McMillan's Magazine 1872-11: Vol 27 Iss 157

MACMILLAN’S MAGAZINE.

NOVEMBER, 1872.

THE GENIUS OF SOPHOCLES.’

Tue most brilliantly joyous of all
comedies were brought out in a city
vexed during the years that gave them
birth by every kind of misery in turn ;
by want and pestilence, by faction and
the mutual distrust of citizens, by
defeat on land and sea, by the sense of
abasement and the presage of ruin.
During more than twenty years of war
Aristophanes was the best public teacher
of Athens; but there were times when
distraction was more needed than advice.
One of the best of his plays belongs to
the number of those which were meant
simply to amuse the town at a time
when it would have been useless to lash
it. The comedy of the “Frogs” came out
in a season of gloomy suspense—just
after Athens had made a last effort in
equipping a fleet, and was waiting for
decisive news from the seat of war; in
January of 405 B.c., eight months before
Egospotami and about fifteen months
before the taking of Athens by Lysander.
A succession of disasters and seditions
had worn out the political life of the
city ; patriotic satire could no longer
find scope in public affairs, for there
were no longer any vital forces which
it could either stimulate or combat.
Nor could the jaded minds of men at
such a time easily rise into a region of
pure fancy, as when nine years before,
on the eve of the last crisis in the war,
Aristophanes had helped them to forget

1 A Lecture delivered in Dublin before the
Society for Afternoon Lectures on Literature
and Art.

No. 157.—vow. xxvii.

scandals of impiety and misgovernment
on a voyage to his city in the clouds.
What remained was to seek comfort
or amusement in the past ; and since
the political past could give neither,
then in the literary past—in the glories,
fading now like other glories, of art and
poetry.

It was now just fifty years since the
death of Aischylus. It was only a
few months since news had come from
Macedonia of the death of Euripides.
More lately still, at the end of the year
before, Sophocles had closed a life blessed
from its beginning by the gods and now
happy in its limit; for, as in his boyhood
he had led the pzan after Salamis, so
he died too soon to hear the dirge of
Imperial Athens—the cry, raised in
the Peireus and caught up from point
to point through the line of the Long
Walls, which carried up from the harbour
to the town the news of the overthrow
on the Hellespont.

With the death of Euripides and the
death of Sophocles so recent, and no
man living who seemed able to replace
them, it might well seem to an Athenian
that the series of the tragic masters was
closed. In the “Frogs” Aristophanes
supposes Dionysus, the god of dramatic
inspiration, going down to the shades,
to bring back to Athens, bheggared of
poets and unable to live without them,
the best poet that could be found below.
It is hard to imagine anything more
pathetic than an Athenian audience
listening, at just that time, to that

vy

2 The Genius of Sophocles.

comedy in the theatre of Dionysus; in
view of the sea over which their empire
was even then on its last trial; sur-
rounded by the monuments of an empire
over art which had already declined—
in the building, at once theatre and
temple, which the imagination of the
poets lately dead had long peopled with
the divine or heroic shapes known to
them and their fathers, but in which,
they might well forebode, the living
inspiration of the god would never be
so shown forth again.

The interest of the comedy does not
depend, however, merely on its character
of epilogue to a school of tragic drama
so masterly, of so short an actual life,
of so perpetual an influence; it takes
another kind of interest from the just-
ness of its implicit criticism; the
criticism of a man whose wit would
not have borne the test of centuries
and the harder test of translation, if he
had not joined to a quick fancy the
qualities which make a first-rate critic.

When Dionysus reaches the lower
world, an uproar is being raised among
the dead. It has been the custom that
the throne of Tragedy, next to Pluto’s
own, shall be held by a laureate for the
time being, subject to removal on the
coming of a better. For some time
fEschylus has held the place of honour.
Euripides, however, has just come down ;
the newer graces of his style, which he
lost no time in showing off, have taken
the crowd; and their applause has
moved him to claim the tragic throne.
/Eschylus refuses to yield. As the only
way of settling the dispute, scales are
brought ; the weightiest things which
the rivals can offer are compared ; and
at last the balance inclines for A‘schylus,
But where, in the meantime, is Sopho-
cles? He, too, is in the world of the
dead, having come down just after
Euripides. “Did he” (asks Xanthias,
the slave of Dionysus) “lay no claim
to the chair?” “ No, indeed, not he,”
answers J/Zacus: ‘“No—he kissed
A’schylus as soon as he came down, and
shook hands with him ; and A‘schylus
yielded the throne to him. But just
now he meant, Cleidemides said, to hold
himself in reserve, and, if dischylus

won, to stay quiet; if not, he said he
would try a bout with Zuripides.”

It is in this placing of Sophocles rela-
tively to the disputants, even more
than in the account of the contest, that
Aristophanes has shown his appreciative-
ness, While he seems to aim merely
at marking by a passing touch the good-
humoured courtesy of Sophocles, he
has, with the happiness of a real critic,
pointed out his place as a poet. The
behaviour of Sophocles in the “ Frogs”
just answers to his place in the literary
history of his age. This place is fixed
chiefly by the fact that Sophocles was a
poet who did not seek to be a prophet ;
who was before all things an artist ;
and who, living in the quiet essence of
art, represented the mind of his day
less by bringing into relief any set
tendencies than by seizing in its highest
unity the total spirit of the world in
which he lived and of the legendary
world in which his fancy moved, and
bringing the conflicts of this twofold
world into obedience, as far as possible,
to the first law of his own nature—
harmony. The workings of this instinct
of harmony will be best seen, first, by
viewing Sophocles as a poet in two
broad aspects—in regard to his treat-
ment of the heroic legends and in his
relation to the social ideas of the age
of Pericles; next, by considering two
of his special qualities—the quality
which has been called his irony, and
his art of drawing character.

The national religion of Greece was
based upon genealogy. It carried back
the mind by an unbroken ascent from
living men to heroes or half-gods who
had been their forefathers in the flesh,
and thence to gods from whom these
heroes had sprung. The strength of a
chain is the strength of its weakest
part; enfeeblement of belief in the
heroes implied enfeeblement of belief in
the gods. The decreasing vividness of
faith in the heroes is the index of
failing life in the Greek national re-
ligion.

At the beginning of the fifth century
before Christ this belief in the heroes
was real and living. The Persian Wars
were wars of race, the first general con-

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The Genius

flict of Hellene with barbarian ; and it
was natural that in such a conflict the
Greek mind should turn with longing
and trust towards those kindred heroes
of immortal blood who long ago had
borne arms for Achaia against Asia. It
was told how, on the day of Marathon,
the Athenian ranks had been cheered
by the sudden presence among them of
Theseus ; while through the press of
battle two other combatants had been
seen to pass in more than earthly
strength, the hero Echetlus and he who
had given his name to the field. Just
before the fight at Salamis a Greek ship
was sent with offerings to the tombs of
the Aacide in A®gina; and when the
pean sounded and the fleets closed, the
form of a colossal warrior was seen to
move over the battle, and the Greeks
knew that the greatest of the acid
line, the Telamonian Ajax, was with
them that day, as he had been with their
fathers at Troy.

But from the moment when the united
Greek effort against Persia was over, the
old belief which it had made to start up
in a last glow began to die out. The
causes of this decline were chiefly three.
First, the division of once-united Greece
into two camps—the Athenian and the
Spartan,—a division which tended to
weaken all sentiments based on the idea
of a common blood ; and the belief in
the heroes as an order was one of these
sentiments. Secondly, the advance of
democracy, which tended to create a
jealous feeling and a sarcastic tone in
regard to the claims of the old fami-
lies; chief among which claims was
that of kinship with the gods through
the heroes. Thirdly, the birth of an
historical sense. Before the Persian
crisis history had been represented
among the Greeks only by local or
family traditions. The Wars of Libera-
tion had given to Herodotus the first
genuinely historical inspiration felt by a
Greek. These wars showed him that
there was a corporate life, higher than
that of the city, of which the story
might be told ; and they offered to him
as a subject the drama of the collision
between East and West. With him,
the spirit of history was born into

of Sophocles. 3

Greece ; and his work, called after the
nine Muses, was indeed the first utter-
ance of Clio. The historical spirit was
the form in which the general seepticism
of the age acted on the belief in the
heroic legends. For Herodotus himself,
the heroes are still godlike. But for
Thucydides, towards the end of the
century, the genuine hero-ship of Aga-
memnon and Pelops is no more; he
criticises their probable resources and
motives as he might have discussed the
conduct or the income of a contemporary.
They are real to him; but they are
real as men ; and, for that very reason,
unreal as claimants of a half-divine
character.

The great cycles of heroic legends
furnished the principal subjects of Attic
tragedy. Three distinct methods of
treating these legends appear in AZschy-
lus, Sophocles, and Euripides,

The spirit of Aéschylus is in all things
more Hellenic than Atheriian. The Pan-
hellenic heroism of which in the struggle
with Persia he had himself been a witness
and a part is the very inspiration of his
poetry. For him those heroes who were
the common pride of the Greek race
are true demigods. In his dramas they
stand as close to the gods as in the
Tliad; and more than in the Iliad do
they tower above men. With him
their distinctive attribute is majesty ; a
majesty rather Titanic than in the proper
Greek sense heroic. What, it may be
asked, is the basis of this Titanic majesty ?
It would be easy to say that the effect
is wrought partly by pomp and weight
of language, partly by vagueness of out-
line. But the essential reason appears
to be another. The central idea of
Greek tragedy is the conflict between
free-will and fate. In Aischylus this
conflict takes its simplest and therefore
grandest form. No subtle contrivance,
no complexity of purposes, breaks the
direct shock of the collision between
man and destiny. Agamemnon before
the Fury of his house is even as Pro-
metheus facing Zeus.

In thus imagining the heroes as dis-
tinctly superhuman, and as claiming
the sympathy of men rather by a bare
grandeur of agony than by any closely-

B 2

4 The Genius of Sophocles.

understood affinity of experience, Aschy-
lus was striving to sustain a belief which
had not gone out of his age, but which
was dying. In his mid-career, about
ten years before his Oresteia, the so-
called relics of Theseus found at Scyros
were brought to Athens by Cimon and
laid in a shrine specially built for them.
The distinctly religious enthusiasm then
shown implies the old faith. It is hard
to suppose that a like incident could
have brought out a like public feeling
even thirty years later.

Euripides, towards the end of the
century, stood in nearly the same rela-
tion to his contemporaries as that of
Eschylus to his at the beginning: that
is, he was in general agreement with
their beliefs, but held to some things
from which they were going further and
furtheraway. The national religion was
now all but dead. By the side of
philosophic scepticism had come up the
spurious scepticism which teachers of
rhetoric had made popular. The devo-
tional need, so far as it was felt, was
usually satisfied by rituals or mysteries
brought in from abroad ; the old creed
was not often attacked, but there was
a tacit understanding among “able ” men
that it was to be taken allegorically ;
and a dim, silently spreading sense of
this had further weakened its hold upon
the people. What, then, was a tragic
poet todo? The drama was an act of
worship; the consecrated mythology
must still supply the greatest number
of its subjects. Euripides solved the
problem partly by realism, partly by
antiquarianism. He presented the hero
as a man, reflecting the mind as well as
speaking the dialect of the day ; and he
made the legend, where he could, illus-
trate local Attic tradition. The reason
why this treatment failed, so far as it
failed, has not always been accurately
stated. Euripides has sometimes been
judged as if his poetical fault had been
in bringing down half-gods to the level
of men and surrounding them with
mean and ludicrous troubles. Probably
this notion has been strengthened by
the scene in the “Acharnians” (the really
pointed criticisms of Aristophanes upon
Euripides are to be found elsewhere),

in which the needy citizen calls on
Euripides and begs for some of the rags
in which he has been wont to clothe
his heroes ; and the tragic poet tells his
servant to look for the rags of Telephus
between those of Thyestes and those of
Ino. But the very strength of Euri-
pides lay in a deep and tender com-
passion for human suffering: if he had
done nothing worse to his heroes than
to give them rags and crutches, his
power could have kept for them at
least the sympathy due to the sordid
miseries of men ; he would only have
substituted a severely human for an
ideal pathos. His real fault lay in the
admission of sophistic debate. A drama
cannot be an artistic whole in which
the powers supposed to control the issues
of the action represent a given theory
of moral government, while the agents
are from time to time employing the
resources of rhetorical logic to prove
that this theory is either false or
doubtful.

Between these two contrasted con-
ceptions—the austere transcendentalism
of Aischylus and the sophistic realism
of Euripides—stands the conception of
Sophocles. But Sophocles is far nearer
to Aischylus than to Euripides ; since
Sophocles and A®schylus have this
affinity, that the art of both is ideal.
The heroic form is in outline almost the
same for Sophocles as for A®schylus ;
but meanwhile there has passed over it
such a change as came over the statue
on which the sculptor gazed until the
stone began to kindle with the glow
of a responsive life, and what just now
was a blank faultlessness of beauty
became loveliness warmed by a human
soul. Sophocles lived in the ancestral
legends of Greece otherwise than
“Eschylus lived in them. A’schylus
felt the grandeur and the terror of their
broadest aspects, their interpretation of
the strongest human impulses, their
commentary on problems of destiny :
Sophocles dwelt on their details with
the intent, calm joy of artistic medita-
tion; believing their divineness ; finding
in them a typical reconciliation of forces
which in real life are never absolutely
reconciled—a concord suchas the musical

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instinct of his nature assured him must
be the ultimate law; recognizing in
them, too, scope for the free exercise of
imagination in moral analysis, with-
out breaking the bounds of reverence ;
for, while these legends express the con-
flict between necessity and free-will,
they leave shadowy all that conflict
within the man himself which may
precede the determination of the
will.

The heroic persons of the Sophoclean
drama are at once human and ideal.
They are made human by the distinct
and continuous portrayal of their chief
feelings, impulses, and motives. Their
ideality is preserved chiefly in two
ways. First, the poet avoids too
minute a moral analysis; and so each
character, while its main tendencies are
exhibited, still remains generic, a type
rather than a portrait. Secondly—and
this is of higher moment—the persons
of the drama are ever under the directly
manifested, immediately felt control of
the gods and of fate. There is, indeed,
no collision of forces so abrupt as in
Aéschylus ; since the ampler unfolding
of character serves to foreshow, and
sometimes to delay, the catastrophe.
On the other hand, there is no trace of
that competition between free thought
and the principle of authority which is
often so jarring in the plots of Euripides.
In the dramas of Sophocles there is
perfect unity of moral government ; and
the development of human motives,
while it heightens the interest of the
action, serves to illustrate the power of
the gods.

The method by which Sophocles thus
combines humanity with idealism may
be seen in the cases of Ajax, of (2dipus,
and of Heracles,

Ajax had been deprived of the arms
of Achilles by the award of the Atreide.
The goddess Athene, whom he had
angered by arrogance, had seized the
opportunity of his disappointment and
rage to strike him with madness. In
this frenzy he had fallen upon the flocks
and herds of the Greek army on the
plain of Troy, and had butchered or
tortured them, thinking that he was
wreaking vengeance on his enemies.

The Genius of Sophocles. 5

When he comes to his senses, he is
overpowered by a sense of his disgrace,
and destroys himself.

The central person of this drama be-
comes buman in the hands of Sophocles
by the natural delineation of his anguish
on the return to sanity. Ajax feels the
new shame added to his repulse as any
man of honour would feel it. At the
same time he stands above men. An
ideal or heroic character is lent to him,
partly by the grandeur with which two
feelings—remorse, and the sense that
his dishonour must be effaced by death
—absolutely predominate over all other
emotions, as over pity for Tecmessa and
his son ; chiefly by his terrible nearness
to Athene, as one whom with her own
voice she had once urged to battle, pro-
mising her aid—when, face to face with
her, he vaunted his independence of her,
and provoked her anger ;—then, as the
blinded victim whom she, his pretended
ally, had stung into the senseless slaughter
—lastly,as the conscious, broken-hearted
sufferer of her chastisement.

In the farewell of Ajax to Tecmessa
and the seamen who had come with him
from Salamis to Troy—a farewell really
final, but disguised as temporary under
a sustained (though possibly unconscious)
irony—the human and the heroic ele-
ments are thus blended :—

“ All things the long and countless
years first draw from darkness, then
bury from light; and nothing is past
hope, but there is confusion even for
the dreadful oath and for the stubborn
will. For even I, I once so wondrous
firm, like iron in the dipping felt my
keen edge dulled by yon woman’s words ;
and I have ruth to leave her a widow
with my foes, and the boy an orphan.
But I will go to the sea-waters and the
meadows by the shore, that in the purg-
ing of my stains I may flee the heavy
anger of the goddess. . . . Henceforth
I shall know how to yield to the gods
and learn to revere the Atreidz : they
are rulers, so we must submit. Of
course, dread things and things most
potent bow to office. Thus it is that
the snow-strewn winters give place to
fruitful summer ; and thus Night’s weary
round makes room for Day with her

6 The Genius of Sophocles.

white horses to kindle light ; and the
breath of dreadful winds at last gives
slumber to the groaning sea ; and, like
the rest, almighty Sleep looses whom he
has bound, nor holds with an eternal
grasp. And we, shall we not learn dis-
cretion? I chiefly, for I have newly
learned that our enemy is to be hated
but so far as one who will hereafter be
a friend ; and towards a friend I would
wish so far to show aid and service as
knowing that he will not always abide.
For to most men the haven of friend-
ship is false. But all this will be well.—
Woman, go thou within, and pray to
the gods that in all fulness the desires of
my heart may be fulfilled. And do ye,
friends, honour my wishes even as she
does, and bid Teucer, when he come,
have care for me and good-will to you
as well. For I will go whither I must
pass,—but do ye what I bid; and per-
chance, perchance, though now I suffer,
ye will hear that I have found rest.”

The story of (2dipus is more complex ;
alternations of alarm and relief, of con-
fidence and despair, attend the gradual
unravelling of his history ; the miseries
which crowd upon him at the last dis-
covery seem to exhaust the possibilities
of sorrow. A character so variously
tried is necessarily laid open; and
(Edipus is perhaps the best known to
us of all the persons of Sophocles,
Antigone, Electra, Philoctetes are not
less human ; but no such glare of light-
ning flashes in the depths of their
natures. At the opening of the play
how perfect an embodiment of assured
greatness is (Edipus the King, bending
with stately tenderness to the trouble of
the Theban folk :—

“QO my children, latest-born to Cad-
mus who was of old, why bow ye
to me thus beseeching knees, with the
wreathed bough of the suppliant in your
hands, while the city reeks with incense,
rings with prayers for health and cries
of woe? 1 deemed it unmeet, my chil-
dren, to learn of these things from the
mouth of others, and am come here my-
self, I, whom all men call (Edipus the
famous.”

And how thoroughly answering to
this is the tone in which the priest, the

leader of the suppliants, tells the trouble
and the faith of Thebes :—

“A blight is on it in the fruit-guarding
blossoms of the land, in the herds among
the pastures, in the barren pangs of
women ; and withal that fiery god, the
dreadful Plague, has swooped on us, and
ravages the town ; by whom the house
of Cadmus is made waste, but dark
Hades rich in groans and tears.

“It is not that we deem thee ranked
with gods that I and these children are
suppliants at thy hearth ; but as deem-
ing thee first of men, not only in life’s
common chances, but when men have to
do with the immortals ; thou who camest
to the town of Cadmus and didst rid
us of the tax that we paid to the hard
songstress,—and this, though thou
knewest nothing from us that could help
thee, nor hadst been schooled ; no, with
a god’s aid, as we say and deem, didst
thou uplift our life.

“And now, (Edipus, name glorious
in all eyes, we beseech thee, all we sup-
pliants, to find for us some succour ;
whether thou wottest of it by the whisper
of a god, or knowest it in the power of
man.”

Then comes the oracle, announcing
that the land is thus plagued because
it harbours the unknown murderer of
Laius ; the pity of G.dipus is quickened
into a fiery zeal for discovery and atone-
ment; and he appeals to the prophet
Teiresias :—

“'Teiresias, whose soul grasps all
things, the lore that may be told and
the unspeakable, the secrets of heaven
and the low things of the earth,—thou
feelest, though thou canst not see, what
a plague doth haunt our state,—from
which, great prophet, we find in thee
our protector and only saviour. Now,
Pheebus—if perchance thou knowest
it not from the messengers — sent
answer to our question that the only
riddance from this pest which could
come to us was if we should learn aright
the slayers of Laius, and slay them, or
send them into exile from our land. Do
thou, then, grudge neither voice of birds
nor any other way of seer-lore that thou
hast, but save thyself and the state and
me, and take away all the taint of the

lew leet ph et st sO hb

ea a

The Genius of Sophocles. 7

dead. For in thee is our hope; anda
man’s noblest task is to help others by
his best means and powers.”

Teiresias is silent: the taunts of
(Edipus at last sting him into uttering
his secret-—(@dipus is the murderer: and
thenceforward, through indignation,
scorn, agonized suspense, the human
passion mounts until it bursts forth in
the last storm.

And now the human element of the
history has been worked out. (£dipus
has passed to the limit of earthly
anguish ; and, asif with his self-inflicted
blindness had come clearer spiritual
sight, he begins to feel a presentiment
of some further, peculiar doom. “Suffer
me to dwell on the hills,” he asks of
Creon, “that there I may die. And
yet thus much I know, that neither
sickness nor aught else shall destroy
me ; for Ishould never have been saved
on the verge of death except for some
strange ill.” The second play of Sopho-
cles—“ (Edipus at Colonus ”—has per-
vading it the calm of an assurance into
which this first troubled foreboding has
settled down: (Edipus, already in spirit
separate from men, has found at Colonus
the destined haven of his wanderings,
and only awaits the summons out of life.
At last from the darkness of the sacred
cavern the voice long-waited for is
heard,—“ (Edipus, (dipus, why do
we tarry?” And the eye-witness of his
passing says, “ Not the fiery bolt of the
god took him away, nor the tumult of
sea-storm in that hour, but either asum-
moner from heaven, or the deep place of
the dead opened to him in love, without
a pang. For the man was ushered forth,
not with groans nor in sickness or pain,

_but beyond all mortals, wondrously.”

As (Edipus, first shown in the vivid-
ness of a tortured humanity, is then
raised above men by keen spiritual
anguish, so it is earthly passion and
bodily suffering which give a human
interest to Heracles the very son of
Zeus. He stands by the altar on Mount
Cenzeum, doing sacrifice to his Olympian
Father for the taking of (Echalia; clad
in the robe which his messenger, Lichas,
has just brought him as the gift of
Deiancira; the robe which she has

secretly anointed with the blood of the
Centaur Nessus, believing this to be a
charm which shall win back to her the
love of Heracles. What follows is thus
told :—

“ At first, hapless one, he prayed with
cheerful heart, rejoicing in his comely
garb. But when the flame of sacrifice
began to blaze from the holy offerings
and from the resinous wood, sweat broke
out upon his flesh, and the tunic clung
to his sides, and at every joint, close-
glued as if by workman’s hand; and
there came a biting pain twitching at
his bones ; and then the venom as of a
deadly, cruel adder began to eat him.

“Then it was that he cried out on
the unhappy Lichas, in nowise guilty
for thy crime, asking with what thoughts
he brought this robe ; and he, knowing
nothing, hapless man, said that he had
only brought thy gift, as he was charged.
Then Heracles, as he heard it, and as
a piercing spasm clutched his lungs,
caught him by the foot, where the ankle
hinges in the socket, and flung him at a
rock washed on both sides by the sea ;
and Lichas has his white brain oozing
through his hair, as the skull is cloven
and the blood scattered therewith.

“ But all the people lifted up a voice
of anguish and of awe, since one was
frenzied and the other siain; and no
one dared to vome before the man. For
he was twitched to the ground and into
the air, howling, shrieking; and the
rocks rang around,—the steep Locrian
headlands and Eubcea’s capes. But
when he was worn out with ofttimes
throwing himself in his misery on the
ground and often making loud lament,
while he reviled his ill-starred wedlock
with thee and his marriage into the
house of (Eneus, saying how he had
found in it the ruin of his life—then,
out of the flame and smoke that beset
him, he lifted his distorted eye and
saw me in the great host, weeping ; and
he looked at me, and called me, ‘Son,
come here, do not flee my woe, even if
thou must die with me—come, bear me
out of the crowd, and set me, if thou
canst, in a place where no man shall see
me; or, if thou hast any pity, at least
convey me with all speed out of this

8 The Genius of Sophocles.

land, and let me not die on this
spot.’”

Presently Heracles himself is brought
before the eyes of the spectators. In
the lamentation wrung from him by his
torment two strains are clear above the
rest, aud each is a strain of thoroughly
human anguish. He contrasts the
strength in which, through life, he has
been the champion of helpless men—
“‘ofttimes on the sea and in all forests
ridding them of plagues”—with his own
helpless misery in this hour; and he
contrasts the greatness of the work to
which he had seemed called with the
weakness of the agent who has arrested
it —

“ Ah me, whose hands and shoulders
have borne full many a fiery trial and
evil to tell! But never yet hath the
wife of Zeus or the hated Eurystheus
laid on me aught so dreadful as this
woven snare of the Furies, which the
daughter of (CEneus, falsely fair, hath
fastened on my shoulders, and by
which I perish. Glued to my sides, it
has eaten away my flesh to the bone; it
is ever with me, sucking the channels of
my breath ; already it has drained my
vigorous blood, and in all my body I
am marred, the thrall of these unutter-
able bonds. Not the warrior on the
battle-field, not the giant’s earthborn
host, nor the might of wild beasts, nor
Hellas, nor the land of the alien, nor
all the lands that I have visited and
purged, have done unto me thus ; but a
woman, a weak woman, born not to the
strength of man, alone, alone has struck
me down without a sword.

“O King Hades, receive me !—Smite
me, O flash of Zeus! O King, O
Father, dash, hurl thy thunder-bolt
upon me! Again the pest eats me—
it has blazed up, it was started into
fury! O hands, hands, O shoulders and
breast and trusty arms, ye, ye in this
plight, are they who once tamed by
force the haunter of Nemea, the scourge
of herdsmen, the lion whom no man
might approach or face—who tamed the
hydra of Lerna and the host of monsters
of double form, man joined to horse,
with whom none might mingle, fierce,
lawless of surpassing might—tamed

the Erymanthian beast and the three-
headed dog of Hades underground, an
appalling foe, offspring of the dread
Echidna,—tamed the serpent who
guards the golden apples in earth’s
utmost clime. And of other toils ten
thousand I had taste, and no man got
a trophy from my hands. But now
with joint thus wrenched from joint,
with frame torn to shreds, I have been
wrecked by this blind curse—I, who
am named son of noblest mother—lI,
who was called the offspring of starry
Zeus!”

Anon he learns that the venom which
is devouring him is the poisoned blood
of his old enemy, the Centaur Nessus.
That knowledge gives him at once the
calm certainty of death ; and now, in
the nearness of the passage to his
Father, there arises, triumphant over
bodily torment, the innate, tranquil
strength of his immortal origin. He
sees in this last chapter of his earthly
ordeal the foreordained purpose of
Zeus :—

“Tt was foreshown to me by my
Father of old that I should die by no
creature that had the breath of life, but
by one who was dead and a dweller in
Hades. So this monster, the Centaur,
even as the god’s will had been fore-
shown, slew me, a living man, when he
was dead.”

He directs that he shall be carried to
the top of Mount (Eta, above Trachis,
sacred to Zeus; that a funeral pyre
shall there be raised, and he, while yet
living, laid upon it; that so the flame
which frees his spirit from the flesh may
in the same moment bear it up to Zeus.
No one of the sacred places of Greece
was connected with a legend of such
large meaning, with one which was so
much a world-legend, as this mountain-
summit looking over the waters of the
Malian Gulf. As generation after
generation came to the struggle with
plagues against which there arose no
new deliverer, weary eyes must often
have been turned to the height on which
the first champion of men had won his
late release from the steadfast malignity
of fate; where, in the words of the
Chorus foreboding the return of Philoc-

ae,
5 ;
\ The Genius of Sophocles.

tetes to Trachis, “the great warrior,
wrapt in heavenly fire, drew near to
all the gods.” It is Sophocles in the
“ Trachiniz ” who has given the noblest
and the most complete expression to
this legend ; showing Heracles, first, as
the son of Zeus suffering for men and
sharing their pain; then, towards the
end of his torments, as already god-
like in the clear knowledge of his
Father's will and of his own coming
change to perfect godhead.

One aspect of the poetry of Sophocles
has now been noticed ; the character of
the treatment applied by him to those
legends which supplied the chief ma-
terial of Greek tragedy. It has been
pointed out that the heroes of A®schylus
are essentially superhuman; that the
heroes of Euripides are essentially
human, and often of a low human
type ; that the heroes of Sophocles are
at once human and superhuman: human
generically, by the expression of certain
general human qualities ; superhuman,
partly by the very strength in which
these qualities are portrayed, partly by
the direct relation of the persons with
supernatural powers. It has been seen
further that these three styles of hand-
ling correspond with successive phases
of contemporary belief; the tendency
of Greek thought in the fifth century
B.C. having been gradually to lower
the ideal stature of the ancestral demi-
gods.

But this change of feeling towards
the myths is not the only change of
which account has to be taken. The
spirit of dramatic poetry was influenced,
less directly, yet broadly, by the cur-
rent of political change.

At the beginning of the fifth century
B.c. Athens was a limited democracy ;
at the close of the century it was an
absolute democracy. Three periods may
be marked in the transition. The first
includes the new growth of democracy
at Athens, springing from the common
effort against Persia—the reform of
Aristeides and the reform of Pericles.
Its net result was the formal maturing
of the democracy by the removal of a
few old limitations. The second period
is one of rest. It covers those thirty

years during which the recent abolition
of conservative checks was compensated
by the controlling power of Pericles,
and there was “in name a democracy,
but in fact government by the leading
man.”! The third period, beginning at
the death of Pericles, at last shows the
mature democracy in its normal work-
ing. The platform for a leader of the
people which Pericles had first set up
remains ; it is held by a series of men
subservient to the people; and the
result is the sovereignty of the ecclesia.
4Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
represent respectively the first, second,
and third of these periods.

Z€schylus, whose mind was heated to
its highest glow by the common Greek
effort against Persia and thenceforth
kept the impress of that time, was
through life democratic just so far as
Athens was democratic at the end of
the Persian Wars. On the one hand,
he shared the sense of civic equality
created by common labours and perils.
On the other hand, he held to the old
religion of Greece and Athens, to the
family traditions bound up with it and
to the constitutional forms consecrated
by both. His greatest trilogy, the
Oresteia, marks the end of the first
period just defined ; and its third play,
the “ Eumenides,” is a symbol of his
political creed. On the one hand, it
exalts Theseus, peculiarly the hero of
the democracy ; on the other, it protests
against the withdrawal of a moral censor-
ship from the Areiopagus.

Euripides, in the last third of the
century, is a democrat living under a
democracy which disappointed his
theory. His constant praise of the
farmer-class is meaning; he liked them
because they were the citizens who had
least to do with the violence of the
ecclesia. It was the sense of this vio-
lence—the hopeless bane, as he thought
it, of the democracy—which hindered
him from having a thorough interest in
the public affairs of the city and from
drawing any vigorous or continuous life
for his poetry from that source. It was
natural that he should have been one
of the literary men who towards the

2 Thucyd. ii. 65.

10 The Genius of Sophocles.

end of the war emigrated from Athens
to Macedonia. The strain of social
criticism, often rather querulous, which
runs through his plays gives them, in
one respect, a tone strange to Attic
tragedy. An Athenian dramatist at
the festivals was a citizen addressing
fellow-citizens ; not only a religious but a
certain political sympathy was supposed
to exist between them. Aischylus and
Sophocles, in their different ways, both
make this political sympathy felt as part
of their inspiration ; Euripides has little
or nothing of it. He shares the pride
of his fellow-citizens in the historical or
legendary glories of the city ; as for the
present, he is a critic standing apart.
More thoroughly than Alschylus in
the first period or Euripides in the
third, is Sophocles a representative poet
in the second period of the century.
The years from about 460 to about
430 B.c. have been called the Age of
Pericles. The chief external character-
istic of the time so called is plain
enough. It was the age of the best
Athenian culture ; a moment for Greece
such as the Florentine renaissance was
for Europe ; the age especially of sculp-
ture, of architecture, and of the most
perfect dramatic poetry. But is there
any general intellectual characteristic,
any distinctive idea, which can be re-
cognized as common to all the various
efforts of that age? The distinctive
idea of the Periclean age seems to have
been that of Pericles himself; the
desire to reconcile progress with tradi-
tion. Pericles looked forward and
backward: forward, to the development
of knowledge and art ; backward, to the
past from which Athens had derived an
inheritance of moral and religious law.
He had the force both to make his own
idea the ruling idea in all the intel-
lectual activity of his age, and to give
to his age the political rest demanded
for this task of harmonizing the spiritual
past and future of a people. Thucy-
dides—a trustworthy witness for the
leading thoughts if not for the words of
Pericles—makes him dwell on the way
in which two contrasted elements had
come to be tempered in the life of
Athens. After describing the intel-

lectual tolerance, the flexibility and
gladness of Athenian social life, Pericles
goes on: “Thus genial in our private
intercourse, in public things we are
kept from lawlessness mainly by fear,
obedient to the magistrates of the time
and to the laws—especially to those
laws which are set for the help of the
wronged, and to those unwritten laws of
which the sanction is a tacit shame.” +

It is by this twofold characteristie—
on the one hand, sympathy with pro-
gressive culture, on the other hand,
reverence for immemorial, unwritten
law—that Sophocles is the poet of the
Periclean Age. There are two passages
which, above all others in his plays, are
expressive of these two feelings. One
is a chorus in the “ Antigone ;” the other
is a chorus in the “ (Edipus Tyrannus.”
One celebrates the inventiveness of man ;
the other insists upon his need for
purity.

In the “Antigone” the Chorus exalts
the might of the gods by measuring
against it those human faculties which
it alone can overcome :—

“Wonders are many, but nothing is
more wonderful than Man ; that power
which walks the whitening sea before
the stormy south, making a path amid
engulfing surges ; and Earth, the eldest
of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied,
doth it wear, turning the soil with the
race of horses as the ploughs go to and
fro from year to year.

“ And the careless tribe of birds, the
nations of the angry beasts, the deep
sea’s ocean-brood he snares in the meshes
of his woven wiles, he leads captive,
man excellent in wit. He conquers by
his arts the beast that walks in the
wilds of the hills, he tames the horse
with shaggy mane, he puts its yoke on
its neck, he tames the stubborn moun-
tain-bull.

*‘ And speech, and wind-swift thought,
and all the moods that mould a state
hath he taught himself; and how to
flee the shafts of frost beneath the clear,
unsheltering sky, and the arrows of the
stormy rain.

“ All-providing is he ; unprovided he
meets nothing that must come. Only

1 Thucyd. ii. 37.

The Genius

from death shall he not win deliverance ;
yet from hard sicknesses hath he de-
vised escapes.

“Cunning beyond fancy’s dreams is
that resourceful skill which brings him
now to evil, anon to good. When he
honours the laws of the land, proudly
stands his city: no city hath he who in
his rashness harbours sin. Never may
he share my hearth, never think my
thoughts, who doth these things !”

In the “C£dipus Tyrannus” the Chorus
is indirectly commenting on the scorn
for oracles just expressed by Iocasté :—

“‘ Mine be the lot to win a reverent
purity in all words and deeds sanctioned
by those laws of sublime range, brought
forth in the wide, clear sky, whose birth
is of Olympus alone; which no brood
of mortal men begat; which forgetful-
ness shall never lay to sleep. Strong
in these is the god, and grows not old.

“Insolence breeds the tyrant; Inso-
lence, once blindly gorged with plenty,
with things which are fit or good, when
it hath scaled the crowning height leaps
on the abyss of doom, where it is served
not by the service of the foot. But that
rivalry which is good for the state I pray
that the god may never quell: the god
ever will 1 hold my champion.

“But whoso walks haughtily in deed
or word, unterrified by Justice, revering
not the shrines of gods, may an evil
doom take him for his miserable pride,
if he will not gain his gains fairly, if he
will not keep himself from impieties,
but must lay wanton hands on things
inviolable.

