tdel Trafalgar Square as it might be. 662 ‘THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. contain a great deal of wasted space, but they greatly add to the beauty and dignity of Hyde Park Corner. But the reviewer’s chief scorn is reserved for the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, which he considers a typical product of the Royal Institute, of debased taste, wasteful both in its decorative work and its useless halls, staircases and towers, unsuited to the scientific collections it contains; while the stoneware, a mechanical and moulded substitute for art, of a nauseous, reddish-yellow tint, produces an effect which the critic considers revolting. I would directly join issue with him as to this building, which is well proportioned, admirably lighted and ventilated, and one of the most' satisfactory lately erected in London. I never enter it or drive past it without a feeling of cheerfulness and pleasure. The terra-cotta work, which the reviewer so dislikes, is a most happy discovery for London, and, resisting the influence of fogs and damp, remains bright and clean for a far longer period than any other material in use. Wherever employed, it lights up a street: witness the Constitutional Club =a Pi te ‘ 4 | ! ; <. ‘Rai | if large (lal Dalat le TA i Saas meer ee te => — mn A? Piccadilly and the Green Park,—a Suggestion. in Northumberland Avenue, or the Congregational Church in Duke Street. The architecture of the Natural History Museum may not be very original; but it is an eminently pleasing, dignified, and suitable building, and the hypercritical arguments of ten Quarterly Reviewers will not prove the contrary. Of somewhat similar style, though more ambitious, and of inferior merit, is the Imperial Institute. But it is a representative example of the later Victorian architecture ; while the vast additions to the South Kensington Museum, which are now to be commenced, may do much to beautify this somewhat gloomy and monotonous quarter. The Royal Institute of British Architects may be as worthy of contempt as the Quarterly Reviewer insists, but there is undoubtedly a very wholesome spirit abroad among British architects: an impatience of the old types, Gothic, Classic, Renaissance, or simple Georgian ugliness. It has been recognised that new London should have a style of its own for public and private buildings, suited to the climate, the light, the disintegrating effect of the smoke, the habits of the people ; and, in consequence, there have been built in the last twenty years, in London, more houses remarkable for beauty, variety, originality, suitability, and power, than in the preceding two hundred years. 89 2y6jw 3) sv aavnbg zuawnsjang 664 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. Very little of the improvement of the Metropolis is due to the initiative of the Government. No public building, however urgently needed, is granted without years of persistent worry. Like a sloth in a South American forest, the official screams and resists if he is urged to move onward. It is upon the Government directly that the blame for the worst of the blots and blemishes of London must directly fall. No matter which party is in office —whether the witty Mr. Plunket directs affairs, or the amiable Mr. Shaw Lefevre—there is the same record of apathy, waste, incompetence, and indifference to the public interests. In minor matters, where the permanent secretaries to the Department of Works are responsible, there is evidence of both energy and taste. It is to Mr. Freeman Mitford and Mr. Primrose that we owe the admirable landscape gardening and the beautiful flowers in Hyde Park, and elsewhere. But in street improvement and public works, the inefficiency has long been a scandal. England is, undoubtedly, with the single exception of the United States, the only country in which a State Department would be permitted to so neglect its proper business, to outrage public taste and waste public money. If the Department is attacked, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is equally at fault, comes to its defence, and the blame is shifted on to the last Administration, the County Council, or the Vestries. As if a Government or a Department had any raison a’étre beyond efficiently doing its duty! If it is unable to compel Councils and Vestries, it should make way for those who can. The Metropolis is covered with the marks of the carelessness and blunders of the Department of Works; and little improvement can be hoped for until the First Commissionership ceases to be a political appointment, given to any partisan who may understand architecture no more than shoemaking, and is entrusted, for a term of years, to the most competent person who can be found. The present arrangement is worthy of Laputa. If we were fortunate enough to secure a First Commissioner of both energy and genius, the beautifying of London would be soon ensured. ‘Take, as an example, Piccadilly, which is one of the famous streets of the world, and even now far more beautiful than the monotonous and ugly Rue de Rivoli in Paris, with which alone it can be fairly compared. How easily and cheaply might its attractiveness be doubled! Sweep away the hideous iron railings, which suggest a county jail; widen the roadway thirty feet from the Isthmian Club to Hyde Park Corner, and throw out a broad and handsome terrace, with suitable balustrades and wide steps into the Park, on which people might walk or sit in the full shade of the trees. In accomplishing this there are no difficulties, and only eight half-grown plane trees would require to be removed. Nothing would be taken from the Park which was not restored to it many times over in usefulness and beauty. Let us look for a moment at Whitehall, the most interesting street historically in the British Empire, and which should form a worthy approach to the Abbey and Palace of Westminster. For thirty years the Government have been vainly trying to pull down the mean row of houses between King Street and Parliament Street, and, to my personal knowledge, the project was farther advanced twenty years ago than it is to-day. An energetic Board of Works would sweep them away in a month, and not only these houses, but the whole nest of shabby dwellings between the India Office and the Abbey, creating, what would be, for London, the only possible rival to the magnificent Place de la Concorde in Paris. For Trafalgar Square is too shut in to be imposing ; though it might be greatly improved if a Government which thought more of beauty than of the favour of the roughs, were to remove the paving stones and turn the whole inner area into a flower garden. A stone’s throw from this standing disgrace to the Government at Westminster is the desolation, the open wound, caused by the demolition of Lord Carrington’s house AN IMPERIAL CITY. 665 opposite the Horse Guards, and next door to the Banqueting Hall. When the lease fell in, the Government ruthlessly, under pretence of immediately utilising the space for important public offices, pulled down this splendid house on which enormous sums had been spent, in spite of the protests of the owner. For years the ground has lain idle, a Golgotha of rubbish and oyster shells, in this historic thoroughfare, surrounded by hoardings, and exposing in its hideous nakedness the back part of the abandoned United Service Institution, and other squalid ruins. And now the First Commissioner has the audacity to announce in the House of Commons that this scandal is to continue for another seven years, and that the vacant space will not be utilised until the Admiralty buildings on the Horse Guards Parade are completed. Let, at any rate, the House insist that the vacant place be cleansed and laid down with grass, shrubs, lalsts] —) alais angie || ee h Portland Avenue. A Suggestion. and flowers until it is required, in the same manner as private munificence has adorned the vacant ground adjoining the Courts of Justice. The history of the new Admiralty is as discreditable to the Department of Works as either of the preceding cases. In 1887 the Committee of the House of Commons who recommended the buildings, declared that they would be ready in two or three years. It is now 1893; and while the original estimate was £195,000, no less than £ 304,500 have been already spent, and the First Commissioner does not believe the buildings will be completed till 1900. It is obvious that the contractors who built the palatial mansions on the Victoria Embankment or at Albert Gate could finish the Admiralty out of hand in two years; but the Government prefers to waste the public money, exactly as they used to take seven years to build an ironclad, which they have now discovered can be far more cheaply completed in two. So that, in addition to the loss of £16,000 a year on the cost of the land, there is the rent of the houses of clerks who are to be accommodated in the new building, p/us the loss on the vacant land on the opposite side of Whitehall, which is not to be built upon until 1900, the value of 666 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. which is estimated at £400,000. If a private company managed its affairs in this manner it would soon be bankrupt. All this waste might be forgiven were the Government intending to place a worthy building on this incomparable site. But the elevation of the new Admiralty is altogether without distinction. In material, in decor- ation, in design, it is mean and commonplace, and as pretending to express the public taste of a great country; is a disgrace to those who sanctioned it. These three examples, situated close together in Whitehall, are sufficient to show the incapacity of the Government for taking action, and their indifference to such matters as raising the public taste and beautifying the metropolis of the Empire. Those who esire other examples may look at the horrible addition to the Embankment front of Somerset House, or to the collection of rotting hoardings, corrugated iron sheds and dilapidated shops and public-houses at Albert Gate, between Knightsbridge Road and Tattersall’s, which would not be tolerated for a month in any other civilised city ; or they may reflect on the fact, which is not sufficiently known to the public, that it was by the personal influence of the late Mr. W. H. Smith as Member for Westminster, that the whole of the beautiful gardens of the Victoria Embankment, which forms the most splendid modern improvement of the city, were not laid ott in building lots. Into the numerous questions which concern the improvement of London—lighting, cleaning, the abolition of smoke, the condition of the roadways, kiosks for newspapers and refreshments, shelters for omnibus passengers, and innumerable other questions of interest, I have no space in this paper to enter. I would only observe that if London were adequately cleaned and lighted, its beauty would be very speedily acknowledged. I know few cities, foreign or provincial, which are so inadequately lighted as London. Even the lighting of the principal thoroughfares, such as Piccadilly, after the shops are closed, is little superior to that in the reign of George III., the feeble gas jets giving hardly more light than the oil lamps of our ancestors, while fashionable thoroughfares, like Park Lane and Grosvenor Place, are left in all but Cimmerian darkness. I cannot imagine this state of things being tolerated in any city except London, which is so vast that no individual taxpayer exerts himself to set matters right. The traveller may wander to the uttermost parts of the earth, to towns in the far West like Denver and Cheyenne ; to obscure African or European towns, like Tangier or Syracuse, and he will find them more brilliantly lighted with electricity than the imperial city of London. In the matter of cleaning again. Has the pavement of London been ever washed in the memory of man except by the rain? The condition of London in wet or damp weather, which is ordinarily three parts of the year, is a disgrace. ‘The water-supply is abundant ; there is an army of unemployed asking for work, and the authorities have not sufficient energy or public spirit to form them into such a cleaning brigade as in Paris, washing down the pavement and roadway of every principal street early every morning. The best hope of the regeneration of London is in the County Council, which has already shown both energy and enlightenment in the preservation and improvement of parks and gardens, and making a commencement in supplying music for the enjoyment of the people. There are many who distrust the Council and oppose any extension of its present powers. This is a mistake. Nothing can be more ignominious than the rule of the vestries under which we have groaned so long ; and our best chance of deliverance from our grievances is in the extension of the power of the Council. I would give them larger authority than at present over roads, buildings, water, gas, electricity, the beautification of the streets, the parks, the architecture, sanitation. Indeed, the whole le ie ic AN IMPERIAL CITY. 667 machinery and material of our municipal life I would place in their hands, with the sole exception of the police. Even the School Board I would like to see subordinate to the Council, receiving its due share of the local taxation, and not an extravagant share as at present. An educational board, independent of control, and its expenditure regulated by no regard for the comparative merits of other claims on the common purse of the taxpayer, is an anachronism far more glaring than that of the separate administration of the City by the Lord Mayor and Corporation. The police should always remain under the direct control of the Government. They now represent, more perfectly than any other institution, the claims of London as a great imperial city. They are indisputably the best police in the world, and are so far the first that there is no second. I remember asking a very intelligent Indian prince, on his return from England, what had most struck him there, and he at once replied, “The London police.” All foreigners are impressed in a similar manner. The patience and gentleness of the police; their courtesy to strangers, women and aged people; their courage and resource, make them to me, as to many Londoners, a constant object of admiration and esteem. There is no position in life in which the best qualities of Englishmen are more conspicuously shown than in the Metropolitan police. They cannot be improved, so it would be an act of folly to change their masters. The second, and equally cogent, reason against placing them under the Council is the obvious necessity that the protection of the Sovereign, the Houses of Parliament and the public buildings and the very heart of the empire, should be entrusted to no other authority than the responsible ministry of the day. No sane European government has surrendered the control of its metropolitan police, and any English minister who should propose it would deserve to be impeached. If an example of the danger of entrusting the police of a great city to a corrupt municipality be needed, New York furnishes the warning, where the Irish police are far more a terror to honest citizens than to the criminal classes, and where they break the heads of harmless people as merrily and light-heartedly as if they were still enjoying the humours of Donnybrook Fair. But the County Council is not at present so constituted as to satisfactorfly perform its important duties, far less those wider and larger functions which should be entrusted to it. It has not yet won the confidence of the taxpayers. Greater dignity and authority should be conferred upon it, and at the same time it should be so directed as to ensure an enlightened, sober, and continuous policy. It should include all Metropolitan Members of Parliament, the number of whom will be largely increased with the next Redistribution Bill. Its president should be selected from among these by a majority of three-quarters or two-thirds of the Council, and he should be a paid official with a salary of not less than £4,000 a year, so that his whole time might be devoted to his important duties. The requirement of a two-thirds majority would probably. ensure that he would not be a mere politician but a competent man of business. He should be appointed for five years, with the right of re-election by a majority as large as his original appointment required. The number of the present members of Council should be reduced proportionally to the increase in parliamentary members, and a certain number of gentlemen whose advice would be valuable should be appointed ex officio—such as the First Commissioner of Works and the Presidents of the Royal Academy and the Royal Institute of British Architects. Thus we might obtain a Council worthy of London, which would secure and retain the confidence of the citizens, and devote its energies, now too often dissipated in party warfare, to the well-being, comfort, and adornment of what must become the most beautiful and stately of imperial cities. 668 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. To preserve a proper continuity in policy, and to avoid crude and hasty decisions, it should be ruled that, for every question of principle, additional local taxation, the initiative in legislation, or change in the constitution of the Council, a three-quarter majority would be needed ; while to start efficiently on their beneficent career the coal and wine duties should be reimposed. ‘Their abolition was unnecessary and unwise, discreditable to Conservatives and Liberals alike ; and both parties are now heartily ashamed of a surrender which crippled the administration of London for the sole benefit of coal merchants and middlemen. The last question of importance concerns the City proper, with its separate government by the Lord Mayor and Corporation, and its wealthy and powerful Guilds, the twelve most important of which possess an annual revenue of upwards of half a million sterling. To this rich spoil many Socialist eyes eagerly turn. Like Marshal Blucher, they consider London a fine city to plunder. But we may hope that the national conscience will insist on these enthusiasts understanding that to rob a Corporation is as immoral as robbing a shop, and that the City will be allowed to preserve her ancient rights and privileges. Should the time come when the Corporation and the great Companies betray their trust and forget their duties, their separate jurisdiction will not be supported by public opinion. But now the City is the cleanest, best lighted, most orderly part of London, and the revenues of the Guilds are utilised liberally and wisely for purposes of charity and for the endowment of science, art and education. When the County Council have raised the general administration of London to the standard of the City they may speak with better grace of the abolition of its special jurisdiction and privilege. LEPEL GRIFFIN. ‘‘ There she sat, her thin hands lying open on her lap.”"—See page 677. EW people could guess why George Oakworth, master of the National School at Cragside, extended the patronage of his friendship to Dick Denholme, drunkard and law-breaker. He was a handsome, pale, intellectual youth of twenty-five years, with a taste for botanising and geological speculation ; while Dick, fifteen years his senior, was a man of no taste whatever, unless the taste for ale be counted—a being whose rough and dissolute aspect spoke with such unblushing effrontery of his flagrant knavishness, that a little dissimulation might have passed, in him, for a kind of negative virtue. Yet the relationship which subsisted between them was that of the most intimate comrades. They lived in the same cottage ; they spent their Saturdays in long excursions; and it was understood that those who wished to quarrel with the young teacher might hope to indulge themselves also in the hostility of Dick. The opinion was boldly hazarded by some that, if the truth could be told, George Oakworth was no better than he ought to be, because a man is known by the company he keeps. There were others who pointed out that the schoolmaster, out of motives of personal timidity, had merely possessed himself of a stout defender. Not only were both these views mistaken ones, but when the friendship was struck up it was Dick who took the initiative. Abandoning a hopeful career and the meretricious insincerities of a big city, George Oakworth had sought oblivion and honest dealing in a village community. The first week of his duties at the National School was disturbed by an incident which, trivial in itself, sufficed to shape for a while his course of life. He had begun with a gentle hand, hoping to interest the boys rather than to govern them ; and although some at times had fallen happily asleep, and others—on the back benches—had exhibited a mortifying preference for the furtive game called “noughts and crosses,” he had persevered with heroic good temper. But one restless morning, the sharp crack of an explosive paper pellet sounded on the wall behind him, and the school burst out laughing. His face flushed, and his practised eye travelled at once to the delinquent, an overgrown and lubberly youth named Puggy Cullingworth, who was accustomed to slaver on his copy- book, and whom his father had sent to school at an age when it was no longer possible to teach him anything. 669 670 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. Puggy sat at the endof a bench. Advancing upon him slowly, the teacher adminis- tered a box on the ear which smote, as the lightning smites, before it was seen, and which set a big bell booming in his head. ‘a ba iS I The school felt that the incident had only commenced, and was thrilled with a gleeful expectancy. Puggy had long been admired for his amazing effrontery and un- manageable dulness. He could fight any three small boys of the normal school age, and it was well known that old Scaife, who kept the school when he first came to it, did not dare to frown at him. Consequently, when the effeminate new master, pale and unsuspecting, advanced upon the raw-boned hero and struck him, an impressive silence brooded in the room. And the wide-eyed onlookers were right. ‘The incident had not terminated. When the young boor sprang to his feet with a cry of rage, the dominie gripped him by the slack of his waistcoat, kneading his fists into the rebel’s abdomen, and rushed him down the schoolroom till his back struck the wall, with a crash that knocked all the breath out of his body and all the expression out of his face. DICK DENHOLME. 671 “You big baby!” he cried hoarsely. ‘Go to your seat. If you had been more of a man I'd have thrashed you!” And, turning to the rest, he added, with a quietness of manner that was equally appalling with his fury: ‘I wish to treat this school as a seminary of gentlemen ; but I will be treated as a gentleman myself.” Which was very fine, but rather above the heads of his juvenile audience, whose hearts were beating fast at the spectacle of this vivid and awful example. Moreover, a clamorous bellowing of inarticulate threats and protests burst the next moment from the humbled booby, and could not be subdued. Master Puggy Cullingworth was put out of doors, and drifted homewards, while a blessed state of receptivity came upon the smaller fry, and his dismal ululations died away gruesomely into the far distance. Nevertheless, when the school assembled the next day, the master noted a certain restlessness among his pupils, the symptom of suppressed anxiety. He got more stupid answers than usual ; and on several occasions, at the sound of passing footsteps in the road, all eyes were turned towards the door. In vain he rattled on the desk with his ruler: he only made the little wretches nervous. At last curiosity got the better of him. ‘“ Does any one know,” he asked, “ why Cullingworth is not at school this morning ?” All hands went up. “ Well?” he said, pointing to the youngest volunteer, a dumpy red-headed child with honest big blue eyes. “ Please, teacher,” that innocent lisped, “’cause his father’s comin’ to slug yo’ for what yo’ did yusterda’.” “Very well,” said the master. “Slates away now, and get out your history cards.” 3ut in spite of his sang frotd the feverish apprehensiveness increased ; and at last, when a trampling of feet made itself heard on the playground gravel, with the sound of loud voices,. the children mounted the forms to look out of the windows. “Silence !” cried the master, in a sharp, metallic voice. “ Keep your places !’ The door was opened, and as if pushed into the room by the pressure of those behind them, several hulking fellows made a trailing step or two forward from the threshold, and paused sheepishly. All but the foremost took off their caps, and he was scowling royally. “Well, gentlemen,” said the schoolmaster, prompt to speak first, “to what may I attribute this intrusion ?” Ephraim Cullingworth—whom he had recognised by his unmistakable likeness to the absent scapegrace—strode out and answered him. ‘None o’ thi damned impidence !” he shouted. “ Wilt-a tak’ it standin’ or liggin’?” Mr. Oakworth’s behaviour was admirable. ‘One moment, gentlemen, please,” he said—his eyes had flashed and then turned grave—“TI am placed here in charge of your children, and, whatever they may hear elsewhere, I cannot have bad language in the schoolroom. We will discuss this affair outside.” A murmur of approval passed through the crowd. Walking quickly past his antagonist, he stood with the key in his hand while that individual, sulky and irresolute as if he suspected a trick, hesitated before following the rest into the playground. Then, putting the key in his pocket, he handed his coat to the nearest bystander—who happened to be Dick Denholme—and said briefly, for every one’s hearing, “T suppose you know what fair play is in Cragside ?” “Comed to see it gi’en,” Dick answered with a grin. The ring was formed, and the stripling offered his hand to his burly adversary. “Keep that for my lad,” he said, “an’ frame tha [get ready] !” ? ee peer e ae 672 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. An " ‘ I'he result of the fight was a complete surprise. Less than five minutes sufficed, amid a scene of unbridled enthusiasm, to demonstrate the master’s supremacy. His oe ee ~ * challenger lay groaning, unable to respond to the call of “Time,” and he resumed his coat, breathing hard, but without a scratch. A shrill shout went up within the school- house, whose windows were thronged with wide-eyed faces pressed against the glass. Dick Denholme spoke up like the funny man in a melodrama. ‘“ Nowthen!” he cried, above the din of voices, “ther’ some on yo’ talkin’ o’ what ye’d do. Are ye bahn to get agate? He’s here, is t’ lad, an’ just i’ fettle [in ‘form’]. He willn’t keep yo’ waitin’.—What, ye’re back’ard 7 comin’ forrard? Well, then, he s’ll feight wi’ his coit on. Six to one bar one—is’t a fair wager?” 3ut the victorious dominie cut short this flattering stream of banter. ‘“ Excuse me,” he said stiffly; “I think we have wasted too much time already. Be good enough to clear the playground as soon as your man can go with you.” And he went in without further parley, leaving them to straggle away with as much dignity as they could muster. If he had cared to think of it, George Oakworth might have found in this rencontre the means of becoming popular ; but as it was, he only made the acquaintance of Dick. That uncomely outlaw was so seized with admiration of his skill as a boxer, that he regularly waylaid him on the road home, and kept him in conversation with queer DICK DENHOLME. 