https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/c0a78d32c32a678a4a95958fffb1b142.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=cuXT4Y14Ma2gJZ1DMA-Gl0zLwO%7EMmfm5VwTZ8jPOm2Kqqxnns0oqIH38VYZHgQL%7E-ZgZFYmaE%7EVIf%7EtTjBqJ4tC9RD%7EijSaptpNXlk2amyBhOJ2YfNzwGXbDhJ%7EknOgDyD4l%7EvU-d-I-QFdej4-4BI6MP9scatDblw1pltkUb21gPWvPSbtLnMOWj5v9IuECR%7EpgX-7aPccv06EJ5O4IVRcI3Gm%7E22mn4JsaU-ExcehE2HZi5grWBwk4ABsSar%7EoXoEkYANZ4qynvvB4-076dsQypUK7osL4xDl0Nq5dXT2mj8vzDanauTfhSF8q07-IOPJBcVWQMZg-vPQKieh3YQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f708ad88e05469109d8fb1d630bd4c2c PDF Text Text I .fEW J'lt & ■»""-U*1 JW<- LITTELL’S LIVING AGE.-NO. 1134.-24 FEBRUARY, 1866. From the Fortnightly Review. AMERICA, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. concerned would be in certain expectation of it, were it not for the general belief that M. Taine speaks of certain conditions there are in America paramount domestic under which society becomes nothing more reasons against the adoption of such a polithan tm commerce d’affronts. Whilst .there cy. Such a course would increase the is reason to hope that the relations be­ financial burdens, already very heavy, un­ tween man and man, or class and class, in der which the country is now struggling; any society of the, present day, cannot be Msvould indefinitely postpone that return to properly characterised as an interchange of a settled and normal condition of things insults, it is to be feared that the phrase is, which trade always craves, and especially to a sad degree, expressive of the relations after the losses consequent upon war; it subsisting between nations; Here the skies would call again from their homes the sol­ seem always angry, and the volleys of can­ diers who, after the wear and tear of four non alternate only with the hurtling of years of hardship and danger, are desirous recriminations. The historian who shall of rest; it would cost more than any prob­ live when there is a community of nations, able result of a foreign war could repay; will probably, in reading the Blue Books of it would involve the possibility of defeat, these years, think of Saurian growings which would imply a humiliating downfall and gnashings in primaeval swamps. It is from the position and prestige which the therefore with a natural anxiety that one of United States has gained by the thorough the leading nations is seen holding a brand, suppression of the gigantic rebellion that and hesitating whether, and whither, to threatened its existence. Nevertheless, con­ throw it. It is undeniable that the United vinced as the writer himself is, by these and States stands in this attitude at the pres­ higher considerations, that it would be ent moment, and that the world has reason wrong for the United States to enter upon to await with profound solicitude the deci­ a war with any foreign power, he is equally sions of the present Congress as to the foreign' convinced that there are other considera­ policy to be adopted by that nation. I tions calculated to tempt the present Gov­ cannot conceive, of a, legislative assembly ernment at Washington to an opposite gathered under more solemn circumstances course, some of which may be briefly stated than those which surround this Congress, or here. of one holding in itself more important It is an old idea with rulers that, in cer­ issues. tain conditions, a foreign war is conducive Formation, material expansion, centrali­ to the health of a nation, — an idea which sation, and an ambition to lead in the, old countries have outgrown, but one that affairs of the world, may be traced in his­ is sure to have powerful advocates in a tory as the successive embryonic phases young_one. A civil war, says Lord Bacon, through which nations pass. Unfortunately is like the heat of a fever; a foreign one,, is history attests also many “ arrests ” on this like the heat of exercise. It need be no line of development. America, however, longer a secret that, in the few months suc­ has thus far advanced well, and has now ceeding the bombardment of Fort Sumter, reached the last form that precedes a set­ and preceding the actual determination, tled nationality. Her foreign policy, hith­ to coerce the South into the Union by erto relatively of the least, now becomes of military power, there was a powerful influ­ the first importance; for while it seems inev­ ence at Washington seeking to superinduce itable that she should now be tempted to a war with England, with the object of aspire to a leading position in the world, uniting the discordant parties and sections the temptation is reinforced by some pro­ by a direct appeal to the patriotism of both. vocations from without, and by certain This concession to the anti-English senti­ strong inducements from within. The con­ ment— which, for reasons, to be hereafter ditions for a war policy are so obvious that stated, was hitherto confined to the South I have little doubt the nations immediately and its ally, the Northern Democratic party THIRD 3ERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXL 1475. �546 , AMERICA, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. — seemed a fine card to play at that junc­ ture ; and if the Trent affair could have occurred sooner than it did, that card might have been played. That it was not, at any rate, is due to the moral character of Mr. Lincoln, and to the strong friendship for England of the Chairman of the Senatorial Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Hon. Charles Sumner. It was plain, too, that New England, the centre of friendship for England at that time, would permit no war to be undertaken on such immoral grounds, and at the same time that she was deter­ mined to make the crisis that had come an occasion for settling the slavery question for ever. Thus the foreign war project for evading the national emergency was smoth­ ered. It was essentially a pro-slavery plan — though it might have encountered a pow­ erful opposition from those Confederates of Virginia and the Carolinas who cared more for separation than for slavery — and had it succeeded in uniting the North and South, slavery would to-day be entering upon a new lease of existence instead of being abolished. Just now the same temptation recurs. The status of the negro in the South is a .-subject for agitations and divisions nearly as .fierce as those which preceded and re­ sulted in the civil war. The South and its old ally, the Democratic party in the North, are demanding the return of the Southern States with their governments still commit­ ted exclusively to the whites : the Northern Republicans bitterly oppose this, maintain­ ing that.the humiliated slaveholders cannot be trusted to legislate justly for the blacks, without whose aid (in the declared opinion of President Lincoln) the rebellion could not have been suppressed. The issue is most important; for, once restored to the position of equal States, - the Southern legislatures . could — providing only that they did not contravene technically the law against chattel slavery — enact a sys­ tem of serfdom, and retain the “ Black Codes,” which prohibit the education and Srevent the elevation;of the negroes, the forth being powerless to interfere unless another war should arise to arm it with the abnormal right, which it. now has, to con­ trol the section it has ;just conquered. The security proposed by the Northern Re­ publicans is to give the negroes votes, which the . Southerners and the. Democrats furi­ ously oppose. It will ,be seen at once that .this political situation necessitates the con­ tinuance of a bitter sectional strife. The . arguments of the Southern party about the constitutional rights of States to regulate their own suffrage naturally provoke taunts concerning their four years’ effort to over­ throw the constitution; their talk about the inferiority of the negro leads their antago­ nists to place the barbarities of Anderson­ ville prison by the side of the long patience of the negro ; the alleged “ unfitness of the negro to vote ” is replied to with the tu quoque based on the disloyalty of the whites; and so long as this issue is before the country, the Northern press naturally parades every current instance of inhuman­ ity to the negro, and every expression of hatred to the Yankees, of which its corre­ spondents easily find enough in the South. All this of course wakes an angry and de­ fiant spirit there ; and thus the country is relegated to the dissension and agitation about the negro which had prevailed with­ out intermission for more than a generation before the war. There is no doubt that the late President Lincoln foresaw this issue, and he has left on record, in a letter recently published, his determination to have ended the negro agitation for ever by demanding equal rights in the seceded States for the ne­ gro. But President Johnson is a very different man. For more than thirty years a Southern slave-holder, a Democratic poli­ tician, and a steady voter in the Congress against all New England ideas, he never­ theless— simply from a pride in the old flag — opposed his own section. He vigor­ ously resisted the rebellion, though it can scarcely be said that he clung to the North. The North rewarded his constancy by elect­ ing him to the Vice-Presidency. But,now that the convulsion is over, he and the country are discovering that sudden chan­ ges are rarely 'thorough. So, in the present controversy on negro-suffrage, President Johnson takes the side that might be expect­ ed of a Tennessean Democrat, and opposes the party which elected him. Of course his cabinet are with him. Nevertheless President Johnson and his cabinet see that either by conceding the last hope of slave­ ry — “a white man’s government ” — or by some other means, this controversy must ter­ minate, at least for the present, in order that reconstruction, clamorously demanded by the national exchequer and by trade, may take place. If it has been determined that negro-suf­ frage shall not be conceded, what “ other means ” remain ? Suppose some great and overpowering national emergency were to occur— one involving the national pride or interest — would it not at once divert at­ tention from the sectional issue ? If the �JjjaHfrffii' jwiiuiriiiwij » AMERICA, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. I 547 Northern and the Southern man should fight mise of the negro questibn; and if their Gov­ side by side for a common cause, against a ernment should attempt to bring on a for­ common foe, for some years—the longer eign war for the purpose of suppressing the the better — would not old differences be agitation of that question, there would not healed ? And if to carry on such a war be wanting clear-headed men to repeat Southern States as well as Northern must throughout the country the story of how furnish quotas of men and money, and raise the original colonies compromised on the crops for food, then Southern States must be negro question in ord er that they might form at once reconstituted; and to effect this at a Union “for the common defence,” — that once, must not the country be persuaded to ■ is, present an unbroken front to George III. compromise on the negro-suffrage question ? should he seek to subjugate them,—and The influence at Washington—I need how that compromise has proved to have not mention names — which four years ago been pregnant with wrongs and agonies * urged these considerations to prevent utter which make the tea-tax of our fathers ridic­ rupture between North and South, survives ulous. To keep off King George they to suggest them as furnishing a possible es­ bowed to King Slavery: their posterity, still cape from the dilemma of the administra­ groaning under the terrible results of that tion which is hardly strong enough to en­ “policy,” will be very unlikely to extempor­ counter the present Congress—the most ise a King George for the purpose of re­ radical one that has ever assembled • in peating the blunder. When, however, the America. And to this influence is now add­ restoration of the Southern people and lead­ ed another, urging a new classof considera­ ers, and the re-pledging them to the Union, tions in favour of a foreign war .; chiefly are added to the first consideration, the this: there are a number of able leading men North-West, to whose prosperity the loyalty in the South, each influential in his com­ of the Mississippi river and of both its banks munity, who are now in disgrace, and who, to the Gulf is esseMQl may not prove to be if the country settles down to peace, have (^inflexible virtue. A third reason why a foreign war might nothing left but to live on in obscurity, una­ ble to hold office, and without anything to not be unwelcQme to the Washington Gov­ mitigate the deep sense of humiliation or the ernment is, that it has now a large army al­ wounds of pride. The flag at which Lee, ready collected and to a certain extent Beauregard, Johnstone, Mosby, and many drilled, which it is deemed inexpedient, for others struck, can float only to bring a shad­ reasous connected with the internal condi­ ow upon them. The greatest of them has tion of the country, to dissolve at once, and already hidden himself in a fourth-class col­ which is likely to be demoralized if it has lege. Already the North asks, Which shall nothing to do. Nor would the people of we prefer, the negro who defended, or the America be willing to support a large army white who trampled upon, our flag ? A and navy in idleness. And in this connec­ foreign war would be the rehabilitation of tion it may be said that whilst the rank and these Southern men. Indeed, emigration file of the Americm military force would be seems to be almost the only alternative glad to remain, for a loDg time certainly, in which would enable them to emerge from their homes, a war would be more welcome to their disgrace with the American people, the vast number of officers whom the late con­ recover position, and claim rights as defend­ flict raised from obscurity, and for the most ers of the nation. Moreover, it is not at all part created, and to the large majority of certain but that they mi"ht— particularly- whom peace is sure to bring the obscurity in the case of a war with England — be able which it brought them six years ago. The , ■ to cast a part of the cloud under which they prominent generals of the United States now sit upon the people and leaders of New were before the war railroad-presidents, sur­ ' England, who have never applauded the veyors, lawyers, &c.; hardly one of them, motto, “ Our country, right or wrong,” and excepting Fremont, had a national reputa­ • who assuredly could not be brought to fight tion. It need not be a matter of wonder with anything like the earnestness lately dis-1 that so many among them, General Grant played in their war with slavery, in an un- ; being of the number, are already widely necessary or a doubtful war — not at all in ; and justly quoted as favourable to a foreign I one whose political objects would be precise­ war policy. As crowning all these considerations it ly those which are most repulsive to the strong moral sense of that section. must not be forgotten that the old undying My belief is that New England and the dream of continental occupation, of which North-West may be relied upon to oppose the “ Monroe doctrine ” is the familiar but any undisguised postponement by compro- , inexact label, is at present producing more �548 AMERICA, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. exasperations and is under fewer restraints than ever before. The Romulus of the United States, whoever he may have been, did not surround the country with any fur­ row, and the Remuses had not in the first years even to leap, so long as their filibus­ tering expeditions respected those bounda­ ries which the average American regards as the natural ones of his country —i.e. the Pacific Ocean on the west, the Atlantic on the east, the Isthmus of Panama on the south, and the North Pole on the north. Since the Mexican war, and in recoil from the mean­ ness and criminality which led to and at­ tended the seizure of Texas, there has been in the United States a moral sentiment able to hold in check the disposition to encroach upon its neighbours, as those representa­ tives of a Democratic administration who met at Ostend a few years ago and pro­ posed to obtain Cuba by fair means or foul, discovered to their cost. But the moral sen­ timent which would have continued to shel­ ter Mexico would not find a single American to plead its applicability to Maximilian, unless in the reverse of the obvious sense. And since it is understood, that the exci­ sion of Maximilian by the power of the Unit­ ed States means the grateful self-annexation of Mexico (in some way) to the Union, it will be at once seen that the passion for ex­ pansion and the moral sentiment of the country jump together in a way that they never did before. On the other hand, whilst the desire for Canada is much feebler than that for Mexico, the restraint of inter­ national morality which would have protect­ ed it has been removed by the general sense of wrongs received at the hands of England, and the representatives of England in Cana­ da, and by a current belief that annexation to the Union is desired by nearly all of the French Canadians and the Irish. Whilst these considerations are being urged at Washington, those who are most strongly opposed to a foreign war, and were among the most trusted advisers of Presi­ dent Lincoln — as, for example, the Chair­ man of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, before alluded to — are now without the ear of the President, and range in hostility.to his plan of reconstruction. Of all the rea­ sons that have been mentioned, the consid­ eration which will weigh most strongly with the President and his Cabinet will be the hope of starving off the negro-agitation, and of securing the ret urn of the Southern States without negro-suffrage. If negro-equality were to be placed beyond question by the present Congress, every cloud of war would clear away tor the present, and the Mexican Empire would be the only thing concerning which one could anticipate, even at a distant period, any collision between the United States and any nation of the Old World. Hence the friends of peace in America are as anxiously hoping for the settlement of the negro question on the only basis which can be final, and that will not remit the country to the bitter animosities and agitations of the past, as the friends of war are indiffer­ ent to or anxious to' evade such settlement. The particular danger is that the Congress will decide to keep out the Southern States without imposing negro-suffrage as a condi­ tion of their return, in which case the Presi­ dent might be induced to try and alter the conditions under which the question would come before another Congress, by seeking, as above indicated, to weld the two sections, and purge the South of the stain upon its loyalty, with the fires of a foreign war. I confess that the probabilities affecting the question of war or peace between Ameri­ ca and France or England seem to me slightly inclining to the side of war; and I am sure that the internal considerations enumerated, much more than the claim against England, or the Monroe doctrine — whose importance in the case I am far from undervaluing — will be the mainspring of the war policy, if it be adopted. The next question of interest is whether a hostile movement, if determined upon, will be directed against France or against Eng­ land. ~ There is in America a traditional friend­ liness towards France. At a celebration of the national American Thanksgiving-day, by Americans in Paris, December 7, the heartiest applause was awarded to a toast proposed by General Schofield in these words: — “The old friendship between France and the United States; may it be strengthened and perpetuated ! ” At the same festival the Hon. John Jay, the chair­ man, alluded to some of the associations which are stirred in every American’s mind when France is mentioned. “ Our patriotic assemblage,” he said, “ in this beautiful Capi­ tol, amid the splendours of French art and the triumphs of French science, recalls the infancy of our country, and the various threads of association that are so frequently intertwined in the historic memories of America and France. The French element was early and widely blended with our transatlantic blood, and it is a fact that two of the five commissioners wdio in this city signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783 —that treaty by which England closed the war and recognised the American Republic — were �< AMERICA, FRANCj AND ENGLAND. \ 549 of Huguenot descent. In the war now ever, his perception of a growing feeling for closed, as in that of our Revolution, French territorial expansion among the Americans. and American officers fought side by side, But an element of .even paramount import­ and side by side in our House of Representa­ ance in this feeling was a dread that the tives hang — and will continue to hang, as a American Republic might have to struggle perpetual memento of the early friendship with powerful and hostile forms of govern­ between the countries — the portraits of ment. The Monroe doctrine was really Washington and Lafayette. The territory that for which few Europeans would give it . of Orleans, including that vast and fertile credit — a conservative policy. Explicitly valley extending from the gulf to the limits respecting powers already planted on that of Missouri, was ceded to us by the First continent, it affirmed the limits of the right Napoleon almost for a song, and there are of intervention for itself, as well as for lorstill perpetuated in its names, habits, and eign powers. It was meant to be, and was, traditions, pleasant memories of France.” an especial check upon the westward ag­ Mr. Jay did not, in Catholic France, hint gressions of American filibusters, by imwhy the Huguenots happened to be in plying that only their unjust encroachments America; he did not bring to any rude test from aBtid could justify interference with ■of historic criticism the part played, literal- other nations. It recommended <tself to . ly, by the Marquis de Lafayette in the first, the most thoughtful men of the last genera­ or by the young French chevaliers, who en­ tion in the United SffieB as the means of joyed their cigars and champagne with keeping for ever out of the Western hemi­ McClellan whilst the soldiers of the Union sphere that grim political idol to which the were being massacred before Richmond, in peace of the old world had been so often the second revolution; neither did he in­ sacrificed — the “ balance of power.” It as­ quire whether at that time the Emperor of sumed, indeed, the Predominance of the the French was making proposals to Eng­ United States on that continent, but then land to join him in an inte wention favoura­ the United States open® its arms, its lands, ble to the South, nor remenfter the Jiisses its honours to the people of all nations. and cries in the French Assembly which The Monroe doctrine was, then, conserva­ drowned M. Pelletan’s voice when he an­ tive, in that it put a defiq^M check upon the nounced the downfall of Richmond (which idea of absorbing surrounding countries, and M. Pelletan declared — mistakenly, it would limited the United States wtheidea of pre­ appear — were so loud, tha®they would be dominance. Even this may seem arrogant, heard across the Atlantic). But, in ignor­ but it is difficult to see by what other means ing such questions and crowning his address the New World could have been saved from with tue toast “ The Empgror of the becoming the mere duplicate of the Old. French,” Mr. Jay undoubtedly represented To permit the occupation of countries, the general determination of his country­ ■ which the United States has restrained her­ men to put the best construction possible self from occupying, by foreign governupon everything that France does, and their, nlents of formstessentially hostile, necessi­ instinctive disposition to wink at her plain­ tates an injurious modification of her own. est offences. This disposition must be con­ Any such Power, once admitted and estab­ sidered prominently in our calculations of lished, must be Watpied; and to watch it the probable action of the United States implies Expensive fortifications of long fron­ upon the Mexican Empire. There can be tiers, standing armies, and young men sup­ no doubt that if any other nation than plying them — things utterly opposed to France had established that Empire, the end the spirit in which the American Republic of the rebellion in -America would have been was founded. A few ships might prevent swiftly followed by the march of Federal the landing on those shores of a Power troops across the Rio Grande. which, once fixed there, would require that The Monroe doctrine was of gradual and the Union should become a centralized and natural development. The earliest ex­ military nation. Thus there is no principle pression of the sentiment out of which it that would protect California, or Texas, or grew was given by the First Napoleon, Louisiana from French encroachment, that when he assigned as a chief reason for dis­ would not haye equally have protected posing of the territory of Orleans — the Mexico. The south-western states have greater part of the Mississippi Valley — on only to be weak to become food for the fur­ the easy terms in which President Jefferson ther growth of “the Latin race/’and the obtained it, that it was the manifest destiny glory of its new Cmsar. Hence garrisons, of that territory to become a portion of the .under General Weitzel, and others, are al- ■ United States. . He did but express, how- ready on the south-western border, where �550 AMERICA, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. x they must stay so long as the representative of French power stays. The best men in America, are persuaded that it would be more favourable to the peace of the world if such garrisons should cease to exist, through the removal of the occasion for them. ‘ . The traditional friendship of the United States with France has undoubtedly, been strained to the utmost by this invasion of Mexico, and by the circumstances under which it occurred. The subversion of the Mexican Republic was consummated in the face of three unequivocal declarations to the American Minister at Paris, that the Government then existing in Mexico should not be altered by the invasion; it was. ac­ complished at a time when, the United States was prevented from having any voice in the matter by the gigantic war which tied her hands; it was for the avowed pur­ pose of building up a rival power on the North American continent; and it selected as the representative of that flagrant de­ fiance of the principle which in America has a sanctity corresponding to that of .the “ balance of power ” in Europe, a prince belonging to a House more unpopular among Americans, and more associated with the oppression of weaker peoples, than any that has reigned on the continent of Eu­ rope. ' If it should ultimately appear that only by war can the empire thus attempted be expelled, war will surely come. But there are reasons why the United States will strain every nerve to secure that object by negotiation before resorting to armed force. The friendly feeling towards France already adverted to, the equally strong feeling among the Irish and the Roman Catholics generally, and the especial affection and gratitude to France of the Southerners — whom the foreign war, if undertaken, is ex­ pected to rehabilitate —• would all make the conflict one for which the American people tiould have little heart. It would require repeated refusals of any other set­ tlement on the part of Louis Napoleon to generate the amount of popular exaspera­ tion requisite for the war. At the same time I doubt not but that General Scho­ field and others will sufficiently convince the Emperor of the French that the Ameri­ can Government and people will never con­ sent to the permanent existence of a for­ eign monarchy in Mexico. The willingness to postpone positive action in the matter is enhanced by the consideration that non-re­ cognition and hesitation on the part of the United States, encouraging as they do the Juarists to continue their resistance, in­ juriously affecting the Mexican loan, and accumulating the expenditure of France, constitute in themselves almost a forcible attack upon Maximilian. There is also something like a superstitious belief among the people that no government will stand long in Mexico until it is consigned by des­ tiny to the United States; and I venture to predict that in that direction the United States will pursue the Micawber policy of waiting for something to turn up, and that this policy will be presently justified by the evacuation of Mexico by French troops, with Maximilian close upon their heels. Much as I regret to say it, I cannot deny to myself that a war with England — were there any pretext for it, or anything to be gained by it — would unite all sections and classes in America more effectually than one with any other Power. The reasons for a war, so far as they are external, weigh against France; the feeling., against Eng­ land. The traditional feeling in America toward England has been the reverse of what it has been toward .France. The ori­ gin of this anti-English feeling is not won­ derful. NextMo those portraits of Wash­ ington and Lafayette, mentioned by Mr. Jay as hanging side by side in the Hall of Representatives at Washington, may be found several pictures of the American gen­ erals and English generals standing in less gentle relations to each other. But the resuscitation and increase of the ill-feeling toward England are due to causes which it may be well to explain, for there have been strong commercial and other reasons why all animosities between the countries should Jong ago have passed away. The jealousies which existed after the separation of 1782, were such as are often witnessed between parties just near enough to each other to make differences irritating—as the right and left wings, or old and new schools of Churches — but these tend to subside as the parties become more and more set and se­ cure in their respective’positions. As a matter of fact these jealousies had almost disappeared, and but few traces of them can be found in the generation that preceded this. The cause of the animosity between the Northern and Southern States was the cause also of the revival of an anti-English feeling in America—Slavery. English Quakers were among the first agitators for emancipa­ tion in the Union. The first abolitionist in America — Benjamin Lundy — had. by his side Fanny Wright, who established in Ten. nessee a colony of liberated negroes with the intent of proving that they were fit for �AMERICA, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. 551 freedom. The Anti-Slavery Society, which to his immediate withdrawal from that city, sprang up in the North, was materially as­ and a determination to proceed no farther sisted by the English societies ; its watch­ into the Slave States. But meanwhile this words were taken from the great anti-slave­ feeling had a strong reinforcement. The ry leaders of England, and the utterances Irish were thronging to America by thou­ of Sharpe, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and oth­ sands, and the Irish vote had become the ers, were hurled with tremendous effect deciding power in every general election. against the Southern institution. The It is a dreary fact that the Irish elected * Methodists were made to remember that every America^ President from 1844 to Wesley had pronounced slavery to be “the 1860. To win that Irish vote a political sum of all villanies ; ” and everywhere it party had simply to take the ground of was held up as a token of the superiority violent antagonism to England: that sure of England that her air was “ too pure for card the Democratic party had always been a slave to breathe.” When the “ pro­ willing to play, and the Irish, almost with­ slavery re-action,” as it is termed, set in — out exception, voted for it and its protege, that is, when the invention of the cotton- Slavery. The denouncers oft England in gin (about the first part of this century) the North were notoriously the leading had gradually quadrupled the value of Democrats, who, for party purposes, fanned slaves, and the Southern politicians began the hatred of this country which every Irish­ to reverse the verdict of Washington, Jeff­ man was sure to bring with him to the Unit­ erson, and Henry against slavery per se — ed States. I have no idea that these dema­ mutterings against “ English Abolitionists” gogues really felt any sympathy with the began to be heard. The anti-slavery ggsits, Irish, or that they knew anything whatever in later times, of William Forster, Joseph about Ireland or its relations to England^ Sturge, George Thompson, and other distin­ whilst pouring out their invectives against guished abolitionists, led to a fierce outcry “British Tyranny.” The Fenians have, in the South that her rights and institutions perhaps, by this time learned (if a Fenian were threatened by “ British abolitionists,” can learn anything) how much reality there “ British emissaries,” and “ British gold.” was in this profuse Democratic sympathy The writer can remember when every po­ for Ireland ; but when it is considered that litical gathering in Virginia, his native there are five million Irish haters of Eng­ State, was lashed into fury by the use of land in America, and that to obtain this these phrases. President Jackson, in a great electoral power the Democratic party Message to Congress, denounced the inter­ has committed itself to every anti-English ference of “foreign emissaries” with the policy, it will be seen how vast an. addition institution of slavery. Boston, because of to the hatred of the enraged pro slavery its anti-slavery character, was scornfully men has thus been made in these later years. called “ that English city.” The pro-slave-S In all this time the only section of Ameri­ ry re-action gained a complete sway of the ca that could be called friendly to England Union about twenty years ago ; since which was New England, such friendliness having time, until 1860, slavery elected every Presi­ been frequently made the occasion for dent, and was represented by large though denouncing thatByoup of States. The gradually diminishing majorities in Con­ leading men of New England — Emerson, gress. ,The commercial classes of the North Channing, Phillips, Sumner, Garrison, Low­ were its violent adherents on account of ell — had been guests in the best English the immense value of the Southern trade; homes, and had entertained English gen­ and if any merchant became tarnished by a tlemen. The youth of the colleges and suspici on of his pro-slavery soundness, the universities of New England were kindling New York Herald published his name—a with enthusiasm for Carlyle, Tennyson, proceeding which withdrew all dealings Mill, and the Brownings. Along with her from him, and threatened him with ruin. anti-slavery influence there, went forth also Thus a vast majority, North and South, from. New England editions of English came to nourish a deep hostility toward books and English modes of thought; and as England, for her policy of emancipation in the country at large was, in the years im­ her own colonies, and for her alleged inter­ mediately preceding the war, gradually won ference with slavery in America. How to an anti-slavery positions^ England be­ furious the South was toward England was came, if not generally liked, at least the shown in those disgraceful scenes — not to most respected of foreign nations. The be reported here — which are said to have virtues of Queen Victoria were especially attended the attempt of the Prince of a subject of frequent eulogium throughout Wales to visit Richmond, Virginia, and led the North; and everything bade fair tO’ �552 AMERICA, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. bring about a reaction in the feeling to­ wards the people over whom she ruled. Indeed the welcome given to the Prince of Wales at the time of which I now write, bore witness to the existence of a friendlier spirit regarding “ the mother country ” than any one would have ventured to predict a few years before. The gradual repres' sion of the anti-English prejudice cost the ' Republicans of the North a long period of political weakness (for they too might have bid for the Irish vote) ; it was the result of the laborious diffusion of English literature, and I know that it was esteemed by the reflecting Americans to be a victory for mankind. The reasons why this friendliness has been of late replaced by indignation and an­ ger, in New England as well as elsewhere, are too well known to require much elucida­ tion here. I am quite sure that if England had known as much about the United States five years ago as she knows now, the pres­ ent unhappy relations between the two coun­ tries could not be subsisting. England sneered at those who had been her friends, who were fighting the last battles of a con­ flict begun by herself, and gave her sympa­ thies to those who had denounced her for her love of freedom. Not going far enough to do more than repress for a moment the traditional animosity of the South, she went far enough to fill the North with in­ dignant surprise, and has left in both sec­ tions a sentiment which might easily find vent in war, if any sufficient object to be gained thereby should present itself. If it were England that had occupied Mexico, war would have been declared against her ere now; hitherto, as I have intimated, whilst the war-interest has pointed to France, the war feeling in America has been toward England. The feeling of an­ ger towards this country is so universal in the United States that I believe it would be impossible to find amongst its public men, or even its literary men, a single ex­ ception from it, — unless it be among a few who, having constant personal intercourse with England, know how little any quick generalisations concerning this country, its character, or its feeling, are likely to be correct. A few protests against the very general denunciation of England may have been uttered there, or sent there by Ameri­ cans resident here; but they have been lost like chips in the rapids of Niagara. I write these things with profound regret; but I think the facts should be known. There have been many instances in his­ tory where such a condition of popular feeling has required the merest pretext to initiate war. In the present case there is something which is already regarded in America as a sufficient occasion for war (were war desirable), and may be presently regarded as an adequate cause for it. The United States has, although so young as a nation, presented more than a score of “ claims ” against other nations; and in every case, I believe, these claims have been ultmately adjusted to its satisfaction, though now and then refused at first. The late claim upon the English Government for damages committed by the Alabama —■ for those alone would probably have been insisted upon-—meant much more than a pecuniary matter to the Americans. As * foi the merchants who had suffered losses by Confederate cruisers they were gener­ ally men who a few years ago were so pa­ tient and resigned when slavery was scut­ tling human hearts and homes, that many of us smiled with a grim satisfaction at their ' pathetic emotions when some defenceless sloop with its innocent family of bags and barrels was sent to the bottom. But withal the Alabama was regarded as the palpable symbol of that anti-American sentiment which had appeared at the outbreak of the war — a symbol which not the Kearsage, but England alone, could sink; and the claim for the losses by hei’ ' signified also a reclamation for wounds rankling in every American heart. I have no intention of discussing here the case of the A liibama; but the legal case as it stands in the correspondence between Earl Russel and Mr. Adams is so different from the moral case which is at this moment powerfully agitating the American mind, that it seems to me important to mention a few points recently laid by Mr. George Bemis, the eminent jurist of Boston, before his countrymen, which are more likely to poison the future relations between the two countries than any question raised in the diplomatic discussion referred to. This hitherto unwritten, or rather uncollected, chapter in the history of the Alabama is derived from the English Blue Boole, and refers to the last two days’ stay of that cruiser in British waters, after the Govern­ ment had decided upon her detention, and after the alleged telegraphic order for her seizure had been sent to the officials of Liverpool. . The Alabama left Laird’s dock in Liver­ pool in July, 1862, under pretence of tak­ ing out a pleasure party, and went to sea without ever returning to that port again. The American Minister having called upon �I AMERICA, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. 