“Tn such case, what man can boast
any more that he shall ward the arrows
of anger from his life? Nay, if such
deeds are honoured, what have I more
to do with dance and song ?

“No more will I go, a worshipper, to
the awful altar at Earth’s centre, no
more to Abw’s shrine or to Olympia,
if these oracles fit not the issue so that
all men shall point at them with the
finger. Nay, King—if thou art rightly
called—Zeus, all-ruling, let it not escape
thee and thy deathless power !”

We have now looked at a second
general aspect of the poetry of Sophocles.
As in his treatment of the heroic legends

of Sophocles. 11
he interprets, but is above, the religious
spirit of his age, so in his reconciliation
of enterprise and reverence he gives an
ideal embodiment to the social spirit of
his age.

Eschylus is a democratic conserva-
tive ; Euripides is the critic of a demo-
cracy which he found good in theory
but practically vicious ; Sophocles sets
upon his work no properly political
stamp, but rather the mark of a time
of political rest and of manifold intellec-
tual activity; an activity which took
its special character from the idea of
an elastic development reconciled with
a restraining moral tradition.

As the general spirit of Sophocles is
perhaps best seen in these two phases,
so among the special qualities of his
work there are two which may be taken
as the most distinctive—his “irony,” to
give it the name which Bishop Thirl-
wall’s Essay has made familiar ; and his
delineation of character.

The practical irony of drama depends
on the principle that the dramatic poet
stands aloof from the world which he
creates. It is not for him to be an
advocate or a partisan. He describes a
contest of forces, and decides the issue
as he conceives that it would be decided
by the powers which control human lite.
The position of a judge in reference to
two litigants, neither of whom has abso-
lute right on his side, is analogous to
the position of a dramatic poet in refer-
ence to his characters. Every dramatic
poet is necessarily in some degree ironi-
cal. In speaking, then, of the dramatic
irony of Sophocles it is not meant that
this quality is peculiar to him. It is
only meant that in him this quality is
especially noticeable and especially
artistic.

Irony depends on a contrast; the
irony of tragedy depends mainly on a
contrast between the beliefs or purposes
of men and those issues to which their
actions are overruled by higher powers.
Sophocles has the art of making this
contrast, throughout the whole course
of a drama, peculiarly suggestive and
forcible. In his six extant plays, the
contrasts thus worked out have different
degrees of complexity. The “Trachiniw”

12 The Genius of Sophocles.

and “Electra” may be taken as those in
which the dramatic irony is simplest.
In the “Trachiniz” there is a twofold
contrast of a direct kind: first, between
the love of Deianeira for Heracles and
the mortal agony into which she un-
wittingly throws him; then, between
the meaning of the oracle (promising
rest to Heracles), as understood by him
and Deianeira, and its real import. In
the “ Electra” there is a particular and
a general contrast, both direct; the
sister is mourning the supposed death
of her brother at the very moment when
he is about to enter the house as an
avenger ; and the situation with which
the play ends is the exact reversal of
that with which it opened.

The “Ajax” and the two (idipus
plays, again, might be classed together
in respect of dramatic irony; in each
ease suffering is inflicted by the gods,
but through this the sufferer passes to
a higher state. Athene, the pretended
ally of Ajax, humbles him even to
death; but this death is a complete
atonement, and his immortal fame as a
canonized hero begins from the burial
with which the drama closes. In the
“(Edipus Tyrannus” the primary con-
trast is between the seeming prosperity
and the really miserable situation of the
king. A secondary contrast runs through
the whole process of inquiry which
leads up to the final discovery. The
truth is gradually evolved from those
very incidents which display or even
exalt the confidence of (Edipus. In
the “ (Edipus at Colonus” this contrast
is reversed. The Theban king is old,
blind, poor, an outcast, a wanderer.
But he has the inward sense of a
strength which can no more be broken ;
of a vision clearer than that of the
bodily eye; of a spiritual change which
has made a sorrow a possession ; of
approach to final rest.

It is, however, in the two remaining
plays, the “ Antigone ” and the “Philoc-
tetes,” that this irony of drama takes
its most subtle and most artistic form.
Antigone buries Polyneices against the
law of the land; Creon dooms her to
death, and thereby drives his own son
to suicide. But the issue is not a

simple conflict between state-law and
religious duty. It is a conflict be-
tween state-law too harshly enforced
and natural affection set above the laws.
Creon is right in the letter and wrong
in the spirit ; Antigone is right in the
spirit and wrong in the letter. Creon
carries his point, but his victory be-
comes his misery; Antigone incurs
death, but dies with her work done.
In the “ Philoctetes,” again, there is an
antithesis of a like kind. Philoctetes
is injured and noble ; Odysseus is dis-
honest but patriotic. Odysseus wishes
to capture Philoctetes in the public
interest of the army at Troy. He
urges on Neoptolemus that the end
sanctifies the means. Neoptolemus at
first recoils; then consents; finally
deserts the plot in a passion of generous
pity for Philoctetes. The result is that
Philoctetes is brought back to Troy,
but by fair means. He eventually
agrees to do that of which he had
loathed the thought, and goes back to
his hated enemies under circumstances
which make that return the happiest
event of his life. Odysseus, on the other
hand, gains his end; but not by the
means which he had proposed to him-
self. He carries Philoctetes back to
Troy; but only after his stratagems
have been foiled. Neoptolemus, mean-
while—true, after his first lapse, to
honour—conquers without a change of
front.

It is that same instinct of harmony
which has already been seen to rule the
work of Sophocles in its largest phases,
which gives its motive and its delicate
precision to his management of dramatic
irony. He works out the contrasts of
drama so clearly and with such fineness
because he aims at showing how a bene-
ficent power at last solves them ; not,
as in Aischylus, by victory over a super-
natural evil power, nor, as in Euripides,
by abrupt intervention; but through
those natural workings of human cha-
racter and action over which the gods
watch.

The accurate delineation of human
character has therefore a special impor-
tance for Sophocles. It has already
been said that in the primary or heroic

The Genius

persons of the Sophoclean drama human
character is delineated only broadly,
with a deliberate avoidance of fine
shading. It is therefore in the secon-
dary or subordinate persons of the drama
that we must look for the more delicate
touches of ethical portraiture.

Sophocles shows his psychological
skill especially in two ways: in follow-
ing the process by which a sensitive
and generous nature passes from one
phase of feeling to another; and in
tracing the action upon each other of
dissimilar or opposite natures. Philoc-
tetes, first rejoiced by the arrival of
the Greeks on his island,—then sus-
picious,—then reassured,—then fren-
zied with anger,—then finally concili-
ated ; Tecmessa, agitated successively
by fear, by hope, by despair concerning
Ajax ; Electra, at first heroically patient
in the hope that her brother will return
as an avenger, then broken-hearted at
the news of his death, at last filled
with rapture by his sudden living pre-
sence; Deianeira, by turns anxious,
elated, jealous, horror-stricken—these
are examples of the power with which
Sophocles could trace a chapter of spi-
ritual history.

A closer examination of the character
of Deianeira will help to set this power
in a clearer light. When the herald
Lichas arrives at Trachis with the
prisoners taken by Heracles at (Echalia,
Iolé, beautiful and dejected, at once
arouses the interest of Deianeira; but
it is the interest of compassion merely,
with a touch of condescension in its
kindness. ‘Ah, unhappy girl, who art
thou among women... .?” “ Lichas,
from whom is this stranger sprung?”
Lichas does not know; Iolé will not
speak ;—nor has she spoken, adds the
herald, since they left Euboea. So
Deianeira says: “ Then let her be left
at peace and go into the house as best it
pleases her, and not find a new pain at
my hands beside her present ills ; they
are enough. And now let us all move
towards the house.”

Presently Deianeira is told by a man
of Trachis, who had heard it from
Lichas himself in the market-place, that
Tolé is the daughter of Eurytus, King

of Sophocles, 13

of CEchalia; and that it was to win
Iolé that Heracles had stormed and
sacked that town. ‘Ah me unhappy,”
she cries, “in what a plight do I stand!
What hidden bane have I taken under
my roof?” Her informant and Lichas
are confronted with each other; Lichas
is put to confusion ; and then Deianeira
turns to him with this appeal :—

“Do not, I pray thee by Zeus who
sends forth his lightnings over the high
(Etean glen, do not use deceitful speech.
For thou wilt tell thy news not to a base
woman, nor to one who knows not the
estate of men, and how it is not in their
nature always to take joy in the same
things. Now whosoever stands up
against Love, as a boxer to change
buffets, is not wise. For Love rules the
gods as he will, and me also—why should
he not !—yes, and many another such as
I. So that Iam quite mad if I blame
my husband for being taken with this
malady, or blame this woman, who has
had part in a thing nowise shameful,
and not in any wrong to me. . . . Come,
tell the whole truth ; it is a foul blight
on a free man to be called a liar.”

Lichas confesses all, and ends with
this advice—* For both your sakes, for
his and for thine own as well, bear with
the woman ;” and Deianeira pretends
to have adopted his counsel : “ Nay,”
she says, “‘even thus am I minded to
do. Believe me, I will not bring on
myself a self-sought bane by waging
fruitless war with the gods.”

3ut how different is the feeling which
she presently avows to the chorus of
Trachinian maidens: “Of anger against
the man I have no thought ; but to live
in the same house with this girl—what
woman could bear it?” Then she re-
members the love-charm given her long
ago by Nessus. There is a moment of
feverish hope while she is preparing and
despatching the robe for Heracles. But
hardly has it gone when an accident
reveals to her that she has anointed the
robe with some poison of fearful viru-
lence. In a moment, her thoughts rush
forward to the worst; and her own
words, in telling the story to the Chorus,
foreshow the death to which she pre-
sently gives herself on hearing the

14 The Genius

tidings from Eubcea—“ Life with a bad
name must not be borne by her who
glories to have been born not base.”

The second special form in which
Sophocles shows his power of drawing
character consists in exhibiting the
action upon each other of natures broadly
or at least distinctly different. He loved
to display this mutual action in an in-
terview at which the two speakers ex-
change arguments. The sisters Electra
and Chrysothemis, the sisters Antigone
and Ismene, hold conversations of this
kind. It might be objected that in these
cases the influence can scarcely be called
mutual ; and that, while Electra makes
Chrysothemis angry and Antigone makes
Ismene feel ashamed, Chrysothemis pro-
duces no impression upon Electra nor
Ismene upon Antigone. But it should
be observed that in each case the weak
sister had this important influence upon
the strong sister ;—she made her feel
alone. The selfishness of Chrysothemis
isolates Electra in the task of avenging
their father, as the feminine timidity of
Ismene isolates Antigone in the task of
burying their brother. In each case,
the heroine agitates the less courageous
sister, and on the other hand the de-
fection of a natural ally braces the
heroine.

jut the finest examples of such juxta-
position are to be found in the “ Philoc-
tetes:” a tragedy which for artistic
finish has often, and perhaps justly,
been ranked as its author’s masterpiece ;
and in which the absence of much inci-
dent permitted or exacted the utmost
exercise of skill in delineating character,
From many good passages in the play
one may be chosen as a specimen—
the opening scene between Odysseus
and Neoptolemus. Odysseus, holding
that the public interest of the army at
Troy justifies recourse to fraud, proposes
to take Philoctetes by a stratagem.
Neoptolemus, a young and generous
man, is at first shocked; but Odysseus
succeeds in making ambition conquer
the sense of honour. The dialogue itself
alone can give aa idea of the fineness
with which this is managed :—
“ Neoptolemus, What wouldst thou ?
Odysseus. The mind of Philoctetes

of Sophocles.

must be snared by thee with a well-told
tale. When he asks thee who and whence
thou art, say—‘ The son of Achilles,’
—that must not be garbled; but thou
art homeward bound, having quitted
the Greek armada, and conceived for
them a deadly hatred. . . . The thing
to be plotted is just this—how thou
mayest compass to steal the unconquer-
able arms. I well know, my son, that
by nature thou art unapt to utter or to
frame such wiles. Yet victory, we
know, is a sweet prize to win. Take
heart: our honesty shall be proved
another time. But now lend thyself to
me for one little roguish day ; and then,
for all the rest of thy days, be called
the most virtuous of men.

NV. Son of Laertes, whatever counsels
pain my ear, to the same I abhor to
lend my hand. It is not in my nature
to compass aught by knavery—neither
in mine nor, as they say, in my father’s.
I am ready to take the man by force,
not by fraud ; with the use of only one
foot he will never worst all of us in
open fight. And yet, having been sent
to aid thee, I am loth to be called
traitor. But I wish, Prince, to miss
my mark by doing right rather than
to win by baseness.

O. Son of a gallant sire, time was
when I, too, in my youth had a slow
tongue and an active hand. But now,
when I come out to the proof, I see
that words, not deeds, always come to
the front with men.

N. In short, what dost thou bid me
but to lie ?

O. I bid thee take Philoctetes by
guile.

N. And why by guile more than by
persuasion ?

O. He will never be persuaded ; and
by force thou art not likely to take him.

NV. Hath he a strength so defiant, so
dreadful ?

O. Arrows inevitable and winging
death,

N. One cannot dare, then, even to
go near him ?

O. No, unless thou snare him, as I
bid.

NY. So thou thinkest it no shame to
lie?

O. None, if the lie is fraught with
health.

J. And how shall a man have the
face to utter it ?

O. When thou dost aught for gain, it
is unmeet to shrink.

N. And what gain for me is his
coming to Troy ?

O. Troy can be taken by these arrows
alone.

N. Then J am not, as ye said, to be
the captor ?

O. Not thou apart from these, nor
these from thee.

NV. It seems, then, they must be won,
if so it stands?

O. I tell thee by this deed thou shalt
gain two gifts.

NV. What are they? If I knew, I
would not shrink.

O. Thou wilt be known as wise and
brave.

NV. Enough ; I'll do it, and put away
all shame.”

I have attempted to show what is
distinctive of the genius of Sophocles in
a fourfold manifestation: in his blend-
ing of a divine with a human character
in the heroes ; in his expression of the
effort to reconcile progress with tra-
dition ; in his dramatic irony—that is,
in the precision with which he brings
out contrasts, especially between the
purposes of men and of the gods, in
order that the final solution may be
more impressive; lastly, in his por-
trayal of character—not in a series of
situations, but continuously through
chapters of spiritual history. It has
been seen that the instinct which rules
his work under each of these aspects is
what may be called in the largest sense
the instinct of harmony. His imagi-
nation has a tranquil mastery of the
twofold realm of Tragedy—the natural
and the supernatural—and tempers the
conflicting elements of each or both
with a sure sense of fitness and just
proportion.

It is for this reason—because of
all the Greek poets he is the most per-

The Genius of Sophocles. 15

fectly an artist—that his poetry has
a closer significance than any other
for that form of plastic art which stands
nearest to drama. It is the best inter-
preter of those pieces of Greek sculp-
ture, such as the groups of Niobe and
Laocoon, which express a moment of
conflict between human and super-
human force. It has been said that for
the Greeks beauty was the index on
the balance of expression—that is, a
central control governing the equipoise
between terror and pity. The terror
inspired by Niobe and by Laocoon,
accusing with upturned eyes the de-
stroying power; the pity inspired by
their children, clinging to the shelter
which cannot protect them: these are
harmonized by the beauty, at once
terrible and tender, of the whole. Just
such is the harmony between the human
and superhuman elements in the agony
of (Edipus and of Heracles.

Again, it is chiefly because Sophocles
had supremely this most Greek of in-
stincts, the instinct of just proportion,
that his mind was so perfectly attem-
pered to the genius of Greek polytheism
—a religion of which the piety was a re-
verent sense of beauty and of measure.
He lived just when this religion had shed
upon it the greatest strength of intellec-
tual light which it could bear without
fading; he is, perhaps, the highest
type of its votary—the man for whom,
more than for any other who could be
named, the old national religion of
Greece was a self-sufficing, thoughtful,
and ennobling faith. Sophocles was,
indeed, the perfect Greek ideal of a man
who loved the gods and was loved by
them—one, the work of whose life was
their service under their direct inspira-
tion ; to whom they gave victory not
followed by insolence, long years and
opportuneness of death ; and whom the
most imaginative of satirists could not
imagine, even among the boundless
rivalries of the dead, less good-humoured
than he had been upon earth.

R. C. Jess,

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF “A DAUGHTER OF HETH,” ETC.

CHAPTER XXX.
TWEED SIDE.

* Ah, nappy Lycius !—for she was a maid
More beautiful than ever twisted braid,
Or sighed, or blushed, or on spring-flowered
lea
Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy ;
A virgin purest-lipped, yet in the lore
Of love deep learned to the red heart's core.”

Tue very first object that we saw, on
this the first morning of our waking in
Scotland, was a small boy of seven or
eight, brown-faced, yellow-haired, bare-
footed, who was marching along in the
sunlight with a bag of school-books on
his back about as big as himself.

“Oh, the brave little fellow!” cries
Tita, regarding him from the door of
the inn with a great softuess in her
brown eyes. “ Don’t you think he will
be Lord Chancellor some day ?”

The future Lord Chancellor went
steadily on, his small brown feet taking
no heed of the stones in the white
road.

“T think,” says Tita, suddenly plung-
ing her hand into her pocket, “I think
I should like to give him a shilling.”

“No, Madam,” says one of us to her,
sternly, “ you shall not bring into this
free land the corrupting influences of
the south. It is enough that you have
debased the district around your own
home. If you offered that young patriot
a shilling, he would turn again and rend
vou. But if you offered him a half-
penny, now, to buy bools———”

At this moment, somehow or other,
Bell and our Lieutenant appear together ;
aud before we know where we are, the
girl has darted across the street in
pursuit of the boy.

“What are bools?” asks the Lieu-
tenant, gravely.

“Objects of interest to the youthful
student.”

Then we see, in the white glare of
the sun, a wistful, small, fair and sun-
burned face turned towards that young
lady with the voluminous light brown
hair. She is apparently talking to him,
but in a different tongue from his own,
and he looks frightened. Then the sun-
light glitters on two white coins, and Bell
pats him kindly on the shoulder; and
doubtless the little fellow proceeds on
his way to school in a sort of wild and
wonderful dream, having an awful sense
that he has been spoken to by a fair and
gracious princess.

“ As I live,” says my Lady, with a
great surprise, “she has given him two
half-crowns !”

Queen Titania looks at me. There is
a meaning in her look—partly interro-
gation, partly conviction, and wholly
kind and pleasant. It has dawned upon
her that girls who are not blessed with
abundant pocket-money do not give away
five shillings to a passing schoolboy with-
out some profound emotional cause.
Bell comes across the way, looking vastly
pleased and proud, but somehow avoid-
ing our eyes. She would have gone into
the inn, but that my Lady’s majestic
presence (you could have fanned her
out of the way with a buttertly’s wing !)
barred the entrance.

“Viave you been for a walk this
morning, Bell?” she says, with a fine
air of indifference.

“ Yes, Madame,” replies our Uhlan—
as if he had any business to answer for
our Bell.

“Where did you go?”

“Oh,” says the girl, with some con-
fusion, “ we went—we went away from
the town a little way—I don’t exactly
know a

And with that she escaped into the
inn.

“ Madame,” says the Lieutenant, with
a great apparent effort, while he keeps his
eyes looking towards the pavement, and
there is a brief touch of extra colour in
his brown face, “ Madame—I—I am
asked—indeed, Mademoiselle she was
good enough—she is to be my wife—
and she did ask me if I would tell
you x

And somehow he put out his hand—
just as a German boy shakes hands with
you, in a timid fashion, after you have
tipped him at school—and took Tita’s
hand in his, as if to thank her for a
great gift. And the little woman was
so touched, and so mightily pleased,
that I thought she would have kissed
him before my very face, in the open
streets of Lockerbie. All this scene,
you must remember, took place on the
doorstep of an odd little inn in a small
Scotch country town. There were few
spectators. The sun was shining down
on the white fronts of the cottages, and
blinking on the windows. A cart of
hay stood opposite to us, with the horse
slowly munching inside his nose-bag.
We ourselves were engaged in peacefully
waiting for breakfast when the astound-
ing news burst upon us.

“Oh, Iam very glad indeed, Count
von Rosen,” says Tita ; and, sure enough,
there was gladness written all over her
face and in her eyes. And then in a
minute she had sneaked away from us,
and I knew she had gone away to seek
Bell, and stroke her hair and put her
arms round her neck, and say, “ Oh, my
dear,” with a little sob of delight.

Well, I turn to the Lieutenant. Young
men, when they have been accepted,
wear a most annoying air of self-satis-
faction.

“Touching those settlements,” I say
to him; “have you any. remark to
make ?”

The young man begins to laugh.

“Tt is no laughing matter. I am

No. 157.—vob. xxvn.

The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. 17

Bell’s guardian. You have not got my
consent yet.”

“ We can do without it—it is not an
opera,” he says, with some more of that
insolent coolness. “ But you would be
pleased to prevent the marriage, yes?
For I have seen it often—that you are
more jealous of Mademoiselle than of
anyone—and it is a wonder to me that
you did not interfere before. Dut as for
Madame, now—yes, she is my very
good friend, and has helped me very
much.”

Such is the gratitude of those con-
ceited young fellows, and their pene-
tration, too! If he had but known
that only a few days before Tita had
taken a solemn vow to help Arthur by
every means in her power, so as to atone
for any injustice she might have done
him! But all at once he says, with
quite a burst of eloquence (for him)—

“ My dear friend, how am I to thank
you for allthis? I did not know when
I proposed to come to England that this
holiday tour would bring to me so much
happiness, It does appear to me I am
grown very rich—so rich I should like
to give something to everybody this
morning—and make everyone happy as
mysel x

“Just as Bell gave the boy five
shillings. All right. When you get
to Edinburgh you can buy Tita a Scotch
collie—she is determined to have a
collie, because Mrs. Quinet got a prize
for one at the Crystal Palace. Come in
to breakfast.”

Bell was sitting there with her face
in shadow, and Tita, laughing in a very
affectionate way, standing beside her
with her hands on the girl’s shoulder.
Bell did not look up ; nothing was said.
A very friendly waiter put breakfast on
the table. The landlord dropped in to
bid us good morning, and see that we
were comfortable. Even the ostler, the
Lieutenant told us afterwards, of this
Scotch inn had conversed with him in
a shrewd, homely, and sensible fashion,
treating him as a young man who would
naturally like to have the advice of his
elders.

The young people were vastly de-

Cc

18 Tie Strange Adventures of a Phaeton.

lighted with the homely ways of this
Scotch inn; and began to indulge in
vague theories about parochial education,
independence of character, and the
hardihood of northern races—all tending
to the honour and glory of Scotland.
You would have thought, to hear them
go on in this fashion, that all the good
of the world, and all its beauty and
kindliness, were concentrated in the
Scotch town of Lockerbie, and that in
Lockerbie no place was so much the
pet of fortune as the Blue Bell Inn.

“And to think,” says Bell, with a
gentle regret, ‘that to-morrow is the
last day of our driving.”

“But not the last of our holiday,
Mademoiselle,” says the Lieutenant.
“Ts it necessary that any of us goes
back to England for a week or two, or
a month, or two months?”

Of course the pair of them would
have liked very well to start off
on another month’s excursion, just as
this one was finished. But parents and
guardians have their duties. Very soon
they would be in a position to control
their own actions ; and then they would
be welcome to start for Kamschatka.

All that could be said in praise of
Scotland had been said in the inn; and
new, as Castor and Pollux took us away
from Lockerbie into the hillier regions
of Dumfries-shire, our young people
were wholly at a loss for words to de-
scribe their delight. It was a glorious
day, to begin with: a light breeze tem-
pering the hot sunlight, and blowing
about the perfume of sweet-briar from
the fronts of the stone cottages, and
bringing us warm and resinous odours
from the woods of larch and spruce.
We crossed deep glens, along the bottom
of which ran clear brown streams over
beds of pebbles. The warm light fell
on the sides of those rocky clefts and
lit up the masses of young rowan-trees
and the luxuriant ferns along the moist
banks. There was a richly cultivated
and undulating country lying all around ;
but few houses, and those chiefly farm-
houses. Far beyond, the rounded hills
of Moffat rose soft and blue into the
white sky. Then, in the stillness of

the bright day, we came upon a way-
side school ; and as it happened to be
dinner-time we stopped to see the
stream of little ones come out. It was
a pretty sight, under the shadow of
the trees, to see that troop of children
come into the country road—most of
them being girls in extremely white
pinafores, and nearly all of them, boys
and girls, being yellow-haired, clear-
eyed, healthy children, who kept very
silent and stared shyly at the horses
and the phaeton. Allthe younger ones
had bare feet, stained with the sun, and
their yellow hair—which looked almost
white by the side of their berry-brown
cheeks—was free from cap or bonnet.
They did not say, “ Chuck us a ’apenny.”
They did not raise a cheer as we drove
off. They stood by the side of the
road, close by the hawthorn hedge, look-
ing timidly after us ; and the last that
we saw of them was that they had got
into the middle of the path and were
slowly going off home—a small, bright,
and various-coloured group under the
soft green twilight of an avenue of trees.

As we drove on through the clear,
warm day, careless and content, the two
women had all the talking to themselves ;
and a strange use they made of their
opportunities. If the guardian angels
of those two creatures happen to have
any sense of humour, they must have
laughed as they looked down and over-
heard. You may remember that when it
was first proposed to take this Prussian
Lieutenant with us on our summer tour,
both Bell and my Lady professed the
most deadly hatred of the German na-
tion, and were nearly weeping tears
over the desolate condition of France.
That was about six months before.
Now, thirty millions of people, either in
the south or north of Europe, don’t
change their collective character—if
such a thing exists—within the space
of six months; but on this bright
morning you would have fancied that
the women were vying with each other
to prove that all the domestic virtues,
and all the science and learning of civi-
lization, and all the arts that beautify
life, were the exclusive property of the

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Teutons. Now, my Lady was a later
convert—had she not made merry only
the other day over Bell’s naive con-
fession that she thought the German
nation as good as the French nation?
—but now that she had gone over to
the enemy, she altogether distanced
Bell in the production of theories, facts,
quotations, and downright personal
opinion. She had lived a little longer,
you see, and knew more ; and perhaps
she had a trifle more audacity in sup-
pressing awkward facts. At all events
the Lieutenant was partly abashed and
partly amused by her warm advocacy of
German character, literature, music, and
a thousand other things; and by her
endeavours to prove—out of the his-
torical lessons she had taught her two
boys—that there had always prevailed
in this country a strong antipathy to the
French and all their ways.

‘Their language too,” I remark, to
keep the ball rolling. “Observe the dif-
ference between the polished, fluent, and
delicate German, and the barbaric dis-
sonance and jumble of the French!
How elegant the one, how harsh the
other! If you were to take Bossuet,
now ‘

“Tt is not fair,” says Bell. “We
were talking quite seriously, and you
come in to make a jest of it.”

“T don’t. Are you aware that, ata
lecture Coleridge gave in the Royal In-
stitution in 1808, he solemnly thanked
his Maker that he did not know a word
of that frightful jargon, the French
language ?”

The women were much impressed.
They would not have dared, themselves,
to say a word against the French
language ; nevertheless, Coleridge was
a person of authority. Bell looked as
if she would like to have some further
opinions of this sort; but Mr. Freeman
had not at that time uttered his epi-
gram about the general resemblance of
a Norman farmer to “a man of York-
shire or Lincolnshire who has somehow
picked up a bad habit of talking French,”
nor that other about a Norman being a
Dane who, “ in his sojourn in Gaul, had
put on a slight French varnish, and who

The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. 19

came into England to be washed clean
again.”

“Now,” I say to Bell, “if you had
only civilly asked me to join in the
argument, I could have given you all
sorts of testimony to the worth of the
Germans and the despicable nature of
the French.”

“Yes, to make the whole thing
absurd,” says Bell, somewhat hurt.
“T don’t think you believe anything
seriously.”

“ Not in national characteristics even ?
If not in them, what are we to believe ?
But I will help you all the same, Bell.
Now did you ever hear of a sonnet in
which Wordsworth, after recalling some
of the great names of the Commonwealth
time, goes on to say—

* France, ’tis stran
Hath brought no such souls as we had then.
Perpetual emptiness ! unceasing change !

No single volume paramount, no code,
But equally a want of books and men !’

—does that please you?”
“ Yes,” says Bell, contentedly.
“Well, did you ever read a poem

called ‘ Hands all Round ’?”

“ No.”

“You never heard of a writer in the
Examiner called ‘ Merlin,’ whom people
to this day maintain was the Poet
Laureate of England?”

“ No.”

“ Well, listen :—

* What health to France, if France be she

Whom martial progress only charms ?

Yet tell her—better to be free

Than vanquish all the world in arms.
Her frantic city’s flashing heats
But fire, to blast, the hopes of men.

Why change the titles of your streets /

You fools, you’ll want them all again.
Hands all round !
God the tyrant’s cause confound !

To France, the wiser France, we drink, my

friends,

And the great name of England, round and

round !’”

At that time, Miss Bell, thousands of

people in this country were disquieted

about the possible projects of the new

French Government; and as it was

considered that the Second Napoleon

would seek to establish his power by
foreign conquest——”
c 2

|;

20 The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton.

“This is quite an historical lecture,”
says Queen Tita, in an under-tone.

” and as the Napoleonic legend
included the humiliation of England,
many thoughtful men began to cast
about for a possible ally with whom we
could take the field. To which country
did they turn, do you think?”

“To Germany, of course,” says Bell,
in the most natural way in the world.

“ Listen again :—

* Gigantic daughter of the West,
We drink to thee across the flood.
We know thee, and we love thee best,
For art thou not of British blood ?
Should war’s mad blast again be blown,
Permit not thou the tyrant powers
To fight thy mother here alone,
But let thy broadsides roar with ours.
Hands all round !
God the tyrant’s cause confound !
To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and
round !”

Bell seemed a little disappointed that
America and not Germany had been
singled out by the poet; but of course
nations don’t choose allies merely to
please a girl who happens to have en-
gaged herself to marry a Prussian
officer.

“ Now,” I say to her, “ you see what
aid I might have given you, if you only
had asked me prettily. But suppose
we give Germany & éurn now—suppose
we search about for all the unpleasant
things <4

“Oh no, please don’t,” says Bell, sub-
missively.

This piece of unfairness was so
obvious and extreme that Von Rosen
himself was at last goaded into taking up
the cause of France, and even went the
length of suggesting that peradventure
ten righteous men might be found
within the city of Paris. "Twas a
notable concession. I had begun to
despair of France. But no sooner had
the Lieutenant turned the tide in her
favour than my Lady and Bell seemed
graciously disposed to be generous.
Chiiteaubriand was not Goethe, but he
was a pleasing writer. Alfred de
Musset was not Heine, but he had the
merit of resembling him. If Auber

did not exactly reach the position of a
Beethoven or a Mozart, one had lis-
tened to worse operas than the “ Crown
Diamonds.” The women did not know
much about philosophy; but while
they were sure that all the learning and
the wisdom of the world had come from
Germany, they allowed that France had
produced a few epigrams. In this ami-
able frame of mind we drove along the
white road on this summer day; and
after having passed the great gap in the
Moffat Hills which leads through to St.
Mary’s Loch and all the wonders of the
Ettrick and the Yarrow, we drove into
Moffat itself, and found ourselves in a
large hotel fronting a great sunlit and
empty square.

Our young people had really con-
ducted themselves very discreetly. All
that forenoon you would scarcely have
imagined that they had just made a
solemn promise to marry each other;
but then they had been pretty much
occupied with ancient and modern his-
tory. Now, as we entered a room in
the hotel, the Lieutenant espied a num-
ber of flowers in a big glass vase ; and
without any pretence of concealment
whatever, he walked up to it, selected a
white rose, and brought it back to Bell.

“ Mademoiselle,” he said, in a low
voice—but who could help hearing
him ?—“‘ you did give to me, the other
day, a forget-me-not; will you take this
rose ?”

Mademoiselle looked rather shy for a
moment: but she took the rose, and—
with an affectation of unconcern which
did not conceal an extra touch of colour
in her pretty face—she said, “ Oh, thank
you very much,” and proceeded to put
it into the bosom of her dress.

“Madame,” said the Lieutenant, just
as if nothing had occurred, “I suppose
Moffat is a sort of Scotch Baden-
Baden ?”

Madame, in turn, smiled sedately,
and looked out of the window, and
said that she thought it was.

When we went out for a lounge after
luncheon, we discovered that if Moffat
is to be likened to Baden-Baden, it
forms an exceedingly Scotch and re-

a

a i ee ed ee he

spectable Baden-Baden. The building
in which the mineral waters are drunk!
looks somewhat like an educational
institution, painted white, and with
prim white iron railings. Inside, instead
of that splendid saloon of the Conver-
sationshaus in which, amid a glare of gas,
various characters, doubtful and other-
wise, walk up and down and chat while
their friends are losing five-franc pieces
and napoleons in the adjoining cham-
bers, we found a long and sober-looking
reading-room. Moffat itself is a white,
clean, wide-streeted place, and the hills
around it are smooth and green ; but it
is very far removed from Baden-Baden.
It is a good deal more proper, and a
great deal more dull. Perhaps we did
not visit it in the height of the season,
if it has got a season; but we were at
all events not very sorry to get away
from it again, and out into the hilly
country beyond.

That was a pretty drive up through
Annandale. As you leave Moffat the
road gradually ascends into the region
of the hills ; and down below you lies
a great valley, with the river Annan
running through it, and the town of
Moffat itself getting smaller in the
distance. You catch a glimmer of the
blue peaks of Westmoreland lying far
away in the south, half hid amid silver
haze. The hills around you increase in
size, and yet you would not recognize
the bulk of the great round slopes but
for those minute dots that you can
make out to be sheep, and for an occa-
sional wasp-like creature that you
suppose to be a horse. The evening
draws on. The yellow light on the
slopes of green becomes warmer. You
arrive at a great circular chasm which is
called by the country-folks the Devil’s
Beef-tub—a mighty hollow, the western

1“ Bien entendu, dailleurs,que le but du voyage
Est de prendre les eaux ; c'est un compte réglé.
Deaux, je n'en ai point vu lorsque j'y suis

allé ;
Mais qwon ou puisse voir, je wen mets rien
en gage ;
Je crois méme, en honneur, que Veau de
voisinage
A, quand on Pexamine, un petit godt salé.”
A, DE MusseET.

The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. 21

sides of which are steeped in a soft
purple shadow, while the eastern slopes
burn yellow in the sunlight. Far away
down in that misty purple you can see
tints of grey, and these are masses of
slate uncovered by grass. The descent
seems too abrupt for cattle, and yet
there are faint specks which may be
sheep. There is no house, not even a
farm-house, near; and all traces of
Moffat and its neighbourhood have long
been left out of sight.

But what is the solitude of this place
to that of the wild and lofty region you
enter when you reach the summits of the
hills? Far away on every side of you
stretch miles of lonely moorland, with
the shoulders of more distant hills
reaching down in endless succession
into the western sky. There is no sign
of life in this wild place. The stony
road over which you drive was once a
mail-coach road: now it is overgrown
with grass. A few old stakes, rotten
and tumbling, show where it was
necessary at one time to place a protec-

tion against the sudden descents on the *

side of the road; but now the road
itself seems lapsing back into moorland.
It is up in this wilderness of heather
and wet moss that the Tweed takes its
rise ; but we could hear no trickling of
any stream to break the profound and
melancholy stillness. There was not
even a shepherd’s hut visible ; and we
drove on in silence, scarcely daring to
break the charm of the utter loneliness
of the place,

The road twists round to the right.
Before us a long valley is seen, and we
guess that it receives the waters of the
Tweed. Almost immediately afterwards
we come upon a tiny rivulet some two
feet in width—either the young Tweed
itself or one of its various sources ; and
as we drive on in the gathering twilight
towards the valley, it seems as though
we were accompanied by innumerable
streamlets trickling down to the river.
The fire of the sunset goes out in the
west, but over there in the clear green-
white of the east a range of hills still
glows with a strange roseate purple.
We hear the low murmuring of the

i Dol

22 The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton.

Tweed in the silence of the valley.
We get down among the lower-lying
hills, and the neighbourhood of the
river seems to have drawn to it thou-
sands of wild creatures. There are
plover calling and whirling over the
marshy levels. There are black cock
and grey hen dusting themselves in the
road before us, and waiting until we are
quite near to them before they wing
their straight flight up to the heaths
above. Far over us, in the clear green
of the sky, a brace of wild duck go
swiftly past. A weasel glides out and
over the grey stones by the roadside ;
and further along the bank there are
young rabbits watching, and trotting,
and watching again, as the phaeton gets
nearer tothem. And then, as the deep
rose-purple of the eastern hills fades
away, and all the dark green valley of
the Tweed lies under the cold silver-
grey of the twilight, we reach a small
and solitary inn, and are almost sur-
prised to hear once more the sound of
a human voice.