673 stories of village life. The sequel the reader knows. It should be added, however, that old Mrs. Denholme, who soon afterwards became the teacher’s landlady, made him so comfortable, and so plainly looked upon him as her ne’er-do-weel’s good angel, that he found himself very much at home ; and further, that Dick had fewer occasions for over-indulgence in malt liquor than aforetime, and began to respect himself accordingly. In one particular only did Dick find the schoolmaster an uncongenial friend. He could never bring him to talk sympathetically of affairs of the heart. Yet he made to him a most intimate confession, which, until then, had never passed his lips. “Ye willn’t hardly believe it,” he said—they were lying one afternoon among the heather of the parish common—*“ but there’s a lass i’? Cragside parish ’at ’ould wed me to-morn if Aw could but keep teetotal. Aye, there is. Aw’m a gaumless [stupid] fooil, mate, that’s what Aw am. Shoo’s t’ grandest lass i’ four parishes, an’ Aw do believe shoo fancies me! But—vwell, tha knaws. Aw git droughen wi all my mates but thee.” George Oakworth, prone on his back, with his hat tilted over his eyes, listened to this touching avowal in absolute silence. Most people would have divined that, in a man so youthful, this kind of taciturnity indicated a recent disappointment ; but Dick, in his innocence, admired it despairingly as a mark of superiority. “Tha thinks Aw’m soft, mebbe,” he said, raising himself on his elbow from a similar position of repose. ‘“‘ But tha’s nivver seen her. Eh, lad! shoo’s like a fine mornin’ i’ t’ springtime. It maks a man’s blood dance just to look at her!” But the teacher’s cynicism was not long to be left undisturbed. On a summer evening of the very next week, as he struck into a wonted field-path on his way home- wards, he came face to face with a romantic adventure. Walking with his gaze bent upon the ground, he became conscious of a female figure standing right in his path, and mechanically raised his eyes. For an instant he faltered in his stride: the girl’s glance was upon him as if she would speak, and in the whole course of his life he had not beheld so superb a creature. Her clear beauty of complexion, and the lusty health and strength which confessed itself in every generous line of her queenly figure, were the features which first amazed him. She was clad in a homely print gown, which might have fitted her when it was new, but which she had so outgrown that its seams were bursting on the rounded arms, and it was only held across the ample bosom by a few precarious buttons. Her smooth and lustrous brown hair was auburn where it was touched by the sunlight, and set on the back of her graceful head she wore a huge straw sun-hat, in an advanced stage of dilapidation. “You mustn’t go this way,” she said, and advanced her hands as if she would push him back ; for he had been about to pass her when she found her tongue. The teacher smiled, and raised his hat with a town-bred courtesy. “Why not?” said he, glad of the chance to stop and feast his eyes upon such fresh and salient loveliness. What ripe, sweet lips she had! and how tender was the blue of her lustrous eyes ! “Eh, you mustn’t, Mr. Oakworth. They’ve planned to fettle you down yonder. I heard ’em planning it yesternight, when they were drunk, and they’re drunk to-day. They'll do it, for sure.” And then she became conscious of his too eager gaze and of her own astonishing boldness, and blushed to the roots of her hair, and looked the picture of modest distress. “T think I dare face them with you to stand by me,” said the graceless rogue. “Are you going that way?” ? MAGAZINE. “Me! Nay, I’m going home again, as quick ’s my legs “ll carry me!” And with a Parthian glance, that seemed to rest upon him a thought longer than it might have done, she tripped away along the path by which she had come. Without the presence of mind to cry “ Good-bye!” or “ Thank you!” George Odakworth stood very stupidly looking after her, and then—turned back to follow. Once she glanced over her shoulder, per- haps to see if he had heeded her warning; but, whether she suspected his manceuvre or was merely satisfied, she looked behind nomore. Her pace quickened presently into a run, so rapid that, himself walking, he could not keep her in sight ; and coming soon afterwards to a place where the road divided, he had to abandon the pursuit. It was within a month of this adventure that Mrs. Den- holme’s lodger, in explanation of a sudden change in his habits, volunteered the remark that he thought it bad for his health to sit up reading so late as he had been used to do, because it deprived him of the morning air. Nature, he declared, never looked so beautiful as when the dew was still on the grass and the smell of the cool earth was in the air. And the simple soul, who almost loved him, told him that he looked a vast deal better for early rising already —“pearter ” was the word she employed. All she wished was that he could persuade “that idle lad” to get up earlier too. Deary me! He lay abed sometimes till nine o’clock, when the best of the day was gone. Stealing silently downstairs one balmy morning at four o’clock or thereabouts, DICK DENHOLME. 675 Mr. Oakworth discovered the cause of Dick’s apparent slothfulness. A couple of hares which he had not noticed overnight lay on the slopstone ; and Dick was out in the yard in his stockinged feet, laboriously scraping a coat of fresh soil from his hobnailed boots. Palpably, he had not yet been in bed. As their eyes met the poacher started, but Mr. Oakworth, merely shaking his head, turned and went indoors again. On several occasions he had seen his boon companion come in of an evening with similar spoils, which he was understood to have “won in a raffle”: and Dick’s luck in raffles was so extraordinary that he had thought it prudent not to pry too closely into the method of their manipulation. It did not occur to him that on this occasion at all events his own behaviour must appear a little curious in the eyes of Dick, trained as he was by his way of life in habits of acute observation. He hurried through the fields with the rapid stride of a man who either has too much in view, or is too familiar with his path, to spare a glance for objects by the way. Dipping after a while into a copse of beech and birch and mountain ash, he picked his way confidently through the hazel and briar under- growth, and, crossing the head of a gorge which the trees concealed, he arrived behind a high stone wall on the farther side. Thence, from a distance of twenty or thirty yards, one looked upon Ephraim Cullingworth’s farm. His approach in this fashion had been masked until the last moment, but oh! éfourderie! it had been observable from the window of his own abode up to the point where he had entered the wood. He stood impatiently waiting, tearing up the long tangled grass about his feet, and strewing it on the bushes. For odd moments he drowsed in pleasant reveries, vaguely smiling; and then fell to again on the grass and the leaves with a vehemence that startled the big thrushes into flight. Besides which, he sighed often, and turned pale and red by turns, and otherwise behaved in the most eccentric manner. Ten minutes passed, or something less or more (time, we know, is not counted by the clock alone), ere the lithe and upright figure of Maggie Cullingworth, first seen by him on a certain evening which the reader wots of, appeared in the trellised porch of the kitchen-garden and moved sweetly towards him into the home pasture. She was carelessly swinging a basket, and thinking, you are to suppose, of nothing at all, which, as Hamlet said, is a fair thought for maids to think. To and fro she went, gathering mushrooms to line her basket ; and behind the stone wall a pair of ardent, longing eyes watched her till she was hidden by an envious knoll. And thereupon the owner ‘of those eyes turned aside down the darksome glen, and made his way unseen to a dense thicket of holly, where, in the dim depth of it, there was a natural alcove, softly carpeted with dry leaves. And here he waited again, his head in a whirl. A rustle among the branches, and his wood-nymph came peeping. But as he stepped eagerly forward she beat a quick retreat, and stood laughing at him from behind a hazel-bush and shaking her lovely head. He, the rascal, approaching her with a look of tame supplication, made a sudden dash and caught her round the waist to snatch a kiss; but, adroitly, with a moist palm laid upon his mouth, she baulked the proffered embrace, and still laughed upon him over her rosy arm. The tantalising situation! Her face so near his own that he could perceive the most marvellous new and gleaming beauties in it, her glorious blue eyes looking right into his, and dancing with frank enjoyment of his baffled ardour. THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. “Oh, Maggie!” he said, with a quick-piercing pang, “you promised ”—and let her go. “Now then!” quoth Maggie, ‘‘you’ve spilled ail my mushrooms.” He began to pick them up, but she would not let him do so much as that for her, and hastened to do it herself, manceuvring all the time against another surprise. Well?” she asked, when they had finished, and she stood facing him with one hand on her hip. “Is that all? Where’s your gather- ing ?” He had to confess that he had forgotten to look for any. Maggie tossed her head. “Oh, Mr. Oakworth!” : she said, mimicking his doleful manner exactly, “ you promised !” | This rustic goddess, with her liberal | ~\44ee- manners and her virtue ever on the qui vive, put him quite out of countenance. ‘, His glance rested upon her with an ex- pression she had not hitherto seen in him—an . expression grave and piercing, before which her eyes fell and the beat of her heart quickened. How pure and womanly she seemed to him to be, in that moment ! “Come,” he said softly, “we'll look for them together.” She understood, and did not meet his glance. This open love was of a new complexion. They walked side by side down the glen into the pasture, neither speaking a word. Once or twice her keen, familiar ear detected a crackling of fallen twigs in the underwood on the opposite slope. She would have been all eyes at the sound a few minutes ago, but now she gave it no heed. The quiet happiness, which on that bright morning began to flow into George Oakworth’s life, was balm to an old raw wound. But while it healed that sore, it mingled as vinegar upon nitre with certain dregs of memory, and set them in a ferment. Into the fair heaven of an innocent love he entered, as many and many a man does whose youth has been spent in some big city, with trembling and with bitter self-reproach. He said to himself, as many a man does, that he was in no wise worthy of this chaste and beauteous being with whom a heedless fate had graced his pathway. But, he lacked, like all such men, that sublimity of heroism which would have refused the boon. It may be that he prized it so much the more highly. There was at least one un- important person who would have approved his reasons, whatever they were. “ Puggy” Cullingworth in those days found him perfectly delightful, and passed in one short week from his habitual mood of hate, vented behind the teacher’s back in surreptitious moppings and mowings, to a condition of hero-worship that did him credit. But in his roseate egotism the schoolmaster neglected Dick; and that affronted patron fell tragically away from grace. He was drunk daily, and never merry in his cups. ‘Their long and intimate rambles were ended ; their pleated ties of friendship had somehow come all undone ; Dick’s budding self-respect and his comrade’s fostering interest had vanished together—and Dick was a lost man. Coming home one Friday evening, glad that his labours for that week were over, the insouciant lover found his landlady shedding quiet tears as she went about her work. In some strange way he was irritated ; but when he had eaten the meal that she spread for him, and had sat a while smoking in the twilight, his heart smote him, for he realised on a sudden that she must then have been sitting for some time in silence and semi-darkness in the little scullery behind the living-room. He arose and looked. There she was indeed, her thin hands lying open on her lap, her jaw fallen, and her dim eyes gazing out of the tiny window upon the last grey streaks of daylight in the western sky. He was shaken by a gruesome apprehension on perceiving her so. She made no sign, and it struck him that she would look like that if she were dead. “Mother!” he said, in a voice that sounded strange to himself. . It was a name he had called her by sometimes, half in jest and half in affection, and now it came involuntarily to his lips. She turned her head, and rose hastily to put away the tea-things. “No, not that,” he smiled, holding out his hand. ‘“ There’s no hurry. But what’s the matter to-night, mother ?” She pottered back into the kitchen, and fumbled with the lock of a drawer, from a corner of which she took out something. “Reyk me down t’ lamp, wilt-a?” she said, ‘an’ Aw’ll let tha see.” He took it down from the high mantelshelf; and when she had lighted it, she laid before him on the bleached harden cloth a framed pencil-sketch, yellow with age behind the glass that had been put over it to keep the flies off. It was the portrait of a chubby boy, with his hair combed smoothly down to his eyebrows, and a comical look of speechless weariness on his face. “ Aw wor thinkin’ o’ times goan,” she said, “an’ they moidered me a bit. Ye'd hardly fancy ’at he wor ivver like that, wo’d ye? Eh, but Aw mind it weel. His uncle James did that pictur’, one Sunday o’ t’ efternooin, an’ Aw can mind t’ little lad poolin’ a button off his jacket, thro’ bein’ forced to sit quiet so lang. Aw’ve kept it i’ that drawer sin’ his father deed, for he took a mislikin’ tul ’t when he growed up, an Aw’re flaid [afraid] he’d burn it. Aye, he’re a grand little lad. He used to say, ‘Mother, when Aw grow up a big man, Aw willn’t git droughen like my father. Then Aw can win [earn] summat, cannot Aw?’ But someway he he’s ne’er done mich.” The frail old woman pushed up her spectacles and wiped her eyes. “But there’s some ’ats waur,” she resumed, more cheerfully. ‘ Aw s’ould be thankful. He’s rare an’ fond of his shiftless owd mother. Aw’m little use now. If Aw could think—if he didn’t seem—— Eh, dear!” Suddenly she began to weep without restraint, rocking her body to and fro in the chair, and gripping her shrunken arms. “Aw fancied, when ye com’,” she went on, “’at he mud git steadier like; an’ he did mend ; but latterly—Aw cannot tell what to think on ’t. He used to drink DICK DENHOLME. 677 678 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. just wi’ his mates like, as it leeted [happened] they com’ together. But there’s summat strange : he’s nut been out o’ liquor for three wik, an’ this nooinin’—they browt him home, an’ he—he didn’t knaw me.” The teacher was alarmed, and profoundly touched. Three weeks drunk, and he not to know it ! “We must have a doctor to him,” he said—and unwittingly added the last straw to the burden of the mother’s grief, for in Cragside a-doctor is not often called in except in grave cases. He had much ado to assuage her fright, for Dick proved to be comatose and horribly livid; and when he got back from the surgery, he found her trembling from head to foot. But when, having used the stomach-pump and applied other restoratives, the doctor gave her some medicine and said that the rascal would be all right by Monday if he could be kept in the house, she took courage again, though crying a little after the doctor left her. A period of delirium followed. George Oakworth undertook the duties of nurse, and sat with his friend for three nights and two days. He found him pitifully changed —unshaven and dirty, yellow-skinned and haggard. He saw him cower, and boggle, a go a : re Pata cai DICK DENHOLME. 679 and fight desperately, beset by phantom horrors; and, still more monstrous, he saw the abject palsy of mind and body which succeeded to the frenzy. It was his part to oppose an unyielding resistance to the tricks and entreaties by which the miserable sufferer, with incessant iteration, sought to regain his liberty and renew his debaueh. Only in the small hours of Monday morning, when Dick sank at last into a healthy slumber, did he cease from the horrid vigil. Then, absolutely worn out, he fell asleep instantly where he sat. He was roused by a click of the latch on the bedroom door; but roused so imperfectly that he did not at once connect the sound with any cause. But it was broad morning, and starting up in fear of being late at school, he saw that Dick was gone. He bounded downstairs. As he entered the kitchen, Dick was hurriedly closing a drawer where both of them knew that the table-knives were kept. George Oakworth strode over to him. “Vou fool!” he said. The poor devil turned to him meekly, and moved toward the staircase again. “Tr'll bide [keep],” he muttered. “Nonsense, man!” cried the young fellow, sick with dismay. “TI shall want you best man one of these days.” fo = Dick had the piteous gaze of a wounded animal. His eyes wandered. “ He doesn’t knaw,” he gasped. “Cheer up, old man,” urged his nurse and preserver. “ What is it I don’t know ? Tell. me.” “Say nowt, mate,” answered Dick feebly, steadying himself by the wall and avoiding his questioner’s eyes ; “but it’s my lass ’at ye’re coortin’.” Mrs. Denholme, coming downstairs an hour later to begin the labours of the little household, found George Oakworth lying on the big sofa, his hands under his head and his eyes fixed upon the ceiling. If her sight had been good, she would perhaps have been struck by his excessive pallor; but he bade her good morning pleasantly, almost tenderly, and filled her with joy by announcing confidently that her son was himself again. “7 don’t think,” he said, “ he’ll drink like that any more.” While she busied herself lighting a fire, he went up to speak to the convalescent. Dick, who was sitting on the bedside, looked up shamefacedly as he entered the room. “Good-bye, old chap,” said the teacher, holding out his hand. Dick started to his feet. ““Ye—ye munnot do that!” he cried. But the hand was still extended, and the teacher was even smiling. * Aw willn’t hev it!” he burst out, hysterical. ‘“ Ye’re a better man nor me.” So George Oakworth laid hold of the coarse fist that was clenched on his comrade’s knee, and grasped it warmly with both hands. “Tt’s you that don’t know,” he said. “ Good-bye ; and—God bless you !” A man feels like a coward at such times, and the schoolmaster got out of the house without saying a farewell to Dick’s mother. He could write for his boxes when he should need his books again. Again? Would he ever have the courage to begin life a third time? Was it worth while ? He must leave some message for Maggie, to make Dick’s happiness sure if he could. What a fool he had been! The first time, that was comprehensible ; he had been green, eager, and careless, and the woman had been—well, none of these. But a second time! His cheeks burned and his ears tingled. A country wench VoL. I.—No. 5 45 MALL MAGAZINE. 680 THE PALL had now the laugh of him; a wench that carried the perfume of hay and of cows about her. How it pierced through him to think of it, and of her smile, so loyal and artless, and full of the promise of sweet things, that he could never look at her longer than a moment or so! Last time he saw her he had nearly kissed her. ‘They were together by a brook, in close concealment among the nut trees, she sitting, and he lying at her elbow, gazing on the pure outline of her face, the pretty coral of her little ear, and the rounded neck. ‘The temptation came upon him to snatch a kiss just there where the skin is whitest. Why didn’t he do it? A kiss—a thing very sweet to think of, and borne lightly by the conscience. Heavens! what would he not give, now it was all over and past—what would he not give to be tempted so again? All over and past! ‘The chance to touch her hand as he walked by her side, and her gown when the briars caught it, the gentle melody of her voice in simple talk, the soft magic of her eyes when she said, ‘‘ Good-bye : it’s milking-time ”—even the sight of her tripping away across the dewy grass. Here was the place where he once had her in his arms for an instant—only once and let her go so easily—let her go as if she were not a prize for the gods. She had been there that morning, without doubt, two hours ago at most. Was that her voice calling the dog? Ah, if he had but kept the tryst instead of falling asleep like a fool! But Dick! The thought made him shiver with a thrill of horror which before he had not felt. He found a pencil and a bit of paper; and, still shaking, he wrote some formal words of parting : “Drar Miss CuLLINGwoRTH,—I am going away, for I have no right to see you again. I was never worthy to be your friend; but I assure you I did not know till this morning about Dick. Make him happy. He loves you more than he does his life. Good-bye. ‘There have been no pleasanter times in all my life than those walks and talks with you. Good-bye. For you there are happier things in store ; but I hope you will sometimes spare a kind thought of remembrance for one who is for ever—YourR DEVOTED ADMIRER.” He folded the note, and fixed it with his scarf-pin upon the trunk of an oak tree, by the mouth of their holly-grove. It pleased him a little to think of the scarf-pin as a keepsake. It had been his mother’s gift to him; and there was no woman else so worthy to keep it as this rustic maiden for whom his heart was bleeding. He must have been mad to think of her for one instant as false, as like ——- He had barely time to hide, warned by the familiar click ot a gate, before she came in sight of the spot where he had been standing. He crouched among the bushes, trembling at the thought of being found there ; and oh! the dolorous pang that pierced him when a little cry of joy announced that she had seen the note. In the moments of dizzy throbbing confusion and heart-sickness that followed, he was vaguely conscious of hearing a moan and something like a fall; but when he came to himself, starting and beginning to listen intently, he wondered whether it was possible that Ae could have made those sounds. But, if not—if it was Maggie, and she was lying there! Heavens! did she love him, then? and so much, so strangely ? He came out from his hiding-place, and stood, with white face and listless hands, distracted with indecision. He could not leave her so; but to go to her was never to leave her again. DICK DENHOLME. 681 A heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder, and shook him much as an electric discharge shakes one. ‘* Drew } Of all men in the world the least welcome. His eyes restless with a hidden intent, and his manner betraying a frightful affectation of gaiety. x & 7 Bi ", ayy. s 444° “ Aye, Dick !” he said, with a short laugh that sounded cynical and fierce. “ Dost think Aw didn’t knaw wheer ye do yo’r sweetheartin’ ? ” The schoolmaster made a gesture of desperation. “For God’s sake,” he burst out, ‘don’t let’s quarrel here. Go and see to that poor girl. I dare not.” Dick laughed again as the younger man began to speak ; but at the allusion to Maggie, though he could not have understood it, his face grew suddenly grave, and his lips moved queerly. 682 - THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. “ Nay,” he replied, speaking quickly and between gasps, “ that’s what Aw’ve comed for. Ye knaw nowt what ye’re doin’. If it be agean her will—an’ thee goin’ away, mate, fro’ Cragside-——-Damn it, we’re mates, lad—we’ve been like mates, choose how !” The schoolmaster looked at him, comprehending nothing yet. “ Sitha, Aw willn’t hev it! Dost hear? Aw tell tha Aw cannot thoil ’t !” He was shouting, and his face was like that of a furious man. There was a rustle in the thicket of holly, and Maggie, a vision of loveliness among the dark leaves, stood gazing out upon the two men, very pale and wild-eyed. A moment later, with a tremulous cry of mingled fright and joy, she had thrown herself upon the schoolmaster’s breast, and was whispering eagerly, “ You won’t go now! Oh, say you won’t go! I should die, I think.” He clasped her passionately, with a great sob and the blindness of sudden tears. “Tha sees !” blurted Dick unheeded ; “shoo’re noan o’ my lass. Dunnot stand theer like a stuck sheep! Dang tha, tha maks me wild!” And he plunged headlong down the side of the gorge. Dick’s matchmaking was disconcerted for a while by the unappeasable sulkiness of Ephraim Cullingworth, Maggie’s turbulent and raffish father. But she came of age a few months later, and one bright morning in the winter they were married quite happily without his consent. The merrymakings at George Oakworth’s new home near the schoolhouse were presided over by Dick in his predestined and voluntary capacity of best man. At their height they were interrupted by the sudden appearance of the malcontent, who came noisily in without knocking, and waved aside the outraged chairman, who had started up with a prodigious look of ferocity. “Tt’s all reight,” he said, with a bearish unceremoniousness which was meant to pass for good humour. ‘’Course it is. Bud tha’s gitten a rare wench for thi wife, George Oakworth. Hesn’t ta now? By ! , shoo’s t’ bonniest 1’ ten parishes ! Well, gie’s thi hand. Aw wodn’t ha’ let her goa, but, dang it! tha’s ta’en her—-an’ tha knaws how to keep her, Aw judge.” Saying which, he made a show of “sparring,” and burst out laughing at himself, and at the joyfulness of their welcome. J. KEIGHLEY SNOWDEN. Zz O A O Zz oO —t 7) ea = [After Sir Joshua Reynolds.) THE FOLLIES OF FASHION. PART III. ILLUSTRATED BY FACSIMILES OF OLD PRINTS IN THE COLLECTION OF Dr. PARR. aa ‘ AYS Beauty to Fashion, as they sat at the toilette, ‘If I give a charm you surely will spoil it, When you take it in hand there’s such murth’ring and mangling, Tis so metamorphos’d by your fiddling and fangling, That I scarce know my own when I meet it again, Such changelings you make both of women and men.’ ” And Fashion, protesting against this reproach, winds up her defence by : ‘* Vet, say what you please, it must be allowed That a woman is nothing unless @ /a mode.” True, from all time, and true now, Fashion is the passe partout to many follies, and blinds the eyes of her votaries to the absurdities she leads them to. “It is better,” says Horace Walpole, “to leave the Mode to its own vagaries ; if she is not contradicted she seldom remains long in the same mood. She is very despotic ; but though her reign is endless, her laws are repealed as fast as made.” In former papers we have portrayed the ladies as they appeared in their towering head-dresses and enormous hoops. In 1789 every head was lowered, and gradually the clothing became so scanty that, it was said, the dressmakers dreaded the approach of summer, fearing that no clothes would be worn, and that their occupation would be gone :— ‘* Beauty now wears each hour some changing dress,— One day scarce any, and the next day less.” The discarded hoops were replaced by enormous cork bustles over which the dress projected to an unnatural and alarming size. The neck and bosom, hitherto exposed 683 684 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. and bare, was now hidden under a structure of wire covered with gauze or muslin | “ The Siege of Cork.” which puffed out from under the chin. ‘The hair, no longer high, was correspondingly wide and frizzed out @ /a herisson—“ hedgehog fashion.” Large curls or loops hung THE FOLLIES OF FASHION. 685 down the back, the whole surmounted with plumes of feathers or garlands of flowers. The gowns, open in front, had short trains ; fancy petticoats were worn, and gauze or cambric aprons. The hands were tucked into big muffs, or carried large fans. Muffs were carried more for Fashion’s sake than for the sake of comfort, and nothing surprises one more than to reconcile the scanti- ness of the clothing with the severity of the winters. Again and again we read that for two months the Thames has been a firm highway. Ten weeks of frost are recorded, cutting winds, heavy falls of snow, several inches of ice over the frozen Serpentine; yet Fashion remains inexorable, and “the dashing skaters who take the lead in agility and grace,” and “the sonnish females who throng the banks,” consider them- selves amply clothed if to their cambric gowns they add a gros de Naples spenser, or a twilled sarsnet pelisse. As a slight concession to the piercing winds and _ thick-ribbed ice, these reckless fair ones sometimes permitted their necks to be gracefully entwined by a swans- down boa, or they carried a muff of ermine, leopard, or Siberian goat skin. Muffs were not considered inconsistent with evening dress ; made either of fur or “long and slender, of plain white satin elegantly tamboured.” They were worn at the opera and the play. To’see and be seen was the chief object in going toa theatre in those days. “The pleasure of a play is to shew one’s self in the boxes, and see the company and all that,” says a lady to her milliner in 1773 ; in which year the chief ornament of the stage was an actress with such consummate taste in dress, that a paragraph in the Macaroni and Scavoir Vivre Magazine for 1772 says: “Ladies are referred for, everything relative to elegancies of fashion to that celebrated priestess of taste Mrs. Abingdon.” Mrs. Abingdon began life as a flower girl, with the soubriguet of “ Nosegay Fan,” and lived to create the part of Lady Teazle, and “to set the fashions to all the fine ladies in the three kingdoms.” “All her spare time,” we read, “was occupied in running about London to give advice to aristocratic ladies on the important subject of new dresses and new fashions. . . . No drawing-room, marriage, or entertainment was given but Mrs. Abingdon’s assistance was requested. In this manner alone she made from £1500 to £2000 a year. Her dress on and off the stage was perfect, and much studied and copied. . . . In London to say ‘It is like Mrs. Abingdon’s’ was sufficient to stop the mouths of grumbling fathers and husbands.” Those meretricious aids to beauty, the too free use of which we, in this age, condemn, were lavishly indulged in by all classes of a past day. In a curious satirical poem published in 1690 we read : ‘* Mouches for patches to be sure From Paris the ¢72 fine procure And Spanish paper (rouge) lip and cheek With spittle sweetly to belick. * * * * And that the cheeks may both agree Plumpers to fill the cavity.” 686 THE PALL MAGAZINE. MALL At different periods of the seventeenth and eighteenth century it was a fashionable practice with the ladies to spot their face with black patches, and we still frequently see the small circular boxes of Battersea enamel which were carried in the pockets in case these beauty spots fell off and had to be renewed. ‘The manner in which the patches were placed indicated the politics of the fair wearer, and stringent rules are given to avoid fine faces being improperly patched.” fie eee ers CAEN — + SSNS ew ap, ~~, Rw “ Darby and Joan.” (Miss Farren and Lord Derby). A correspondent in the ew Lady's Magazine for 1787 says : “ Patches may be reduced to nine sorts which ought to be placed in the following manner :— 1. The passionate, or smart, patch, at the corner of the eye. 2. The majestic, almost in the middle of the forehead. 3. The gay, on the brink of the dimple caused by a smile. The ga//ant, in the middle of the cheek. 5. The Aessemg, at the corner of the mouth. 6. The brisk, near the nose. 7. The coguettish, wpon the lips. 8. The discreet, or prudish, under the lower lip. 9. The concealing, upon a pimple. “Those who advert to these rules may be convinced that a promiscuous manner of patching may be productive of ill consequences and lead the enamorate to many a mistake.” About the year 1733 female hawkers of toilette mysteries chose the Mall and the THE FOLLIES OF FASHION. 