553 Earl Russell for an explanation of this, be well to remind the reader here that, so wrote home the following as the statement early as July 4th, the British Government he received at that interview : — "had promised Mr. Adams that the Custom House officials at Liverpool should keep a “ His lordship first took up the case of the strict watch on the movements of the ex­ ‘290’ [the name by which the Alabama was pected Alabama, and report any further in­ first known], and remarked that a delay in de­ formation that could be collected concern­ termining upon it had most unexpectedly ing her.) The Hercules proceeds to fulfil been caused by the sudden development of her errand, but has not completed her ship­ a malady of the Queen’s Advocate, Sir John D? Harding, totally incapacitating him for the ping of men and warlike equipment until transaction of business. This made it neces­ sometime during the morning of the 30th. sary to call in other parties, whose opinion had During the forenoon, some hours before the been at last given for the detention of the gunboat, Hercules starts, the AmcMn Consul has but before the order got down to Liverpool the vessel placed the following note under the eye of was gone.” * the head of the Custom House : — In the debate on the escape of the Ala­ “U. S. Consulate, Liverpool, bama, which occurred in the House of July 30, 1862. Lords, Aprd 29, 1864, Earl Russell gave f“Sir,—Referring to myaPMions communi­ cation to you on the subject of the gunboat .' this further explanation : — ■‘No. 290fl|fitted out by Mr. LaiM at Birken­ “ The United States Government had no head, I beg now to inform you that she left reason to complain of us in that respect [in the Birkenhead dock on Monday night [the ves^mHmorningMrthe 29th] left regard to the escape of the Alabama], because 28thl we took all the precaution we could. We col­ M^M^^^ycomi^wed by the steilm-tug Hercu­ les. The Hercules returned last evening, and lected evidence, but it was not till it was com­ was cruising off plete that we felt ourselves justified in giving the her master stated orders for the seizure of the vessel. These orders, Port Iypias, that she had six guns on board however, were evaded. I can tell your lord ship concealed below, and was taking powder from from a trustworthy source how theyiwere evaded!?’ another vessel. The Hercules is now alongside the Wood_[Eaii Russell then proceeded to quote a pass­ age from Fullam’s ‘ Cruise in the Confederate side landing-stage, taking on board men (forty States War Steamer Alabama ’ (p. 5), of which or fifty), beams, evidently for guiMcarriages, and other things, to convey down to the gunthe last paragraph ran as iollows] : — “Our unceremonious departure [from Liver­ bo® A quantity of cutlasses was taken on pool] was owing to the fact of news being receiv­ board on Friday last. These circumstances all go to confirm the ed to the effect that the customs authorities had orders to board and detain us that morning.” representations heretofore made to you about this vessel, in the face of which I cannot but [Upon which Earl Russell adds] : — “ That was the fact. However the owner regret she lias been permitted to leave the port, ,and I report them to youH^M you may take came to be informed of it, it is impossible for me to say. There certainly seems to have been such steps as you may deem necessary to pre­ treachery on the part of some one furnishing the vent this flagrant violation of neutrality. Respectfully, I am your obedient servant, information.” “ Thomas H. Dudley, Consul. On the morning of July 29th, 1862, the “ The Collector of Customs, Liwrpool.” Alabama put out from the Liverpool docks, In response to this urgent appeal, Mr. E. having on board several ladies,and gentle­ men of the family of Mr. John Laird, M. P., Morgan, Surveyor of the Port, seems to and enough of other invited guests to make have been sent to visit the Hercules. The a show of a pleasure party, and was towed following is the record of his labours: — by a steam-tug, the Hercules, to a point Copy of a Letter from Mr. E. Morgan, Sur­ fourteen miles from Liverpool. There the party was transferred to the Hercules, and veyor, to the Collector, Liverpool. “ Surveyor’s Office, 30 July, 1862. the Commander of the Alabama made an “Sir, — Referring to the steamer built by appointment with the Hercules to return to the Liverpool and bring a large portion of hjs boat Messrs. Laird, which is suspected to be a gun­ intendedfor some foreign government, — crew to Beaumaris Bayljabout forty miles ■ “ I beg to state that since the date of my distant from ’ the town. The Hercules last report concerning her she has been lying reached Liverpool on the evening of the in the Birkenhead docks fitting for sea, and 29th, and anchored for the night. (It may receiving on board coals and provisions for her *The itaZzes here and elsewhere, in paragraphs crew. “ She left the dock on the evening of the quoted from the Blue Book,.are, of course, not in the originals. 28th instant, anchored for the night in the i �554 . AMERICA, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. Mersey, abreast the Canning Dock, and pro­ ceeded out of the river on the following morn­ ing, ostensibly on a trial trip, from which she has not returned. X “ I visited the tug Hercules this morning, as she lay at the landing-stage at Woodside, and strictly examined her holds, and other parts of the vessel. She had nothing of a suspicious character onboard —no guns, no ammunition, or anything appertaining thereto. A consider­ able number of persons, male and female, were on deck, some of whom admitted to me THAT THEY WERE A PORTION OF THE CREW, AND WERE GOING TO JOIN THE ‘GUNBOAT.’ “ I have oniy to add that your directions to keep a strict watch on the said vessel have been carried out, and I write in the fullest confidence that she left this port without any part of her armament on board; she had not as much as a single gun or musket. “ It is said that she cruised off Point Lyna,9 1st night, which, as you are aware, is some fifty miles from this port. “Very respectfully, (Signed) “ E. Morgan, Surveyor. The Foreign Enlistment Act says very plainly, that every ship “ having on board, conveying, carrying, or transporting ” any person or persons “ enlisted, or who have agreed or been procured to enlist, or who shall be departing from his Majesty’s domin­ ions for the purpose or with the intent of enlisting,” “ shall and may be seized by the Collector,” &c., (Stat. 59 George III. c. 69, s. 6). Mr. Morgan says some of the men on the Hercules admitted to him “ that they were a portion of the crew, and were going to join the gunboat;” he knows that it is a gunboat, and that it has gone off “ osten­ sibly on a trial trip and yet we find the following letter sent to the Commissioners of Customs in London: — “ Custom House, Liverpool, 30th July, 1862. “Honourable Sirs,—Immmediately on re­ ceipt of the aforegoing communication [not given, or perhaps Consul Dudley’s, qu. ?], Mr. Morgan, Surveyor, proceeded on board the Hercules, and I beg to enclose his report, ob­ serving that he perceived no beams, such as are alluded to by the American Consul, nor any­ thing on bourd that would justify further action on my part. “ Respectfully, . (Signed) “ S. Price Edwards.” The following • telegram was laid before The Lords Commissioners of her Majesty’s Treasury on the morning of July 29 : — “Liverpool, 29th July, 1862. “ ‘ No. 290.’ “Sir, — We telegraphed you this morning that the above vessel was leaving Liverpool. She came out of dock last night, and steamed down the river between 10 and 11 a. m. “ We have reason to believe she has gone to Queenstown. “ Yours obediently, “Duncan, Squarey, & Blackmore.” Lastly, here is the record of how, when the horse was stolen, the stable-door was locked: — I “ Thirty-first July, 1862, at about | half-past seven, p. m. “ Telegrams were sent to the Collectors at Liver­ pool and CorL [at above date] pursuant to Treasury Order, dated 31st July, to seize the gun­ boat (290) should she be within either of those ports. • , -- “ Similar telegrams to the officers at Beaumaris and Holyhead were sent on the morning of the 1stAugust. They were not sent on the 3ist July, the telegraph offices to those districts being closed. ' “ And on the 2d August a letter was also sent to the Collector at Cork, to detain the ves­ sel should she arrive at Queenstown.” It is noticeable that only on the evening of the 31st of July was any word sent to Queenstown, where, according to the tele­ gram of the 29th, the American agents in Liverpool “ have reason to believe she (the Alabama) has gone ! ” And why was no telegram sent to Point Lynas on the night of the 30th ? Three days were lost when all depended upon hours. Nay, there have been cases when England, feeling herself aggrieved by such ships, has — as those who remember the cases of the Terceira and the Heligoland know — pursued and destroyed them even in foreign waters. The feeling was of another kind in this case: the Ala­ bama .was followed through English and other waters, but with plaudits. Now all this is far lrom pleasant read­ ing to an American. Earl Russell him­ self, as quoted above, has said that there seems to have been “ treachery ” in the proceeding. Nay, in “ Hansard ” for Feb­ ruary 16, 1864, he will be found to have classified it as a “ belligerent operation,” and as “ a scandal and in some degree a re­ proach to British law.” Is it wonderful then that the United States should prefer a claim, accompanied by a suggestion of ar­ bitration, for the losses by this cruiser, which for a time swept American ships from the seas ? Is it wonderful that it should in­ terpret the refusal to admit the claim or the suggestion as a moral confession of judg­ ment ? Is it wonderful that, irrespective of the legal points of the case, Americans should perceive in the above facts the ex­ �janet’s 555 questions. pression of a hostile animus toward her, as yet unlaid, so far as any official act is con­ cerned, and that they, should, with their deep sense of wrong, be eager to seize an oc­ casion for retaliation ? The liberation of John Mitchell, at the request of the Fenians, by President John­ son, after he (Mitchell) had rendered himself so especially odious to the people of the United States by his treason, was attended with no popular outcry. ' It could never have been done had there not been a gen­ eral feeling of resentment toward England. It is a straw only, but it shows the wind to be setting from a tempestuous quarter. It may be supposedEhat the very causes which have operated to alienate the Northern States from England would im­ ply a friendship for her in the South; but besides the old animosity of the South toward England, on account of her influence against slavery, she feels bitterly the sym­ pathy of the English masses for the North, the cold shoulder given to her agents at the English Court, the repeated refusals of the British Government to join France in an in­ tervention, and its refusal of any aid to prevent the South being crushed. Thus every class and section in America has a grievance against England. There are, indeed, men in that country whose thoughts reach beyond the vexations and passions of the moment, who may be counted on to do what they can to prevent such a dire calamity as a war between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race would be. But the fact may not be concealed that by the refusal to submit the case of the Alabama to arbitration, in the present state of American feeling, the wildest Irishman who would fire a hemi­ sphere to boil his potatoes is made stronger than the most thoughtful statesman. To a point of ministerial dignity — for the dignity of a nation cannot depend upon shielding the blunders of a Cabinet or the “ treachery” of its subordinates — it must be ascribed, that the entrance into Parliament of such friends of the United States as Mill, Hughes, and Fawcett, and of Forster into the Gov­ ernment does not mark the meginning of an era of good-will between the two na­ tions; that the sunken AZaframa leaves a brood of her kind to be hatched out by the heat of the next English war, and to resuscitate a semi-baiMSrs mode of war­ fare which had seemed about to pass away; and that even this ugly programme is the least disastrous alternative to which the friends of peace can look forward. Moncuke D. Conway. / ! X JANET’S QUESTIONS. Janet ! my little Janet! You think me wise I know; And that when you sit and question, With your eager face aglow, I can tell you all you ask me : My child, it is not so. I can tell my little Janet Some things she well may prize; I could tell her some whose wisdom Would be foolish in her eyes; There are things I would not tell, her, They are too sadly wise. I can tell her of noble treasures Of wisdom stored of old; To the chests where they are holden I can give her keys of gold ; And as much as she can carry She may take away untold. But till her heart is opened, Like the book upon her knee, What is written in its pages She cannot read nor see : Nor tell till the rose has blossomed If red or white Twill be. And till life’s book is opened, And read through every age, Come questions, without answers, ■ Alike from child and sage : Yet God himself is teaching His children page by page. I still am asking questions With each new leaf I see ; To your new eyes, my Janet, Yet more revealed may be. You must ask of God the questions I fail to answer thee. — Good Words. �556 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND From the Quarterly Review. A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art. By Thomas Wright, Esq.; with Illustrations from various sour-, ces, drawn and engraved by E. W. Fair­ holt, Esq. Among the many contributions which Mr. Thomas Wright has made towards Eng­ lish antiquarian research, and, in particular, towards the familiar delineation of the man­ ners and customs of our ancestors, none is, perhaps, so popular or so well known as his two volumes entitled ‘ England under the House of Hanover, illustrated from the Car­ icatures and Satires of the day.’ The very spirited woodcuts with which this book is adorned by Mr. Fairholt might alone have sufficed to make its fortune. Published only in 1848, it is already difficult to pro­ cure a copy. Encouraged by his success in this line, Mr. Wright has now attempted the wider enterprise announced in this title­ page. Wd fear that in'doing so he has been somewhat over ambitious. A history of the ‘ caricature and grotesque in literature and art,’ extending over all countries and all time, comprising not only pictorial represen­ tations, but poetry, satire, the drama, and buffoonery of all descriptions, is a subject which, if it be attempted at all in a single octavo volume, could only be so in the form of a compact and well-reasoned essay, to which Mr. Wright’s entertaining fragmen­ tary sketches bear little resemblance. The ‘immeasurable laughter’ of nations, ancient and modern, cannot be reduced within so small a compass. We must therefore con­ tent ourselves with thanking Mr. Wright for his desultory but agreeable attempts for our enlightenment. And we propose, on the present occasion, to confine ourselves entirely to the artistic portion of them: en­ livened, as it is, by a new series of Mr. Fair­ holt’s excellent illustrations. Our inability to transfer these to our own pages places us, as we feel, at a great disadvantage: many words are required to explain to the reader the contents of a picture, which a few outlines by an able hand impress at once visibly on the recollection. De­ prived of this advantage, we must confine ourselves as well as we can to the points on which caricature touches the history of social and political life, rather than those by which it borders on the great domain of Art, properly so called. GROTESQUE course, an Italian word, derived from the verb caricare, to charge or load; and therefore it means a picture which is charged or exaggerat­ ed. [“Kitratto ridicolo,” says Baretti s Dic­ tionary, “in cui fiensi grandemente accresciuti i difetti.” The old French dictionaries say. “ c’est la meme chose que charge en peinture.”] The word appears not to have come into use in Italy until the latter half of the seventeenth cen­ tury, and the earliest instance I know of its em­ ployment by an English writer is that quoted by Johnson from the ‘ Christian Morals ’ of Sir Thomas Brown, who died in 1682, but it was one of his latest writings, and was not printed till long after his death: “ Expose not thyself by fourfooted manners unto monstrous draughts (i. e. drawings) and caricatura representations.” This very quaint writer, who had passed some time in Italy, evidently uses it as an exotic word. We find it next employed by the writer of the Essay, No. 537, of the ‘ Spectator,’ who, speaking of the way in which different people are led by feelings of jealousy and prejudice to detract from the characters of others, goes on to say “From all these hands we have such draughts of mankind as are represented in those burlesque pictures which the Italians call cari­ catures, where the art consists in preserving amidst distorted proportions" and aggravated features, some distinguishing likeness of the person, but in such a manner as to transform the most agreeable beauty into the most odious •monster.” The word was not fully established in oqr language in its English form of carica­ ture until late in the last century.’ — p. 415. This, no doubt, is a serviceable, artistic definition of the word; but • its popular meaning is, perhaps, a little more limited. It would be difficult accurately to distin­ guish ‘caricature ’in composition, accord­ ing to the above description, from what we simply term ‘ grotesque ; ’ exaggeration, that is, of natural effects for the mere purpose of the ludicrous. In using the word caricature, we generally add to this notion that of satire; and the best definition for our purpose, as well as to suit ordinary ap­ prehension, though not at all originating in the primary meaning of the word, will be, that ‘ caricature ’ implies the use of the grotesque for the purpose of satire : satire, of course, of many kinds, individual, moral, political, as the case may be. Looking at our subject from this point of view, we must never eliminate from it all those amusing details respecting classical ‘ caricature,’ to which Mr. Wright has de­ voted the first part of his work, and which a clever French writer, M. Champfleury, hasjust illustrated inalittle book, superficial, ‘ The word caricature is not found in the dic­ entertaining, and ‘ cock-sure of everything,’ tionaries, I believe, until the appearance of that as the manner of his nation- is, entitled of Dr. Johnson, in 1755. Caricature is, of ‘ Histoire de la Caricature Antique.’ The �IN LITERATURE AND ART. 557 ancients were passionately fond of the gro­ erical creatures.’ In others, the desired tesque : the Greeks intermingled it strange­ effect is produced, not by these mere fabri­ ly, but gracefully, with their inimitable cre­ cations, but by grouping men and animals ations of beauty: the Romans, after their together in fanciful or ridiculous conjunc­ nature, made it coarse and sensual, where tions. And these — conceived and execut­ not merely imitative of the Hellenic. ed with a prodigality of imagination _ ‘ The discourses of Socrates resemble the amounting in many instances to genius — pictures of the painter Pauson.’ Some one constitute, perhaps, the favourite, though had ordered of Pauson the picture of a by no means the only, style of comic art horse rolling on the ground. Pauson paint­ familiar to the classical ancients; one of ed him running. The customer complained which the known examples have of late that the condition of his order had not been years greatly multiplied, owing to the disfulfilled. ‘ Turn the picture upside down,’ cowries of ancient paintings at Pompeii and said the artist, ‘ and the horse will seem to elsewhere. There is a pretty description roll on the ground.’ From this moderately of a picture of this sort in» the ‘ leones ’ of facetious anecdote of Lucian Mlom a pas­ Philostratus. It represents a ‘number of sage of Aristotle, in which it is said that BQpids riding races on swans: one is tight­ ‘ Polygnotus painted men better thanBjley ening his golden rein, another loosening"it; are; Pauson;. worse than they are; PionHSisI one dexterously wheeling round the goal: such as they are ; ’ and, lastly, from a few you might fancy that you could hell them lines of Aristophanes, in which some Pau­ encouraging their birds, and threatening son or other is jeered at for his poverty, as­ and qtSffilling with one another, as their sumed to be the lot of Bohemian artists in very faces represent: one is trying to throw general; M. Champfleury has arrived at the down his neighbour j another has just thrown rapid conclusion, that Pauson was the doyen down his; another is slipping off his steed, of all caricaturists. And he vindicates him, in order to bathe himself in the basin of the eloquently, from the aspersions of the Sta- hippodrome.’ * gyrite. ‘ Aristotle,’ says he, ‘ preoccupied But, to revert to our original distinction, with the idea of absolute beauty, has not ancient art. though rich in the grotesque, expounded the scope of caricature, and its does not produce on us the effect of carica­ importance in society. This thinker, plun­ ture ; either it has no definite satirical aim, ged in philosophical abstractions, despised orDM® has such, the satire is lost .upon our as futile an act which nevertheless consoles ignorance. The attempts of antiquaries to the people in its sorrows, avenges it on explain its productions byraWig them a its tyrants, and reproduces, with a satirical supposed libellous meaning are among the pencil, the thoughts of the multitude.’ most comical efforts of modern pedantry. Pliny the elder, after mentioning the seri­ A laughable scene on an Etruscan vase, repous compositions of the painter Antiphilus, resenting a lover. climbing |l ladder to his informs us that ‘ idem (Antiphilus) jocoso. mistress’s casement,' figures, we are told, nomine Gryllum deridiculi habitus pinxit. Jupiter and Alcmena. The capital travesUndb hoc genus picturse Gryll^voeabantur. tie of fEneas and Anchises as monkeys The meaning of this obscure passage — (PQm») is meant tolMBfee the imitative whether Grylluswas a ridiculous personage style of Virgil! The well-known and amus­ who had the misfortune to descend to posteri­ ing seejSeifn a paMs studio (tW.) is ‘ an ty in some too faithful portrait byAntiphibus,' allusion to the deMkiM of art.’ A pigmy or whether Grvllus was a serious person a.jgl and a fox (GreoorBn Museum) are a phi­ perhaps the son of Xenophon and hero of losopher and flatterer. An owl cutting off Mantinea, whose portrait was placed by the the head of a cock is Clytemnestra mur­ Athenians in the Ceramicus, whom Anti­ dering AgameAon; a^shopper philus had the audacity to caricature — driving a parrot in a car (Herculaneum) is has exercised. the wits of plenty of anti­ quaries, and will no doubt give occupation The ‘ leones. of Flavius Philostratus, a to many more. However, it seems to be of*the age of the’ Flavian Emperors, contain writer a rhe­ from this anecdote of Pliny that grotesque torical description of a series of pictures which he figures engraved on ancient gems have re­ saw, or feigns himself to have seen, in, a ‘ stoa,’ or colonnaded four or ceived the name of ‘ Grylli ’ among the ated ‘in a building® ofthe city live stories,’situ­ suburb of Neapolis.’ The curious in modern times. This title has subjects described are partly mythological, partly landscape. Someof them are identical with those been particularlyKapplied to those which of frescoes of Pompeii, overwhelmed at the same represent figures ‘ composed of the heads period; and the general description of the style of and bodies of different animals capriciously treatment such as to remind the reader closely of united, so as to form monstrous and chim- | those beautiful and singular Specimens of the art of a world gone by. �558 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE Seneca conducting Nero! Such are a few I tians, they still found pagan emblems and figamong the solemn interpretations which I ures in their models, and still went on imitat­ modern sagacity has put on these ‘ capricci, ing them, sometimes merely copying, and rather than caricatures,’ as M: Champfleury at others turning them to caricat ure or burlesque. long that, a truly calls them, with which the spirit of And this tendency continued sostill existedatre­ much later date, where there Greek antiquity, as playful as it was daring, mains of Roman buildings, the mediaeval archi­ loved to decorate the chamber and engrave tects adopted them as models, and did not hesi­ the gem. tate to copy the sculpture, although it might It is painful, and in some degree humiliat­ be evidently pagan in character. The accom­ ing, to note the transition from the light and panying cut represents a bracket in the church comparatively graceful character of ancient of Mont Majour, near Nismes, built in the tenth art, even in its comic forms, to the excessive century. The subject is a monstrous head eat­ grossness, meanness, and profanity, which ing a child, and we can hardly doubt that it characterised the corresponding branch of it was really intended for a caricature on Saturn in the middle ages in Western Europe. No devouring one of his children.’ — pp. 40-49. doubt this change was partly a continuation For our own parts, we should doubt of that which took place when the brief im­ portation of Grecian models into the West greatly whether the sculptor in question had had ceased, and the coarser Roman style Saturn in his mind at all, any more than Dante had when he imagined Satan devour­ succeeded it. ing a sinner with each of his three mouths: ‘ The transition from antiquity to what we the illustrations of which passage, in early usually understand by the name of the middle illuminations and woodcuts, are exactly ages,’ says Mr. Wright, ‘ was long and slow : like the copy in Mr. Wright’s work of this it was a period during which much of the tex Mont Majour sculpture. And generally, we ture of the old society was destroyed, while, at doubt whether Mr. Wright does not attri­ the same time, a new life was gradually given bute to classical recollections .too large a to that which remained. We know very little share in the production of that monstrous of the comic literature of this period of transi­ style of art which furnishes our next re­ tion ; its literary remains consist chiefly of a markable chapter in the history of carica­ miss of heavy theology or of lives of Saints. . . . The period between antiquity and the ture — the Ecclesiastical Grotesque, such middle ages was one of such great and general as it exhibited itself especially in France, destruction, that the gulf between ancient and England, and Germany. It has to our mediaeval art seem to us greater and more ab­ minds very distinctive marks of a rougher rupt than it really was. The want of monu­ Northern original. However this may be, ments, no doubt, prevents our seeing the gradu­ there is something humiliating, as we have al change of the ooe into the other; but enough, said, in the degradation of skill and esthet­ nevertheless, of facts remain to convince us ic perception which is evinced by these rel­ that it was not a sudden change. It is now, ics of generations to which we so often as­ indeed, generally understood that the knowledge cribe a peculiarly reverential character. and practice of the arts and manufactures of the Romans were handed onward from master No doubt its elements, so to speak, may be to pupil after the empire had fallen ; and this traced in part to some very ordinary pro­ took place especially in the towns, so that the pensities of the human mind. It has been workmanship, which had been declining in said, probably with some truth, that when character during the later periods of the em­ the most prevailing of all common motives pire, only continued in the course of degrada­ was an intense fear of hell and of evil tion afterwards. Thus, in the first Christian spirits, the most natural mode of relief, by edifices, the builders who were employed, or at reaction, was that of turning them into least many of them, must have been pagans; ridicule. And however impossible it may­ and they would fodow their old models of or­ namentation, introducing the same grotesque be, to intellects cultivated after the modern figures, the same masks and monstrous faces, fashion, to reconcile these propensities with and even sometimes the same subjects from the a strong sense of the majestic and the beau­ old mythology, to which they had been accus­ tiful, yet we cannot doubt the fact that they tomed. It is to be observed, a so, that this kind were so reconciled. As. Dante could inter­ of iconographical ornamentation had been en­ mingle his unique conceptions of supernatu­ croaching more and more upon the old archi­ ral grandeur with minute descriptions of tectural purity during the latter ages of the the farcical proceedings of the vulgarest Empire, and that it was employed more pfo- possible fiends with their pitchforks, so the •fusely in the later works, fro n which this task same artists who produced, or at least orna­ was transferred to the ecclesiasical and to the domestic architecture of the middle ages. Af­ mented, our cathedrals, with those glorious ter the architects themselves had become Chris- | expressions of thought sublimed at once by �IN LITERATURE AND ART. 559 the love of beauty and the love of heaven, I pride, envy; in fact, all the deadly sins comcould furnish them out with the strangest, I bined in one diabolical whole? — p. 74. meanest, often filthiest images which a de­ The goat-like countenance of the arch­ based imagination might suggest. Fortu­ nately, age has done so much to veil these fiend is a common mediaeval, as well as mod­ debauches of skill with sober indistinctness, ern German, type; but whoever wishes to that they seldom strike the eye of a casual tracq backward the conception of Retsch’s observer, in a sacred edifice, very offen­ Mepnistopheles, should look in particular at sively. But they lurk everywhere, and in an ivory carving, in the Maskell collection ' disgusting multitudes; in the elaborate at the British Museum, of exquisite work­ stonework of ceilings, windows, and' col­ manship, styled the Temptation of Christ, by umns ; in battlements, bosses, and corbeils ; Christoph Angermair, 1616. One more instance, and a very striking in the wood-carving of stalls, misereres, and often on the lower surface of folding one, may be mentioned by way of exception subsellia; while they are equally to be found, to the ordinary meanness and vulgarity strangest of all, where the Donna Inez of which characterise the mediaeval representa­ Lord Byron’s ‘ Don Juan ’ found them, in tions of the supernatural. It is noticed and the illuminated pages of missals, destined for engraved by Malcolm, in his ‘ History of purposes of daily devotion. So long as Caricature? The missal of King Richard these were confined to mere burlesque, no II., preserved in the BrMRi Museum, is full great harm was done, and certainly non,e of grotesque illustrSions ofEhe ordinary cast, though beautifully executed. But intended. among them is one of a higher and stranger turn of invention, the exact meaning of ‘ The number and variety of such grotesque which is unknown. It Represents the choir faces/ says Mr. Wright, ‘which we find scat­ of a solemn Gothic chapel. A white monk tered over the architectural decoration of our old is celebrating mass at the altar; another lies ecclesiastical buildings, are so great that I will prostrate before it; ten of order, seated not attempt to give any more particular classifi­ in iSir stalls, sing the service. Above these cation of them. All this church decoration was intended especially to produce its effect upon the appearEeated in a higher range of stalls, middle and lower classes, and mediaeval art was, five figures dimly drawn, which on examina­ perhaps more than anything else, suited to nga tion appear to be robed skeletons — two diaeval society, for it belonged to the mass and with the Papal tiara, two with coronets, one not to the individual. The man who could enjoy with a cardinal’s hat. The effect of the a match at grinning through horse collars, must whole is very terrific, after the fashion of have been charmed by the grotesque works of the the ghostliest conceptions of Jean Paul meidteval stone-sculptor and wood-carver; and, Richter, and otheiEGerman masters of the we may add, that these display, though often spectral and calling back to mind, at rather rude, a very high degree of skill in art, a the same: time,(the coincidence the the lines of great power of producing striking imagery? — which Shakspeare has put into the mouth of p. 1.48. ‘ In all the delineations of demons we have the same monarch — yet seen,’ he says elsewhere, ‘ the ludicrous is the spirit which chiefly predominates; and in no ‘For within the hollow crown one instance have we had a figure which is real­ That wreathes the mortal temples of a King, ly demoniacal. The devils are droll, but not Keeps Deith his court: and there the antic sits, frightful; they provoke laughter, or at least ex­ Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp? cite a smile, but they create no horror. Indeed, But when the prevailing and violent quar­ they torment their victims so good-humouredly that we hardly feel for them. There is, howev­ rels between different classes of religious er, one well-known instance in which the me­ persons in the Church perverted the same diaeval artist has shown himself thoroughly suc­ tendency into a taste for licentious ribaldry cessful in representing the features of the spirit — when it was no longer the Devil who was of evil. On the parapet of the external gallery piously laughed at in these compositions, of the cathedral church of Notre Dame in Par­ but monks, nuns, hermits, and so forth, who is, there is a figure in stone, of the ordinary were introduced as symbols of everything stature of a man, representing the demon, ap­ parently looking wi;h satisfaction upon the in­ degrading — when grotesque, assuming the habitants of the city as they were everywhere in­ attitude of satire, turned, according to our dulging in sin and wickedness. The unmixed suggested distinction, into caricature prop­ evil — horrible in its expression in this coun­ erly so called — then the practice in ques­ tenance — is marvellously portrayed. It is an tion assumed a much darker complexion. absolute Mephistopheles, carrying in his features The foulest of these representations, and a strange mixture of hateful qualities — malice, they are only too numerous, can be barely �560 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND alluded to in a work like Mr. Wright’s. Au older publication, already noticed, Mal­ colm’s very imperfect ‘ History of Carica­ ture,’ goes into more details respecting them. We will only say that those who enter on the subject had better not carry into the in­ quiry exaggerated notions respecting the decorum or the piety of the so-called ‘Ages of Faith,’ lest they should be too abruptly dispelled. Gradually, and with the progress of en­ lightenment, a somewhat more serious, though still familiar, mode of dealing with subjects of this description became general; but the change was not so early as has been sometimes supposed, since the stalls of Hen­ ry VII.’s chapel at Westminster exhibit some of the very worst of this class of offen­ ces against taste and religious feeling. But in the fifteenth century, under the hands of its artists, the supernatural, though still tainted with the grotesque, germinated into the awful. The union of the two may still be traced in that marvellous but perishing series of representations, ranging over all the known and conjectured regions of life and eternity, which decorates the Campo Santo of Pisa—that ‘‘Antechamber of Death,’ as the Italians call it. From the same sources of thought arose the profuse crop of ‘ Danses Macabres,’ dances of death, coarsely painted on thousands of cemetery walls, and drawn and engraved by number­ less artists, with more or less of spirit; phan­ tasmagorias, in which the love of the horri­ ble was repulsively mixed with that of the ludicrous, but still far less ignoble in taste and character than those early grotesques of ecclesiastical sculpture, to which our atten­ tion has been hitherto drawn. It is refreshing, however, to turn from this disagreeable class of subjects to the few specimens of a freer and healthier turn for the ludicrous, unmixed with profanity, which mediaaval art has left us. Probably one of the earliest specimens of English caricature drawing, as distinguished from mere gro­ tesque, is that described by Mr. Wright, as follows: — ‘It belongs to the Treasury of the Exchequer, and consists of two volumes of vellum, called Liber A and Liber B, form­ ing a register of treaties, marriages, and sim-, ilar documents of the reign of Edward I. The clerk who was employed in writing it seems to have been, like many of these of­ ficial clerks, somewhat of a wag, and he has amused himself by drawing in the margin figures of the inhabitants of the provinces of Edward’s crown, to which the documents referred. Some of these are plainly designed for caricature.’ Two of themare evi­ GROTESQUE dently Irishmen, their costume and weapon, the broad axe, exactly answering to the de­ scription given of them by Giraldus Cambrensis. Two are Welchmen — ludicrous figures enough, whose dress is equally in ac­ cordance with contemporary description, except in one curious particular, which writers have not noticed. The right legs are naked, like those of the German hackbutteers in the ‘ Lay of the Last Minstrel ’:— ‘ Each better knee was bared, tr aid The warrior in the escalade.’ ‘ When the official clerk who wrote this tran­ script came to documents relating to Gascony, his thoughts wandered naturally enough to its rich vineyards and the wine they supplied so plentifully, and to which, according to old re­ ports, clerks seldom showed any dislike; and accordingly, in the next sketch, we have a Gas­ con occupied diligently in pruning his vine tree.’ From the sculptured and illuminated re­ ligious-grotesque of the Middle Ages to the German and Dutch woodcut-literature of the period of the Reformation, the transition is not a very wide one. The style is pretty similar, the profanity much the same, only a fiercer element has been added by contro­ versial bitterness. Perhaps this class of works may be justly cited, in chronological series, as affording the real commencement of the art of modern political caricature, properly so called. On both sides of the question this method of ridiculing antago­ nists was most profusely resorted to. The jovial, popular figure of Martin Luther, in particular, formed, as it well might, a very favourite piece de resistance for pictorial sa­ tirists in the old interest to work upon. One cut, preserved by Mr. Wright, ‘ taken from a contemporary engraving in wood, presents a rather fantastic figure of the demon play­ ing on the bagpipes. The instrument is formed of Luther’s head, the pipe through which the devil blows entering his ear, and that through which the music is produced forming an elongation of the reformer’s nose. It was a broad intimation that Lu­ ther was a mere tool of the evil one, created for the purpose of bringing mischief into the world.’ — p. 251. But, continues Mr. Wright, the reformers were more than a match for their opponents in this sort of warfare. Doctor Martin had been identi­ fied, for various cogent reasons, with Anti­ christ : — . • ‘ But the reformers had resolved, on what ap­ peared to be much more conclusive evidence, �/! . 561 IN LITERATURE AND ART.- that Antichrist was only emblematical of the [ he chose, to rank among the most original papacy : that under this form he had been long | as well as powerful of modern artists — the dominant on earth, and that the end of his reign I famous Jacques Callot, born at the end of was then approaching. A remarkable pamph­ I the century, in 1592 — a man, as Mr. let, designed to bring this idea pictorially before i Wright truly observes, who was destined the world, was produced from the pencil of Luther’s friend, the celebrated painter Lucas j not only to give a new character to the Cranach, and appeared in the year 1521, under ! then recent art of engraving on copper, the title of “ The Passionale of Christ and An­ | but also to bring in a new style of ludic­ tichrist.” It is a small quarto, each page of rous and fanciful composition. Inimita­ which is nearly filled by a woodcut, having a ble, however, as Callot’s works are, they few lines of explanation in German below. The belong rathesl to the class of ‘ caprices,’ cut to the left represents some incident in the or ‘ ex-travaganzas,’ than of caricature in life of Christ, while that facing it to the right the sense in which we have used it; for his gives a contrasting fact in the history of Papal genius had not the satirical turn, properly tyranny. Thus, the first cut on the left repre­ speaking: and the same may be said of his sents Jesus in His humility, refusing earthly dignities and power, while on the adjoining page most successful copyisfflDella Bella, a clever ) we see the Pope, with his cardinals and bishops, artist, but who never succeeded in equalling . supported by his hosts of warriors, his cannon his origin IM The works of Romain de and fortifications, in his temporal dominion over Hooghe, who, brought up in the merely exsecular princes. On another we have Christ travagant school of Callot, was extensively washing the feet of his disciples, and in con­ employed in producing ^satirical and em­ trast the Pope compelling the Emperor to kiss blematic representations of English political his toe. And so on, through a number of illus­ events after the Restoration, perhaps serve trations, until at last we come to Christ’s ascen­ sion into heaven, in contrast with which a troop as the connecting link between the old of demons, of the most varied and singular ‘ caprice ’ and the modern political carica­ forms, have seized upon the Papal Antichrist, ture. The need for pictorial representations to and are casting him down into the flames of hell, where some of his own monks wait to re­ stimulate the political feelings of the public, in times when literature was comparatively ceive him.’— p. 254. scanty, had been of course as keenly felt in This style of pictorial satire, as the ad­ England as in c®Br errantries $ but it was * vancing art of wood-engraving began more kept in check, through the public contests > and more to multiply specimens, attained, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as we have said, much popularity in the six­ by the great inferioritjalof our artists, and teenth century in Germany, and extended particularly our engravers, to those of the itself from religious to political and purely Continent. Here and there we meet with social subjects. Its latest employment in ’striking exceptions. The vwodcuts to the those regions on a large and popular scale first edition of ‘Fox’s Martyrs’ contain, was perhaps during the Thirty Years’ War ; among the fearful scenes which they gener­ but the extremity to which that country was ally representkjcaricature likenesses of Gar­ reduced by that dreary contest seems to diner, Bonner, and other well-known per­ have extinguished its very life. The works sonages of the time, and are singularly pow­ of this class, disseminated through broad­ erful in execution. But the like of these sides, printed sheets, large illustrated folios are very few. One odd illustration, per­ and popular duodecimos, are frequently ex­ haps, of the need felt for these pictorial rep­ ecuted with considerable spirit as well as resentations, and the defectiveness of the humour. But often, and especially towards ordinary means for supplying it, is to be the latter portion of the period, they exhibit found in the peculiar taste of that age for a strong tendency to become pedantic and employing elaborate devices on banners allegorical. When the art of caricature, borne in procession or carried in the field, becoming over-learned, addresses itself to in order to stimulate the ardour of partisans. particular classes only, and requires a spe­ It will be remembered how the Scottish cial education in order to make its products Protestant lords took the field against understood, it may be-safely pronounced in Queen Mary with (among others) a great a declining condition. standard, on which the catastrophe of the Perhaps the most successful result of the Kirk of Field was represented, with the fig­ early wood cut-grotesque was, that it led the ure of Darnley lying on the ground, and. way for greater achievements in art; and the words ‘ Judge and revenge my cause, O its influence may be especially traced in the Lord.’ In the Great Rebellion such stand­ designs of one who deserves, notwithstand­ ards were abundantly used, chiefly on the ing the inferiority of the department which Royalist side, with devices both serious and THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1476. V $ t �562 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND GROTE.SQUE of the caricature order. Here is an ex­ English specimens of art, at first few and ample of the latter, taken by the Round­ far between, began to make their way into heads at Marston Moor, described by Rush­ favour among these foreign importations; worth : — and it is just at this period (the reign of George I.) that we find them first exhibiting ‘ A yellow coronet: in its middle a lion couch­ the well-known advertisements,4 Printed for ant, and behind him a mastiff seeming to Carington Bowles, next the Chapter House snatch at him, and in a label from his mouth written, Kimboltoq: at his feet little beagles, in St. Paul’s Church Yard, London,’—a and before their mouths written, Pym, Pym, house famous in the same line for full a cen­ Pym : and out of the lion’s mouth these words tury afterwards. 4 It was a defect of the earlier publica­ proceeding, Quousque tandem abutere patientions of this class,’ says Mr. Wright in his tia nostra ? ’ earlier work, 4 that they partook more of Another curious vehicle of political cari­ an emblematical character than of what we cature in England, in the seventeenth cen­ now understand by the term 44 caricature.” tury, generally of very inferior order, was Even Hogarth, when he turned his hand to that of playing-cards. 4 The earliest of politics, could not shake off his old preju­ these packs of cards known,’ says Mr. dice on this subject; and it would be diffi­ Wright, is one which appears to have been cult to point out worse examples than the published at the very moment of the restora­ two celebrated publications which drew tion of Charles II., and which was perhaps upon him so much popular odium,44 The engraved in Holland. It contains a series Times.” ’ The reader will easily under­ of caricatures on the principal acts of the stand the distinction, though^it cannot of commonwealth, and on the parliamentary course be traced out with absolute accuracy leaders.’ The ace of diamonds, for instance, in comparing different pieces. A design, : represents 4 The High Court of Justice, or for example, in which political characters Oliver’s Slaughterhouse.’ Among other are represented under the guise of various packs of a" similar character which have animals, is generally emblematic or sym­ been preserved, one relates to the Popish bolical in character. This is a simple in­ Plot, another to the Ryehouse Conspiracy stance ; but the symbolism is often compli­ (published in Holland), another to the cated, and not easy of • comprehension. South Sea Bubble. Hence a necessity for long letterpress ex­ Romain de Hooghe, already mentioned planations in the form of labels issuing as a follower of Callot, became, together from the mouths of the characters, or other­ with others of his countrymen, as we have wise — a device showing inferiority of skill. seen, the great exponent of English political The most effective caricature explains it­ satires during the events of the last Stuart self, and exhibits point instead of allegory. . reigns. Their productions must have been The favourite plates of the first part of the widely circulated in England ; and, in fact, Georgian era, which appeared periodically, , superseded in public estimation the very about 1740, styled 4 The Series of Euro­ . inferior articles of domestic manufacture. pean State Jockies,’ and so forth, were This period of Dutch supremacy among us compositions of many figures, as hiero­ may be said to have continued down to the glyphical as the frontispiece to a prophetical • date of the South Sea Bubble aforesaid ■— almanac. The gradual way in which Eng­ ‘ the time,’ says Mr. Wright, 4 in which lish comic art became emancipated from ■ caricatures began to be common in Eng­ this somewhat pedantic mould may be illus­ land ; lor they had been before published at trated by a later instance, out of Gillray’s rare intervals, and "partook so much of the works. Charles Fox was represented by character of emblems that they are not the caricaturists of his youth with a fox’s easily understood.’ The earliest of these, head, as his father, Lord Holland, had al­ and the best, were of Dutch manufacture, most invariably been before him. And so yet these were negligently executed. 4 So he is in one or two of Gillray’s first prints. little point is there often in these carica­ But Gillray almost immediately abandoned tures, and so great appears to have been the the old usage, and gave the patriot his own call for them in Holland, that people seem burly physiognomy. The gradual passage to have looked up old engravings destined from the emblematic to the simply satirical ■ originally for a totally different purpose, completes the establishment of the modern . and, adding new inscriptions and new ex- English school of caricature. The nature of the change cannot be bet­ j planations, they were published as carical tures on the Bubble.’ * ter exemplified than by reference to a piece which had prodigious vogue in its day, and * House of Hanover, i, 71. �IN LITERATURE AND ART. / x , ■ • i ■ < ■ 563 is repeatedly mentioned with interest by described in the .verses accompanying the Horace Walpole and other contemporaries. print, which are wittier than the print Copies of it are still common in collections : itself. Its great success, however, was we have seen it even jconverted into the evinced by the numerous rival works of art mounting of a lady’s fan. This is headed of both political colours which it called, ‘ The Motion, 1741/ and commemorates the forth, ‘ the Reason, ‘ the Motive/ ‘ the failure of a famous attempt to upset Sir Grounds,’ &c. It may perhaps be said with Robert Walpole’s government. The back­ truth to be the prototype of that whole ground represents Whitehall, the Treasury, class of pictorial satires, great favourites and the adjoining buildings as they then | with Englishmen, in which the small revo­ stood. (The spectator is looking down lutions of ministries and oppositions are Whitehall from a point nearly opposite travestied as scenes of popular life. the modern Admiralty : to his left is a dead We need not delay over the other innu­ wall along the east side of the street, be- merable caricatures of the same reign; • hind it private buildings, Scotland Yard, they are generally very ignoble ones; but &c., extending as far as the Banqueting ghe comparative novelty of the fashion in House; in front, the gateway over the en­ England rendered them extremely popular, trance of what is now Parliament Street, and there was a kind of frank jollity pre­ with the inscription ‘ Treasury.’) dominant in the English body corporate *> just at that epoch — the epoch, as Hallam ‘Lord Carteret, in the coach, is driven to­ satisfied himself, of the maximum of physi­ ward the Treasury by the Duke of Argyll as cal well-being to be traced in our history coachman, with the Earl of Chesterfield as among the mass of the people — which postilion, who, in their haste, are overturning peculiarly suited this development of broad the vehicle; and Lord Carteret cries “ Let me get out!” The Duke brandishes a wavy national humour. One or two specimens sword, instead of a whip; and between his may detain for a moment the eyes of those legs the heartless changeling, Bubb Dodington, who turn them over, rare as they have now sits in the form of a spaniel. . i. . ' Lord generally become, in the collection at the Cobham holds firmly by the straps behind, as British Museum, or in that far more valua­ footman; while Lord Lyttelton follows on ble one amassed in many a year of busy horseback, characterised equally by his own collectorship by Mr. Hawkins, formerly of lean form, and that of the animal on which that establishment. There is a wild force he strides. ... In front, Pulteney, drawl in the very rough execution of the print on ing his partisans by the noses, and wheeling a barrow laden with the writings of the Opposi­ the original broadside of Glover’s famous tion, the Champion, the Craftsman, Common ballad, ‘ Hosier’s Ghost,’ in which the spirits Sense, &c., exclaims, “ Zounds, they’re of ‘ English captains brave,areally form a ours ! ’” * very spectral crew. Another may be noted for the quiet savageness of its insult to This once famous squib affords, as we Lord George Sackville: it is entitled, ‘ A have said, a good exemplification of the Design for a Monument to General Wolfe passage from the old and formal to the (1760), or, a Living Dog better than a Dead modern style of political caricature. It Lion.’ The dead lion reclines below a bust bears strongly the type of Dutch origin, of this hero : the living dog at his side is a but without the carefulness of Dutch ex­ greyhound, and on his collar is the word ecution. The idea is clever and suggestive, ‘ Minden.’ And, lastly, one more, for the but the workmanship at once artificial and very oddity of the conception : ‘ Our late feeble. The likenesses were no doubt Prime Minister,’ 1743. It is simply the jolly sufficiently good to amuse the public of that face of Sir Robert Walpole, without any day; Horace Walpole calls them 1 admira­ accessories whatever, thrown back as against ble ; ’ but they are inexpressive. The wavy a pillow, and the jaws relaxed into a most sword, a relic of the emblematic school, is contagious yawn, with the words, ‘ Lo, a clumsy piece of allegory, spoiling the what are all your schemes come to ? ’ and realism of the piece; and so is the figure the lines from the Dunciad : — of Pulteney, leading the Tory squires by cords passed through their noses. The ‘ Ev’n Palinurus nodded at the helm only fun in the composition is to be found The vapour mild o’er each Committee crept, in the figures of Bubb Dodington as a Unfinished treaties in each office slept, spaniel, and Lord Lyttelton on horseback And chiefless armies dozed out the campaign, — ‘ so long, so lean, so lank, so bony,’ as And navies yawned for orders on the main.’ * House of Hanover, i. 179. i We cannot, however, pass over the period �564 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND of George II. without noticing that it seems to us to be the first in which that much enduring animal, the British lion, figures extensively as a popular character. As yet, people’s eyes were not open to his ludicrous side, and artists accordingly made free with him in every variety of emblema­ tic action. We have him roaring with in­ dignation at the misdeeds of various Minis­ ters ; ‘ hocussed ’ apparently, and with the Spaniard paring his claws, in allusion to the matter of Jenkins’s ears: frightening the Gallic cock, defending the Austrian eagle, led passive in a leash by the Duke of Newcastle; and, lastly, ‘ embracing George II.’ (1745), to the discomfiture of the Pope and Pretender, who exclaim: ‘ We shall never be a match for George while that lion stands by him I ’ Some of the names of the hack carica­ turists of this epoch are preserved by Mr. Wright; most of them of as little notoriety as merit. Among them< however, are some amateurs of social position ; and one dame of quality—a Countess of Burlington. ‘ She was the lady of the Earl who built Burlington House in Piccadilly; was the leader of one of the factions in the Opera disputes at the close of the reign of George I.; and is understood to have designed the well-known caricature upon Cuzzoni, Fari­ nelli, and Heidegger, which was etched by Guppy, whom she patronised.’ Such were the very undistinguished characteristics and history of English art in the grotesque and comic line, when the appearance of Hogarth on the stage marked an entirely new epoch in its history. It would be superfluous here to recapitulate the details of the life or achievements of our great domestic painter; the more so, as his powers in the line of caricature, pro­ perly so called, though very great, were subordinate to his far higher merits as a painter of ‘ genre,’ as the French phrase it,1 a delineator of popular scenes and incidents into which the humorous only entered as an ingredient, although a very important one. As a political caricaturist poor Hogarth made a fatal mistake: he took the wrong side:— .. 4|< tjUlW ‘It appears evident,’ says Mr. Wright, ‘that before this time (October, 1760) Hogarth had gained the favour of Lord Bute, who, by his interest with the Princess of Wales, was all powerful in the household of the young Prince. The painter had hitherto kept tolerably clear of politics in his prints, but now, unluckily for himself, he suddenly rushed into the arena of political caricature. It was generally said that Hogarth’s object was, by displaying his; GROTESQUE 1,4 zeal in the cause of his patron, to obtain an in­ crease of his pension; and he acknowledges himself that his object was gain. “ This,” he says, “being a period when war abroad and contention at home engrossed everyone’s mind, prints were thrown in the background; and the stagnation rendered it necessary that I should do some timed thing to recover my lost time, and stop a gap in my income.” Accordingly he determined to attack the great minister Pitt, who had recently been compelled to re­ sign his office, and had gone over to the oppo­ sition. It is said that John Wilkes, who had previously been Hogarth’s friend, having been privately informed of his design, went to the painter, expostulated with him, and, as he con­ tinued obstinate, threatened retaliation.’ ‘ The Times, No. 1,’ was the first fruit of Hogarth’s unlucky fit of loyalty ; a labour­ ed emblematic print, after the. older fash­ ion, to the glory of Lord Bute and discredit of Pitt. Wilkes attacked the artist in the ‘ North Briton; ’ Hogarth retorted — only too successfully—in this admirable print of Wilkes with the cap of liberty: ‘ eventu­ que impalluit ipse secundo,’ for Wilkes, with all his apparent firn and bonhomie, was a deadly enemy. The nettled patriot brought his friend Churchill, and a host more of libellers in letterpress and in cop­ perplate, on the back of his unfortunate as­ sailant : — ‘ Parodies on his own works, sneers at his personal appearance and manners, reflections upon his character, were all embodied in prints which bore such names as Hogg-ass, Hoggart, O’Garth, &c. . . . The article by Wilkes in the “ North Briton,” and Churchill’s metri­ cal epistle, irritated Hogarth more than the hostile caricatures, and were generally believed to have broken his heart. He died on the 26 th of October, 1764, little more than a year after the appearance of the attack by Wilkes, and with the taunts of his political as well as his professional enemies still ringing in his ears.’ — pp. 446-449. Hogarth left no school of followers; his genius was of too independent and peculiar an order to admit of this. Perhaps the nearest to him was Paul Sandby; described by Mr. Wright as ‘ one of those rising artists who were offended by the sneering terms in which Hogarth spoke of all artists but him­ self, and foremost among those who turned their satire against him.’ Sanby was one of the original members of the Royal Ac ardemy, and is best known as a topographical draughtsman; but Mr. Wright terms him the father of water-colour art in England. As a caricaturist he led the attack against Lord Bute and the Princess Dowager, as �I' * > IN LITERATURE AND ART. well as against Hogarth ; his sketch of the two Scotchmen travelling to London on a witch’s broomstick, with the inscription, ‘ the land before them is as the Garden of Eden, and behind them a desolate wilder­ ness,’ is one of the best of the witticisms provoked by the miso-Caledonian movement of that day. We cannot quite dgree with Mr. Wright when he says that, ‘ with the overthrow of Bute’s Ministry (1763) we may consider the English school of caricaturists as completely formed and fully established.’ On the con­ trary, it seems to us, from such collections as we have examined, that the political branch of the art was at a particularly low standard for nearly twenty years after that event. The American war produced very little amuse­ ment of this kind; it was an affair into which the nation entered with a dogged and reluctant seriousness: and Washington and Franklin, Silas Deane and John Adams, afforded but drab-eoloured subjects for the facetious limner. Social topics were just then much more in vogue ; the extravagances in dress of the Macaronies and high-flying la­ dies'of the day (the acme of absurdity, in modern costume, was certainly reached in the years 1770-1780), the humours of Vauxhall,.and Mrs. Cornely’s masquerades, di­ verted men’s minds from the bitter disap­ pointment of a contest in which nothing was to be gained either by persevering or giving way. * Perhaps the best specimen of the pictorial humour of that time was to be found, not in the shop window prints! but in the pages of the numerous magazines; some of these never appeared without an illustration or two of the jocose order, like the comic newspapers of our time. But when the incubus of the American war was removed, and domestic faction reappeared on the stage in all its pristine vivacity, the simultaneous appearance of the ‘ Rolliad ’ and its fellow satires in literature, and of Gillray and his fellow-workmen in art, heralded the advent of a new era. We must hasten to him whom Mr. Wright terms, with perfect justice in our opinion, 1 the greatest of English caricaturists, and perhaps of all caricaturists of modern times whose works are known — James Gillray.’ His father was an out-pensioner of Chel* In one of the caricatures of this period (repro­ duced by Mr. Wright in his former work) Lord Sandwich is represented with a bat in his hand, in allusion, we are told, to his fondness for cricket; but it is a curved piece of wood, much more resem­ bling that with which golf is played. And the same peculiarly shaped instrument is put into the hand of a cricket-loving lady in a.print of 1778 (Miss Wicket and Miss Trigger).' What is the date of the bat now used ? . ‘ 565 sea Hospital, and sexton of the Moravian burial-ground at Chelsea, where the carica­ turist was born in 1757. Belonging by his origin, and still more by his loose and Bohe­ mian habits, to a very ordinary sphere of life, it is certainly singular that he should have acquired such a close observation and intimate knowledge of events as they oc­ curred, not only in the political, but in the fashionable world. His great sources of information were, no doubt, the newspa­ pers ; but occasionally he seems even to have anticipated the newspapers; more than one court scandal and state intrigue seems to have been blazoned first to public notice in the well-known shop windows of Hum­ phreys or of Fores, always crowded with loiterers as soon as one of Gillray’s novel­ ties appeared. It is no doubt true, and af­ fords a curious subject of speculation to any one who may think the inquiry worth pur­ suing, that, when Gillray’s fame was estab­ lished, many an amateur of the higher cir­ cles seems to have assisted him, not merely in furnishing hints, but also sketches, which Gillray etched and sold for his own profit. Some of his best caricatures, if we are not mistaken J are from outlines supplied by Bunbury, others were composed by Brown ' low North. But these are exceptions only, and do-not invalidate the general proposi­ tion as to the singularity of the circum­ stance that this drunken son of a sexton was for many years the pictorial Aristophanes of his day, and aided, at least, by those who were behind the sceMs. of much which took place in the inner recesses of high life. His fame as a political caricaturist was first established by his burlesque prints on Rodney’s victory (1782). The rueful figure of the unlucky French admiral De Grasse, in one of them, is among the most charac­ teristic of his performances. As we have said, it was some time before he thoroughly emancipated himself from the allegorical style ; and another peculiarity of inferior ar­ tists haunted him a long' time, the fashion, namely, of overloading his compositions with quantities of letter-press, oratorical or jocose, proceeding from the mouths of his characters, as if his pencil had not been fully powerful enough to speak for itself. He rushed with an energy all his own into the war of squibs which succeeded the Fox and North coalition, and then conceived those ideals of the leading patriot, and of his friend Burke, which he afterwards rendered popular in every corner of the kingdom by a thousand repetitions. A very admirable series of sketches, however, of these two �566 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE and Lord North, as ‘War, Peace, and Neither War nor Peace,’ portraits scarcely touched with grotesque, though in skilfully exaggerated attitudes, commonly inserted in the bound volumes of Gillray’s works, is, we are satisfied, not his; it bears much more the appearance of Sayer’s workman­ ship. Fox and his personal following were peculiarly the objects of Gillray’s aversion ; and, not many years later than this, the unhappy circumstances of the Prince of Wales’s matrimonial career provoked him into a series of the most popular, daring, and spirited of all his works; some of which, however, it is not easy in our decent age to indicate even by reference, though they seem to have been exposed without scandal in the most frequented thoroughfares of Lon­ don. Gillray, however, was ‘ not a hired libeller,’says Mr. Wright,‘like Sayer and some other of the lower caricaturists of that time: he evidently chose his subjects in some degree independently, as those which offered him the best mark for ridicule; and he had so little respect for the ministers or the court, that they all felt his satire in turn.’ After exhausting his power of picto­ rial invention against the heir apparent, he found a still more congenial subject of 1 satire in the peculiarities of his Majesty George III. himself. Here, however, per­ sonal spite is said to have given the induce­ ment. ‘ According to a story which seems to be authentic, Gillray’s dislike of the King was em­ bittered bv an incident somewhat similar to that by which George II. had provoked the anger of Hogarth. Gillray had visited France, Flanders, >and Holland, and he had made sketches, a few of which he had engraved. He accompanied the painter Loutherbourg, who had left his native city of Strasburg to settle in England, and became the King’s favourite artist, to assist him in making groups for his great painting of the ‘ Siege of Valenciennes,’ Gillray sketching groups of figures while .Loutherbourg drew the landscapes and build­ ings. After their return, the King expressed a desire to see these sketches, and they were placed before him. Louthesbourg’s landscapes and buildings were plain drawings, and easy to understand, and the King expressed himself greatly pleased with them. But the King’s mind was already predjudiced against Gillray for his satirical prints : and when he saw his hasty and rough, though spirited sketches of the French soldjers, he threw them aside con­ temptuously with the remark, “ I don’t under­ stand these caricature fellows.” Perhaps the „ very word he used was intended as a sneer upon Gillray, who, we are told, felt the affront deeply, and he proceeded to retort by a carica­ ture which struck at once at one of the King’s vanities, and at his political predjudices. George III. imagined himself a great connois­ seur in the Fine Arts, and the caricature was entitled “ a connoisseur examining a Cooper’.”' It represented the King looking at the celebrat­ ed miniature of Oliver Cromwell, by the Eng­ lish painter, Samuel Cooper. When Gillray had completed this print, he is said to have ex­ claimed, “I wonder if the Royal connoisseur will understand this!” It was published on the 18th of June, 1792, and cannot have failed to produce sensation at that period of revolu­ tions. The King is made to exhibit a strange mixture of alarm with astonishment hi contem­ plating the features of this great overthrower of kingly power, at a moment when all kingly power was threatened. It will he remarked, too, that the satirist has not overlooked the royal character for domestic economy; the King is looking at the picture by the light of a candle end stuck on a save-all.’ If there is any truth in the story, certainly never was artist’s revenge more completeThe homely features of the poor old king — his prominent eyes, light eyebrows, pro­ truding lips, his shambling walk, his gaze of eager yet vacant curiosity — are even now better known to us through Gillray’s carica­ tures than through anything which theMuses of painting and sculpture, in their serious moods, could effect for him or against him. Gillray’s etchings, and Peter Pindar’s verses, were for years among the minor plagues of royalty. Not, indeed, in the estimation of the stout-hearted monarch himself, as impervious to ridicule as to argument whenever he thought himself in the right; no man in his dominions laughed more regularly at each hew caricature of Gillray than he ; and a whole set, inscribed ‘ for the king,’ forwarded to him as they came out, is said to be preserved at Wind­ sor. But they were more keenly felt by his little knot of attached courtiers, and also by sober-minded people in general, seriously apprehensive, in those inflammable times, of anything which might throw ridi­ cule on the Crown. One of the coarsest and most powerful, and which is said to have given especial offence at head-quarters, is that which represents Queen Charlotte as Milton’s Sin, between Pitt as Death and Thurlow as the Devil. Others, of less virulence, such as ‘ Affability,’ or the King and the Ploughman ; the ‘ Lesson in Apple Dumplings ; ’ the conjugal breakfast scene, where George is toasting muffins, and Char­ lotte frying sprats; the ‘ Anti-Saccharites,’ where the Royal pair are endeavouring to coax the reluctant princesses (charming figures) to take their tea without sugar, — these, and numbers more, held up the Royal �IN LITERATURE AND ART. 567 peculiarities, especially the alleged stingi­ wild and extravagant now grew on him. ness of the Court, in a manner in which the Doubtless it was sharpened by the effect on usual coarseness of the execution rather his brain of constant potations, which grad­ tended to heighten the exceeding force and ually brought on delirium tremens. His latest art-debauches — if such we may term humour of the satire. But when this country became seriously them — have often a touch of phantasma­ involved in hostilities with France, repub­ goric-pictorial nightmare, like those of Callot, lican, and afterwards imperial, a change Teniers, and Hollenbreughel. His last draw­ came over the spirit of Gillray’s satire. ing is preserved in the British Museum, exe­ Thenceforth he gradually ceased his at­ cuted when he was quite out of his mind — a tacks, not only on the Royal family, but on madman’s attempt at a portrait, said to be domestic objects of raillery in general, and that of Mr. Humphreys, the printseller. He applied himself almost exclusively to sharp­ died in 1815 ; and the inscription 4 Here lies ening the national spirit of hostility against James Gillray, the caricaturist,’ marks, or the foreign enemy. His caricatures against lately marked, the spot of his interment in the French are those by which he is best the Broadway, Westminster. His works, known, especially abroad, and occupy the once so popular, had fallen so much in greatest space in his works. This was, no fashion a few years ago that the plates were doubt, the popular line to take, and Gillray about to be sold for old copper, when they worked for money; but it would be doing were rescued by Mr. J. H. Bohn, the pub­ great injustice to the poor caricaturist’s lisher, who gave to the public those now memory to suppose that money was his well-known re-impressions which have pro­ main object. The son of the old pensioner cured for the artist a new' lease of fame. Gillray was the Rubens of caricature, and was full of the popular instincts of his class. It was not the French revolution or con­ the comparison is really one which does no quests that he opposed; it was the French injustice to the inspired Fleming. The life­ themselves, whom he hated with all the ve­ like realism of the Englishman’s boldlyhemence of a Nelson or a Windham. rounded, muscular figures, and the strong These later compositions of his are, indeed, expression communicated to them by a few marvellous performances. But they are so strokes of the pencil, are such as Antwerp rather from the intensity of imaginative fu­ in all her pride might not disdain. Any ry with which they are animated, than from one who has studied some of Rubens’s crowds of nude figures which approach the ordinary qualities of the caricaturist. They are comparatively destitute of his nearest to the order of caricature — his old humour and fun. Not that he had out­ sketches of the4 Last Judgment,’for instance, grown these. His few domestic caricatures in the Munich Gallery —■ will appreciate the are still full of them; such are those on justice of the parallel. Gillray was undoubt­ 4 All the Talents ’ (1806), one of which, the edly coarse to excess, both in conception 4 Funeral of Baron Broadbottom,’ is among and execution ; so much so, as to render his the most comic of all his productions. The last works mere objects of disgust to many ed­ survivor of its procession of mourners, the ucated in the gentler modern school. But late Marquis of Lansdowne, has now been there are also numbers of a taste more re­ dead for some years ; the features of the re­ fined than catholic, who disclaim all admira­ mainder are quite unfamiliar to this genera­ tion for Rubens on the very same grounds. tion ; and yet it is scarcely possible to look And one quality Gillray possessed which at it even now without a smile, such as we was apparently discordant from his ordinary bestow on the efforts of our cotemporaries character. Many of his delineations of female Leech or Doyle. But when Gillray tried beauty ■ are singularly successful, and he his vein on a French subject, he passed at seems to have dwelt on them with special once from the humourous to the grotesque, pleasure, for the sake of the contrast with and thence to the hideous and terrible. his usual disfigurements of humanity. His One of his eccentric powers, amounting heroines are certainly not sylphs, but they certainly to genius, comes out strongly in often are, like the celestials of Rubens, un­ these later caricatures ; that of bringing to­ commonly fine women. Let us refer to a gether an enormous number of faces, dis­ few well-known instances only ; such as his torted into every variety of grimace, and representations of Mrs. Fitzherbert at her yet preserving a wonderfully human ex­ best time, notwithstanding the. prominence pression. We would signalise particularly of the aquiline feature, which it was his two, one almost tragical, thh 4 Apotheosis of business to enhance ; of George III.’s daugh­ Hoche;’ one farcical, the ‘Westminster ters in the 4 Anti-Saccharites,’ and other Election’ (1804). The tendency to the prints; the Duchess of Richmond as the �.. 568 1 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE ‘ Height of Fashion; ’ the charming seated figure entitled ‘ Modern Elegance,’ 1795 (said to be Lady Charlotte Campbell, but is it not an older person ?), in which, though the costume is playfully exaggerated, the features are finely drawn; the beauty (evi­ dently a portrait also) who is reading Monk Lewis’s ‘Tales of Wonder’ to a' bevy of I very homely gossips (1802); and even the I common ball-room figures, in ‘ A Broad 1 1'Hint of not meaning to Dance’ (1804), in which, however, the design is Brownlow North’s. Still, we fear that Gillray must be gener­ ally comprehended in the somewhat auda­ cious assertion of M. Champfleury, that ‘satirists, from Moliere down to Prudhon, only recognise two conditions for women — those of courtezan and housewife.’ It will be seen that several of our instances are taken from what may be termed social, in contradistinction to political, caricatures, many of which are quite equally worthy of the master, although not those on which his popularity mainly rests. They are often of a libellous boldness, inconceivable now-adays, and equally so in earlier times; for the generation to which Gillray belonged stood out in bad pre-eminence among all others in English domestic history in respect of this particular kind of coarseness — a generation which could see exposed in the shop-windows such shameless pictorial sa­ tires as those directed against Lady Arch­ er, and other dames of gambling celebrity; or the representation of the dashing daugh, ters of a countess as the ‘ Three Graces in a High Wind; ’ or of a titled beauty nurs­ ing her infant in a ball-dress, as the ‘ Fash­ ionable Mamma; ’ or of Lady Cecilia John­ ston, an inoffensive lady, of unobtrusive style as well as character, against whom it is said the artist had conceived some grudge, which induced him spitefully to represent her in all manner of ludicrous situations. Others of this class, it may be added, related to darker scandals behind the scenes, and may not now be met with in the ordinary collections of Gillray’s works, though they excited little comment, and no disgust, in his day. To pass again, for one moment only, from Gillray’s merit as an artist, to his specialty as a caricaturist; his strong i power of seizing likenesses, and giving them ! a ludicrous expression, was, no doubt, the 1 chief element of his popularity. In this he surpassed all his predecessors, though he has been equalled by one or two of his succes­ sors. But in one bye-quality we are in­ clined to think him unrivalled: the faculty of giving by a few touches a kind of double expression to a countenance; cowardice underlying bravado; impudence, affected, modesty. See, as a specimen, the exceedingly comic representation of Addington and Napoleon, sword in hand, daring each other to cross the Channel which flows between them. A single figure of Burke as an ‘Uniform Whig’ (1791), admirably drawn in other respects, conveys much of this mingled meaning, though not quite so easily decipherable. The sage is lean­ ing against a statue of George III.; he holds in one hand Burke’s ‘ Thoughts on the Revolution,’ in the other a cap of liber­ ty ; the motto, ‘ I preserve my consistency, by varying my means to secure the unity of my end.’ The caricaturist’s experience had attained for once to ‘something like prophetic strain.’ His facility of execution was wonderful. It must, no doubt, be added, as a natural qualification of such praise, that his drawing is often incorrect and careless in the extreme, even after all allowance for what we have never seen fully explained, the vast difference, in point of excellence, between various copies of what is apparently the same print. He is said ‘to have .etched his ideas at once upon £he copper, without making a previ­ ous drawing, his only guides being sketches of the distinguished characters he intended to produce, made on small pieces of card, which he always carried about with him.’ Of Rowlandson (born 1756, died 1827), Mr. Wright speaks in high terms of praise, saying that he ‘ doubtlessly stands second to ■ Gillray, and may, in some respects, be con­ sidered as his equal. . He was distin­ guished by a remarkable versatility of tal­ ent, by a great fecundity of imagination, and by a skill in grouping quite equal to that of Gillray, and with a singular ease in forming his groups of a great variety of figures. It has been remarked, too, that no artist ever possessed the power of Rowland­ son of expressing so much with so little ef­ fort.’ We are sorry that we cannot, for our own parts, subscribe to these eulogies. As a political caricaturist — to which line he resorted as a matter of trade, espousing the Whig side as others did the Tory — he seems to us dujl enough. In general sub­ jects he succeeded better, yet appears to us endowed with all Gillray’s coarseness, but with little of his satirical power and none of his artistic genius. James Sayer, cotemporary with these two as an artist, deserves mention as pos­ sessed of a certain amount of original tai-' ent, though not of a very high order. He was ‘ a bad draughtsman,’ says Mr. Wright �IN LITERATURE AND ART. —- surely too sweeping a criticism — ‘ and his pictures are produced more by labour than by skill in drawing, but they possess a considerable amount of humour.’ His like­ nesses, generally produced by a small num­ ber of hard and carefully-executed lines, seem to us of great merit as such, though wanting in life and energy. He was almost exclusively a political caricaturist, and, unlike the reckless ^but independent Gillray, he turned his talents to good ac. count, devoting himself to the cause of Pitt, who bestowed on him in return the ‘ not , unlucrative offices of Marshal of the Court of Exchequer, Receiver of the Sixpenny Dues, and Cursitor.’ His most famous production was the well-known ‘ Carlo ' Khan’s Triumphal Entry into Leadenhallstreet’ (on the occasion of Fox’s India Bill, 1783), still common in collections. Butthis succeeded chiefly because it fell in with the humour of the time; though the idea is good, the execution is cold, and it is encum­ bered with symbolical accessories, after the older fashion which we have described. Among his minor works, an unfinished proof of Boswell, Mrs. Piozzi, and others of the Johnsonian clique, with the ghost of the Doctor himself scowling at them from above, exhibits a good deal of his peculiar laborious talent. Our catalogue of cotemporaries would hardly be complete without including in it the clever and goodhumoured amateur Henry Bunbury, though no dabbler in State affairs, like jGillray and Sayer. Bunbury had (as Mr. Wright says) ‘ little taste for political caricature, and seldom meddled with it. He preferred scenes of social life and humourous incidents of cotemporary manners, fashionable or popular.’ It may be added that he does not seem to have often inserted portraits in his .pieces. He was rather the forerunner of the modern French ' school of grotesque artists ‘ de genre,’ of whom we shall have a word to say presently. His drawing, says Mr. Wright, ‘ was often bold and good, but he had little skill in etching.’ After some early essays in that line, “ his designs were engraved by various persons, and his own style was sometimes modified in this pro­ cess.’ We have ourselyes seen original drawings by his hand, very superior both in force and refinement to the coarse style of the ordinary plates which bear his name. z Perhaps the best known and most ludicrous t of his compositions are his illustrations of ‘ Geoffry Gambado’s Art of Horsemanship.’ Bunbury was brother to the baronet who married Lady Sarah Lennox, and himself 569 husband of one of Goldsmith’s’ favourite Miss Hornecks. He died in 1811, the date of his last work, ‘ A Barber’s Shop in Assize Time,’ engraved by Gillray. Passing over Isaac Cruikshank — a very prolific artist of the same period with Gill­ ray, of whom he was a pretty close imitator — we arrive at his illustrious son George, who still survives to connect our era with the last. He is now almost forgotten as a political caricaturist, in which line he em­ barked, fifty years ago, under the auspices of his father, but soon abandoned it to achieve his peculiar andaunique celebrity as an etcher of small figures, chiefly in the way of illustrations to letterpress, in which humour and the most exquisite appreciation of the ludicrous alternate with beauty and pathos of no common order. ‘ The ambi­ tion of George Cruikshank,’ says Mr. Wright, ‘ was to draw what Hogarth called moral comedies, pictures of society through a series of acts and scenes, always pointed with some great moral; and it must be con­ fessed that he has, through a long career, succeeded admirably.’ Every one is aware of the zeal with which the amiable artist has devoted himself to promote the public good by this employment of his brain, of which an amusing illustration is furnished by the current story — for the truth of which, however, we will by no means vouch — that he insisted on formally presenting his ‘Drunkard’s Progress’ to her Majesty! And yet, to our taste, George Cruikshank’s most ambitious attempts in this line are scarcely equal to the trifling productions which he has now and then thrown off in mere exuberance of genius and animal spirits. The first edition of a little book, entitled ‘ German Popular Stories,’ which appeared in 1834 (the letterpress was by the late Mr. Jardine), contains, on the mi­ nutest possible scale, some of the most per-1feet gems, both of humour and gracefulness, which are anywhere to be found. The reader need only cast his eye on ‘ Cherry, or the Frog-Bride ; ’ the ‘ Tailor and the Bear-; ’ ‘ Rumpelstiltskin,’ and the inimi­ table procession of country folks jumping into the lake after the supposed flocks of sheep in ‘ Pee-wit,’ to learn how much of fun, and grotesque, and elegance of figures also, and beauty of landscape, may be conveyed in how few lines. The history of English caricature of the Georgian era would be incomplete without a notice of the various printsellers who supplied the material to the public, and whose shop-windows furnished, not so many years ago, favourite stages or stations, as it �570 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND were, for the wandering Cockney, on his peregrinations between East and West; and with this Mr. Wright has accordingly fur­ nished us. Perhaps the most celebrated were Humphreys, of New Bond-street and Piccadilly (whom, however, Mr. Wright does not mention), and Fores. ‘ S. W. Fores dwelt first at No 3, Piccadilly, but afterwards establishe i himself at No. 50, the corner of Sackville Street, where the name still remains. Fores seems to have been most fertile in ingenious expedients for the extension of his business. He formed a sort of library of cari­ catures, and other prints, and charged for ad­ mission to look at them; and he afterwards adopt­ ed a system of lending them out in portfolios for evening parties, at which these portfolios of car­ icatures became a very fashionable amusement in the latter part of the last century. At times some remarkable curiosity was employed to add to the attractions of his shop. Thus, on carica­ tures published in 1790, we find the statement that “ In Fores Caricature Museum is the completest collection in the kingdom. Also the Head and Hand of Count Struenzee. Admit­ tance, one shilling.” Caricatures against the French revolutionists, published in 1793, bear imprints stating that they were “ published by S. W. Fores, No. 3 ,Piccadilly, where may be seen a Complete Model of the Guillotine. Ad­ mittance, one shilling.” In some this model is said to be six feet high.’ Mr. Wright closes his list with George Cruikshank, as the last representative of the great school of caricaturists formed in the reign of George HI. But there is anoth­ er, still living among us, whose experience as an artist goes very nearly back to that reign, and who may be in the most literal sense called the last of the political caricatu­ rists as he is considered by many the best — Mr. Doyle, the world-famous H.B. of the past generation. Those who belonged to it can well remember the height of popularity which his lithographed sketches achieved, the little blockades before the shop-windows in St. James’s-street and the Flaymarket whenever a new one appeared, and the con­ venient topic of conversation which it was sure to afford to men of the clubs, when meet­ ing each other on the pavement. For it was to critics of this class that H.B. particularly addressed himself. His productions wanted the popular vigour of those of Gillray and his school. But it is to Mr. Doyle’s high honour that they were also entirely free from the scandalous coarseness of his predecessors, and that he showed the English public how the purposes of political satire could be fully se­ cured without departing a hand’s breadth from the dignity of the artist or the charac­ GROTESQUE ter of the gentleman. As a delineator of figures, we cannot esteem him very success­ ful. They run too much into the long and lanky; portions of the outline, the extremities in particular, are often almost effeminate in their refinement: when he attempts a really broad, bluff personage, he is apt to produce the effect of a fine gentleman masquerading as a Falstaff. But it was in the likeness of his portraits, and their expression, that his chief and singular merit consisted. And in these, again, his success was extremely va­ rious. His fortune, in a professional sense, may be said to have been made by three faces — those of the Duke of Wellington, King William IV., and Lord Brougham. The provoking, sly no-meaning, establishing itself on the iron mask of the first; the goodhumoured, embarrassed expression of the second; the infinite variety of grotesque fancies conveyed in the contorted features of the third ; these were reproduced, week after week, for years, with a variety and fertility perfectly astonishing. In other cases he never could succeed in hitting off even a tolerable likeness : of his hundred or so representations of the late Sir Robert Peel, we do not recollect one which conveys to us any real remembrance of the original. The Peel of caricaturists in general, not only of H.B.,was a conventional person­ age ; .as is, though in a less marked degree, the Gladstone of our present popular artists. Still more remarkable was the failure of H.B., in common with his predecessors, in catching the likeness of Gtsorge IV. In all the countless burlesque representations of that personage, from the handsome youth of 1780 to the puffy veteran of 1827, there are scarcely any which present a tolerable re­ semblance. The courtly Lawrence suc­ ceed in portraying him well enough ; the caricaturists, usually so happy, never. H. B.’s published sketches amount to some nine hundred, and afford a capital key to the cabinet and parliamentary history of Eng­ land, from the Ministry of Wellington to the end of Lord Melbourne’s. While num­ bers of them *o credit to the artist’s politi­ d cal sagacity as well as his skill, we cannot forbear to notice one which, to our present notions, illustrates the ‘ nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurse ’ — produced when the Tories, to whom H.B. appertain­ ed with all his heart, anticipated the tri­ umphs of French over English diplomacy under the conduct of our then Foreign Sec­ retary : it is No. 171 in the series, ‘The Lame leading the Blind: ’ Lord Palmers­ ton, guided into a ditch by Talleyrand. With the renowned H. B. the line of regu- �IN LITERATURE AND ART. lar British caricaturists closes. The taste of the nation has sought another direction. But do not let us be misunderstood. The spir­ it of the' art survives, and will do so as long as England is a free country and Englishmen retain a sense of the ludicrous ; but its form is so completely changed, by the substitu­ tion of the cheap illustrated newspaper for the comparatively expensive broad-sheet of the last century, that a more convenient moment could not be found, for closing the old chapter in artistic history and beginning a new one, than that in. which Doyle ceas­ ed his labours and the ‘ Punch ’ school of satirists began theirs. The very distinct mode of treatment which the small size of the modern comic newspaper, compared with the old sheet, necessarily requires, combines with other causes of difference to render this new school something quite apart from the old one. Its success must needs be obtained more through skill in the delinea­ tion of individual faces, and compactness of wit in the 1 motive ’ of the composition, than through breadth of treatment, or (generally speaking) through talent for grouping. In the delineation of faces, however, and es­ pecially in portrait, which is the specialty of political caricature, the designers with whom we are now dealing have an immense advantage over those of former times, in being able to use the results of the art of photography. Photographs of faces and fig­ ures, always at hand, are a very superior class of auxiliaries to those hasty ‘ drawings on bits of card ’ with which Gillray was wont to content himself. The popularity which our present favourites have earned is prob­ ably more real, certainly much more exten­ sive, than that gained by their most success­ ful predecessors, from Hogarth to Cruik-1 shank : with whose names that of Leech, so lately lost to us, and of his living associates and rivals, of whom we need only name Doyle the younger and John Tenniel as specimens, will assuredly find their places in the future annals of art. But, arrived at this turning point, we must take farewell of our subject, devoting only a few pages more to the cotemporary history of modern French caricature, on which Mr. Wright (to our regret) does not enter. We had hoped to derive considerable assistance for this purpose from a new publication of our friend M. Champfleury, entitled ‘ Histoire de la Caricature Moderne,’ which has just fallen into our hands ; but although the title is thus comprehensive, the contents reduce themselves to a few lively pages of panegyric on two or three recent artists, which seem to be diotated’in great measure by personal feelings. I 571 The general subject can be nowhere so well studied in a summary way as in the two volumes of M. Jaime (‘ Musee de la Carica­ ture’), with very fairly executed illustra­ tions, to which we can only apply the an­ cient reproach, ‘ tantamne rem tarn negligenter; ’ for M. Jaime has but treated' the matter in a perfunctory way, as if afraid of dwelling too much on it. It has not, however, the interest which attaches either to the coarser but bolder style of art inaug­ urated by the Germans in the sixteenth cen­ tury, or to that which prevailed in the great English age of political caricature. Callot was indeed aJFrenchman, by race at least, though born in Lorraine, then independ­ ent ; but his associations were more with the school of the Netherlands than that of France. Nor had he any followers of note in the latter country. The jealous wake­ fulness of French government, and the cold and measured style which French art de­ rived from a close addiction to supposed classical models, were both alike unfavoura­ ble to the development of the artistic empire of ‘ Laughter, holding both his sides.’ French artists of the eighteenth century for the most part touched ludicrous subjects in a decorous and timid way, as if ashamed of them. As the literature of theEeountry is said to abound in wit, while it is poor in hu­ mour, so its pictorial talent found vent rath­ er in the neat and effective K tableau de genrejlthan in the irregularity of the gro­ tesque ; or, to employ another simile, French cbmic art was to English as the genteel comedy to the screaming farce. And the same was the case (to treat the subject briefly) with that of other nations over which France exercised predominant influ­ ence. Chodowiecki was the popular Ger­ man engraver of domesti(?fecenes in the last century, and his copper-plates have great delicacy of execution and considerable pow­ er of expression. He was in high vogue for the purpose of illustrating with cuts the novels and the poetry of the great age of German literature, and his productions are extraordinarily numerous. But he habitu­ ally shrank from the grotesque. His ad­ mirers styled him the German Hogarth — a comparison which he, we are told, rejected with some indignation, and which Hogarth, could he have known it, would certainly have rejected likewise; for Chodowiecki, with all his other merits, very seldom ap­ proaches the ludicrous, and never soars to the height or descends to the depth of cari­ cature. The unbounded licence of the first French Revolution, and the strange mixture of the burlesque with the terrible which attended �572 A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND its progress, gave of course for some years the most favourable opportunities possible for the exercise of pictorial wit, so far as the nation possessed it. There can be no great­ er treat to one who loves to tread the by­ ways of history, often the shortest cuts to truth, than to turn over the series of those magnificent volumes in the Imperial Libra­ ry of Paris, in which the whole pictorial an­ nals of the last century or so in France are preserved; everything arranged as nearly as may be in order of date, and not of sub­ jects : portraits, festal shows and triumphs, processions, battles, riots, great events, rep­ resented under every form down to the rough newspaper woodcut and street carica­ ture, unrolling in one vast phantasmagoria before the eye. We have much that is val­ uable and useful in our Museum, but noth­ ing, in the matter of historical art, compara­ ble to this collection. An inadequate idea of it only can be formed from the miscella­ neous contents of the well-known three fo­ lio volumes of prints, entitled ‘ Tableaux de la Revolution Francaise.’ The earlier part of the caricatures of that age are the most humourous and also the best executed. As the tragedy deepened, fun became more and more out of place; and the satirists who had seen its outbreak having most of them lost their heads or fled the country, the business fell into the hands of more vulgar workmen. One of the first (1788) may be mentioned, not so much for its execution, which is tame enough, as because it is (as far as we know) the real original of a piece of wit which has since made its fortune in every language, and been falsely attributed to many facetious celebrities. Calonne, as a monkey, has assembled his 1 notables,’ a flock. of barn-door fowl. ‘ Mes chers administres, je vous ai rassembles pour savoir a quelle sauce vous voulez etre manges.’ ‘Maisnous ne voulons pas etre manges du tout.’ ‘ Vous vous ecartez de la question.’ But French art, as we have seen, refined and softened into effeminacy under the class civilization of the ancien regime, and ren­ dered prudish also by its adherence to classi­ cal models, had its decorum soon shocked by too coarse intermixture of the grotesque. In­ deed, the reason often given by Frenchmen of the last generation for the acknowledged inferiority of their caricatures to ours, was the superiority of French taste, which could not accommodate itselfto ‘ignoble’ exaggeration. On the whole, therefore, those of the revo-< lutionary series of which we have been speaking are more interesting, historically, and also from the keen wit of ten developed in them, than from their execution. There GROTESQUE is no French Gillray or Rowlandson. Here and there, however, among a multitude of inferior performances, the eye is struck by one really remarkable as a work of a higher order than our English cotemporary series could furnish. Such is the famous ‘ Arresta-' tion du Roi d Varennes,’ 1791. The wellknown features of the Royal party, seated at supper with lights, are brought out with a force worthy of Rembrandt, and with slight but marked caricature; while the fierce, excited patriotic figures, closing in on them from every side, have a vigour which is really terrific. Another, in a different style, is the ‘ Interieur d’un Comite Revolutionnaire,’ 1793. It is said, indeed, to have been designed by a first-rate artist, Fragonai’S, one who doubtless wrought with a will, for he had prostituted his very considerable talents to please the luxurious profligacy of the last days of the ancient regime, and the stern Revolution had stopped his trade, an­ nihilated his effeminate customers, and re­ duced him to poverty. Fragonard’s powers as a caricaturist are characterised by a wellknown anecdote. He was employed in painting Mademoiselle Guimard, the famous dancer, as Terpsichore; but the lady quar­ relled with him, and engaged another to complete the work. The irritated painter got access to the picture, and with three or four strokes of his brush turned the face of Terp­ sichore into that of a fury. The print now in question is a copper-plate, executed with exceeding delicacy of touch. A dozen fig­ ures of men of the people, in revolutionary costume, are assembled round a long table in a dilapidated hall of some public building. A young ‘ ci-devant,’ his wife and child, are introduced through an open door by an ush­ er armed with a pike. If the artist’s inten­ tion was to produce effect by the contrast of these three graceful figures with the vulgar types of the rest of the party, he has suc­ ceeded admirably. They are humbly pre­ senting their papers for examination ; but it is pretty clear that the estimable commit­ teeman, to whom the noble is handing his passport, cannot read it. The cunning, quiet, lawyer-like secretary of the commit­ tee, pen in hand, is evidently doing all its work. At the opposite end of the table an excited member is addressing to the walls what must be an harangue of high elo­ quence ; but no one is listening to him, and the two personages immediately behind him are evidently determined to hear no noise but their.own. But our favourite figure — and one well worthy of Hogarth — is that of the sentinel off duty: he is seated beside a bottle, pike in hand, enjoying his long pipe, �iwinM i^i i IN LITERATURE AND ART. 573 and evidently, from the expression of his tember. It had a brief and feverish revi­ face, far advanced from the excited into the val under the Republic of 1848 ; some of meditative stage of convivial patriotism. A its productions in that period are worth a placard on the door announces, somewhat moment’s notice, both from their execution contradictorily as well as ungrammatically, and good humour: we remember two ‘ Ici on se tutoyent: fermez la porte s’il vous of the class of general interest; the 1 Ap­ plait! ’ Altogether there is much more of parition du Serpent de Mer,’ a boat full of the comic than the ferocious about the pa­ kings, startled by the appearance of the new triots ; and one may hope that the trembling Republic as the problematical monster of family, for whom it is impossible not to feel the deep ; and the ‘ Ecole de Natation,’ in an interest, will this time be ‘ quittespourla which the various Kings and Emperors.of peur.’ Europe are floundering in a ludicrous, variThe popular governments — Revolutiona­ ety of attitudes among the billows of revo­ ry and of the First Empire — easily tamed lution, while the female rulers of Britain, the spirit of caricature, as they did that of Spain, and Portugal are kept afloat by their more dangerous enemies, and it only revived crinolines. But under the decorous rule of when France was replaced under the. tyran­ the Empire, no such violation of the re­ ny of legitimacy. There is a great deal of spect due to constituted authorities at home merit in those on the Bonapartist side, of is any longer tolerate^, while ridicule, 1814 and 1815 ; many of them appear to be even of foreign potentates, is permitted executed by some one clever artist, to us un­ only under polite restrictions. Debarred known. We will only notice one of them,' from this mode of expressing itself, French the ‘Voeu d’un Royaliste, ou la seconde en­ gaiety finds one of its principal outlets, in tree triomphante.’ Louis XVIII. is mounted the more innocent shape of social carica­ behind a Cossack — the horse and man are ture, which was never so popular, or culti­ admirably drawn—while the poor King’s vated by artists of so much eminence, as expression, between terror and a sense’ of within the last thirty years. And here we the ludicrous of his position, is worthy of the must notice a singular change in French best efforts of Gillray or Doyle. workmanship, which appears to us to have Caricature continued to be a keen party been occasioned chiefly or wholly by the weapon in France through the period of introduction of lithography. We have al­ the Restoration, and in the early years of ready observed how much difficulty its art­ Louis Philippe. The latter monarch’s head ists found in departing from the rules of especially, under the resemblance of a pear, classical outline and correct drawing, so which Nature had rendered appropriate, long as the old-fashioned line engraving was popularised in a thousand ludicrous or prevailed, and the consequent inferiority of ignominious representations; his Gillray French to English caricature in breadth, was Honore Daumier, a special friend and its superiority in congjlmess. The intro­ favourite of M. Champfleury, but in whom duction and great popularity of lithography we are unable ourselves to recognize more in'France seems to have altogether changed than secondary merit. ‘ Entre tous, Dau­ the popular taste. Artists now dash off, mier fut celui qui accommoda la poire aux rather than embody, their humorous con­ sauces les plus diverses. Le roi avait une ceptions in the sketchiesLof all possible honnete physionomie, large et etouffee. styles, and that which affords the greatest La caricature, par l’exageration des lignes licence for grotesque distortions of figure \ du masque, par les differents sentimens and face. Boilly, a clever and fertile lithog­ qu’elle preta a l’homme au toupet, le ren- rapher, was perhaps the first to bring dit typique, et laissa un ineffa?able relief. this style of composition into vogue. But Les adversaires sont utiles. En politique, to such an extent has the revolution now un ennemi v.aut souvent mieux qu’un ami.’ gone, while we, on the other hand, have The genius of Daumier had some analogy been pruning the luxuriance of the old with that of the sculptor-caricaturist Dan- genius of caricature, that the positions of tan. the two countries seem to have become re­ But, the liberty of art, like that of the versed, and England to be now the country Tribune, degenerated into licence, and of classic, France of grotesque art; in the France has never been able in her long age comic line of which any reader may judge of State tempests to maintain the line be­ for himself, by comparing the style of the tween the two. Political caricature was cuts in ‘ Punch,’, for instance, with those in once more extinguished in the Orleans the ‘ Charivari.’ We cannot say that we reign, with the applause of decent people find the change on the other side of the in general, by the so-called laws of Sep- Channel an improvement, or that we have �I 574 / A HISTORY OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE. been enabled to acquire a taste for the hasty lithographed caricatures of popular figures and scenes which encumber French print-shops. The works of Bunbury, among English artists of this kind of renown, per­ haps most nearly approach them ; but these, rough though they are, have, at all events, a body and substance, and consequently a vigour, which their Gallic successors appear to us to lack, and which they endeavour too often to supply by loose exaggeration. However, it is idle to set up our own canons of taste in opposition to that of a nation, and a foreign nation into the bargain ; and we may do our readers more service by giving them a few short notices of the leading artists who have risen to popular­ ity in modern France by this style of com­ position. Nicolas Toussaint Charlet had an educa, tion and parentage somewhat like those of our Gillray; born in 1792, the son of an old dragoon of Sambre-et-Meuse, he began his career in a not very noble occupation, being employed in the office where military recruits were registered and measured: and it was in that function, possibly, that he picked up and stored in his memory those thousand types of grotesque young con­ scripts and old grognards, ‘ enfants de troupe,’ ‘ tourlourous,’ and ‘ gamins,’ with which he filled the shop-windows while amusing the multitude with their darling ‘ scenes populaires.’ He was not exactly a caricaturist in the peculiar sense which we have given to the word, but an artist‘de genre; ’ in his own peculiar line few have surpassed him. It must be noticed that his sturdy Bonapartism evinced itself in some ambitious attempts at more serious compo•sitions ; one of which, ‘ La Garde meurt et ne se rend pas,’ established his fame in 1816, while an ‘ Episode de la Campagne de Russie ’ (1836) is ranked at the head of his works by some of his admirers. But for our part, we greatly prefer the exquisite naivete, though without much of the Eng­ lish vigour, which characterises some of his popular scenes; such — to quote one among a thousand — as that in which a peasant, looking down with the utmost gravity on a comrade who is lying in the road, helplessly drunk, exclaims, ‘ Voilh pourtant comme je serai dimanche ! ’ Charlet, who died in 1845, left some two thousand lithographed designs, besides numerous water-colours and etchings. Paul Chevalier Gavarni, born in 1801, ranks at the head of the living caricaturists of France, unless the Vicomte Amedee de Noe (under his nom de plume, or rather de crayon, of ‘ Cham,’ Ham the son of Noah) be supposed to contest with him that eminence. The journal ‘ Les Gens du Monde ’ (1835), and subsequently the ‘Charivari,’ owed to him the greater part of tlaeir celebrity. If not equal to Charlet in the ‘ naif’ and simply popular style, Gavarni excels him in satiri­ cal force and in variety. Twenty-five years hence (says Theophile Gautier) ‘ it is through Gavarni that the workhwill know of the existence of Duchesses of the Rue du Helder, of Lorettes, students, and so forth.’ Gavarni visited England in 1849, where, according to his biographer M. de Lacaze (in the ‘ Nouvelle Biographie Ge­ nerale ’), he took so profound a dislike to our English aristocratic social system (it was the year, be it remembered, in which the doctrine ‘la propriete c’est- le vol,’ took some short hold on Parisian spirits), that he fell into a fit of‘le spleen,’ became misanthrophic, and produced nothing fora long time but sketches of ‘ gin-shop frequent­ ers, thieves, street-sweepers, Irishmen, and the beggars of St. Giles’s and Whitechapel;’ but we are happy to learn, from the same authority, that he soon recovered his gaiety in the less oppresive atmosphere of Paris. His ‘ CEuvres Choisies’ were published as long ago as 1845, in four volumes. ‘ Deja,’ says Champfleury, ‘ son oeuvre est curieuse h consulter comme l’expression d’un peintre de moeurs epris d’ideal elegant dans une epoque bourgeoise.’ Completing these brief notices of modern French caricaturists with the mere mention, of the great artist Gustave Dore, who has lately condescended to some clever extrava­ gances allied to caricature, and of that ec­ centric novelty Griset,.we must now con­ * clude our hasty retrospect of the art in general. The institution of the ‘ comic illustrated newspaper ’ has now made the tour of the world ; the United States fur­ nish abundant specimens; Germany and Italy toil manfully in the wake of France and England; we have even seen political carica­ tures from Rio de Janeiro nearly as good as the ordinary productions of either. But it is impossible to follow a subject so greatly widening in its dimensions; and as cheap­ ness of execution, while it extends the popularity of this class of compositions, diminishes the labour expended on them, we have not to expect for the future either productions of so much interest, or artists of such celebrity, as some of those dealt with in this article. �575 REST FOR THE WEARY. I ,arest for the weary. “ TRere remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God/’— Heb. iv. 9. Dear the storm-won calm of autumn Brooding o’er the quiet lea; Sweet the distant harp-like murmur Trembling from the charmed sea. Nestling breezes clog the branches; Leaves lie swooning on the air; Nature’s myriad hands are folding O’er her gentle heart, for prayer. Make the lean grave sleek with treasn Whilst they, weary, take their rest. Dead they are not; only sleeping, Dull although their senses be, Yet they for the summons listen, Calling to eternity. Brothers, sleeping in the Saviour, Sound their dreamless sleep and ble But we trust, when this is broken, There remaineth still a rest ! New-born on the lap of silence, Cradled on a hoary tomb, Lo 1 babe evening craves a blessing As the day forsakes the gloom; As one lingering sunbeam flushes The grey spire to golden red, And the motto “ peace ” is blazoned Glorious o’er the resting dead. Peace be to the shapeless ashes, Perfect once in valour’s mould; Once on fire for truth and duty, Now without a spark, and cold.. Smiting was the hero smitten, Swordless hands now cross his breast; Share we his mute supplication ; Weary, may the soldier rest! Peace to him who braved the tempest, Polar ice, and tropic wave; Long the homeless sea who traversed, Then came home to find a grave ! In this calmest roadstead anchored, May no more the sailor rove, Till he lose himself for ever “ In the ocean of God’s love! ” Peace to him, the tried and saintly; Wise to counsel, apt to cheer; With a sober smile for gladness, With a hope for every tear. Earth lies lightly on his bosom, Faith bedecks his priestly tomb With the sacred flowers that symbol Life, and light, and deathless bloom. Peace to him who bears no legend Carved above his lowly bed, Save that he was found, unsheltered From the storm and winter, dead. Peace to him, that unknown brother, Quit of want, and woe, and shame; Trust we that the nameless stranger Bears in heaven a filial name 1 From the four winds assembled, Kindred in the fate to die ; Eld and infant, alien, homebred, Neighbours now, how calm they lie! Valour, beauty, learning, goodness, With the weight of life opprest, THE BITTER AND THE SWEET. Come, darling Effie, Come, take the cup: Effie must drink it all — Drink it all up.x / Darling, I know it is Bitter and bad; But ’twill make Effie dear . Rosy and glad. Mother would take it all For her wee elf— , But who would suffer then? Effie herself. If Effie drinks it, Then, I can tell, She will go out to play Merry and well. ' Drink, and then, darling, You shall have this, — Sweet after bitter: Now, first, a kiss. Ah, darling Effie, God also knows, When cups of bitterness His hand bestows, 1 How His poor children need Urging to take Merciful draughts of pain, Mixed for their sake. He, too, gives tenderly Joy after pain, Sweet after bitterness, After loss gain. — Sunday Magazine. I, �WERE WOLVES. From the Spectator. WERE * WOLVES. . A i >; i In this remarkable little book, remarkable for a power its external aspect does not promise and an interest its name will not create, Mr. Baring-Gould, an author known hitherto chiefly by his researches in North­ ern literature, investigates a belief, once general in Europe, and even now enter­ tained by the majority of the uneducated class. In widely separated places, and among races the most distinct, a belief has been traced in the existence of beings who combine the human and the animal char­ acter, who are in fact men changed either in form or in spirit into beasts of prey. The belief, though strong still, was strongest in the Middle Ages, when men were more un­ restrained both in their acts and their cre­ dulities. In the extreme North it was so powerful that Norwegians and Icelanders had a separate name for the transformation, calling men gifted with the power or afflicted with the curse men “ not of one skin.” Mr. Baring-Gould pushes his theory far when he connects the story of the Berserkir with the theory of were wolves, the Berserkir be­ ing extant to this day in Asia, calling them­ selves Ghazis, and keeping up their fury as the Berserkir probably did, with drugs ; but all Scandinavia undoubtedly believed that men had upon occasion changed into ani­ mals, and exhibited animal bloodthirstiness and power. So did the Livonians. So down to the very end of the sixteenth cen­ tury did all Southern Europe, where the Holy Office made cases of metempsychosis subject of inquiry and of punishment. The very victims often believed in their own guilt. One man in 1598, Jacques Roulet, of Angers, stated in his confession that though he did not take a wolf’s form he was a wolf, and as a wolf committed murders, chiefly of children. Even now the peasants in Norway believe as firmly in persons who can change themselves into wolves as the peasants in Italy do in the evil eye, the Danes think persons with joined eye brows liable to the curse, the people of SchleswigHolstein keep a charm to cure it, the Slo­ vaks, Greeks, and Russians have popular words for the were wolf, and Mr. BaringGould was himself asked at Vienne to as­ sist in hunting a loup garou, or wolf who ought to have been a human being. In In­ dia the belief is immovable, more particu­ larly in Oude, where the mass of evidence collected is so extraordinary that it shook -for a moment the faith of a man so calm as the Resident, Colonel Sleeman, and induced him to give currency to a theory that wolves might suckle and rear the children of human beings, who thenceforward would be wolves. Ultimately, we believe, he abandoned that notion, but not before he had puzzled all India with his collection of exceptional facts, and riveted the supersti­ tion of the people of Oude. A belief so universal and so lasting sug­ gests some Cause more real than a supersti­ tious idea, and Mr. Baring-Gould believes he has discovered one. He hold^that in every human being there is some faint trace of the wild-beast nature, the love of destruction and of witnessing the endurance of suffering. Else why do children display cruelty so constantly, string flies on knitting­ pins, and delight in the writhings of any animal ? In the majority this disposition is eradicated either by circumstances, by training, or by the awakening of the great influence we call sympathy. In a minority the desire remains intact but latent, liable to be called out only by extraordinary inci­ dents or some upset of the ordinary balance of their minds. In a few it becomes a pas­ sion, a sovereign desire, or even a mania entitled to be ranked as a form, and an ex­ treme form, of mental disease. It was the latter exhibition which gave rise to the be­ lief in the were-wolves, who were, in Mr. Baring-Gould’s opinion, simply raving mani­ acs, whose wildness took the form either of a desire to murder or of a belief in their own power of becoming beasts of prey. So late as 1848 an officer, of the garrison in Paris was brought to trial on a charge of rifling graves of their bodies and tearing them to pieces, and the charge having been proved on conclusive evidence, his own confession included, was sentenced to one year’s im­ prisonment. He was mad, but had he lived before madness was understood he would have been pronounced either a vampire or a loup garou. Madness miscomprehended was the cause of the facts which supported , the monstrous belief, a theory almost de­ monstrated by the history of the case of Jacques Roulet. The extract is long, but the story is complete: “ In 1598, a year memorable in the annals of lycanthropy, a trial took place in Angers, the details of which are very terrible. In a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude, some coun­ trymen came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horridly mutilated and bespattered with blood. As the men approached, two * Were Wolves. By Sabine Baring-Gould. Lon­ wolves, which had been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket. The men gave don : Smith, Elder, and Co. �7 \ WERE WOLVES. 