CHAPTER XXXI.
OUR EPILOGUE.

** Nor much it gr ves
To die, when summer dies on the cold sward.

Why, T have been a butt rfly, a lord
Of flowers, garlands, lowe -knots, silly posit 8,
Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbour-roses :

My kingdom's at its death.”

Wuen you have dined on ham and
eggs and whisky the evening before, to
breakfast on ham and eggs and tea is a
great relief the morning after. We
gathered round the table in this remote
little inn with much thankfulness of
heart. We were to have aglorious day
for the close of our journey. All round
the Crook Inn there was a glare of sun-
shine on the rowan-trees. The soft
greys and greens of the hills on the
other side of the river rose into a pale-
blue sky, where there was not a single
cloud. And then, to complete the pic-
ture of the moorland hostelry, appeared
a keeper who had just set free from their

kennel a lot of handsome setters, and
the dogs were flying hither and thither
along the white road and over the grass
and weeds by the tall hedges,

“Do you know,” said Bell, “that
this used to be a posting-house that had
thirty horses in its own stables; and
now it is only used by a few sportsmen
who come here for the fishing and later
on for the shooting ?”

So she, too, had taken to getting up
in the morning and acquiring informa-
tion.

“Yes,” she said, “but it has been
taken by a new landlord, who hopes to
have gentlemen come and lodge here by
the month in the autumn.”

She was beginning to show a great
interest in the affairs of strangers :
hitherto she had cared for none of these
things, except where one of our Surrey
pensioners was concerned.

“ And the ostler is such an intelligent
and independent old man, who lets you
know that he understands horses a great
deal better than you.”

I could see that my Lady was mentally
tracking out Bell’s wanderings of the
morning. Under whose tuition had
she discovered all that about the land-
lord? Under whose guidance had she
found herself talking to an ostler in the
neighbourhood of the stables? Butshe
had not devoted the whole morning to
such inquiries. We remarked that
the Lieutenant wore in his button-hole
a small bouquet of tiny wild-flowers,
the faint colours of which were most
skilfully combined and shown up by a
bit of fern placed behind them. You
may be sure that it was not the clumsy
fingers of the young Uhlan that had
achieved that work of art.

“And now, my dear children,” I
observe, from the head of the table,
‘* we have arrived at the last stage of our
travels. We have done nothing that
we ought to have done ; we have done
everything that we ought not to have
done. As one of you has already
pointed out, we have never visited a
museum, or explored a ruin, or sought
out an historical scene. Our very course
has been inconsistent, abnormal, unrea-

Oe - ee ol

Somwd tts

oe eae fo Ke fb Oo

The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. 23

sonable—indeed, if one were to imagine
a sheet of lightning getting tipsy and
wandering over the country in a helpless
fashion for several days, that might
describe our route. We have had no
adventures that could be called adven-
tures, no experiences to turn our hair
grey in a dozen hours; only a general
sense of light, and fresh air, and motion,
and laughter. We have seen green
fields, and blue skies, and silver lakes ;
we have seen bright mornings and
breezy days, and spent comfortable
evenings in comfortable inns. Shall we
not look back upon this month in our
lives, and call it the month of sunshine
and green leaves ?”

Here a tapping all round the table
greeted the orator, and somewhat dis-
concerted him; but presently he pro-
ceeded :—

“Tf, at times, one member of our
party, in the reckless exercise of a gift
of repartee which heaven, for some
inscrutable reason, has granted her, has
put a needle or two into our couch of
eider-down F

“T pronounce this meeting dissolved,”
says Bell quickly, and with a resolute
air.

“Yes, Mademoiselle,” put in the
Lieutenant. “It is dissolved. But as
it breaks up—it is a solemn occasion—
might we not drink one glass of
champagne——”

Here a shout of laughter overwhelmed
the young man. Champagne up in
these wild moorlands of Peebles, where
the youthful Tweed and its tributaries
wander through an absolute solitude !
The motion was negatived without a
division ; and then we went out to look
after Castor and Pollux.

All that forenoon we were chased by
a cloud as we drove down the valley
of the Tweed. Around us there was
abundant sunlight—falling on the grey
bed of the river, the brown water, the
green banks and hills beyond; but down
in the south-west was a great mass of
cloud which came slowly advancing
with its gloom. Here we were still in
the brightness of the yellow glare, with
a cool breeze stirring the rowan-trees

and the tall weeds by the side of the
river. Then, as we got further down
the valley, the bed of the stream grew
broader. There were great banks of
grey pebbles visible, and the brown
water running in shallow channels
between, where the stones fretted its
surface, and caused a murmur that
seemed to fill the silence of the smooth
hills around. Here and there a solitary
fisherman was visible, standing in the
riverand persistently whipping thestream
with his supple fly-rod. A few cottages
began to appear, at considerable inter-
vals, But we came to no village ; and
as for an inn, we never expected to see
one. We drove leisurely along the now
level road, through a country rich with
waving fields of grain, and dotted here
and there with comfortable - looking
farmhouses.
Then Bell sang to us :—

** Upon a time I chanced
To walk along the green,
Where pretty lasses danced
In strife, to choose a queen ;
Some homely dressed, some handsome,
Some pretty and some gay,
But who excelled in dancing
Must be the Queen of May.”
3ut when she had sung the last
verse—
** Then all the rest in sorrow,
And she in sweet content,
Gave over till the morrow,
And homewards straight they went.
But she, of all the rest,
Was hindered by the way,
For every youth that met her
Must kiss the Queen of May,”—

my Lady said it was very pretty, only
why did Bell sing an English song after
she had been trying to persuade us that
she held the English and their music in
contempt ?

“ Now, did I ever say anything like
that?” said Bell, turning in an injured
way to the Lieutenant.

“No,” says he, boldly. If she had
asked him to swear that two and two
were seven, he would have said that
the man was a paralysed imbecile who
did not know it already.

“ But I will sing you a Scotch song,
if you please,” says Bell, shrewdly sus-

24 The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton.

pecting that that was the object of Tita’s
protest.

** Will ye gang to the Hielands, Leezie Lind-
say *

—this was what Bell sang now—

“* Will ye gang to the Hielands wi’ me?
Will ye gang to the Hielands, Leezie Lind-

Say, e

My pride and my darling to be ?”’
** To gang to the Hielands wi’ you, sir,

I dinna ken how that may be,

For I ken nae the land that you live in

Nor ken I the lad I’m gaun wi’.”
And so forth to the end, where the
young lady “kilts up her coats o’ green
satin,” and is off with Lord Ronald
Macdonald. Probably the Lieutenant
meant only to show that he knew the
meaning of the word “ Hielands ;” but
when he said—

“And we do go to the Highlands,
yes?” the girl was greatly taken aback.
It seemed as though he were coolly
placing himself and her in the position
of the hero and iieroine of the song ;
and my Lady smiled, and Bell got con-
fused, and the Lieutenant, not knowing
what was the matter, stared, and then
turned to me to repeat the question.
By this time Bell had recovered herself,
and she answered hastily—

“Oh yes, we shall go to the High-
lands, shall we not ?—to the Trossachs,
and Ben Nevis, and Auchenasheen ng

“And Orkney too, Bell? Do you
know the wild proposal you are making
in laying out plans for another month’s
holiday ?”’

“ And why not ?” says the Lieutenant.
“It is only a pretence, this talk of much
work, You shall send the horses and
the phaeton back by the rail from Edin-
burgh ; then you are free to go away
anywhere for another month. Is it not
so, Madame ?”

Madame is silent. She knows that
she has only to say “yes” to have the
thing settled; but thoughts of home
and the cares of that pauperized parish
crowd in upon her mind.

“*T suppose we shall get letters from
the boys to-night, when we reach Edin-
burgh. There will be letters from home,
too, saying whether everything is right

down there. There may be no reason
for going back at onee——”

She was evidently yielding. Was it
that she wanted to give those young
people the chance of a summer ramble
which they would remember for the
rest of their life? The prospect lent a
kindly look to her face ; and, indeed,
the whole of them looked so exceedingly
happy, and so dangerously forgetful of
the graver aspects of life, that it was
thought desirable to ask them whether
there might not be a message from
Arthur among the batch of letters await-
ing us in Edinburgh.

’*Twas a random stroke, but it struck
home. The conscience of these careless
people was touched. They knew in
their inmost hearts that they had wholly
forgotten that unhappy young man whom
they had sent back to Twickenham with
all his faith in human nature destroyed
for ever. But was it pity for him that
now filled their faces, or a vague dread
that Arthur might, in the last extremity
of his madness, have gone up to Edin-
burgh by rail to meet us there ?

“‘He promised us an important com-
munication,” says my Lady.

She would not say that it was under-
stood to refer to his marriage; but that
was the impression he had left. Very
probably, too, she was haunted by specu-
lations as to how such a marriage, if it
took place, would turn out ; and whether
little Katty Tatham would be able to
reconcile Arthur to his lot, and convince
him that he was very fortunate in not
having married that faithless Bell.

“* Madame,” said the Lieutenant, sud-
denly—he did not care to have that
pitiful fellow Arthur receive so much
consideration—“ this is a very sober
country. Shall we never come to an
inn? The champagne I spoke of, that
has gone away as a dream; but on this
warm day a little lemonade and a little
whisky—that would do to drink the
health of our last drive, yes? But
there is no inn—nothing but those fields
of corn, and farmhouses.”

At last, however, we came to a village.
The Lieutenant proposed to pull up and
give Castor and Pollux a mouthful of

water and oatmeal—it was always Castor
and Pollux that were supposed to be
thirsty. But what was his amazement
to find that in the village there was no
inn of any kind !

“T wish there were some villages of
this sort down in our part of the
country,” says Queen Tita, with a sigh.
“With us, they build the public-house
first, and that draws other houses.”

And with that Bell began to relate to
the Lieutenant how my Lady was once
vexed beyond measure to find—just as
she was coming out of an obscure public-
house on a Sunday morning, after having
compelled the tipsy and quarrelling land-
lord thereof to beg forgiveness of his
wife—a whole group of visitors at the
Squire’s house coming along the road
from church, and staring at her as if she
had gone into the public for refreshment.
It was a vastly interesting story, perhaps;
but the sulky young man paid little heed
to it. He wore an injured look. He
kept looking far ahead along the road ;
and, although it was a very pretty road,
he did not seem satisfied. At length he
pulled the horses up, and hailed a far-
mer who, in his white shirt-sleeves, was
working in a field close by, along with
a domestic group of fellow-labourers.

“T say,” called out the Lieutenant,
‘isn’t there an inn on this road ?”

“Ay, that there is,” said the man,
with a grim smile, as he rose up and
drew his sleeve across his forehead.

“ How far yet ?”

“Twa miles. It’s a temperance hoose!”

“‘ A temperance hoose,” said the Lieu-
tenant to Bell; “what is a temperance
hoose ?”

“They don’t sell any spirits there,
or beer, or wine.”

“ And is that what is called temper-
ance ?” said the Lieutenant, in a peevish
way; and then he called out again,
“Look here, my good friend, when do
we come to a proper kind of inn ?”

“There is an inn at Ledburn—that’s
eight miles on.”

“Eight miles? And where was the
last one we passed ?”

“Well, that maun be about seven
miles back.”

The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. 25

“Thank you. It is healthy for you,
perhaps, but how you can live in a
place where there is no public-house not
for fifteen miles—well, it is a wonder.
Good day to you!”

“Gude day, sir!” said the farmer,
with a broad, good-humoured laugh on
his face ; the Lieutenant was obviously
not the first thirsty soul who had com-
plained of the scarcity of inns in these
parts.

“These poor horses,” growled the
Lieutenant as we drove on. “It is the
hottest day we have had. The clouds
have gone away, and we have beaten in
the race. And other eight miles in
this heat a

He would probably have gone on
compassionating the horses, but that he
caught a glimpse of Bell demurely
smiling, and then he said—

“Ha, you think I speak for myself,
Mademoiselle ? That also, for when you
give your horses water, you should
drink yourself always, for the good of
the inn. But now that we can get
nothing, Madame, shall we imagine it,
yes? What we shall drink at the Led-
burn inn? Have you tried, on a hot
day, this !—one glass of sparkling hock
poured into a tumbler, then a boitle
of seltzer-water, then three drops of
Angostura bitters, and a lump of ice.
That is very good; and this too—you
put a glass of pale sherry in the tumbler,
then a bottle of soda-water, then a little
lemon-juice n

“Please, Count von Rosen, may I
put it down in my note-book?” says
Tita, hurriedly. “You know I have
your recipe for a luncheon, Wouldn't
these do for it?”

“Yes, and for you!” says a third
voice. ‘ What madness has seized you,
to talk of ice and hock in connection
with Ledburn? If you get decent
Scotch whisky and ham and eggs for
luncheon, you.may consider yourselves
well off.”

“T am a little tired of that sort of
banquet,” says my Lady, with a gentle
look of resignation. “ Couldn’t we drive
on to Edinburgh ?”

But for the sake of the horses, we

26 The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton.

should all have been glad to do that;
for the appearance of this Ledburn
inn, when we got to it, impressed us
with awe and terror. ‘Tis a cutthroat-
looking place. The dingy, dilapidated
building stands at the parting of two
roads ; the doors were shut as we drove
up to it; there was no one about of
whom we could ask a question. It
looked the sort of place for travellers to
reach at dead of night, and become the
subject of one or other of the sombre
adventures which are associated with
remote and gloomy inns in the annals
of romance. When we did get hold
of the landlord, his appearance was not
prepossessing. He was a taciturn and
surly person. There was apparently no
ostler, and he helped Von Rosen to take
the horses out of the phaeton, but he
did so in a fashion which awoke the ire
of the Lieutenant to a serious degree,
and some sharp words were being ban-
died about when I drove the women
into the inn.

“That is a dreadful person,” said my
Lady.

“Why? He has become morose in
this solitary inn, that is all. If you
were shut up here for a few years, what
would you become ?”

We had ham and eggs and whisky
in a dingy little chamber upstairs. The
women would touch nothing—notwith-
standing that the Lieutenant came in to
announce that the shoe of one of the
horses had got loose, and that a smith
would have to be sent for from some
distance off. Moreover, when the smith
did come, it was found that our inge-
nious landlord had not informed him
what was required of him, and conse-
quently he had brought no tools. Should
we send the horse back with him, or
would he despatch a boy for his tools ?

“How many miles is it to Edinburgh?”
says my Lady.

* About a dozen, I should think.”

“We couldn’t walk that, do you
think?” she says to Bell, with a doubt-
ful air.

Bell could walk it very well, I know ;
but she regards her companion for a
moment, and says—

“We must not try.”

Looking at this fix, and at the annoy-
ance the women experienced in being
detained in this inhospitable hostelry,
that young Prussian got dreadfully
enraged. He was all the more wroth
that there was no one on whom he
could reasonably vent his anger ; and,
in fact, it was a most fortunate thing
for our host that he had at last con-
descended to be a little more civil. The
Lieutenant came up into the room, and
proposed that we should play bézique.
Impossible. Or would Mademoiselle
care to have the guitar taken out?
Mademoiselle would prefer to have it
remain where it was. And at length
we went outside and sat in the yard, or
prowled along the uninteresting road,
until the smith arrived, and then we
had the horses put in and set out upon
the last stage of our journey.

We drove on in the deepening sunset.
The ranges of the Pentland Hills on our
left were growing darker, and the wild
moorland country around was getting
to be of a deeper and deeper purple.
Sometimes, from the higher portions
of the road, we caught a glimpse of
Arthur’s Seat, and in the whiter sky of
the north-east it lay there like a pale-
blue cloud. We passed through Penny-
cuick, picturesquely placed along the
wooded banks of the North Esk. But
we were driving leisurely enough along
the level road, for the horses had done
a good day’s work, and there still re-
mained a few miles before they had
earned their rest.

Was it because we were driving near
a great city that Von Rosen somewhat
abruptly asked my Lady what was the
best part of London to live in? The
question was an odd one for a young
man. Bell pretended not to hear—she
was busy with the reins. Whereupon
Tita began to converse with her com-
panion on the troubles of taking a
house, and how your friends would
inevitably wonder how you could have
chosen such a neighbourhood instead of
their neighbourhood, and assure you,
with much compassion, that you had
paid far too much for it.

a a. ae Oe ek. ee

“ And as for Pimlico,” I say to him,
“vou can’t live there ; the sight of its
stucco would kill you in a month. And
as for Brompton, you can’t live there ;
it lies a hundred feet below the level of
the Thames. And as for South Ken-
sington, you can’t live there; it is a
huddled mass of mews. And as for
Belgravia or Mayfair, you can’t live
there ; for you could not pay the rent
of a good house, and the bad houses are
in slums. Paddington?—a thousand
miles from a theatre. Hampstead 1—
good-bye to your friends. Bloomsbury ?
—the dulness of it will send you to an
early grave. Islington }—you will ac-
quire a Scotch accent in a fortnight.
Clapham !—you will become a Dissenter.
Denmark Hill?—they will exclude you
from all the fashionable directories,
Brixton !—the ‘endless meal of brick’
will drive you mad. But then it is true
that Pimlico is the best-drained part of
London. And Brompton has the most
beautiful old gardens, And South Ken-
sington brings you close to all sorts of
artistic treasures. And Hampstead has
a healthy situation. And Mayfair is
close to the Park. And Clapham is
close to several commons, and offers you
excellent drives. And Denmark Hill is
buried in trees, and you descend from it
into meadows and country lanes, And
Islington is celebrated for possessing
the prettiest girls in the world. And
Brixton has a gravelly soil—so that you
see, looking at all these considerations,
you will have no difficulty whatever in
deciding where you ought to live.”

“T think,” said the young man,
gravely, “the easiest way of choosing a
house in London is to take one in the
country.”

“Oh, do live in the country!” ex-
claims Tita, with much anxiety. “ You
can go so easily up to London and take
rooms about Bond Street or in Half-
moon Street, if you wish to see pictures
or theatres. And what part of the
country near Lundon could you get
prettier than down by Leatherhead ?”

Bell is not appealed to. She will
not hear. She pretends to be des-
perately concerned about the horses.

The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton.

27

And so the discussion is postponed,
sine die, until the evening ; and in the
gathering darkness we approach Edin-
burgh.

How long the way seemed on this
the last night of our driving! The
clear twilight faded away; and the
skies overhead began to show faint
throbbings of the stars. A pale yellow
glow on the horizon told us where the
lights of Edinburgh were afire. The
road grew almost indistinguishable ; but
overhead the great worlds became more
visible in the deep vault of blue. Ina
perfect silence we drove along the still
highway, between the dark hedges ; and
clearer and more clear became the
white constellations, trembling in the
dark. What was my Lady thinking of—
of Arthur, or her boys at Twickenham,
or of long-forgotten days at Eastbourne
—as she looked up at all the wonders
of the night? There lay King Charles’s
Wain as we had often regarded it from
a boat at sea, as we lay idly on the
lapping waves. The jewels on Cas-
siopeia’s chair glimmered faint and
pale ; and all the brilliant stars of the
Dragon’s hide trembled in the dark.
The one bright star of the Swan re-
called many an evening in the olden
times; and here, nearer at hand,
Capella shone, and there Cepheus looked
over to the Pole-star as from the dis-
tance of another universe. Somehow
it seemed to us that under the great
and throbbing vault the sea ought to be
lying clear and dark; but these were
other masses we saw before us, where
the crags of Arthur's Seat rose sharp
and black into the sky. We ran
in almost under the shadow of that
silent mass of hill. We drew nearer to
the town ; and then we saw before us
long and waving lines of red fire—the
gas-lamps of a mighty street. We left
the majesty of the night outside, and
were soon in the heart of the great city.
Our journey was at an end.

But when the horses had been con-
signed to their stables, and all arrange-
ments made for their transference next
day to London, we sat down at the
window of a Princes Street Hotel.

28 The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton.

The tables behind were inviting enough.
Our evening meal had been ordered, and
at length the Lieutenant had the wish
of his heart in procuring the Schaumwein
with which to drink to the good health
of our good horses that had brought us
so far. But what in all the journey
was there to equal the magic sight that
lay before us as we turned to these big
panes? Beyond a gulf of blackness,
the old town of Edinburgh rose with a
thousand points of fire into the clear
sky of a summer night. The tall
houses, with their eight or nine stories,
had their innumerable windows ablaze ;
and the points of orange light shone in
the still blue shadow until they seemed
to form part of some splendid and en-
chanted palace built on the slopes of a
lofty hill. And then beyond that we
could see the great crags of the Castle
looming dark in the starlight, and we
knew, rather than saw, that there were
walls and turrets up there, cold and

distant, looking down on the yellow
glare of the city beneath. What was
Cologne and the coloured lamps of its
steamers—as you see them cross the
yellow waters of the Rhine when a full
moon shines over the houses of Deutz
—or what was Prague with its countless
spires piercing the starlight and its great
bridge crossing over to the wooded
heights of the Hradschin—compared to
this magnificent spectacle in the noblest
city of the world? The lights of the
distant houses went out one by one.
The streets became silent. Even the
stars grew paler; but why was that?
A faint light, golden and soft, began to
steal along the Castle-hill; and the
slow, mild radiance touched the sharp
slopes, the trees, and the great grey
walls above, which were under the stars.

“Oh, my dear,” says Tita, quite
gently, to Bell, “we have seen nothing
like that, not even in your own country
of the Lakes!”

[Note by Queen Titania.—* It seems they have put upon me the responsibility of saying the
last word, which is not quite fair. In the old comedies it was always, the heroine of the piece
who came forward to the footlights, and in her prettiest way spoke the epilogue ; and of course
the heroine was always young and nice-looking. If Bell would only do that, now, I am
sure you would be pleased; but she is afraid to appear in public. As for myself, I don’t
know what to say. Count von Rosen suggests that I should copy some of the ancient
authors and merely say ‘Farewell, and clap your hands ;’ but very likely that is a joke—
for who can tell when gentlemen intend to be amusing?—and perhaps they never said any-
thing so foolish. But, as you are not to be addressed by the heroine of the piece, perhaps,
considering my age—which I am seldom allowed to forget—perhaps a word of advice may be
permitted. And that is to the ladies and gentlemen who always go abroad and spend a great
deal of time and money in hiring carriages to drive them in foreign parts. Of course everyone
ought to go abroad ; but why every year? Iam sure I am not prejudiced, and I never enjoyed
any tour abroad so much as this one through England. I do consider England (and of course
you must include Scotland and Ireland) the most beautiful country in the world. 1 have never

een to America ; but that does not matter. It cannot be more beautiful than England. If it
is, so much the better, but I for one am quite satisfied with England ; and as for the old-fashioned
and quaint places you meet on a driving-tour such as this, I am sure the American ladies and
gentlemen whom | have met have always admitted to me that they were delightful. Well, that
is all. I shall say nothing about our young friends, for I think sufficient revelations have been
made in the foregoing pages. Arthur has only been to see us once since our return, and of
course we could not ask him the reason of his getting married so unexpectedly, for Katty was
with him, and very pleased and happy she looked. Arthur was very civil to our Bell ; which
shows that his marriage has improved him in one respect ; but he was a little cold and distant
at the same time. The poor girl was dreadfully frightened ; but she made herself very friendly
to him, and kissed little Katty in the iost affectionate manner when they were going away.
Luckily, perhaps, Lieutenant von Rosen was up in London ; but when he came down next
day, Bell had a great deal to tell him in private ; and the result of the conversation—of which
we elderly folks, of course, are not permitted to know anything—seemed to be very pleasing to
them both. Then there was a talk between my husband and him in the evening about a loose-
box in certain stables. Bell came and put her arm round my waist, and besought me very
prettily to tell her what were the nicest colours for a drawing-room. It seems there is some
house, about a couple of miles from here, which they have visited; but I am not going to tell
= any more. As our Bell is too shy to come forward, I suppose I must say Good-bye for

er, and thank you very much indecd for coming with us so far on such a long and roundabout
journey. "] :

SAALBURG AND SAARBRUCKEN,

A cuapter of English history in which
it needs a certain effort of thought to
see a chapter of English history is
written in the Roman remains on the
right bank of the Rhine. The talk about
natural boundaries and the frontier of
the Rhine has done somewhat to over-
shadow the fact that the great German
river never has been a lasting frontier
of anything. Cesar found the German
settled, as he still is, on both sides of it.
The successors of Cesar established their
power, so far as they were able, on both
sides of it also. The elder Empire
ruled so much as it could hold of its
eastern bank, from Milan or from Ra-
venna, from York or from Trier. The
younger Empire ruled so much as it
could hold of its western bank, from the
island palace of Gelnhausen or from the
home of the conquered Saracen at
Palermo. Since modern France first
reached the Rhine at the Peace of
Westphalia, the natural boundary has
been overleaped whenever there has
been a chance. One aggressor thought
it enough to keep his hold on Breisach ;
another was not satisfied unless Liibeck
formed part of a French department as
well as Strassburg. The most palpable
result of the great vengeance of our own
day is that the boasted natural frontier
is a frontier no longer. A generation or
two hence the temporary French occupa-
tion of Strassburg will seem as strange
an accident as the shorter French oc-
cupation of Hamburg: it will seem as
strange an accident as the longer English
occupation of Calais. Go back as far
as recorded history will take us, and we
shall find Germans dwelling on the left
bank of the Rhine no less than on the
right. But we shall also find the Latin-
speaking enemy, whether he takes the
form of an ancient Roman or a modern
Frenchman, striving to establish his

dominion on the right bank no less than
on the left.

It must always be remembered on
the one hand, that the Roman pro-
vince of Gaul, looked on as a land which
has the Rhine for its eastern frontier,
was a land which contained Teutonic as
well as Celtic and Iberian inhabitants.
And it must no less be remembered that
the Rhine did not form any fixed or
impassable boundary of the Gaulish
province, but that it was overpassed
whenever the Roman masters of Gaul
found it possible, and thought it ex-
pedient, to overleap it. Gaul, we must
bear in mind, is a purely geographical
term, marking out a certain territory on
the map, but a territory occupied by
various nations and languages, a territory
so far from being purely Celtic that it was
not even purely Aryan. Of the Gaulish
province the Rhine formed the boundary
in a rough sense ; but it was only in a
rough sense that it formed it, and during
the greater part of its course, so far as it
formed a boundary at all, it formed a
boundary, not between the Celt and the
Teuton, but between the independent
Teuton and the Teuton under Roman
dominion. But existing remains show
that it was only in a very rough sense
that it was a boundary at all. The
Rhine no doubt became for several
centuries the boundary of the lands
which were thoroughly Romanized, those
within which Roman culture and the
Latin language became thoroughly do-
minant. But it was far from being the
limit of Roman military occupation. A

toman frontier province was commonly
bordered by a sort of debateable land,
which had been brought more or less
under Roman dominion or Roman influ-
ence, but which had not been thoroughly
welded into the great system of the
Roman world. It was indeed a matter

30 Saalburg and Saarbriicken,

of policy to have everywhere a frontier
district of this kind, a district which
might bear the brunt of a never-ending
border warfare, and might keep the
struggle with the Barbarian as far off
as might be from the lands which re-
posed in the full enjoyment of the
Roman Peace. Such a border district
we find in the lands beyond the Rhine,
just as we find it in the lands beyond
the Danube. The great cities on the
Rhine and the Mosel, Colonia, Mo-
guntia, and their fellows, were doubtless
thoroughly Roman from an early stage
of the Roman dominion in those regions.
Augusta Trevirorum became in the later
days of the elder Empire a seat of Im-
perial rule, another Rome as it were,
like Milan and Ravenna, like Nikomé-
deia and Byzantium, transplanted to the
Rhenish border of the Empire. The
land immediately west of the Rhine
was most likely never so thoroughly
Roman as in the days just before the
time when it ceased to be Roman at all;
for the presence of Emperors at Trier
was simply a sign that the Roman pos-
session of Gaul was in serious danger.
Beyond these thoroughly Romanized
lands, beyond the great river which in
some sort guarded them, lay a half sub-
dued district, where Roman soldiers
pitched their camps, where they have
left ample traces of their presence be-
hind them, but where we cannot believe
that the culture and the speech of
Rome ever made a thorough conquest
of the whole land. On the left bank
of the Rhine we are perhaps some-
what surprised to find that the Roman
has left so few traces of himself,
whether in nomenclature or in his
actual works. Trier stands alone in this
region, as it stands alone in Northern
Europe generally, in the possession of
great surviving Roman works, works
truly worthy of an Imperial city. But
that surviving Roman works are rare in
this region really proves but little ; they
are just as rare in large districts of Gaul
which beyond doubt were thoroughly
tomanized, and whose Roman popula-
tion must have been far less disturbed
at the time of the Teutonic conquests.

The argument from nomenclature proves
much more; Teutonic names, names
plainly newer than the Teutonic re-
conquest, are decidedly the rule along
the left bank of the river, only less
universally than along the right bank.
But when we cross to the right bank,
into that part of old Francia which
forms the modern Nassau and Hom-
burg, we are surprised at finding how
much the Roman has left behind him.
A glance at the Museum at Wies-
baden is enough to bring strongly home
to the mind that, though we may fairly
call the Rhine the boundary of the
Roman civilization, it certainly was not
the boundary of the Roman power.
Aquz Mattiace and its neighbourhood
are rich in Roman remains; the hot
springs were early known to Roman
naturalists, and there seems reason to
think that they did not fail to draw
thither Roman visitors! A not very
long walk from the modern town brings
us to a still more distinct witness of
Roman occupation in the distinctly
marked ruins of the Roman fortress
of Rambach. Some food for thought
is provided when we see the site of the
stronghold of the heathen conquerors
turned to the peaceful uses of God’s
acre, and the church, a building of no
value or interest in itself, standing erect
among the relics of a state of things
which has so wholly passed away.
But there is nothing at Rambach to
give much detailed instruction to any
but professed students of Roman anti-
quities. But Wiesbaden and Rambach
together supply enough to set any one
thinking, to make any one who feels an
interest in the great struggle of tongues
and races which has gone on for so many
ages along the line of the great river,

1 The elder Pliny (xxxi. 17) speaks of the
**Mattiaci Fontes” as if from a vague report,
and certainly does not imply that there was
any settlement there in his time. ‘‘ Sunt et

Mattiaci in Germania fontes calidi trans
Rhenum, quorum haustus triduo fervet. Circa
margines vero pumicem faciunt aque.” Am-
mianus (xxix. 4) speaks familiarly of “ Aqua
Mattiace,” as if by his time it had grown,

if not into a town, at least into a military
station.

feel specially eager to learn something
more of any traces which the earlier
stages of that great struggle may have
left behind them.

On one spot at least in that region
the seeker after traces of the great
struggle between Roman and German
will not be disappointed. The first
thoughts suggested by the name of Hom-
burg are certainly not thoughts of his-
tory or antiquities in any shape. But,
at no great distance to the north-west,
the road which, passing from Homburg,
climbs the heights forking off in two
directions towards Obernhain and Usin-
gen, leads straight to aspot than which
none speaks with a clearer voice of the
presence and of the retreat of the Roman
invader. This is the great Roman station
of Saalburg, the chief of all the Roman
military posts along the line of the
Taunus. And close beyond it we reach
the real limit of the Roman power in
these regions. The Pfahlgraben, the
dyke drawn in an irregular shape from
the Lahn to the Main, answers to the
successive walls made by the Romans
in our own island to defend the fully
subdued and organized province against
the incursions of the unsubdued natives.
But as a mere structure of earth, a vallum
and not a murus, it is not an object to
be compared with the stately bulwark of
stone with which—according to Dr.
Merivale, in the latest days of their
power—the Imperial people fenced in
the smaller extent of their dominion
in Britain. In the immediate neighbour-
hood of Saalburg—and I cannot profess
to have traced it elsewhere—the P/fahl-
graben itself is not a very striking ob-
ject. Of no great height and almost
covered with brush-wood, it might easily
be passed over by any one who was not
specially looking for it. Save for its lying
so near to works the nature of which
cannot be mistaken, it might easily
escape notice altogether, or it might be
taken for some fence of a far less ancient
and dignified kind. But about the
fortress whose remains rise above it,
about the Saalburg itself, there can be
no mistake whatever. The walls no-
where rise much above the foundations ;

Saalburg and Saarbriicken. 31

there is nothing standing up, like the
vast Roman buildings at Trier, like the
mighty walls of Anderida, or even like
the smaller fragments at York, Lincoln,
and Leicester. Yet no one can raise any
question as to what the building was or
who the people were who reared it.
The Saalburg is the camp of the con-
queror, pitched there to guard the furthest
outposts of his dominion. It was the
chief of the Roman stations along
the Taunus range, looking backward
on the land which Rome had brought
more or less thoroughly under her
dominion, and looking forward on the
land which she did not venture to claim
as her own, but which still remained the
undisputed heritage of the free German.
Between him and herself she had drawn
a line to be at once a boundary and a
bulwark, and the spot to which we have
carried ourselves in fact or in thought is
the greatest and strongest of the posts
by which that bulwark was to be guarded.
The look-out from the Saalburg over the
Pfahlgraben which lies beneath it is
still a look-out on a wild and free land
which shows but few signs of man’s
works or dwellings. As we trace out the
length and breadth of the fortress, its
walls, its gates, the hall of its pre-
torium, the places within and without
its walls set apart for the various pur-
poses of Roman military life, it needs
no great flight of imagination again to
people them with those who, seventeen
or eighteen hundred years back, guarded
that fortress against the assaults of men
of our own blood and speech who were
striving to win back the land which the
stranger had rent from them. We see the
site of the altars where, on the soil whence
the worshipper of Thunder and Woden
had been driven, prayers and incense
went up to the Jupiter of the Roman
Capitol, to Mars the father of Rome, and
to Venus the mother of her Ceesars. We
trace out the ground once covered by the
tents of the legionaries gathered around
the central dwelling of their Imperator.
We look forth from thence on the wide
expanse beyond the boundary wall, and
we think with what feelings our kins-
folk on the yet unconquered soil may

32 Saalburg and Saarbriicken.

have now and then heard an echo of
the sounds, or caught a distant glimpse
of the scenes, which went on daily
within the bulwark which told that the
whole land of their forefathers was no
longer theirs. They saw, spreading its
wings in theirnativesky, the proud badge
of Rome’s dominion, the eagle of Marius
and Cwsar, and they looked not forward
to the day when they themselves should
be the heirs of Rome’s titles and Rome’s
dominion, when the Roman eagle should
become the badge of German rule, and
when the Tiber should welcome as Roman

Cesar whatever King might be chosen

on the banks of the liberated Rhine.!