687 Park for the sale of their wares. ‘ Pomatum, my lady, of all sorts,” says one of them ; “Jip salves, night masks ; right chemical liquor to change the colour of the hair, and trotter oil and bear’s grease to thicken it ; fine mouse-skin eyebrows that will stick on iD ine etill 4 “ The Lopsided Beauties.” RONDA sO as never to come off . . . and to blind the men (who will sometimes be examining), I carry artificial flowers, ribbons, and gloves.” Again, in the early years of the present century an advertisement tells us “I have all sorts of the finest tinctures to brighten the hair and to colour the lips . . . all sorts of cushions, plumpers, and bolsters , I have artificial brilliants of all waters, whether 688 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. for the bright eye, the piercing eye, the sleepy eye, the bold eye, the swimming eye ; and the smoothest mouse-skin eyebrows of all colours.” “The City Tailors Wife.” These advertisements recall a ballad of the seventeenth century, in which ladies are solemnly warned against the use of such allurements and are told: ** And women, all whom this concerns, Tho’ you offended be, And now in foule and rayling terms, Do swagger and scold at me, I tell you, if you do not mend your ways The devil will fetch you all one of these days.’ ’ THE FOLLIES OF FASHION. 689 As a protection from the sun, ladies then made use of their large fans. Parasols seem to have been unknown. In a description of the “ Ladies’ undress for August,” inthe Westminster Magazine for 1777, we read: “ The most elegant and delicate ladies carry a long japanned walking-cane, with an ivory hook-head and on the middle of the cane is fastened a silk umbrella or what the French call a pariso/, which defends them from the sun and slight showers of rain. It opens by a spring, and it is pushed up towards the head of the cane when expanded for use.” The fine old gentleman in the foregoing print carries an umbrella, an adjunct to dress at that time not often seen. Ladies found them inconveniently clumsy and heavy; and the caricaturists pointed out that the large hats, puffed-out petticoats, “The Shower” and buffont fronts rendered umbrellas unnecessary, as these useful garments could give shelter to a family. Except to pay visits and to promenade in the parks, gardens, and fashionable resorts of the day, women of position never walked. Indeed, a “ constitutional ” would have been to them an impossibility ; for the mere suggestion of a leather boot or shoe, with a sensible stout sole, would have disgusted the sensitive fair ones. ‘* Let a pair of velvet shoes Gently press her pretty toes ; Gently press and softly squeeze, Tott’ring like the fair Chinese.” Little wonder that the poor ladies tottered! To walk at all when mounted on peg-like heels, often three inches high, seems-all but impossible ; and it became the fashion—a fashion imported from France—to carry a tall cane, that support might be given to the body. ee | 690 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. For a short period boots made of dogskin were introduced ; but whether from pity to the canine species, or disgust at the enlarged appearance of their feet, ladies set their faces against the fashion, and the tripping French shoe was again seen to “ wanton on the foot of beauty.” So late as 1805 we read that, “the Diana buskin was the fashion in spring, but now the slipper of Thetis bears the palm”; and the Bed/e Assemblie of 1812 informs its readers: “For walking, half-boots of nankeen, pale- blue jean, or grey kid, fringed round the top and laced behind, are much in favour ; and for familiar visits the Grecian sandal of black or very dark silk or satin, laced and bound with a very opposite light colour, has lately been much adopted.” In the month of March we learn that “ half-boots of orange Morocco have been seen in Hyde Park, but among our e/eganfes Pomona sandals and Roman boots of white Morocco continue in high estimation.” With the short clinging draperies then worn our grandmothers paid as much attention to their feet as to their faces, an attention highly necessary when “ petticoat transparencies just reach the calf of the leg and display a fine ankle to great advantage.” Bustles had disappeared, buffonts were soon to follow ; but as in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the pious Latimer had fruitlessly expended himself in denouncing “ artifi- cial hips and roundabouts,” so now the bishops preached in vain that the fashion of scanty garments was scandalous and indecorous. Deaf ears were turned to their sermons and their censure, and no result followed except a number of caricatures too coarse for reproduction. As formerly with the hoops Fashion had defied every censor, so now she continued to give countenance to a style of dress which servéd to accentuate rather than to drape the figure. “Stays are now very much thrown aside,” writes an arbitress of fashion, “and the exquisite contour of a fine Grecian form is no longer disguised in impenetrable and hideous armour. After this intelligence it is needless to acquaint our fair readers “ that the waists are considerably shorter” ; indeed, the bodice gradually diminished until we read that “a corset about six inches high was the only defensive apparatus between the necklace and the apron strings of a fashionable belle.” In the Ladies’ Pocket Magazine for 1795, there is a protest from Jemmy Jumps, a stay maker : ** For heaven’s sake, dear ladies, part With anything,—your head, your heart, Your very brains,—nay, what you will, But keep your wazs¢, oh, keep that still ! You lose, consider, half your charms When folded in a lover’s arms ; And ’stead of goddess,—angel call’d, You'll be as Wo body extoll’d.” But in spite of all remonstrances, for many years clinging scanty skirts and bare necks and shoulders continued to be the fashion ; and when corsets were worn, we are told that “they must be laced tight as strength can draw the cord.” Other fashions came and went. The fan at one period to be found in the hands of women of all classes, dwindled from a size large enough to give wind to turn the sails of a mill to a mere toy, and then was laid aside. Pockets were of necessity abandoned, and every “aspirant to elegance” carried a reticule, which Dibdin laughed at in one of his popular songs. A sailor just returned from sea is surprised at the change in his wife’s garments : ‘** But what, ’bove every thing beside, Did Jack most furiously displease No pockets did she wear, to hide Her pincase, wipe, and bunch of keys. =< @& n SS Ry: " AM fi Y! Y if) SSS SS SSESVo © SS Elegant French Morning Costume.’ 691 » 692 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. ‘*Thus harum-scarum would she fling, Her gear at random, without rule ; Her handkerchief crammed in a thing The women call a ridicule. ‘* As to the ridicule, Jack said, He wished each girl such things who chose Might have the snuffles in her head, No muckinger to blow her nose.” In its turn the reticule was crushed by a notice that, “even in undress, a handkerchief must supply the place of a bag. In one corner the money is put and a knot made, the other corner is passed through the ring of the keys and another knot made. ‘This is inconvenient, but such is the dictate of Fashion.” About 1770 Fashion decreed that two watches must be worn, and _straightway every leader of the mode appeared with two—one hanging on each side, the one worn on the left side being a fausse montre covered with silk, with sprigs in gold thread embroidered on it. This was probably to avoid the tax which, for a time, was placed on watches. The adornment of the head has always been an important study in dress, and the varying shapes of the hats defy description. A bare enumeration of their names would fill a paper. In May 1775 the Zady’s Magazine enumerates the new sorts of hats—‘“ The City Hat,” The St. James’,” “The Ranelagh,” ‘ Macaroni,” “ Otaheite,” “The Skimming-dish Hat.” “The Calash,” introduced by the Duchess of Bedford, was a formidable arrangement made like the hood of a carriage, to be pulled over the head by a string which connected itself with the whalebone hoops. ‘** Hail! Great Calash ! o’erwhelming veil, By all-indulgent Heaven, To sallow nymphs and maidens stale In sportive kindness given. ‘* Safe hid beneath thy circling sphere, Unseen by mortal eyes, The mingled heap of grease and hair And wool and powder lies. ** From the bald head should pad and /ée And loads of horsehair fall, Fear not the loose disorder’d pate— Calash will hold it all.”—177¢. Some of these head ornaments were as ridiculous as they were disfiguring ; others added to the charms of the pretty faces which peeped from under them. ‘Then came the Arethusan mob, the Nuremberg nightcap, the Grecian cap, the Mameluke turban, to be worn over Brutus crops or with “ Medusa locks in tortuous twists about the face.” “The curls very dishevelled” or plaited round the head in the Sappho and Cleopatra style. Nor were bonnets forgotten. ‘Their shapes varied as much as the hats, and a different one was required for each toilette and occasion. The divorce of Lady Ligonier, after the duel between her lord and Count Vittorio Alfieri—Italy’s most tragic poet, and in this case co-respondent—created such a sensation among the ladies, that, according to the papers, a famous milliner invented a new fashion in bonnets to be worn at trials of this kind, “the great advantage of which is that it renders a fan unnecessary. This bonnet is called /a Coguine.” _ When St. James’ Park was no longer the fashionable promenade, the Green Park became the evening resort of the deau monde; and we read that fabulous sums “4A Lady with Calash.” Mais vous sages Anglois qui méprisent nos gouts, Vous aves des folies tout aussi bien que nous; Oh! grand Dieu, quel malheur, quel étrange embarras Quoi? donc cette caléche a causé ce fracas ! 693 694 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE were paid for the privilege of throwing out bow windows on the Park side of the Arlington Street houses. From these could be best seen the crowd who, in evening dress, made it their after-dinner lounge, and it was here that in the summer of 1790 ladies first appeared with veils to their bonnets “to the infinite annoyance of the gentlemen, who called them ‘lace curtains.’” The St. James’ Chronicle for October of that year, says that the fair ones have “made more false steps since the commencement of this face-concealing fashion than appear on the records of gallantry for many years before.” Louisa PARR. “ The Invisible Téte-a-téte.” ROME IN AMERICA. HERE is a common idea, no less absurd than it is widespread, that the spirit of Roman Catholicism is hostile to all. progress; that it is a monarchical and reactionary spirit utterly opposed to freedom of thought or opinion in matters of religion, educa- tion, or politics. It is this idea which animates the enemies of the Church of Rome the world over, and which is strikingly prevalent among non- Catholic thittkers in the United States of America. There many worthy, but somewhat shortsighted and prejudiced individuals, can see in the establishment and increase of Catholicism in their midst nothing but the ultimate destruction of the unity of their Republic, the hindrance to all progress, the death- blow to all freedom. Some regard the Church of Rome as a hopeless anachronism, a feeble survival of medizevalism ; others, as a source of constant menace and danger. And yet, if the Church but carries out her highest aims, acts up to her loftiest ideals, she will in the end be a source of safety, and not of peril, to the great Republic in whose midst she has taken so firm a root. This is a bold assertion; but I hope to show within the scope of this article that it is not made without good grounds, and without a well-founded belief in its sincerity and truth. And I may here state that, although myself a staunch adherent of the Anglican Church, I went recently to the United States, taking with me letters of introduction from Cardinal Manning to the chief American prelates, in order that I might make a careful study of this question on the spot. I trust, therefore, that I am fairly well qualified to express a duly thought-out opinion on the subject. In the first place, then, it must be remembered that the spirit of the Church of Rome is to be ever “he Church of the nation in which she lives. Without conceding one jot or tittle of those principles and dogmas which she holds dearest, which are the very foundations of her well-being, and upon which, as upon a rock, she is so firmly established that she cannot be shaken, yet in matters of policy, in affairs of State, it is surprising to note how frequently she moves forward on VoL. I—No. 5. 695 46 696 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. clear, broad, well-defined lines—lines laid down for her by those whose experience is the experience of ages. In whatever country, therefore, she seeks to establish herself, she recognises in matters of civil government that that form is the legitimate one which is the adopted one. She understands and accepts the great changes which have come in civil and political institutions; so that alliances between the Church and State which were in past ages commendable and necessary, she now regards as no longer advisable or even possible. She is not a mere medizeval crystallisation precipitated into the midst of this vast, pulsating, energising nineteenth century. She is not a mere bundle of cold theories, impossible dogmas, and worn-out creeds, thrown down to lie idle at the feet of an onward-rushing, striving, earnest, and vigorous humanity. Herself a great power, full of undying life and of irresistible energy, so far from being hampered by her past traditions, she glories in them, and is encouraged by the memory of them, whilst every moment she is applying the experience gained in ages gone by, and in every part of the known world, to meet the exigencies of the present, to be ready for the immediate future. In her the heart of humanity beats for ever against the heart of humanity. Nowhere is this more clearly seen to be true than in America. Here the Church is on her trial as she has never been since that moment when she first reared her temples amid the palaces and glories of Imperial Rome. Here, for the first time in the history of the world, and with a sharpness of contrast hitherto unseen, the old and the new are confronted with one another. Here face to face they stand —the Grand Old Church, the Glorious Youthful Republic; and meanwhile the world looks breathlessly on. For a crisis is at hand. This is a tide in the affairs of Rome which, if she takes it at the flood, will lead her on Cardinal McCloskey. to such fortune as even she has never before experienced. Discussing this subject the other day with Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, he finely remarked to me, with his epigrammatic neatness, that the Mississippi will never allow itself to be dominated by the Tiber. I do not know that the Tiber desires to rule over the Mississippi; but we may rest well assured that, whatever happen, even the father of waters itself will never get the better of that turgid yellow stream upon the banks of which for three thousand years have stood the successive empires, once political and now ecclesiastical, that have so steadily and grandly ruled the world. Even in the vast new Republic beyond the seas traditions have their power and their influence. Rome there as elsewhere marches on with unwearying, irresistible, unhindered footstep. But, as I have suggested, with all her glorious traditions, she is not guilty of the fatal mistake of living upon them. She is proud of them, as who would not be? She is inspired, but not dominated by them. They only spur her on to fresh effort. As a well-known American prelate has recently declared, her work is in the present and not in the past. It will not do for her to understand the thirteenth better than the nineteenth century; to be more conversant with the ROME IN AMERICA. 697 errors of Arius or Eutychus than with those of contemporary infidels or agnostics ; to study more deeply the causes of Albigensian or Lutheran heresies, or of the French Revolution, than the causes of the social upheavals of our times. American Catholics seek no backward voyage across the sea of time; they ever press forward. They believe that God intends the present to be better than the past, and the future to be better than the present. The tendencies and movements of the age, which affright the timid, are providential opportunities opening the way for them to most glorious victory. They regard the conversion of America as tantamount to a conversion of the whole world; for in America, what I may term, for lack of a better word, Modernity, which sums up the whole experience of the bygone ages, reaches its climax. ‘To conquer America, therefore, is to conquer the world. “ The movements of the modern world,” as Archbishop Ireland, of Minnesota, has well expressed it, “have their highest tension in the United States.” There, natural order, as opposed to the supernatural, is seen at its best; there it displays its fullest strength. Again, the freedom of Republicanism is not only fully extended to, but is gratefully accepted and intensely appreciated by, the Church of Medizvalism. This is a fact scarcely as yet realised by the ordinary European, or even by the American Catholic, or Protestant, for the matter of that. But the paragraph as to religious equality in the national constitutions, drawn up so many years ago, upon which the whole well-being, and indeed the very existence of the Republic depend, is what more than anything else gives the foreign Church that has established herself in its midst her greatest power, all her hope for the future. Rome in the Republic is free, freer than ever she has been before, freer than she is anywhere else to-day. “T was boasting in Rome,” said a distinguished prelate to me a short time since—‘“ I was boasting that the Catholic Church was really free only in America. “The officer of the Inquisition to whom I was talking objected: ‘ But the Church there is not protected by the State.’ “*Tndeed she is,’ replied I, ‘even if that protection be only negative ; for the fathers of the American constitution, regarding questions of religion as matters for the individual conscience only, wrote that, “ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or pv ohibiting the free exercise thereof.” So that we need no State protection; we can protect ourselves. And even if in all respects we are not fortunate, surely it is better to get some misfortunes through liberty than good fortunes through tyranny.’ ” I think that I have now very fairly paved the way for my three suggestions concerning the work, both present and future, of the Roman Church in America, and the position that she can make for herself in the great Puritan Republic. In the first place, she must exist 7 the people, for the people, dy the people. She must set herself, if she is to do any good at all, or if she is to obtain any firm or lasting establishment whatever, to the bettering of humanity. In the persons of her priests and bishops American Rome must show to the world that, what Mr. Stead has well termed a humanised Papacy, is not only possible, but an absolute, warm, living, pulsating, energising fact. Secondly, and this follows the first as the night the day, she must show herself not only abreast of the times, but in advance of the times. And if she keeps herself abreast of the times as they are in America, then she is abreast of the whole world. And, thirdly, she will probably—nay, almost certainly—prove herself a political factor of the highest importance in the preservation—or, indeed, in the very building up—of the unity of the great Republic. 698 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. These three phases of her work, the carrying out of which in their entirety will most thoroughly justify her presence and existence in the United States, are the phases upon which, during the remainder of this article, I propose to speak. First, then, Rome, to really take up her rightful position in the Republic, must demonstrate to that Republic that a humanised Papacy is not only a possibility, but an absolute glowing fact. And already, it must be conceded, she is in a fair way to do this. Nobody who has seen for himself the manner in which Catholicism in America has identified itself with the cause of struggling and suffering humanity can doubt that it has at heart the present well-being to the full as much as the future welfare of its people. The American Catholic priests understand well that their duty lies not exclusively within the sanctuary, that if they would hold the people, and exert due influence in the country, they must go out into the highways and byways, and wipe the tear of sorrow, and lift up the fallen, and urge onward the masses of men. Bishops and priests are taking hold vigorously of social questions. All realise that the great mission of the Church in America is by the influence of her ministers and her teaching, conservative and yet merciful towards the weak, to save society midst its present strugglings and vicissitudes. Catholic socialism, so-called, has been instituted specially to counteract the irreligious tendency of materialistic socialism in denouncing the shameful inequalities, which are as absolutely contrary to the spirit of Christ as to the spirit of a Republic which declares all men to be born free and equal. The Church here recognises the fact that labour has its sacred rights as well as its dignity. It believes that paramount among the natural franchises of the labouring classes is their right to organise or to form themselves into societies for mutual protection and benefit ; and it recognises the fact that in this right thus to organise lies the safety of a vast community, as that which, for instance, exists in America. For this right implies a confidence in the honesty and intelligence of the masses. As Cardinal Gibbons told me when I alluded to his wise counsel to the Pope on his Holiness’s intention to interdict the Knights of Labour: “I am entirely on their side,” said his Eminence to me, “though I have often been condemned for upholding associations banded _ to- gether for political purposes. I recognise, of course, that in such combinations there may be dangers ; but if they are to be forbidden on account of possible dangerous results, why, then, good-bye to all progress, and to all freedom. Here is where the Catholic Church would step in as a friend and as an adviser. She acts as a benefactor when she intervenes. between employer and employed, and suggests the most effectual means of diminishing, or even removing, the causes of discontent. The Church tweesicrs | would help the Knights of Labour, and Cardinal Gibbons. all members of similar organisations, so long as they are rightfully resisting capitalists who would cruelly oppress them. Our 7é/e here is to live the life of ROME IN AMERICA. 699 the people, to understand them, to make our influence felt. We American clergy realise this fact in a way in which it is impossible for the clergy of older countries to realise it.” I cannot better conclude this part of my argument than by quoting from the eloquent sermon preached by the Archbishop of Minnesota to the Centennial Conference of American Catholics, held at Baltimore last November: “The time has come,” said he, and I quote him literally—‘“the time has come for ‘salvation armies’ to penetrate the wildest thicket of thorns and briars, and bring God’s Word to the ear of the most vile, the most ignorant, and the most godless. Saving those who insist on being saved, as we are satisfied in doing, is not the mission of the Church. ‘Compel them to come in,’ is the command of the Master. This is not the religion we need to-day—to sing lovely anthems in cathedral stalls, and wear Sass == SS SSeS Cae in| yale lh nn yi if Hn) a Meg = TT) Ws Y isin: Yl Da Wh! ht II) i MIL Ziv a) am Ml AK “(| Y4;)\\ Y Catholic College, Georgetown. copes of broidered gold, while no multitude throng the nave or aisle, and the world outside is dying of spiritual and moral starvation. Seek out men, speak to them, not in stilted phrase, or seventeenth-century sermon style, but in burning words that go to their hearts as well as to their minds. . . . These are days of warfare, days of action. It is not the age of the timid and fugitive virtue of the Thebaid. Into the arena, priest and layman! Seek out social grievances ; lead in movements to heal them. Peep mercifully into factories at etiolated youth and infancy. Breathe fresh air into the crowded tenement quarters of the poor. Follow upon the streets the crowds of vagrant children. Lessen on railways and in public service Sunday work, which renders for thousands the practice of religion impossible. Cry out against the fearful evil of intemperance, which is damaging hourly the bodies and souls of countless victims. ‘This is religion pure and undefiled.’ This will secure the age to God’s Church.” 700 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. I come now to my second point, nor do I think I shall have much difficulty in proving that the Church in the Republic is making very earnest and successful endeavour to show herself not only abreast of the times, but in advance of the times. And that means much in America. In the first place, then, she keeps abreast of the times in that she increases and multiplies with them. A fruitful Church is a flourishing Church ; a flourishing Church is a progressive Church. Figures are uninteresting, but they are sometimes undeniable. Those that I append are, moreover, trustworthy, for they are taken from an un- prejudiced source—the Mew York Herald. 1 must draw attention to the fact that the personal figures refer only to communicants, excluding altogether the thousands of those whom I may term lapsed Catholics, but who are yet, by birth and training, members of the ancient Church. ‘The Mew York Herald for Sunday, August 2nd, 1891, thus speaks : “The census report gives the number of communicants, making the returns for the Roman Catholic Church uniform with those of Protestant denominations. For the first time we have now an authoritative statement of the numbers of communicants in the various Catholic dioceses. It will be seen by this that the Catholic Church in the United States is a body of gigantic proportions. Its churches are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the land. ‘The old New England of the Puritans is now the New England of the Catholics. The ecclesiastical province of Boston, which reports 1,004,605 communicants, is next, numerically, to the province of New York, which has 1,375,404 communicants. ‘The grand totals of the Church are on a magnificent scale. There are 10,221 church organisations, 8765 church edifices, with a seating capacity for 3,366,633, valued at $118,381,516, and 6,250,045 communicants. ‘This is more than half of all the Protestant denominations combined, which in 1880 numbered 10,065,963 communicants.” In addition to this it is interesting to note that there are upwards of 70 Catholic colleges, 40 theological seminaries, and 220 academies. These establishments are supervised by 75 bishops and 14 arch- bishops. That “the old New England of the Puritans is now the New England of the Catholics” is a serious statement ; yet it is one for which its promulgators have good foundation. There is no doubt that the development of Catholicity in New England has been wonderful, and here is one ex- planation of it, an explanation well estab- ) lished by statistics. The descendants of , \ the Puritans have arrested their own de- The first building erected at Georgetown. velopment by a limitation of family. The Irish—and latterly the French Canadians who have settled in New England in great numbers—-have, like all honest Catholics, an innate as well as a religious horror of any interference with the course of nature, and, in consequence, they are rapidly possessing the land. It is quite in accordance with the old Bible promise on the subject of children that the man shall be happy whose quiver is full of them. The Catholics are happy, and they shall not be afraid to stand with their enemy in the gate. ROME IN AMERICA. 701 The decline of population in New England is a remarkable fact which attracts general attention in the United States, and forces itself on public notice in a hundred different ways. For instance, once thriving and teeming farms are fast becoming desolate wildernesses. The want of the farmers is sons and daughters. They are rearing up none; ° Rachel mourns for her children because they are not. From Connecticut come startling facts on the decline of Congregationalism—the dying out of the once dominant religion, formerly so tyrannical. No young people are growing up to fill the old meeting-houses ; no children to come rushing out of school with merry glee. The New York Suz, in a recent issue, makes the smallness of Congregationalist families the topic of a special article. The Congregational Church has 492,000 members, and 325,000 households. ‘The New England race has dwindled to this! Scattered all over the country, the body once so active, so dominant and energetic, has shrunk from what it once was in ancestral New England to one-third of a million families in forty-four states and the few territories. A family can be scarcely less than father, mother, and one child. Yet only one-half the Congregationalist families are Church members. Each household is represented by one member and a half. None are growing up to supply the steady loss. The baptisms last year amounted only to 8889. On an average of thirty-seven families only one child was born, or, at all events, brought to be baptised. The Sw remarks: “Tf this Puritan Church-is not raising up sons and daughters to take the places of the fathers who are passing away, how can it hope to grow and flourish as it did when families of eight, ten, and twelve were common among the godly people of New England ?” How prophetic, then, are the words of the old New England Congregational minister, the Rev. Joshua Hopewell, to the immortal Sam Slick, well-nigh sixty years ago: “ ‘Sam,’ said he, ‘ we’re agoin’ to have an established Church ; it may be a very good Church, and it is a great deal better than many we have; but still it ain’t the Church of the Pilgrim Fathers.’ ‘What Church, minister?’ said I. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘the Roman Catholic Church: before long it will be the established Church of the United States.’ ” Now, when it is remembered that New England has been for two centuries the very temple of Puritanism, the importance of the statements here fearlessly made, that it is fast becoming the very stronghold of Catholicism, cannot possibly be under-estimated. For to win the fight in New England is to win it all over America. But if the Church in the Republic is really to keep pace with the onward rush of events in that marvellous country, she must keep the pace in every particular, otherwise her increase will be a curse to herself and to the country at large. Quality, not quantity, is what must first be considered. The precipitation of vast hordes of ill-educated, untrained, and unintelligent persons upon the wide-spreading lands of America would be little less than a calamity. It is not sufficient for Rome in the West to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. She must provide that her offspring be burgesses of pure life and wholesome morals. They become citizens of no mean city : let them take heed that they be worthy of their inheritance. Here, again, I come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is doing her best to secure this end, is aiming at a consummation so devoutly to be desired. Her task, however, is indeed no light one. I realised this to its fullest extent as I sat in the great Jesuit College of Georgetown talking to some of the Roman Hierarchy on the question of Catholic instruction and education, and my heart sank at the thought 702 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. of its magnitude. But as I gazed into the shrewd Roman faces of Bishop Keane, the Rector of the Catholic University of America, and Monsignor Campbell, a prelate of the Society of Jesus, and Provincial of the Jesuits of Maryland and New York—faces in which, how- ever, were easily discerned the ’cuteness and enterprise of the energetic Yankee I took heart of grace, and hoped for the best. For those faces told me, in a far more literal sense than it might be supposed, that the old was merged in the new, that Romanism was fused es with Puritanism, Medizevalism was lost LOS in the vast sea of Modernity. It is quite a moot point as to which party most influences the other in this Bishop Keane. strange fellowship; whether Rome dominates America, or America triumphs over the Italian element. But in the faces of my friends I took comfort ; the good qualities of the Old World and the New were equally present. And I reflected, as we sat a moment in deep stillness, that if the Church can but rise out of her lower self, with such men to guide her she will not fail to accomplish the work she has undertaken, or to win in the race that is set before her. I glanced out of the window, and see! away down by the silver waters of the historic Potomac, I caught a glimpse of the beautiful Washington Memorial. ‘There, like Cleopatra’s Needle, it stands, and you cannot get away from it. It is seen from everywhere ; it dominates the whole city. Pure, chaste, virginal, its beauty, its pathos, its sublimity grow on one day by day, and all day long ** That slim Egyptian shaft uplifts Its point to catch the dawn’s and sunset’s drifts Of various gold.” And is it not so with the Church in the great Republic? Is it not thus, indeed, that Rome in America is actually showing herself? Towering aloft, pure, proud, pitiful, in the midst of a great people ; gazing back on the long, dead Eastern past ; steadfastly looking forward into the golden mists of the far new West, illumined by the light of ages, hopeful of the brilliant future. These were my thoughts in that moment of silence. I broke it reluctantly. Bishop Keane had just been declaring that his people did not seek to make their Church a National Church, so much as to make it keep pace with the times and with the aspirations of the country. “ But, sir,” said I, “can you so rise above your old traditions, many of which are hopelessly out of harmony with the spirit of to-day? ‘Think, Bishop Keane, of the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day, and of the Holy Inquisition; how do you get away from or how do you explain those dark blots in your Church’s past history ?” The prelate replied : “Can you not see that these mistakes were rather political than ecclesiastical, committed by the State rather than the Church—though I admit the Church permitted such action ? But in those days all Churches persecuted. There is no place for the Inquisition in a free country to-day, and God forbid there ever should be. We have better methods. We would even do away with ordinary ecclesiastical ROME IN AMERICA. 703 condemnations. Our advice to the holy See, in dealing with the Church in America, is to let condemnations alone. ‘The world is not governed by these, but by persuasive presentation of the truth. We regard the Protestant sects as our brethren. Our Cardinal follows in the footsteps of Dr. Carrol, the first Archbishop of Baltimore, who declared: ‘It never was our doctrine that salvation can be obtained only by those actually in the communion of the Church.’ As to your objections: the Church that once condemned Galileo now provides some of the greatest astronomers of the day. In this very college in which we are sitting this moment, the first and oldest Jesuit College in America, there is a magnificent observatory ; and within the next few weeks the father in charge is about to publish a work of original investigations conducted here. And within these walls has been contrived a new application of photography to star transit, which will have an important effect on astronomy generally. “ But,” he went on, smilingly, ‘our advance with the times is not carried on in the skies only: we are progressing wonderfully with the ordinary education, first of our clerics, and then of our laity. ‘Take for instance the Catholic University of America, ae = oe ities PP arr 3 eae ae RN hd . Sie wile ears The Catholic University, Washington. over which I have the honour to preside. Do you think for one moment that we devote all our energies to turning out priests who shall be only priests—-men who know theology and nothing else, nothing of the world or of matters secular? Here, in America, before all things our American Catholics must be prepared to contend against atheism, and free-thought, and scepticism, and the like. ‘They, of all men, must keep pace with the times, must strive to discern the future, must be able to give a reason for the faith that is in them. The smallest part of their education is that which comprises Catholic theology. It is an obligation on our men to know thoroughly the other side. ‘There- fore in the four years they are at the University, they learn to trace the connection between science and dogma. They make a profound study of the principles of morals as applied to society, with a psychological study of normal and abnormal mental conditions. Their cosmological course involves no small knowledge of chemistry, physics, geology, and paleontology. ‘They are thoroughly well-versed in sociology, literature, and history. In learning all these things they seek only to know the truth, and the truth shall make them free. We strive as earnestly as any of our Protestant fellow-countrymen for the cause of universal education. God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” 704 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. Thus the eloquent Rector of the great Catholic University of America. His state- ments go far to disprove the very unwarrantable assertions made by certain ill-informed Protestants that Catholics are ignorant, bigoted, and hopelessly in arrear of the times ; out of touch, in short, with the spirit of the age. And as regards the desire of the Catholics to control the religious education of their children, who can reasonably blame them? Mr. James Russell Lowell assured me, only a few weeks before his death, that he considered the demands of the Catholics ASS fair and reasonable, and in accordance SS with justice and common-sense. Both * Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop John ay) Ireland informed me in the most earnest manner possible that they did not desire to interfere at all with the State schools as at present constituted. On the con- Yy- — trary, they gloried in them. ‘“ Withered be a >>» the hand raised to destroy them,” said the “iy Yi? Archbishop. No, these two splendid s f prelates, Americans and loyal Republicans ee . $Y) J to the very core, would bitterly resent any attempt to hinder free education as granted by the State. All they ask is to James Russell Lowell. be allowed to give their own religious education in their own hours, —this religious education to go hand in hand with the secular teaching provided by the State. As Dr. Ireland has well pointed out, the State school, by ignoring the religious instruction of its children, is doing harm to the State. Therefore Catholics, while as earnest as their Protestant brethren for the retention of the admirable secular education of the State system, would add to it the religious education, not only of its own Church, but of all the other Churches in the Republic. In no smallest respect do such men as Gibbons and Ireland lag behind in the onward march of civilisation. ‘They strain every nerve that, in every particular, the Church shall be well abreast of the times, and even in advance of the times. ‘ The Church,” says one of them, “must prove equal to the hour and the occasion. It must enter into the spirit of the twentieth century, and into the spirit of the times and of the conditions of its environment, and it must have both pluck and push. In addition to these qualities, however, it must give evidence of an unquestionable intellectual superiority ; it must dominate by its erudition, and its rules of conduct must be based on reason and science, in order that it may prove the most powerful educational organisation. ‘To effect this we must have a thoroughly educated clergy, who, at the same time, shall be thoroughly American, and imbued with American ideas. Our foreign priests have not divested themselves, and do not divest themselves, of the old spirit. ‘They are bound down by the past. What we want is a new generation.” In America the Church is free from all trammels. It can act as it thinks proper ; it enjoys the completest autonomy ; it is in close touch with the people. Many, even non- Catholics, are turning to Rome as the one great social force necessary to maintain the people in the right path. And the Church, animated with new youthfulness, feeling itself really and truly American, divested of all care for the past, and full of hope for the future, is ready for the battle. Yes, the Church, as represented by her officers, is ready, but are the soldiers in her ROME IN AMERICA. 705 ranks equally prepared? The weak point undoubtedly in the Church of Rome is the lack of energy and spontaneous, harmonious, and united action on the part of her lay members. ‘They leave all to their priests, their officers. But the Colonel and the subalterns cannot possibly fight the battle single-handed ; the private soldiers must follow where their officers lead. Archbishop Ireland frankly concedes to Protestantism a lay energy and promptitude of action which are not to be found in his own Church. In his recently published “ Tries at Truth,” Mr. Arnold White fondly dreams of a Christian Church in which there shall be neither priests nor ministers, churches nor ordinances. This, taken by itself, is an ideal impossible of realisation. He might as well plead for a fleet without ships and officers, or an army without generals and captains. But his main argument contains a grand truth. He would have a Church where a// are servants of the Most High, a// banded together to do His work, a// striving to bring to pass the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. So must it be with the Church in the Republic. Her humblest members are called upon to strive to the uttermost. Lay energy, lay action, lay thought and promptitude will avail what the teaching or even the most devoted self-sacrifice of the clergy cannot hope to accomplish. It is no good that priests and prelates spend and be spent, whilst the lay members of their flock are given over to a political scoundrelism which would put to shame the vilest outcasts of humanity. It is of little avail that the priests of the Church preach glorious truths, or raise aloft pure ideals, whilst a timid and reactionary press dare take no step onward and upward in the higher life of its Church. There is a great work for the Roman Catholic laity in the American Republic. -And if they but realise this, the Church, like a mighty army, brilliantly officered, splendidly disciplined, perfectly manned and equipped, will move on to victory. And so, if all these her ideals are carried out in their entirety, it goes without saying that the Church will speedily become an important, if not the most important political factor in the Republic. She will become a factor that will not permit itself to be left unreckoned with in the calculations of any politician, or body of politicians, desirous of exercising an influence either for good or evil in the States—a factor that more than any other in American politics will go towards the construction and the maintenance of unity in the Republic. Rome, say what we may, and however much we may dislike or seek to explain away or absolutely deny the fact, Rome, nevertheless, is the one great Church—the one vast political as well as ecclesiastical organisation that speaks with authority, with a voice that zw¢// be heard. And especially must it be remembered that the Church in the Republic I am so fondly depicting will be, not the Church of Medizevalism, or of the Imperial City, or even of the Vatican of to-day. Rome in the Republic will be American Rome; it will be Puritan Rome, it will be emancipated Rome. It will not be Rome as we have hitherto known it, hampered and fettered by canons and rules centuries old, and altogether and hopelessly incompatible and out of touch with the spirit of to-day. It will be Rome Americanised—in other words, frankly democratic. And American Rome will find it her duty, and indeed even now finds it her duty, to modify or abolish those canons and laws which are absurd and ridiculous in the vast, new, young Republic. Rome in America glories in the proud traditions of the past ; she is inspired and encouraged by them, but she does not live upon them. In her western avatar she is puritan and English, even more than she is medizval and Italian. It is quite true, in another sense perhaps than Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes meant it, that the Tiber will never dominate the Mississippi, but it is equally true that the Mississippi may flow into the Tiber. And I believe that the day will come, when, if she will but act up to her loftiest ideals, and in accordance with her noblest traditions, republican Rome, | : i j | | i { : THE MALL MAGAZINE. 706 PALL Puritan Rome, will dominate not the United States only, but the whole English- speaking world. Rome, with her old traditions undimmed and illumined by the spirit that once animated the Pilgrim Fathers of the Republic, will be possessed of a power and of an influence un- dreamed of even in the days her loftiest supremacy. If she can but rise above her antecedents and how great an “if” is this what may she not accomplish ? Emancipated, tolerant, democratic, American, who shall say what is not in store for her, or what is beyond the accomplishment of such a Church? But if this ideal of mine is ever to become other than such stuff as dreams . are made of, it will be readily understood that she must be com- pletely nationalised and naturalised throughout. Archbishop Corrigan. Nor is this difficult of accom- plishment when we remember that the Roman Church is chiefly remarkable for an endless plasticity and an inexhaustible faculty for adaptation, which modern biologists have taught us to recognise as the condition precedent of life. In the highest and best sense of the word she follows out the precepts of the Apostle, and becomes, anywhere and everywhere, all things to all men. She never changes in her dogmas, her principles of morals, or her essential constitution. She may, she does, change in points of discipline, in practical application of principles according as circumstances are altered, and in her general exterior bearing ; her garments take the colour of her environment. And this power of adaptation on her part—itself an essential of vitality—is nowhere more remarkably displayed than in America. ‘The States are jealous of foreign influence. ‘The Church feels that she has no right to exist in America as a mere foreign establishment. Catholics desire no outward form of union between Church and State. They claim their rights as citizens of a free Government, and they demand for the Church no other rights than those which the law gives to all forms of voluntary association among citizens. And is not this Christ’s own ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven? Certain narrow, prejudiced people will continue to judge Catholics from what they may have said or done under other forms of government or in other ages. Such critics are mistaken. Parties change, and the relations of men with them change also ; and the relations of Catholics to the State in America are entirely different from the relations of like kind in other places and times. They know their niche in the Republic, and they fit themselves to it loyally and unreservedly. With regard to the increasing hordes that are ever flowing into the great Republic, it is generally conceded, even by her enemies, that the Church of Rome will do more than any other body in the States, not only to Christianise them, to humanise them, and to render them fit and capable citizens, but also to establish them in the land of their adoption. Not the most prejudiced Puritan, the most bigoted Protestant, the ROME IN AMERICA. 407 most loyal Republican, but acknowledges quite frankly and truthfully, and with nothing of arriére-pensée, that in the case of anarchy or of revolution, the influence of Rome will ever be healthily conservative, and will ever be exercised in favour of the Govern- ment, and to restrain the wild passions and headstrong impulses of various foreign elements—elements that otherwise would continue to be a source of daily-increasing menace and danger to the unity and happiness of the States. America is now universally regarded as the “ dumping” ground for the Old World, which considers itself privileged to precipitate her surplus populations upon the wide-stretching prairies or the already overcrowded cities of the New World. All this seething mass of Bohemians and Hungarians, Swedes and Germans, Irish and Italians, can be held together only, by ecclesiastical ties. This presents not only a serious problem to be solved by the Government, but it constitutes, at one and the same moment, the chief difficulty that confronts the Church, and provides her with the one great opportunity of proving to the world the real tangible nature of her power and of her influence. For it has now become the aim and duty of the Church in America to unite, fuse, mould, assimilate into one homogeneous and harmonious whole the various nationalities that come beneath her care, and to inculcate not only one form of Christianity, but also a heartfelt allegiance to the political principles of the country. Priests, as a rule, recognise this fact. The question, of course, is a very difficult one ; the problem to be solved ‘is very vast; so much then the greater will be the credit to the body that solves it. In exact proportion to the difficulty of gaining the victory will be the Awdos acquired by the victors and the influence they will subsequently be able to exercise. It was not always so. In the early days of emigration Roman Catholic priests and bishops were invariably, like their people, strangers and pilgrims in a foreign land. ‘The Church then necessarily wore a foreign aspect. ‘This was inevitable, and But the foreign aspect is now wearing away. The majority of American Catholics are now born in America, and are American to the very core. Bishops and priests understand that, while Catholics, they must be Americans. ‘The whole tendency of the Church at the present day is to make faithful, loyal Catholics and loyal Americans. yet undesirable for many reasons. Laudable as is this tendency, and glorious the consummation ultimately to be attained, yet the work does not progress without meeting difficulties from these very foreign elements within her ranks. Germans, Poles, Bohemians, French, and Italians make a strong fight for their own customs and tendencies ; and, under the guidance of Herr Cahensley and other mistaken leaders—blind leaders of the blind are endeavouring, as far as possible, to give each insignificant ethnical unit its own repre- sentative on the Episcopate. From every point of view, ecclesiastical as well as political, this would be suicidal. If their ideas triumphed, Archbishop John Ireland. we should see in America an Italian Church, a German Church, a Hungarian Church, a French Church. Their rulers would establish and maintain a foreign unit in every state, would create an tmperium in imperio in each locality. THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. 708 Not so Cardinal Gibbons and his assistant prelates. These wiser and wider-minded Catholics realise the intense importance, if the Church is really to carry out her mission in its entirety, of Americanising and nationalising as rapidly and completely as possible bishops, priests, and people, remembering always that the spirit of the Church is to be the Church of the nation in which she works. And now is her dream on the very verge of actualisation. Her prelates are not foreigners ; they are not aristocrats; they are Americans to the core, attached heart and soul to the principles of democracy, seeking only to build up each and all into the true union of the Republic. Their one desire is to see a free Church in a free country, teaching to the varied inhabitants of that country the universal brotherhood of man and the all-fatherhood of God, without which, as both they and I hold, no Republic can hope to exist. And if the Church but succeed in the carrying out of these her ideals, she will no longer be the Church zz the Republic, but the Church of the Republic beloved of all her children,—Rome, the Mother of the world. RAYMOND BLATHWAYT. [Zhe Author desires to acknowledge with thanks the assistance he has recetved from Messrs. Burns & Oates.] ‘ANNOYDAV Id S.NSYCQTIHD AHL "ysis *y ff 49 parvesuy |) ee oor eee et ee ee Se sneer 2 aseenepen SEEN 1HE CHILDREN’S FLAYGROUND. - PR I Mee * NEEDED rest, and so I went to Holland. In order to rest properly one needs a flat country. Many people go to Switzerland to rest, and thereby commit a grave error. In that perpendicular country one is continually tempted to climb up to the edge and look out over the world below ; whereas in a flat country the impossibility of ever reaching the horizon is so self-evident that one is content to remain placidly in the same place, and think only of the flattest and most unexciting topics. I utterly disagree with those who think that it is possible to become perfectly familiar with a country by spending two days in it ; and that to be carried through a city by an express train entitle one to be regarded as an authority as to that town. Nations and cities cannot be studied in this superficial way. If you want to become really familiar with the architecture, the galleries, and the public resorts of a town, and also to know the politics, the literature, the manners, and the morals of its inhabitants, you must spend from twelve to twenty- four hours in that town. ‘This will seem a hard saying to the American tourist who wishes to write a book on, say, “German Traits,” or to the English globe-trotter who contemplates an exhaustive work on the “Origin and Development of American Civilisation ” ; but it is nevertheless true. If you wish to be thorough you must pay the price of thoroughness. I spent no less than four days in Holland, twenty-seven hours of which I passed in Amsterdam. There can therefore be no doubt of my qualifications for writing of Holland in general and of Amsterdam in particular. I like them both. ‘They are calming to the mind, and there is probably more sleep to the square bedstead in Holland than in any other country in Europe. I reached Amsterdam by train from Brussels, and passed through a number of able and deserving towns, which I studied, though of course in a somewhat superficial way, from the window of my railway carriage, or the refreshment room of a railway station. There was Rotterdam, well known in history as the residence of a merchant with a peculiar leg. There was Schiedam, dear to chemistry as the place where “schnapps” were invented. ‘There was also a town variously known as “ s’ Graven- hagen,” “La Haye,” “Haag,” and “The Hague.” I did not like it, for I hate a town that does not know its own name. Nevertheless it is only fair to say that Bedeker speaks kindly of it, and says in effect that it is a perfectly respectable town. Still pursuing my way to Amsterdam, I passed through Leyden, where Puritans and 709 MALL MAGAZINE. 710 THE PALL electric jars were once produced ; Haarlem, a town apparently named after a suburb of New York, and to all appearances quite as capable of shaking its inhabitants with malarial fever ; and finally reached the Amsterdam railway station, which is situated in about the middle of the harbour of Amsterdam. I think it has been remarked by some previous explorer that Holland is flat. ‘The surface of the country is unbroken except by the dykes, and the horizon is as_ the horizon of the sea would be if it were dotted with windmills as well as with ships. The men that one passes on the country roads are, with hardly an exception, immensely wide. ‘This is an illustration of the familiar scientific truth that men expand or contract in proportion to the horizon of the place where they live. Thus the mountaineer of Switzerland, owing to the excess of mountains in his native land, seldom sees a horizon that is more than half a mile distant from him, and grows The New Market-place, Amsterdam. tall and thin, shooting upwards in a perpendicular direction instead of expanding horizontally. The Dutchman, on the contrary, whose horizon is limited only by the curve of the earth, grows laterally, and at about the age of forty-five is nearly globular, being almost as wide as he is tall. The same is of course true of the Dutchwoman ; and if one travels in Holland on a Monday, as I did, he gains an idea of the width of the Dutch matron, which is simply appalling. He has but to glance at the teeming clothes-lines in order to comprehend But this is a subject that can only be adequately treated in the columns of a scientific journal. The Dutch are an eminently healthy people in appearance. They are bright-eyed and ruddy-faced, and the fact that they survive the incessant use of tobacco, grown in the Dutch colonies, proves that they must be wonderfully robust. I am convinced that man attains his highest physical development in a damp and foggy land. It must be the fogs of London that produce the athletic young men and the superb young I= I= eo = ~~ ve A DUTCH EXTERIOR. 711 women that are the admiration and envy of the rest of the world. France is far drier than England, and, as a consequence, its people have shrunk until they resemble a nation of prematurely old boys; while in hot and dry Calabria and Sicily man is even smaller still. In Holland, on the contrary, where the winter fogs are more persistent than they are in London, and where everything is so damp that wine waters itself, no matter how tightly it is corked, and you have to wring out the sugar that you put in your coffee, men, women, and children are, if anything, more obtrusively healthy than is the average Englishman. If you want to cultivate a fine breed of men water them profusely. I have little doubt that were every Frenchman to be played upon with a hose for an hour every morning and an hour every evening the race would gain four or five inches annually. The girls of Amsterdam, who have just begun, so to speak, to expand, are wonderfully pretty. In fact, they bear a curiously close resemblance to English girls, and half a dozen times while walking in Amsterdam I was momentarily surprised “ Bas “ . ae @ oe , ! ial, ii We PM ee a >. A Drawbridge, Rotterdam. to hear young ladies, whom I had assumed to be typically English, speak Dutch ; which is something that I think no self-respecting English girl would do. I studied the language carefully, with the help of Bzdeker and the signs and notices at the railway stations, and I do not hesitate to say that it is wholly uncalled for. It is simply German misspelled and lengthened out to an unpardonable extent. For example, I saw an advertisment which began Enge/schekleedermakerij ; and if any responsible Dutchman will undertake to defend such a word I should like to hear him try ‘it. Then at every railway station a large placard sternly orders you to “ Past op de Zakkenrollers.” Now, 1 had no zakkenrollers, and I would not have taken any as a gift; and yet I was constantly told by that offensive proclamation that I must “ Past op de sakkenrollers.” 1 am proud to say that I never once complied with the order, and I don’t think wild horses could have made me do it. You see, I looked upon the thing as a matter of principle. Many English girls learn German, and when they speak it I almost like the language ; but I really could not listen to an English girl who should go so far as to speak Dutch. Yet, in a spirit of fairness, let me remark that in a Dutch newspaper I saw a leading article entitled “A//er/‘e.” The editor did not spell very well, but he was, at least, exceptionally frank. VoL. I.—No. 5. 