577 chase immediately, following their bloody tracks Jacques Roulet would have been found in­ till they lost them; when suddenly crouching sane by any modern jury, and there is scarcely among the bushes, his teeth chattering with in mediaaval literature a case of lycanthropy fear, they found a man half naked, with long which cannot be explained upon this sim­ / hair and beard, and with his hands dyed in blood. His nails were long as claws, and ple theory, — the one at last adopted, and were clotted with fresh gore and shreds of hu­ in our judgment proved, by Colonel Sleeman flesh. This is one of the most puzzling man in Oude, but a more difficult question and peculiar cases which come under our no­ remains behind. Is it quite certain that all tice. The wretched man, whose name was cases of long-continued and outrageous cruel­ Roulet, of his own accord stated that he had ty presuppose madness ? Is cruelty in fact fallen upon the lad and had killed him by a natural quality, which can be cultivated, smothering him, and that he had been prevent­ or an abnormal desire, the result of extreme ed from devouring the body completely by the and gradual depravation of the passions arrival of men on the spot. Roulet proved and the reason ? Take the well known case on investigation to be a beggar from house to of Gilles de Uetz in 1440. If evidence house, in the most abject state of poverty. His companions in mendicity were his brother John can prove anything it is certain that this and his cousin Julien. He had been given man, head of the mighty House of Laval, lodging out of charity in a neighbouring vil­ lord of entire counties and of prodigious lage, but before his apprehension he had been wealth, did throw up a great position in the absent for eight days. Before the judges, public service to wander from town to Roulet acknowledged that he was able to trans­ town and seat to seat kidnapping children, form himself into a wolf by means of a salve whom he put slowly te death to delight which his parents had given him. When ques­ himself with their agonies. He confessed tioned about the two wolves which had been himself to eight hundred such murders, and seen leaving the corpse, he said that he knew perfectly well who they were, for they were his his evidence was confirmed by the relics companions, Jean and Julien, who possessed found. He was betrayed by his own agents, the same secret as himself. He was shown the and in the worst age of a cruel cycle his clothes he had worn on the day of his seizure, crimes excited a burst of horror so profound and he recognized them immediately; he de­ that he, a noble of the class which was be­ scribed the boy whom he had murdered, gave yond the law, so powerful that he never at­ the date correctly, indicated the precise spot tempted to escape, «vas burnt alive. Was he where the deed had been done, and recognized mad, or only bad beyond all human ex­ the father of the boy as the man who had first perience ? Mr. Baring-Gould inclines evi­ run up when the screams of the lad had been dently to the former theory, and it is at all heard. In prison, Roulet behaved like an idiot. events a pleasing one, but it is difficult for I When seized, his belly was distended and hard; in prison he drank one evening a whole pailful thinking men to forget that power has in oth­ of water, and from that moment refused to eat er instances produced this capacity of cruelty, or drink. His parents, on inquiry, proved to to refuse credence to all stories of the cruelty be respectable and pious people, and they proved of Caesars, and Shahs, and West Indian slave­ that his brother John and his cousin Julien holders. It is possible, and we hope true, had been engaged at a distance on the day of that the genuine enjoyment of pain is rare Roulet’s apprehension. ‘ What is your name, among the sane, though the Roman popu­ and what your estate ? ’ asked the judge, Pierre Herault. — ‘My name is Jacques Roulet, my lace felt something like it, and though we age thirty-five; I am poor, and a mendicant/ are ever and anon startled by cases of wil­ — ‘ What are you accused of having done ? ’ — ful cruelty to animals, but genuine indiffer­ ‘Of being a thief—of having offended God. ence to it is frequent, and granted the in­ My parents gave me an ointment; I do not difference, any motive may give it an ac­ know its composition.’—‘When rubbed with tive form. The thirst for domination is the this ointment, do you become a wolf? ’ — ‘ No • most common impulse, but in well known but for all that, I killed and ate the child Cor­ instances jealousy, fear, hatred, religious nier : I was a wolf.’ — ‘ Were you dressed as a bigotry, and even vanity, have been equal­ wolf?’ — ‘I was dressed as I am now. I had events the passion my hands and my face bloody, because I had ly efficacious. At all that it is restraina­ been eating the flesh of the said child.’ — ‘ Do differs from madness in your hands and feet become paws of a wolf ? ’_ ble. Hardly one genuine case on a great ‘ Yes, they do.’ — ‘ Does your head become like scale has been recorded in a civilized coun­ that of a wolf — your mouth become larger ? ’ — try for many years, and it seems certain ‘ I do not know how my head was at the time; I that the restraints of order prevent it from used my teeth; my head was as it is to-day. I acquiring its full sway, and that therefore it have wounded and eaten many other little is rather the depravation of nature than na­ children; I have also been to the sabbath.’ ” ture itself which is its origin. Gilles de THIRD SERIES. DIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1477. V �578 SCIENCE AND MIRACLE. ,Retz is possible, if he were sane, only in a class which can indulge every impulse with impunity, and at a time when law is no longer to be feared. It may be true that he belonged to the were-wolf genus, the men afflicted with homicidal mania, but he may also have belonged to a class now almost as exceptional, the men in whom unrestricted power has developed that thirst for testing it in its highest, its most frequent, and its most visible form, the infliction of slow death-agonies upon powerless human beings. It was, we fear, the madness of a Ceesar rather than of a were wolf which influenced Gilles de Betz, and Mr. Baring-Gould would, we think, have exemplified his theo­ ry more perfectly had he excluded stories which testify not so much to the instability of human reason as to the depths of evil lurking in the human heart. He argues in­ deed that Gilles de Betz is the link between the citizen and the were wolf, but then in so doing he assumes one tremendous datum, that madness always shows itself in the ex­ treme development of the latent heart, and not in its radical perversion. One of its ■ commonest forms nevertheless is intense hatred of those whom the patient has most genuinely and fondly loved, and the bal­ ance of probability is that insanity as often perverts as intensifies the secret instincts of its victim. Mr. Baring-Gould has, we ■ think, demonstrated that madness misap­ prehended was the root of the were-wolf delusion, but not that homicidal mania is the ultimate expression of an inherent ten• dency in universal human nature. From the Spectator. SCIENCE AND MIRACLE. Professor huxley, in the remarkable lecture on “ improving natural knowledge ” delivered to the working classes at St. Mar­ tin’s Hall, and since published in the Fort­ nightly Review, states with a candour and moderation worthy of all praise, certain notions destructive of all worship, — ex­ cept that very impossible kind of worship recommended by Professor Huxley, worship ■ of the Unknown and Unknowable, — which have been gaining more and more hold of ■ merely scientific men for many generations, and which, we need not say, are absolutely inconsistent with admitting the activity of : any supernatural will in the Universe, and .•.still more the actual occurrence of miracle. Now it is a matter worth a little considera­ tion how far men of pure science are trust­ worthy on matters of this kind, how far their evidence is what we should call on other subjects the evidence of experts, or not. On a medical subject, we should never.think of adopting absolutely any theory rejected by a very large and, perhaps in­ creasing, number of the most eminent men in the medical profession. On a historical subject, we should think it absurd to take up with a view against which every fresh historian of learning and eminence began with clearer and clearer conviction to pro­ test. How far, then, even if it be true, as it possibly may be, that the tendency of the highest and calmest scientific thought is increasingly anti-supernatural, can we con­ sider this the tendency of a class entitled to special intellectual deference, or the re­ verse ? Mr. Brooke Foss Westcott, in a very thoughtful volume which he has just published on the Gospel of the Resurrec­ tion” * freely admits that “ a belief in miracles decreases with the increase of civilization,” but maintains, amidst other weaker and less defensible positions, that the accuracy of comprehensive views of nature as a whole, is not only not secured, but may be even specially endangered, by too special and constant a study of given parts of nature. “ The requirements,” he says, “ of exact science bind' the attention of each student to some one small field, and this little fragment almost necessarily becomes, for him the measure of the whole, if indeed he has ever leisure to lift his eyes to the whole at all.” And undoubtedly the man who has been studying, say, for the sake of a definite example, the chemical effects of light all his life, and who knows that every different substance when burnt yields a different spectrum, so that you may know by the number and situation of the dark lines exactly what substance it is that is burning, might be inclined to look at the possibility of miracle, and at faith in the supernatural will, from a narrow point of view. He will say to himself, ‘If one of these spectra were suddenly to change its appearance, if such a dark line vanished, and such others appeared, should I not know with a certainty to me infallible, — a certainty on the absoluteness of which I should never hesitate to risk my own life or that of my family, — that some other element had been introduced into the burn­ ing substance ? Could anything persuade me that the change was due to divine volition apart from the presence of a new * Macmillan. �SCIENCE AND MIRACLE. ' ' j ■ 579 element or new elements in the burning be equivalent to the positive alteration in substance ? Must not the Almighty him­ the essence of a mighty whole, as really self, if He chose to make the change, make astounding in itself as the change which it by providing the characteristic element could made oxygen burn (that is, oxidize) for the purpose,—just as if He chose to or two and two equal to five. alter the moral traits of a human character, Now this is, we take it, something less He could only do it by a process that would than conjecture, — indeed demonstrable alter the character itself, and not by mak­ scientific error, if science be taken to in­ ing a stupid and ignorant man give out all clude anything more than the laws of physi­ the characteristic signs of wisdom and cal phenomena. It is probably true indeed learning, or a malignant and cruel man put that in some sense the physical forces of the forth all the moral symptoms of warm be- Universe are an invariable quantity, which nevolence and charity.’ Sb the scientific only alter their forms, and not their sum man would argue, and we are disposed to total. If I move my arm, the motion, says think would argue rightly. For, admitting the physiologist, is only the exact equiva­ that the physical qualities of things are lent of a certain amount of heat which has realities at all, we should say that to make disappeared and taken the form of that the physical qualities of one thing inter­ motion. If I do not move it, the heat re­ change with the physical qualities of an­ mains for use in some other way. In either other, without interchanging the things, is, case the stock of force is unchanged. This if it be logically and morally possible, as is the conviction of almost all scientific the Transubstantiationists believe and most men, and is probably true. But whether other men disbelieve, a piece of divine the stock of physical force is constant or magic or conjuring, and not a miracle. But not, the certainty that human will can then, do not many great scientific men like change its direction and application — can Professor Huxley really infer from such transfer it from one channel to another — trains of reasoning far more than they will is just the same. And what that really warrant ? All that such reasonings do tend means, if Will be ever free and uncaused, to show, is, that if you truly conceive the though of course not unconditioned,— natural constitutions of things, there are which is, we take it, as ultimate arid scienti­ changes which you cannot make without fic a certainty as any in the Universe, — is destroying those very things altogether, no less than this, — that a strictly super­ and substituting new ones. As a miracle natural power alters the order and constitu­ which should make two and two five is tion of nature, — takes a stock of physical intrinsically impossible (Mr. Mill and the force lying in a reservoir here and transfers Saturday Review in anywise notwithstand­ it to a stream of effort there, — in short, ing), so also (though less certainly) a mira­ that the supernatural can change the order cle which should make oxygen a combusti­ and constitution of the natural, — in its ble gas instead of a supporter of combus­ essence pure miracle, though miracle of hu­ tion, and quite certainly a miracle which man, and not of divine origin. For ex­ should make it right to do what is known ample, almost every physiologist will admit to be wrong, or wrong to do what is known the enormous power that pure Will has to be right, is intrinsically impossible. But over the nervous system, — that it can pro­ the modern scientific inference goes much long consciousness and even life itself for further than this, and immediately extends certain short spaces, by the mere exertion the conception of these inherent constitu­ of vehement purpose. Physicians tell you tions of certain things and qualities to the constantly that such and such a patient whole Universe, — assuming, for instance, may no doubt, if it be sufficiently impor­ that it is just as impossible, just as much tant, by a great effort command his mind a breach in the inherent constitution of sufficiently to settle his affairs, but that it some one or more things, for one who has will be at the expense of his animal force, been dead to live again, for the phenomena — in short, that it will be a free transfer of of decomposition to be arrested, the heart force from the digestive and so to say vege­ once silent to begin to beat, as for oxygen tating part of his system, to that part of itself to burn without ceasing to be oxygen. his physical constitution, his nervous system, The way in which this view would *e de­ which lies closest, as it were, to the will. b fended would be that all matter and all its Nay, we have heard physicians say that qualities are now almost proved to be modes patients, by a great effort of pure will, of force, and all force indestructible, so have, as they believe, prolonged their own that any kind of supernatural change in life for a short space, that is, have imparted, the phenomena of matter would appear to we suppose, through the excitement pro­ �580 SCIENCE AND MIRACLE. duced by the will on the nervous system and so downwards, a certain slight increase of capacity to assimilate food to the failing organic powers of the body. In other words, we conclude, just as the organism is failing to draw supplies of physical force from the outward world, its power of doing so may be slightly prolonged,—the out­ ward world drained of a small amount of force it would otherwise, have kept in stock, and the organism compelled to absorb it — by a pure volition. Can there be a clearer case of action of the supernatural on the natural, — even granting that the sum total of physical force is not altered, but only its application changed ? What more do we want to conceive clearly the room for Christian miracle, than the application of precisely the same con­ ception to God and Christ ? The students of the Universe appear to us to be in pre­ cisely the same condition with regard to the Universe, as a scientific observing mind secreted in some part of a human body (not the mind moving that body, but some other) would be in with relation to the structural, chemical, mechanical laws of that body. Suppose an atom of your blood able to retain its identity constantly in a human body, and to travel about it on a tour of scientific observation. It would very soon arrive at the conclusion that there were great laws of circulation of the blood and the fluids which supply it,— such as we see in nature in the astronomi­ cal laws, — great laws of force by which the legs and arms are moved, like the forces of tides or falling waters in the Universe, — great structural laws, by which different tissues, like the hair, the skin, nails, the nervous and muscular tissues, grow up out of the nourishment supplied them, just as we notice the growth of trees and flowers out of the earth, —and great though some­ what uncertain laws of alternation between activity and repose, — like the laws of night and day; — and such a scientific particle as we have supposed would undoubtedly soon begin to say that the more deeply it studied these things, the more the reign of pure law seemed to be extended in the universe of the body, so that all those un­ certain and irregular phenomena (which we, however, really know to be due to the changes effected by our own free self-gov­ erning power), must be ascribed, it would say^ not to any supernatural influence, but to its own imperfect knowledge of the more complex phenomena at work. And such a scientific particle would be perfectly justified in its inferences; for we have sup­ posed it only an intellectual observing ma­ chine, not a free will with knowledge of its own that there is a power which is not caused, and which can effect real modificacations in the relation even of physical forces which never vary in amount. But nevertheless it would be wrong, and could never know the truth, namely, that the ordering of the succession in these physical forces, — the interchanges between one and the other, — the physical influences over the body exerted by the command of the appetites and passions, were all of them really traceable in great part to super­ natural power, though to supernatural pow­ er which does not either add to or subtract from the sum total of physical force present in the Universe. And we maintain that the men of pure science, as they are called, —the men who study everything- but Will, — fall into precisely the same blunder as such a rationalizing particle of a human body, and for the same reason. They are quite right in their inferences from their premises, but their premises are radically defective. In truth the room for miracle remains as wide as ever. Admit all the discoveries of science, and still they only prove a cer­ tain constancy in the amount of physical force, and a certain invisible law of suc­ cession between the same phenomena. But just as a man who puts forth a great effort to retain his consciousness and reason or even life for a short time longer than he would otherwise do, may succeed, — suc­ ceed, that is, in pumping up the failing supply of physical force from the Universe to his system for a few minutes or hours, when without such an effort it would have fled from his body and passed away ipto other channels, — so miracle only assumes that a supernatural power infinitely greater than man’s will might, on sufficient reason, — which every Christian believes to be far more than sufficient, — do the same thing infinitely more effectually, and for a far longer time. Miracle is in essence only the directing supernatural influence of free mind over natural forces and substances, whatever these may be. In man we do 'not call this miracle, only because we are ac­ customed to it, — and in nature scientific men refuse to believe that any such direct­ ing power exists at all. But nevertheless, every accurate thinker will see at once, that free will, Providence, and Miracle do not differ in principle at all, but are only less or more startling results of the same fact, — which true reason shows to be fact, — that above nature exist .free wills, pro- �THE DURATION OF OUR SUPPLY OF COAL. shall readily understand that the vital ques­ tions for the wealth, progress, and greatness of our country are these : — “Is our supply1 of coal inexhaustible ? and if not, how long will it last?” — Mr. Jevons enables us to answer both these 'questions. It is very far from being inexhaustible ; it is in process of exhaustion ; and, if we go on augmenting our consumption from year to year at our present rate of increase, it will not last a hundred years. Our geological knowledge is now so great and certain, and what we may term the underground survey of our islands has been so complete that we know with tolerable accuracy both the ex­ tent, the thickness, and the accessibility of our coal fields, and the quantity of coal annually brought to the surface and used up. The entire amount of coal remaining in Great Britain, down to a depth of 4,000 feet, is estimated to be 80,000 millions of tons. Our annual consumption was in 1860 about 80 millions. At that rate the avail­ able coal would last for 1,000 years. But our consumption is now steadily increasing at the rate of per cent, per annum, and will in 1880 be, not 80 millions, but 160 millions ; and, if it continues thus to increase, will have worked out the whole 80,000 mil­ lions before the year 1960. Nay it would reach this climax probably some time earlier ; for our calculation includes all the coal down to 4,000 feet; and no coal mine has yet been worked at a greater depth than 2,500 feet; and we do not believe that mines can be worked profitably, and we have lit­ tle reason to think they can be worked at all, at such a depth as 4,000 feet. Of course we know that, practically, our coal-fields will not be worked out within this period. Of course we are aware that our present rate of annual augmentation cannot. be maintained. Every year we have to go deeper for our supply; and going deeper means incurring greater and greater ex­ pense for labour, for machinery, for ventila­ tion, for pumping out the water, for acci­ dents, &c. Going deeper, therefore, implies an enhanced price for the coal raised, and that enhancement of price will check con­ sumption. But it is precisely this imminent ' enhancement of price, and not ultimate ex­ haustion, that we have to dread; for it is this enhancement which will limit our rate of progress and deprive us of our special ad­ vantages and our manufacturing supremacy. Let us see a little in detail the modus ope­ rands The difficulty of working and raid­ ing coal increases rapidly as the mine grows deeper, or as inferior mines have to be worked ; the heat grows more insupporta­ bably of all orders of power, which do not, indeed, ever break the order of nature, but ’ can and do transform, — as regards man by very small driblets,— but as regards higher than human wills in degrees the extent of», which we cannot measure, — natural forces from one phase of activity into another, so as greatly to change the moral order and significance of the Universe in which we live. ? k THF DURATION k’ From the Economist, 6 Jan. OF OUR SUPPLY OF COAL. U$der the title of “ The Coal Question/ Mr. Jevons * has furnished the public with a number of well-arranged and for the most part indisputable facts, and with a series of suggestive reflections, which every one interested in the future progress and greatness of his country will do well to pon­ der seriously. Few of us need to be re­ minded how completely cheap coal is at the foundation of our prosperity and our com­ mercial and manufacturing supremacy. Coal and iron make England what she is ; and her iron depends upon her coal. Other countries have as much iron ore as we have, and some have better ore ; but no country (except America, which is yet unde­ veloped) has abundant coal and ironstone in the needed proximity." Except in our supply of coal and iron we have no natural suitabilities for the attainment of industrial greatness; nearly all the raw materials of our manufactures come to us from afar ; we import much of our wool, most of our flax, all our cotton and all our silk. Our railroads and our steamboats are made of iron and are worked by coal. So are our great factories. So now is much of our war navy. Iron is one of our chief arti­ cles of export; all our machinery is made of iron; it is especially in our machinery that we surpass other nations ; it is our ma­ chinery that produces our successful textile fabrics; and the iron which constructs this machinery is extracted, smelted, cast, ham­ mered, wrought into tools, by coal and the steam which coal generates. It is believed that at least half the coal raised in Great Britain is consumed by the various branches of the iron trade. With these facts present to our mind we I * The Coal Question. By W. Stanley Jevons, M. A. Macmillan, 1865. 581 �582 THE DURATION OF OUR SUPPLY OF COAL. ble, the shafts and passages longer, the dan­ Nor does there seem any escape from ger greater, the ventilation more costly, the these conclusions theoretically, nor any way quantity of water to be kept out or got out of.modifying them practically. We may, more unmanageable. A very short period it is said, economise in the use of coal. may raise engine coal and smelting coal But, in the first place, the great economies from 5s to 10s per ton. Now a cotton mill that can be reasonably looked for have been of ordinary size will often use for its steam- already introduced. In smelting iron ore power 80 tons of coal per week. This at 5sis we use two-thirds less coal than formerly, l,000Z a year; at 10s per ton, it is 2,000/. and in working our steam engines one-half But the cotton mill is full of machinery; less;. and, in the second place, it is only a and one great element in the cost of this rise in the price of coal that will goad us machinery is the coal used in smelting and into a more sparing use of it; and this working the iron of which the machinery is very rise of price is the proof and the meas­ made. The railroads which bring the cot­ ure of our danger. “ Export no more ton to the mill and take the calico and yarn coal,” it is suggested, and so husband your back to the place of exportation are made stores. But we could not adopt this expe­ of iron and worked by coal: so are the dient, even if it were wise to do so, or con­ steamboats which bring the cotton to our sistent with our commercial policy, without shores and export the yarn to Germany; — throwing half our shipping trade into ton­ the cost of carriage, therefore, which is a fusion by depriving them of their ballast very large item in the contingent expenses trade; and even then the evil would be of our factories, will be greatly increased scarcely more than mitigated ? “ Why,” both directly and indirectly by a rise in the ask others, “ should we not, when our own price of coal. An advance in that price stores of coal are exhausted, import coal from 5s to 10s per ton, maybe estimated to from other countries which will still be rich be equivalent to 2,000/ a year on the work­ in mineral fuel, and thus supply our need ?” ing cost of a good-sized cotton mill. That Simply because of all articles of trade and is,, as compared with the present state of industry coal is the most bulky in propor­ things, and as compared with foreign coun­ tion to its value; and that it is the fact of tries, every manufacturer wouid have a having it at hand, of having it in abundance, burden of 2,000/ a year laid upon him, and of having it cheap, of having it without the would have to raise the cost of his goods to cost of carriage, that has given us our manu­ that extent. .How long could he continue facturing superiority. With coal brought to compete with his rivals under this disad­ from America, with coal costing what coal vantage, or (it would be more correct to then would cost, we could neither smelt our say) with his present advantage taken away iron, work our engines, drive our locomo­ from him ? And how long would coal con­ tives, sail our ships, spin our yarn, nor tinue to be supplied even at 10s a ton ? weave our broad cloths. Long before we And, be it observed, the check to the had to import our fuel the game would be consumption of coal— the retardation i. e. up. in our progress towards ultimate and abso­ Of 136 millions of tons now annually lute exhaustion — can only come from in­ raised throughout the world, Great Britain crease of price, and the moment that it does produces 80 millions and the United States come, the decline of our relative manufac­ only 20. But this is only because we have turing pre-eminence has begun. We shall had the first start, and because our popula­ avoid the extinction of our coal in the short tion is far denser, and because our iron and period of a century ; but we shall do so only our coal lie conveniently for each other and by using less now; — and using less now conveniently for carriage. As soon as means producing less iron, exporting less America is densely peopled, to America calico and woollens, employing less ship­ must both our iron and our coal supremacy ping, supporting a scantier population, — and all involved therein — be trans­ ceasing our progress, receding from our rela­ ferred ; for the United States are in these tive position. We may, it is true, make our respects immeasurably richer than even coal last a thousand years instead of a hun- Great Britain. Their coal-fields are esti­ dred, and reduce the inevitable increase in mated at 196,000 square miles in extent, its price to a very inconsiderable rate; while ours are only 5,400. But this is not but we can do so only by becoming stationary ; all: their coal is often better in quality and and to become stationary implies letting incomparably more accessible than ours, es­ other nations pass us in the race, exporting pecially in the Ohio valley. In some places our whole annual increase of population, the cost at the pit’s mouth even now is 2sjper growing relatively, if not positively, poorer ton in America, against 6s in England. ' and feebler. �HAIR-DRESSING IN EXCELSIS. From the Spectator. '583 a man’s hair is naturally as long as a woman’s strikes them with a sense of surprise, and have almost ceased to dress it. They use It is not easy to understand the differen­ pomade still, or at least hairdressers say ces in the popular appreciation of the mi­ so, and a few of them, unaware that a nor trades. Why is a tailor considered rath­ mixture of cocoa-nut oil and thin spirit is er contemptible, when no idea of ridicule in all ways the absolutely best unguent, attaches to a bootmaker ? Both make waste cash upon costly coloured oils, but clothes, and in trade estimation the tailor, hairdressing for men is out of fashion. The who must always be something of a capital­ average hairdresser contemptuously turns ist, is the higher man of the two, but the over the male head to some beginner, who popular verdict is against him. Nobody snips away till hair and tournure are got calls a hosier the eighteenth part of a man, rid of with equal speed. Up to 1860, too, yet strictly speaking his business is only a women wore their hair, even on occasions minor branch of tailoring. No ridicule at­ demanding a grand toilette, after a very taches to a hatter, notwithstanding the lu­ simple fashion, one which the majority of natic proverb about his permanent mental them could manage very well for them­ condition, but everybody laughs internally selves, and which required only careful as he speaks of a -hairdresser. Is it because brushing. This fashion was not perhaps .hairdressers were once popularly supposed altogether in perfect taste. Simplicity has to be all Frenchmen, and therefore share charms, but still a custom which compelled the contempt with which dancing-masters women with Greek profiles and complex­ are regarded by people who, while they ex­ lions of one shade only and girls with cherry press it, would not for the world fail to profit cheeks and turned-up noses equally to wear by their instructions ? A singing-master is their hair like Madonnas, was open to some allowed to be an artist, often one of the slight attack on artistic grounds. Madonnas first class, but a dancing-master is consider­ should not have laughing blue eyes, or pout­ ed a cross between an artist and a monkey. ing lips, or flaxen hair, or that look of esOr are hairdressers despised, like men mil­ pieglerie which accompanies a properly turn­ liners, because their occupation, especially ed-up nose, — not a snub, that is abomina­ in modern Europe, where men have aban­ ble, but just the nez retrousse which artists doned wigs, long locks, and the careful ar­ detest and other men marry. The Second rangement of the hair, is essentially femi­ Empire, however, does not approve simpli­ nine ? That may be the explanation, for city, and gradually the art of dressing hail' nobody despises the lady’s-maid more or has come again into use. The fashion of less because if she is “ very superior ” she wearing hair a I’Imperatrice was the first - can dress hair as well as any hairdresser. blow to the Madonna mania, and young Or is the sufficient cause to be sought in women with no foreheads, and with pointed their pretensions, in their constant but un­ foreheads, and with hair-covered foreheads, successful claim to be considered artists, all pulled their unruly locks straight back something a little lower than professionals, because an Empress with a magnificent but a great deal higher than mere trades­ forehead chose to make the best of it. Any­ men, a claim which induces them to indulge thing uglier than this fashion in all women in highflown advertisements and the inven­ with unsuitable foreheads and all women tion of preposterous names, usually .Greek, whatever with black hair it would be hard but not unfrequently Persian, for totally to conceive, and the mania did not as a useless unguents ? The claim is allowed in mania last very long. Then came the day France, but in England, like the similar of invention, the use of false hair, the in­ one of the cook and the confectioners, sertion of frisettes, the introduction of gold­ it has always been rejected, a rejection en dyes, the re-entry of the vast combs prized which excites the profession every now and by our great grandmothers, the admiration then to somewhat violent and therefore ri­ of pins stolen from the Ionian and Pompe­ diculous self-assertion. They perceive an ian head-gear, and a general attention to opportunity just at present. For a good the head-dress which we can best describe many years past the business of the coiffeur by quoting from the Manners and Customs has been comparatively a very simple affair, of Ancient Greece a paragraph on the hair­ rising scarcely to the dignity of a trade and dressing of Athenian women : — “ On noth­ entirely outside the province of art.x Men ing was there so much care bestowed as. all over Europe have adopted the fashion upon the hair. Auburn, the colour of Aph­ of the much ridiculed Roundheads, cut their rodite’s tresses in Homer, being consider­ hair habitually close, till the assertion that ed most beautiful, drugs were invented in HAIRDRESSING IN EXCELSIS. �584 HAIR-DRESSING