Our thoughts may well pass on from our

kinsfolk to ourselves. The fortress on

the Taunus marked indeed how far
the power of Rome had reached, but it
marked no less how far the hopes of

Rome had fallen back. Rome had in-

deed spread her power beyond the

Rhine and the Danube; but there had

been a day when she had looked on

the Rhine and the Danube as rivers
whose course should flow within her
home domain, when she had reared
her trophies by the Lippe and had
pitched her camps by the Weser, and
had deemed that no stream nearer than
the mighty Elbe itself should mark the
spot where the Roman Terminus had
deigned to fix his halting-place. When
it was needful to fence in the ridge of

Taunus with artificial bulwarks, and to

guard them with all the skill of Roman

discipline and all the strength of Roman
fortification, it showed that the dreams
of those days had passed away, that

Terminus had been driven to content

himself with a halting-place nearer to

his old shrine on the Capitoline, that

Rome had found that she might indeed

plant her outposts on German soil, but
1 Gunther, Ligurinus de Gestis Frederici,

lib. i.:—

** Et quo Romanum nostra virtute redemptum
Hostibus expulsis ad nos justissimus ordo
Transtulit imperium, Romani gloria regni
Nos penes est ; quemcumque sibi Germania

Regem
Preficit, hune dives submisso vertice Roma
Suscipit, et verso Tiberim regit ordine
Rhenus.”

that the whole length and breadth of
the German land was not doomed to
become a Roman province. And the
day on which that doom was fixed ruled
the destinies, not only of the Teutonic
mainland but of the Teutonic island ;
it fixed the fate of Britain as well as the
fate of Germany. When bulwarks were
needed to fence in the land wrested from
our kinsmen between the Lahn and the
Main, it showed that our own land by
the Elbe and the Weser was free without
fear of bondage or invasion. What if
it had been otherwise? What if the earlier
hopes of Drusus, the later hopes of his
son, had been carried out in all their
fulness? What if the tongue and laws
and habits of Rome had been firmly
established as far as the Elbe or the
Trave, while her military outposts had
stretched to the Oder or the Vistula?
Such an extension of the Roman power
would have carried with it the bondage
of our own fathers. We must not forget
that, in the days of which we are now
speaking, our nation and its name were
already in being, though the obscure
name of the English is found only, with-
out remark or description, among a list
of dimly seen Teutonic tribes who were
hidden from Roman sight by their
guardian streams and forests, and were
known only as common worshippers of
the mother Earth on whichthey dwelled.!
Had the schemes of Drusus been carried
out, our fathers must have shared the
fate of their kinsmen. There is no reason
to think that a German province, if
once fully conquered, would have had
a different history from the Gaulish pro-
vince. If the Germans were threatening,

the Gauls had once been more threatening

still. And yet Gaul became thoroughly

incorporated with the Roman dominion ;

1 Tacitus, Germanie, 40. ‘* Reudigni de-

inde et Aviones et Angli et Varini et Eu-

doses et Suardones et Nuithones fluminibus

aut silvis muniuntur. Nec quidquam notabile

in singulis, nisi quod in commune Hertham,

id est, Terram matrem, colunt, eamyue inter-

venire rebus hominum, invehi populis, arbi-

trantur.” Tacitus, who has thus much to

say about the Angles, does not speak of the

Saxons. Ptolemy twice (ii. 11, 11; 31) men-

tions the Saxon name, but has nothing to say

about the Angles.

we

7

Saalburg and Saarbriicken, 33

its inhabitants—as far as we can see,
its Teutonic as well as its Celtic inhabi-
tants—had thoroughly put on the habits
and feelings of Romansand had learned to
glory inthe Roman name. Our Batavian
kinsfolk became loyal subjects of the
Empire, and our own fathers, the Angles
and Saxons whose name Rome barely
knew, could hardly have failed to do the
like. The Teutonic speech, High and
Low—if indeed it is not too early to talk
of any difference between High and Low
—could hardly have stood its ground
against the encroaching Latin any better
than the Gaulish tongue had done. Teu-
tonic dialects might possibly havelingered
on, as Basque and Breton have lingered
on, in some out-of-the-way corners, per-
haps to be a subject of curious study
for Slavonic or even for Turanian philo-
jogers. For the lot which did fall to the
Teutonic nations could, in such a case,
hardly have failed to fall to the Slaves.
As they did settle in and influence so
many of the provinces of the Eastern
Empire, they could hardly have failed
to do the like by the Western. But it
is plain that the influence of the Slaves
in the East, though strictly analogous
to that of the Teutons in the West, was
at once far less extensive in degree and
far less wholesome in kind. Had Ger-
many been conquered, Europe could
hardly have been saved from either re-
maining attached to the Byzantine Em-
pire, or being split up into two or more
Empires of the Byzantine type. The
‘Teutonic awakening of mankind, if it
ever happened at all, must have waited
for the turn of the Scandinavian branch
of our race, when their day of greatness
began in the eighth century.

In such a state of things as this,
an English conquest of Britain, and all
that in every quarter of the world has
followed on the English conquest of
Britain, could never have happened or
been dreamed of. Instead of the
healthy and vigorous barbarians who
crossed over to found a new Teutonic
world in the Celtic island, the Angles
and Saxons of the fifth century would
have been Roman provincials speaking
a Roman tongue. The Elbe, perhaps

No. 157.—vow. xxvii.

the Eider, would have been set as thick
with Roman colonies and settlements as
the Rhine and the Mosel. The Low-
German speech, which one set of con-
quests made the tongue of Britain,
which another set of conquests made
the tongue of the southern shore of the
Baltic, might perhaps have had about
as much influence on the Romance
of Northern Germany as the old Celtic
speech has had on theRomance of Central
Gaul. Instead of speaking a ‘l'eutonic
tongue in a Teutonic island, we might
still be in our old home on the main-
land, speaking a Romance tongue with
possibly a Slavonic infusion. England
could never have been ; the name might
indeed have lived on as the name of
a petty corner of land among the fiords
and islands of the Western Baltic ; but
the new England beyond the sea and the
newer England beyond the Ocean could
never have been heard of. The history
of the English, no less than the history
of the German, people begins in the
Teutoburg forest. The future destiny of
our race became possible when Armi-
nius smote down the legions of Varus.
The Roman historian himself honours
him as beyond doubt the liberator of
Germany ;' but in being the liberator
of Germany he made it possible that
Hengest and Cerdic should one day be
the founders of England.

A train of thought like this can
hardly fail to come into the mind of
any one to whom history is a whole, as
he. stands on the heights of Saalburg
and looks out from the Roman fortress,
over the Roman wall, into that free
German land which that fortress and
that wall stand as the confession of
Rome that she could never conquer.
But the same train of thought might
come into the mind at any point along
the whole line of the Roman defences.
But associations less vague and more
local cleave to the Saalburg itself. Next
to the scene of the great deliverance
itself among the hills between the Ems
and the Weser, no spot, there seems
every reason to believe, played a greater

1 Tacitus, Annals, ii. 88. “ Liberator haud
dubie Germaniz.”

D

34 Saalburg and Saarbriicken.

part in the struggle than that on which
we are now standing. There is little
reason to doubt that the height of Saal-
burg has been trodden both by the
earliest champion of our race and by
the noblest invaders that the lands of
Latin speech ever sent against us.
Drusus, in his conquering march into
the heart of Germany, had established
a post on Taunus. With the recovery
of freedom under Arminius the badge
of foreign rule was swept away; but
when Germanicus came to restore the
work of his father, the fortress which
his father had reared was set up again.!
That Saalburg was the actual point of
Taunus where the fort of Drusus was
placed can of course not be proved to
demonstration. But the conjecture has
every probability on its side. The
fortress which was thought worthy of
special care by the Roman generals and
of special notice by the Roman historian
can hardly fai] to have been that which
clearly was the strongest and most im-
portant point along the line of the
Pfahlgraben. And this beyond doubt
is Saalburg. We may therefore safely
set down Saalburg as being the place
which Drusus and Germanicus chose as
the main stronghold of Rome in these
regions. Nor does there seem to be
any reasonable doubt that it is the Ar-
taunon of Ptolemy.? But, further than
this, there seems to be no distinct
notice of the place in history. That so
it should be is not wonderful. We
must not look for much geographical
precision during that long time of the
Imperial history when we are driven to
get most of our facts from the epito-
mators, Greek and Latin. And when
Rome has again a historian in Ammianus,
we have got to times when Saalburg was
doubtless almost as thorough a wreck
as we see it now. We may be sure
that the Roman occupation of the
Taunus had come to an end long before

1 Tacitus, Annals, i. 56. ‘*Germanicus.. .
posito castello super vestigia paterni presidii
in monte Tauno, expeditum exercitum in
Cattos rapit.” In the Annals, xii. 28, there

is another reference to the Taunus as a point
occupied by the Remans,
3 II. 11, 29.

the times when independent Germans
sacked the great Roman cities on the
left bank of the Rhine. It was enough
for Julian again to establish the Rhenish
boundary by his victory at Strassburg.
The first prince who ever set forth from
Paris on a German campaign deemed it
a great matter to keep up, how he best
might, a single fortress—an Imperial
Breisach—at some unknown point on
the independent side of the stream.’
Valentinian again crossed the Rhine and
established another outpost of the same
kind on the heights above the Neckar.
But an outpost on the Neckar is of
itself a sign that the dominion of Rome
on the Lahn and the Main had passed
away. And Valentinian showed no
less how far and no further he carried
his real hopes of lasting dominion, when
he deemed it needful to line the Rhine
itself with strong defences from the
Retian mountains to the Ocean.”

To one who really grasps history as a
whole, who really takes in the full bear-
ing of those wonderful times when it is
equally true to say that the German con-
quered Rome and that Rome conquered
the German, the charm of association is
perhaps even greater in tracking out the
steps of Valentinian, and yet more the
steps of Julian, than in tracking out the
steps of Drusus and Germanicus. The
true historic interest of the works of the

1 Ammianus, xvii. 2. ‘‘Dum nullus ob-
sisteret, munimentum quod in Alamannorum
solo conditum Trajanus suo nomine voluit
appellari, dudum violentius oppugnatum tu-
multuario studio reparatum est; locatisque
ibi pro tempore defensoribus, ex barbarorum
visceribus alimenta congesta sunt.”

2 Ammianus, xxvii. 10; xxviii. 2. “Valentini-
anusmagna animo concipiens et utilia, Rhenum
omnem a Retiarum exordio adusque fretalem
Oceanum magnis molibus communiebat, castra
extollens altius et castella turresque assiduas
per habiles locos et opportunos, qua Galliarum
extenditur longitudo: nonnunquam etiam
ultra flumen edificiis positis subradens bar-
baros fines.”’ The historian goes on to tell howa
fortress by the Neckar (‘‘ munimentum celsum
et tutum, quod ipse a primis fundirat aus-
piciis, preterlabente Nicro nomine fluvio”)
was in danger from its position ; he both turned
the course of the river and raised another
fortress on a neighbouring height (‘* trans
Rhenum in monte Piri, qui barbaricus locus
est, munimentum exstruere disposuit raptim”).

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Saalburg and Saarbriicken. 35

men who had to defend the dominion
of Rome against German invasion is at
least as great as any that can belong to
the works of men who strove to make
Germany subject to Rome. A work of
Julian repaired by Valentinian would call
up as long a train of thought as a work of
Drusus repaired by his son. But, as we
have seen, the few historical notices
which we can with any approach to
certainty connect with the Saalburg
belong to the earlier period. And there
is no antiquarian evidence which at all
leads us to fix any of the works at Saal-
burg to the days after Constantine.
Such evidence as we have, that of the
coins and inscriptions which have been
found there, certainly suggests the belief
that the Saalburg was forsaken at a
much earlier time. There seem to be
none later than the time of the Gor-
dians, while most of them belong to
what we may call the Antonine period.
That is, if we may extend that name to the
reigns of the princes who were or pro-
fessed to be of the House of Severus,
and who thought good to adorn them-
selves with the name which had been
borne by Pius and Marcus. So far as
these facts prove anything, they might
lead us to doubt whether the fortress
belongs to the earliest days of the
Empire, and whether we should not see
in a work of Trajan or his age, one of
the fruits perhaps of the diligent wan-
derings of the restless Hadrian. But
they certainly lead us to think that the
Saalburg did not remain a Roman
stronghold much after the middle of
the third century. One thing is certain,
that, whoever was the founder of the
fortress, its arrangements were at some
later time wholly changed, and changed
in several points into forms differing
from the arrangements commonly fol-
lowed in Roman encampments. The
details have been carefully worked out
in a pamphlet by a local antiquary to
which I have referred in a note. The
position of the Via Principalis, the

1 A list of them is given in a pamphlet
by Dr. K. Rossel, ‘Das Pfahigraben-Castell
Saalburg bei Homburg. Wiesbaden, 1871.”
Pp. 5—9. Dr. Rossel describes the existing
remains at length.

great transverse street which crossed the
camp, has been changed, and changed
to a less usual place. And it is a detail
well worthy of notice, that one of the
usual gates of the Pretorium, namely
that nearest to the Pfahlgraben, that, in
short, which faced the enemy, is left
out. Into the technical details of the
remains I will not presume to enter ; I
have not enough knowledge of the
minuter points of Roman military archi-
tecture to risk an opinion as to any
theories which may be formed from
these appearances as to the date or
object of the changes which have plainly
taken place. The history of Saalburg,
as we can make it out from either docu-
mentary or archeological evidence, seems
to come to this. The Roman fortress of
Artaunum was founded by Drusus, was
destroyed by Arminius, and restored by
Germanicus. At some time in its his-
tory great and remarkable changes were
made in its internal arrangements. It
was in full and uninterrupted Roman
occupation during the latter half of the
second century and the first half of the
third. After the time of the Gordians
(238-244) there is no direct evidence
of either kind to tell us anything as to
the fate of the fortress. But this very
lack of evidence, combined with what
we know of the course of warfare in.
Germany in the fourth century, makes it
almost certain that Artaunum was lost
to Rome at some time in the century
between the Gordians and Julian, and
was never won back again.

Such is the history of the Saalburg,
a history meagre enough, but still one
which makes it a living and speaking
witness of the long struggle of the Latin-
speaking powers—of Rome, or more truly
of Gaul under Roman dominion—to
bring the free tribes of Germany under
their yoke. But the history of the past
is always clothed with a further interest
when we can closely connect it with
the present. I at least never felt more
truly that history is one thing, that the
struggle of Dutch and Welsh! from the

1 | of course use these words in the old and
wide sense, like the German Deutsch and
pd 2

36 Saalburg and Saarbriicken,

first Cesar onwards is one thing, than
when I saw the spot where Arminius
had overthrown the fortress of Drusus
trodden by men who had themselves
played their part in that mighty act of
the great drama which has just been
wrought beneath our own eyes. I had
the good luck to see Saalburg on a day
which seemed to bring both ends of the
story near together. A party of German
soldiers, men who, like Arminius, had
helped to drive back the invader from
the soil of Germany, men who, like
him, in freeing Germany, had helped to
free England and mankind, were ga-
thered, as they might have been in the
days of Arminius, among the ruins of
the fortress which was reared to hold
Germany in bondage to men of Latin
speech. Like the soldiers of Rome
herself, they could wield spade and
pickaxe as well as more deadly weapons.
Spade and pickaxe had been plied that
day in bringing the remains of the
ancient fortress more thoroughly to
light. Nor were those who wielded them
dealt with as mere machines, as mere
hands, pretty much on a level with the
tools which they wielded. The German
soldiers who were set to dig for the
traces of past times within the walls of
the Saalburg were set to do it as a
reasonable service. When their work
was done, one of the officers of the party
got up, and in a clear voice and style
which could be followed even by those
who were not very familiar with spoken
German, explained to his men what the
place was where they had been work-
ing, what was its history, and what was
the meaning of the different parts of
the building and of the remains which
they had been working to bring to
light. _ It was something to hear the
deeds of Arminius told in his own
tongue on a spot which had beheld
them by men who had had their own
share in the same work as his after
eighteen hundred and sixty years. I
could not help saying to myself, “ This

Wilsch. We have lost much in point of

clearness by confining the names to the Dutch
of Holland and the Welsh of Britain.

is Geist. If these men are ever called
on to beat Frenchmen again, they
will beat them all the better for hear-
ing this.” I fancy some shallow
lounger, glad to cover his own igno-
rance of history and incapacity of
thought, crying out ‘“ Antiquarian rub-
bish.” For antiquarian rubbish I have
as thorough a contempt as any man.
The whole doings of both Buonapartes,
their Consulates, their Empires, their
Senates, their Plebiscites, their babble
about Cesar and Clovis and Charle-
magne, and, grandest of all, the carrying
of the Bayeux Tapestry to Paris to make
Frenchmen with a Corsican at their
head fancy that they had some share in
the man who smote them at Varaville
—all this is antiquarian rubbish of a
truth. But when the same great
struggle has been going on for ages,
when the Latin-speaking lords of Gaul,
whether the seat of their power has
been at Rome or at Paris, have from
the very beginning, whenever they
have had the means, carried on one
long warfare against independent Ger-
many, it is no antiquarian rubbish to
compare the latest stages of the struggle
with the earliest. The Buonapartes
of course represent the Caesars, so far as
they are all members of the same order,
that order of which the Dionysii in one
age of the world and the Visconti in
another were members ‘hardly less emi-
nent. But they represent the Cesars in
any direct and special way only so far as
they have played their part in carrying
on that long warfare of Latin-speaking
Gaul against Germany, of which the
Roman occupation of Saalburg marks
one stage and the German recovery of
Strassburg marks a stage the other way.
In this point of view, and in this point
of view only, we may give the Buona-
partes, as well as to the Valois and the
Bourbons, the credit, such as it may
be, of representing Drusus and Ger-
manicus as aggressors on the freedom
of Germany.

Another train of thought may be sug-
gested by the scene which I saw on the
Saalburg. An army is an evil in what-
ever land it is found, but in some

~*

. re BS OVE IS Qe st le OD

~- lUcrrmUC OT lCU|]ShCOtllC(iC rw

46

Saalburg and Saarbriicken. 37

lands an army is a necessary evil. Till
the Ethiopian shall change his skin and
the leopard his spots, armies cannot be
got rid of on the mainland of Europe.
As long as France still keeps any trace
either of the will or of the power to
play the part which she has gone on
playing for so many ages, so long Ger-
many must stand ready for her own
defence. In our own island the need
of an army is less clear. A strong navy
and a well-trained militia may well be
thought to be force enough for a land
which has no frontier but the Ocean.
But if we are to have an army, we may
surely learn something as to the way of
dealing with it from what I saw and
heard at Saalburg. A German soldier
is dealt with as a reasonable being. He
is held to be capable of understanding
the past history of his country, capable
of giving willing and intelligent help in
exploring and preserving the existing
traces of that history. Every German
soldier who used his spade within the
old fortress and listened to the explana-
tion of what that fortress was, must
have felt himself raised as a man and a
citizen by so doing. Why should not
English soldiers, if there are to be any,
be raised in the same way? We have
sites enough to explore of no less im-
portance to the history of our land than
Saalburg is to the history of Germany.
We have officers in our army—I could
name more than one of my own know-
ledge—as well able to explain those
antiquities to those under their com-
mand as the German officer whom I
heard at Saalburg. But I should much
like to know whether the idea of so
doing ever came into their heads or into
the heads of those higher in command
than themselves. It would be a gain
in more ways than one if those an-
cient monuments of the land which
we, alone among civilized nations,
leave to private caprice to destroy, to
preserve, or explore at pleasure, could
be thoroughly examined, and their
minutest details brought to light, by
the labour of those whom the nation
pays, and from whom it ought to receive
so me service even in time of peace. A

German soldier is surely a better Ger-
man for giving his help in exploring
the stronghold of the Roman conqueror
of his forefathers. An English soldier
would surely be the better Englishman
if he were set to work in the like sort
within the walls of Anderida, the scene
of the crowning victory of the South-
Saxon and of the landing of the Norman,
where the Roman city and the Norman
castle} stand alike empty and desolate,
but where the homes and churches of
Englishmen, near but not within the
Roman fortress, have outlived the me-
mory alike of the Briton whom they
conquered and of the Norman who con-
quered them.

From Saalburg, the speaking witness
of the long struggle which reaches from
Cesar and Ariovistus to the events of two
years past, it was not unfitting to pass
to the one spot on all which two years
ago was German soil which was a wit-
ness of the latest scene of that struggle.
It was not wholly of set purpose that
the next place after Saalburg which I
stopped to examine was Saarbriicken.
But I was not sorry to pass thus, as it
were at a single stage, from the beginning
of the long story to what is as yet its
ending. A long and roundabout journey
leads from the heights of Taunus to the
banks of the Saar, as a long tale of ups
and downs on either side leads from the
days of the Claudii to the days of the
Buonapartes. But it is well to see
the two ends of the struggle as it were
at a glance. I set out from a spot
which showed how the German race, in
the very beginning of its history, was
already able to hold its own against the
might of Rome in the days of her
greatest power. I went thence to a
spot which showed how the German
race now can do more than hold its own
against invaders of Roman speech who

1 I do not remember that there is in Peven-
sey Castle any work technically of Norman
date, but, whether there is or not, the castle
represents the presence of the Normans, just as
the walls represent the presence of the Romans,
and the two villages and their churches that
of the English. The Briton alone has left no

sign.

38 Saalburg and Saarbriicken.

come on the old Roman errand. The
only weak point of the comparison is
the intense grotesqueness of the modern
side of it, which makes it hard to bring
the two together without a laugh.
There is some difference between an
invasion which presses on by land and
sea from the Rhine to the Elbe and an
invasion which proclaims itself about to
do wonders on the Spree and ends in a
few days’ visit to the Saar. There is
some difference between the toils and
dangers which the old legions faced
among the hills and woods and marshes
of uncleared Germany ! and the easy ex-
ploit of crossing an undefended frontier
and firing on an unfortified town. In
each case Germany was attacked by a
father and a son. But there is some
difference between the Drusus to whom
men looked for the restoration of Roman
freedom and the Buonaparte by whom
the freedom of France had been over-
thrown. And there is a wider differ-
ence still between Germanicus in all his
glory and the trembling schoolboy who
was dragged to receive his baptism of
fire at Saarbriicken and its confirmation
on the heights of Speicheren. Drusus
left his trophy by the Weser ; the only
trophy which a Buonaparte has left be-
hind him by the Saar is the stone reared
by German hands to preserve the me-
mory of “Lulu’s erste debut.” No
antiquary of times to come will find at
Saarbriicken such rich relics and speak-
ing witnesses of the last inroad of the
Latin race as Saalburg pours forth with
such abundance to commemorate the
first. We stand on the heights which
two years back were crowned by the
cannon of the invader. We look down
on the river, on the peaceful streets, on
the houses and churches among which
we have to peer curiously for any sign
that an enemy has been among them.
We look back to the opposite heights,
now once more German soil, and we see
the spot where the German nation,

1 Dion. ly. 1. és re ry rSv Xdrrww eséBare[v
0 Apovcos| Kal mponrAOe wéxpe Tis SovnBlas,
thy te tv moolvy ok atadaitdpws Xeipovmevos
wal ots, mposuryvivtas of odk dvamwrt)
Kpara@y.

arising in all the might of its righteous
cause, drove back the invaders from the
few roods of German ground which
were all that he could hold even fora
moment. And in the dale between the
two hills we look down on the one sad
memorial which the last visit of the
Latin race has left in Germany. We
see the graves where the vanquished in-
vaders and the triumphant deliverers lie
side by side, and we think of the guilt
of the man on whose head the blood of
invaders and deliverers alike rests. Per-
haps our thoughts run on further. At
Saarbriicken, fresh from Saalburg, the
mind may well pass swiftly over the
long ages which have come and gone
between Germanicus and Buonaparte.
We may think perhaps, not only of
deeds of wrong or harm done on either
side, but of the moment when all
wrongs on both sides were forgotten,
in the face of a more fearful scourge.
We may think of the moment when
all men of Aryan race and Christian
faith felt themselves brethren in the
presence of a heathen and Turanian
invader; when Roman and Goth and
Frank marched forth together to stem
the wasting course of Attila, in the
crowning merey of the Catalaunian
fields. And with the happy brother-
hood of Aétius and Theodoric in that
day’s struggle we may contrast the
later deeds of Most Christian Kings,
who brought the pirates of Barbary
into the havens of Genoa and Nizza,
and leagued with the Turk to point
his cannon against the ramparts of Bel-
grade and Vienna. And we may con-
trast too the doings of later Eldest Sons
of the Church, who have brought their
Zouaves and Turcos to harry Christian
and civilized lands. We may think of
the long age of endless aggression,
of the men who stole Metz in one cen-
tury and Strassburg in the next, of
those who sent the Protestants of
France to the stake, while they stirred
up wars to protect the rights of the
Protestants of Germany. We may see
the burning ruins of Speier and Worms
and Heidelberg ; we may see the bones
of the Czsars cast out of their graves in

fi

Coro ff Po

ee

aE

Saalburg and Saarbriicken, 39

the plundered and desecrated minster,
to glut the spite of the pious King for
whom such exploits as these so worthily
won the title of the Great. We may
look on to days nearer to our own, to
days when, not only Mainz and Worms
and Speier, not only Trier and Kéln
and Aachen, but Bremen, Hamburg, and
Liibeck had passed under the domi-
nion of the enemy, and when, by a yet
deeper fall, German princes stooped to
accept crowns from the invader of their
country, and to hail him as their Pro-
tector against the still lawful King of
Germany. And we may look also on
the days of vengeance past and pre-
sent. We may look back to the old
times, when the barriers of Julian and
Valentinian were swept away, when
Gaul was parcelled out among German
masters, when Rheims beheld the bap-
tism of a German conqueror, and
Paris became for a moment the seat
of a German dominion. And we may
think too of the days before Gaul had
again parted herself from the German
rule! when Rome and Germany were
one, and when the Lord of Rome and
Aachen stooped once or twice in his
reign to show his face in such lowly
cities as Rouen, Tours, and Paris. We
may see the first prince of the new
nation and the new speech, the first
French King that ever reigned in Paris,
Odo himself, the champion alike of
Paris and of Christendom, receive his
new-made crown as a gift from the
German Arnulf, while not yet a Roman
Emperor, but a simple German King.
We may see one Otto encamping alike
beneath the walls of Paris and the walls
of Rouen, and the host of another Otto
startling the Duke of the French and
his Frenchmen by the mighty echo of
the Hallelujah of Montmartre. And
our thoughts may thence pass on to
days nearer to our own, when, after
the darkest hour of bondage, the Ger-
man people arose as one man, how they
drove the stranger from their soil, how
they bore their part in the great ven-
1 Gunther, Ligurinus, lib. i.
** Et simul a nostro secessit Gallia regno,
Nos-priscum regni morem servamus.”

geance, and marched into conquered
Paris with the united hosts of libe-
rated Europe. And one thought still
is left to fill up the whole cycle.
Three years before I stood on the hill
of Saarbriicken I had stood in the
stately palace of Rheims, among the
goodly chambers with their goodly
furniture, which for more than forty
years had been waiting for a King to
dwell in them. I could not deem then
that, before a year had passed, a King
should dwell in them indeed. The
wheel had indeed come round again
when German William dwelled in the
home of German Hlodwig, and when
Remigius might look down from the
walls of his own minster! to greet a
conqueror who needed not his convert-
ing hand. We pass on to one scene
more, to that great day in the annals of
the world when the throne of Henry of
Saxony and Rudolf of Habsburg was
again set up, when German princes
and. people hailed the chief of united
Germany within the very hall of the
man who had given German cities to
the flames and had cast out the dust of
German Cesars from their graves.

Such is the long train of thought
which is called up by the sight of two
spots so memorable in ages far away
from each other as Saalburg and Saar-
briicken. And one thought more cannot
be kept down. In the great deliverance
of the days of our fathers we had our
share with our brethren. The men of
the Teutonic mainland and the men of
the Teutonic island fought side by side
in the righteous struggle. It was not by
England alone, nor by Germany alone,
but by England and Germany joined
together in the bonds of brotherhood,
that the first Buonaparte was at last
beaten to the earth. In the great
deliverance of our own day we have
had no share; the second Buonaparte
has been overthrown by the single arm
of Germany. We had no share in the

1 [ do not meanthe Abbey of St. Remigius
dedicated to him after his death, but the
metropolitan church, the successor of his own
church when in the flesh.

40

work, but at least we need not look
askance at those who have worked for
us as well as for themselves. But for the
deeds of Arminius, England had never
been ; but for the deeds of later Germans,
England would have had to do battle
singly with the common disturber of the
world. But for the great salvation of
two years past, the man who had smitten
Russia and Austria and Germany would
assuredly have before long stretched
forth his hands to smite England also.
The man who had told the world that
he had Waterloo to avenge would never
have been content with avenging it
on the countrymen of Biliicher only.
If the light-hearted ones had marched
in triuniph to Berlin, the turn of Lon-
don would have come next. From
this our brethren of the mainland have
saved us. They have laboured, and we
have entered into their labours. Why
then do we hang back, and refuse to
share in their joy and thankfulness for
their righteous victories? I know of
nothing stranger than the way in which
English feeling turned about in the
course of the great struggle in which Ger-
many stood forth as the common cham-
pion of mankind. At first the heart of
England beat for the righteous cause.
Then, all at once, simply, as it would
seem, because for once might and right
were found to go together, Englishmen
turned round and proclaimed their
sympathy for the aggressors who were
receiving the due reward of their deeds.
Men strangely seemed to see danger
to ourselves in the victories which freed
us from the greatest of dangers. They
began, without cause, without reason,
to suspect some evil purpose in the
men who were fighting the battles
of mankind, who were crushing the
power which had for so many ages
been the disturbing element in Europe.
By the way in which so many English
speakers and writers allow themselves to

Saalburg and Saarbriicken.

speak of everything German, we are fast
making enemies of a nation which, two
years ago, valued our friendship and re-
joiced in our sympathy. To minds of
this kind the appeal to kindred blood
and speech, to a friendship a thousand
years old and more, to all that binds
nations together which have shared in the
overthrow of Bouvines and in the victory
of Waterloo, might seem only “ anti-
quarian rubbish.” Yet it would be hard
for any man to show any point in which
English and German interests clash, any
point in which Germany, her union and
her victories, are in any way dangerous
to England. Germany will be our
friend, if we will only let her; if she
becomes our enemy, it will be wholly
our own doing. Deep indeed is the
sin of the men who stir up causeless
strife, of the men above all who stir
up strife between two nations whose
hearts ought to be as one. Deep is the
sin of the men who can seek by pestilent
buffoonery to set brethren at variance
and to jeopard the hardly won peace
of the world. Next to the guilt of the
men who madly rushed into an un-
righteous war comes the guilt of the men
who can trifle away the peace and good
will of nations by jests like the Battle
of Dorking and Dame Europa’s Schoo).
Next to the crime of the man who
hides a real danger comes the crime
of the man who proclaims a false one.
The real danger passed away when the
work which began at Speicheren was
brought to its happy end at Paris. The
men who overthrew Varus and the men
who overthrew the Buonapartes were
men fighting in one cause, and that cause
was the cause of England as well as of
Germany. Alike within the Pfaklgra-
ben of Saalburg and on the undefended
heights of Saarbriicken, it is not only
German but English history that has
been wrought out.
Epwarp A. Freeman.

9

ee a a a a,

41

THE TRAVELLER'S HYMN FOR ALL SAINTS’ DAY,

Being an adaptation of Arndt’s Poem: “ Was ist des Deutschen

Vaterland ?”

Wuere is the Christian’s Fatherland ?
Is it the Holy Hebrew Land?

In Nazareth’s vale, on Zion’s steep,

Or by the Galilean deep ?

Where pilgrim hosts have rush’d to lave
Their stains of sin in Jordan’s wave,

Or sought to win by brand and blade
The tomb wherein their Lord was laid?

Where is the Christian’s Fatherland ?

Is it the haunted Grecian strand,
Where Apostolic wanderers first

The yoke of Jewish bondage burst ?

Or where, on many a mystic page,
Byzantine prelate, Coptic sage,

Fondly essay’d to intertwine

Earth’s shadows with the Light Divine?

Or is the Christian’s Fatherland

Where, with crown’d head and crozier’d hand,
The Ghost of Empire proudly flits,

And on the grave of Cesar sits ?

O by those world-embracing walls,

O in those vast and pictur'd hails, '

O underneath that soaring dome,

Shall this not be the Christian’s home?

Where is the Christian’s Fatherland _—
Tie still looks on from land to land—

Is it where German conscience woke,
When Luther’s lips of thunder spoke ?
Or where by Zurich’s shore was heard
The calm Helvetian’s earnest word?

Or where, beside the rushing Rhone,
Stern Calvin rear’d his unseen throne ?
Or where from Sweden’s snows came forth
The stainless hero of the North?

The Traveller's Hymn for All Saints’ Day.

Or is there yet a closer band—

Our own, our native Fatherland ?

Where Law and Freedom side by side

In Heaven’s behalf have gladly vied ?
Where prayer and praise for years have rung
In Shakespeare’s accents, Milton’s tongue,
Blessing with cadence sweet and grave

The fireside nook, the ocean wave, ~

And o’er the broad Atlantic hurl’d,
Wakening to life another world ?

No, Christian! no !—not even here,

By Christmas hearth or churchyard dear ;
Nor yet on distant shores brought nigh )
By martyr’s blood or prophet’s cry—
Nor Western pontiff’s lordly name, ,
Nor Eastern Patriarch’s hoary fame—

Nor e’en where shone sweet Bethlehem’s star :
Thy Fatherland is wider far.

Thy native home is wheresoe’er

Christ’s Spirit breathes a holier air ;

Where Christ-like Faith is keen to seek

What Truth or Conscience freely speak—

Where Christ-like Love delights to span

The rents that sever man from man—

Where round God’s throne His just ones stand—
There, Christian, is thy FarHeRLanp.

A. P.S.

CoLOGNE, Sept, 20, 1872.

THE TWO

MARYS.

BY MRS. OLIPHANT.

PART II.

CHAPTER VI.

I wap not intended to carry on any
further a history which is chiefly about
myself ; but events are always occurring
which change one’s mind from day to
day, and alter one’s most fixed resolu-
tions. Ido not pretend to understand
people who make unchangeable decisions,
and certainly I am not one of them. Be-
sides, common fairness requires that I
should allow Mrs, Peveril to have the
same privilege as myself, and tell things
_ herown way. I could not have imagined,
had I not seen it, the difference there
was between the aspect of things to her
and to me. I suppose it is true after all
that everybody has his or her own point
of view, which is different from all
others. Of course we realize this fact
quite clearly in a great poem like ‘“‘ The
Ring and the Book ;” but to recognize it
in one’s own small affairs has somehow
a much stranger, more surprising effect.
What an odd difference it would make
in the world if we could all see our-
selves now and then with other people’s
eyes! I confess that the girl in her
story, who was Mr. Peveril’s daughter,
is very much unlike the girl in mine—
and yet the same somehow, as may be
traced out with a little trouble. This
is humbling, but it is for one’s good,
I suppose. When you look at yourself
in a mirror, you have so much interest
in yourself that your defects don’t strike
you—you can’t help being the first figure
—the most important; but to feel that
all along you are not important at all—
anything but the first figure, a mere
shadow, scarcely noticed! it has a very
odd effect—sometimes laughable, some-

times rather the reverse; but this was
what now happened to me.

I must add, however, that a long time
passed over before I could even think that
Mrs. Peveril might have something to
say on her side. It was not because of
the rupture between Mr. Durham and
myself, and the sudden conclusion of
that dream and all that it seemed likely
to bring with it. No doubt these things
embittered all my feelings about her ; but
yet I was reasonable enough to come to
see that it was not her fault—that she
had kept out of the way with all her
might—and that after all she could not
foresee that another complication might
arise between him and me. She could
not of course foresee this ; and even if she
had foreseen it, what could she have
done? I think it shows I was not un-
fair in my judgment, for a girl of seven-
teen, to say that I soon came to see that.
But though I did not blame her, of
course I was embittered against her,
and took refuge in being very angry with
her on other grounds. That she should
have said our living together was a mis-
take was the chief of these. Why was
it a mistake? Did she mean to say it
was my fault? If it was simply her
fault, as I felt sure it was, why did she
call it a mistake? Why not say plainly
out, “I was wrong, and so we got into
trouble”? How easy it seems to be
for people to acknowledge themselves
in the wrong! but not so easy for
oneself, somehow. I never met any-
body who liked it, though I have met
with so many who ought to have done
it, and to whom it would have been
so simple—so easy, I thought; but
that never seemed to be their opinion.

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44 The Two Marys.

Mrs. Tufnell, who is in some things
a very odd old lady, says it never
is anybody’s fault. ‘There was never
any quarrel yet,” she will say, “ but
there were two in it—there was
never any misunderstanding but two
were in it. There is no such thing as
absolute blame on the one side and
innocence on the other. Even in your
affairs, Mary, my dear ” But this I
never can see nor allow. How could I
be to blame? Only seventeen, and know-
ing so little of the world, and expecting
everybody to be good and true, and say
just what they thought. When a man
said he was fond of me, how was I to
put up with his having been fond of
somebody else? And when a woman
professed to be thinking of me, was it
natural that I could be pleased to know
she had been thinking of herself? I
could not help behaving just as I
did. It was the only natural, the only
possible way; but for them, they
ought to have known better, they ought
to have thought of me. On the whole
that is the thing that hurts one—that
goes to one’s heart. People think of
themselves first—when they ought to be
thinking of you, they think of themselves
first. I suppose it is the same all over
the world.