47 MALL MAGAZINE. THE PALL we \ All Holland is intersected by innumerable canals. They take the place of hedges and fences, and do not have to be “(, either pruned or painted. ‘Their existence is a proof of the gm sobriety of the Dutch, in y, spite of the fact that A Holland is the land of gin. If the Dutch were a drunken people, they would fall into their canals and drown them- selves, toan extent jf that would soon depopulate the ; country. Uf Y YY Wd w/// These canals are also one \\ reason why the \W Dutch are so \ domestic in their habits. A Dutch- man knows that if he goes S& out after dark the chances are that he will WV fall into a canal. Consequently he stays at home, and remarks to his ¢ wife that he loves her too dearly to think of spending an evening away from her. If there were as many canals in England and France as there are in Holland, England would be sober, and Frenchmen would make the acquaintance of their wives. The usual method of locomotion in Holland is by | boat. If you stand by the roadside and look across the country, you will be constantly — surprised to find steamboats, schooners, sloops, and galliots sailing across the meadows ; for the canals disappear from 4 sight at a short distance, owing to the ra flatness of the country, and the =. vessels that navigate them seem to BL be sailing over the turf and among the grain. ‘There are | \ so many of these vessels —- y that they must be a fruitful 7 source of accidents. ‘The 9) \ farmer who is mowing a field is constantly liable to be run down | by a steamboat, or to have the bow- sprit of a sloop suddenly thrust among pity gl his ribs; a state of things which must ma make agriculture a somewhat exciting / and venturesome pursuit. I cannot understand the winds of Holland. I have frequently seen two parallel canals, down one of which a vessel would j y) GZ Y, ae 1th Md tae) ) Lt : + fe a se : A DUTCH EXTERIOR. 713 be sailing with a fair wind, while another vessel, with an equally fair wind, would be sailing up the other canal. Of course you will say that each vessel had the wind abeam; but such was not the case. Each vessel had the wind nearly astern, It is hence evident that the Dutch construct their canals, as they do their railways, on a sort of double-track principle; though how they manage to have one wind for the down canal and another for the up canal is more than I could find out. I suppose I did not know the language well enough to under- stand everything. Windmills have also, I think, been mentioned in connection with Holland. They are as the sands of the sea in number, and perform the constant labour of pumping out leaky Holland; for no Hollander would venture = |= ————____ to deny that his country leaks badly. The at ao thousands of pumps, worked by wind power, manage to keep the water under ; but one shudders to think what would happen y were the wind to cease to blow, say, for two whole Se ae We ess A picturesque corner of Rotterdam. , days, and the leaks to be permitted to have their own way. Probably Holland 4 would founder in less than forty-eight hours. Fortunately the wind, seeing the advantage of having a perfectly flat country to blow over, constantly blows, and the pumps are never compelled to remain idle. Night and day the pumps are kept going, until they suck, and are then allowed a temporary rest. The windmills | are built on pivots, so that they may be braced sharp up or squared in, as the case may be, to meet the direction of the wind. It was probably the experience gathered in working the windmills, and keeping at the pumps, that made the Dutch in former days a nation of sailors. The windmill is not unlike a fast Dutch galliot in build; and when a man has learned to manage the sails of a windmill, and keep the pumps going. he has learned the most important points of old-fashioned seamanship. The railway traveller learns to dislike the windmill, because of its apparent giddiness and fondness for waltzing. As the train passes a dozen windmills at 714 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. different distances, the nearest ones begin to waltz around the more distant ones, and the traveller’s eyes presently begin to ache, and he expresses views as to windmills which would hardly be fit for publication. Personally, I cannot but think that if the Hollanders were thoroughly to caulk their country, and so stop the leaks permanently, the plan would be an improvement on their present system of relying exclusively on pumps. ‘There is no doubt that Holland could be made tight, provided yv Tower of the Mint, Amsterdam. the inhabitants were willing to incur the necessary expense. Were she to be covered with a layer of concrete a foot thick, she would be perfectly dry, and the enormous expense of building and sailing thousands of windmills would be avoided. However, the Hollanders have a right to do as they please, only if they could prevent their mills from waltzing before the eyes of the railway traveller it would be better both for his eyesight and his morals. In the course of this exhaustive study of Holland I shall of course be expected to say something about the favna and the %ora of the country. The latter seems to A DUTCH EXTERIOR. “I ~ uN consist exclusively of cabbages and tulips, and I must firmly, even if sadly, condemn tulip salad. Among the fauna the storks occupy a prominent place, at all events in books. I did not see any of them, as they were all absent in Egypt, personally conducting parties of small birds. ‘The courtesy of the stork in carrying small birds on his back, to spend the winter on the Nile, is as well known as his devotion to his aged parents; a devotion much dwelt upon in scientific Sunday School books. I hope it may be true, but I confess I should like to have the evidence carefully sifted. Indeed, I should like to have some proof of the existence of storks in Holland. I ‘have seen a good many pictures representing the favourite residences of leading storks ; but I never saw any ore who had really seen a stork. Moreover, I should like | UBER — ms (aiid Maree ora > <= An Amsterdam Street. to know if the stork spells himself correctly. I have always had a feeling that his right name is “stalk,” and that his transformation into “ stork” is a cockneyism. Still the stork may be all right, and may be full of devotion to his grandfather, and of kindness to small birds. We whose acquaintance with birds is chiefly confined to sparrows ought not to judge all birds by those dissolute city vagabonds. There is a peculiar bird in Holland which seems to the traveller to be a sort of combined duck and crow. He wears a dark pair of wings over a light grey under- jacket, and when you see him flying over a field, or engaged in stealing grain, you at once recognise him as a crow who has passed into second mourning. But observe him more closely, and you shall see that he has the bill of a duck and is web-footed. The bird is not a regular duck, for I have seen scores of ducks in the windows of restaurants, and have eaten my share of ducks of various species. I am_ therefore prepared to maintain that ducks do not fly over miles of territory at a stretch, and do v> 716 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. not steal grain,—that is unless they are wild ducks who know not the moral law. These Holland birds are not wild ducks, for they spend most of their time in farmyards, and I am forced to the conclusion that they were originally crows, and developed web-feet and duck-bills in consequence of their prolonged residence in a leaky country. I did not eat any duck while in Holland, and no prudent man who had observed the peculiarities of the Holland ducks would eat them. ‘The best that can be said for them is that they are a sort of converted crow, and I do not like crows, no matter what professions they may make. The scare-cat is an ingenious but artificial animal, which I have never met outside of Holland. It is a large and apparently ferocious dog, made of terra cotta, or other comparatively cheap material, and placed in the chicken yards of Dutch farmers to discourage the advances of cats. ‘The theory is, that the Dutch cat, who desires to steal chickens, and who beholds this fraudulent animal on guard in the barnyard, will immediately fly in terror to the nearest i Wag ~ shelter. is is : Jutch cats »y lack the intelligence Pt ae shelter. If this is true of Dutch cats, they lack the intelligence Pe | ax. of the other members of the race. Fancy frightening the British cat with an artificial dog! She would simply look at him with a scornful smile, = and proceed to steal under his very nose. ‘The scare-cat, however, would , hardly be as numerous as it is in Holland, unless its efficacy were a well-established fact. Perhaps it is « the excess of water in Holland, and A characteristic Canal scene. not the prevalence of scare-cats, which has driven most of the Dutch cats over the border into Belgium, where they seem to be thoroughly at home. There was one thing which gave me a high opinion of the intelligence of the Hollander. He has his tricycle drawn by a horse, instead of driving it with his personal legs. ‘The most frequent vehicle to be seen on the country roads is a three- wheeled cart, drawn by a horse, or at all events by a Dutch substitute for that animal. The great superiority of this plan to that of propelling a tricycle with the human legs is self evident. My physician has long tried, though vainly, to induce me to sentence A DUTCH EXTERIOR. 717 myself to hard labour on the tricycle. Iam now willing to meet him in a spirit of compromise, and to take to tricycling provided I may do it in the Dutch manner. Amsterdam, to which we have arrived at last, is commonly known as the Venice of the North. At least so I was informed by seventeen different persons during my stay in the former city. It is something like Venice. For instance, it has very nearly the same smells ; also it has water in its canals—a phenomenon which occurs at Venice, except when the tide is very low. But you cannot make a Venice merely by digging a few canals and providing them with appropriate smells. The Amsterdam canals are, it is true, numerous, but they are not in the least Venetian. They are wide and they are bordered, not with palaces, but with trees, behind which are rows of sharp-gabled houses, that are about as Venetian as are the pork packing establish- ments of Chicago. Nevertheless, a city may have its merits even if it cannot be a genuine Venice. Amsterdam is certainly wonderfully quaint and attractive. It is a place which is curiously restful, although the streets are often crowded, and the shops appear to be on Mount Alban's Tower. the point of doing a thriving business. ‘The dwelling-houses impress you as being full of beds, and the occupants always seem to have just got up and had their morning bath. There must be a good deal of work done in Amsterdam ; yet nobody seems to work, and the whole population wears the air of people who intend to finish their pipes before engaging in the business of the day. There are numerous huge ocean steamers lying in the port, and you know from the advertisements hung up in the corridors of your hotel that they will presently sail away across the Dutch meadows towards the open sea; but nobody appears to be engaged in loading or unloading them, and they pass the time in smoking as idly as the men who lounge on their decks. The spirit of rest pervades all Amsterdam, which is a rhetorical way of saying that it is a lazy place. There are a few, but not many, picturesque buildings in Amsterdam, and there is an unlimited amount of fog, at least in the winter. I should say that the average Amsterdam fog is twice as wet as a London fog ; though of course it lacks the solidity of the latter. You can run against it without being bruised, and fragments of it 718 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. never stick in your throat without dissolving. Of course it is nearly always wet under foot, and the mud is of a peculiarly slippery character. I can imagine Amsterdam as being really beautiful in summer; but then nobody, so far as I can find out, ever goes there in summer. ‘The Briton always goes away from home in winter. ‘This is because he is patriotic, and wants to see the rest of the world at its worst. He goes to Italy at the season of rains and searching winds ; he goes to Paris either in March or November, and thereupon decides that the climate is worse than that of England ; and when he goes to Amsterdam he chooses, as I did, the time of year when no modest and self-respecting Dutch town would dream of being seen without its wrap of fog. If you will follow my advice you will go to Amsterdam in June.or July, and having first carefully read this article, so as to feel as familiar with Holland as with your native heath, you will find it one of the most charming places for a prolonged stay,— say of thirty-six hours—to be found anywhere outside of the five-mile radius of Charing Cross. W. L. ALDEN PEOPLE WE HAVE MET. (No. 8.) HE French Minister of War sat in his very comfortable chair in his own private yet official room, and pondered over a letter he had received. Being Minister of War, he was naturally the most mild, the most humane, and least quarrelsome man in the Cabinet. A Minister of War receives many letters that, as a matter of course, he throws into his waste basket, but this particular communication had somehow managed to rivet his attention. When a man becomes Minister of War he learns for the first time that apparently the great majority of mankind are engaged in the manufacture or invention of rifles, gunpowders, and devices of all kinds for the destruction of the rest of the world. That morning, the Minister of War had received a letter which announced to him that the writer of it had invented an explosive so terrible that all known destructive agencies paled before it. As a Frenchman, he made the first offer of his discovery to the French Government. It would cost the Minister nothing, he said, to make a test which would corroborate his amazing claims for the substance, and the moment that test was made any intelligent man would recognise the fact that the power which possessed the secret of this destructive compound would at once occupy an unassailable position in a contentious world. The writer offered personally to convince the Minister of the truth of his assertions, provided they could go to some remote spot where the results of the explosion would do no damage, and where they would be safe from espionage. The writer went on very frankly to say that if the Minister consulted with the agents of the police, they would at once see in this invitation a trap for the probable assassination of the Minister. But the inventor claimed that the Minister's own good sense should show him that his death was desired by none. He was but newly appointed, and had not yet had time to make enemies. France was at peace with all the world, and this happened before the time of the Anarchist demonstrations in Paris. It was but right, the letter went on, that the Minister should have some guarantee as to the dona fides of the inventor. He therefore gave his name and address, and said that if the Minister made inquiries from the police he would find nothing stood in their books against him. He was a student, whose attention for years had been given to the subject of explosives. To further show that he was entirely unselfish in this matter, he added that he had no desire to enrich himself by his discovery. He had a private income quite sufficient for his needs, and he intended to give, and not to sell, his secret to France. The only proviso» he made was that his name should be linked with this terrible compound, which he maintained would secure universal peace to the world, for, after its qualities were known, no nation would dare to fight with another. The sole ambition of the inventor, said the letter in Copyright 1893 in the United States of America according to Act of Congress by Robert Barr. 719 720 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. conclusion, was to place his name high in the list of celebrated French scientists. If, however, the Minister refused to treat with him he would go to other Governments until his invention was taken up, but the Government which secured it would at once occupy the lead among nations. He entreated the Minister, therefore, for the sake of his country, to make at least one test of the compound. It was, as I have said, before the time of the Paris explosion, and Ministers were not as suspicious as they are now. The Minister made inquiries regarding the scientist, who lived in a little suburb of Paris, and found that there was nothing against him on the books of the police. Inquiry showed that all BE a he had said about his own private fortune was Lo —_—— ~~ true. The Minister therefore wrote to the in- ventor, and named an hour at which he would receive him in his private office. The hour and the man arrived together. ‘The Minister had had some slight doubts regarding his sanity, but the letter had been so straightforwardly written, and the appearance of the man him- self was so kindly and benevolent and intelligent that the doubts of the official vanished. “TI beg you to be seated,” said the Minister. ‘We are entirely alone, and nothing you say will be heard by any one but myself.” “JT thank you, Monsieur le Ministre,” replied the inventor, “for this mark of confidence; for I am afraid the claims I made in the letter were so extraordi- nary that you might well have hesitated about granting me an interview.” The Minister smiled. “I understand,” he said, “the enthusiasm of an inventor for his latest triumph, and I was enabled thus to take, as it were, some discount from your statements, although I doubt not that you have discovered something that may be of benefit to the War Department.” The inventor hesitated, looking seriously at the great official before him. “From what you say,” he began at last, “I am rather afraid to tell you, my discovery is so extraordinary that in my letter I was obliged to make my claims so mild that I fear I erred in under-estimating rather than in over-stating them. I have the explosive here in my pocket.” “Ah!” cried the Minister, a shade of pallor coming over his countenance, as he pushed back his chair. “I thought I stated in my note that you were not to bring it.” “Forgive me for not obeying. It is perfectly harmless while in this state. That a beneficent peculiarity if I may so term it—of this terrible ‘The hour and the man arrived together.” is one of the peculiarities A NEW EXPLOSIVE. 721 agent. It may be handled with perfect safety, and yet its effects are as inevitable as death,” saying which, he took out of his pocket and held up to the light a bottle filled with a clear colourless liquid like water. “You could pour that on the fire,” he said, “with no other effect than to put out the blaze. You might place it under a steam hammer and crush the bottle to powder, yet no explosion would follow. It is as harmless as water in its present condition.” “ How, then,” said the Minister, “do you deal with it?” Again the man hesitated. “T am almost afraid to tell you,” he said ; “and if I could not demonstrate to your entire satisfaction that what I say is true, it would be folly for me to say what I am about to say. If I were to take this bottle and cut a notch in the cork, and walk with it neck downwards along the Boulevard des Italiens, allowing this fluid to fall drop by drop on the. pavement, I could walk in that way in safety through every street in Paris. If it rained that day nothing would happen. If it rained the next or for a week nothing would happen, but the moment the sun came out and dried the moisture, the light step of a cat on any pavement over which I had passed would instantly shatter to ruins the whole of Paris.” “Impossible!” cried the Minister, an expression of horror coming into his face. “T knew you would say that. Therefore I ask you to come with me to the country, where I can prove the truth of what I say. While I carry this bottle around with me in this apparently careless fashion, it is corked, as you see, with the utmost security. Not a drop of the fluid must be left on the outside of the cork or of the bottle. I have wiped the bottle and cork most thoroughly, and burned the cloth which I used in doing so. Fire will not cause this compound even when dry to explode, but the slightest touch will set it off. I have to be extremely careful in its manufacture, so that not a single drop is left unaccounted for in any place where it might evaporate.” The Minister, with his finger-tips together and his eyes on the ceiling, mused for a few moments on the amazing statement he had heard. “Tf what you say is true,” he began at last, “don’t you think it would be more humane to destroy all traces of the experiments by which you dis- covered this substance, and to divulge the secret to no one? ‘The devastation such a thing would cause if it fell into unscrupulous hands is too appalling even to contemplate.” “T have thought of that,” said the inventor; “but some one else—the time may be far off or it may be near—is bound to make the discovery. My whole ambition, as I told you in my letter, is to have my name coupled with this discovery. I wish it to be known as the Lambelle Explosive. The secret would be safe with the French Government.” “JT am not so sure of that,” returned the Minister. “Some unscrupulous man may become Minister of War, and may use his knowledge to put himself in the position of Dictator. An unscrupulous man in the possession of such a secret would be invincible.” “What you say,” replied the inventor, “is undoubtedly true ; yet I am determined that the name of Lambelle shall go down in history coupled with the most destructive agent the world has ever known, or will know. If the Government of France will build for me a large stone structure as secure as a fortress, I will keep my secret, but will fill that building with bottles like this, and then-——” “‘Lambelle was waiting for him, holding by a leash two sorry-looking dogs.” 722 A NEW EXPLOSIVE. 723 “T do not see,” said the Minister, “that that would lessen the danger, if the unscrupulous man I speak of once became possessed of the keys; and, besides, the mere fact that such a secret existed would put other inventors upon the track, and some one else less benevolent than yourself would undoubtedly make the discovery. You admitted a moment ago that the chances were a future investigator would succeed in getting the right ingredients together, even without the knowledge that such an explosive existed. See what an incentive it would be to inventors all over the world, if it were known that France had in its possession such a fearful explosive! No Government has ever yet been successful in keeping the secret of either a gun or a gunpowder.” “There is, of course,” said Lambelle, “much in what you say; but, equally of course, all that you say might have been said to the inventor of gunpowder, for gunpowder in its day was as wonderful as this is now.” Suddenly the Minister laughed aloud. “T am talking seriously with you on this subject,” he exclaimed, “as if I really believed in it. Of course, I may say I do nothing of the kind. I think you must have hypnotised me with those calm eyes of yours into crediting your statements for even a few moments.” “All that I say,” said the inventor quietly, “can be corroborated to-morrow, Make an appointment with me in the country, and if it chances to be a calm and sunny day you will no longer doubt the evidence of your own eyes.” “Where do you wish the experiment to be made ?” asked the Minister. “Tt must be in some wild and desolate region, on a hill-top for preference. There should be either trees or old buildings there that we can destroy, otherwise the full effects can hardly be estimated.” “JT have a place in the country,” said the Minister, “which is wild and desolate and unprofitable enough. There are some useless stone buildings, not on a hilltop, but by the edge of a quarry which has been unworked for many years. There is no habitation for several miles around. Would such a spot be suitable ?” “Perfectly so. When would it be convenient for you to go?” “T will leave with you to-night,” said the Minister, “and we can spend the day to-morrow experimenting.” “Very well,” answered Lambelle, rising when the Minister had told him the hour and the railway station at which they should meet. That evening, when the Minister drove to the railway station in time for his train, he found Lambelle waiting for him, holding, by a leash, two sorry- looking dogs. “ Do you travel with such animals as these ?” asked the Minister. “The poor brutes,” said Lambelle, with sorrow in his voice, “are necessary for our experiments. They will be in atoms by this time to-morrow.” The dogs were put into the railway-van, and the inventor brought his portmanteau with him into the private carriage reserved for the use of the Minister. The place, as the Minister of War had said, was desolate enough. The stone buildings near the edge of the deserted quarry were stout and strong, although partly in ruins. “T have here with me in my portmanteau,” said Lambelle, “some hundreds of metres of electric wire. I will attach one of the dogs by this clip, which we can release from a distance by pressing an electric button. The moment the dog escapes he will undoubtedly explode the compound.” 724 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. The insulated wire was run along the ground to a distant elevation. The dog was attached by the electric clip, and chained to a doorpost of one of the buildings. Lambelle then carefully uncorked his bottle, holding it at arms’ length from his person. The Minister watched with strange interest as Lambelle allowed the fluid to drip in a semicircular line around the chained dog. ‘The inventor carefully re-corked the bottle, wiped it thoroughly with a cloth he had with him, and threw the cloth into one of the deserted houses. They waited near, until the spots caused by the fluid on the stone pavement in front of the ‘house had disappeared. “ By the time we reach the hill,” said Lambelle, “it will be quite dry in this hot sun.” As they departed towards the elevation, the forlorn dog howled mournfully, as if in premonition of his fate. «*Will you press the electric lever?’ said Lambelle.” “T think, to make sure,” said the inventor, when they reached the electrical apparatus, “that we might wait for half an hour.” The Minister lit a cigarette, and smoked silently, a strange battle going on in his mind. He found himself believing in the extraordinary claims made by the inventor, and his mind dwelt on the awful possibilities of such an explosive. “Will you press the electric lever?” asked Lambelle quietly. ‘ Remember that you are inaugurating a new era.” The Minister pressed down the key; and then, putting his field-glass to his eye, he saw that the dog was released, but the animal sat there scratching its éar with its paw. Then, realising that it was loose, it sniffed for a moment at the chain. Finally, it threw up its head and barked, although the distance was too great for them to hear any sound. ‘The dog started in the direction the two men had gone; but, before it had taken three steps, the Minister was appalled to see the buildings suddenly crumble into dust, and a few moments later the thunder of the rocks falling into the deserted quarry came towards them. The whole ledge had been flung forward into the chasm. There was no smoke, but a haze of dust hovered over the spot. a“ A NEW EXPLOSIVE. 725 ‘My God!” cried the Minister. ‘“ That is awful!” “Yes,” said Lambelle quietly ; “I put more of the substance on the flagging than I need to have done. A few drops would have answered quite as well, but I wanted to make sure, You were very sceptical, you know.” The Minister looked at him. “I beg of you, M. Lambelle, never to divulge this secret to the Government of France, or to any other power. Take the risk of it being discovered in the future. I implore you to reconsider your original inten- tion. If you desire money, I an will see that you get what ha: a you want from the secret yp . : “3 * funds.” Lambelle shrugged his shoulders. “TI have no desire for money,” he said ; “ but what you have seen will show you that I shall be the most famous scientist of the century. The name of Lainbelle will be known till the end of the world.” “But, my God, man!” said the Minister, “the end of the world is here the moment your secret is in the pos- session of another. With you or me it would be safe; but who can tell the minds of those who may follow us? You are putting the power of the Almighty into the hands of a man.” Lambelle flushed with pride as the pale- faced Minister said this. “You speak the truth!” he cried. “It = «my @oas’ cried is the power of Omnipotence.” the Minister. ‘That is awful !'” “Then,” implored the Minister, “re-consider your decision.” “T have laboured too long,” said Lambelle, “to forgo my _ triumph now. You are convinced at last, I see. Now then, tell me, will you, 726 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. as Minister of France, secure for your country this greatest of all inventions ?” “Ves,” answered the Minister; “no other power must be allowed to obtain the secret. Have you ever written down the names of the ingredients ?” “* Never,” answered Lambelle. “Ts it not possible for any one to have suspected what your experiments were? If a man got into your laboratory—a scientific man—could he not, from what he saw there, obtain the secret ?” “It would be impossible,” said Lambelle. ‘I have been too anxious to keep the credit for myself, to leave any traces that might give a hint of what I was doing—if, for instance, I became ill.” “You were wise in that,” said the Minister, drawing a deep breath. ‘“ Now let us go and look at the ruins.” As they neared the spot, the official’s astonishment at the extraordinary destruction became greater and greater. The rock had been rent as if by an earthquake, to the distance of hundreds of yards. “You say,” said the Minister, “that the liquid is perfectly safe until evaporation takes place.” “Perfectly,” answered Lambelle. ‘“ Of course one has to be careful, as I told you, in the use of it. You must not get a drop on your clothes, or leave it anywhere on the outside of the bottle to evaporate.” “‘ Let me see the stuff.” Lambelle handed him the bottle. “Have you any more of this in your laboratory ?” “ Not a drop.” “ If you wished to destroy this, how would you do it ?” “T should empty the bottle into the Seine. It would flow down to the sea, and no harm would be done.” “See if you can find any traces of the dog,” said the Minister. “I will clamber down into the quarry, and look there.” “ You will find nothing,” said Lambelle confidently. There was but one path by which the bottom of the quarry could be reached. The Minister descended by this until he was out of sight of the man above ; then he quickly uncorked the bottle, and allowed the fluid to drip along the narrowest part of the path which faced the burning sun. He corked the bottle, wiped it carefully with his handkerchief, which he rolled into a ball, and threw into the quarry. Coming up to the surface again, he said to the mild and benevolent scientist: “I cannot find a trace of the dog.” “Nor can I,” said Lambelle. ‘Of course when you can hardly find a sign of the buildings it is not to be expected that there should be any remnants of the dog.” “Suppose we get back to the hill now and have lunch,” said the Minister. “Do you wish to try another experiment ?” “TI would like to try one more after we have had something to eat. What would be the effect if you poured the whole bottleful into the quarry and set it off?” “Oh, impossible!” cried Lambelle. “It would rend this whole part of the country to pieces. In fact, I am not sure that the shock would not be felt as far as Paris. With a very few drops I will shatter the whole quarry.” “Well, we will try that after lunch. We have another dog left.” “*1 could not do otherwise,’ he murmured.’ 