IN EXCELSIS. which the hair being dipped, and exposed incident in the annals of modern folly. Some to the noon day sun, it acquired the covet­ thirty women had their hair dressed in pub­ ed hue, and fell in golden curls over their lic by the, same number of men — not, we shoulders. Others, contented with their,. are sorry to say, to the accompaniment of own black hair, exhausted their ingenuity slow music,— an improvement we recom­ in augmenting its rich gloss, steeping it in mend to Mr. Carter’s attention — and some oils and essences, till all the fragrance of two hundred men and women looked on and Arabia seemed to breathe around them. applauded the result. There was in the Those waving ringlets which we admire in middle of the room a long table covered their sculpture were often the creation of with a white cloth, as it were for some sort art, being produced by curling-irons heated of experiment, but upon the table could be in ashes ; after which, by the aid of jewel­ seen nothing but hand-mirrors, which look­ led fillets and golden pins, they were ed indigestible. So long were other visitors brought forward over the smooth white incoming that one visitor, who was con­ forehead, which they sometimes shaded to scious of wan ting the scissors and of a total the eyebrows, leaving a small ivory space absence of bear’s grease, was afraid that one in the centre, while behind they floated in of the many gentlemen who in winning cos­ shining profusion down the back. When tume, and faultless “ ’eads of air,” and un­ decked in this manner, and dressed for the mistakable hairdressing propensities, hover­ gunascitis in their light flowered sandals ed near the door, would insist upon his and semi-transparent robes, they were having his hair cut and dressed forthwith, scarcely farther removed from the state of merely to wile away the time. But fortu­ nature than the Spartan maids themselves.” nately, just as a gentleman with a “ ’ead of The grand triumph of the Ionic barbers, air” which would have done credit to any the invention of a mode of plaiting which wax figure in any shop window, was ap­ occupied many hours, and could therefore proaching with sinister looks, visitors, mas­ be repeated only once a week, and requir­ culine and feminine began to pour in. Then ed those who wore it to sleep on their backs there was diffused around the room an with their necks resting on wooden trestles, odour of bear’s grease, and probably cost­ hollowed out lest the bed should derange lier unguents, and from the look of the the hair, has not indeed been repeated, ladies’ hair the writer was under the im­ though under the fostering care of Mr. Car­ pression that he beheld the victims who ter even that perfection may one be had been immolated •upon the shrine of attained. Still we have the auburn dyes, hairdressing, and who were to exhibit the and the pins, and all the Athenian devices, effects of the sacrifice. But not so. Awhile, and it is not quite certain that the “ chig­ and then there came in, each leaning upon non,” the nasty mass of horsehair and hu­ the arm of the cavalier who was to “ dress man hair which women have learnt to stick her,” about thirty-two ladies, from an age to on the back of their heads, and which is ac­ which it would be ungallant to allude down tually sold in Regent Street attached to to (one can hardly say “ bashful ”) fifteen. bonnets, is not an additional triumph over Their hair was in some instances apparently nature. We have a picture somewhere of just out of curl-papers, but for the most part a chignon more than three thousand years hanging unconfined except at the back, where old, but if we are not mistaken there are it was fastened close to the crown, and then feathers on it as well as hair, the very idea hung down like a horse’s tail. Among the which the President of the Hairdressers’ thirty were one or two magnificent cheveAcademy on Tuesday reinvented, and for lures, but we did not see one that quite which he was so heartily applauded. Of realized the painter’s ideal, one which the course, with the new rage for artificial ar­ wearer could have wrapped round her as rangement, false hair, dyes, chignons, hair Titian’s model must have done, or one on crepe, hair frise, and we know not what, the which the owner could have stood, as on a hairdresser’s art is looking up, and the sen­ mat, as Hindoo women have been known to sible tradesmen who practise it, sensible in do. Their comic appearance, and the clap­ in all but their grandiloquence — which is, ping of hands which arose thereat, showed we take it, half-comic, half a genuine effort one at once that they were the victims or at self-assertion — are making the most of (if you please) the heroines. They sat at the their opportunity. white-cloth-covered table, and the cavaliers The soire'e, or “ swarry,” as the doorkeep­ drew from black bags combs, arid puffs, and er persisted in calling it, of the Hairdress­ hair-pins, and what looked like small roll­ ers’ Academy, held in the Hanover Square ing-pins, and tapeworms, and bell-ropes, Rooms on Tuesday, was really a noteworthy and cord off window-curtains, and muslin �mmM- / ’ ' •. ' ' FRENCH AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS. > 585 and tissue-paper, and flowers and fruits of sheAvould entice oui’ “ golden youth ” (or the earth imitated in green and gold. Then our golden age, for the matter of that) ? the “ dressing ” began, and the spectator What manner of woman, then, would set saw with awe and amazement what art can the fashion in hairdressing ? And we do for hair, then one repented of ever hav­ know what has been the consequence in ing doubted the truth of ladies who at balls France (if we are not nearly as bad here) say, with a significant glance at head-dresses, of following in small matters the lead of the “ Why, how do you do, dear ? I really did demi-monde. On the other hand, two con­ not know you.” Some people may think victions at all events we acquired from the that hair, however plenteous or however spectacle. One is that modern hairdressing scanty, looks better in its natural state than in its highest form is a branch of jewelling, when it is made into a flower garden ; and the real art being shown not in the arrange­ others may hold that no kind of hair is im­ ment of the hair, but in the addition of proved by being interwoven with tape­ things which are not hair — combs, rib­ worms or bell-ropes, or even the cord off bons, flowers, dewdrops, and gilt insects — window-curtains. But it is certain that by the last a taste essentially inartistic and de­ the use of muslin and other materials already praved. The other was that it is not safe spoken of a result may be obtained which for any man to make a proposal in the would justify a man in cutting his mother evening. So utterly were some of the (on the score of non-recognition, if on no “ subjects” changed by the act of the ope­ other), and which would lead one to believe rators, that the possibility of not knowing that so long as a lady has a couple of hand­ in the morning the betrothed of the even­ fuls of hair left she may, with the help of ing seemed very real indeed, and the mis­ art, hold her own against Berenice. When take would be an awkward one for both all the ladies were “ dressed ” one of the parties. “ dressers ” made an unexceptionable little speech in unexceptionable English (for which our experience of hairdressing had not prepared us), concluding by saying that the ladies in their “ dressed ” state would walk round the table each leaning From the Economist, 27 January. on the arm of her “ dresser,” so that the spectators might all have a full view. As THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE FRENCH he said, so did they; nay, they went fur­ AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS. ther, and walked round twice, amidst the applause of (he assembled witnesses. We The Emperor of the French has said were disappointed that no prize beyond many remarkable things, but few more applause was given; we had thought that remarkable than the short sentence in at least a small-tooths comb, after the fash­ which he hints that there is some analogy ion of those said by Miss Emmeline Lott to between the Constitution of France and be used in the Turkish harems, would have that of the United States. The statement been bestowed. But perhaps it would have has been received in England with an been dangerous to have given so decided a impatience which is. a little unjust, and preference to the hair of one lady over that is caused by too exclusive an attention of another, for after all it must be with some to surface differences. Those differences difficulty that the subjects of the exhibition are of course patent to every one ; but the ■ are collected. After the b< swarry ” came a analogy is not the less real and striking. ball, at which whosoever danced with the The key-note of the American Constitution ladies who had their heads powdered was, is the existence of an Executive which dur­ if he disliked dust, to be pitied. The com­ ing its term of office is irresponsible to the pany seemed to be, for the most part, or at people, which acts by its own volition, any rate to a considerable extent, connect­ which can pursue if necessary a policy dia­ ed with the hairdressing interest, and that metrically opposed to the wishes of those they should do all they could to bring their who elected it. That also is the key-note craft to perfection is not only pardonable, of the system established by the Second but commendable. Would it, however, be Empire. The President does as he pleases well if society in general should patronize in all matters within his province just as such exhibitions ? Opinions happily differ, the Emperor does, and like him is irrespon­ but we cannot help thinking evil would come sible to the Legislature — need not, indeed, of it. What manner of woman, is it that explain to the representatives of the people must study such matters as hairdressing, if | his own official acts. His ministers are his �586 FRENCH AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS. ministers or clerks, bound to obey his or­ ders; not bound to pay any heed, and fre­ quently not paying any heed, to votes passed by the popular body. Of course, in America as in France this absolute disunion between the Executive and the body which controls the purse is very inconvenient, and it has in each country been met in the same way. In France the Minister without a portfolio explains to the Corps Legislatif the plans of depart­ ments which he does not control, and in America a friend or connection or political ally of the President performs the same function, Mr. Raymond for example occupy­ ing as nearly as possible that position in Congress, which M. Rouher occupies in the French Chamber. It is true the French spokesman is a recognised official, and the American spokesman is not, but the recog­ nition does not diminish “ responsibility ” in the English parliamentary sense, but rather increases it. It is true Mr. Johnson cannot effect through Congress what the Emperor can effect through his Legislature, but that is because he has not a majority and the Emperor has. In theory the French Cham­ ber has as much right to reject a bill pro­ posed by the Imperial Government as Con­ gress has, and were the Emperor less dread­ ed it would frequently do so. At the pres­ ent moment Mr. Johnson is trying to “ make a majority ” to support his policy b^ means quite as strong as those used in French elections. He has ordered that no radical recommendation for office shall be listened to, and has it is said threatened that unless his opponents give way he will dismiss every official throughout the Union who owes his election to the recommenda­ tion of an opponent, a measure which has daunted his stoutest adversaries as fatal to their re-election. They will be in fact, as in France, struck out of the Government list. Indeed the prerogative of the Presi­ dent is in many ways greater than that of the Emperor. Each is commander-inchief, but the President can deprive any officer of his commission by decree, and the Emperor cannot. A French officer’s grade is his “property,” and though the law has once or twice been violated, it /could not be broken through except for a State necessity. Emperor and President are alike masters of the Civil Service, but the President can and does dismiss at will, and the bureaucracy of France is perma­ nent. An order, such as Mr. Johnson is said to have threatened to give, would in France have aroused an unconquerable re­ sistance. No doubt the Emperor of the French can do things infinitely more highhanded than the President could attempt, but that is not by virtue of the idea of the French Constitution, but by reason of his control over a system essentially and radically despotic, which he did not make, and which his predecessors also used, the French police. Mr. Johnson has no such organisation at his disposal, but when it ex­ isted during the first two years of the war it was used without much regard to anything but the safety of the Federation. Without the police aud the immense army, and with a hostile majority in the Chamber, the Em­ peror would be almost precisely in the po­ sition of the President. But the latter is subject to removal at the expiration of his term ? No doubt Mr. Johnson is, and has therefore a great temp­ tation to make his policy accord with the policy approved by the electors, and so has the Emperor Napoleon, who follows opinion quite as anxiously; but. that deference is no part of the Constitution, which provides for change in the individual, but not for change in the absolute independence of the office. In changing our Premier, we ensure a Change of policy, because if the new man disobeys, he also can be dismissed next day; but in changing the President, America merely places one independent and irre­ movable official in place of another. The theories of the Imperial and Republican sys­ tems are identical, except in the illogical peculiarity of the French Constitution, that it introduces the hereditary element into the Executive, whereas the right of election logically includes a right of dismissal at periods fixed by mutual agreement. But the freedom of the Press, of speech, of asso­ ciation ? Well, these things exist in Amer­ ica and do not exist in France; but it is not in consequence of the Constitution, but of the popular will. Nothing prevents an American President, with Congress at his back, from subverting the freedom of the Press, by means, for example, of remissible taxes, if they think that policy sound. The Emperor and his first Chamber did think it sound, and so freedom in France ended, a fact greatly no doubt to be regretted, but in, no way proving that the principles of the American and French Constitutions are not analogous. One very remarkable power indeed is possessed by the American Legis­ lature which is not possessed by the French, and that is the right of passing a law by a two-third vote, in defiance of the President. But the French Chamber is theoretically just as strong, for it could insist on a certain law being passed, under penalty of a rejec­ �/ / xico. s 587 tion of the Budget, and the Emperor must by which alone a constitutional monarch . either yield, or appeal to a plebiscitum, that can acquire great individual power. At all is, strike a coup d’etat upsetting the Consti­ events, should circumstances ever compel tution, which gives the Chamber such a the Emperor to relax the overstrictness right of control. That the two sets of insti­ of his regime, it is to the American rather tutions are worked in a different way, and than to the British form of freedom that with a different spirit, is too obvious for re­ he appears likely to feel his way. mark ; but that does not destroy the theo­ retic analogy to which the Emperor points. The truth is that apart from the operation ..of the State system, which with many faults ' still organises popular resistance, the Presi­ dent of the United States is, during his From the Saturday Review, Jan. 27. term of office, an excessively powerful mon­ MEXICO. arch, and the fact, revealed only by the war, has evidently struck forcibly on the The position which the Government of imagination of the Emperor of the French. the United States is prepared to take up As he acknowleges in his speech he still dis­ with regard to Mexico is at last clearly and likes Parliamentary Government, for which finally established, and it is one that is cal­ he is himself singularly unfitted, and he culated to excite some apprehension for the glances at the Union with a passing thought future peace of the world. During the au­ that if he ever grants “ liberty,” it will be in tumn months of last year, Mr. Seward was the American and not in the English form. continually urging on the Federal Govern­ Should the thought ever become active, it ment the expediency of the speedy with­ is astonishing how little he will have to do drawal of the French troops; and, with to restore “liberty” after the American many sincere protestations of the most frienimodel as it would appear were the Union ly feeling towards France, he gave the Em­ a republic one and indivisible. He would peror to understand that, if his troops were have to introduce laws establishing the free­ to stay much longer where they were, a dom of the press, and the right of associa­ rupture between the two countries was inev­ tion, and the liability of all officials to pros­ itable. The Emperor would be only too ecution for illegal acts done in their official glad to get his troops away if he could do so capacities; and the exemption of all citizens without compromising his own honour, and from arrest except on criminal charges, and that of France ; and it seemed to him that the constitutional change would be theoret­ the best way of arranging the matter would ically alinost complete. The remaining bethat the French troops. should go, and changes which would be necessary — such that the United States should recognise the as abstinence from interference in the elec­ Emperor Maximilian. • The Mexican Em­ tions, recognition of the right of debate, pire, being thus placed on a friendly footing and restoration of the legislative initiative with the only Power it has to dread, might to individual members — are scarcely con­ hope to establish itself and prosper, if pros­ stitutional. These changes once accom­ perity in Mexico is possible for it. France plished, France would be in possession of a would have succeeded, or, at least, would great amount of practical liberty, of the not have openly and conspicuously failed; control of her own Legislature, and of an and all jealousy between Washington and Executive terribly strong indeed, but not Paris would have been at an end. But Mr. stronger than that of the American Union; Seward has distinctly and decisively re­ rather less strong, because hampered by the jected this proposal. The United States legal rights of the army, and the customary will not recognise the Emperor Maximil­ rights of the civil bureaucracy. That is not ian, nor treat him on any but a hostile foot­ a form of Government we admire, because ing. lathe eyes of the Americans, he is it lacks the one strength of the Parliamen­ an intruder, and an enemy of an injured and tary system, the absolute identity of the friendly Republic, and they can never be Legislature and the Executive power; but content until his enterprise has wholly failed. it is one which might suit France for a time, Congress, as Mr. Seward remarks, must and would have the immense advantage of exercise its legitimate influence on the Gov­ permitting free thought and its expression, ernment of the President ; and the Pres­ and some activity of Parliamentary life ident has not only to announce his own de­ without the previous dismissal of the Napo­ cision, but that of the American people and leonic dynasty, which will never, we fear, its representatives; and the opinion of the consent to that incessant intellectual conflict American people is violently against the �588 MEXICO. Mexican Empire. Of this there can be no withdrawn; but if this is not done, the time doubt; for even if the accusations continu­ must come when they will insist on having ally brought up in Congress against the Em­ their wishes fulfilled. peror Maximilian were true, instead of This uncompromising language of the being, as for the most part they are, gross American Government has placed the Em­ misrepresentations, still the vehemence and peror of the'French in a very difficult po­ pertinacity with which they are urged show sition. He cannot seem to yield to threats; clearly enough how deep is the animosity but still he knows that, if any way of with­ that prompts them. If the whole question drawing his troops with honour can be found, were simply one of the continuance of the he must use it. He has, therefore, set ear­ Mexican Empire, it might be worth while nestly to work to disprove the view which to discuss these accusations, and to show how the American Government has adopted. very slight is the basis on which they have He denies altogether that he ever wished to been reared ; but all matters of detail are set up a Monarchy in Mexico, or to crush a swallowed up in the gravity of the declara­ Republic. But the Republican Govern­ tion which the United States have now is­ ment had insulted and offended him, plun­ sued. The view of the Government of the dered and murdered his subjects, gave no United States is, that the French have vio­ compensation, and perhaps was too weak, lated the Monroe doctrine in its proper poor, and anarchical to give any. He inter­ and original sense. There was a Republic fered merely to get redress, but he did not established in Mexico, holding its territory see how it was possible to hope for redress unopposed, in harmony with the country, from, such a Government as then existed in dear to the inhabitants, and in the most Mexico. Several leading Mexicans pro­ friendly relations with the United States. posed to establish a Monarchy, and he con­ The French came to pull down this Repub­ curred in the idea because he thought a Mon­ lic, and to set up a Monarchy, and they per­ archy, which had long been a favourite no­ sist in remaining in Mexico to force this tion of many Mexicans, offered the best alien Empire on an unwilling Republican chance of getting a Government strong, du­ people. This is the mode in which the rable, and enlightened enough to pay him United States have determined, after full what he was owed. This is all. He no deliberation, to regard the recent history of more wishes to put down a Republic in Mexi­ Mexico; and they will not allow any com­ co than he does to put down a Republic at promise by which their adherence to this Washington; he merely wished, and wishes, view might seem to be weakened. So long to have an instrument ready to provide him as France stays in Mexico, forcing an Em­ with the redress he asked. The Emperor pire on the Republicans of a contiguous Maximilian and his Court, and his Orders State, America will treat France exactly as of the Eagle and Gaudalupe, are only pret­ she would expect France to treat her if ty bits of machinery for the recovery of she sent a fleet, and landed troops, to set up money owing to Frenchmen; and it must a Republic in Belgium. Much, it is ac­ be owned that, if this is all, they are about knowledged, is to be borne from France, as expensive a pi^ce of machinery, in com­ which would not be borne from any other parison with the object to be effected, as country. It will be only in the last resort was ever invented. But then, as the Em­ that the language of America would be­ peror said in his speech, this machinery come hostile to a country endeared to her has answered, or very nearly answered. by so many traditions, and bound to her by There is now in Mexico an enlightened so many ties. The tone of Mr. Seward’s Government triumphant overall opposition, letter is very conciliatory, and the Govern­ with a French commerce trebled in an in­ ment of President Johnson has been reso­ credibly short space of time, plentifully sup­ lute in preventing any indirect breaches of plied with troops, and quite ready to pay off amity. The export of arms from California all that is due to France. A few more ar­ has been prevented, and still more recently rangements have still to be made with the a considerable portion of the troops in Tex­ Emperor Maximilian, so that the stipulat­ as has been disbanded. France has nothing ed payments may be fully secured, and then to complain of in small things; there is only the French troops will be finally and hon­ the one great point of difference between her ourably withdrawn. The ecstatic visions of and the United States, that she has violated M. Chevalier, and the ardent proclama­ a doctrine to which the United States at­ tions of Marshal Forey, are forgotten, or tach the greatest importance, and which utterly neglected. We hear no more of the they are resolved to uphold. They now spread of French influence over the West­ merely ask that the French troops shall be ern hemisphere, of the necessity of enabling �MEXICO. tv * 589 the Latin race to confront the Anglo-Saxon his own resources. If the Emperor Maxi­ race in the New World. The Americans milian would but announce that he was are told that all that has been done in Mexi- now quite, sure of his throne, and that . Co has been done simply to redress the French aid was no longer necessary to him, wrongs and support the claims of French­ the French might undoubtedly retire with­ men; the French’themselves are told that out dishonour. They could not retire at this most desirable end has been accom­ once, but it may be presumed that the plished, and that the troops who have ren­ Americans would be quite satisfied if a Con­ dered its accomplishment possible may soon vention like the September Convention be expected home. But it is scarcely neces­ with Italy were agreed on, and if it were sary to say that neither the Americans nor arranged that all French troops should have the French will be satisfied. The Ameri­ quitted Mexico by the end of the present cans think, and think with perfect truth, year. If the French went, the Austrians that the experiment of recovering French and Belgians must go too— not necessarily debts by shooting Republicans until the at the very same time, but before very long; Austrian Archduke was made Emperor as it is obvious that, if the French have been would never have been tried unless it had guilty of coming to American soil to tram­ been supposed that it could be tried with­ ple down a Republic and set up a Monarchy, out the United States being able to inter­ so have they. The Emperor Maximilian fere with it. The French know that at least would therefore have to decide whether he twenty millions of French money have been could possibly hold his own with native sunk in the experiment, and that if their troops against his domesticV’enemies; and troops were withdrawn it would be a great secondly, whether, if he thought it possible deal more difficult to"recover the new debt to succeed, he would also think it worth than it was to recover the old one. The while to try. It may be assumed, perhaps, that Emperor, by adopting the view that he is the Emperor of the French would be able merely trying to get his just dues from Mexi­ to provide that Mexico should be left alone, co, has done something to conciliate the and that, if he did not go there, neither Americans; yet he has made it even harder would the Americans. But if all foreign than before to justify to France the with­ troops were withdrawn, the Emperor drawal of the troops. To throw away twen­ would have to fight Mexicans with Mexi­ ty millions in the attempt to get back a cans. His Mexicans would feel no enthusi­ tenth of that sum is as deplorable an invest­ asm for him, would regard him as a foreign­ ment, and as conspicuous a failure, as he er, and would with difficulty be induced to could well make. The last Mexican loan of believe that his cause was the winning one. about six millions sterling was almost entire­ His adversaries would be ardent, stimulated ly subscribed by the French poor, on the by the encouragement of the Americans, direct solicitation of the local officials of the panting for revenge, and able to take ad­ Government, and it would most seriously vantage of that general disposition to go impair the confidence of the lower classes in against the existing Government, whatever the Emperor’s policy if it ended in a loss it may be, which pervades all nations of to them of money which they only sub­ Spanish descent. But even if the Emper­ scribed because he seemed to ask for it him- or thought that, after a very long and pro­ self. tracted fight, he might possibly hold his own, The Emperor must, therefore, risk some­ and retain a precarious possession of some thing. He might risk either a war with of the richer parts of the Mexican territory, America, or a blow to his prestige in France. he might very probably hesitate before he His speech was very judiciously worded, and embarked on so dangerous an adventure, he seemed to be preserving a firm attitude, and might begin to examine whetherit could and consulting the dignity of his country, possibly answer to him to take the risk. If while he prepared a mode of escape from his he stayed as long as the French stayed, and Embarrassment by asserting that his work found that the pressure of the Americans was done in Mexico, and that the Emperor was depriving him even of his Austrians 1 Maximilian was firmly established there. and Belgians, he would incur no- disgrace It will now naturally be his first object to by resigning a position that he might fairly get the Emperor Maximilian to share this consider untenable. But the French could opinion ; and the story may be true that he .scarcely withdraw altogether if he went. has sent over a special envoy to represent They could not acknowledge that their at­ to the Emperor of Mexico that he must tempt to obtain redress had been entirely in consent to the withdrawal of the French vain, and all their money wasted ; and they troops, and tTy his chance of empire from would naturally seek to make some arrange- �THE EMPERORS SPEECH. From the Spectator, 27th January. ment with the United States by which, if a Government favoured by the United States THE EMPEROR’S SPEECH. was set up, a return to mere anarchy should be prevented, and the right of the French The Emperor of the French has opened to enjoy some sort of guarantee for the settle­ the Session of his Chambers for the thir­ ment of their claims should be recognized. teenth time, and for the thirteenth time his ' speech is the political fact in the European history of the week. Its interest turns mainly upon three paragraphs, those relating [From another article in the same paper, we to Mexico, to Italy, and to his pledge of one copy the French Emperor’s address.] day “crowning the edifice” by conceding liberty. Of course he says other things, The French Emperor’s address to his but they are so vague or so formal that they Legislature is generally an interesting study. add nothing to our knowledge either of his It is feebler and less clever this year than purposes or his position. He will “ remain usual, but still it is interesting/ The au­ a stranger” to the internal disputes of Ger­ gust author of these compositions has the art many, “ provided French interests are not of touching all great questions of European directly engaged,” but as he is the sole concern in a tone of frankness and gener­ judge whether they are so or not, this osity, and noble sentiments in a Royal or amounts only to a pledge that France will Imperial speech are always pleasant and re­ not interfere with Prussia until her Em­ freshing. What, for example, can be more peror chooses, an assertion which makes a considerate or delicate than the manner in very small draft upon our political faith. which he handles the Americans? They He promises to restore the right of associa­ are reminded of a century of friendship, and tion for industrial purposes, but the liberty it is politely suggested that Imperialism is thus regained is to be “ outside politics,” only the Constitution of the United States and to be limited “ by the guarantees which in a French Court dress. The Mexican ex­ public order requires ” i. e., by any guaran­ pedition is explained in a manner that tee the Emperor thinks expedient. He an­ ought to disarm the most suspicious Yankee, nounces a reduction of the Army, but it has and it seems as if all had been a mistake been effected without a reduction of num­ about the Latin race, as it was about the bers, and declares that a financial equili­ proposed recognition of the South. Some­ brium has been secured by the surplus of body did say something about the Latin revenue, for which surplus his Minister of race, which has evidently been misconstrued Finance only just ventures to hope on con­ a good deal; but the “ American people” dition that everything goes right for two will now comprehend that “ the expedition, more years. He suggests that France is in which we invited them to join, was not governed very much like the United States, opposed to their interests.” France “prays” but does not attempt to explain wherein he sincerely for the prosperity of the great Re­ finds the analogy between a Constitution public, and, just as a French Emperor is only which changes its Executive every four an American President in disguise, so Im­ years, and leaves the entire legislative power perialism in Mexico has been founded “ on to the representatives of the people, and a the will of the people.” Mr. Seward very Constitution which was intended to make Hkely never swears. His talent lies chiefly the executive power hereditary, and which in the line of making other people swear. intrusts the initiative of legislation entirely But it is possible that some less courteous to the man who is to carry that legislation Anglo-Saxons in Washington and in New out. On all these subjects, Germany, fi­ York, who are anxious about the Monroe nance, co-operation, and the Constitution, doctrine, after reading all these high-mind­ the Emperor’s utterance is suggestive, with­ ed expressions, and especially the one about out clearly instructing either his subjects or the French praying for them, will feel in­ the world. No one, for example, could tell clined, in the language used in the School without knowing facts which the Emperor for Scandal by the friends of Joseph Sur­ does not reveal whether his paragraph on face, to observe, “ Damn your sentiments.” Germany is a hint to Count von Bismark to However this may be, and whatever may be go on in his course and prosper, or a.men­ the turn the Mexican difficulty is taking, ace that France would not bear a Union, of one thing is clear, that the French Emper­ Northern Germany against which its in­ terests are directly engaged. or puts his sentiments neatly and well. �THE EMPEROR ’S SPEECH. 