The way in which I first heard Mary’s
story was simple enough. After years
of a dull sort of quiet life at Mrs. Tuf-
nell’s—who was very good to me, and
very kind, but who, of course, could
give to me, a girl, only what she, an old
woman, had to give—the quietest life,
without excitement or change of any
kind—she had a bad illness. It was not
an illness of the violent kind, but of
what, I suppose, is more dangerous to an
old woman, a languishing, slow sickness,
which looked like decay more than
disease. The doctors said “ breaking up
of the constitution,” or at least the
servants said so, who are less particular
than the doctors, and shook their heads
and looked very serious. I was less
easily alarmed than anyone else, for it
seemed to me a naturai thing that an
old lady should be gently ill like that,
one day a little better and the next a

little worse, without any suffering to
speak of. It was not until after she
was better that I knew there had been
real danger, but she must have felt it
herself. The way in which her sense
of her precarious condition showed itself
was anxiety. for me. I remember one
evening sitting in her room by the fire
with a book; she was in bed, and I
had been reading to her, and now-she
was dozing, or at least I thought so.
Things appear (it is evident) very dif-
ferently to different people. I was
extremely comfortable in that nice low
easy-chair by the fire. It was a pretty
room, full of pictures and portraits of
her friends, so full that there was scarcely
an inch of the wall uncovered. The
atmosphere was warm and soft, and the
tranquil repose and ease of the old lady
in the bed somehow seemed to increase
the warmth and softness and kindly
feeling. She was an additional luxury
to me sitting there by the fire with my
novel. If any fairy had proposed to
place her by my side as young and as
strong as myself, I should have rejected
the proposal with scorn. I liked her a
great deal best so—old, a little sick, kind,
comfortable, dozing in her bed. The
very illness—which I thought quite
slight, rather an excuse for staying in
this cosy room and being nursed than
anything else—heightened my sense of
luxury. She was not dozing, as it hap-
pened, but lying very still, thinking of
dying—wondering how it would feel,
and planning for those she should leave
behind her. I knew nothing of these
thoughts, no more than if I had been a
thousand miles away, and fortunately
neither did she of mine. I was roused
from my comfortable condition by the
sound of her voice calling me. I rose
up half reluctantly from the bright fire,
and the little table with the lamp and
my book, and went and sat by her in
the shade where I could not see the fire ;
but still the sentiment of comfort was
predominant in me. I gave my old
lady her mixture, which it was time for
her to take, and advised her to go to
sleep.

“You must not doze this time,” I

a

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The Two Marys. 45

said ; “you must go right off to sleep,
and never wake till morning. Every-
thing is put right for the night, and I
shall not go till you are asleep.”

“T was not dozing,” she said, with
that natural resentment which every-
body feels to be so accused ; and then
after a moment, “ Mary, I was thinking
of you. If I were to die, what would
you do?”

I was very much shocked, and rather
frightened ; and when I looked at her,
and saw by the dim light that she did
not look any worse, I felt rather angry.
“How unkind of you!” I said, “to
speak so! You frightened me at first.
What would it matter what became of
me?”

“Tt would matter a great deal,” she
said. “It would make everything so
much worse. I don’t want to die, Mary,
though I daresay I should be a great deal
better, and get rid of all my troubles—”

“Oh, it is wicked to talk so!”

“Why should it be wicked? I can’t
help thinking of it,” she said, lying in
her warm cosy bed. It made me shiver
to hear her. I began to cry, rather
with a chill, wretched sense of discom-
fort in the midst of all the warmth than
anything else ; upon which she put her
hand on my shoulder and gave me alittle
shake, and laughed at me softly. “ Silly
child !” she said—but she was not angry.
There was a very grave look on her face
behind the smile. Dying was strange
to her as well as to me, though she was
very old.

“ But, Mary,” she went on, “I want
to read you something. I want you to
think again about some one you once
were very fond of. I have some news
of Mrs. Peveril *

“Oh!” I said; and then I went on
stiffly, “I hope she is well.”

“She is quite well—and—your little
brother. I wish you would see them.
All that happened was so long ago; I
think you might see them, Mary.”

“T never made any objection to seeing
them,” I said, more and more stiffly,
though my heart began to leap and
thump against my breast. ‘ You forget
IT had nothing to do with it. It was she

who went away. She said it was a
mistake.”

* You are an unforgiving child. You
did not try to enter into her feelings,
Mary.”

“ How could I?” I said. “ Did she
wish me to enter into her feelings ? Did
she ever give me a chance? She said
it was a mistake. What was there left
for me to say ?”

“ Well, well,” said the old lady, “I
don’t defend her. I always said she
was wrong ; but still I have been hearing
from her lately, Mary. I have three
or four letters which I should like you
to read——”

“You have been hearing from her
without ever telling me!”

“Bless the child! must I not even
get a letter without consulting her?
But, Mary, I am a free agent still, and
I can’t be kept in such order,” she said,
half laughing. “Give me that blotting-
book, and my keys, and my spectacles,
and bring the lamp a little closer.”

Indignant as I was, I was comforted
by all these preparations. And when
she had put on her spectacles and opened
the blotting-book, sitting up in bed, my
mind was so much relieved that my in-
dignation floated away. “It is a pretty
thing for you to talk of dying, and
frighten people,” I said, giving her a
kiss, “ with your cheeks like two nice
old roses.” She shook her head, but
she smiled too : she felt better, and got
better gradually from that hour.

But in the meantime I had to listen
to these letters. Perhaps if it had not
been that my old lady was ill, I would
have been offended to find that she had
deceived me, and had known about
Mary all along. It was a deception,
though she did not mean any harm.
“She had thought it best,” she said,
“to let time soften all our feelings,
before she told me anything about it.”
However, I must not enter into all the
discussions we had on this subject. It
is only fair that Mary should have her
turn, and tell her story as I have told
mine. It is not a connected story like
mine, but you will see from it what

kind of a life hers had been, and what

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46 The Two Marys.

sort of a woman she was. She is different
from the Mary I thought—and yet not
different either—just as I am different
from the girl I thought I was, and yet
very like too, if you look into it. I
cannot tell what my feelings were as I
read first one bit and then another, and
a great deal more which I do not think it
necessary to quote here. One moment
I was furious with her—the next I
could have kissed her feet. These people
who send you from one extreme of
feeling to another, who do wrong things
and right things all in a jumble, take a
greater hold upon you, somehow, than
better people do, who are placid and
always on the same level—at least I
think so. I started by calling her Mrs.
Peveril—and here I am already saying
Mary, as of old, without knowing! And
Mrs. Tufnell wishes me to go and see
her. She has even made me promise
as a kind of reward to herself for getting
better. Since she takes it in this way,
I shall have to go—and sometimes I fear
it, and sometimes I wish for it. Will
it make any difference to me? Will the
old love come back, or the still older
feeling that was not love? Shall I think
of that “Mary” that sounded always so
much sweeter to her than to me? Or
shall I remember only the time when
she was everything to me—when she
charmed me out of my grief and loneli-
ness, and told me her secret, and made
me her companion, and was all mine?
I do not know. I begin to tremble, and
my heart beats when I think of this
meeting; but in the meantime Mary
has a right to her turn, and to tell the
story her own way. It is all in little
bits taken from Mrs. Tufnell’s letters,
and sometimes may appear a little frag-
mentary ; but I can only give it as it
came to me.

CHAPTER VII.
HER STORY.

Wuen I went to be governess at Mrs.
Durham’s I was quite young. I had
been “out” before, but only as nursery
governess. Mine was not a very regular

or, perhaps, a very good kind of educa-
tion. My mother had been a governess
before me, and not one of very high pre-
tensions, as governesses are nowadays.
I don’t think she ever knew anything
herself, except a little music and a little
French, which she had forgotten before
my. time. How my father and she met,
and, still more wonderful, how they took
to each other, is a thing I never could
make out. Perhaps I was most fond of
her, but certainly I was most proud of
him, and liked to copy his ways, and
to believe what my mother often said—
that I was a Martindale every inch of
me. This, poor soul, she meant as a
reproach, but to me it sounded like a
compliment. I was very silly and rather
cruel, as young people are so often. My
father had a great deal of contempt for
her, and not much affection ; and though
I had a great deal of affection, I borrowed
unconsciously his contempt, and thought
myself justified in treating her as he
did. She was wordy and weak in argu-
ment, and never knew when to stop.
But he—when he had stated what he
intended to do—would never answer
any of her objections, or indeed take any
notice of them, but listened to her with a
contemptuous silence. I took to doing
the same; and though I know better
now, and am sorry I ever could have
been so foolish and so unkind, yet the
habit remains with me—not to take the
trouble to reply to foolish arguments, but
to do what I think right without saying
anything about it. This habit, I may
as well confess, has got me into trouble
more than once; but I do not say that
I am prepared to give it up, though I
know [ have taken harm by it, and no
good, so far as I am aware.

We were very poor, and I had been a
nursery governess and a daily governess
when I was little more than a child.
When my poor mother died a little
money came, and then I got a few les-
sons to improve me in one or two
different accomplishments; and then
I took Mrs. Durham’s situation. My
father was one of the wandering men
who live a great deal abroad; and I
had learned French and enough Ger-

feo o's.

nm

tle te it Ole lee lee?’

as

The Two Marys. 47

man to make a show, in the best
way, by practice rather than by
book. ‘French acquired abroad ”—
that was what was put for me in the
advertisement, and this I think was
my principal recommendation to Mrs.
Durham. Her eldest son was at home
at the time—a young man just a little
older than myself. She was a kind
woman, and unsuspicious. She thought
George only a boy, and perhaps about
me she never thought at all—in connec-
tion with him, at least. I used to be
encouraged at first to make him talk
French, and great was the amusement
in the school-room over his pronuncia-
tion and his mistakes. They were all
very kind when I come to think of it.
They were as fearless and trustful with
me as if I had belonged to them. And
then by degrees I found out that George
had fallen in love with me. I think I
may say quite certainly that I never
was in love with him, but I was a little
excited and pleased, as one always is,
you know, when that happens for the
first time. It is so odd—so pleasant to
feel that you have that power. It seems
so kind of the man—one thinks so when
one is young—and it is amusing and flat-
tering, and a thing which occupies your
mind, and gives you something agree-
able to think of. I do not say this is the
right way of thinking on such a subject,
but it is how a great many girls feel,
and I was one of them. I had never
thought seriously of it at all. It seemed
so much more like fun than anything
else ; and then it is always pleasant to
have people fond of you. I liked it ;
and I am afraid I never thought of what
it might come to, and did not take up
any lofty ground, but let him talk, and
let him follow me about, and steal out
after me, and waylay me in the passages.
I did this without thinking, and more
than half for the amusement of it. I
liked him, and I liked the place he took
up in my life, and the things he said,
without really responding to his feelings
at all.

When it was found out, and there was
a disturbance in the house about it, I
came to my senses all at once, with such

a hot flush of pain and shame that I
seem to feel it yet. They had been so
kind to me, that I had never felt my
dependence ; but now, all in a moment
I found it out. His mother was
frightened to death lest he should marry
me! She thought me quite beneath
him; me—a Martindale all over—a
gentleman’s daughter—much better than
she was! This roused a perfect tempest
in me. It was my pride that was out-
raged, not my feelings ; but that pride
was strong enough and warm enough
to be called a passion. I did what I
could to show his mother that nothing
in the world could be more in-
different to me than he was, but she
would not be convinced ; and at last I
determined to do what my father often
had done when my mother was un-
reasonable—to withdraw out of the dis-
cussion at once and summarily, without
leaving any opportunity for further talk.
My father was living then. He was at
Spa, which was not very difficult to
reach. One evening, after Mrs. Durham
had been talking to me (George had
been sent away, but I was not sent
away because they were sorry for me), I
stayed in the school-room till they were
all at dinner, and then I carried all my
things, which I had made up into
bundles, down to the hall with my own
hands, and got a cab and went off to the
railway station. I bought a common
box on my way, and packed them all
into it. I tell you this to show how
determined I was ; not even one of the
servants knew how I had gone, or any-
thing about me. It was winter, and the
Durhams dined at half-past six; so I
had time enough to get off by the
night train to Dover. I had not a very
large wardrobe, you may suppose, but I
left nothing behind me but some old
things. I was not particular about crush-
ing my dresses for that one night. I
remember, as if it were yesterday, the
dark sea and dark sky, and great, chill,
invisible, open-air world that I seemed
to stand alone in, as the steamboat went
bounding over those black waves, or
ploughing through them, to Ostend.
There was a great deal of wind, but the

48 The Two Marys.

sea had not had time to rise, and there
was the exhilaration of a storm without
its more disagreeable consequences. The
vessel did not roll, but now and then
gave a leap, spurning the Channel spray
from her bows. Oh how I recollect
every particular! You might think a
lonely girl in such circumstances—flying
from persecution, if you like to put it
so—flying from love; with nothing but
a very uncertain welcome to look to
from a very unsatisfactory father, and
no prospect but to face the world again
and get her bread somehow—was as sad
a figure as could be imagined. But I
was not sad. I had a high spirit, and
I loved adventure and change. I felt
as if the steamboat was me, going bound-
ing on, caring nothing for the sea or the
darkness. The wind might catch at us,
the water might dash across our sides,
the sky might veil itself—who cared?
We pushed on, defying them all. A poor
governess as good as turned out of my
situation because the son of the house
had fallen in love with me—a penniless
creature without a home, with nota soul
to stand by me in all that dark world.
And yet I don’t remember anything I
ever enjoyed more, than that journey by
night.

This will show you—and you may
show it to Mary to convince her—how
much I cared for George Durham. I sup-
pose he was in love with me—at least
what a young man not much over twenty
considers love. That is six years ago; and
probably he has always had a recollec-
tion, all this time, that he was in love
with me, and thinks that he ought to
have been faithful. I should not wonder
if there was a kind of remorse in his
mind to find that he had fallen in love
with Mary, and cared for me no longer.
It is a superstition with some people
that, however foolish their first fancy
was, they ought to hold by it; but I
must say that I think it was very foolish,
not to say cruel, of both of them, to
make this breach on account of me.

I got another situation after that, and
did well enough—as governesses do. I
never complained, or thought I had any
reason to complain. I taught all I knew

—not very much, but enough for most
people. As for education, as people talk
nowadays—of awakening the minds, and
training the dispositions, and re-creatin

the children, so to speak, intellectually
and morally—TI never thought of such
a thing; and why should I? That is
the work of a mother, appointed by God,
or of some great person endowed with
great genius or influence—not of a
young woman between eighteen and five-
and-twenty, indifferently trained herself,
with quite enough to do to master her
own difficulties and keep herself afloat.
I was not so impertinent, so pre-
sumptuous, or so foolish as to have any
such idea. I taught them as well as I
could ; I tried to make them as fond of
books as I was myself—I tried to get
them to talk like gentlewomen, and not
to be mean or false. I was not their
mother or their priest, but only their
teacher. I had no theory then; but
after one is thirty, one begins to have
theories ; and I can see what I meant in
my earlier time by the light of what I
think now. However, this is not much
to the purpose. I was a_ successful
governess on the whole ; I got on very
well, and I had nothing to find fault
with. It is not a very happy life—when
you are young, and hear pleasant sounds
below-stairs, and have to sit reading by
yourself in the school-room ; when there
is music and dancing perhaps, and
merry talk, and you are left alone in
that bare place with maps on the walls,
and one candle—a girl does not feel
happy ; though on the whole, perhaps,
the school-room is better than to sit in
a corner of the drawing-room and be
taken no notice of—which is the other
alternative. There are a great many
difficulties in the position altogether, as
I can see now that I am older. When
the governess is made exactly like one
of the family, the eldest son will go and
fall in love with her and bring everybody
into trouble. It is hard for the lady
of the house as well. However, after
George Durham, I was careful, and I
never got into difficulty of that kind
again. Four years after I left the
Durhams I had a bad illness—rheumatic

fever. My people were very kind to
me, but I was too proud to be a burden
on them; and as soon as I could be
moved I left and went into lodgings,
and was ill there till I had spent all my
money; it was only then that I had
recourse to the Spicers. Perhaps I ought
to confess that, though Mr. Spicer is my
uncle, I was ashamed of him and dis-
liked him. I have felt angry at my
poor mother all my life for having such
relations ; but of course there they were,
and had to be made the best of. My
money lasted till I was almost well, but
not well enough for another situation.
My father had died in the meantime ;
and only then I sent to the Spicers, and
asked if they would take me in for a
time. I was a good needlewoman ; I
knew I could repay them well for keep-
ing me. That is how I went to them.
What followed no one could have fore-
seen, You know how it was.

I cannot talk about my husband—
yet. Howcould I talk about that which
was everything to me, which changed
my life, which made me another creature?
People may love you, and it makes but
little difference to you. It is pleasant,
no doubt ; it softens your lot; it makes
things bearable which would not be
bearable. I had known that in my life.
But to love—that is another thing.
That is the true revelation—the lifting
up of the veil. It is as different from
simply being loved as night is from day.
I suppose few women are, as I was, in
circumstances to feel this sudden lighting
up of existence all of a sudden. Most
women have a great deal to love, and know
that condition better than the other.
They would not make so much fuss about
being loved did they not already possess
the other gift. But I had never really
loved anybody, I suppose. Various
people had loved me. I had liked it, and
had done what I could to be kind and
agreeable tothem. Some (women) I had
been very fond of. It seems to me now
that the world must have been a most
curious, cloudy sort of place in my early
youth—a dim place, where nothing
moved one very much; where daylight
No, 157,—voL, XXvil.

The Two Marys. 49

was quite sober and ordinary, and
nothing out of oneself was exciting.
When I saw Mr. Peveril first I had no
warning of what was coming. I did
not feel even interested in him. He
seemed too gentle, too soft for my liking.
What attracted me was, I think, chiefly
the fact that he was the only educated
man I ever saw there—the only being,
man or woman, who was not of, or like,
the Spicers. This was my only feeling
towards him for the first two or three
times I saw him—but the .

I am afraid I did not think very
much about Mary when we were married.
Of course I meant to do my duty by
her: that goes without saying. And
her resistance and dislike did not make
me angry. They rather amused me. It
seemed so odd that she should think
herself of consequence enough to be so
deeply offended. She, a girl, with all her
life before her—fifteen—of no present
importance to any mortal, though no
doubt she would ripen into something
after a while. When Mr. Peveril dis-
tressed himself about what he called her
want of respect to me, I used to smile
at him. He would have made her love
me by force had that been possible—as
if her little sullenness, poor child, made
any difference! It was quite natural,
besides—only foolish, if she could but
have seen it. She was a naughty child,
and she thought herself a virgin-martyr.
I hope it is not wicked of me to be
amused by that virgin-martyr look. I
know itso well. I have seen it over and
over again in all sorts of circumstances.
To say a tragedy-queen is nothing. There
is a sublime patience, a pathos about
your virgin-martyrs, which far outdoes
anything else. Poor little Mary! if I
had not seen that she was quite happy
in her own thoughts, even when she
thought herself most miserable, I should
have taken more notice of it. I can’t
tell what she was always thinking about
—whether it was some imaginary lover
or romance of her own that she kept
weaving for hours together ; but it kept
her happy anyhow. She was very pro-
voking sometimes—never was there such

E

50 The Two Marys.

a spoiled child. She balked me tho-
roughly in one thing, and would not
let me be her governess as well as her
stepmother ; which was what I wished.
How often should I have liked to box
her little impertinent ears, and then
laugh and kiss her into good-humour !
But in that point there was nothing to
be done. I had to leave all to time, in
which I hoped—without, alas! having
the least thought, the least prevision,
how short my time was to be. You will
see that I am not one to linger upon my
private feelings. I have said nothing to
you about my happiness. I can say
nothing about my grief. The beautiful
life stopped short—the light went out
after this—an end seemed to come to
everything. I cannot say more about
it. Everything ended—except one’s
pulse, which will go on beating, and the
long hours and days that have to be got
through somehow, and the bread that
has to be eaten in spite of oneself—
and has to be earned too, as if it were
worth the while.

I wonder at myself sometimes, and
you will wonder, that I did not break
down under my grief. It was my first
real grief, as that which preceded it had
been my first real happiness. I have
even envied the people who got ill and
who could go to bed, and darken their
windows and lie still and let the sword
go through and through them in quiet-
ness, instead of writhing on it as I did ;
but that must be nature. My first in-
stinct was to snatch at something, to
lay hold upon something, lest I should
be carried away by some fiery flood or
other. And what I snatched at was
Mary. I love Mary. You may think
I have not acted as if I did; but that is
nothing; and she does not love me.

sut still I have that distinct feeling for
her which I never experienced till her
dear, dear father (oh, my God, my
God, why is it that my child will never
call him so!) showed me the way. I
have had a great deal to bear from her ;
she is not like me; and there are many
things I dislike in her. But all that
does not matter. And it is not as I

loved him—but yet I love her. All I
remember about those dark days was
that I laid hold upon Mary. She could
not escape from me when I seized her so
—few, very few, peopie can. To resist
kindness is easy enough, but downright
love has a different kind of grasp; you
cannot get free of that. It is because
there is so much fictitious love in the
world that people are not aware of the
power of the true.

I secured her—for the time. You may
say it did not last very long; but that
was not my fault; it was because she too,
in her time, woke up from her affection
for me, and all the torpor of her youth,
and heard the call of love, and got up
and left those that did but love her. The
time we lived together was a strange
dreamy time, between blank despair
and a kind of languid happiness. Some-
times I would feel almost happy because
of what was coming, and then I would
be plunged into that horror of darkness,
that shadow of death, which is of all
things on earth the most terrible—
worse, a thousand times worse, than
death itself. I say this with confidence,
because I as good as died once. I was
so ill that I had floated off into that
unconsciousness which would have been
death had they left me alone ; and it
was not unpleasant. Had they left me
alone I should have died, therefore I
am justified in saying that this was
death ; and it was not disagreeable—just
a soft floating away, a gradual growing
dim and shutting out, without any of
that sense of desertion and loneliness
which one feels must be so strong in
the dying. But the shadow of death is
very terrible. No one can exaggerate its
terror. When it seizes upon the soul,
all that surrounds you is lost in one sea
of misery. The waves and the billows
pass over you. You feel as if you could
not endure, could not last through that
flood of pain—and yet you do last. The
great billow passes over, and there is a
calm, and your soul is so fatigued and
worn out that it lies exhausted, and a
languor of rest, which is almost ease,
passes over it. This was how I lived
for three months with Mary; until the

The Two Marys. 51

shock of the other who thrust himself
into our life—the stranger, who was no
stranger, came.

His first appearance was nothing but
an insignificant trouble, a mere annoy-
ance to me,—why should [ care? I had
not thought of him at all for years ; and
I never had thought of him much. But
still I did not want him there: he
annoyed me ; he was a kind of constant
menace of more annoyance to come.
But I don’t know what steps I could
have taken. It was a long time before
I could realize that he would fall in love
with Mary. I rather think it is difficult
to believe that a man who has loved you
will love some one else. That is—if you
are quite indifferent to him ; it is so much
easier then to believe in his faithfulness.
The idea did not occur to me. I feared a
little for Mary once or twice, and tried to
warn her; but she was always a dreamy
sort of girl, and it was hard to tell when
a new influence came over her. She
had lived in dreams of one kind or other
ever since I knew her; and I knew
nothing, really nothing, about what was
going on, till that unhappy afternoon
when he recognized me, and came in
and talked foolishly in Mary’s hearing,
about things that had happened so long
before. Poor child !—-I don’t blame her,
for her foolishness was natural enough.
She thought I had stolen away her
lover, as I had stolen away her father.
She would not listen to me, and when she
did listen to me she did not believe me ;
and there on the other hand was he, de-
manding explanations. Good heavens,
what right has a man like that to ask
explanations—a man one had never
cared for, and would have died of ? He
worried me so that I could not be civil.
What with grief, and what with vexation
at the turn things had taken, and dis-
appointment in Mary, and illness in my-
self, I had no patience with the man,
maundering on about things that had
happened ages before, that were of no
importance to any living being. When
he waylaid me on my way to her, keeping
me back from her, in her agony of temper
and mortification and humiliation, what
I could have done to him! I wasina

nervous state, I suppose, and easily irri-
tated. I could have struck him when
he came outand worried me. And there
was Mary turning her face to the wall,
shutting out the light, shutting her ears,
determined to be miserable. Oh! when
I toiled up and down stairs going to her,
when I felt ill and knew that nobody
cared, when I saw her absorbed in her
foolish misery, and him tormenting him-
self and me about dead nonsense that
never had been anything, you may ex-
cuse me if I had very little patience,
After a night of it I got tired and sick
of the whole business. It seemed too
hard to be obliged to put up with all
this folly on the eve of being ill. And
who would care whether I was ill or not,
if things went on so?

Then I took my resolution suddenly, as
I had done before. It was not with the
hope and high spirit that had kept me
up when I went off to Ostend that I left
Southampton Street, my own house. I
was sick and tired, that was all. I could
not be troubled to goon. I was worried
and impatient and indignant—and then
Mary had a friend to take care of her.
I went away. I went to an hospital
after a while in the same irritated hope-
less state, feeling that it did not matter
what happened ; and there my boy was
born. Well! what did it matter? They
are for honest, poor women, these hos-
pitals—and Heaven knows I was poor
enough, but honest. One cares for one-
self only when one has other people who
care. I had nobody. I did not lose
heart altogether, because that is not my
nature. I could not if I would; but
what did I care for what people would
think or for what they might say? no
more than for the buzzing of the flies.
I should never even hear of it—there
was nobody to tell me, nobody to pay
any attention. I thought most likely
I should die; but I did not calculate
upon dying, for by that time I knew I
had strength to go through a great deal,
And so I did. My boy was quite strong
and well, and I got quite well and strong
too. Often I have thought this showed
how little heart I must have; but I
could not help it. I got quite strong.

- Oo

52 The Two Marys.

I reflected seriously whether I should not
try for a nurse’s place, which was very
well paid, and where very little was
required ; but even if I could have
parted with my boy, I had no one to
trust with the care of him. So instead
of doing this, I made shift to live for a
whole year upon my forty pounds of
income, with a little more which I earned
by needlework. When you are a very
good needlewoman, you can always earn
something. I did very well; I made
baby clothes ; my eyes were strong, and
my health was good, and I had my own
baby to comfort me. There is nothing
that comforts like a baby. When the
child laughs, you laugh too. You laugh
to make him laugh ; first it is sympathy,
then it is delight, till gradually you
grow a baby too, and are amused at
nothing, and happy for nothing, and
live over again, beginning at the very
beginning, in the child.

In this way I grew to be so tran-
quil, so eased in mind, and happy in
heart, notwithstanding my loss, which
I never forgot, that I was tempted to
remain just as I was always; but then
it occurred to me that I should lose all
that I knew, that I would never be able
to teach him, or to get him education,
or to rise in the world, as I wanted to
do for his sake; therefore it was clear
I must do something else. This was
what I did: I found out about a situa-
tion in a school after a great deal of in-
quiry. I went to the lady and told
her my story ; I said I would go to her
for almost nothing if I might have my
baby and a little maid to take care of
him. When she heard of my “French
acquired abroad,” my showy bit of Ger-
man, my music, and how I would make
myself as useful as ever she liked,
having excellent health and no sort of
prejudices about what I did, she closed
with me. I had two rooms, and board
for myself and the maid and the boy—
no more at first—but I managed on
that. And then by degrees we im-
proved. She gave me first twenty
pounds, then a little more. A baby’s
white frock and a widow’s black gown
do not cost much, Wedidvery well. I

have fifty pounds now the school has in-
creased so much ; and I believe I may have
ashare soon if all goes well. My French
goes for a great deal, and even my name
and my widow’s cap go for something,
and everybody in the school likes to tell
the story of the baby. Am I happy,
do you say? I never stop toask myself
whether I am happy or not. One must
form some idea of change in one’s mind,
some thought of a possibility which
might make one happier, before one
would think of asking oneself such a
question. And as I have no reasonable
prospect of ever being happier than I
am, I do not think about it. I am not
unhappy—of that I am sure.

You talk of bringing Mary and me
together again. Would it answer, I
wonder? Sentiment is one thing, but
practicability is another. Having told
you that I loved Mary, I have said all
that either woman or man can say.
Likings change and alter, but love is
for ever. Yet, whether we could live
together, whether she could trust me,
whether she would understand the past,
and feel how little I wished or intended
to interfere with her, I cannot tell;
unless she could, it would almost be
better to leave us as we are. So long
as a woman is young, as Mary is, it is
doubtful and dangerous, I am afraid, to
try any relationships but those that are
quite natural. She is with you, you
dearest, kind friend, as if she were your
own child. You can do her nothing but
good ; but I am not so very much older
than she is. I am older—centuries
older—but not to outward appearance ;
and can you not suppose a state of
things in which the last chapter of our
lives might be, one way or other, re-
peated again? I say this not with any
sort of vanity, Heaven knows, but with
fear and trembling. For I should be
happier with her—far happier—but not
if she came to me with a single doubt
in her mind, a single thought which was
uncertain or suspicious. Do not tell her
this one difficulty which seems to me to
stand in our way, but judge for us both
what is best. I want her for myself
and for my boy. We belong to each

nw Re OS eA Oe Om:

=~ A Or

The Two Marys. 53

other, and no one else in the world
belongs to us. How often I long for
her when I am sitting alone! How
many things I have in my mind to
say to her! But not unless it would
be well for her, to whom anything may
happen. Nothing that I know of, ex-
cept through her or my baby, can now
happen to me.

CHAPTER VIII.

I wit not enter into all the particu-
lars of our discussion after this, for
time would fail me. The last part
of Mary’s letter, which she said was
not to be shown to me, made me
angry. I thought it was vanity on her
part to be afraid of interfering with me
again. “In what way?” I could not
but ask, and that sharply; how could
the last chapter of our lives be repeated ?
Mrs. Tufnell only smoothed my hair
and soothed me, and called me “dear”
and “ darling,” but would give no expla-
nation. ‘“ What does she mean?” I
asked. “ Oh, she means, my love—pro-
bably she means nothing. It is just a
way of talking that people fall into,”
said my old lady. I knew this was said
simply to quiet me, but on the whole
perhaps I preferred it to anything more
definite ; and, after a time, I allowed
myself to be persuaded to pay this visit.
What a strange journey into the past
it seemed ! and yet actually we went far
away from the scene of the past, intoa
place so new and unknown to me, that
it could awaken no associations. We
drove in the comfortable old fly, with
the old sleek horse and the old fat man,
which was as good as Mrs. Tufnell’s
private carriage. She did not keep a
carriage of her own, but I am sure this
fly, in which she drove every day of her
life except when she was ill, cost her
more than a carriage would have done.
She was very apologetic about it always.
“T could not undertake the respousi-
bility of a carriage,” she would say ;
“ horses are always getting ill, and your
coachman drinks, or he gets into trouble
with the maids, or something. Old
Groombridge and his fly suit me quite

well. No, he is not an old rogue, I
have to pay him, of course, for all his
trouble, and for the loss of customers,
and so forth, You know, Mary, he
always suits himself to my convenience
at whatever sacrifice e

This was her idea, and nothing would
convince her otherwise. So we drove in
Groombridge’s old fly—which was one of
the most expensive vehicles in town—
out Hampstead way, but past all the
houses, past everything, till we came to
new houses again, and skeleton roads and
villas growing up like mushrooms, in one
of those long straggling arms that Lon-
don puts out into the country. I had
got excited so often thinking that we
must be quite close upon the place, that
at last I ceased to be excited, and felt
as if we had set out upon a hopeless
circle, and were going to wind in and
out and round and round, till we
worked back to the point from which we
started. How dreary they look, those
new places—roads newly laid out,
breaking in upon the fields, which
somehow look so superior, so dese-
erated, and vulgarized by those new
muddy lines with the unnecessary
kerbstones ; and then all the half-built
houses, each one uglier than the other,
with their bow-windows, all made by
the gross (I suppose), and their thin
little walls that the wind whistles
through, and even their monotonous at-
tempt at irregularity. A steady, solid
row which is very ugly and nothing
more, is endurable. I was saying this,
when suddenly the fly made a sharp
turn, and immediately the villas and the
kerbstones became invisible. We had
got within a mossy wall, through a
large old-fashioned gate. There was an
avenue, not very long nor very grand,
but still an avenue, with odd old trees
all gaarled and mossed over, and I sup-
pose in a very bad condition, but still
old, and trees—trees which our grand-
fathers might have walked under. The
house was an old red-brick house, very
dark red, and covered with little brown
and yellow lichens. It was neat, but
yet one could see it was in want of
repair, and looked like a poor lady in

54

a faded gown and mended lace by the
side of the fine shop-people in silk and
satin. It was a winter day—a very
still and bright one. The shadows of
all the leafless trees made a network
upon the brown gravel path. The cld
house seemed to be basking, warming
itself in the sun. There were a great
many twinkling windows, but not a
creature to be seen except one little
child on the white step of the deep
doorway. There was a porch, and pro-
bably his nurse was there, but the little
fellow was standing out in the sun,
cracking a little whip he had, with his
hair shining in the bright light, and
his little face like an apple-blossom.
He was shouting out some baby nonsense
at the top of his voice. He did not
care for us, nor for anyone. He was
the monarch of all—quite alone in his
kingdom, independent of everybody.

“Who do you think it is, Mary ?”
said Mrs. Tufnell, taking my hand sud-
denly, as I looked out laughing and
amused by him. Good heavens! I had
never once thought. I fell back into
my corner and began to cry, I cannot
tell why. Of course I knew at once
whom it must be.

And then she came, not in the least
altered, kissing me just as if we had
parted yesterday. But she was agitated,
though she tried not to show it. She
took the little boy and brought him to
me, and thrust him into my arms with-
out a word, and her lip quivered, and
for some minutes she could not say
anything. The meeting was hard
altogether. When the thing that sun-
dered you is too far off to be talked
about, and when everybody counsels you
to avoid explanations and go on again
as if nothing had happened, it is very
hard ; you may succeed in uniting the
old strands and twisting them together
once more, but it is perhaps more likely
that you will fail We went into
Mary’s new home, and saw the lady who
was the head of the school. It was
holiday time—the Christmas holidays—
and they were alone. This lady was

middle-aged, older than Mary, but not
so old as Mrs. Tufnell. She was an

The Two Marys.

unmarried woman, and I could at once
understand what Mary had said, that her
very name and her widow's cap told for
something in the place. But what was
most evident of all was that little Jack
was the sovereign of Grove House,
Whatever anybody might do or say, he
was supreme. Miss Robinson was fond
of his mother, and “appreciated” her,
as she told us; but little Jack was the
monarch, and did what he pleased.

Our visit was, as people say, quite
pleasant. It went off perfectly well—
we kissed wher we met and when we
parted—we had a great deal to say to
each other of what had passed since we
met—and there was little Jack to make
acquaintance with, and a great many of
his wonderful adventures to be told of.
Mrs. ‘Tufnell came away with the
thought that it had been a great success,
and that henceforward nothing more
was wanted—that Mary and I would be
one again.

But Mary and I felt differently. I did,
at least, and I am sure so did she. You
cannot mend a rent so easily. Such a
rent—a rent that had lasted more than
five years—how can it be drawn toge-
ther again by any hasty needle and
thread like a thing done yesterday ?
We parted friends, with promises to
meet again; but with hearts, oh! so much
more apart from each other than they
had been an hour before! An hour
before we met I had all sorts of vague
hopes in my heart—vague feelings that
she would understand me, that 1 would
understand her—vague yearnings to-
wards the old union which was almost
perfect. Did you ever see the great
glass sereen they have in some houses
to shield you from the heat of the fire ?
You can see the cheerful blaze through
it, but you feel nothing. Something of
the kind was between Mary and me.
We saw through it as well as ever, and
seemed to enjoy the pleasant warmth ;
but no other sensation followed, only
the chill of a disappointment. I felt
that she was now nothing, nothing to
me ; and I—I cannot tell how I seemed
to her. We had the old habit suddenly
brought to life and put on again, but

The Two Marys. 55

none of the old meaning. We were
like mummers trying to make ourselves
out to be heroines of the past, but
knowing we were not and never could
be what we appeared. I was very
silent during our drive home. I did
not know what to say to my dear old
lady. She looked very fragile with her
pretty rose-cheeks, lying back in the
corner of the fly; she was fatigued,
and in the daylight I suddenly woke
up to see that she did look very fragile.
I had not believed in it before. And
how could I vex her by telling her of my
disappointment? I could not do it; she
was pleased and happy; she held my
hand, and nodded to me and said:
“ Now you see you are not so much
alone as you thought you were. Now
you see you have friends who belong to
you.” How could I have had the heart
to say otherwise—to say I had found
out that we were separated for ever,
Mary and I?