45 728 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. When an hour had passed, Lambelle was anxious to try his quarry experiment. “ By-and-by,” he said, “the sun will not be shining in the quarry, and then it will be too late.” “We can easily wait until to-morrow, unless you are in a hurry.” “T am in no hurry,” re- joined the inventor. ate | thought perhaps you might be, with so much to do.” “No,” replied the official. “Nothing I shall do during my administration will be more important than this.” “T am glad to hear you say so,” answered Lambelle; “and QSseue if you will give me the bottle again . I will now place a few drops in the sunny part of the quarry.” ‘‘Lambelle was anxious to The Minister handed him the try his quarry experiment.” bottle, apparently with some reluctance. “T still think,” he said, “that it would be much better to Le allow this secret to die. No one knows it at present but ' yourself. With you, as I have said, it will be safe, or with me; but think of the awful possibilities of a disclosure.” “Every great invention has its risks,” said Lambelle firmly. “ Nothing would induce meto forgo the fruits of my life-work. It is too much to ask of any man.” “Very well,” said the Minister. ‘Then tet us be sure of our facts. I want to see the effects of the explosive on the quarry.” * You shall,” said Lambelle, as he departed. “T will wait for you here,” said the Minister, ‘and‘smoke a cigarette.” When the inventor approached the quarry, leading the dog behind him, the Minister’s hand trembled so that he was hardly able to hold the field-glass to his eye. Lambelle disappeared down the path. The next instant the ground trembled even where the Minister sat, and a haze of dust arose above the ruined quarry. Some moments after the pallid Minister looked over the work of destruction, but no trace of humanity was there except himself. “T could not do otherwise,” he murmured. ‘It was too great a risk to run.” ROBERT BARR a A 8,9 BE Bile Drawn by G. L. Seymour.) “THE CALL To DuTy.” — wom oe ae ee a a Sh oo = | 7 = ies moa Se oe \ 2 5 rsd pe een ee dae Le tec IE LT SOCIETY—THE REMNANT. LL countries and all epochs have had their periods of social topsyturveydom and moral dévergondage, when virtue seems to have been a dead letter and folly and vice reigned triumphant. Nevertheless, there has always been the remnant. Hidden from public view as they might have been, there they were — those seven ®. thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and who remained faithful to the better way. The old law of Numa did not want for followers, even when Messalina haunted the gardens of the Pincio and Nero criticised the beauty of his murdered mother. Piety and pity were not dead when the Borgias brewed their hell broth for enemies and incon- \ ; y : venient friends alike. When the ig — Piedmontese women flung them- <a > et ' selves by dozens at the feet of the young Emperor, who came in pomp and remained for love, there were still maidens with well-clasped zones and wives whose husbands had no cause for fear. When Charles II. made Chiffinch his companion and confidant, all women were not like my Lady Castlemaine ; likewise, when Du Barry was the uncrowned queen at Versailles, France had her full contingent of those who preferred their undistinguished honour to the glittering corruption surrounding the place of the King’s acknowledged mistress. Even so now, when women notoriously unfaithful to their husbands are met at the “best ” houses, when snobs and tuft-hunters have elbowed and corkscrewed their way into high places, and millionaires without h’s are accepted as equals by the blue-blooded and high-nosed,—even now we have the self-respecting remnant ; and the remnant will have none of these things, and bow neither head nor knee to Baal. 729 730 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. In the articles on Society which have appeared lately, Lady Jeune’s is the only one which recognises the existence of a section too honourable and_high- spirited to be toad-eaters or tuft-hunters. Yet even Lady Jeune speaks of these honourable and self-respecting gentlefolks as a class somewhat apart from those who make what is rightfully called Society—meritorious folk enough, but strangers without the gates, and having no blood relationship with the porphyrogeniti. Now, it is just this position that I deny, and just this section of which I would speak. As well-born, as well-educated, as well-mannered as the kings and queens of Society—I am not now speaking of the highest nobility, who form a class apart- these self-respecting gentry make no effort to wriggle into smart houses, and would not exchange one shred of their independence to be received on terms of apparent equality by those who, according to conventional appraisement, are above them. The word “apparent” is used advisedly; for no high-born aristocrat looks on a commoner, whoever he may be, as his equal; and the title of My Lady is as a chemical agent which alters the very composition of the blood, and dissolves out of it all its commonness. This is true even of those who acquire the rank into which they were not born. As with Lady S-——, who, to an untitled friend born and bred on her own social plane, criticising a third of exactly her own original condition, said, with ineffable disdain: “I do not mind saying it to you, for you are too good- natured to take offence ; but she (Mrs. K——) has such middle-class manners !” The self-respecting gentry know this, and refuse to lower their pride to the base level of touters for a recognition which has always in it the element of contempt for inferiority. This element shows itself plainly enough in Lady Cork’s article and in that of “A Woman of the World”; and so far both these ladies are frank and straightforward. They divide Society into the “born” and the “not born,” and think the mingling together of the fringes a national disaster. They despise those of the “born” who, for the sake of good dinners and fine entertainments, countenance Lady Midas and invite Sir Gorgias to their “small and earlies.” They ridicule Sir Gorgias and his lady for their very success in worming themselves into the Society whereto they have no natural claim, and to which their introduction had been effected only by money. They deprecate the admission of the Jews into the Auis clos of caste, and lament the time when Almack’s was the Paradise through the gates of which not the loveliest Peri of them all, if an Israelite, or “not born,” could hope to pass. They are at odds all through with the democratic wave which has swept together in one heap the pearly nautilus and the coarse sea-snail ; and by their frankness they have done infinite service to the self-respecting remnant, who already know what they have confessed, and so far have strengthened the weaker-kneed of the class. Democratic as Society may be in its pursuit of pleasure, following after every leader that appears, and confounding in one mad swirl base notoriety and honourable fame—money scraped out of to-day’s mud and estates inherited for generations— the fact of class-distinctions still holds good; and both those who are born in the purple, and those whose chrism-cloth was homely tan, know this truth, and act on it. The gilded snob does all he knows to be admitted into smart houses. If his gilding be thick enough, the smart houses open their doors to receive him with apparent cordiality and secret disdain. The tie between them is as untrust- worthy as were Michael Scot’s ropes of sand, and depends solely and wholly on the thickness of the gilding. The marriages made between the two classes are always of the same kind as that of the lioness and the mouse ; and the purple never really fraternises with the tan. Those rich snobs who marry high-bred impecuniosity are SOCIETY—THE REMNANT. 731 no more received into the inner intimacy of the wife’s family than the pretty foreigner is received into the intimacy of the proud Roman sisters—those well- born, well-married noblewomen, who regard their brother’s alien and plebeian wife as no higher than his legalised mistress. Between the two a barrier is fixed which is never thrown down. High-bred impecuniosity rejoices in the affluence which the gilded snob has given her; but rejoicing is not reciprocity. She receives all and gives back nothing; and the man least considered in her own house is the master of that house—the one who plays the meanest part in the social and matrimonial drama is the husband of the wife who fills the stage which he himself has built and furnished. This is the cup of degradation which certain of the baser kind do not refuse to drink for the sake of a high-sounding alliance that annihilates their independence and destroys their individuality; but all the lowly-born who have become rich by their own exertions are not of this degraded type, and every one knows wealthy families who are content with friends, if not quite of their own original status, yet of not such social supremacy as obliges the one to crawl while giving the other cause for insolent airs of patronage and superiority. Content to enjoy the fruits of their own industry and intelligence—content to make those about them happy—to surround themselves with beauty for the sake of beauty, not for the sake of ostentatious display, these too are of the remnant which do not bow the knee to Baal—too sincerely self-respecting to be snobs or tuft-hunters. The laxity of the age in morals is for the most part passed over lightly, and if confessed is apologised for and excused, chiefly on the ground of its improvement on certain notorious epochs. But no candid observer can deny the fact of this laxity ; as indeed must needs be, with the greater freedom given to young women and the fewer duties left them to fulfil. The present period is remarkable, zn/er a/ia, for the loosening of home ties once held so sacred, and for the distaste for home life, once so venerated and loved. Restlessness and discontent have taken the place of the former quietude and serene acceptance of the lot marked out for them, characteristic of English girls. Desire for excitement, adventure, pleasure, and above all longing after those apples of the Tree of Knowledge, make home the dullest place in the world to our young modern Eves, and the father and mother the most irksome companions. Even husbands of their own age pall on them after a time ; and that satiety should destroy love and render marriage unmitigated boredom is one of the accepted canons among the railers at things as they are in favour of things as they are not and can never be. With these young wives maternity counts as a horror, if not a degradation. They abhor children, and Shakespeare’s famous aphorism is no more true to them than the fifth commandment had power over them when girls, or than the seventh has terror for them as wives. Whether they love their lords or not, maternity is a curse they willingly run all risks to avoid; and when they do have children their first care is to shuffle them off on to any one’s hands but their own— their next to delay the introduction of their girls for so long as is decently possible their last to get those girls married out of hand, no matter to whom, so long as they can shake them off their own skirts, and free themselves from inconvenient witnesses and possible rivals. Here again we have the remnant. There are still to be found, even in Society, sweet, natural, tender women who love their babies and welcome them into the world into which they have been brought by no will or act of their own. There are still to be found young and pretty mothers who give up gaieties dnd festivities that they may be at the bedside of a sick child, and who, while looking more the sisters than the mothers of their grown girls, introduce them at the right age and 732 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. neither shunt nor suppress them. Certainly there are mothers who let their daughters go to the right or the left unchaperoned, while they themselves carry on the old game of intrigue with new and varied playfellows; but the remnant exists, and to these clean-minded and clean-living women, faithful wives and devoted mothers, we take off our hats, as to King Edward’s Countess of Shrewsbury, and that pearl among wives and mothers, Lady Rachel Russell. We get a little insight into the wide-spread prevalence of what is surely dangerous flirting, if not absolute intrigue, by Sunday visiting at certain houses. In some the hostess frankly says she does not care to have women at all. She wants only club men and politicians, with whom to discuss the sal’ent questions of the day : vomen, with their flirting and frivolity, are out of placé and out of tune; and this position is intelligible enough. Other houses are frankly open to both sexes. These belong to the remnant. But others again are intended for men only; and even of these it is wished that none but the favourites should call. Before you know this, and if you are a woman who makes Sunday calls, you get your initiation into the secret ways of those houses by a process as painful to yourself as it is disagreeable to your fair friends. You call at this house and that, to. find two people in earnest conversation together—conversation of the kind which does not like interruption. Woman-like, she recovers her self-possession the soonest ; man-like, he shows temper and is sullen. You, the innocent Jonah whose presence has wrecked this little bark of confidential intercourse, bowed under the sense of your involuntary iniquity, talk fast and probably talk foolishly—only anxious to get through your necessary five minutes before you may convey yourself and your embarrassment out of the room. If this happen to you twice or thrice in the same day, it leaves on you the most depressing sense of gross blundering. Then you wish that you had never been born ; for perhaps these unexpected revelations have shattered what was once a delicate and dainty little image ; and one more illusion has gone like an iridescent bubble burst into empty air. For the self-respecting remnant both tact and discrimination are of primal necessity in their dealings with Society. To churlishly refuse the proffered friendship of those on the higher rungs of the social ladder—rungs which are higher than your own- is to write yourself down a snob of the snobs, when that friendship is sincere, simple and human. It all depends on that sincerity, that simple humanness, and on your own estimate of the motive which prompts the offer of that right hand of fellowship. If the motive be frankly sincere, the acceptance should follow suit. But if you are asked as a kind of lion whose roaring is to be a feature—a modern Samson to make sport for the nobly-born Philistines, then are you a cur if you accept, and unworthy of the grand old name handed down to you by your English forefathers. This kind of thing is the enduring temptation and constantly recurring difficulty of successful artists. The Leo Hunters of Society are never idle, and their traps are set, their nets are cast at all four corners of the social jungle. It is not the person they care for, only the name. Nor is it fame they regard, so much as notoriety. An outrage against good taste and decency, if well boomed and talked about, is a bigger passport than an achievement that has escaped the desecration of blare and gained only the distinction of appreciative praise. This nice difference in the spirit is discernible only by the remnant. The ruck of the strivers after private pelf and public notice are too eager in their race to care for nice differences. To see their names in the list of my Lady Fourstars’ guests is all they desire. Little they reck whether they are asked out of regard for themselves or respect for what they have done, or for the mere fact that they are notorious and by their notoriety stand as advertisements SOCIETY--THE REMNANT. 133 for Lady Fourstars herself. Anyway, they are willing to hire themselves out for the pleasure of seeing their names in the list; and if you speak to them of self-respect on the one hand or of self-degradation on the other, you speak a language as foreign as if you exhorted them in Chaldean or warned them in Hebrew. They are not of the remnant, and they bow their knees to any number of Baals without the tender excuse of Naaman when his master leaned on his hand in the House of Rimmon. This does not say that we are free from the obligation of paying our shot in Society. We all must, some in one way, some in another. We must contribute our share to the general quota, either by our birth or our wealth, our beauty or our brains, our fame or our influence, or it may be only by our manners and our power of talk. No totally insignificant and undowered person can possibly hope to be in what is called Society—that is, asked by those who value the outsides of things alone, and who demand the guid pro quo. The best wife in the world, the most meritorious mother, the dearest father, brothers and. sisters to swear by, if neither handsome nor witty, neither rich nor well-born, if contributing nothing to a room in dress, name, appearance, conversation, will not be largely invited, save by those intimates who know and respect them. If these undistinguished persons are touched by the curse of social ambition, they will eat dirt by the peckful for the sake of appearing here and there. If they are of the remnant, with a sufficient amount of good sense and the power of recognising conditions, they will accept their portion of social effacement with the dignity of those who understand their true worth, their real position, and do not wish for fictitious acknowledgments. In all professions and all social circumstances can be found this remnant of the self-respecting, who disdain the arts by which others forge or wriggle their way to the front. In art and literature are the two sections of the rockets, with the charred stick to follow—-and of the steadily flaming cressets, that burn quietly on to the end—those who are “ boomed ” by interested friends and backers, and those the worth of whose work is their sole claim to public consideration. It must be confessed that this last section is in a woful minority in these latter times, and that writers and artists trust more to the power of the boom than they do to the intrinsic worth of their work. But the fame brought by the former method is illusory and transitory. It sells the books, and brings good money to the pocket of the author: so far, indeed, it is neither illusory nor transitory ; but it does not secure the success of future issues, if those issues are unworthy of success. The glamour of a boom lasts but a short time, and no self- respecting worker either values or desires it. The wise know that sooner or later most of us come to our deserts. Those who have been buoyed up by wind-bags get caught on sharp places, which pierce their supports and let them down like stones. Those who have done the best they know, steadily, faithfully, through temporary neglect but ever-increasing recognition, come at last to the goal of their desire— whence they can never be dislodged. The self-respecting worker keeps steadily on, indifferent to hostile criticism save when it conveys a real lesson of better advice, and with but one aim—to do the best he knows. The boomed worker is spasmodic, hurried, and always under strain and apprehension. His dominant endeavour is to surpass himself, not in the intrinsic quality of his work, but in its sensationalism of thought, or it may be of narration. He plays to the gallery, and the gallery likes that which is hot i’ the mouth. His demonstrative friends have been his real undoing, and the charred stick is bound to come down. This is, as was said, specially true of intellectual workers in this present noisy day. But we must never forget the remnant —those quiet, conscientious, and independent workers, whose pride disdains _fire- works, and whose honour is in their own thoroughness. | 734 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. Again, in politics we have the remnant of honest men, whose convictions carry them beyond the considerations of party, its advantages, its emoluments. Of these are the Liberal Unionists—those men who are too conscientious and self-respecting to sell their souls for place, and too manly to be led by a name into the mire into which the party has deliberately walked. Never in our history before has a body of men stood out in fairer light than these Liberal Unionists, who have coalesced with the Conservatives, and gone out from the ranks of their old party to save the Empire from destruction, and to protest against the degradation of the House as ordained by Mr. Gladstone. The fight they make is hard and heavy, uphill all the way, and to a certain extent foredoomed to present failure. They cannot hope to destroy that craven-spirited majority which takes its orders from gutter-sparrows and village ruffians—to bring back to the sense of English honour and English patriotism the recreant sons of the Mother who for place, power, and party, do not hesitate to defame and betray her. The Conservatives, grand as they are, are in their natural groove. It costs them nothing to oppose the mischievous treason of this degraded party, led by the once famous and now lost leader and arch-traitor. But the Liberal Unionists have had to sever old ties and stand foot to foot against old friends. They have had to go into exile, and make friends of those who erstwhile were strangers and opponents. They have been truly the remnant of the faithful, saved from the evil seductions which have brought their weaker brethren to the place where all honest men despise them, all good patriots execrate them, and all self-respecting Englishmen blush that they bear the same name as themselves. And, by the way, this anti-English spirit, this unpatriotic madness, has spread far and struck deep into the vitals of this politically degenerate time. One continually meets in Society with men who are not ashamed to confess that they are absolutely destitute of the sense of patriotism. England is no more to them than France ; and even less than France, inasmuch as the “artistic” element in France is greater than in England; and to these flabby descendants of the men who fought at Crecgy and conquered at Waterloo “art” stands before patriotism, and the shape of a jug, the special shade of a colour, the technique of a picture, throw far into the background such prosaic considerations as loyalty and self-respect, love of country and national dignity. If it were not such a flabby age as it is, all these men would be severely boycotted. Let like herd with like, and let the traitors be dismissed from the presence of the patriotic. The remnant did not consort with the worshippers of Baal or the sons of Belial, and the intrinsic fitness of things remains the same under all changes of name and form. The great ladies condemn the smaller fry who push for a footing on the golden stair. Those great ladies are themselves to blame, partly by their own greed for new experiences—and oh! ye enriched proletariat, remember that you are new experiences to the porphyrogeniti, as much so as if you were black fellows or Aztecs !—and partly by their descent into walks of life and action unfamiliar and inharmonious. Those milliners’ shops, set afloat by certain members of the aristocracy, have been as nails in the coffin of class consideration. If titled folk are poor, and their own kith and kin will not support them, they must work that they may be fed, like others whose blood has not a tinge of blue, and whose chrism-cloth was homely tan. But if titled folk are merely idle at home, and craving for new sensations—craving, too, for what they hope will prove a profitable turn-over of their margin—and on account of this come down into the labour market and enter into competition with the bread-winners fighting for simple sustenance, then are they more than déc/assées, then have they forgotten the best traditions and finest formulas of their order. There are, however, the noble, SOCIETY—THE REMNANT. 