591 Even on the three points we have excepted die course, and the object of this part of the Emperor, as his wont is, gives the world his speech is simply to soothe Americans a riddle to read. What, for instance, is the into waiting until he can retreat with hon­ meaning of the sentence which says that our. He who three years ago spoke only of France “ has reason to rely on the scrupulous strengthening a branch of the Latin race to execution of the Treaty with Italy of the 15 th resist Anglo-Saxon aggression, now anxious­ September, and on the indispensable main­ ly repudiates any idea of hostility to the tenance of the power of the Holy Father ? ” Union. He recalls to the Americans “ a Does it mean that Napoleon regards the noble page in the history of France,” her temporal power as indispensable, or only assistance to the Republic in its great rebel­ the spiritual; that he will put down internal lion, reminds them that he requested them to revolt in Rome, or suffer Italy to garrison take a part in reclaiming Mexican debts, the city, provided only the Pope is left spir­ and almost implores thein to recollect that itually independent ? Is his dictum a threat “ two nations equally jealous of their inde­ to the Revolution or a threat to the priests | pendence ought to avoid any step which Reading it by the light of the Emperor’s would implicate their dignity and their character, we should believe the sentence honour.” Is that an assurance or a menintended only to ward off opposition until 1 afte ? For a French Sovereign to speak the evacuation of Rome was complete, but of possible contingencies as “ implicating read by the facts in progress, blithe re­ French dignity and honour ” is a very cruiting for Rome going on in France, and ^serious thing, but then why these unusual the pressure employed in Florence to make professions of regard for the Union ? It is Italy accept the Papal debt, we should be­ true in a preceding paragraph Napoleon lieve it implied that while Napoleon will re­ has affirmed that he is arranging with the tire, the Pope must remain independent Emperor Maximilian for the recall of his King of Rome. The maintenance of the army, bumhen their return must be effect-' Pope’s power is declared indispensable, but ed when it “will not compromise the in­ nothing is said of the invisible means by terests which France went out to that dis­ which it is to be maintained. tant land to defend.” When is that ? Do So with the Mexican declaration. The the interests to be defended include the re­ Emperor, we admit, is upon this point placed invigoration of the Latin race ? Nothing is in a most difficult position. He made the clear from the speech, and according to singular blunder made by the Times and by the Yellow Book, which is always supposed the majority of English politicians, but not to explain the speech, the French Army is made by the people he rules. Careless of only to return from Mexico when the Presi­ principle and forgetting precedent, reject­ dent of the Union has recognized the Mexi­ ing the idea that freedom must conquer can Empire, an act which he has refused to slavery, and overlooking his uncle’s adage do, and which Congress has specifically for­ that twenty-five millions must beat fifteen if bidden him to perform. There is nothing in they can once get at them, he convinced the speech inconsiste^; with that interpreta­ himself that the South must break up the tion, and if it is correct the Americans will Union. Consequently he invaded Mexico, simply contrast the compliments offered and placed his nominee on its throne. As them in words with the impossible proposal his subjects, with the strange instinct which submitted in fact, and be less content than supplies to great populations the place of ever. All they obtain is a promise 'that at wisdom, had from the first foreseen, he some time not specified, when a result they erred in his first essential datum. The dislike has been accomplished, the Emperor South did not break up the Union, but the will, if consistent with his honour, withdraw Union broke up the South, and Napoleon the troops through whom he has been able finds himself compelled either to withdraw to accomplish it — not a very definite or from a great undertaking visibly baffled and very satisfactory pledge. repulsed, or to accept a war with the oldest It is on the “ crowning of the edifice ’ ally of France — a war in which, if defeat­ alone that the Emperor is partially explicit. ed, he risks his throne, and if successful, can He will not grant a responsible Ministry. gain nothing except financial embarrass­ That system of government, always abhor­ ment. Neither alternatiye seems to him en­ rent to him, has not become more pleasant durable — the former as fatal to the reputa­ of late years, and he declares for the tenth tion for success which is essential to his per­ time that “ with one Chamber holding with­ sonal power, the latter as bringing him into di­ in itself the fate of Ministers the Executive rect conflict with the wishes of all his peo­ is without authority and without spirit,” the ple. He strives therefore to find some mid- “ one ” being inserted either to avoid a di- �592 BEAU-MONDE AND THE DEMI-MONDE IN PARIS. ers by an anouncement for which, after all, both should have been prepared. No one who is at all conversant with the ordina­ ry course of Parisian life — we do not say familiar with its inner mysteries — ought to have been astonished at hearing that cer­ tain grandes dames of French society had sought for invitations to a masqued ball which was to be given by a distinguished leader of the demi-monde. We have had, in our own country, certain faint and partial indications of the same curiosity, revealed in an awkward and half-hesitating sort of way. English great ladies once made an off-night for themselves at Cremorne, in order to catch a flying and furtive glance, not of the normal idols of those gay gar­ dens, but of the mere scenic accessories to their attractions and triumphs. But as yet we have never heard that the matrons of English society have sought an introduction to the Lais of Brompton or the Phryne of May-fair, even under the decorous con­ cealment of mask and domino. Nor has it yet been formally advertised here that the motive of so unusal a request was a desire to learn the arts and tactics by which the gilded youth — and, it might be added, the gilded age — of the country is subjected to the thrall of venal and meretricious beauty. That such a rumour should be circulated and believed in France is — to use the cur­ rent slang — “highly suggestive.” It sug­ gests a contrast of the strongest, though it is far from a pleasing, kind between the society of to-day and the society of other days. It was long the special boast of the French that with them women enjoyed an influence which in no other part of the world was accorded to their sex, and that this influence was at least as much due to their mental as to their physical charms. The women of other nations may have been more beautiful. To the Frenchwomen was specially given the power of fascination ; and it was the peculiar characteristic of her fascination that its exercise involved no dis­ credit to the sense or' the sensibility of the men who yielded to it. A power which showed itself as much in the brilliance of bons mots and repartee as ip smiles and glances, a grace of language and expression which enhanced every grace of feature and of attitude, a logic which played in the form of epigram, and a self-respect From the Saturday Review. which was set off rather than concealed by THE 1 BEAU-MONDE AND THE DEMI­ the maintenance of the most uniform cour­ tesy to others — such were the arts and MONDE IN PARIS. insignia of the empire which the most cele­ The Paris journals lately surprised their brated Frenchwomen, from the days of French, and startled their foreign, read­ Maintenon and De Sevigne to those of rect sarcasm upon the English Constitution, or from a sudden recollection of the part played by the Prussian Chamber of Peers. He believes that his system has worked well, that France, tranquil at home, is respected abroad, and, as he adds with singular au­ dacity, is without political captives within or exiles beyond her frontiers. Are, then, the Due d’Aumale, M. Louis iBlanc, and the author of Labienus at liberty to return to France ? Consequently nothing will be changed, but the Emperor, resolving to “ im­ prove the conditions of labour,” will await the time when all France, being educated, shall abandon seductive theories, and all who live by their daily toil, receiving in­ creasing profits, “ shall be firm supporters of a society which secures their well-being and their dignity.” No one can complain of any obscurity in that apology for the Empire. Its central ideas are all expressed, and all expressed with truthful lucidity. The Emperor is to rule “ with authority and spirit.” There is to be no political freedom, no discussion even of “ theories of govern­ ment, which France for eighty years has sufficiently discussed.” Intelligence and cap­ ital are still to remain disfranchised, but in return the labourer’s condition is to be im­ proved. “ Bread to the cottage, justice to the palace,” was the promise of the Venetian Ten, and Napoleon, if he changes the second, adheres to the first condition. His offer is also bread to the cottage, provided only that there is silence in the palace. It is for France to decide whether she accepts an offer which is not a small one, which if honestly made is capable of fulfillment, and which would pledge her Government to the best ad interim occupation it could possibly pursue. Only we would just remind her that education in the Emperor’s mouth has hitherto meant only education through priests, and improvement in the condition of the labourer only a vast expenditure out of taxes which the labourer pays, that the first result of these works has been the reckless over-crowding of all towns, and that of these promises there is not one which liberty could not also secure. �BEAU-MONDE ANDTPHE DEMI-MONDE IN PARIS. 593 Madame Deffand and Madame Roland or of the roturier ; the conflicts of science and those of Madame Recamier, exercised over theology — all these furnished materials for the warriors, sages, and statesmen of France. the tongues of the clever women, materials The homage paid by the men to the brilliant of which the clever women fully availed women who charmed the society which they themselves. The final result was not, in­ had helped to create may not always have deed, wholly satisfactory. How many a been perfectly disinterested. The friend­ short sharp sarcasm, shot from the tongue ship of the women for their illustrious ad­ of brilliant causeuses,‘rebounded on the gil­ mirers may not always have been perfectly ded rooms wherein it first hurtled! How Platonic. There may have been some im­ many a satire, sugared with compliment, at propriety—or, as our more Puritan friends which rival beaux chuckled in delight, would say, some sin — in the intercourse of came back with its uncovered venom to the some of the most celebrated Frenchmen hearts of those whose admiration had first and Frenchwomen. Yet even this could provoked it! How many a gibe of reckless not have been predicated of all. Madame truth, aimed at courts and nobles, distilled de Sevigne’s reputation comes out. clear through laquais and waiting-maids into the and spotless even from the foulest assault of streets of Paris, to whet the after-wrath wounded vanity and slighted love. We do of that fierce canaille! Many of those not forget the comprehensive loves and the clever women had better been silent; many deliberate inconstancy of Ninon. But Ni­ of those pungent epigrams had better been non, corrupt, as she may have been, was unsaid. Still, while the spirited talk went not venal. She did not ruin her lovers by her on, life was illumined by no common bril­ covetousness, and then receive their wives liance ; and vice not only decked itself, but and sisters in her salons. She was courted forgot _ itself, in the guise of intelligence by elegant and virtuous women, because she and wit. was the single and solitary instance as yet But what a change is it now! There are known of a woman possessing every grace drawing-rooms in Paris which are more and every charm save the grace and charm brilliant and gorgeous than any that De of virtue. Whatever may have been the Sevigne or Recamier ever satin * But their relations between the sexes in those days, brilliance and splendour are not of such it was at least free from grossness. The airy impalpabilities as genius or wit. They charms which attracted men to the Maison are solid, substantial, tangible. They are Rambouillet were not those of sense alone, the brilliance and the splendour, not of able or in a special degree. They were those of men and clever women, but of the uphol­ conversation at once spirited, graceful, sterer, the mechanician, and the decorator. elegant, and vivacious. To an accom­ There is gold, there is marble, there is lapis plished man there is perhaps no greater lazuli; there are pictures, statues, ormolu­ social treat than to hear good French clocks; there are rich velvets and cloud­ spoken by an educated and clever French­ like lace, and a blaze of amethysts, rubies, woman. In her hands a language of which and diamonds. There are trains of Impe­ both the excellences and the defects eminent­ rial dimensions and tiaras of Ijnperial bright­ ly qualify it for the purposes of conversational ness. And in whose honour is all this grand combat becomes a weapon of dazzling fence. display ? To whom is the court paid by Those delicate turns of phrase which imply this mob of sombre-clad and neatly-gloved so much more than they express fly like men of every age, from twenty to sixty ? Parthian shafts, and the little commonplaces Who have taken the place of the great which may mean nothing do what the female leaders of society whose names have pawns do when manipulated by a clever added lustre to France ? Strange as it chess-player — everything. And in the age may seem, their successors are secondwhen the empire of Frenchwomen rested rate or third-rate actresses, opera-dancers, upon their grace and power in conversa­ and singers at public rooms and public gar­ tion, there was ample matter to task their dens. We do not intend to undertake the remarkable talents. It was an age of new superfluous task of penning a moral dia­ ideas. Government, religion, and philoso­ tribe, or inveighing against the immorality phy: the administration of the kingdom of the age. Sermons there are, and will and the administration of the universe ; the be, in abundance on so prolific and provok­ rights of kings to be obeyed by their people ing a theme. In every age actresses and and the right of the Creator to the adora­ ballet-girls have had their admirers. In tion of his creatures; the claims of privi­ every age, probably, they will continue to lege and the claims of prerogative; the have admirers. But what is worthy of note pretensions of rank and the pretensions is this. Formerly this admiration was of THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXI [. 1478. �594 BEAU-MONDE AND THE DEMIMONDE IN PARIS. an esoteric kind. The worshippers adored their divinities in secret. The temples of the goddesses were, at any rate, not obtrud­ ed on the public eye, nor in possession of the most open, public, and splendid streets. The cult, too, was confined to a narrower circle. But now all this is changed; the fanes of the divinities ‘are splendid and in the most splendid streets ; the cult is open, avowed, public. The worshippers are of every age, and are all equally indifferent to secrecy. There is no restriction and no ex­ clusion, save on two grounds — those of poverty and intelligence. There is a kind of intellect admitted into this gorgeous cote­ rie, but it is intellect in livery. The dra­ matic author and the dramatic critic are now as much appendages to the dramatic courtezan as her coachman and her femme de chambre. Where professional reputation depends on scenic effect, and scenic effect depends upon the equivoque put into the .actress’s mouth, and the applause with Tvhich their delivery is received, the man who concocts the equivoque and the man •who criticises their delivery become equally •objects of attention to the actress who is looking ou^ for a clientele. Saving these necessary exceptions, these assemblies are • comprised of rich old men anxious to dissi;pate the money which they have made, and •rich young men as anxious to dissipate the •wealth which they have inherited. And ;now we hear that the wives and sisters of these men seek admission to these Paphian jhalls. Jt is, indeed, not an unnatural, though it iis far from a decent, curiosity which prompts ladies entitled to the reputation of virtue do examine something of the life and dounestic economy of those ladies whose very • existence presupposes an entire repudiation < of virtue. The married women naturally •■desire to know something of the manners and mein and language of the-rivals whose ■arts have diverted their own husbands’ ■treasures into alien and obnoxious channels. 'When a wife hears that her husband has, at one magnificent stroke on the Bourse, (Carried off one or two millions of francs, ; she is curious to ascertain the process by which no inconsiderable proportion of these -winnings has been “ affected ” to the payiment of Madlle. Theodorine’s debts or to the ■purchase of Madlle. Valentine’s brougham. .And the anxious mother, who has long ■dreamed of the ceremony which might unite the fortunes of her dear Alcide with "the dot of her opulent neighbour’s daughter, Is tortured between the misery of frustrated Slopes and curiosity to understand the mo­ tives which impel Alcide to become the daily visitor of Mdlle. Gabrielle in the Rue d’Arcade, and her daily companion when riding in the Bois de Boulogne. Certainly the subject is a very curious one. But does the solution of the problem quite justify the means taken to solve it? Might not enough be inferred from the antecedent history of those who are the subjects of it to dispense with the necessity of a nearer examination? Take a number of women of the lower classes from the different provinces of France — with no refinement, with a mere shred of education, and with but small claim to what an English eye would regard as beauty — but compensating for lack of knowledge, education, and re­ finement by a vivacity and a coquetry pe­ culiarly French. Take these women up to Paris, tutor them as stage supernumeraries, and parade before them the example of the arts of the more successful Eorettes. The rest may be imagined. From these general premises it is not difficult to conjecture the product obtained; to conceive that manner on which jeunes gens dote, a manner made up of impudence and grimace ; that repar­ tee which mainly consists of ,a new slang hardly known two miles beyond the Made­ line ; those doubles entendres of which per­ haps memory is less the parent than instinct, and that flattery which is always coarse and always venal. It would be erroneous to say that we have here given a complete picture of the class which certain leaders of Paris fashion wish to study. There are, in the original, traits and features which we could not describe, and which it is unnecessary for us to attempt to describe, as they are por­ trayed in the pages of the satirist who has im­ mortalized the vices of the most corrupt city at its most corrupt era. Juvenal will supply what is wanting to our imperfect delinea­ tion. English ladies may read him in the vigorous paraphrases of Dryden and Gif­ ford ; ’ while their French contemporaries may arrive at a livelier conception of what we dare not express, if only they stay till the supper crowns the festal scene of the masqued ball. If they outstay this, they will have learned a lesson the value of which we leave it for themselves to com­ pute. . . . It is idle to say that curiosity of this kind is harmless because it is confined to a few. Only a few, indeed, may have contemplated the extreme step of being present at the Saturnalia of the demi-monde. But how many others have thought of them and talked of them ? To how many leaders of society are the doings of these women the �THE COVERT. subjects of daily curiosity and daily con­ versation ? How many patrician. -— or, at all events, noble — dames regular attend­ ants at mass, arbiters of fashion, and orna­ ments of the Church, honour with their in­ quisitiveness, women of whose existence, twenty years ago, no decent Frenchwoman was presumed to have any knowledge ? And do these noble ladies suppose that this curiosity is disregarded by the adventur­ esses from Arles or Strasburg, Bordeaux or Rouen, whom successful prostitution has dowered with lace, diamonds, carriages, and opera-boxes ? Do they suppose that the professed admiration of the young Sardanapali for the ex-couturieres and bal­ let-girls of Paris has not a more potent ef­ fect when combined with the ill-concealed interest of their mothers and sisters ? And what that effect is on the men in one class, and on the women in another, a very slight knowledge of human nature is sufficient to suggest. That girls of moderately good looks will contentedly continue to ply the shuttle at Lyons, or to drudge as household servants in Brittany, or to trudge home to a supperless chamber in Paris with the bare earnings of a supernumerary or a coryphee at a small theatre, when a mere sacrifice of chastity may enable them not only to ruin young dukes and counts, but to become the theme and admiration of duchesses and countesses, is a supposition which involves too high a U 1 •-■! . belief in human virtue; and the conditions we have named are found to be fatal to the virtue of the poorer Frenchwomen. And as for the men, what must be the effect on them ? Debarred from the stirring conflict of politics; exiled, so to speak, from the natural arena of patriotic ambition ; know­ ing no literature save that of novels in which courtezans are the heroines, and caring for no society but that of which courtezans are the leaders; diversifying the excitement of the hazard-table and the betting-room with the excitement of the coulisses; learning from their habitual asso­ ciations to lose that reverence for women and that courteous attention to them which are popularly supposed to have at one time characterized the gentlemen of France — they partially redeem the degradation which they court by showing that even a mixture of vapid frivolity, sensual indulgence, and senseless extravagance is insufficient to cor­ rupt a nation, unless also the female leaders of society conspire to select for their notice and admiration those creatures for whom the law of the land would better have pro­ vided the supervision of the police and the certificate of professional prostitution. When virtuous women of birth and position rub shoulders with strumpets, protests are useless and prophecies are superfluous; for the taint which goes before destruction is already poisoning the heart of the nation. ',fl. J i. ••• • . ‘ bn . •• ' r ' « ------ — W.’tWUS. •» .(< ‘i {f, • bill f> too’t ito <I> ;!•>.. j vf'jqUiH wto -w . *' fl-r< —W RO­ aw; al p to ’ sir fi: THE COVERT. The eagle beats his way Strong-winged through the burning blue: All through the heat of the day In the covert the wood-doves coo. Take the wings of the dove, my soul! Take the wings of the dove! For the sun is not thy goal, But the secret place of love. < Close to the earth and near, And hidden among the flowers, By the brink of the brooklet clear, The dove in her covert cowers. >‘ni Wq XT . .ih Take the wings of the dove, my soul I Take the wings of the dove! For the sun is not thy goal, But the secret place of love. <• --.ml. Flee not afar, my soul Flee not afar for rest 1 . The tumult may round thee roll, q Yet the dove be in thy breast. Take the wings of the dove, my soul! Take the wings of the dove! --X For the sun is not thy goal, But the resting place of love. "ir Mw U yi iv Good Words' �596 ORATION OF THE HON. GEORGE BANCROFT. IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE in her inmost nature, she disenthralled re­ MARTYR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED ligion from bondage to temporal power, STATES. that her worship might be worship only in Oration of the Hon. George Bancroft, at the request of both Houses of Congress, in the Hall of the House of Representa*v lives of the United States, on Monday, Feb. 12, 1866. ! Senators, Representatives, ofAmerica: — GOD IN HISTORY. That God rules in the affairs of men is as certain as any truth of physical science. On the great moving power which is from the beginning hangs the world of the senses and the world of thought and action. Eternal wisdom marshals the great procession of the nations, working in patient continuity through the ages, never halting, and never abrupt, encompassing all events in its over­ sight, and ever affecting its will, though mortals may slumber in apathy or oppose with madness. Kings are lifted up or thrown down, nations come and go, republics flour­ ish and wither, dynasties pass away like a tale that is told; but nothing is by chance, though men in their ignorance of causes may think so. The deeds of time are governed as well as judged, by the decrees of eterni­ ty. The caprice of fleeting existences bends to the immovable omnipotence which plants its foot on all the centuries, and has neither change of purposes nor repose. Sometimes like a messenger through the thick darkness of night, it steps along mysterious ways ; but when the hour strikes for a people, or for mankind, to pass into a new form of being, unseen hands draw the bolts from the gates of futurity; an all-subduing influence pre­ pares the mind of men for the coming revo­ lution ; those who plan resistance find them­ selves in conflict with the will of Provi­ dence, rather than with human devices; and all hearts and all understandings, most of all the opinions and influences of the unwilling, are wonderfully attracted and compelled to bear forward the change which becomes more an obedience to the law of universal nature than submission to the ar­ bitrament of man. GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. In the fulness of time a republic rose up in the wilderness of America. Thousands of years had passed away before this child of the ages could be born. From whatever there was of good in the systems of former centuries she drew her nourishment: the wrecks of the past were her warnings. With the deepest sentiment of faith fixed spirit and in truth. The wisdom which had passed from India through Greece, with what Greece had added of her own; the jurisprudence of Rome; the mediaaval mu­ nicipalities ; the Teutonic method of repre­ sentation ; the political experience of Eng­ land ; the benignant wisdom of the exposi­ tors of the law of nature and of nations in France and Holland, all shed on her their selectest influence. She washed the gold of political wisdom from the sands whereever it was found; she cleft it from the rocks; she gleaned it among ruins. Out of all the discoveries of statesmen and sages, out of all the experience of past human life, she compiled a perennial political philoso­ phy, the primordinal principles of national ethics. The wise men of Europe sought the best government in a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; and America went behind t^ese names to extract from them the vital elements of social forms, and blend them harmoniously in the free Com­ monwealth, which comes nearest to the illus­ tration of the natural equality of all men. She intrusted the guardianship of establish­ ed rights to law; the movements of reform to the Spirit of the people, and drew her force from the happy reconciliation of both. TERRITORIAL EXTENT OF THE REPULIC. Republics had heretofore been limited to small cantons or cities and their dependen­ cies ; America, doing that of which the like had not before been known upon the earth, or believed by kings and statesmen to be possible, extended her republic across a continent. Under her auspices the vine of liberty took deep root and filled the land; the hills were covered with its shadow ; its boughs were like the goodly cedars, and reached unto both oceans. The fame of this only daughter of freedom went out into all the lands of the earth; from her the human race drew hope. PROPHECIES ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF SLAVERY. Neither hereditary monarchy nor heredi­ tary aristocracy planted itself on our soil; the only hereditary condition that fastened itself upon us was servitude. Nature works in sincerity, and is ever true to its law. The bee hives honey, the. viper distils pois­ on ; the vine stores its juices, and so do the poppy and the upas. In like manner, every thought and every action ripens its seed, each in its kind. In the individual man, �ORATION OF THE HON. GEORGE BANCROFT. . 597 and still more in a nation, a just idea gives position of Virginia and the South that the life, and progress, and glory; a false j®pn- clause of Jefferson was restored, and the ception portends disaster, shame, and death. whole Northwestern Territory — all the A hundred and twenty years ago, a West' territory that then belonged to the nation Jersey Quaker wrote : “ this trade of im­ — was reserved for the labor of freemen. porting slaves is dark gloominess hanging over the land; the consequences will be DESPAIR OK THE MEN OF THE REVO’‘£l " lution. grievous to posterity.”. At the North the growth of slavery was arrested by natural The hope prevailed in Virginia that the causes; in the region nearest the tropics it abolition of the slave trade would bring throve rankly, and worked itself into the with it the gradual abolition of slavery ; but organism of the rising States. Virginia the expectation was doomed to disappoint­ stood between the two; with soil, and cli­ ment. In supporting incipient measures mate, resources demanding free labour, for emancipation, Jefferson encountered and yet capable of the profitable employ­ difficulties greater than he could overcome; ment of the slave. She was the land of and after vain wrestlings, the words that great statesmen ; and they saw the danger broke from him, “ I tremble for my coun­ of her being whelmed under the rising flood try, when I reflect that God is just, that his in time to struggle against the delusions of justice cannot sleep forever,” were words avarice and pride. Ninety-four years ago, of despair. It was the desire of Washing­ the Legislature of Virginia addressed the ton’s heart that Virginia should remove British king, saying that the trade in slaves slavery by a public act; and as the pros­ was “ of great inhumanity,” was opposed to pect of a general emancipation grew more the “ security and happiness ” of their con­ and more dim he, in utter hopelessness of stituents, “ would in time have the most the action of the State, did all that he could destructive influence,” and “ endanger their by bequeathing freedom to his own slaves. very existence.” And the king answered Good and true men had, from the days of them, that “ upon pain of-his highest dis­ 1776, thought of colonizing the negro in pleasure, the importation of slaves should the home of his ancestors. But the idea of not be in any respect obstructed. “ Phar­ colonization was thought to increase the dif­ isaical Britain,” wrote Franklin in behalf of ficulty of emancipation; and in spite of Virginia, “to pride thyself in setting free a strong support, while it accomplished much single slave that happened to land on thy good for Africa, it. proved impracticable as coasts, while thy laws continue a traffic a remedy at home. Madison, who in early whereby so many hundreds of thousands are life disliked slavery so much that he wished dragged into a slavery that is entailed on “ to depend as little as possible on the labor their posterity.” “A serious view of this of slaves ; ” Madison, who held that where subject,” said Patrick Henry in 1773, “ gives slavery exists “ the republican theory be­ a gloomy prospect to future times.” In the comes fallaciotis; ” Madison, who in the same year George Mason wrote to the Leg­ last years of his life would not consent to islature of Virginia: “ The laws of impar­ the annexation of Texas, lest his country­ tial Providence may avenge our injustice men should fill it with slaves ; Madison, who upon our posterity.” In Virginia, and in said, “ slavery is the greatest evil under the Continental Congress, Jefferson, with which the nation labors, a portentous evil, the approval of Edmund Pendleton, brand­ an evil — moral, political and economical —ed the slave trade as piracy; and he fixed a sad blot on our free country,” went mourn­ in the Declaration of Independence as the fully into old age with the cheerless words: corner stone of America: “ All men are “ No satisfactory plan has yet been devised created equal, with an unalienable right to for taking out the stain.” liberty.” On the first organization of tem­ NEW VIEWS OF SLAVERY. porary governments for the continental do­ main Jefferson, but for the default of New The men of the Revolution passed away. Jersey, would, in 1784, have consecrated A new generation sprang up, impatient that every part of that territory to freedom. In an institution to which they clung should be the formation of the National Constitution condemned as inhuman, unwise and unjust; Virginia, opposed by a part of New Eng­ in the throes of discontent at the self-re­ land vainly struggled to abolish the slave proach of their fathers, and blinded by the trade at once and forever; and when the lustre of wealth to be acquired by the cul­ ordinance of 1787 was introduced by Na­ ture of a new staple, they devised the theo­ than Dane, without the clause prohibiting ry that slavery, which they would not abol­ slavery, it was through the favourable dis­ ish, was not evil, but good. They turned �598 ORATION OF THE HON. GEORGE BANCROFT. on the friends of colonization, and confi­ dently demanded, “ Why take black men from a civilized and Christian country, where their labor is a source of immense gain and a power to control the markets of the world, and send them to a land of ignorance, idolatry, and indolence, which was the home of their forefathers, but not theirs ? Slav­ ery is a blessing. Were they not in their ancestral land naked, scarcely lifted above brutes, ignorant of the course of the sun, controlled by nature ? And in their new abode, have they not been taught to know the difference of the seasons, to plough, to plant and reap, to drive oxen, to tame the horse, to exchange their scanty dialect for the richest of all the languages among men, and the stupid adoration of follies for the purest religion ? And since slavery is good for the blacks, it is good for their masters, bringing opulence and the opportunity of educating a race. The slavery of the black is good in itself; he shall serve the white man forever.” And nature, which better understood the quality of fleeting interest and passion, laughed, as it caught the echo: “ man ” and “ forever 1 ” SLAVERY AT HOME. A regular development of pretensions fol­ lowed the new declaration with logical con­ sistency. Under the old declaration every one of the States had retained, each for itself, the right of manumitting all slaves by an ordinary act of legislation ; now, the power of the people over servitude through their legislatures was curtailed, and the privil­ eged class was swift in imposing legal and constitutional obstruction, on the people themselves. The power of emancipation was narrowed or taken away. The slave might not be disquieted by education. There remained an unconfessed consciousness that the system of bondage was wrong, and a restless memory that it was at variance with the true American tradition, its safety was therefore to be secured by political or­ ganization. The generation that made the Constitution took care for the predomi­ nance of freedom in Congress, by the ordi­ nance of Jefferson ; the new school aspired to secure for slavery an equality of votes in the Senate; and while it hinted at an or­ ganic act that should concede to the collec­ tive South a veto power on national legisla­ tion, it assumed that each State separately had the right to revise and nullify laws of the United States, according to the discre­ tion of its judgment. SLAVERY AND FOREIGN RELATIONS. The new theory hung as a bias on the for­ eign relations of the country; there could be no recognition of Hayti, nor even the Amer­ ican colony of Liberia; and the world was given to understand that the establishment of free labor in Cuba would be a reason for wresting that island from Spain. Territo­ ries were annexed; Louisiana, Florida, Tex­ as, half of Mexico; slavery must have its share in them all, and it accepted for a time a dividing line between the unquestioned domain of free labor and that in which in­ voluntary labor was to be tolerated. A few years passed away, and the new school, strong and arrogant, demanded and recived an apology for applying the Jefferson proviso to Oregon. SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY. The application of that proviso was inter­ rupted for three administrations; but justice moved steadily onward. In the news that the men of California had chosen freedom, Cal­ houn heard the knell of parting slavery7; and on his deathbed he counselled secession. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison, had died despairing of the abolition of slav­ ery ; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom., His system rushed irresistibly to its natural development. The death struggle for California was followed by a short truce; but the new school of politicians who said that slavery was not evil, but good, soon sought to recover the ground they had lost, and confident of securing Texas, they demanded that the established line in the territories between freedom and slavery should be blotted out. The country, believ­ ing in the strength and enterprise and ex­ pansive energy of freedom, made answer, though reluctantly: “ Be it so ; let there be no strife between brethren ; let freedom and slavery compete for the territories on equal terms, in a fair field under an impartial ad­ ministration ; ” and on this theory, if on any, the contest might have been left to the de­ cision of time. DEED SCOTT DECISION. The South started back in appallment from its victory; for it knew that a fair competition foreboded its defeat. But where could it now find an ally to save it from its own mistake ? What I have next to say is spoken with no emotion but regret. Our meeting to-day is, as it were, at the grave, in the presence of Eternity, and the truth must be uttered in soberness and sincerity. �ORATION OF THE. HON. GEORGE BANCROFT. In a great republic, as was observed more than two thousand years ago, any attempt to overturn the state owes its strength to aid from some branch of the government. The Chief Justice of the United States, without any necessity or occasion, volunteered to come to the rescue of the theory of slavery. And from his court there lay no appeal but to the bar of humanity and history. Against the Constitution, against the memory of the nation, against a previous decision, against a series of enactments, he decided that the slave is property, that slave property is en­ titled to no less protection than any other property, that the Constitution upholds it in every territory against any act of a local Legislature, and even against Congress it­ self ; or, as the President tersely promulgat­ ed the saying : “ Kansas is as much a slave . State as South Carolina or Georgia ; slav­ ery, by virtue of the Constitution, exists in every territory.” The municipal character of slavery being thus taken away, and slave property decreed to be “ sacred,” the au­ thority of the courts was invoked to intro­ duce it by the comity of law into States where slavery had been abolished; and in one of the courts of the United States a judge pronounced the African slave trade legitimate, and numerous and powerful ad­ vocates demanded its restoration. TANEY AND SLAVE RACES. Moreover, the Chief Justice, in his elabo­ rate opinion, announced what had never been heard from any magistrate of Greece or Rome — what was unknown to civil law, and canon law, and feudal law, and comm on law, and constitutional law; unknown to Jay, to Rutledge, Ellsworth and Marshall — that there are “ slave races.” The spirit of evil is intensely logical. Having the au­ thority of this decision, five States swiftly followed the earlier example of a sixth, and opened the way for reducing the free negro to bondage; the migrating free negro be­ came a slave if he but touched the soil of a seventh ; and an eighth, from its extent and soil and mineral resources, destined to in­ calculable greatness, closed its eyes on its coming prosperity, and enacted — as by Ta­ ney’s decision it had the right to do — that every free black man who would live within its limits must accept the condition of slav­ ery for himself‘and his posterity. SECESSION RESOLVED ON. Only one step more remained to be taken. Jefferson and the leading statesmen of his day held fast to the idea that the enslave­ ment of the African was socially, morally 599 and politically wrong. The new school was founded exactly upon the opposite idea; and they resolved first to distract the demo­ cratic party for which the Supreme Court had now furnished the means, and then to establish a new government, with negro slavery for its corner stone, as socially, mor­ ally and politically right. THE ELECTION. As the presidential election drew on, one of the old traditional parties did not make its appearance; the other reeled as it sought to preserve its old position; and the candi­ date who most nearly represented its best opinion, driven by patriotic zeal, roamed the country from end to end to speak for union, eager at least to confront its enemies, yet not having hope that it would find its deliverance through him. The storm rose to a whirlwind ; who should allay its wrath ? The most experienced statesmen of the country had failed ; there was no hope from those who were great after the flesh; could relief come from one whose wisdom was like the wisdom of little children ? EARLY LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. The choice of America fell on a man born west of the Alleghanies, in the cabin of poor people of Hardin county, Kentucky — Abra­ ham Lincoln. His mother could read, but not write ; his father could do neither ; but his parents sent him, with an old spelling-book, to school, and he learned in his childhood to do both. When eight years old he floated down the Ohio with his father on a raft which bore the family and all their possessions to the shore of Indiana; and, child as he was, he gave help as they toiled through dense for­ ests to the interior of Spencer county. There in the land of free labor he grew up in a log cabin, with the solemn solitude for his teacher in his meditative hours. Of Asiatic literature he knew only the Bible; of Greek, Latin, and medieval, no more than the translation of 2Esop’s Fables; of English, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The traditions of Georgfe Fox and William Penn passed to him dimly along the lines .of' two centuries through his ancestors, who were Quakers. HIS EDUCATION. Otherwise his education was altogether American. The Declaration of Independ­ ence was his compendium of political wis­ dom, the life of Washington his constant study, and something of Jefferson and Madi­ son reached him through Henry Clay, whom �600 ORATION OF THE HON. GEORGE BANCROFT. he honoured from boyhood. For the re^t, from day to day, he lived the life of the American people; walked in its light; rea­ soned with its reason, thought with its pow­ er of thought; felt the beatings of its mighty heart; and so was in every way a child of nature—a child of the West—a child of America. HIS PROGRESS IN LIFE. At nineteen, feeling impulses of ambition to get on in the world, he engaged himself to go down the Mississippi in a flat boat, receiving ten dollars a month for his wages, and afterwards he made the trip once more. At twenty-one he drove his father’s cattle as the family migrated to Illinois, and split rails to fence in the new homestead in the wild. At twenty-three he was a captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk war. He kept a shop ; he learned something of sur­ veying ; but of English literature he added to Bunyan nothing but Shakespeare’s plays. At twenty-five he was elected to the Legis­ lature of Illinois, where he served eight years. At twenty-seven he was admitted to the bar. In 1837 he chose his home at Springfield, the beautiful centre of the richest land in the State. In 1847 he was a member of the national Congress, where he voted about forty times in favour of the principle of the Jefferson proviso. In 1854 he gave his influence to elect 'from Illinois to the American Senate a democrat who would certainly do justice to Kansas. In 1858, as the rival of Douglas, he went be­ fore the people of the mighty Prairie State, saying: “ This Union cannot permanently endure, half slave and half free ; the Union will not be dissolved, but the house will cease to be divided.” And now, in 1861, with no experience whatever as an exec­ utive officer, while States were madly fly­ ing from their orbit, and wise men knew not where to find counsel, this descendant of Quakers, this pupil of Bunyan, this child of the great West was elected Presi­ dent of America. He measured the difficulty of the duty that devolved on him, and was resolved to fulfil it. HE GOES TO WASHINGTON. As on the eleventh of February, 1861, he left Springfield, which for a quarter of a century had been his happy home, to the crowd of his friends and neighbours whom he was never more to meet, he spoke a solemn farewell: “ I know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty has devolved upon me, greater than that which has de­ volved upon any other man since Washing­ ton. He never would have succeeded, ex­ cept for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied. On the same Almighty Being I place my reliance. Pray that I may receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain.” To the men of Indiana he said : > “ I am but an accidental, temporary instrument; it is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and lib­ erty.” At the capital of Ohio he said: “ Without a name, without a reason why I should have a name, there has fallen upon me a task such as did not rest even upon the Father of his country.” At various places in New York, especially at Albany before the Legislature, which tendered him the united support of the great Empire State, he said: “ While I hold myself the humblest of all the individuals who have ever been elevated to the Presidency, I have a more difficult task to perform than any of them. I bring a true heart to the work. I must rely upon the' people of the whole country for support; and with their sustaining aid even I, humble as I am, can­ not fail to carry the ship of State safely through the storm.” To the Assembly of New Jersey, at Trenton, he explained: “ I shall take the ground I deem .most just to the North, the East, the West, the South, and the whole country, in good temper, certainly with no malice to any section. I am devoted to peace, but it may. be neces­ sary to put the foot down firmly.” In the old Independence Hall of Philadelphia he said: “ I have never had a feeling politi­ cally that did not spring from the senti­ ments embodied in the Declaration of In­ dependence, which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but to the world in all future time. If the country cannot be- saved without giving up that principle, I would rather be assassinated on the spot than surrender it. I have said nothing but what I am willing to live and die by. IN WHAT STATE HE FOUND THE .COUNTRY. Travelling in the dead of night to escape assassination, Lincoln arrived at Washing­ ton nine days before his inauguration. The outgoing President, at the opening of the session of Congress had still kept as the majority of his advisers men engaged in treason : had declared that in case of even an “ imaginary ” apprehension of danger from notions of freedom among the slaves, “ disunion would become inevitable.” Lin- �ORATION OF THE HOI . GEORGE BANCROFT. 