That evening, however, after tea, she
began to talk to me very seriously.
We were sitting over the fire—she on
her favourite sofa, I on a low chair near
her. ‘The firelight kept dancing about,
lighting up the room fitfully. It was a
large room. We had some candles on
the mantel-piece, which shone, reflected
in the great mirror, as if from some dim,
deep chamber opening off this one ; but
it was really the firelight that lighted
the room. I had been singing to her,
and I half thought she had been asleep,
when suddenly she roused up all at
once, and sat upright in her little prim
way.
“T want to speak to you, Mary,” she
said; and then, after a pause—“ You
think I meant nothing but love and
kindness when I took you to see Mrs.
Peveril to-day; but I am a scheming,
wicked old woman, Mary. I had more
than that in my mind.”

I was alittle, but only a little, startled
by this: I knew her way. I looked up
at her, smiling. ‘ You are so designing,”
I said ; “I might have known there was
something underneath. You are going
to ask them to spend the rest of their
holidays here ?” :

“That if you like,” she said brightly,
encouraged, I could see, by my tone;
“but more than that, Mary; more than
that.”

I was not curious. I looked with an
indolent amusement at the shining of
the firelight and the reflection in the
mirror of the flame of the candles, which
shone out of its surface without seeming
to move the dark ruddy gloom beyond.
A glass is always an inscrutable, won-
derful thing, like an opening into the
unseen : it was especially so that night.

“ Mary,” Mrs. Tufnell resumed, with
a voice that faltered, I could not tell
why ; “do you remember when I first
spoke to you of Mrs. Peveril—when I
was ill—and what I said ?”

“Yes,” I answered, with sudden
alarm, looking up at her. ‘“ You don’t
feel ill now ?”

“No, but I have got a shake,” she
said. “When a woman at my time of
life is ill, though it may seem to pass
quite away, it always leaves a something.
I shall never be as strong as I have
been, my dear child. I feel I have got
a shake. My life has come to be like
the late leaves on the top of a tree,
They may last through many gales, but
the first gust may blow them off. I
cannot feel sure for a day.”

I went close up to her in my fright,
and knelt down by the sofa, and put
my arms round her. “Do not speak
so,” I said; “you could not leave me?
What could I do without you? I am
not an orphan as long as I have you.
You cannot have the heart of

“Qh, Mary! hush ; don’t overwhelm
me. It was of that I wanted to speak. I
shall live as long as I can, for your sake.
But, dear, old people cannot stay always,
however much they may be wanted.
I have been thinking of it a great deal,
and there is a proposal I have to make
to you—with Mrs. Peveril’s consent,
Mary. You must listen to all 1 have to

“Oh, you have consulted Mrs.
Peveril!” said 1; and I got up, feeling
my heart grow chill and sore, and went
back to my seat to hear what was to be
said tome. In the depths of my heart

56 The Two Marys.

I must have been jealous of her still.
It came all back upon me like a flood.
My dear old lady gave me a grieved
look, but she did not stop to explain.
She went quickly on with what she had
to say:

“Grove House is a nice old-fashioned
house, and cheap, and they have a good
list of scholars; and Miss Robinson
would be glad to retire, and would not
ask very much for the furniture and
things; and Mrs. Peveril is so much
liked by everybody. I have always set
apart as much as I thought was right of
my little property, intending it for you,
Mary x

“ Don’t !” I cried, in a voice so shrill
and sharp that it startled even myself
who spoke.

“Tt is not very mach,” she went on,
“but it is all I can give away, and my
whole heart has been set upon doing
something for you with this money that
would make you independent. My dear
Mary, I am half afraid you don’t like
the thought, you are so silent. I had
thought of buying Grove House for
Mrs. Peveril and you.”

“For Mrs. Peveril and me!”

“*Yes—don’t you like the idea, Mary?
—don’t you like the idea? I thought it
was something that would please you
so much. You have always said you
liked teaching, and it would be a living
for you, dear, and a home when I am
gone. I have so wished to make these
arrangements for you, Mary 2

“Ts it all settled ?” I said.

“Nothing could be settled without
your consent. All that I want is your
good. I could not leave you, could I,
at your age, without anyone to stand
by you, without a home to go to, with-
out a friend “

Thus she apologized to me for those
kind, tender plans of hers ; and I sat
like a clod, feeling that I could not
reply. I was dull and heavy and mise-
rable; not grateful, yet feeling how
grateful I ought to be ; understanding
her, yet not owning even to myself that
I understood her. It was not a very
great destiny that was thus allotted to
me, but that was not what I was think-

ing. My mind did not revolt against
the idea of being the mistress of a
school ; which was natural enough. To
tell the truth, I cannot quite tell what
it was that gave me so miserable a feel-
ing. Here was my life marked out for
me; there was never to be any change
in it; no alteration for the brighter or
better occurred to this dear old woman
who loved me. She wanted to make
sure I should have daily bread and a
roof to shelter me, and some sort of
companionship. How right she was!
How good and how kind! and yet, oh,
how dreary, how unutterably blank and
hopeless seemed the prospect! I felt
this with a dull fighting and struggle of
the two things in me—wanting to please
her by looking pleased, feeling how good
she was, and how kind, how just, how
suitable was the arrangement. I felt all
this in a kind of way, and then I felt
the struggle not to be wildly angry, not
to burst out and ask her how she could
think of condemning me so—for my life?

She was grieved and disappointed at
the way I received her proposal, but she
was so good that she took no notice, but
kissed me, and said nothing should be
done or thought of against my consent.
For my part my heart was so heavy and
dull that I could not even thank her for

*her kindness; but I hung about her
when she went to bed, and held her
fast in a speechless way that she under-
stood, I think, though I said nothing.
She cried; she looked at me with her
kind old eyes full of tears. “Oh, Mary,”
she said, “don’t break my heart! If I
could live for ever and go on always
taking care of you, don’t you think I
would do it, for your sake and your
father’s too? But I cannot. One must
die when one’s time comes, however
much one may be wanted, and I must
provide for that.”

“Oh, why can’t I provide for it?” I
cried, “Why can’t I die too? That
would be the best way.”

And then she was angry—half angry
—as much as it was in her nature to be.
And oh, with what a dreary feeling I
found myself alone, and had to sit
down and think it over, and make up

- hes tn mit 2 te 4h et teh eee O68

Tie Two Marys. 57

my mind to it, as one has so often in
this life. I had to teach myself to see
how good it was. AndIdid. I made
up my mind to it. What was there
else in heaven or earth—as I could not
die with my only friend, or compel her
to live, what was there else that I could
do?

CHAPTER IX.

Next morning when I woke, the im-
pression on my mind was, that Mrs.
Tufnell must have died in the night.
I cannot tell why I thought so, but I
woke with such a horror in my mind,
that I threw a shawl over my shoulders
and rushed to her door to ask how she
was, before I could take breath. She
was not up; but smiled at me from her
bed, where she lay with all the pictures
and the portraits of her friends about
her, the centre of a silent company.
“T am quite well—better than usual,”
she said ; but I think she knew the
meaning of my terror, and felt that
after all that had been said it was
natural I should be afraid. This per-
haps threw just a little cloud upon her
serenity too, during the morning, for
however calmly one may think of
dying, I suppose it must startle one to
see that others are thinking of it. I
suppose so—it seems natural. She was
very grave, thoughtful, and somewhat
silent during the forenoon ; and when I
went and sat down by her, and asked
her to forgive me, and said I was ready
to do whatever she thought best, she
took me into her arms and cried and
kissed me. “Oh, that it should be
necessary to change!” she said. “Ido
not feel as if I could face the change—
but, Mary, for your good Ps

It was about noon as we thus sat
talking it over. It comforted me to see
that she liked it as little as I did ; that
she would rather have kept me with
her to the last moment of her life.
But then what should I have done?
—this was what she thought of. We
were talking it all over very seriously,
with more pain than either of us would
show. It was a chilly winter morning.

The room was bright, to be sure, with a
good fire burning, and all the comforts
that so many poor people are without ;
but there was a chill that went to one’s
heart—the chill of the grave for her,
which she thought near ; and the chill of
the outside world, from which she had
sheltered me so long, for me. I re-
member the look of that morning—there
was a black frost outside which bound
all the dry street, and seemed to hold
the naked trees in the square so fast that
they dared not rustle, though an icy
wind was blowing through them. There
were traces still on the windows, not-
withstanding the fire, of the frosty net-
work of the night. The sun had begun
to shine as it approached noon, but even
the sun was white and cold, and seemed
rather to point out how chilly the world
was, than to warm it. After we had
got through all our explanations and
said all that was to be said, and arranged
that Mary was to be invited to the
Square with her child to spend a week
of the holidays and arrange everything,
we still kept sitting together holding
each other’s hands, not saying much. I
could not pretend that I liked it even
to please her, and she did not like it,
though she thought it right; but all the
same it was settled, and there was
nothing more to say.

It was all settled by twelve o'clock,
fixed and decided with that double cer-
tainty which is given by pain. If we
had liked it we should not have felt half
so sure. At half-past twelve the mid-
day post came in, and I was still sitting
by my dear old lady, holding her hand,
feeling my heart sink lower and lower
every moment, thinking how I should
have to leave her when she wanted me
most—when Mrs. Tufnell’s maid came
in with the letters. She gave some to
her mistress, and she gave one to me, I
do not think I recognized the writing at
first. But I got few letters, and it gave
me a little thrill of agitation, I could
not quite tell why. It was a foreign
letter, with a number of unintelligible
postmarks. I got up and went to the
window, partly because my heart began
to beat very loud, and partly to leave

58 The Two Marys.

Mrs. Tufnell at liberty to read her
letters. I recollect looking out uncon-
sciously and seeing the dried-up, dusty,
frosty look of everything, the ice-wind
sweeping the dust round the corners, the
bare shivering trees—with a momentary
thrill of sensation that my life was like
that, dried-up, frost-bound, for ever and
ever. And then, with my fingers trem-
bling and my heart beating, and a con-
sciousness of something coming, I could
not tell what, I opened the envelope
and found This was what I found ;
without any preface or introduction—
without anything to soften the difference
between what was before my eyes and
what was going to be.

There was no beginning to the letter ;
there were a good many blots in it, as if
it had been written with a hand which
was not very steady. There was not
even a date until the end. He who had
written it had been as much agitated as
she who read it; and she who read it
did so as in a dream, not knowing where
she was standing, feeling the world and
the white curtains and the frosty square
to be going round and round with her,
making a buzzing in her ears and a
thumping against her breast.

What a plunge into a new world—
into an old world—into a world not

ealized, not possible, and yet so strange
in its fascination, so bewildering! Was
it a dream—or could it be true ?

“I have long wanted, and often
tried, to write to you again. I do not
know now whether I may or whether I
ought. If this letter should come to
another man’s wife, if it should fall into
your hands in such changed circum-
stances that you will scarcely remember
the writer’s name—and I cannot hide
from myself that all this may be the
case—then forgive me, Mary, and put
it in the fire without further thought.
It will not be for you, in your new life,
but for someone else whom you will have
forgotten, though I can never forget her.
But if you are still little Mary Peveril
as you used to be, oh, read it! and try
to throw your thoughts back to the time
when you knew me—when we used to

meet. You were not much more than a
child. How much I have thought of that
time ; how often and often I have gone
over it in my thoughts I need not tell
you. You were badly used, dear Mary.
I was wrong—I will say it humbly
on my knees if you like: having got
your promise and your heart—for I did
have that, if only for a little while—
nothing could have justified me in
appearing for one moment to place you
otherwise than first in all I did or said.
I will not excuse myself by saying how
much startled I was by the sight of Miss
Martindale, nor how anxious I was to
know whether my mother had any
share, or what share she had, in her dis-
appearance from our house. I will say
nothing about all that, but only that I
was wrong, wrong without any excuse.
Had I thought of what I was risking
by my curiosity, I would have bitten my
tongue out sooner than have asked a
single question. Do you think, could
you think, that I would have sacrificed
you to the old foolish business which
was over years before? I was an utter
fool, I allow, but not such a fool as that.
Therefore, Mary dear, dearest, whom I
havealways thought of, listen tomeagain ;
take me back again! I will beg your
pardon a hundred and a thousand times.
I will humbly do whatever penance you
may appoint me ; but listen to me now.
You would not listen to me at first—
and perhaps I was not so ready at first
to acknowledge how wrong I was. I
have had five long years to think of it,
and I see it all. You were rightly angry,
dear, and I was wrong ; and if ever man
repented, I have repented. Mary, Mary!
take me back !

“TI have been wandering about the
world all this time, working and doing
well enough. I can offer you something
better now than the little cottage we
once spoke of, though that would have
been Paradise. Iam leaving along with
this letter, and hope to arrive in England
almost as soon. I do not ask you to
write—unless indeed you would, of your
own sweet kindness—one word—to
Chester Street? But even if you don’t
do that, I will go to Russell Square in

——aeh ane @& @& ate st oe

The Two Marys. 59

the hope of finding you. Mary! don’t
break my heart. You liked me once. If
I knew what to say that would move
you, I would make this letter miles long ;
but I don’t know what more to say,
except that I love you better than ever,
and no one but you; and that I am
coming back to England for you, for you
only—half hopeless, only determined to
try once more. Perhaps by the time you
have read this I may be at your door.
“ Ever and ever yours,
“Gerorce Dura.”

“ Mary !” cried some one calling me ;
“Mary, what is the matter? Have you
bad news, my dear? Mary! Good
gracious, the child will faint! Mary,
don’t you hear me?”

“Oh, hush, hush!” I cried, not know-
ing what I said. “ Hark! listen! is that
him at the door?”

It was not him just then ; and after a
little while the curtains stopped going
round, and the floor and the Square and
everything about grew solid and steady,
and I came to myself. To myself, yes
—but not to the same self as had been
sitting so sadly holding my old lady’s
hand. What a change all in a moment!
If I had not been so happy, I should
have been ashamed to think that a
man’s letter could all in a moment
make such a change in a woman’s life.
It is demoralizing to the last degree—
it comes in the way of all the proper
efforts of education and independent
thought, and everything that is most ne-
cessary and elevating. If in a moment,
without any virtue of yours, without
any exertion of yours, you are to have
your existence all altered for you—the
greyness turned into brightness, the
labour into ease, the poverty into wealth
—how is it to be supposed that you can
be trained aright? It is demoralizing—
but it is very pleasant. Oh, the change
in one half-hour !

But I should find it very difficult
to explain to anyone how it was that
I behaved like a rational creature at
this moment, and did not take a bad
turn and torture him and myself with
objections. It was not wisdom on my

part ; I think it was the absolute sud-
denness of the whole transaction. Had
he left me more time to think, or pre-
pared me for his reception, my pride
and my delicacy would have come in,
and probably I should have thrown
away both his happiness and my own.
But fortunately he arrived that very
afternoon, before the first excitement
was over, and hearing that Miss Peveril
was at home, and that the servants had
not been forbidden to admit him, walked
up stairs when I was not thinking, and
took possession of me as if there had
been no doubt on the subject. Mrs.
Tufnell was begging me to write to
him at the very moment. I had shown
her my letter, and she was full of
enthusiasm about it. “Be an honest
girl, Mary,” she was saying: “a girl
should not worry a man like that:
you ought to be frank and open, and
send him a word to meet him when
he comes home. Say you are as fond
of him as he is of you

“No, I could not—I could not,” I
was beginning to say; when suddenly
something overshadowed us, and a big,
ringing voice said behind me, “ How
could she? Let us be reasonable.” Rea-
sonable! After that there was no more
to say.

But if it had not all passed like a
dream ; if he had not been so sudden ;
if he had taken more time and more
care—the chances are, I know, that I
should have behaved like a fool, and
hesitated and questioned, and been
proud and been foolish. As it was,
I had to be honest and happy—there
was no time for anything else.

This was of course the ending of the
whole matter. I have often wondered
whether, had my dear old lady been
burdened with the anxiety of her charge
of me, she would have died. As it is,
she has not died. She lives with us
often now, and we with her. On my
wedding day she talked of departing
in peace; but so far from departing
in peace, she has been stronger ever
since, and has a complexion any girl
of twenty might envy. When I look
back to Southampton Street and to

60 The Two Marys.

Russell Square, where I was so un-
happy, they all grow delightful and
beautiful to me. It was very bad, no
doubt (I suppose), while it lasted, but
how I smile now at all my dolours!
The delightful fact that they are over
makes them pleasant. “That is how
it will be, Mary,” my dearest old
lady says, “with all our sorrows, when
we die and get safely out of them. We
shall smile—I know it—and wonder
how we could have made such a fuss
over those momentary woes.” ‘This is a
serious way of ending a story, which
after all has turned out merely a love-
story, a thing I never contemplated
when I began to confide my early
miseries to you. How miserable I
was! and how it all makes me smile
now!

As for Mary—the other Mary—we
carried out that arrangement for her
which had been proposed for me. We
bought Grove House for her. I do not
know what we could have done better.
I never see that she is dull or weary of

her life. What languors she may have
she keeps from common view. Little
Jaek has grown a great boy, and she is
very happy in him. But she does not
give herself up to him, like so many
mothers. “I must keep my own life,”
she said to me once, when I wanted her
to give up, to live quietly at home and
devote herself to my little brother alone.
“ He will go out into the world after
a while,” she went on; “he must, he
has to make his way—and I, what
should I do then? follow him or stay
at home all alone+—No! I must keep
my own life.” And so she does. Hap-
piness? I cannot tell if she has happi-
ness: so many people get on without
that—though some of us, I thank God
humbly on my knees, have it without
deserving it—without having done any-
thing for it. Mary, I believe, never
takes time to ask herself how about
that. She said so once; she is not
unhappy, and never will be; she has
her life.

—— == = Cle

61

THE ACT FOR REGULATING THE SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS.

BY REV. HUGH SMYTH, J.P.

Tue Act for Regulating the Sale of In-
toxicating Liquors received the Royal
Assent on one of the last days of the
expiring session, and its immediate
result has taken the great mass of the
public completely by surprise.

The Bill had dragged its way so slowly
through Parliament, it had been the
subject of such intense and almost
microscopic scrutiny, so many conflict-
ing interests had secured so many
alterations of detail, that when a veteran
statesman gave it a bene discessit in the
memorable words that the House was
well rid of it at any price, its opponents
and its supporters alike believed that
all the life was gone out of it, and the
public was persuaded that it was the
weak and timid measure of an Adminis-
tration pledged to do something, and
yet anxious to do as little as possible.

But a very different impression would
have been produced in the minds of any
of our readers who had taken sufficient
interest in the subject to watch its first
operation in the nearest town, or village,
and he would not have been slow to
come to the conclusion that it was very
far from being a weak or timid measure,
and that nothing but an intense reliance
upon an Englishman’s habitual submis-
sion to law and his natural love of order
could have justified its enactment, or
rendered the maintenance of its pro-
visions probable. If our reader had
taken for his point of observation a
village in the agricultural districts, he
_would have heard it proclaimed early
in the evening, that this was the first
Saturday evening in the harvest, that
the labourers had never been so great
in their own eyes for many a long year,
had never received such a week’s wages
by from five to ten shillings, that they
had most of them drunk during the
day their allotted gallon of ale, that

the steady men had taken enough, and
yet were contemplating that wretched
“one pint more” which produces so
much misery and mischief, whilst
the hard drinkers were making them-
selves up for the best night of it they
had made since last harvest, and for
disposing with all speed of the surplus
wages, which were burning a hole in
their pockets ; he would have seen the
wives of the steadier labourers anxiously
speculating how soon they might expect
their good men, and with what sum
they might hope to begin their shopping,
whilst the wives of the hard drinkers
were looking forward to the midnight,
when the public-houses would discharge
their drunken inmates, and they would
get their poor salvage out of the wages,
the deficiency too often made up in
oaths, abuse, and perhaps a kick or a
blow to those long-suffering ones, who
were safe not “ to go for a summons.”

The butchers’ and grocers’ shops flared
up very tantalizing to the matrons, but
as yet very quiet, till the Licensed
Victuallers should have taken their first
turn at the wages.

But as ten o’clock! approached, a scene
with an intensely comic element was
developed ; the men came up in groups
from the various farm-houses ; they had
not left work till after nine on this fine
harvest day, and the wages had been
reckoned up and paid afterwards, so
they were late; but when they reached
their special “ public” they could hardly
believe their eyes or their ears ; no blaze
of gas, no clean-swept floors, no froth-
ing ale, no jolly songs, no village ora-
tions, no oaths or wrangling ; the gas is
being lowered, the first shutter is already
up, silence within, and without a knot

1 The magistrates in this division had exer-

cised their power, and fixed ten as the hour of
closing.

62 The Act for Regulating the Sale of Intowicating Liquors.

of very discontented grumblers mutter-
ing curses loud and deep, mingled with
larger knots of women and girls, many
of them positively dancing for joy, and
chaffing the men most unmercifully.
Thus they learn for the first time—for
the secret either by accident or design
has been marvellously well kept—that
the new Act has come into operation,
and the public-houses are henceforth to
be closed at ten.

A few choice spirits prompt at an
emergency seize upon empty bottles
and jugs, and replenishing them with
hot haste prepare for an al fresco revel ;
but somehow it does not take, and the
sensible and well-disposed (and after all
they form the great majority of the agri-
cultural labourers), with a few shrugs of
the broad shoulders, a “ what next?” or
two, and perhapsa fewstronger expletives,
turn to their homes or their “* missuses,”
who are looking out for them, and who,
if they are wise matrons, have at home
some oil for the ruffled tempers in the
shape of a jug of ale and a comfortable
bit of supper.

So the men are at last mollified, and
the missus goes out rejoicing, with a
heavier purse and a lighter heart than
she has had for many a weary year.

For another hour the shops of the
butchers, grocers, bakers, &c., are busy
with cheery bargaining ; then they begin
to close just at the hour the press of
business had usually commenced, and
soon after eleven all is quiet in the
village.

So much for the villages. The towns
in which the greatest results were ob-
tained are—(1) Leeds, where it is said
“the streets in the lower parts were
usually on a Saturday night in a state
of uproar till one o’clock, and numerous
robberies and assaults took place be-
tween twelve and one o'clock ; on
this night, however, all was quiet by
midnight, and only four apprehen-
sions were made after eleven o'clock.”
(2) Birmingham, which is remarkable
for the organized strength of the Licensed
Victuallers, and in which nevertheless
the new hours met with little or no
opposition. (3) Rochdale, in which the

enforcement of the early hours was co-
incident with the commencement of the
Rush-bearing wake—during which in
previous years the drunkenness was
almost intolerable, in which however not
one single arrest for drunkenness was on
this night made after eleven o'clock ;
and (4) Liverpool, where the change is
so graphically recorded as to be worth
describing in the words of the report
which has come to hand.

“ Under the late-hour system all was
glitter and glare in the neighbourhood
of London Road, Lime Street, and
Williamson Square, from the time dark-
ness set in until the gin-palaces closed
at 1 a.m. About midnight, vice held
high carnival in these localities: the
public-houses did a roaring trade, and
the streets were thronged with loose
women, and other disreputable charac-
ters. All this was changed on this
night, as if by an enchanter’s wand. At
eleven o'clock, the licensed houses were
closed, and where the night before
there had been drunkenness and riot,
decency and order prevailed.

“ Before midnight the streets were
quiet, and in otherwise notorious tho-
roughfares there was a marked absence
of drunkenness, and of those unhappy
wretches who thronged the streets, or
who wandered about from public-house
to public-house in search of victims.”

But if Saturday night took the whole
public by surprise, not less did Monday
morning bring astonished dismay to
many an unlucky offender at the Police-
courts throughout the country.

This is the sort of scene which
occurred at one certainly, and probably
in a hundred others :—

John Stokes appears in the prisoners’
dock, age twenty-two,—sodden with his
debauch—much bemused with blood
and beer—loathsome with dirt—with
almost every finger-touch of God's
handiwork obliterated by vice and
drink: in the back of the court, a
careworn woman, young, but all youth
gone out of her, with a black-eye, a
miserable baby, and a ragged shawl,
herself much dishevelled, too miserable
to care how she looks, and yet, strange

as

Saat ot itt eee mem eee em. 8 lO lhe ae a ae a Oe eS

a le ae. i ie i Ce eee oe es ee

The Act for Regulating the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors. 63

mystery, with some care still for the
drunken fellow in the dock.

It is only the old story : he was turned
out of the public-house at eleven o'clock,
made a disturbance, wanted to fight the
world generally, knocked his wife over
when she came to persuade him to go
home, then with a nice sense of equality
rolled over into the gutter himself and
wallowed there, swearing grievously ;
finally, was brought to the Police-court
on a stretcher. Has got nothing to
say—thinks it is all true what the
“genleman” (i.e. P.C. A 23) says, but
don’t remember “nothink about it—
suppose he must pay.” —“ Must pay?” —
he thinks the usual fine is coming, five
shillings and costs, with a week to pay
it in, during which wife and child must
live on bread and water. But, not so
fast—the Superintendent speaks. ‘“‘ The
New Act has come into operation, your
worship, and there are seventeen
previous convictions against this man,
eight for drunkenness, two for felony,
three for larceny, four for assaults.”
There are three magistrates ; they con-
fer, consult the Act; and refer to the
12th clause.
with hard labour is the penalty ; shall
he have it? It is the first offence
under the New Act; let it be fourteen
days, one of the Bench proposes.
“Give him the whole month and the
first offence may be the last,” a second
magistrate advises. Jn medio tutissimus
ibis, propounds the chairman, and sen-
tences the prisoner to twenty-one days.
“What, isn’t there nothink to pay?”
exclaims the prisoner, horribly disgusted.
“No,” is the answer ; “we have power
to commit without a fine, and we
exercise it.” Blank dismay falls on the
countenances of a large party of the
prisoner’s comrades, who are in court,
and the prisoner is taken out.

But John Stokes is not the only man
astonished at the Court that Monday
morning. John Stokes had emerged
from the Pig and Porcupine kept by
Thomas Nokes, and he takes the place
of John Stokes, answering to a summons
promptly served upon him, and, in all
his look of injured innocence demanding

A month’s imprisonment:

to know why he is placed in that dis-
graceful situation, he is soon informed.
Police-constable A 23, confirmed by
Police-constable A 32, and supported by
a respectable tradesman, who appears as
a summoned witness sorely against his
will, had seen John Stokes reel into the
Pig and Porcupine, and there be served
with a pint of beer. The landlord:
‘*Daresay it was so; how is he in a crowd
of customers to pick out every man who
has had a drop of beer too much?”
The Magistrates confer again. They
refer to the 13th clause, and again,
adopting a medium course after due
consultation, they inflict a fine of five
pounds and costs. The landlord pays
the fine, with a prophecy that the Pig
and Porcupine must shortly be closed if
that is the law. The loss of the Pig
and Porcupine, and the loss of many
Pigs and Porcupines, will be equably
borne by society.

Having thus endeavoured to describe
the inauguration of the Act for Regulat-
ing the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors, it
is time that we refer more in detail to
its provisions, and to the provisions of
Acts of previous Sessions. In point of
fact any real effort to suppress intem
perance is of very recent date.

At the time when senators, judges,
and magistrates got drunk themselves,
without fear or shame—though in the
good old times they did many strange
things—they could hardly be very severe
upon drunken culprits. In point of
fact, drunkenness per se went un-
punished, and landlords thought it was
no concern of theirs that men got
drunken in their houses, so long as riot
within their premises was avoided.

But as intemperance in its grosser
forms decayed amongst the higher and
middle classes, gradually thinking men
began more clearly to recognize the
magnitude of the evil as it prevailed
amongst the working classes. The ad-
vocates of total abstinence no doubt
were the pioneers of this movement ;
they prepared the public mind for re-
pression, and made that safe which a
few years ago would have produced a
rebellion.

64 The Act for Regulating the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors.

But the advocates of total abstinence
were not long alone ; judges and magis-
trates, Poor-law commissioners and
Poor-law guardians, ministers of re-
ligion and members of the medical pro-
fession, gradually raised a loud and ener-
getic protest: two-thirds of the crime,
one-half of the pauperism, one-third of
the disease, and three-fourths of the in-
sanity of the country, could be clearly
traced to intemperance.

These were startling facts, and they
were produced not by theorists or fana-
tics, but by practical men amongst the
first in power and position in the coun-
try. What could be done to diminish
evils so gigantic ?

“ Abstain altogether,” the temperance
advocates prescribed. But even if it
were granted that a universal total ab-
stinence was desirable, or possible, or
could long be maintained without a
reaction, the country was not ripe for it:
the progress of the total abstinence
movement was slow, while the evils
were very pressing. At least, Bench
and Bar, Divinity and Medicine, urged,
“Increase the penalty of drunkenness,
and do something to diminish the temp-
tations to it by regulating the traffic in
drink.” And so the public mind set
itself seriously to consider the subject
which was thus forced on its attention.

Three distinct plans were very ably
presented to it, in addition to the total
abstinence which it had rejected.

(1.) To transfer the regulation of the
drink traffic to boards chosen by the
ratepayers, who should have the power
to fix the hours and conditions of sale
in any given parish, and to decide on
the number of houses, with power of
total prohibition if carried by a majority
of two-thirds.

(2.) The adoption of a plan which
had been successfully tried in Sweden,!
namely, to purchase or suppress all exist-
ing houses, and sell liquors only in
houses made the property of the Go-
vernment, giving to the salaried servants
who sold them no interest whatever in
their sale.

(3.) To give to the magistrates, in

1 See Macmillan for Feb. 1872.

whom the regulation of the traffic was
at present vested, increased power both
in the suppression of drunkenness and
as regarded the conduct and number of
the public-houses.

To the first of these proposals there
was this great objection, that the result
would be very various in different
parishes, and could only be obtained by
an incalculably bitter and severe contest
between contending parties. And to
both the first and the second there was
this objection, that the capital engaged
in the liquor traffic was enormous, and
that to wholly or partially suppress
it without compensation would be a
dangerous precedent, and could not be
justified even by its evident expediency,
whilst fully to compensate might appal
the financier most sanguine as to the
ultimately recuperative results of the
expenditure. To the third proposal
there was this objection, that the magis-
trates were held in the public mind to
be the parties culpable as regarded the
existing state of things. ‘They had,
however, a good answer, which was
ultimately accepted by the Legislature.
They said that the power apparently
vested in them was illusory, and it was
thus described :—

The only statute which imposed a
penalty on drunkenness was that old one
of James I., which inflicted a fine of
five shillings, giving the offender a week
to pay it in, with the alternative of six
hours in the stocks if not paid. But
the stocks were gone, and no magistrate
would ever dream of their revival. So
the offender used to leave the dock
grinning with a sort of “ Don’t you wish
you may get it?” They had then no
power to punish drunkenness.

So, too, as regarded the number and
conduct of public-houses. Forty years
ago they had some power, but about that
time an Act was passed which permitted
any man who could obtain a licence from
the Excise to sell beer. At first there
were some feeble safeguards : a bond fide
rateable value of the house was required,
and official testimonials of character
were indispensable ; but gradually all
these were withdrawn or evaded, and it

The Act for Regulating the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors. 65

came to this, that all the houses in a
parish might become beer-shops if men
foolish enough to open them could be
found ; and that they might be con-
ducted as recklessly as possible, and
still continue to be pvublic-houses, pro-
vided only the tenant was changed after
a second conviction. So there were
houses which were perfectly well known
as thieves’ houses, in which robberies
were planned, and to which their booty
was taken ; into which also if an honest
man entered it was perfectly certain he
would be drugged and robbed ; there
were poachers’ houses, gamblers’ houses,
brothels, &c. Every house had its
spécialité, and in the majority of in-
stances the spécialité was not innocent.

In the meantime the legitimate trade
was in a miserable condition ; if a house
had established a respectable trade, a
rival was opened three doors off, and the
landlord must devise some new attrac-
tion or be ruined. They were ruined
in numbers. The writer of this article
has known houses which have changed
their tenants four times in a year:
he has seen gentlemen’s servants bring
the savings of a lifetime ; returned emi-
grants and mechanics the hard earnings
of their best years ; widows and unfor-
tunate tradesmen the salvage of better
times ; all to be absorbed in this great
gulf of the liquor trade. Many houses
were opened and retained solely that
they might be baits for the unwary, and
innumerable artifices were employed for
presenting a fictitious trade.

This is the report which the Magis-
trates presented to the public; and very
cautiously at first, but by degrees more
and more decidedly, power was placed
in their hands. First of all, they were
allowed, if a drunkard was riotous as
well as drunk, to fine or imprison him ;
the limit of imprisonment without a fine
being seven days without hard labour.
‘Then the beer-houses were brought under
their jurisdiction. No licence was to be
issued by the Excise without their cer-
tificate, and they might refuse licences
both to them and to licensed houses
on the following grounds :—1, That the
house was unsuitable for the purpoce ;
2, that it was badly conducted ; 3, that

No, 157,—VoL, XXv11.

the character of the landlord was un-
satisfactory. These do not look large
powers on paper, but the results were
extraordinary where they were rigor-
ously exercised.

The “Luton Experiment,” as it is
termed, was one of the earliest and
most prominent. In that town the
bench of Magistrates, aided by a zealous
and active Superintendent of Police and
well supported, it must be added, by the
public opinion of the town, exercised
these powers with great vigour and
boldness. The first result reported was
that crime was diminished to one-half,
serious crime to one-fourth. An experi-
enced statesman said to the writer of
this paper, “ I could not have believed it
in human power to produce such a result
in so short a time.” There was nothing
spasmodic in this result; the decrease in
crime was maintained, the gaol became
more empty, and the county rates more
easy.

The Government undertook at the
commencement of this session to legislate
on this principle. The Act which it
passed cannot be described as exhaus-
tive of the subject, but, as we said earlier
in this article, it is by no means the
timid, objectless measure it has been
described. Its most important features
may be thus summed up :—

1. The detection and punishment of
adulteration.

2. The punishment of aggravated
drunkenness without the option of a
fine.

3. The earlier closing of public-houses
and their optional closing on Sundays.

4. The regulation of the conduct of
public-houses, by severe and clearly de-
scribed penalties on the permission of
drunkenness and gaming, or the admis-
sion of disorderly or dishonest characters,

The first of these provisions was
clearly necessary at the outset. With-
out crediting all the stories of widely
spread adulteration, there can be no
doubt that it existed largely in the
lower-class houses, and that many a
man came out of them drunk who was
no more responsible for it than a man
who had been poisoned would be for
taking poison.

F

66 The Act for Regulating the Sale of Intowicating Liquors.

The second will render intemperance
disgraceful and dangerous. No legis-
lative enactments will of themselves
cure dipsomaniacs, but the fear and
disgrace of a gaol will deter many a
man who has not yet lost all self-
control.

The third will extinguish the trade
during those hours in which it is most
dangerous. All authorities concur in
attributing the most mischief to the last
two hours. It is during them that men
drink themselves drunk; it is during
them that wages are squandered, crime is
concocted and committed, and homes
rendered miserable by drunken outrage.

The fourth provision will no doubt
strike a death-blow to many houses
which only pander to the vice and
crime of the community; and though
vice and crims will continue to exist
when these panderers have passed
away, there is no doubt they have been
thus stimulated to an unnatural vigour,
and will dwindle and decrease when the
stimulant is withdrawn. Nor will even
the vested interests suffer in the long
run. The disreputable trade does not
really pay. The brewer will do his
business in fewer houses and with more
respectable tenants ; he will not be con-
stantly compelled by a ruinous competi-
tion to push his trade into unproductive
investments ; his capital and his losses
will be reduced, as his conscience, let
us hope, becomes more easy ; and thus
a great social reform will have been
inaugurated with a minimum of suffering
to particular interests.