735 stately remnant of men and women to whom wod/esse cblige is a living phrase, and self- respect as potent an influence as religion itself. Indeed, it is religion ; for the sect of the Stoics never dies out, and here too the remnant holds its proud head high and refuses obeisance to the popular Baal of the hour. That popular Baal to the aristocracy is competition in work for wages with the poorer members of society who have to work if they would live. “The dignity of labour ”— in itself and when used sincerely a fine phrase enough—has become with these self-forgetting aristocrats a word of degradation. The spell upon them is not noble striving to do homely things well, but the hope of ignoble gain and success in yet more ignoble competition. In this competition they play with loaded dice. They know that their name will be a powerful make-weight for acceptance, and that merit alone will not sway the leaders’ choice. Every penny which these titled and influential workers make for their superfluous expenses, and on the strength of their social position, is taken out of the mouths of the impecunious, to whom it is of vital need to earn bread for themselves and their families. And, con- gested as the labour market is on all sides, this incursion of the uncovenanted is a direful hindrance to the well-being of the needy, already jostling one another too rudely among themselves. The remnant of the well-portioned who have gifts and capacities do none of these things. They are content to be artists and “ workers” for the pleasure of their own, and the joy they themselves take in their achievements. The remnant do not care to advertise themselves by exhibitions, by competition, by receiving payment, even for the professed purpose of charity ; but nobly, and in the old grand style of the sheltered woman, they keep sacred the things they do, and content themselves with home applause and private delectation. This is the remnant into the houses of which the modern social element does not enter. They do not associate with men to whom their butlers could give points—-with women less refined than their maids. Noamount of gilding could make these people acceptable ; and no intrigue whereby to effect an entrance could be successful. They stand by their own order, and maintain the dignity of inherited caste. Notoriety is as offensive to them as ill-breeding, as ostentation. They see no charm in that kind of impudent cleverness which has assumed heroic proportions of late: the cleverness which here ignores a notorious past in favour of a decent present—there outrages all sense of feminine decency, as well as forgets the limits of geographical accuracy. Such “fame” as this the remnant of the truly noble reject, as they would turn aside from the phosphorescent shine of corruption. They refuse to hold terms with the undesirable, however big the posters setting forth their names—however bright the shine of what is substantially corruption. In a lovely little knot apart stand the remnant of fair women who have not bowed the knee to the Baal of rampant egotism under the name of a mission, and self-display under the name of political action. No platform orators are they, appealing to men’s passions, euphemistically styled their reason; no disturbers of an ancient civilisation, which the sovereign’s coronation oath undertakes to respect, for the sake of the career it opens and the emoluments that career includes. To this remnant home duties lie closer and are more sacred than wild tramps in foreign lands for the conversion of content into discontent, quietude into restlessness, the claustral life befitting the religion, the morals, the habits, and the climate, into the half-Amazonian freedom which does as much harm as good even in the colder north and west, and which would be so disastrous in the south and east. The remnant among modern women are as beautiful and pure, as orderly and as modest, as were ever their predecessors in the finest days of history. The type has not died out; it is only overshadowed 736 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. by the more vulgar self-assertion of the rowdy kind—those blatant, noisy, and unsexed Wild Women who have gone beyond the line of feminine modesty, as the best of all ages have traced it, and left to the remnant the guardianship of the holy books and the care of the sacred fire. Were it not for this remnant, indeed, we might well despair because of the things we see and hear. But the seven thousand save us, and the chosen people have always their representatives. In this remnant, then, lies the hope o: the future. It was the salvation of the past. In the worst time of Rome’s corruption it existed, as one might find sweet flowers hidden among weeds and filth ; and what can be said of Imperial Rome may be said of every other country and every other epoch. There has always been the i remnant ; self-respecting, honourable, faithful to the better way, loyal to the finer traditions. _When all society seemed to be given over to hopeless corruption, in the quiet homesteads, far removed from the glare of Courts and the noise of cities, noble men and women lived in the grand simplicity of virtue, and reared their children to respect the gods and themselves. When men openly laughed at morality, and women notoriously bartered chastity for gain, and gave away the true for the false, the remnant kept the record clean ; and by degrees the best outran the worst. So now as in the past. Undeclared by public blare, the remnant of self-respecting men and women hold that dignified place of silent personal pride which accepts no bribe and offers none— content to be and not to seem, to have and not to beg. Undeflected by fear or favour, they eschew the worship of a remunerative Baal, and prefer instead the more barren honour of loyalty to their own dignity. They neither fawn on the great nor sell themselves to the rich. They neither prostitute the columns of their paper to hoist a second-rate worker into a first-class place, nor themselves fetch and carry and fawn and cringe for the friendship of the influential contributor, of the able editor. To them pride is as necessary as the air they breathe ; and with the breaking of that pride their life would be at an end. How, indeed, péople can live whose pride has melted into baseness is a problem for which they have no answer. It belongs to the same class as those tremendous surgical mysteries by which human beings can live with half their brains cut away. Rob the remnant of their self-respect, and you take the heart out of them for good and all. And even as modern surgery has not yet come to this power, so have the remnant not learnt the secret of uniting self-debasement with self-respect, which self-respect is the very life of their life—that modern version of the Old Law of Numa which they cherish as the vestals cherished the sacred fire. reper ary cara E. Lynn LINTON. THE PARTRIDGE. ¥ all the game birds the partridge is most familiar to those who live in the country: every child that toddles after its brothers and sisters of larger growth through the fields and meadows knows well the call of the partridge, and the whirring a fe flight of the bird. - é pie If Scotland can claim'the red grouse as her national game bird, ore igs a England may certainly lay claim to the grey partridge as her own; ™ although the compact-looking, active bird is to be found in suitable localities i throughout the United Kingdom. Cultivation, which is, as a rule, so injurious to wild game birds, has proved beneficial so far as the propagation of the partridge is concerned; for he, like the sparrow, thrives best close to the cornfields, or, I might say, wherever agricultural pursuits are in full working order. The bird’s range is a varied one; he is in the fields as a general rule, no matter, whether the crops of wheat, oats, barley, turnips, or mangolds are on or off, the greater part of the year is passed by the partridge in the fields. Some writers have mentioned moor-partridges in a way that might almost lead the general public to believe that we have two distinct species of the bird, or, at least, a well-marked variety of the common one ; but this is not the case: we have only one grey partridge, When I write of fields as the bird’s principal habitat, both by day and night, 737 738 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. my readers must understand that the hedgerows and banks that enclose those, also the tuffety borders of the grazing meadows, are to be included. Moor-partridges are wild-bred birds, which have been brought out on the moors, which are separated, in our Southern counties, only by a splashed bank from the cornfields. Having been hatched out on the moor, they, together with old birds, naturally frequent it, and they “jug ” or squat closely together there at night. The fields are visited certainly, but the principal food supply will be gleaned from their wild hatching-out place ; and they fly farther and run longer distances, also they are a little smaller and darker than those that keep entirely to the corn and the root lands. The food they get on the moors is, in a great degree, like that of the blackcock and red grouse, and their flesh is naturally darker than that of the other birds. The coveys found on the moors are wilder also, and far more gun-shy, than are those of the lower grounds. When they are on the wing you can very often watch them fly clean out of sight without dropping. These little differences are all I have been able to observe between the two; and in the Surrey heathlands we have a goodly number of these moor birds. Scattered grains of corn, various seeds from the vegttation of the fields, far too numerous for us to mention, and those creeping and flying hosts that frequent the corn lands,—slugs, worms, beetles in their mature and their immature stages,—flies and green food, with bits of sharp gravel swallowed to help digestion, form the principal bill of fare of this bird. ‘Those that live on the moors eat the green tender shoots of the heather, and, in the season, the whortle berries and those of the dewberry or trailing bramble. The finest birds for size and plumage are found in some of the Southern and Eastern counties. Where the corn and marsh-land join each other there is the perfect home for our birds. How often have I seen the coveys come whirring from the yellow corn on to the wide green flats which were quivering in the heat, in order to visit some of the countless ant hills, where the great hares resting between the old mole-heaps started up as the birds dashed over them! Golden cornfields, vast stretches of green flats, bordered by the tide, whilst a few sails dotted the water, made a very agreeable picture. The partridges found something there to please them certainly ; for, added to ants’ eggs, there were the grasshoppers in thousands. As you moved along you would be covered by these nimble skip-jacks. Good food and shelter, with warmth— for at that time our marsh summers were hot ones—made all the difference to the size and plumage of the partridges which were found there in such great abundance. One of my friends, who shot on his own marshes with one of Manton’s muzzle-loaders, using either a Spanish pointer or a curly-coated setter—only seen now in old sporting works, such as Daniel’s and others of a like nature—used to leave a brace now and then when he passed our house. It was proper partridge shooting then—not driving ; and what was then considered a fair day’s sport would be laughed at now. But the birds were cleanly killed by real sportsmen who knew how to shoot. Some of my readers will probably say mine are old-fashioned ideas. So they may be, but I am not able to alter them. When a brace was given to me in those days the feathers had a bloom on them like that on a bunch of grapes. No sportsman at that time would allow the plumage of the birds that fell to his gun to be “ mucked about,” if he could possibly help it. Fishing and shooting are, I know, wide apart as sports, but the good old rule for feather will apply equally well to fin in this matter. A good all-round angler, if he has had luck, will turn the fish out of his creel in perfect order, a layer of fish and a layer of sedge or fern alternately. Out they come, a glittering heap, with their scaling perfect ; and, when treated in this manner, they form really the most beautiful picture of still life the eye can rest on. THE PARTRIDGE. 739 The partridge, like that blessed bird of the Highlander, the red grouse, is con- sidered to be a bird of good omen throughout the whole length and breadth of the country side; for when his cheery call sounds from furrow and ridge the spring is coming, and summer will follow. Then, also, there is good to be got from the fresh scent of the ploughed fields ; for there is truly life in the earth. The plough has been left turned up on its side on the edge of this large field for two hours or more ; warm showers have fallen at intervals through the day, and the sun has gone down, leaving a great broad line of saffron light edging the tops of the distant hills, with a great mass of warm grey rain clouds above it. Plovers come flapping from the sheepwalks on the hills above to the fresh-turned furrow below; it is too dusky to see them after they have settled, but their murmuring weet-zweets fall on the ear ; and then comes the chir-chir-chir-chir-chir-up-up, chir-er-er, chir-chir-up of the partridges, with a rush. Others sail over head as we lean over the old wooden gate that leads into the field, and a long jerking shadow flits past us, crossing the fresh-turned furrows ; it is a solitary hare that is hastening to join a regular hare frolic on the slopes of the upland pastures. No game bird that I am acquainted with is more able to take care of itself than the partridge is. I have known the birds lose their wits at times under exceptional circumstances, but not very often; for the partridge is the picture of dashing alertness. ; It has always been a joy to me to see a large covey melt away, so to speak, out of sight in a fallow field, where they have been confidently feeding, when we have very cautiously let them know that we were looking directly at them. ‘The old cock, that at times would stand nearly on end just to look all round him, I have seen lowering himself, as if some spring within him was gently getting limper and limper. Through my field-glass I have noted the outside birds raise their clean- cut heads for a second or two, then lower them, depress their tails to the ground, and glide towards the others ; a few brown dots showing, now here, now there, and the large covey is soon invisible if on a fallow field—not stubble, but old fallow lea. All our game birds possess this moon-seed property of making themselves practi- cally invisible when there is any necessity for their doing so. Before these violent changes occurred in our favourite Surrey moorland haunts I used often to amuse myself by watching black game being properly set up in a glass case. A blackcock in full breeding plumage is one of the most imposing and conspicuous birds you can look at; though the bird is out of his proper place when he is with the bird-preserver. The place to observe him is when he goes to feed on a dark patch of moor bog, with white and grey bleached stones cropping out of it. You will not see him before he dashes up in front of you; but this has often taken place when my eyes and ears have been opened to their widest. These few notes taken from the life, made as I have wandered, sketch-book and note-book in hand, and the birds before me, in the summer, and also in the bitter winter weather, have nothing to do with keepers or poachers. The so-called exposure of poaching manceuvres is utter nonsense. Rest assured that when keepers grind their teeth in impotent rage at certain jobs, they do not know much about how the thing is done, or they would certainly put a stop to it to save their places ; and poachers who are up to their business hold their tongues about it. When I read of whole coveys being netted, field after field, I feel simply disgusted at the mis- statements ; for if ever a bird slept witi one eye open, it is the partridge. As to the green plover, that frequents the same open fields, he walks in his sleep, and moans out his fezwét-weet-weet-weet ! One thing I am positive of: twenty pheasants come to grief for every single 5 yy g ) g 740 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. partridge. I should just like to see fields—at least in the Southern counties—swept over with gossamer silk nets, in the way some gentlemen, who know so precisely how the thing is done, try to explain so lucidly. Partridges pair, and they are devoted parents, not only when the chicks are out, but also when their broods are fully fledged. The wiles and shifts both parents will use to lure you away from their young, whom you so frequently startle from off some of the numerous ant-hills that crop up from the turf and ferns, must be seen to be credited ; it would be useless to attempt the description of it. Broken wings, broken legs, fits, and death-throes, all are gone through, close to your feet, in less time than it has taken us to mention these assumed afflictions, giving the young plenty of time to get to cover in all directions and into all sorts of places. Then, again, if you keep very quiet, you will presently hear the old birds call, and in less than a minute the little family will be busy round some ant-heap, as if nothing had disturbed them at all. COCK PARTRIDGE, No one ever dreams of hurting the innocent creatures ; there is the traditicnal folk-lore, and there are woodland laws, fully recognised by all classes. These have not the least bearing on the game laws, but they are equally strict, and must be acted upon. Even if some did feel disposed to break them, they could not do it, unless they were willing to be cut by all wood dwellers. Two very different kinds of ant-hills supply the eggs or ant pupz to the young of game birds, and of partridges in particular. First, there are the common emmet heaps, or ant-hills, which are scattered all over the land ; go where you will, you will find them. ‘These the birds scratch and break up, picking out the eggs as they fall from the light soil of the heaps; the partridges work them easily. But the ant-eggs proper—I am writing now from the game-preserving point of view—come from the nests or heaps of the great wood-ants—either the black or the red ants. ‘These are mounds of fir-needles, being, in many instances, as large at the bottom in circumference as a waggon-wheel, and from two to three feet in height ; even larger THE PARTRIDGE. 741 where they are very old ones. ‘They are found in fir woods, on the warm, sunny slopes under the trees, as a rule, pretty close to the stems of the trees. The partridges and their chicks do not visit these heaps, for they would get bitten to death by the ferocious creatures. ‘The keepers and their lads procure the eggs of these ; and a nice job it is! A wood-pick, a sack, and a shovel are the implements required for the work. Round the men’s gaiters or trousers leather straps are tightly buckled, to prevent, if possible, the great ants from fixing on them, as they will try to do, like bulldogs, when the heaps are harried. ‘The top of the heap is shovelled off, laying open the domestic arrangement of the ant-heap, and showing also the alarmed and furious ants trying to carry off their large eggs to a place of safety ; but it is all in vain! Eggs and all, they go into the sack. In spite of every precaution, the ant-egg getters do get bitten severely, for the ants would fix anything. They spit, as the men term it, their strong acid venomously. When a lot of heaps have been harried it smells as if some coarse kind of aromatic vinegar had been poured out under the trees. The ants revenge themselves in this fashion: they fix you with their pincers, then, HEN PARTRIDGE, bending their bodies between their legs, they eject the acid into the wound their strong pincers have made. ‘Thousands upon thousands of the creatures can be seen, raised up on their legs, their bodies bent underneath and forwards, spraying formic acid in all directions. If you place your hand over the great hollow in the heap it will get finely covered with it. I have been bitten by wood-ants, and have had to bear it; but it was a sore experience. No notice is taken of what a keeper or his lad may say when under punishment from ant-bites; they had need be forgiven if they use improper words to the grindstone after they have come home from ant-egg getting. These heaps are harried for the home-bred birds; that is, home- and hand-fec ones, both pheasants and partridges, hatched out by small game hens—game fowl kept specially for that purpose—from the eggs that have been taken from the outlying nests. Other strains of the domestic fowl are used, but the game hens are the favourite foster- parents. When the birds are fed with the eggs, as many of the ants as it is possible to get rid of are kept out, but some are sure to be mixed up with the eggs, and these fix on the feeding birds, making them jump off the ground. The common emmets, the creatures that the wild birds feed on—their young broods particularly—are harmless, but the large wood-ants are not. I have known them pull creatures to 742 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. pieces and eat them up so cleanly that their skeletons have been far better prepared than you would see them among specimens got up for anatomical purposes; in fact, some, who know what the ants can and will do, place small animals, ranging from rabbits and squirrels to mice, and birds, from the size of a partridge down to the golden-crested wren, in their nests. Ifa perfect skeleton is required of a viper, snake, slow-worm, toad, frog, or either of the lizards, place the reptile in one of these fir-needle heaps in some lonely place in the fir-woods—one that is not likely to be visited—and you will get what you want. In a dead, hard winter—in fact, such a one as our last (1892-3)—our friend the partridge is not put to it like his larger associates are, for the bird naturally is a ground one; all his living is got from it; he lives, broods, and jugs there. No matter how deep the snow may be, or how intense the frost, it does not cover up all places completely. Brambles, thorns, and dead bracken, tore grass, and bent tuffets may, to all appearance, look covered up, but it is not really so ; underneath all is warm and dry, and not a vestige of snow will you find there, unless you kick it in with your foot, or hit it with your stick to make it fall. Nature’s own pure covering this is, wherewith to protect her children. They know where to go, and how to form their shelters from all the winds that blow. As to feeding, not one-tenth part of the wild fruits and berries are gathered by human hands; and as to the plants that bear seed of some kind, who can tell how many provide food for the game birds, for they riper and fall, being unconsidered hedgerow and field plant provender. Hawkweeds, thistles, ground brambles, the trailing kind that runs over the pastures in places here and there, forming low clumps a few inches in height, are not exactly what a farmer would like to see in his pasture lands ; but as some of these at one time were part of the common lands, cultivation has not quite got rid of the vegetation indigenous to common land. No matter what the farmer may think, the birds know this is their own feeding range ; for the hedge dykes that surround these rough pastures have a growth of their own of kixes, wild parsnips, moth mullein, long grass and brambles, all of which are very long in decaying. ‘They dry up hard, and droop down ; their stems may be broken by the winds, but there they are, snow-covered certainly, but warmly covering in the dry ditches below them, so forming fine warm shelters for the partridges. Birds do not feel cold as common humanity does ; for putting quite on one side the feather quilts with which they are covered, their blood is much hotter than our own—that of game birds particularly so. There they are, about the middle of the field, heads down, backs up, and their tails drooped, busily feeding round the dead stems of some weeds and low brambles. ‘Ten or a dozen'of them there are, I fancy; for you can count more than you can see at all times ; and we can plainly see the bunched-up backs of nine. They are picking and scratching round and amongst the trailing brambles. None of the brambles lose all their leaves in the winter ; green and withered leaves can be seen on them, no matter how hard the weather may be. As the small fruit with large seeds is not considered worth picking, it drops, when dead ripe, and falls on the ground ; the pulp rots, but the seeds remain there, well protected by the tangle above them ; and the birds know of it. When hard times come they know where food can be found, and they get it as a rule. There are no rules, however, without exceptions. Partridges jug or roost in a sort of round robin fashion, their heads turned outwards, and their tails of course the reverse way. This is all right, and very nice when weather permits it ; but just before the sun, like a globe of fire seen through the cold grey clouds, gets very low down, the partridges make for warmer-quarters. I have remarked in some of my articles on natural life, furred and feathered, how very closely wild creatures at times will come to the localities where man has his home and THE PARTRIDGE. 743 surroundings. ‘The subject of this present article is a keen bird, and from time beyond record his race have kept near the tillers of the soil. If I wished to. find a covey at night, in such weather as I have just alluded to, I should know where to look for them ; and I should find them, snug and warm as toast, where no breath of wind or biting frost could reach them. But just where that particular place is, I must certainly decline to tell; and for very excellent reasons. I do not kill birds, nor have I the least wish to do so. One thing, however, I will say about it, and that is, the partridges would be where most would probably never dream of searching for them. The bird’s natural enemies are comparatively few, taking into consideration his ground habitat. Raptores, in Southern countries—the sparrow-hawk excepted—are very few ; and this hawk rarely kills the partridge, for the reason that hedgerow birds are so abundant, and they are a far easier quarry than our swift bird. I could, if I thought it necessary, give authentic information of the large bags of partridges made in past years ; but as this article deals more with the natural history of the brave bird than with the sport he provides, such records need not be given. Although the larger Raptores in Southern countries are conspicuous by their absence, when migrating time comes round some of these long and wide-winged beauties pass over the Southern countries in small numbers—a couple of pairs, or a single pair, as the case may be. Sometimes a few buzzards—a very few—either the rough-legged, common, or honey buzzard, are brought singly to me to look at, and there it ends. The only chance we have now of looking at one or two of the larger sort is when the corn is cut, and the partridges feed and shelter more in the root crops, turnips or swedes by preference. Mangolds, or “ wuzzles,” they work as well, but the turnips are favoured by them most. Harriers, at one time—the hen-harriers— were frequently to be seen on the wide heaths, commons, and moors which were so very numerous in this district, Surrey. ‘These when changes came about were killed, of course ; at least folks killed all they could. After forming their hunting-grounds for so many years, it is not to be wondered at if a pair still pay a passing visit when on flight, for the line of country is still the same ; that at any rate has not altered in its formation, although new comers have scratched about a bit. “ What are you looking at, my man, so intently?” I asked of a lad who was sheep tending. “Why, them ’ere big birds—hawks o’ some sort. I think they be arter the partridges.” Where 2” “Oh, you'll see ’em, no fear; they are gone up the walley now, they'll come back agin. ‘They’ve bin goin’ backwards an’ forrards fur sum time now. Don’t ye hear the birds holler? ‘They’re frittened at ’em, I ken tell ye. There they be! Ain’t they big uns ?” A pair of hen-harriers these were, partridge hawking—the grey cock and the larger ring-tailed hen—a fine sight. ‘They had not struck a quarry yet, for partridges do not let hawks get them if they can help it. The pair evidently thought they had been wasting time for no purpose, for they dashed past, over to a large field of swedes ; and here something must have told them they would meet with better success, for they set to work like a couple of pointers. We could see nothing of the partridges for the leaves. Once the ring-tail made a pounce, and we could hear the covey shriek in terror; but no capture was made. Presently the harriers changed their tactics, and they hunted the lines of swedes Vout. I.—No. 5. 49 744 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. backwards and forwards for a time, nearly over the whole length; then they shot back and worked across it, beginning at the far end, and working towards us. Not a foot of that field did the pair appear to miss, for we saw them well, as we were standing on a bit of a knob of ground overlooking the field. “ They’re workin’ on ’em up close now ; jist the same as my old dog corners my sheep. Them ’ere partridges wun’t be able to put up with much more on it.” Nor did they ; for at the last flight up the whole covey dashed out screaming from the corner of the field. Like lightning the hawks pounced—clap—clap! A cloud of feathers flew as each struck their bird, and that pair of harriers breakfasted on partridges. “A SON OF THE MARSHES.” ‘© HEN-HARRIERS” Gfarinda’s eauly. HE tree may win the stripling With its clusters round and red, And a shepherdess may languish Till his stlly mouth is fed; But Clarinda has an orchard Where sweet circles grow for me, And no shepherd, though he covet, Dares approach my cherry-tree ! The mistress airs her velvet Ev'ry Sunday down the arsle As the sunburnt farmers titter, And the saucy nilkmaids smile ; Though wt cost a mort of money And can make the children stare, ‘Tis a thistle to the softness That Clarinda’s cheek doth wear. But when my sweetheart dangles In the Avon as tt goes Fler feet, and cattle ponder On the marvel of her hose ; Not a virgin ever trusted Such a comely white as this Lo the chilly river fingers, And for water-lips to kiss / NORMAN GALE. 4 Y Y BR ~ THE PRODIGAL SUN—SIGNS OF THE SILLY SEASON—VAGARIES OF CONSTANT CORRE- SPONDENTS—VANITY FAIR AGAIN—DOES SATIRE DO ANY GOOD ?—STEAD AND SPOOKS — GROUSE AND MELODRAMA —IS ROBERT BUCHANAN A MAN ?— THE PLAGUE OF BIOGRAPHIES—FLORAL ADVERTISEMENTS—LONDON versus ABERDEEN —PROFESSOR BAIN—THE FOUNTAIN PUN. AOR many moons now have I gone oy about beneath the morbid influence — of a man I created—a man who got married by reason of a snowstorm the like of which the oldest inhabitant could not remember. My man took him a wife because he felt he ought not to cheat his grand- children out of so good a story. ‘Ah, my little ones, during that fearful frost an ox was roasted whole below London Bridge, without setting the Thames on fire!” Now, that man is riding me—I cannot shake him off. I know he will drive me to the altar and play best man. It is not the Royal Wedding that has turned my thoughts to matrimony and tales of a grandfather! ’Tis not that I may be able to mumble of the glories of the illuminations, and of the twenty thousand loyal voices singing “ Daisy! Daisy!” in the Strand at two o’clock of the morning; no, it is simply the weather of this year of grace that is luring me to the nuptial knot. Verily, it has been our Anmus mirabilis. As far back as March the sunshine was so con- tinuous that one felt frightened at one’s felicity, and tempted to sacrifice a day and do some work. Chaucer is avenged on the cheap humourists ;, Spring is vindicated for a generation, and May is merry beyond the reach of slander. The English summer has turned up at last, to testify to the good faith of the poets; and though for the next fifty years winter spend the summer with us, the old tradition will flourish, not to be tarnished by wind or rain. One swallow does not make a summer, but one summer makes 746 WITHOUT PREJUDICE, an epoch. But why all this extravagant spilth of sunshine? why this waste in one year of half a dozen fine seasons? The prodigal sun again ! was °@ so intense det an Ox was e roasted under London 4 EEONS _ Bridge (in the shade, : ‘mind you) without fire! And a Neapolitan ice, Charley, fetched —” But no, I must not think these volup- tuous thoughts. That * Way marriage lies ! ap OR this year’s Silly Season the weather has supplied an excellent topic, of which, you see, I have already taken advantage. I do not know ifI have “spotted” the favourite, for I have to make my book so long in advance that I do not even know the names of the entries. Perhaps we shall hold a public court-martial over the loss of the Victoria, and decide to husband our re- sources by going to war ; perhaps we shall be arguing whether the new Laureate is a poet ; perhaps we shall discuss what to do with our parents. SIGNS OF THE SILLY SEASON. A gooseberry that groweth green and great, A serpent round the sea serenely curled, A lonely soul that fails to find a mate, A boy redundant in a teeming world, A sister yearning for dead sisters’ shoes, A life that longs for death, or after-life, A ghost, a mistress whom her maids abuse, An erring judge, a French or German wife, A child’s long ear or holiday, a slum, A man gone bald, or drunk, a coin’s design— Should things like these across your paper come, Conclude the Silly Season will be fine. you have ever been struck by the o catholicity — not say the self- contradictori- ness — of the constant correspondent. The creature will enter with zest into any obscurest 747 discussion ; there is no topic too small for it, and certainly none too great. The following letters, carefully culled from the annual con- tributions of a lady whose epistolary career I have followed with interest, will indicate the delicious inconsequence that has made them for me such grateful reading ;—- 1888. SIR,— There is nothing in life worth purchasing by pulsations and respirations, The world is a dank, malarious marsh, with fitful Will-o’-the-Wisp flashes of false radiance—a vast cemetery waiting for our corpses, There is no such thing as happiness. “Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravin’, shrieks against” the idea. Youth is an illusion, and old age an apprehension. maturity a regret, Fortunately Pro- vidence has sent us a panacea-—Universal Suicide. I an, Sir, Yours obediently, AGATHA P, ROBINS. 