Notr.—Since this article was written
the Superintendents of Police in up-
wards of 300 towns have been requested
to report on the operation of the Act.

Some of the replies record an in-
creased number of convictions for
drunkenness, which, as drunkenness
per se was rarely prosecuted previous to
the passing of the Act, may be taken
as evidence of the salutary operation of
a social medicine hereafter to produce
good results ; but as regards the general
working of the Act their unanimity is
very remarkable ;—almost without an
exception they speak most favourably of

present and hopefully of future results.
It will be sufficient to subjoin specimen
replies from three or four representa-
tive towns of each class,

Large Manufacturing Towns and
Mining Districts.

1. Ashby-de-la-Zouch :—A large min-
ing division. The miners get large
wages, and there is always a good deal
of drinking going on... . but the
new Act works well—(G. Ward, Su-
perintendent. )

2. Birmingham :—The order of our
streets greatly improved. The nights
are now peaceable.—(G. Glossop, Chief
of Police.)

3. Bradford :—Town much quieter
after closing than formerly. Police ap-
prove of the Act.—(F. W. Graham,
Chief Constable.)

4. Dudley :—Quiet, where disorder
and fighting prevailed. Night police
spared much rough usage. — (Henry
Burton, Superintendent.)

Small Country Towns.

1. Andover:—No one can tell the
difference but those who witness it; I
have been a Superintendent of Police
thirty-two years, and I never recollect
an Act passing that will do such an
amount of good.—(Thomas Campbell,
Superintendent.)

2. Buckingham :—Quietude and sa-
tisfaction amongst all parties, except a
few drunkards, who would like houses
to be open always.—(J. Howe, Super-
intendent.)

3. Cirencester :—I believe the eleven
o'clock closing to be a benefit to the
town and neighbourhood.—(W. Wood,
Superintendent.)

Seaports and Watering-places.

1. Bath :—Great quietness in the
streets ; fewer cases of drunkenness.—
(G. S. Mattlebury, Superintendent.)

2. Plymouth :—Streets very much
quieter and more orderly.—(Frederick
Wareford, Superintendent.)

3. Yarmouth :—Town very much
quieter. Police consider it a great im-
provement.—(G. Tewsley, Superinten-
dent.)

|

SBOrBESSVELSEBSE

ha

67

REDISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER.

Tux passing of the Reform Bill of 1867
necessitated the early consideration of
three other kindred measures. The ad-
mission to the franchise of a large
uumber of persons belonging to a class
more or less dependent upen others, and
therefore susceptible of various kinds of
influence, was certain to add a new im-
petus to the Ballot movement ; the es-
tablichment of household suffrage in the
towns inevitably led to a demand for
uniformity of suffrage in this respect
between town and country ; whilst the
attention of Parliament could hardiy
have been directed to the subject of
Reform at all without disclosing to the
public view such anomalies and vagaries
in our present distribution of electoral
power as could not fail to lead erelong
to a thorough overhauling of the repre-
sentative system under which we live.
Ii is probable that the Ministry which
passed the Reform Bill hardly foresaw
the consequences of the proceeding by
which they “dished the Whigs.”
Honestly anxious to settle a question
which had long stood between them-
selves and popular favour, they saw
little beyond the franchise difficulties
of the moment, and hugged themselves
with delight at the idea of having out-
bid their opponents, and being enabled
to display themselves upon the hustings
as the party which had enfranchised the
“working man.” They were new dis-
ciples in the school of Reform, and may
therefore be excused for not having
foreseen the inevitable consequences of
their abandonment of tie old resistance
policy of their Party, and their adoption
of principles and measures which be-
longed of right to their opponents, and
the logical results of which they could
therefore scarcely be expected to under-
stand.

Questions of the character which we

are discussing are never “settled,” and
the only practical result of the Disraeli
Reform Bill was to change the platform
of agitation, and encourage the hopes of
the more “advanced” school of agi-
tators. Thus, had the six-pound fran-
chise Bill of Lord Russell’s Government
become law, we should probably be now
at the beginning of an agitation for
“household suffrage,” which would have
lasted us for ten, fifteen, or twenty
years, during which time our efforts
at National Education would have been
preparing the rising generation of our
people for such an extension of elec-
toral rights. Mr. Disraeli has saved
us from this agitation, but only to land
us in another; and to-day, having jus’
carried the Ballot, we begin to hear the
mutterings of the coming storm which
the defenders of the Constitution will
ere long have to encounter.

It is not our purpose to-day to deal
with the question of uniformity of fran-
chise. Mr. Trevelyan has already given
notice of a motion for next session for
leave to bring in a Bill to extend house-
hoid suffrage to counties ; and although
valid reasons for the postponement of
such a measure may doubtless be ad-
vanced, it is difficult to see how the
ebove-named extension can long be re-
sisted. The householder in a repre-
sented borough is not rendered by any
special privileges of locality a superior
being to his fellow-citizen who is estab-
lished in a place which chances to be
unrepresented ; and it can scarcely be
doubted that, before many years have
passed over our heads, the sauce for
the town goose will be found equally
suitable to the country gander. But
whether this question be solved next
year—or the year after—or when it shall
have become sufficiently the subject of
agitation to influence contests at a

F 2

68 Redistribution of Political Power.

general election, it is pretty certain
that the third measure to which we
have alluded as being rendered neces-
sary by the Reform Bill of 1867 is
about to force itself upon the attention
of the country. The following an-
nouncement in the Daily News of
August 9th heralds the coming move-
ment :—

“Conference on Electoral Reform—Redis-
tribution of Seats. —A conference convened by
tue Electoral Reform Association of_repre-
sentatives of Reform Associations, Jiberal
tectoral Committees and others, to discuss
srievances arising out of the present imperfect
svstem of representation, will be held at St.
James's Hall, London, on the 12th November,
iteleven o'clock. Reform Associations, Liberal
Conmittees and others, are invited to nominate
representatives to attend such conference. A
molic meeting will be held in the evening of
tiie same day in support of the resolutions
advpted by the conference.”

One of the most cherished privileges
of an Englishman is his right to “ dis-
cuss his grievances,” and if inequality
iu the distribution of representation be
i:ndecd a grievance upon those to whom
nas fallen a lesser share of this blessing
tun they would appear to be entitled
t» by the circumstances of combined
wealth and population, it must be at
once conceded that there exist a vast
number of our fellow-countrymen with
so legitimate a grievance, that St. James’s
tiall, or twenty St. James’s Halls, might
wtsily be filled to overflowing by the
Swicrers,

I: is not too much to say that, test it
as we will, there is scarcely anything
topertaining to our British constitution
vive absurd and anomalous than the
«istiibution of our representation. In-
‘cd, so entirely is it above and beyond

‘ae application of any intelligible reason
hy which its present state might be ex-
yun ned and justified, that if such were

it desire at the present moment we
+10. be inelined to fall back upon the

of an eminent Conservative
stuvstian, Who once expressed himself
t» to writer of this article in the fol-
nz terms: “It is all very well,”
i he, “to tak about eyualities of
eeocoral rights, equal electoral districts,
wit a fairer system of representation

according to wealth and population.
That never was the object of the
British constitution in providing a House
of Commons. The real object was, and
is, to get together, somehow or other, a
body of gentlemen of position and cha-
racter, willing to charge themselves with
the transaction of public business, and
to be the intermediate body between the
Crown and the people. So long as you
secure such a body, it signifies but little
by what constituencies its members are
chosen.”

If we could accept the above as a cor-
rect description of the whole circum-
stances of the case, we might be content
to let the subject rest. Unfortunately,
however, whatever may be the object
with which the framers of the British
constitution originally provided us with
a House of Commons, the question of
its composition and manner of selection
cannot be so easily laid aside. We are
all, doubtless, interested in securing the
election of an able, educated, honest
representative body, in whom public
confidence may be reposed. But that
same public confidence will never be
given, or will at least be given only in
a minor degree, to a body which can be
easily shown to be scarcely “ repre-
sentative,” except by a strained or
limited interpretation of the word. It
is all very well to say that at the present
moment the House of Commons contains
within itself men who may be fairly
said to represent every class of the com-
munity, save always that great operative
class who can never be directly repre-
sented in any appreciable manner in
an unpaid Leyislature. The assertion
would be hardly true, as a mere matter
of fact; and even if it were so, would
not be satisfactory to the inquiring
public, if it were found that the pro-
cess by which such a result had been
obtained could not be defended by any
rational argument, and rested upon no
tangible theory of representation.

In the discussion of such a question
as the present, it is generally much
easier to describe the grievance than
to suggest the remedy; and before we
proceed to do either the one thing or

woth We ag ker cg

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Pee ee oO

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Redistribution of Political Power. 69

the other, it is well to consider the pre-
cise object we have in view, and the
principles upon which we desire to pro-
ceed. Our object, then, is to obtain a
House of Commons as nearly as possible
representing the opinions and interests
of all classes of her Majesty’s subjects.
The principles which we must bear in
mind in our attempt to achieve this
object may be roughly stated as two—
first, that representation shall be distri-
buted with due regard to the wealth,
population, and national importance of
the different districts to be represented ;
and, secondly, that no class or interest
shall be wronged or placed at disadvan-
tage in the distribution. But the diffi-
culty of dealing with such a question in
a practical and satisfactory manner is
almost incalculable. There are those
who would apportion out the whole
country into “equal electoral districts,”
But what are “equal electoral districts” ?
Are they to be equal in area, or in popu-
lation? The former would be absurd,
because you might have ten square miles
in one county, with a population of a
thousand persons, or very much less,
and a population of many thousands
upon one square mile in another
locality. Electoral districts, however,
equal in population, or as nearly so as
could be arranged, would be by no
means satisfactory. The importance of
a district depends not only upon its
population, but upon its wealth-pro-
ducing powers, and a comparatively
small district, as far as population is
concerned, may often be of much greater
importance to the nation than a densely
populated area elsewhere. And, indeed,
if we had districts carved out for us to-
morrow, as nearly as may be equal in
their importance and population, it can-
not be doubted that very few years
would pass over our heads before the
constant shiftings of population caused
by the creation of new industries, the
opening up of fresh fields of labour in
distant countries, and the ceaseless de-
velopment of trade which is ever taking
place in a country like our own, would
leave our representative system again in
an unequal and anomalous condition.

It is not, however, because there are
difficulties in the way of improvement
that all attempts at improvement are to
be rejected ; and probably the best way
to promote the success of such attempts
will be to point out some of the most
glaring anomalies which exist at present.
In so doing, we shall exclude Scotland
and Ireland altogether from considera-
tion—not because they have no share in
the national grievance, but because there
are exceptional circumstances in the case
of each country which render it difficult
to deal with all three within the limits
of one and the same article. Leaving,
therefore, the 103 members for Ireland
(reduced from 105 by the disfranchise-
ment of Cashel and Sligo) and the 60
members contributed by Scotland to the
national Legislature, we come to regard
the position of our English and Welsh
legislators, whose number—to fulfil the
magic roll of 658—should be 493, but
who only amount to 489 in consequence
of the disfranchisement of the delinquent
boroughs of Beverley and Bridgewater,
and the non-apportionment of these
seats to any other centre of representa-
tion. Of these 489 English and Welsh
members, 187 are returned by counties
and divisions of counties ; 275 by cities
and boroughs exclusive of the metro-
polis ; 22 by metropolitan constituencies,
and 5 by universities,

Let us commence our investigation of
anomalies by a slight examination of the
manner in which the Census returns of
1871 bear upon the above distribution
of representatives. Observe the propor-
tion: 187 county members, 302 town
and university members ;—then turn to
the “ Preliminary Report and Tables of
the Population and Houses enumerated
in England aud Wales, on 3rd April,
1871,” and we shall find, at page 21, a
table showing the division of our popu-
lation to be as follows :—

1. Resident in parliamentary
boroughs . . . + «ss
2. In counties outside parlia-
mentary boroughs . . .

Total .

10,655,930

12,048,178
. 22,704,108

So that the minority of the whole popu-

eee

t
\
"

a

—

= =

70 Redistribution of Political Power.

lation of the country, dwelling in repre-
sented towns, actually returns to Parlia-
ment a far greater number of members
than the majority.

Some kind of reply to this startling
fact has occasionally been made by
attempting to show, first, that a certain
number of borough constituencies have
attached to them rural districts which
bring them, in reality, under the deno-
mination of small counties rather than
towns ; and, secondly, that many of the
smaller boroughs are practically under
the same influences as those which pre-
vail in counties. Neither of these argu-
ments, however, appear to us to be of
much vaiue. As regards the first, it
cuts both ways, for it may be said that
towns too small to be legitimate centres
of representation are bolstered up by
the addition of rural districts whose
electors they “swamp,” whereas they
had much better yield their members
either to larger towns now unrepresented,
or to the under-represented counties ;
whilst as to the second argument, if it
be true, it certainly appears desirable
that such small boroughs should be
merged in their counties, and their
members returned by the whole rather
than by a portion only of those electors
who are said to be of the same character,
and subject to the same influences.
Moreover, if this argument be sound, it
may be that the town element and not
the country is actually wronged by this
misleading distribution of seats.

Bui, in fact, it is simply idle to argue
in favour of an anomaly so absurd as
that illustrated in the figures given
above; there is no pretence either of
justice or of equality, in a system which
allows ten millions of people to have
302 representatives, and obliges twelve
millions to be content with 187. Men
do not become better or wiser in propor-
tion to their concentration in towns. If
they did so, our great centres of popula-
tion, as will be presently shown, are
cruelly wronged by the present distribu-
tion of political power. But a man is
no better or worse an elector because he
lives in a town: why, then, should his
urban propensities vest him with so

much greater electoral privileges than
those possessed by the man who “shuns
the din of cities” and resides in the
country? This, then, is the first great
problem which must be met and reso-
lutely faced by any statesman who under-
takes to deal with the question which
we are now discussing. It cannot be
shirked or evaded. Any attempt te
settle upon a satisfactory basis the distri-
bution of our representation must clash
at once with vested interests, whose
resistance it will only be possible to
overcome by proceeding upon some
principle which will appeal to the fair-
ness and sense of justice of those in
whose hands the decision will rest ; and
this principle will not have been dis-
covered until the balance is fairly struck
between urban and rural population, and
the glaring inequality which we have
pointed out duly investigated and re-
moved.

But whilst the town constituencies
monopolize so large a share of electoral
power, it must not be supposed that this
share is distributed among them in pro-
portions of a fair and equal character.
Of the 10,655,930 population resident
in parliamentary boroughs, the ten metro-
politan constituencies contain 3,008,101 ;
and therefore, if population were the
test, out of the 297 members returned
by towns, exclusive of the universities,
about 84 instead of 22 would properly
fall to the metropolis. To this there
is, of course, one answer of some
validity—namely, that the interests ot
London are to a great degree the in-
terests of the whole country ; and that
the whole of the 654 members of Parlia-
ment residing of necessity some half the
year in London, may be called, in one
sense, representatives of, the metropolis.
Moreover, it may be urged that it would
be alike against public policy and public
opinion to concentrate so much political
power in the metropolitan boroughs,
and that the case is one of an exceptional
character, to which the population test
could not fairly be made to apply.

These arguments, however, do not
apply to the next instance of inequality
in our Borough representation system.

Redistribution of Political Power.

The Census returns before us show
17 “borough” constituencies the popu-
lation of each of which exceeds 100,000
persons. Liverpool heads the list with
493,346, or nearly half a million ;
Brighton closes it with 103,760. The
aggregate population of these boroughs
amounts in round numbers to 3,270,000
persons. By our population test, there-
fore, these constituencies would be en-
titled to 91 members, whereas 36
is the number which they return to
Parliament. Thus, these seventeen
towns and the metropolitan boroughs,
comprising, jointly, a population of
above six and a quarter millions out of
the total borough population of some-
thing above ten millions and a half,
return 58 members, whilst the remain-
ing constituencies, comprising a popula-
tion of four and a quarter millions, are
provided with 239 representatives.

The anomalies of the system, however,
may be better and more concisely shown
by the following table, which shows, in
round numbers, the distribution of elec-
toral power among the 10,655,000 popu-
lation resident in represented places :—

Electors.

3,008,000 resident
boroughs return ‘

3,270,000 resident in 17 towns with
a population exceeding

; _ Members.
in metropolitan
22

y . ure
1,575,000 resident in 22 towns with
a population between
50,000 and 100,000 . . 37
1,850,000 resident in 54 towns with
a population between
20,000 and 50,000. . . 81
552,000 resident in 39 towns with
a population between
10,000 and 20,000. . . 64
400,000 resident in 56 towns with a
population below 10,000. 56

297

10,655,000
a
By comparing the two first items of the
above table with the rest, it will be seen
at once that 400,000 persons in Eng-
land, by the accident of their localiza-
tion, actually return to Parliament
within three of the number of represen-
tatives returned by upwards of six and
a quarter millions of their fellow-country-
men located elsewhere; whilst 952,000

71

persons return 120 members against
96 members returned by a population
of about seven and a half millions /

The incongruity of the system, how-
ever, does not end here—the more closely
it is examined the more indefensible
does it appear. Among the fifty-six
boroughs with a population under
10,000 are thirteen with a population
in each below 6,000, and an aggregate
population of 64,342, which return to
Parliament twelve members ; whilst, ex-
clusive of metropolitan boroughs, there
are thirty-one towns the aggregate popu-
lation of each of whieh exceeds the
aggregate of the aforesaid twelve, but of
which four return three and the rest
only two members each. Moreover, to
contrast individually with each of these
small privileged boroughs, there are
twenty-eight towns possessed of munici-
pal privileges but not in the enjoyment
of representation, the population of each
of which exceeds that of each of the
fifty-six represented towns, and of which
five have a population exceeding twenty,
fifteen a population exceeding ten,
thousand. The list is enormously in-
creased if we pass to towns having
neither parliamentary nor municipal
privileges, and the necessity of revision
becomes more and more apparent. Place
side by side with Bridgnorth, Bridport,
Chippenham, Eye, Marlborough, Tewkes-
bury, and the like (several of which
actually show a population diminished
since the Census of 1861), such places
in the south as Croydon, Ramsgate,
Margate, Tunbridge Wells, Torquay,
Luton, &c., and the system which gives
members to the former whilst leaving
the latter unrepresented appears really
beyond criticism. Similar instances of
inequality might be multiplied ad in-
Jimitum if we were to bring into review
the large unrepresented towns in the
North of England. St. Helens, Hanley,
Keighley, Barnsley, and other towns with
populations varying from ten thousand
up to fifty or sixty thousand, might be
adduced to prove our position, but that
it really seems superfluous to add further
evidence. It is plain beyond the neces-
sity of proof that no intelligible prin-

72 Redistribution of Political Power.

ciple governs our present system of
representative distribution, and the diffi-
culty is one which time will only aggra-
vate. It has already become the habit
of certain organs of public opinion to
criticise important divisions in the House
of Commons with a view to discover the
amount of wealth and population rela-
tively represented by majorities and
minorities, and it cannot be satisfactory
when the result (as has more than once
been the case) shows a minority of mem-
bers representing a majority of popula-
tion. As the education of the country
progresses, these things will be better
understood, and public opinion will
scarcely permit that the voice of the
great centres of industry and the most
important interests of the country shall
be neutralized or out-voted by a number
of small and unimportant constituencies.

The argument in favour of small
boroughs, moreover, has been destroyed
by the course of events. However in-
defensible in theory, it was practically
useful that young men of promise should
by this channel be introduced into the
House of Commons. There is no such
mistake as to object to a candidate on
account of his youth. Of course it would
be a great misfortune to have a Parlia-
ment of which a majority were youths
of one- or two-and-twenty, but this is a
contingency which we need hardly ap-
prehend under any possible system. The
business of a member of Parliament,
however, requires an apprenticeship as
much as any trade or profession, and it
will be an evil day for England when
her electoral system excludes men from
entering the House of Commons at an
early age.

This, however, has been to some ex-
tent the result of the manner in which
we have dealt with our small boroughs.
We have in most cases got rid of the
“patron,” who used to nominate some
friend of his own, or some leading mem-
ber of his Party, who might be in want
of a seat. It may be doubted, however,
whether, having gone thus far, we might
not with advantage have gone somewhat
further in the enlargement of constitu-
encies. For the tendency of boroughs

under the present system is to elect either
a very rich or a “local” candidate, and
upon this point our representative system
shows a lamentable weakness. That
which we should all desire is the election
of men capable of legislating for the
interests of the empire at large, and as
little as possible hampered by local ties
and prejudices. But the smaller the
constituency, the stronger the influence
of a local candidate, and at the present
moment not only is the number of places
extremely limited in which a candidate
without wealth or local influence could
hope for success, but the accidental dis-
placement of even a prominent member
of either political party is hard to remedy,
owing especially to the large number of
“local” representatives now sitting in
Parliament.

It appears to us, therefore, that in any
redistribution of representative power,
two main objects should be kept in view.
First, the removal of glaring inequalities
between town and country and between
borough and borough; secondly, the
merging as far as possible of local in
general interests—or rather, the preven-
tion of the mischief which ensues from the
preponderating power possessed by the
former over the latter under our present
system. It must not be supposed that
we imagine or desire that by any change
which might be adopted for the further-
ance of the above object the interests of
any particular locality would suffer in
the slightest degree. Such interests can
indeed rarely be promoted under the
present system by the special exertions
of the one or two members which the
locality may return to Parliament, unless
the case affecting them which comes
before the Legislature has real merits of
its own which the assiduous attention of
such members may bring more clearly
into view. But our argument is, that to
secure men best fitted to promote the
general interests of the country should
be the first consideration in the consti-
tution of the Legislative Body, and that
attention to individual local interests
will always follow and be consequential
upon the attainment of this desideratum.
A “local” case worth attention will

always find its advocates, who will more-
over do battle with far greater advan-
tage when it is known that their own
self-interest and re-election are not
directly involved in the issue. On the
other hand, under the present system,
a good and useful member of Parliament
often loses his seat, not from any de-
parture from the principles upon which
he has been elected, not from any neglect
of duty, but because he has offended
some small local prejudice, has been
unable to confer personal favours upon
some few constituents, or because the
course of legislation which he or his
party have supported has given umbrage
to some particular interest in the borough
which he represents, whose local desires
have been opposed to the general good
of the community.

The remedy for this evil, and for the
startling representative inequalities
which we have endeavoured to point
out, must be bold and sweeping, if it is
to be effectual. Mr. Hare’s plan has
been frequently discussed, and its adop-
tion would, no doubt, in some measure
remove our complaints. One general list
of candidates for the whole country for
which every elector might vote, and the
requirement of a certain quota of votes
to return each member, would effectually
get rid of the “local” grievance, and
would equally solve the larger difficulty
of unequal distribution. There appear
to us, however, to be two powerful ob-
jections to the adoption of this scheme.
In the first place, although it would in
all probability secure seats in Parlia-
ment to any and every man of any
prominence in the political world, it
would entirely fail to secure that vepre-
sentation of interests which is so
desirable in a country like our own.
It would be quite possible that the
entire fusion of constituencies and the
ignoring altogether of local feeling
might result in the very imperfect repre-
sentation of certain interests, and the
exclusion of men specially qualified to
represent such interests in the House of
Commons. ‘The second objection, how-

ever, is of a character still more im-
portant.

The utter abolition (so to

Redistribution of Politacal Dower. 73

speak) of local representation would
cure one grievance only to inflict another.
There would be danger that many voters,
finding their electoral power diminished,
and their share in the choice of mem-
bers infinitesimally reduced, would ab-
stain altogether from participation in
parliamentary elections. Thus the
political life of England would be
deadened ; and no greater misfortune
could happen than the possible result,
that the people, or a large portion of
them, should cease to take an interest
in political matters. Another evil
might also spring up, namely, that those
whose interest in politics had been thus
diminished, but who were still willing
to take some share in the electoral battle,
would be tempted to place themselves
in the hands of agents and wire-pullers,
who would thus, to a great extent, con-
trol the elections, which are at present
carried on with at least some amount of
self-action on the part of the great body
of the electors. This objection, however,
is to some extent weakened by the fact
that the adoption of the Ballot will pro-
bably have done pretty near as much as
can be done in the way of placing
elections under the control of “ wire-
pullers” and central agencies, and that,
if this be an evil, it is probable that it
will have already been accomplished with-
out any alteration in our Redistribution
of representation.

There is, however, a modification of
Mr. Hare’s scheme, which appears to us
to comprise all its advantages without
the objections to which we have called
attention. It is almost hopeless to strike
an exact and accurate balance between
the urban and rural constituencies ; but
it is not impossible to adopt a system by
which this balance might be left to ad-
just itself. If it were at all likely that
a proposition would be entertained
which would at once create against it-
self such an amount of fierce opposition
as that which we are about to mention,
we should propose to begin by reducing
the number of members of the House
of Commons. The proper transaction
of business by 658 or (as at present)

-654 persons, is so utterly impossible,

74 Redistribution of Political Power.

that our wonder is, not that so many
Acts of Parliament are difficult of inter-
pretation, and that “ Amendment Acts”
are constantly required to explain and
alter what has been done, but that
any Acts are ever passed at all. An un-
wieldy assembly, transacting business in
a chamber which cannot accommodate
above two-thirds, or, by dint of great
and inconvenient crowding, possibly
three-fourths of its members at the same
time, is neither a creditable nor a neces-
sary part of our constitution ; and it may
be safely stated that a considerable re-
duction of the number of members
would be attended by no mischief to
any class or interest, whilst it would
greatly facilitate the due performance of
legislative duties. But as the scheme
which we are about to recommend does
not necessarily involve such a reduction,
we shrink from the opposition with
which our proposition would be encoun-
tered, and proceed to discuss the ques-
tion upon the supposition that the
number of members will continue the
same, and the proportions between Eng-
land, Scotland, and Ireland remain
unaltered.

This being settled, therefore, we have
to apportion 493 members throughout
England and Wales. The population
being 22,704,108, two members to each
100,000 of population would give a
total of 454. But if, leaving the five
university members as they are, and
possibly giving a member to Durham
University and one to the Inns of
Court, we made the present counties
and electoral divisions of counties
centres of representation, a very little
manipulation of details would enable us
to absorb the number of 493 among the
fifty-two counties of England and Wales.
The method of procedure would then
be as follows:—Each division of a
county would have a number of
members according to its population,
and each elector in the division, whether
resident in town or country, would have
a share in returning that number.
Take as an example the county of
Durham, which now returns thirteen
members to Parliament; namely, four

for the two divisions into which the
county is divided, two each for Durham
and Sunderland, and one each for
Stockton, Darlington, Hartlepool, South
Shields, and Gateshead. Under the
proposed change the population of the
county of Durham, including the above
towns, and amounting to 685,046, would
entitle it to fourteen members; eight
for the Northern and six for the South-
ern Division. Again, Sussex, which
at present enjoys an unfairly large share
of representation, sending to Parliament
four county members, two each for
Brighton, Hastings, and Shoreham, and
one each for Chichester, Horsham,
Lewes, Midhurst, and Rye, making a
total of fifteen, would be reduced to
nine, that being the full share to which
her population of 417,407 would entitle
her. Lancashire and Yorkshire, more-
over, would have their relative repre-
sentation more fairly adjusted: the
former, which, with her boroughs, now
returns thirty-two members, would be
entitled to fifty-six by her population of
2,818,904 ; and the latter, with a popu-
lation of 2,436,113, would send forty-
nine instead of her present number of
thirty-six. Can anyone maintain that
the importance of these two great
counties, relatively to the rest of the
empire, does not fairly entitle them to
this increase of representation ?

It might indeed be a question whether
the five great provincial towns of Eng-
land—viz. Liverpool, Manchester, Bir-
mingham, Leeds, and Sheffield—should
not be treated exceptionally, and return
members independently of the counties
in which they are respectively situated.
Probably this might be desirable, but
our scheme would in no way be injured
thereby. An exception might also with
advantage be made in the case of the
metropolis, the three million population
of which might return its proportion of
members, which would only amount to
an increase of eight over the present
number of twenty-two.

The abstraction of the metropolis
and the five great towns would prevent
the swamping by town-voters of any of
the county constituencies, and it only

ee ene an ae ee’ at oe 8 ee

Redistribution of Political Power. 75

remains to point out the working and
the advantages of the proposed alter-
ation. In the first place, there would
be absolute equality of franchise
throughout the country. One man
would not be endowed with a greater
share of electoral power than his neigh-
bour by the mere accident of locality,
but every voter throughout each county,
urban or rural, would have an equal
share with every other voter in the
same county. Next, the evil of petty
local jealousies and prejudices would be
swept away without injury to anyone.
Each elector, for instance, in Sunder-
land, Stockton, Darlington, or any other
borough in the county of Durham,
would, by his present qualification, be
enabled to vote for a much larger
number of members than he can do
under the present system, whilst, in the
selection of candidates, small local pre-
dilections and local influences would
have to give way to the more enlarged
requirements of a greater constituency.
A man must have given evidence of
talent and capability for work beyond
the precincts of his own immediate
locality, in order to be acceptable to a
constituency which would embrace so
much wider an area, and the result
would probably be most beneficial to the
constitution of the House of Commons.
Counties would look out, naturally, for
the best and most distinguished men
among their own country people ; and as
there would probably be many cases in
which such a list would not exhaust the
number of members to be returned,
. there would be openings which hardly
exist at present for good and tried men,
who, unconnected with a particular
county, might be recommended to it by
their public services.

One great improvement, however,
might be engrafted upon the proposed
change. We refer to the adoption of
the cumulative system of voting, by
which the utter ousting of a minority
from representation would be at once
prevented. We are well aware of all
that can be urged, and plausibly urged,
against the ‘‘ Representation of Minori-
ties ;” nor are we about to enter upon

the arguments by which the project may
be supported. It is well known, how-
ever, that the system which at present
obtains in the “unicorn” counties and
towns is by no means the system which
is specially advocated by the friends of
“‘Minority Representation.” If the
change which we propose were adopted,
there is no doubt that an extension of
the existing system of the “ minority
vote” would secure a fair share of re-
presentation to all important minorities.
The extension would simply go to this
—that each elector should only be able
to vote for two-thirds of the number of
members to be returned. Thus, if the
total number were fourteen (as in the
case of Durham), the nearest figure to
two-thirds being ten, each elector might
vote for ten candidates. The result
would, of course, be that, after an elee-
tion or two by way of testing their rela-
tive strength, ten candidates of the party
in the majority and five of the party in
the minority would be returned. But
the cumulative vote would enable every
elector to vote for the whole fourteen if
he pleased, or to give his fourteen votes,
counting fourteen, to one candidate, or
seven votes apiece to two candidates—
or to distribute them, in short, accord-
ing to his fancy. Even without this
change in the law of voting, we believe
that the advantages of our scheme
would be found to greatly preponderate,
although we confess to a predilection
for some such amendment as that to
which we have alluded.

It would be possible, as an alternative,
to adopt Mr. Hare’s plan, and apply it
in a modified form to the constituencies
formed under the above scheme. The
number of votes which each candidate
would require to poll having been ascer-
tained, the whole list for each county or
division of a county would have to be
voted for; those declared elected who
had obtained the requisite number of
votes ; and the vacancies caused by the
failure to obtain the necessary quota
would have to be filled up by a fresh
election. Probably, however, the trouble
and expense which this plan would en-
tail upon constituencies and candidates

76 Redistribution of Political Power.

would be found to constitute a formid-
able if not insuperable objection to its
adoption; and for our own part we
would greatly prefer the cumulative
vote, although we believe the scheme
which we propose would, even without
this addition, work sufficiently well.

In shadowing forth the above scheme
for the removal of existing inequalities
and the fairer redistribution of political
power throughout the country, we have
not attempted to elaborate details, nor
to anticipate the many objections which
will be taken by the friends of the pre-
sent system. Our fear, however, is not
on account of the imperfections so much
as of the boldness of the scheme. It is
never easy to make men surrender a
privilege, or what they believe to be a
privilege, for the general good ; nor will
they easily understand that the general
good can really clash with what they
think to be their own interests. The
ramifications, moreover, which surround
an ancient system, the obstinate dislike
to change which is inherent in our

English natures, and the fear of some
possible consequential evil, shadowy and
indistinct, but none the less fearful,
all combine to render difficult the im-
provement we suggest. Yet the ques-
tion must be faced, and that speedily.
There is just cause for an agitation in
favour of a great and sweeping change,
and just cause for an agitation ought
not to be allowed to exist. We widened
the basis of our constitution in 1866-67,
but we stopped short of completion in
our task. Let us delay no longer, but
anticipate the storm which will infal-
libly arise ere long, and deal with this
question before it has been made the
battle-field of Party, before it is identi-
fied with men whose aims and desires
go far beyond the progressive constitu-
tional improvement which is desired by
moderate men of both political parties,
and before we are forced to deal with it
at a season less calm and a moment less
opportune than the present for the wise
and satisfactory solution of a difficult
political problem.

E. H. Kyatonsuri-HuceEssen,

da a ee he ee ee ee

77

AN AUSTRIAN VIEW OF THE DEFENCE OF ENGLAND.

BY THE BARON VON SCHOLL, MAJOR-GENERAL, AUSTRIAN ARMY.

EDITED BY LIEUT.-COL, ©. C.,CHESNEY, R.E.

Srxce the death of Sir John Burgoyne there
is perhaps no one living who has made that
special branch of strategy which deals with the
value of fortifications so completely his own
as the writer of this memoir. His Excellency
General Baron Scholl is well known as lately
occupying the post of Minister for National
Defence in the Austrian Cabinet, an office
which may be said to have been created for
the time in order to give the reviving Empire
of the Hapsburgs the special benefit of his
counsels under new military conditions. He
had previously held a post equivalent to our
Inspector-Generalship of Fortifications ; and
his services had been specially called on for the
necessary defence of the great Quadrilateral
fortresses in 1859 and 1866. The very
strength of their works, and the defensive
strategy adopted by the Austrians, combined
to prevent their engineers from being called on
for more than preparation. But Baron Scholl
is far more than an engineer. No scientific
part of the military profession has escaped his
grasp ; whilst his study of military exigencies
in other countries than Austria is so close
that it is the editor’s belief, the result of per-
sonal conversation on the subject, that it
would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find
any Frenchman at this moment so thoroughly
conversant with the past and future of the
defences of Paris, for example, as this dis-
tinguished foreigner. It cannot be a matter
of indifference to the public to see his thoughts
on our own defences frankly given us ; and
they are the more important as his views differ
widely from those of the highest authority we
YOSSESS.

. The Editor of Macmillan having kindly
offered this memoir, as of national interest,
the benefit of its wide circulation, it is
necessary to say that its late appearance, con-
sidered as a review of Cclonel Jervois’ Royal
{nstitution lecture on “The Defences of Eng-
land,” delivered last year, is explained by the
iztter’s having only fallen, in a complete form,
iuto Baron Scholl’s hands this spring, when

vis.ting England after a close professional in-
spection of the works of Paris, and by the
delay of translation—for it was in English
druis that it came over. The duty has fallen

to lic uf compressing it, in order to bring the
Poa Viehim magazine limits; hut 1 have
» this without treading on the

? a ; ’

cader of the

~ seypteets $' ves
Gy OF COM vie Lae

benefit of any of his opinions on important
questions. It is enough to add that the subject
which Baron Scholl treats with such startling
knowledge is doubtless studied on the Con-
tinent elsewhere than at Vienna.—C. C. C.

CotoneL JeERvoIs’s pamphlet? was put
into my hands during my last visit to
England, with the request that I would
give my opinion frankly upon the whole
subject, and especially upon the forti-
fying of London.

The circumstance of my not being
an Englishman may arouse suspicion in
the reader, that I may not care to write
what I really think, or that the pro-
posals I may make would be contrary
to the public interests of the country.
May I be allowed as far as possible to
clear myself beforehand from suspicion
of this kind ?

As an Austrian I belong to a country
which has never yet been at war with
England, but, on the contrary, has often
been its ally, and it is hoped may be so
again. That Austria is the natural ally
of England has indeed become almost
a proverb ; and when I had the honour,
in the year 1851, of being presented to
the Duke of Wellington, he said, “It
is always a pleasure to me to see one
of our old allies.” I have also been
personally connected with England
through a series of years, by ties of
friendship and relationship, which my
recent visit has served to strengthen.
And if a man’s word has any weight
with the reader, will he accept mine,
that I shall endeavour to treat this sub-

1 “*The Defensive Policy of Great Britain,
considered in a lecture delivered at the Roval
Institution on May 12th, 1871.” By Colonc!
W. PF. Drummond Jervois, R.E., C. B., Secret ir;

Director of Fortifications. London: 1871. ~

78 An Austrian View of the Defence of England.

ject as though I were myself none other
than a loyal Englishman ?

Colonel Jervois’ pamphlet appears to
me divisible into two parts. For while
the first eight chapters treat of the
general conditions affecting the defence
of the mother country, its coasts, its
colonies, and its commerce, the rest
are exclusively devoted to the necessity
of the fortification of London. And
it would seem to me as though this
were in the main the object the writer
had in view.

I not only agree with Colonel Jervois
in all that he advances in his first eight
chapters, but would also add to his
arguments the following :-—

1. As To GIBRALTAR.

In an article which appeared in 1869
in the publications of the Austrian
Engineer Committee, I endeavoured to
set forth the great importance of Gib-
raltar to England. The Straits, indeed,
are not actually so narrow at that point
that they could be closed by means of
heavy guns planted on Europa Point ;
yet the Bay of Algesiras, adjoining on
the west, affords good shelter for a fleet
ready to attack in flank any enemy who
should venture to pass the Straits. By
this means, England in the event of
war at once cuts in two the navies of
all such Powers as possess fleets on both
sides of the Continent, as is the case
with Spain, France, and Russia; she
may at her will confine the navies of
the Mediterranean (as the Italian and
Austrian) to that sea, and prevent all
others from entering its waters,

Besides this, Gibraltar forms a station
for coaling on the all-important road to
India through Egypt ; and Nature her-
self has already so fortified it that it
has become a proverb to say of any other
very strong place, “It is a second Gib-
raltar.” I agree, therefore, in strongly
combating the opinion of those who
talk of giving up Gibraltar.

In view of the interests of England, I
would not even hear a word in favour
of taking Ceuta in exchange for Gib-
raltar, for Spain could not reimburse
the expenditure which has been made

upon Gibraltar ; and, besides, the Bay
of Ceuta is unfavourably situated with
regard toithe Straits compared to that
of Algesiras, and is more exposed to
the weather. Ceuta could never be
made by any art so strong as Gibral-
tar; and finally, the glorious memories
which attach to the Rock would be
wanting to inspire the garrison in case
of an attack.

It is undoubtedly true that the
Spaniards could incommode ships lying
in the Bay of Gibraltar, and could even
cannonade the harbour. But for this
there are two remedies—either let Eng-
land acquire the Spanish territory about
the Bay of Algesiras and fortify it; or
let England keep good friends with
Spain, which is all the easier, because
Spain is at present much interested in
cultivating the support of England.

2. Tue Iste or Wicut.

The south coast of England, in its
extent from the Land’s End to Rams-
gate, is certainly the most exposed, on
account of its proximity to the French
coast ; and as the Isle of Wight lies in
front of this coast, and is only sepa-
rated from the mainland by the nar-
row channel of the Solent, this island
appears to me of such importance for
friend and foe that I cannot sufficiently
recommend it to attention, and I would
wish to see more done to fortify it than
has hitherto been effected. The Solent
is to an English fleet just what the
channel near Pola was to the Austrian
before the battle of Lissa, affording good
shelter and free issue, either towards
east or west.

The Solent, in fact, is the true offen-
sive basis for British maritime opera-
tions; but it would cease to be so
from the moment an enemy was in the
Isle of Wight. This is my reason for
asserting that the defences of this
island should be further strengthened.
This is the more necessary because an
enemy lodged there would have within
reach of him, at the short distance
across the Solent, a most desirable
pied terre. It might be alleged that
a landing at the back of the Isle of

ie) alll a i i a: af Ee oe

Wight is difficult from the nature of
the coast, and that the enemy, having
no port there, would not seek to occupy
the Isle of Wight, because troops once
landed could not be reinforced or sup-
plied in bad weather, and would even
be in danger of starving. But many
persons acquainted with the locality
believe that a landing is perfectly pos-
sible, the sea often remaining calm for
days together. And it would perhaps be
to the enemy’s interest to seize the Isle
of Wight, with the object of diverting
the defender’s attention from points of
landing elsewhere. In that case he
would throw only a small number of
troops on the island, and the landing
would occupy but a very short time.
They would thus be little exposed to
danger from a sea goiting up during
the operation, and the small number
could easily be provided with food and
ammunition sufficient for a considerable
time.

With the enemy in possession of the
Isle of Wight, there is the striking dis-
advantage that the works which serve
to close the Solent at the Needles
passage and Spithead are taken in flank
and rear, that the fleet can no longer
use the Solent, and the entry into Ports-
mouth is endangered. Moreover, in
order to check the further advance of
the invader, it would be necessary to
concentrate a superior force on the Eng-
lish coast, cut in two as it is by the
deep inlet of Southampton Water, and
any English army acting elsewhere
would be correspondingly weakened. I
assume here, naturally, that the enemy
has not only infantry but also guns on
the island, for it is only with the shells
of these that he can reach the northern
shore of the Solent. The island is in
fact a very tempting object for an
enemy ; for if the landing succeeds, he
secures himself a footing from which he
cannot be easily expelled, having the
Solent, like a gigantic wet ditch, in his
front. It may be further said of the Isle
of Wight, that its preservation is all
the more important in English interests,
inasmuch as by its means the dis-
advantages of Portsmouth (the position

An Austrian View of the Defence of England. 79

of which, under modern conditions, is
very bad) are somewhat obviated. Ports-
mouth, as a great naval depdt, is far
too advanced. In regard to this question,
I must recognize the wisdom of the
English Government in having, as has
been the case quite recently, paid in-
creased attention to the more secure
position of Chatham, and having made
extensive preparations there for build-
ing and repairing ships of war.

I do not propose to enter here upon
the question of what further fortifications
are necessary on the Isle of Wight to
prevent the enemy from occupying it,
for this is a question of detail, the solu-
tion of which my honoured friend
Colonel Jervois understands as well at
least as I can pretend to.

3. ‘THe Iste or ANGLESEY.

No reference is made to this islead
in the treatise, possibly for the reason
that it lies on a less exposed side of the
country, and because Colonel Jervois,
considering the shortness of the time
available to him, did not wish to bring
too many questions under consideration,
and desired to arrive as svon as possible
at his virtual object. Perhaps I mar
be allowed to add something relative to
the Isle of Anglesey.

Although I am not of those who
believe in the probable outbreak of a
war between England and the United
States, in which the latter could play
so aggressive a part as io carry the
operations into the mother country, yet
nevertheless one should for safety’s
sake accept the supposition that the
Americans, aided by a coalition of
Zuropean States, might carry the war
to Europe. In such a case Ireland
might become a base of operations in the
prosecution of the war, and considering
the small width of the Irish Channel,
the Isle cf Anglesey would offer the
same advantages as the Isle of Wight,
and become a good pied @ terre naturally
secured from attacks from England by
the Menai Straits.

On a closer comparison with the Isle
of Wight, Anglesey has the advantage,
being in possession of a good harbour at

80 An Austrian View of the Defence of England.

Holyhead, whereby troops could be
supplied and reinforced whatever the
weather. It appears to me very necessary
that some special attention should be
paid to its defences, although, on the
other hand, I must allow that the Menai
Straits do not form a rendezvous for
the fleet like the Solent, neither is there
any point in the vicinity resembling
Portsmouth in importance.

4, IRELAND.

Colonel Jervois speaks of the necessity
of keeping a strong force in Ireland in
case of war. Thoroughly agreeing with
this view, I cannot divest myself of the
apprehension that the enemy might suc-
cced in possessing himself of Ireland ;
for as it would be undesirable to weaken
the army in Great Britain too much,
this force in Ireland could never be very
large, and on the coast of Ireland there
are a number of unfortified harbours and
bays where the enemy could very easily
land.

The possibility of the loss of the
island should therefore be held in view,
and it should be considered what should
he done either to prevent it or to regain
the island if lost.

The first end would certainly be ob-
tained by means of fortifications. But
even if only so much were done as to
prevent enemy’s vessels from lying in
any harbour, this would involve the
ex»enditure of a very formidable sum.

It would be better to undertake first
what would be necessary for effecting
the recapture of the island. This in-
volves the means of landing an entire
my with all its material without mo-
tation, of putting it in a position to
ce the offensive immediately under
ivourable conditions, and of having ra

e of security to fall back upon in the
want of failure in the open field. In
renly to the further question whethe:
one or two points of the coast should
le scleeted for this purpose, I would
ecytainly say ¢o ; for advantages not only

L'e, but manifold, are to be derived

efrom. For suppose one point of the
only prepared, should the enemy

» position before it with his entire

’

‘s
ts
yi

strength, it might happen that it would
be altogether impossible to debouch, or
the prospects of success be very much
diminished. But if two points of the
coast are so prepared, and the English
army lands at that one where the enemy
is not, there is no obstacle to debouching.
And should the enemy take position
before both points, he has committed
the fault of dividing his strength, and
the English army has good prospect of
beating the enemy in detail. The
existing fortifications of Cork are not
sufficient for such purposes as the above,
as they only serve to prevent an enemy
on the leeward side from forcing his
way into the harbour. The existence,
however, of these fortifications and of
the harbour establishments, and the
geographical situation of Cork Harbour,
with reference to a British fleet stationed
on the English coast, and an army held
ready for embarkation, should be suffi-
cient to designate this as one of the
places spoken of, whilst the other should
be in the northern section of the eastern
coast near Dundalk, if the natural con-
ditions are appropriate. Not at Dublin,
certainly, for this would be too near
Cork, and the development of the town
would be interfered with. Cork and
Dundalk would be, so to speak, the
tétes du pont which would facilitate the
recapture of Ireland, and would also
serve for any troops to retreat upon
which had been unable to prevent the
enemy’s landing, and obliged to retire
before numbers.
5. A Centrat ARSENAL,

Notwithstanding that Colonel Jervois
has drawn attention to the importance
of a central arsenal, I cannot refrain
from saying that its importance appears
to me so great, that every means should
be adopted to call it into existence as
early as possible.

At present, all the supplies for the
army are on the coast, which is at the
same time the frontier, aud consequently

» placed as to ) be most expos my to th
euemy’s attacks. This is contrary to the
havsara 1 order of things, and pvt lead
to the very worst conseqnence

An Austrian View of the Defence of England. 81

Even Woolwich is not properly placed
in view of war. The Central Arsenal
should contain all the stores of the army,
and partly of the navy also, and should
accommodate all workshops for the
manufacture of war material.

In order not to weaken the active
army in the field too much, the arsenal
should be capable of being defended
for a long time by a small number of
men: this obliges us to search for a
locality where nature has already done
much to facilitate defence. The forti-
fications should be designed with a view
to mere defence, for the offensive might
lead to losses too serious for a small
garrison. There would be a wise
economy in the creation of a Central
Arsenal, for at present the stores
being scattered on the coast Jead to
many places being more strongly forti-
fied than they otherwise would be,
merely because they are depdts of sup-
plies.

I am not inclined to dispute the
point as to whether Sheffield or Cannock
Chase would be best adapted for a
Central Arsenal. This is matter for
special local inquiry. I would only re-
mark that the locale should be one
where Art comes to the aid of Nature
only, and not where everything must be
left to Art ; for such artificial fortifica-
tions are expensive, and never can as-
sume the large proportions to be met
with where Nature herself eo-operates
in the defence, as she often does on
a gigantic scale.

6. Army ORGANIZATION.

On the Continent the English military
organization is often blamed, and the
institution of Volunteers laughed at.
For my part I have never been able to
join in this blame and derision.

The system of voluntary enlistment
is of course far less of an injury to per-
sonal freedom than the conseription, or
any form of compulsory levy ; and the
raising of volunteers is less injurious
still. Enlistment provides soldiers of
long service, which is particularly de-
sirable for non-commissioned officers,
and also for soldiers who enter the

No. 157.—vou. xxvti.

cavalry or other special arm. Under
the law of universal liability to service
prevalent on the Continent, the want of
old soldiers is bitterly felt, and every-
thing put into operation to meet the dis-
advantage has been insufficient to wean
men from the attractions of their homes.
I believe, therefore, that England ought
to adhere to her present system of en-
listment for the standing army, all the
more because she requires a system of
long service, seattered as her troops are
over the world, and hampered by the
difficulties of foreign relief.

The institution of Volunteers I would
also preserve, with all its shortcomings ;
for it has the great advantage of being
of spontaneous growth, and only requir-
ing fostering care. I am persuaded that
the Volunteers, if called to arms by
the country in earnest, would be on the
spot and ready for action in a trice,

This is guaranteed by the patriotism
of the Briton, his habit of self-reliance,
his respect for the law and public
opinion, the conseiousness of the pos-
session of institutions more liberal
than any which could be given him by
others, the memories of former victories,
and, finally, a great contempt of the
enemy. Where such powerful factors
work in unison, no one should despair
of such an institution, while its bare
existence warns the enemy that he must
use far greater foresight than if he had
merely the standing army to deal with.

From my point of view, the only
disadvantage of the standing army and
the Volunteers is that their numbers are
too small ; a defect all the more sensible
because, if a general war broke out,
England would probably be obliged to
strengthen the garrisons in India and
the colonies considerably, and to send
them strong reinforcements from the
mother country. The words of Marshal
Bugeaud on this subject are remarkable :
“Linfanterie Anglaise est la plus ré-
doutable du monde, mais heureusement
il n’y en a pas beaucoup.”

If England has gained many victories
on the Continent in spite of the smail
strength of her army, it must not be
forgotten that she was ‘generally acting

G

An Austrian View of the Defence of England.

with allies. Indeed, British comman-
ders have derived the further advantage
from their allies that they have been
able to use them for duties for which
the English soldier is least well adapted,
eg. skirmishing; for the red’ uni-
form, and the contempt of cover which
is the consequence of an excessive dar-
ing, lead to heavy losses on such service,
England should accustom herself to con-
sider the possibility of having to rely
upon her own resources in the case of
a general war, and of encountering a
coalition which could bring a superiority
of force against her. Under such cir-
cumstances nothing remains but to de-
velop one’s own forces to the utmost ;
and as this pressure can only be of a
temporary nature, the question of per-
sonal freedom should be set aside for
the time, and every man fit for service
be called to action. Without abolishing
what exists, and setting up something
different in its place, it would be well
if England raised her wilitia in-
fantry at least in the sense of the law
of universal service, training them solely
as auxiliaries for the defence of the
mother country.

As a pattern for such a militia, I
would recommend that of Switzerland,
which, though costing very little,
showed in 1870 a readiness for service
which did them the highest honour.

The first training of recruits, and the
periodical call out to manceuvres, would
certainly affect the national economy
considerably. Colonel Jervois reckons
the cost at 30/. sterling per man per
year ; but where the independence of
the country is actually at stake, money
considerations sink into insignificance.
If Switzerland, with her republican feel-
ings, and her possessions which no one
covets, recognizes this universal obliga-
tion, how much more should England
do so, whose riches are the envy of the
Continent, and whose foreign posses-
sions are constantly exposed to so many
dangers !

1 A very doubtful assertion this. Many
practical soldiers declare red to be one of the
least conspicuous of colours at a moderate
distance,—C. C. €.

7. Lonpon,

Having referred to what seemed
proper to supplement the first eight
chapters of the “ Lecture,” I now pass
to the consideration of what I regard as
its chief conclusion—the fortifying of
London, which my honoured friend
wishes to see effected.

The importance of the subject is such
that I think it necessary to say some-
thing on the theory of the subject ; for
in all matters of fortification there is
a theory, and the application of it toa
given case is a subsequent stage. The
defence of capitals is a subject for such
a special theory, and perhaps this ques-
tion has never been so well ventilated
as in the present century. While
some advocated the defence of capitals,
others, and among them even military
men, have declared it to be folly; and
therefore, if we ask, in this case, which
is the true view, the answer cannot be
made, as it so often is, that a middle
course is the true one, for here there is
no middle course—either fortify, or do
not fortify! “To be, or not to be, that
is the question.”

When it is considered that in such
fortification strategical and tactical data
are but part of the determining factors,
and that other circumstances inter-
pose themselves which must have great
practical weight, it is clear that the
answer may be given with as much
justice in the negative as in the affirma-
tive, according to the special case.
Wherever the whole life is concentrated
in the capital, and this is exposed to be
easily reached by the enemy, as in the
case of Paris, fortification appears highly
necessary ; but where those conditions
are different, as at St. Petersburg (on
the land side), Moscow, or Madrid, the
argument for fortification is lost; or if
it still holds good in part, the question
arises whether the expenditure which
the fortification of the capital demands
would not be better applied to other
military measures.

It is chiefly among continental peo-
ples that the question of the fortifica-
tion of the capital arises. Having com-

munication with their neighbours over
dry land, they are always liable to
attack; and the less the distance and
intervening obstacles, the greater the
apprehension. This is increased in pro-
portion as the country is centralized,
for with the capital the command of
the whole country has often been lost,
although a considerable extent of terri-
tory remained untouched. On _ this
theory we maintain that in the French
interest the fortification of Paris is in a
high degree justifiable ; while, on the
other hand, Spain; which with its pro-
vincial divisions is decentralized rather
than centralized, would do much better
to apply her money towards the fortifi-
cation of the provinces on her border
than upon the defence of the capital.

Turning our attention now specially
to London, it would be absurd to main-
tain that London fortified would not
offer a much longer resistance than
London unfortified. But although Lon-
don forms officially the central point of
the countries subject to the sceptre of
England, can this great city be con-
sidered as a capital in the same sense
as the capitals of continental countries
which theorists would recommend to be
fortified ?

To answer this question aright we
must go back into the book of History,
and there we find that those peoples
who, like the Anglo-Saxons and Nor-
mans, took possession of the British
Islands, made it their first business to
divide the lands and to secure places of
residence upon them. They in no way
sought to collect themselves in towns,
as did the founders of Venice, and, at
an earlier date, those of the Roman
municipalities.

When subsequently in England mar-
kets were established, and towns arose,
and the “gentlemen” built themselves
houses therein, these were only for
temporary wants. The country-seat con-
tinued to be so much the principal con-
sideration, that it actually gave rise to
an architecture of its own, with a wider
range than is to be found in any other
country. Thus from the earliest times
in England a peculiar country life has

An Austrian View of the Defence of England. 83

been developed, and the true house of
the gentleman is his country-seat, not
the town-house which he has built in
London, for the most part within such
limited horizontal dimensions that the
several living rooms are stacked in tiers
one above another, The English gentle-
man, in contradistinction to his fellow
on the Continent, passes the greater
part of the year, even the winter, in
the country: to London he goes merely
for business, or to meet friends, or for
such amusements as are to be found only
where men congregate. In spite, there
fore, of the colossal size to which London
has attained, it is not to be compared
with capitals on the Continent, where
the house of the gentleman is in the
capital, and the estates he owns are
merely regarded as possessions to be
occasionally visited.

If under the name of the capital of a
country we understand the focus of its
life and the development of its civi-
lization, we must, in the case of Eng-
land, apply the term to a far wider area
than the limits of London would offer.

Geographers may be perfectly right in
describing London as the capital ; but in
a politico-strategical question such as
this, I should say that the whole island of
Great Britain, or at least England proper,
is the capital of all the countries which
are governed from the British throne.

London has so overflowed into the
surrounding country, that it would
puzzle the geographers themselves to
define its true limits; and if they
were to fix the limit to-day, it would
be wrong again (and so much the better
for the Marquis of Westminster) to-
morrow. I have thought it right to
notice these facts, because London must
be regarded with other eyes than any
continental city, and because, as a rule,
books on the art of fortification speak of
capitals under merely military condi-
tions, and do not allude to the bearings
of national culture and of politics on
the question.

Besides the gentlemen’s country-seats,
manufacturing establishments have been
set up which appear gigantic compared
with those on the Continent, and are,

84 An Austrian View of the Defence of England.

in fact, the main sources of England’s
power and wealth, agriculture and
breeding of animals being as nothing
in comparison. These mines of wealth
are so valuable that it cannot be a
matter of indifference whether they are
to go on, or be occupied by the enemy
and come to a standstill.

The argument that the stoppage of the
factories would create a starving prole-
tariat class, of which the Government
would find it difficult to disembarrass
itself when peace was regained, is alone
sufficiently weighty to cause any great
extension of the fortifications to embrace
these establishments. We thus come
involuntarily to the sea, and as the coast
forms a line having in front of it that
great wet ditch, I affirm my conviction
that the circuit of the fortitications of
London is nowhere else to be sought
than on the line of the coast, and that
any funds designed for the defence of
London should be employed to perfect
the fortifications of the coast.

England, whose insular position makes
her differ so vastly from every conti-
nental nation, should draw advantage
from these circumstances. She can do
so all the better from the possession of
a highly developed network of railways,
while the distances of the coast-line from
an army stationed centrally are in com-
parison to other countries very small,
and the country so thickly populated
that a sufficient number of combatants
ought to be soon got together to throw
against an enemy attempting to land
with good prospect of success. If such
a force can be brought at once on the
spot, a moderate number may prove
quite sufficient. For landing an army
is an operation which, to be successful,
should not be in the least impeded
by the enemy, even though weather
and coast are favourable.

If we consider successful instances of
landing, as in 1840, near Beyrout, and
in the Crimea in 1854, we should not
forget that these landings were not in
the least disputed by the enemy ; while
on the other hand, another case in 1840
shows that three hundred troops, with-
out any guns, were able to prevent the

landing of the crews of three men-of-
war (the Benbow, Carysfort, and Zebra),
mounting together one hundred and
twenty-four guns, The risk of being
forced to retire by the smallest resist-
ance is the reason why naval officers of
experience are so careful in selecting
places for disembarkation. This is
particularly the case when the disem-
barkation is on a large scale, for then
there is more time fur bad weather to
come on, and the danger arises lest the
party landing should be obliged to break
off their operations, leaving the troops
already on shore to their fate, when they
would probably be soon thrown into the
sea by superior forces. This is the
reason why different points of the coast
are of very different importance to the
defender with respect to a landing.
Small bodies of troops could land
almost anywhere, but entire armies only
where the locality is peculiarly suitable.
Moreover, the advance of the fortifica-
tion of London to the coast would en-
able the navy to take an active part in
the defence, which it could hardly do
were it withdrawn from the coast. In
1870-71 the crews of the French navy
undoubtedly took a stirring part in the
defence of the forts of Paris; but how
much more service would they not have
rendered if Paris had lain upon the
sea, when they could have made use of
their armed ships, and would have been
acting on an element and in localities
which they knew.

It is not to be denied that the coast-
line, even if we exclude Scotland, is
very much longer than a ring run
closely round London; but in fortifi-
cation it is often seen that a greater
extension gives a stronger form. He
who, being in a valley surrounded by

hills, seeks to make his defence in the -

lower ground, will often be less able to
resist than if he took up a position on
the more distant barrier; and in the
case of an island, it often happens that
a position on the coast is preferable,
partly on account of its steepness, partly
from the prevalence of rocks and shoals,
but principally because the enemy who
proposes to land must undertake con-

ee ea ee, ee ee.

it ———_ an - een, ae

siderable operations under fire without
being able to answer. Bad weather gives
the defender the respite he so often
needs, an advantage enjoyed in much
smaller measure in the defence of land
fortifications. But few outposts are
necessary to watch the enemy to sea-
ward during such weather, and the
whole of the rest of the force can take
its repose without danger.

By the fortification of the coast I do
not mean the multiplication of such
powerful batteries as those which in
recent years have been erected at differ-
ent points. Batteries for guns of posi-
tion (upon Moncrieff carriages) are only
required at certain very important points,
and the greater part of the works would
consist at the most merely of earthworks
for the temporary shelter of field-guus, of
breastworks for infantry, and chiefly in
theconstruction of communications along
and down to the coast, and of buildings
for the shelter of troops, which could
thus be kept at hand and in good con-
dition.

Where long tongues of land stretch
into the sea, interior entrenchments could
be designed, cutting off such promon-
tories, and so shortening the line of
defence. Such entrenchments would
certainly not impede any landing
beyond them, but by tracing them suit-
ably they could be made so strong that
the enemy would never break through.
The advance of the line of fortification
to the coast should be accompanied by
a system of defensive organization ;
and this organization must, where not
already existing, be properly prepared
beforehand during peace. According
to my view, the whole coast should be
divided into districts ; and the militia,
with the Volunteers in each district,
should be practised in the defence of
the adjacent coast-line, and in time of
war be kept in readiness to be em-
ployed on this duty.

During peace a permanent command-
ant of the districts should be appointed,
with a suitable staff; they should make
themselves familiar with the locality,
and prepare such dispositions as in time
of war might become necessary.

An Austrian View of the Defence of England.

85

It would be always competent to the
commander-in-chief to concentrate his
army in the interior of the country, or
to detach portions of it to the most
threatened parts of the coast, and so
reinforce the Volunteers and territorial
militia. Above all, a scheme of defence
taking in all Great Britain and Ireland
should be established. It is only in this
way that it is possible to bring all the
measures introduced by the War De-
partment in peace time into harmony
with what would be required in war.
And if this is not attained, we may see
the War Department preparing what
is not wanted, and making omissions
whieh, when war broke out, could not
be rectified for want of time.

The first consequence of the establish-
ment of this scheme of defence would
be a heavy task for the general staff—
viz., the choice of the first points of
coucentration and the best lines of
operation, the taking note of the capa-
bilities of the railways available, and
the fixing of favourable points where
resistance could be offered to the enemy,
even after he might have penetrated
the coast zone. It would then be the
affair of the Engineer department to
prepare during peace plans for forti-
fying these positions differently, accord-
ing to the time available, so that in
case of need work could be at once
commenced, and the usual loss of time
spared. Itis, of course, understood that
fortitications of this kind can only be of
a temporary nature, and that the time
allowed for construction would be the
very shortest—perhaps not more than
forty-eight hours. I cannot sufficiently
urge this establishment of a general
scheme of defence ; the advantage of it
is, that it preserves us not only from
incurring irreparable loss of time, but
also from taking hurried and false
measures. The commander of the army
finds everything prepared to his hand,
and it only needs his order to call the
whole machinery into action.

The adoption of field fortification
as a means of strengthening the posi-
tions of the army is entirely in accord-
dance with what Colonel Jervois

86 An Austrian View of the Defence of England.

in his tenth chapter quotes as the
dictum of the Duke of Wellington: “I
know of no mode of resistance, much
less of protection, from the danger, ex-
cept by an army in the field capable of
meeting and contending with its for-
midable enemy, aided by all means of
fortifications which experience in war
and science can suggest.” It cannot
remain a matter of indifference whether
this means is merely thought of as to
be applied in case of war, or whether
the ground is already surveyed and the
plans made in peace.

I readily agree with Colonel Jervois
that it would be a grand misfortune to
England if London were to fall into
the enemy’s hands; but to prevent
this calamity it appears to me more
advantageous to defend the coast than
to erect a special zone of works which,
however much art is brought to bear
in its construction, can never form
such a giant obstacle as the sea, or be
so unassailable as many parts of the
coast already are by nature. It is to
be understood that I except the line
of the Thames from these remarks ; it
should be made impossible to the
enemy to avail himself of this approach,
and if the works now existing in the
river are insufficient, there is nothing
to prevent their being strengthened and
made more numerous. ‘Torpedoes, as
an auxiliary for the defence of the
Thames and other harbours, will con-
tinue to be employed, but too much
confidence should not be reposed in
them; powerful guns are always the
main thing.

If, however, London must be fortified,
I would, in opposition to the view taken
by my honoured friend, plead for that
which he calls an indirect defence—viz.,
not for fortification by means of a zone of
detached forts (direct defence), but for
the erection of some small-sized fortresses
at a greater distance from London, and
besides these for a light enceinte near
London, of which Colonel Jervois makes
no mention.

Paris, Verona, Coblentz, are exam-
ples of such a modern fortress, and
the opinion is generally adopted that

for the future no other system could or
should be employed. “ Le systéme des
forts détachés” is looked on as the
optimum ; and if it could be said of a
place, “ It has no detached forts,” people
at once snapped their fingers at it. In
joy at the discovery of this new system,
which without doubt has many advan-
tages, the disadvantages have been lost
sight of.

I will not enter into the details of
how much less strength a chain of
works with wide, unoccupied intervals
must have, than a connected line, like
that of the old enceintes; and I will
be entirely silent over the great calamity
which would ensue from the loss of a
couple of forts, when the rest become
uiseless ;—I confine myself here to the
persona! question; a question which, as
it appears to me, has been too little
considered, but which in practice is of
great import by reason of its many
difficulties,

In a fortress of the old style, i.e. one
with an enceinte merely, like old Ports-
mouth, there was one, and but one,
commandant. This officer could super-
vise everything, give his orders person-
ally, and be always on the spot where
needed. This was an advantage for
the commanders of detachments sub-
ordinated to him, as they could easily
refer to him, and so avoid the great
responsibility of acting independently.
jut how very different in the case of
fortresses with detached forts! Here it
is impossible for the commandant to see
everything: very often he must make
dispositions suddenly on no other data
than news just received—often very
meagre; and if he leaves his usual
residence, it is possibly long before
he is again found. Each detached
fort must have its own individual com-
mandant, who at one time is acting
under the directions of the commander
of the whole, at another on his own
judgment, having in the latter case to
bear the full weight of the responsibility.
Besides this, these commandants often
labour under the difficulty of having to
handle arms with which they are in-
differently acquainted, They would be

An Austrian View of the Defence of England.

chiefly officers of Infantry—men who
have little experience with the weapons
of the Artillery, particularly with heavy
guns, perhaps have hardly ever seen one,
and yet suddenly would have to dispose
of thirty or more! Many undoubtedly
would soon master their new position,
but many not, and particularly not those
who belong to the mediocrities; and as
these, after all, form the majority, we
must keep them chiefly in view. If
London is to be surrounded by a girdle
of fifty detached forts—high as is my
opinion of the British army—I think
it will be no easy matter for the com-
mander to find at once, amongst the
troops under his orders, fifty individuals
capable of fulfilling the very difficult
duties attached to the post of com-
mandant of a detached fort, more
especially as the troops will, in all
probability, not be well known to their
chief.

This personal question induces me,
therefore, in any plan for the fortification
of London, to prefer what Colonel Jervois
terms the indirect system, according to
which the capital would be surrounded
by a far smaller number of small fort-
resses, each of them under the orders of
an entirely independent commandant;
the intervals between them being pre-
pared as fast as possible for defence by the
readiest available means. Thus London
would have nothing to fear from a night
attack, and obstacles would not be
placed in the way of an extension of
the town, as would be the case were
lines erected. The small fortresses in
question should be constructed exclu-
sively for defensive purposes, offensive
operations being left to the garrison and
its commandant. Even if they were so
far distant from each other that their
guns did not command the intervals, no
apprehension need be entertained of the
line of these fortresses being permanently
pierced, for no enemy could establish
himself with a siege train on a spot to
the rear of which, right and left, he
knew he had positions occupied by his
opponents, and armed with fortress
guns.

87

8. Pantcs.

Towards the conclusion of his lecture,
Colonel Jervois speaks of the panics
which periodically occur, and expresses
an opinion that they will cease as soon
as proper and definite plans are adopted
fur the defence of Great Britain.

Were measures taken in accordance
with what I have stated above, I should
concur in this opinion. If, on the other
hand, Colonel Jervois thinks that these
panics will cease simply because, instead
of devoting all energies to the fortifi-
cation of the coasts, London especially
is fortified, I must remark that panics
of this nature would be just as prevalent
amongst those who have their homes out-
side London. But I think these panics
spring from other and deeper sources.
They are caused much less bya want of
defensive measures than by the recent
policy of England. During the close of
the wars against Napoleon I., England
was a Power respected and feared: the
marvellous victories of Aboukir and
Trafalgar, of Vittoria and Waterloo, had
contributed their share to the founda-
tion of her prestige, which lasted long
after the deposition of Napoleon. Eng-
land was then at the zenith of her power
and glory ; and because she then feared
no one, there were then no panics.

A great change has since then taken
place in the position of England, not in
consequence of the rise of another
Great Power on the other side of the
ocean, but because the statesmen of
England have themselves been most
active in bringing it about. From the
moment when dreams of universal peace
began to prevail, her policy changed, and
being taken for absolute weakness, gave
room for aggression abroad and panic at
home.

What, for example, can be thought of
the conduct of a Power so rich and
great as England, when, in spite of its
strength and importance, she volun-
tarily gives up Corfu, leaving the
impression on the Continent that the
foreign policy of England was hence-
forth to be dictated by economy alone ?
Who in former times would ever have

ee ee

88 An Austrian View of the Defence of England.

dared even to mention the cession
of Gibraltar? From an English point
of view it will be asked, Did we not
in the Crimean War destroy the Russian
dockyards, and did we not, in order to
liberate the Abyssinian prisoners, make
a most expensive campaign? My reply
is, that the destruction of those dock-
yards was considered on the Continent
as a very tardy revenge for the seizure
of the Vixen, and that it was Napo-
leon III. who set the Crimean War
a-going. As to the Abyssinian War, it
is known to many persons on the Con-
tinent that the liberation of the captives
was not its sole object.

The power of Napoleon IIT. was
increasing by means of the Suez Canal,
his influence was taking root in Egypt,
and all the efforts of English diplo-
macy to defeat the Canal project had
failed. It was consequently necessary
to do something to strengthen the posi-
tion of England in these regions, and
to maintain the command of the road
to India.

Thus the causes which led to the
Abyssinian campaign were political and
commercial as well as humanitarian,
although to English honour it must not
be forgotten that she rescued prisoners
who were not her own subjects.

If England were the only nation in
the world, an earthly paradise might
result from the teaching of the policy of
peace at any price : each man would live
solely for his own interests, much money
would be made, and many pleasures en-
joyed. But besides England there are
many other lands, where dwell nations
entertaining very varied opinions. In-
nate in some of these nations there is
such flexibility of character, and so much
mental quickness, that events occur sud-
denly and in rapid succession ; and as
the French, the neighbours of England,
have these characteristics specially, it is
no wonder that the lovers of peace are
periodically awakened from their dreams
by events which produce surprise and
panic. As long as such dreams in-

fluence public policy, there will be no
cessation of panics, even though .Eng-
land encase herself in Sir John Brown’s
14-inch iron plates, and be made tuo
bristle all over with Mr. Bessemer’s 30-
inch steel guns. If English statesmen
allow the present state of things to last
much longer ; if they do not, as regards
their foreign policy, revert to the prin-
ciples of their predecessors who over-
threw Napoleon I., England will, it is
true, remain a great commercial country,
but it will abdicate all claim to the title
of a Great Power, sink down to the level
of a larger Holland, and possibly at some
future day become the prey of the old
German race, led on by Germanized
Slavs; or perhaps a colony of North
America. It is a source of regret to me
that the above remarks contain what
may wound the feelings of an English
patriot. But in a question of such
importance, it has appeared to me neces-
sary to mention all that can bear upon
it, not with a view to causing pain, but
in order to arrive at a clear idea of
what is requisite as the basis of a plan
of defence. Had I not touched on these
matters, I should have failed to give my
readers the reasons for my opinion, and
thus been guilty of an omission which I
should ever afterwards regret. I should
ill requite the cordial reception which
has on many occasions been given to
me in England, if I failed to say what I
have at heart, or spoke otherwise than
I think. In conclusion, I regret that
my views respecting the fortification of
London do not coincide with those of
Colonel Jervois. The cause of this lies
in our looking at the matter from dif-
ferent starting-points ; I therefore hope
that he and those who share his opinions
will not on this account bear me ill-
will, And I would beg of all my
readers to consider me, though a foreign
critic, yet as a real friend, who, far from
desiring the decline, is very anxious for
the prosperity of England.

Vienna, Sept. 1872.