1889. S1r,— Surely ‘‘A Mad Englishman” and ‘* Dorothy X.,” who maintain so glibly that country life is more enjoyable than town life, fail to realise how much of our pleasure depends on human jntercourse. It is given only to poets to talk with trees. Nor can ordinary mortals find ‘Sermons in stones, Books in the running brooks.” We need the cathedrals and the libraries that are to be found only in the great centres of national life—yes, and also the art-galleries and the theatres. Of course, if people will martyr themselves to keep up appearances, and want to live in a fashionable neighbourhoed, they will not find town life either cheap or pleasant. But if they are content to live outside the aristocratic radius, they can find many a comfortable villa, with baths (hot and cold) and back gardens which may easily be converted into rustic retreats (I would especially recommend rhododendrons). If you are also not above omni- buses (taking a cab only when it rains, and selecting a driver who does not look as if he would swear), and are satisfied to go to the pit, then I feel sure London is not only as cheap as the village, return for your money. but gives you a far greater Newly-married couples in especial often make a great mistake in settling in the country for the sake of economy. It is only in the town that they can really lead a tranquil, happy life, enriched with all the culture and civilisation. resources of Sir, Yours obediently, AGATHA P. I am, ROBINS. 748 THE PALL 1890. SIR,— The failure of marriage be glossed over any longer. ** A Woman of No Importance ” is too apparent to oA Ve a ed deserve the thanks of every honest heart for their brave outspokenness. Too long has this medizval monstrosity cramped our lives. The beautiful word ‘‘ Home” a doll’s Marriage is misery in two syllables. conceals house or whitewashes a_ sepulchre. How can people be happy chained together like galley- slaves? It contradicts all we know of human nature, * Love, free as air, at sight of human ties Spreads his light wings and in a moment flies.” Away with this effete Pharisaism ! Let us realise the infinite possibilities of happiness latent in the The world is longing for freedom to love truly, nobly, wisely, many. I an, Sir, blessing of existence. Yours obediently, AGATHA P. ROBINs. 1891. SIR,— I can testify by personal experience to the fact that teriorating. the manners of our children are de- Coming up to the Metropolis for a Bank Holiday, I without what my own expense—even from respectably- day’s excursion last could not walk anywhere ribald temarks—and, was worse, at dressed children. Let those look to it who ‘“Teach the young idea how to shoot.” I thank always been cast in Heaven my lot has a sweet where Devonshire _ village, N contagion of ill-conduct IX has not yet spread | * among the juvenile population. I am, Sir, § Yours obediently, AGATHA P, ROBINS. 1892. SIR,— Have your flippant correspondents, ‘‘ Poly- gamist ” and ‘‘ Illegal Brother-in-Law,” any con- ception of the thousands (ay, tens of thousands) of hearts that are languishing in misery because they cannot marry their deceased sisters’ husbands ? And all because of a text which is not to be found in the Bible! Fie upon you, ye so-called Bishops, “Dressed in a little brief authority,’ Abolish this unrighteous law, I say, and let floods of sunshine and happiness into a million darkened homes. I an, Sir, Yours obediently, AGATHA P. ROBINs. MALL overt rearing \ MAGAZINE. UT, after all, is it fair to juxtaposit Agatha’s letters? What if one were to collect the leaders of any news- paper on any given subject, before or after any event? I have met Agatha P. Robins in many other places at many other times. Sometimes she is interested in the best substitute for shirt-buttons or for Christianity, sometimes in the problem of living on a thousand a year, sometimes in the abolition of stag-hunting. It is difficult to trace exactly when “ The Season” ends and “ The Silly Season” gas It needs the finest discrimination to know when the ad- jective comes in — : eS without a wordly training, r\ indeed, you cannot tell WY; the one from the other. But /,m won the past masters of the social z= Shine art proclaim that “The Season”: is ~~ = ‘ dead, and we bow our bamwgaett heads in reverence. e * Yes, it is vanished, that a focus of futilities, that wonderful Season, that phantasmagoria of absurdities, of abortive ambitions, over which a hundred humourists have made merry: it is dead, with its splendours and _ jubila- tions and processions—dead as the ropes of roses in St. James’s Street. Often have I debated the potency of satire, again and again have I suggested to learned friends a scientific and historical investigation of the popular belief that satire moves mountains or even molehills. But they agree only in shrinking from the task. To take only the last half-century : we have had one supreme satirist who harped eternally on the failings of fashion and the vanity of things. In his novels society saw itself reflected in all its attitudes and postures and _posings. Not one meanness or folly escaped. What Professor Huxley has done for the crayfish, that Thackeray did for the Snob. He studied him lovingly, he dissected (9 him, he classified every variety of him. A thousand disciples, less gifted but equally re- morseless, followed in the Master’s footsteps. Pusch took up the tale, and week by week repeated the joke. It was heard in drawing-room recitations to the accompaniment of pianos; it even went on the stage. Ladies rushed New into print to expose foibles men never guessed, and to say of the sex at large what less gifted women say only of their personal friends. For years we have never ceased for 4 a moment to hear ] 7, 7 the lash of the Vy whip, the swish of the birch, the whizz of the arrow, the ping of the bullet, the thwack of the flail, the thud of the ham- mer, the buzzing of the hornet. And what does it all amount to? How much execu- tion has been done? Is society purer or nobler? Have less daugh- ters been sold at Vanity Fair, or more invitations been sent to poor relatives? Has Jones got better manners or champagne? Is Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkins more distant to duchesses? Did my Lady Clara Vere de Vere consider whether Hood’s seamstress was at work on her court gown? Is anyone wiser or kinder or honester for all the literary pother? Are the diplomatic corps less macu- late than in the days of Grenville Murray ? Have we not, on the contrary, cast on our own imperfections the complaisance of an eye educated in the superior imperfections of our neighbours ? O, here is a new satirist arisen, Sarah Jeannette Duncan, who, in Zhe Simple Adventures of a Memsahib, sketches Anglo-Indian Society in a manner that would not discredit Thackeray—and with something, too, of Thackeray’s haunting sense of the pathos of the dead Past and the flying Present. But will the memsahib of to-morrow take warning by the fate of Helen Peachey, who went out to India in all her bridal bravery, in all her youth and freshness ? Will she escape exchanging the placidity of Fra Angelico’s piping cherubim for the petulance and ring-shadowed eyes of the seasoned matron? Will she be on her guard against shrinking to the prejudices and flirtations of a coterie, dying to all finer and higher issues ? Will she worship virtue more and viceroys less? Alas, I fear me not—no more than Pagett, M.P., will leave off talking of solar myths, or foolish things cease to be done WITHOUT PREJUDICE. 749 under the deodars. Will Hogarth keep wine- bibbers from the bottle, or can you make men sober by acts of L’Assommoir? Will Madame Bovary stay a sister’s fall, or Sapho repel an eligible young man? Will the Dunciad keep one dunce from scribbling, or Le Tartufe elevate a single ecclesiastic? As well expect “ long firms” to run short, and the moths to avoid the footlights, and the fool to cease from the land. “ How gay they were, and how luxurious, and how important in their little day! How gorgeous were the attendants of their circumstance, on the box with a crest upon their turbans !—there is a firm in Calcutta that supplies beautiful crests. And now, let me think! some of them in the Circular Road Cemetery—cholera, fever, heat-apoplexy ; some of them under the Christian daisies of England—probably abscess of the liver.” Yes, madam, we know it all} we recognise the Thackeray touch. “And soon, very soon, our brief day, too, will have died in a red sunset behind clustering palms, and all its little doings and graspings and pushings, all its petty scandals and surmises and sensations, will echo further and further back into the night.” True, most true, and pity ’tis ’tis true. But meantime we will go on with our little doings and graspings and pushings—yes, madam, even you and I who have realised the vanity g@ of all things ; for the knowledge <7 thereof— this, too, is vanity. “And . it was /striv- all a_ striving and a ing, and an ending in (j ) nothing, and no one knew Git what they had lived and /~ ~~ “"=worked for.” Yea, so it is, Fraulein Schrei- ner. And still” , = we are living on and oh! { baad ,_- how hard we work = 7 ME on African farms or otherwhere) to express artistically our sense of the futility of life! VANITAS VANITATUM. A rich voluptuous languor of dim pain, A dreamy sense of passionate regret, Delicious tears and some sweet, sad refrain, Some throbbing, vague and tender canzonet, That mourns for life so real and so vain, Wherein we glory while our eyes are wet. 9AM afraid, if I pursue this investi- gation, I shall end by believing that satire is simply an zsthetic satisfaction 75° —the last luxury of the sinful. Ridicule, we are always told, is a tremendous de- structive—an atmosphere in which nothing can live. But is it? Christianity, Kings and War are little the worse for the jets of mockery that have been playing on them for two centuries. In Swift's day the wits at the coffee-houses regarded religion as a farce that even the Augurs could not keep up any longer without public winking ; yet Diderot and the encyclopedia are dead, and the bishops we have always with us! It was thought War could not survive Voltaire’s remark that a monarch picks up a parcel of men who have nothing to do, dresses them in blue cloth at two shillings a yard, and marches away with them to glory—but here is our Henley singing a song of the sword, while all our novelists are looking to their weapons. Despite Heine’s sarcasm, the collection of English kings is as incomplete as ever. A _ passing fad can, perhaps, be made to pass along a little faster, but it only makes room for another. True, Pusch killed the craze for sunflowers and long necks ; but then Punch invented it. It was merely made to be destroyed brilliantly, like a Chinese cracker or a Roman candle. Folly is older than Punch’s jokes, and will survive them. Snob- bery and self-seeking, pettiness and stupidity, envy, hate and all uncharitableness, were no secret to the mummies in the British Museum. rivers yo, thither they go again.” Are there not a hundred sayings in Ecclesiastes and Menander, in Horace and Moliére, as apt to- day as though fresh from the typewriter? One of the learned friends to whom I proposed the thesis contended that Perseus and Juvenal at least are out of date. But this was merely my learned friend’s ignor- ance. Is it not the truest piety to conclude that those things which the ridicule of the ages cannot kill deserve their immortality— that Kings, War, and Christianity play a part in the scheme of creation, and that even snobbery and jobbery, folly and fraud, rouge and respectability, and horseracing, bounders and politicians, the prize-ring and the mar- riage market, are all necessary to the fun of Vanity Fair! They are thrown up by the flux of things for Honesty to set his heel on. So houp-la! On with the dance ! louder, ye fiddlers ! faster, O merry-go-round ! ay, not so glum, ye moralists and _satirists, “Unto the place whither the 2 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE. philanthropists and preachers ; link hands all—ducdame, aducdame | — and thank the gods for keep- ing you in occupation. Wo has should we - e ——— do without our fools? The question seems put for a Silly Season correspondence. Come, gather, fools all. Ye could not be better employed than in answering it. For, mark, brother-satirists mine, you cannot kill the Silly Season correspondence. And you cannot kill Ghosts. Perhaps because they do not exist. No other dead thing is so tenacious of life as your ghost. If ridicule were really fatal, we should have given up the ghost long since. Consider the fires of burlesque through which he has passed unscathed. What indignity has been spared him? Now at last he is to encounter the supreme test—he is to be taken seriously. Mr. Stead has the matter in hand—or should one say, the spirit? Once a quarter there will be a pilgrimage to Borderland (terms, 10s. 6d. per annum). who Mr. Stead, believes in himself in a way that is refreshing in these atheistic times, will either rehabilitate the ghost or lay him for ever. Now, for my part, I am quite willing he shall be treated scientifically, like the aforesaid crayfish, or the Mammoth, or the movement of glaciers; and that Clairvoyance, Telepathy, Wraiths, Spirit Photography, Magic, Astrology, Theo- sophy, and the rest shall have a fair hearing. I have myself wasted hours in making a hat climb and do tricks. You and another person—a pretty girl by preference—join finger-tips round the rim of the hat, which rarely disappoints. But whether its perform- ance is due to the generation of a current of electricity, or to unconscious muscular pressure, or to both, I have never been able to decide. The faithful will do well to re- member that the moment the Supernatural is attested and classified, it becomes as natural as anything else. The world is only made to look more ridiculous than it appears already if our deceased friends really rap tables and pull off our bedclothes, as Miss Florence Marryat’s did. Certainly such spooks add nothing to the dignity and sanctity of the scheme of creation, and are no friends to religion. That charming woman, Mrs. Besant (who up to the moment of going to press is still a theosophist), is always rushing at conclusions ; and even Mr. Stead considers that the best working hypothesis is the existence of unembodied intelligences, invisible but capable of impressing the mind —a theory already exploited in fiction by Robert Barr in his clever tale “ From whose Bourne,” wherein the disembodied intelli- gence of Lecoq blunders badly in tracking a criminal. Theosophists, being gifted by Heaven with an absence of humour, propound some propositions so absurd that they do not deserve to be true. Their reading of the riddle of this painful earth explains obscurum per obscurius. Where is the point of a pro- gression through stages, in the absence of a continued consciousness? What does it matter if I am not myself, but somebody else in his fifth plane? And why do the Mahatmas live in such out-of-the-way places ? They are like your debtors—always out when you call, while your letters to them return marked “Gone away. Left no address.” Decidedly I agree with Mrs. Besant’s anta- gonist, Mrs. Frederika Macdonald, that it is better to bear the religions we know than fly to others that we know not of. ND you cannot kill Grouse. At least I I sometimes suspect there are others of the population equally in- competent, and perhaps still less inter- ested in battues; though the Twelfth figures in everybody’s calendar like a Church festival, and the newspapers devote leaders to it, and the comic papers have pictures, and sometimes even jokes about it, and you would think the whole population of these islands struck work and went a- shooting with gillies and dogs and appropriate costume. But A that is the craftiness of the - editors, from Mr. Buckle and Mr. Yates down to the editor of the Halfpenny WITHOUT PREJUDICE. 751 Democrat —they make the humblest of us feel we are in the best sets, [Korree paace_] so we all cume up to town ie for the season, and are seen at three parties a night, and we ride in the Park, and we go to Henley and Goodwood to a man; and we yacht at Cowes, and pot grouse in Scotland —still with the same _ wonderful unanimity ; and we hunt with the hounds, and run with the salmon, and keep our Christmas in country houses, and come up smiling for the New Year, ready to recommence the same old Sisyphean round. I suppose the people who really do these things could be exhibited in the National Gallery, but the space their doings fill is incalculable. Sy ND you cannot kill Adelphi Melo- cl drama. True, several specimens of it have latterly died an early death ; but that was because the authors, stung by the new criticism, weakly developed aspirations after literature and romance. was the old stage-carpenter, Mr. Pettitt, ” called in, and the old machinery of murder’ set going again, than the old pilgrimage set in to the temple of the brothers Gatti (Gatti Adelphi, as the Greeks would say). Mr. Pettitt the cleverest playwright (as distinct from playwriter) of the day; he is a Surrey Sardou, and never makes a failure, except when assisted. Now, I have a piece of advice to offer to the Italian gentlemen who have done so much for our drama. It is, that they run their theatre on a principle of duality be- fitting their joint management. Let it be the home of Melodrama and Burlesque, the same play serving for both genres. Let, say, Mr. Sims—who is so clever in either species—write the pieces —each melodrama being its own burlesque. But no sooner is there, with a serious meaning droll in the burlesque, will secure the brothers two au- diences, and after eight o’clock I guarantee An extra dash of colour here, an ambiguous line in the melodrama and a 752 THE PALL standing room only. The simple will come to weep and thrill, the cynics to laugh and chuckle. And everybody will be happy. aN sooth, is not the world divided into RE those who take the great cosmic drama seriously, and those who treat it as farce? On the one hand the workers and the fighters, on the other the journalists, politicians, and men about town. Yet have the workers and the fighters the nobler part. A genuine emotion, an earnest conviction, vitalises life. The day-dreams of hungry youth are better than the dinners of prosaic maturity, and a simple maiden in her youth is worth a hundred epigrams. I had rather be an Adelphi god than a smoking-room satyr. IMNay- Wi He writes for those to whom litera- ~ ture makes no appeal. Literature is a freemasonry of the highest minds, and that poetry is Greek to the masses I should scarcely have thought a “Question at Issue ” demanding substantiation from Mr. Gissing. Mr. Gosse must know eclipse which darkened England at the passing of Alfred Tennyson was invented by the newspapers and the poets who out- raced one another to weep upon his tomb. Look upon Mr. Booth’s map of East London, with its red lines showing the swarms of human beings who live ignobly and die obscurely, and realise for yourself of what import the cult of beautiful form is to these human ant-heaps. Walk down the populous Whitechapel Road of a Saturday night, | or traverse the long slimy alleys of Rotherhithe among the timber wharves, and discover how many of MW your countrymen and contemporaries are living neither in your country nor in your century. To Mr. Henry James, the dull undertone of pain and sorrow is part of the music of London—such harmony is in zesthetic souls. But the dull and the gross, who only suffer and endure, the muddy vesture of decay closes them in and they cannot hear it. HO shall blame the melodramatist ? George that the MALL MAGAZINE. A HAT shall literature do for these? In Ra great smoky Midland town, on dreary pavements, under sloppy skies, I saw a girl who was a greater argu- ment for melodrama than all the cheques of all the managers. She was going to her work in the raw dawn, her lunch in a package under her arm ; the back was bent and the face was pale and pinched, but there was a slumbering fire of romance in the deep-fringed eyes, and suggestions of poetry lurked in the shadows of her hair ; and at once my breast was full of stirrings to write for her—only for her—a book full of beauty and happiness and sunshine, and, oh ! such false views of life, such inaccurate pictures of the pleasures of a society she would never know. The hero should be handsome and brave and good, with a curl- ing moustache ; and the heroine should be beautiful and true, with an extensive ward- robe; and the clouds would come only to roll by, and the story should die away in an odour of orange-blossom, and in a music of marriage-bells. And there should be lots of money for everybody, and any amount of laughter and gaiety, and I would give dances twice a volume, and see that all the girls had partners, delightful waltzers with good con- versation. And there would be garden- parties (weather permitting invariably), and picnics without green spiders, and sails with- out sea-sickness. And as for truth and realism —fie on them! We can create a much nicer world than nature’s. Why be plagiarists, when we can make universes of our own ? poets when he launched his brilliant lines against “The Dismal Throng.” But Mr. Buchanan’s invective—like Miss Marie Corelli’s—would be more forcible if it were less indiscriminate. To attack Shakespeare and Tupper in the same breath were to do Tupper a good turn Moreover, it is but a few months ago that Mr. Buchanan appeared as the author of one of the dis- malest poems of the century,—pessimistic as “Queen Mab”—following it up by an avowal in the Daily Chronicle that he could not believe in God because of the agonies of his pet monkey. Here we have him once more a rampant theist and optimist. so self-contradictory He is that I am WITHOUT PREJUDICE. reluctantly driven to the belief that he is an honest man. But why does he not write under my title ? #R are there many Buchanans whom we have all been ignorantly confound- ing? The biographer of the future will be wiser. He will distinguish between the poet Buchanan, who knows nature, and the dramatist of the same name who doesn’t. There is a second poet, Thy Byronic, and brilliant, who is only i nominally the same as Buchanan the mystic (not to be confused with 6 Buchanan the ma- 2) terialist, who is of a , corpulent habit, and \ lunches at Rule’s). i\«\ There is also i Buchanan the Complete Letter- Writer, who is unrelated to § Buchanan the author of “ Chris- ? tian Romances,”— who, in his turn, suffers from being often identified with the Buchanan who writes novels for the old person; and it need hardly be said that none of these gentle- men is Buchanan the essayist, or Buchanan the business man, who lives in a fine suburban villa. They were all born in different years, and some of them are dead. Several are men of genius, and one or two are Philistines whom the others dislike. %|UT the biographer of the future will | hardlybe able, even if he takes all these men for one, to make a bigger book than Lady Burton has made out of her hus- band. I yield to none in admiration for the late Sir Richard ; but I could wish his widow had treated his life as untenderly as she treated some of his risky translations. No man can possibly deserve two huge volumes. The perspective is all wrong. Bossuet got the history of the world into a fifth of the space. Moral : Beware of biographical widows. VIVE LA Mort! Wa, HEREFORE do the critics rage ? ’Tis the biographic age! Every dolt who duly died In a book is glorified 753 Uniformly with his betters ; All his unimportant letters Edited by writers gifted, Every scrap of MS. sifted, Classified by dates and ages, Pages multiplied on pages, Till the man is—for their pains— Buried ’neath his own Remains. Every day the craze grows stronger, Art is long, but “ lives” are longer. They who were the most in view Block the stage Jost mortem too. Hark the tongues of either sex— Reminiscences of X ! Of his juvenile affections Hundreds write their Recollections, (None will recollect their writings) Telling of his love for whitings Fried in butter, or his fancy For bananas, buns and Nancy. Thank the gracious gods on high, Every day some “ Life” must die : Death alone is our salvation. Though ’tis dubious consolation That of all these countless “ Lives ” Only the Unfit survives. WONDER if this evil would come within the scope of the “ Society for Checking Abuses of Public Ad- vertising” ! Certainly the eyesore evil is not the sole abuse of advertisement. Yet, as it is the easiest to tackle, Mr. Richardson Evans may effect some good by his plea entitled “The Age of Disfigurement.” Whether London be beautiful, as Mr. Henry James certifies, or the monstrous wen that Mr. Grant Allen, with his fondness for extreme proposition, would make it out, it is not improved by mural decorations repre- senting ladies with their back hair down, or demons cycling down chutes. Within bounds advertisements do no harm—they are a sort of artificial vegetation that springs up to hide walls and blank hoardings. But they do not keep within bounds ; they are a leprosy on the face of the earth. How disgraceful the long unlovely street of advertisements that leads to our South Kensington exhibitions ! 754 THE PALL It has been suggested that flypapers should be so sprinkled as to produce an esthetic design in dead flies, so as to introduce beauty into the homes of the poor. It would be more in harmony with the age to lay out our public gardens with floral injunctions to use oer Brag and 3’s hair-dye and C’s corn-plaster. display are the road to riches, and the trail _I take credit to myself for having been among the first to cry in the wilderness ; but the critics them! —say it is all empty paradox. of vulgarity is over it all. bless THANK you sincerely, Mr. Arthur Cawston, for the honour you have done me in dedicating to me your “Comprehensive Scheme for Street Im- provements in London.” All the same I cannot afford to buy a copy, though I hope many of your other “ Fellow-townsmen ” who share the honour with me will put down their guineas. Like Mr. Grant Allen, you allow too little for the charm of irregularity and historical association—for odd bits and queer views coming unexpectedly round the corner to meet one, for ancient gardens and fragments of field in the back- ways of Holborn, for quaint waterside alleys and old-world churches in out-of-the-way turnings—for everything, in fact, that has the charm of natural growth. strange I would not give up Booksellers’ Row for a thousand improve- ments in the Strand. Where shall you find a more piquant peace than in the shady quadrangles that branch out of the bustle of Fleet Street, and flash a memory of Oxford spires or Cambridge gardens on the inner eye? What spot in the world has inspired a nobler sonnet than Wordsworth’s on West- minster Bridge? = lh Fiala... Who would ex- oe halle change our happy incongruity for the mechanical regularity of the mushroom cities of the States? Paris MALL MAGAZINE. has, no doubt, made herself beautiful ; but she could have afforded not to be much better than she can afford to be. Mr. Cawston holds up Glasgow as a model city— a pioneer—and the splendour of its municipal buildings is as the justice of Aristides. But if an ugly woman does not dress well, who should? With all its civic spirit, Glasgow remains grey, prosaic, intolerable—the cham- pion platitude of commercial civilisation. Aberdeen would have been a far finer example of the schematic city of which theorists dream, There is something heroic about the spaciousness of its streets, the loftiness of the buildings, and the omnipresence of granite—a Tyriazean spirit, which finds its supreme embodiment in the noble statue of Wallace poised on rough craglets of un- polished granite, and of General Gordon with his martial cloak around him. If Edinburgh be the Athens of Scotland, Aberdeen is its Sparta. And yet after a while Aberdeen becomes a weariness and an abomination. For you discover that it is one endless series of geometrical diagrams. The pavements run in parallel .lines, the houses are rectilineal, the gardens are squares or oblongs; if by chance the land sprawls in hillocks and _ hollows, nevertheless, is it partitioned in rigid lines. The architecture is, equally austere. The very curves demon- strate the theorem that a curve is made up of little straight lines, the arches are stiff and unbending, and wherever a public building demands an ornament, a fir-shaped cone of straight lines rises in stoic severity. In vain one seeks for a refuge from Euclid—for an odd turning or a crooked by-way. To match the straightness of their streets and the granite of their structures the Aberdonians are hard-headed, close-fisted, and logical (there is a proverb that no alien can settle among them), and when they die they are laid out neatly in a rectangular cemetery with parallel rows of graves. Even when they stand about gossiping they fall naturally into geometric figures: if two disconnected men are smoking silently in the roadway, they trisect it; and if another man arrives he converts the company into an equilateral triangle. I am convinced the moon shrinks from appearing in Union Street except it is in perfect quarters, and hides timidly behind a cloud unless its arcs are presentable. Professor Bain was born in Aberdeen. This accounts for much in our British metaphysics. Aberdeen produced the man who vivisected Shelley’s “ Skylark,” and explained away the human mind and all that is therein ; Aber- deen educated him, graduated him, married him,