601 coin and others had questioned the opinion of of th© South, or any decision of the Su­ Taney; such impugning he ascribed to the preme Court; and, nevertheless, the seced­ “ factious temper of the times.” The fa­ ing States formed at Montgomery a provi­ vorite doctrine of the majority of the sional government, and pursued their re­ democratic party on the power of a terri­ lentless purpose with such success that the torial legislature over slavery he condemned Lieutenant-General feared the city of as an attack on “ the sacred rights of pro­ Washington might find itself “ included in perty.” The State Legislatures, he insist­ a foreign country,” and proposed, among ed, must repeal what he called “their un­ the options for the consideration of Lincoln, constitutional and obnoxious enactments,” to bid the seceded States “ depart in peace.” and which, if such, were “ null and void,” The great republic seemed to have its em­ or “ it would be impossible for any human blem in the vast unfinished capitol, at that power to save the Union ! ” Nay 1 if these moment surrounded by masses of stone and unimportant acts were not repealed, “ the prostrate columns never yet lifted into injured States would be justified in revolu­ their places: seemingly the monument of tionary resistance to the government of the high but delusive aspirations, the confused Union.” He maintained that no State wreck of inchoate magnificence, sadder might secede at its sovereign will and than any ruin of Egyptian Thebes or pleasure; that the Union was meant for Athens. perpetuity; and that Congress might at­ tempt to preserve, but only by conciliation; HIS INAUGURATION. that “the sword was not placed in their The fourth of March came. With inhands to preserve it by force; ” that “ the stincftve wisdom the new President, speak­ last desperate remedy of a despairing peo­ ing to the people on taking the oath of ple ” would be “ an explanatory amend­ office, put aside every question that divided ment recognizing the decision of the Su­ the country, and gained a right to univer­ preme Court of the United States.” The sal support, by planting himself on the American Union he called “ a confederacy ” single idea of Union. That Union he de­ of States, and he thought it a duty to make clared to be unbroken and perpetual; and the appeal for amendment “ before any of he announced his determination to fulfil these States should separate themselves “the simple duty of taking care that the from the Union.” The views off the Lieu­ laws be faithfully executed in all the tenant-General, containing some patriotic States.” Seven days later, the convention advice, “ conceded the right of secession,” of confederate States unanimously adopted pronounced a quadruple rupture of the a constitution of their own; and the new Union “ a smaller evil than the reuniting of government was authoritatively announ­ the fragments by the sword,” and “ eschew­ ced to be founded on the idea that slave­ ed the idea of invading a seceded State. ry is the natural and normal condition After changes in the Cabinet, the Presi­ of the negro race. The issue was made up dent informed Congress that “ matters were whether the great republic was to main­ still worse; ” that “ the South suffered se­ tain its providential place in the history of rious grievances,” which should be redress­ mankind, or a rebellion founded on negro ed “ in peace.” The day after this message slavery gain a recognition of its principle' the flag of the Union was fired upon from throughout the civilized world. To the Fort Moultrie, and the insult was not disaffected Lincoln had said: “ You have revenged or noticed. Senators in Congress no conflict without being yourselves the ag­ telegraphed to their constituents to seize gressors.” To fire the passions of the South­ the national forts, and they were not ar­ ern portion of the people the confederate rested. The finances of the country were government chose to become aggressors; grievously embarrassed. Its little army and on the morning of the 12th of April was not within reach — the part of it in began the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Texas,' with all its stores, were made over and compelled its evacuation. by its commander to the seceding insur­ UPRISING OF THE PEOPLE gents. One State after another voted in convention to go out of the Union. A It is the glory of the late President that peace Congress, so-called, met at the re­ he had perfect faith in the perpetuity of quest of Virginia, to concert the terms of the Union. Supported in advance by capitulation for the continuance of the Douglas, who spoke as with the voice of a Union. Congress in both branches sought million, he instantly called a meeting of to devise conciliatory expedients ; the ter­ Congress, and summoned the people to ritories of the country were organized in a come up and repossess the forts, places and manner not to conflict with any pretensions property which had been seized from the �602 ORATION OF THE HON. GEORGE BANCROFT. Union. The men of the North were trained in schools; industrious and frugal; many of them delicately bred, their minds teem­ ing with ideas and fertile in plans of enter­ prise ; given to the culture of the arts; eager in the pursuit of wealth, yet employ­ ing wealth less for ostentation than for de­ veloping the resources of their country; seeking happiness in the calm of domestic life; and such lovers of peace that for gen­ erations they have been reputed unwarlike. Now, at the cry of their country in its dis­ tress, they rose up with unappeasable patri­ otism : not hirelings'— the purest and of the best blood in the land; sons of a pious ancestry, with a clear perception of duty, unclouded faith and fixed resojve to succeed, they thronged round the President to sup­ port the wronged, the beautiful flag of the nation. The halls of theological semi­ naries sent forth their young men, whose lips were touched with eloquence, whose hearts kindled with devotion to serve in the ranks, and make their way to command only as they learned the art of war. Strip­ lings in the colleges, as well as the most gentle and the most studious; those of sweetest temper and loveliest character and brightest genius passed from their classes to the camp. The lumbermen sprang forward from the forest, the mechanics from their benches, where they had been trained by the exercise of political rights to share the Hfe and hope of the Republic, to feel their responsibility to their forefathers, their posterity and mankind, went forth re­ solved that their dignity as a constituent part of this republic should not be impaired. Farmers and sons of farmers left the land but half ploughed, the grain but half plant­ ed, and, taking up the musket, learned to face without fear the presence of peril- and the coming of death in the shocks of war, while their hearts were still attracted to the charms of their rural life, and all the tender affections of home. Whatever there was of truth and faith and public love in the com­ mon heart broke out with one expression. The mighty winds blew from every quarter to fan the flame of the sacred and unquench­ able fire. in an eminent degree attained to freedom of industry and the security of person and property. Its middle class rose to greatness. Out of that class sprung the noblest poets and philosophers, whose words built up the intellect of its people; skilful navigators, to find out the many paths of the ocean; discoverers in natural science, whose inven­ tions guided its industry to wealth, till it equalled any nation of the world in letters, and excelled all in trade and commerce. But its government was become a govern­ ment of land, and not of men; every blade of grass was represented, but only a small minority of the people. In the transition from the feudal forms, the heads of the so­ cial organization freed themselves from the military services which were the conditions of their tenure, and throwing the burden on the industrial classes, kept all the soil to themselves. Vast estates that had been managed by monasteries as endowments for religion and charity were impropriated to swell the wealth of courtiers and favorites; and the commons, where the poor man once had his right of pasture, were taken away, and, under forms of law, enclosed distributively within their own domains. Although no law forbade any inhabitant from pur­ chasing land, the costliness of the transfer constituted a prohibition; so that it was the rule of that country that the plough should not be in the hands of its owner. The church was rested on a contradiction, claiming to be an embodiment of absolute truth, and yet was a creature of the statute book. HER SENTIMENTS. The progress of time increased the terri­ ble contrast between wealth and poverty; in their years of strength, the laboring peo­ ple, cut off from all share in governing the State, derived a scanty support from the severest toil, and had no hope for old age but in public charity or death. A grasping ambition had dotted the world with military posts, kept watch over our borders on the northeast, at the Bermudas, in the West Indies, held the gates of the Pacific, of the Southern and of the Indian Ocean, hover­ ed on our northwest at Vancouver, held the THE WAR A WORLD-WIDE WAR. whole of the newest continent, and the en­ For a time the war was thought to be trances to the old Mediterranean and Red confined to our own domestic affairs; but Sea ; and garrisoned forts all the way from it was soon seen that it involved the desti­ Madras to China. That aristocracy had nies of mankind, and its principles and gazed with terror on the growth of a com­ causes shook the politics of Europe to the monwealth where freeholds existed by the centre, and from Lisbon to Pekin, divided million, and religion was not in bondage to the governments of the world. the state ; and now they could not repress GREAT BRITAIN. their joy at its perils. They had not one There was a kingdom whose people had I word of sympathy for the kind-hearted �ORATION OF THE HON poor man’s son whom America had chosen for her chief; they jeered at his large hands, and long feet, and ungainly stature; and the British' secretary of state for foreign af­ fairs made haste to send word through the palaces of Europe that the great republic was in its agony,, that the republic was no more, that a head stone was all that remain­ ed due by the law of nations to “ the late Union.” But it is written: “ Let the dead bury their dead ; ” they may not bury the living. Let the dead bury their dead; let a bill of reform remove the worn-out gov­ ernment of a class, and infuse new life into the British constitution by confiding right­ fill power to the people. HER POLICY. GEORGE BANCROFT. 603 land. Thrice only in all its history has that yearning been fairly met; in the days of Hampden and Cromwell, again in the first ministry of the elder Pitt, and once again in the ministry of Shelburne. Not that there have not at all times been just men among the peers of Britain — like Halifax in the days of James the Second, or a Granville, an Argyll, or a Hdughton in ours ; and we can­ not be indifferent to a country that produces statesmen like Cobden and' Bright; but the best bower anchor of peace was the working class of England, who suffered most from our civil war, but who, while they broke their diminished bread in sorrow, always en­ couraged us to persevere. FRANCE AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE. ■ * The act of recognizing the rebel belliger­ But while the vitality of America is inde­ structible, the British government hurried ents wagLconcerted with France ; France, so to do what never before had been done by beloved in America, on which she had con­ Christian powers, what was in direct con­ ferred th® greatest benefits that one people flict with its own exposition of public law in ever conferred on another^ France, which the time of our struggle for. independence. stands foremost on the continent of Europe Though the insurgent States had not a ship for the solidity of her culture, as well as for in an open harbor, it invested them with the bravery and ■ generous impulses of her all the rights of a belligerent, even on the sons ; France, which for centuries had been ocean; and this, too, when the rebellion moving steadily in its own way towards in­ was not only directed against the gentlest tellectual and policial freewom. The poli­ and most beneficent government on earth, cy regarding further^ponization of Ameri­ without a shadow of justifiable cause, but ca by European power®!, known commonly when the rebellion was directed against Ma as the doctrine of Mowoe, had its origin in man nature itself for the perpetual enslave­ France; and if it takes any man’s name, ment of a race. And the effect of this re­ should bear the name of Turgot. It was cognition was that acts in themselves pirati­ adopted by Louis the Sixteenth, in the cabi­ cal found shelter in British courts of law. net of which Vergennes was the most imThe resources of British capitalist^ their portant member. It is emphatically the poliworkshops, their armories, their private ar­ cy of France^ to which, with transient de­ senals, their shipyards, were in league with viations, the Bourbons, the First Napoleon, the insurgents, and every British harbor in the House of Orleans have ever adhered. the wide world became a safe port for British ships, manned by British sailors, and arrngfl THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON AND MEXICO. The late President was perpetually har­ with British guns, to prey on our peaceful commerce ; even on our ships coming from assed by rumors that the Emperor Napoleon British ports, freighted with British pro­ the Third desired formally to recognize the ducts, or that had carried gifts of grain to States in rebellion as an independent power, the English poor. The prime minister in and that England held him back by her re­ the House of Commons, sustained by cheers, luctance, or France by her traditions of scoffed at the thought that their laws could freedom, or he himself by his own better be amended at our request, so as to pre­ judgment and clear perception of events. serve real neutrality; and to remonstrances But the republic of Mexico, on our borders, now owned to have been just, their secreta­ was, like ourselves, distracted by a rebellion, ry answered that they could not change and from a similar cause. The monarchy of England . had fastened upon us slavery their laws ad-infinitum. which did not disappear with independence; RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND. in like manner, the ecclesiastical policy es­ The people of America then wished, as tablished by the Spanish council of the In­ they always have wished, as they still wish, dies, in the days of Charles the Fifth and friendly relations with England; and no Philip the Second, retained its vigor in the man in Europe or America can desire it Mexican Republic. The fifty years of civil ' more strongly than I. This country has al­ war under which she had languished was ways yearned for good relations with Eng- I due to the bigoted system which was the �604 ORATION OF THE HOnJ GEORGE BANCROFT. ' legacy of monarchy, just as here the inheri­ tance of slavery kept alive political strife, and culminated in civil war. As with us there could be no quiet but through the end of slavery, so in Mexico there could be no prosperity until the crushing tyranny of in­ tolerance should cease. The party of slav­ ery in the United States sent their emissa­ ries to Europe to solicit aid; and so did the party of the church in Mexico, as organized by the old Spanish council of the Indies, but with a different result. Just as the re­ publican party had made an end of the re­ bellion, and was establishing the best gov­ ernment ever known in that region, and giv­ ing promise to the nation of order, peace, and prosperity, word was brought us, in the moment of our deepest affliction, that the * French emperor, moved by a desire to erect in North America a buttress for Imperial­ ism, would transform the republic of Mexico into a secundo-geniture for the house of Hapsburgh. America might complain ; she >could not then interpose, and delay seemed justifiable. It was seen that Mexico could not, with all its wealth of land, compete in cereal products with' our northwest, nor, in tropical products, with Cuba; nor could it, under a disputed dynasty, attract capital, or create public works, or develop mines, or borrow money; so that the imperial system of Mexico, which was forced at once to rec­ ognize the wisdom of the policy of the repub­ lic by adopting it, could prove only an un­ remunerating drain on the French treasury for the support of an Austrian adventurer. THE PERPETUITY OF REPUBLICAN INSTI­ TUTIONS. Meantime, a new series of momentous questions grows up, and forces themselves on the consideration of the thoughtful. Re­ publicanism has learned how to introduce into its constitution every element of order, as well as every element of freedom; but thus far the continuity of its government has seemed to depend on the continuity of elec­ tions. It is now tobe considered how per­ petuity is to be secured against foreign oc­ cupation. The successor of Charles the First of England dated his reign from the death of his father; the Bourbons, coming back after a long series of revolutions, claimed that the Louis who became king was the eighteenth of that name. The present emperor of the French, disdaining a title from election alone, is called the third of his name. Shall a republic have less power of continuance when invading armies prevent a peaceful resort to the ballot box ? What force shall it attach to intervening legisla­ tion ? What validity to debts contracted for its overthrow ? These momentous questions are by the invasion of Mexico thrown up for solution. A free State once truly constituted should be as undying as its people; the republic of Mexico must rise again. THE POPE OF ROME AND THE REBELLION. It was the condition of affairs in Mexico that involved the Pope of Rome in our dif­ ficulties so far that he alone among temporal sovereigns recognized the chief of the Con­ federate States as a president, and his sup­ porters as a people; and in letters to two great prelates of the Catholic Church in the United States gave counsels for peace at a time when peace meant the victory of se­ cession. Yet events move as they are or­ dered. The blessing of the Pope at Rome on the head of Duke Maximilian could not revive in the nineteenth century the eccle­ siastical policy of the sixteenth; and the re­ sult is only a new proof that there can be no prosperity in the State without religious freedom. THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA. When it came home to the consciousness of the Americans that the war which they were waging was a war for the liberty of all the nations of the world, for freedom itself, they thanked God for the severity of the trial to which he put their sincerity, and nerved themselves for their duty with an inexorable will. The President was led along by the greatness of their self-sacrifi­ cing example; and as a child, in a dark night on a rugged way, catches hold of the hand of its father for guidance and support, he clung fast to the hand of the people, and moved Calmly through the gloom. While the statesmanship of Europe was scoffing at the hopeless vanity of their efforts, they put forth such miracles of energy as the history of the world had never known. The navy of the United States drawing into the public service the willing militia of the seas, doubled its tonnage in eight months, and established an actual blockade from Cape Hatteras to the Rio Grande. In the course of the war it was increased five fold in men and in tonnage, while the inventive genius of the country devised more effec­ tive kinds of ordnance, and new forms of naval architecture in wood and iron. There went into the field, for various terms of service, about two million men; and in March last the men in service exceeded a million; that is to say, one of every two able-bodied men took some part in the war; and at one time every fourth able-bodied I man was in the field. In one single month. �ORATION OF THE HO-N. GEORGE BANCROFT.1 605 one hundred and sixty-five thousand were Mississippi, which would not be divided, recruited into service. Once, within four and the range of mountains which car­ weeks, Ohio organized and placed in the ried the stronghold of the free through field, forty-two regiments of infantry — Western Virginia and Kentucky and Ten­ nearly thirty-six thouand men; and Ohio nessee to the highlands of Alabama. But was like other States in the east and in the it invoked the still higher power of immor­ west. The well-mounted cavalry numbered tal justice. In ancient Greece, where ser­ eighty-four thousand ; of horses there were vitude was the universal custom, it was bought, first and last, two thirds of a mil­ held that if a child were to strike its parent, lion. In the movements of troops science the slave should defend the parent, and by came in aid of patriotism ; so that, to choose that act recover his freedom. After vain a single instance out of many, an army resistance, Lincoln, who had tried to solve twenty-three thousand strong, with its ar­ the question by gradual emancipation, by tillery, trains, baggage and animals, were colonization, and by compensation, at last moved by rail from the Potomac to the Ten­ saw that slavery must be abolished, or the nessee, twelve hundred miles in seven days. Republic must die; and on the 1st day of In the long marches, wonders of military January, 1863, he wrote liberty on the ban­ construction bridged the rivers; and where- ners of the armies. When this proclamaever an army halted, ample supplies await­ tion, which struck the fetters from three ed them at their ever changing base. The millions of slaves reached Europe, Lord vile thought that life is the greatest of Russell, a countryman of Milton and Wil­ blessings did not rise up. In six hundred berforce, eagerly put himself forward to and twenty-five battles, and severe skir­ speak of it in name of mankind, saying: mishes blood flowed like water. It streamed “ It is of a very strange nature ; ” “a meas­ over the grassy plains ; it stained the rocks; ure of war of a very questionable kind; ” the undergrowth of the forest was red an “ act of vengeance on the slave owner,” with it; and the armies marched on with that does no more thanEErofess to emanci­ majestic courage from one conflict to anoth­ pate slaves where the United States authorer, knowing that they were fighting for God ities cannot make emancipation a reality.” and liberty. The organization of the medi­ Now there was no pa™ of the country emcal department met its infinitely multiplied braced in the proclamation where the United duties with exactness and despatch. At the States could not and did hot make emanci. news of a battle, the best surgeons of our jfflffipn a reality. Those who saw Lincoln cities hastened to the field, to offer the most frequently had nev^fibefore heard zealous aid of the greatest experience and him speak with bitterness of any human skill. The gentlest and most refined of being ; but he did not conceal how keenly women left homes of luxury and, ease to he felt that he had been wronged by Lord build hospital tents near the armies, and Russell. And he wrote, in reply to another serve as nurses to the sick and dying. Be­ caviller: “ The emancipation policy, and sides the large supply of religious teachers the use of colored troops/gvere the greatest by the public, the congregations spared to blows yet dealt to the rebellion. The job was their brothers in the field the ablest minis­ a great national one ; and let none be slight­ ters. The Christian Commission, which ed who bore an honorable part in it. I hope expended five and a half millions, sent four peace will come soon, and come to stay; thousand clergymen chosen out of the best, then there will be some black men who can to keep un soiled the religious character of remember that they have helped mankind the men, and made gifts of clothes and food to this great consummation.” and medicine. The organization of private RUSSIA AND CHINA. charity assumed unheard of dimensions. ■The Sanitary Commission, which had seven The proclamation accomplished its end, thousand societies, distributed, under the for, during the war, our armies came into direction of an unpaid board, spontaneous military possession of every State in rebel­ contributions to the amount of fifteen mil­ lion. Then, too, was called forth the lions, in supplies or money — a million and new power that comes from the simultane­ a half in money from California alone — ous diffusion of thought and feeling among and dotted the scene of war from Paducah the nations of mankind. The mysterious to Port Royal, from Belle Plain, Virginia, sympathy of the millions throughout the • to Browsnville, Texas, with homes and world was given spontaneously. The best lodges. writers of Europe waked the conscience of the thoughtful, till the intelligent moral THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. sentiment of the Old World was drawn pi The country had for its allies "the River to the side of the unlettered statesman �606 ORATION OF THE HONF GEORGE BANCROFT. of the West. Russia, whose emperor had just accomplished one of the grandest acts in the course of time by raising twenty mil­ lions of bondmen into' freeholders, and thus assuring the growth and culture of a Rus­ sian people, remained our unwavering friend. From the oldest abode of civiliza­ tion, which gave the first example of an im­ perial government with equality among the people, Prince Kung, the secretary of state for foreign affairs, remembered the saying of Confucius, that we should not do to others what we would not that others should do to us, and in the name of the Emperor of China closed its ports against the war ships and privateers of “ the seditious.” CONTINUANCE OF THE WAR. The war continued, with all the peoples of the world for anxious spectators. Its cares weighed heavily on Lincoln, and his face was ploughed with the furrows of thought and sadness. With malice towards none, free from the spirit of revenge, victo­ ry made him importunate for peace; and his enemies never doubted his word, or despaired of his abounding clemency. He longed to utter pardon as the word for all, but not unless the freedom of the negro should be assured. The grand battles of Mill Spring which gave us Nashville, of Fort Donelson, Malvern Hill, Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness of Virginia, Winchester, Nashville, the capture of New Orleans, Vicksburg, Mobile, Fort Fisher, the march from Atlanta and the capture of Savannah and Charleston, all foretold the issue. Still more, the self-regeneration of Missouri, the heart of the continent; of Ma­ ryland, whose sons never heard the mid­ night bell chime so. sweetly as when they rang out to earth and heaven that, by the voice of her own people, she took her place among the free ; of Tennessee, which passed through fire and blood, through sorrows and the shadow of death, to work out her own deliverance, and by the faithfulness of her own sons to renew her youth like the eagle — proved that victory was deserved and would be worth all that it cost. If words of mercy uttered as they were by Lincoln on the waters of Virginia, were defiantly repelled, the armies of the country, moving with one will, went as the arrow to its mark, and without a. feeling of revenge struck a deathblow at rebellion. ing him to a second term of service. The raging war that had divided the country had lulled; and private grief was hushed by the grandeur of its results. The nation had its new birth of freedom, soon to be secured forever by an amendment of the Constitution. His persistent gentleness had conquered for him a kindlier feeling on the part of the South. His scoffers among the grandees of Europe began to do him honor. The laboring classes every where saw in his advancement their own. All peoples sent him their benedictions. And at the mo­ ment of the height of his fame, to which his humility and modesty added charms, he fell by the hand of the assassin; and the only triumph awarded him was tb,e march to the grave. THE GREATNESS OF MAN. This is no time to say that human glory is but dust and ashes, that we mortals are no more than shadows in pursuit of shadows. How mean a thing were man, if there were not that within him which is higher than himself—if he could not master the illu­ sions of sense, and discern the connections of events by a superior light which comes from God. He so shares the divine impul­ ses that he has power to subject interested passions to love of country, and personal ambition to the ennoblement of man. Not in vain has Lincoln lived, for he has helped to make this Republic an exatnple of jus­ tice, with no caste but the caste of humani­ ty. The heroes who led our armies and ships into battle — Lyon, McPherson, Rey­ nolds, Sedgwick, Wadsworth, Foote, Ward, with their compeers — and fell in the ser­ vice, did not die in vain ; they and the my­ riads of nameless martyrs, and he, the chief martyr, died willingly “ that government of the people, by the people, and for the peo­ ple, shall not perish from the earth.” THE JUST DIED FOR THE UNJUST. The assassination of Lincoln, who was so free from malice, has from some mysterious influence struck the country with solemn awe, and hushed, instead of exciting, the passion for revenge. It seemed as if the just had died for the unjust. When I think of the friends I have lost in this war — and every one who hears me has, like myself, lost those whom he most loved — there is no consolation to be derivedftom victims on the scaffold, or from any thing but the es­ tablished union of the regenerated nation. Lincoln’s assassination. „ CHARACTER OF LINCOLN. I Where, in the history of nations, had a Chief Magistrate possessed more sources of In his character Lincoln was through and consolation and joy, than Lincoln? His through an American. He is the first nacountrymen had shown their love by choos­ I tive of the region west of the Alleghanies to �ORATION OF THE HON . GEORGE BANCROFT. i 607 attain to the highest station; and how hap­ Lincoln was one of the most unassuming py it is- that the man who was brought for­ of men. In time of success, he gave credit ward as the natural outgrowth and first for it to those whom he employed, to the fruits of that region should have been of un­ people, and to the providence of God. He blemished purity in private life, a good son, did not know what ostentation is; when he a kind husband, a most affectionate father, became President he was rather saddened and, as a man, so gentle to all. As to in­ than elated, and his conduct and manners tegrity, Douglas, his rival, said of him, “ Lin­ showed more than ever his belief that all coln is the honestest man I ever knew.” men are born equal. He was no respecter The habits of his mind were those of of persons ; and neither rank, nor reputa­ meditation and inward thought, rather than tion, nor services overawed him. In judg­ of action. He excelled in logical statement, ing of character he failed in discrimination, more than in executive ability. He rea­ and his appointments were sometimes bad; soned clearly, his reflective judgment was but he readily deferred to public opinion, good, and his purposes were, fixed; but and in appointing tne head of the armies he like the Hamlet of his only poet,, his will followed the manifest preference of Conwas tardy in action, and for this reason, and gressBu A good President will secure unity to his not from humility or tenderness of feeling, he sometimes deplored that the duty which administration by his own supervision of devolved on him had not fallen to the lot of the various departments. Lincoln, who acnever governed another. He was skilful in analysis, dis­ cepted advice ^adily cerned with precision the central idea, on by any member of his Caftnet, and could which a question turned, and knew how to not be moved from a purpose deliberately disengage it and present it by itself in a few formed; but his supervision of affairs was homely, strong old English words that would unsteady and incomplete |Jand sometimes, be intelligible to all. He delighted to ex­ by a sudden interference transcoding the press his opinions by apothegm, illustrate usual forms, he rather confused than adthem by a parable, or drive them home by a vanced the public business. If he ever story. failed in the scrupulous regard due to the Lincoln gained a name by discussing relative rights of Congress, it was so evi­ questions which, of all others, most easily dently without design that no conflict led to fanaticism; but he was never carried could ensue, or evil precefent be estabaway by enthusiastic zeal, never indulged lished. Truth he would receive from any in extravagant language, never hurried to one ; but, when impressed by others, he did support extreme measures, never allowed not use their opinions till by reflection he himself to be controlled by sudden impulses. had made them thoroughly his own. During the progress of the election at which It was the nature of Lincoln to forgive. he was chosen President, he expressed no When hostilities ceased w he who had al­ opinion that, went beyond the Jefferson ways sent forth the flag with every one of its proviso of 1784. Like Jefferson and Lafa­ stars in the field, was eager to receive back yette, he had faith in the intuitions of the his returning count^men, and meditated people, and read those intuitions with rare some new announcement to the South.” sagacity. He knew how to bide his time, The amendment of the Constitution abolish­ and was less apt to be in advance of public ing slavery had his most earnest and un­ opinion than to lag behind. He never wearied support. During the rage of war sought to electrify the public by taking we get a glimpse into his soul from his an advanced position with a banner of privately suggesting to Louisiana that “ in opinion; but rather studied to move for­ defining the franchise some of the colored ward compactly, exposing no detachment people might be let in,” saying: “ They in front or rear; so that the course of his would probably help, in some trying time administration might have been explained to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the as the calculating policy of a shrewd and family of freedom.” In 1857 he avowed watchful politician, had there not been seen himself “ not in favor of ” what he improp­ behind it a fixedness of principle which erly called .“ negro citizenship: ” for the from the first determined his purpose and Constitution discriminates between citizens grew more intense with every year, consum­ and electors. Three days before his death ing his life by,its energy. Yet his sensibili- he declared his preference that “ the elect­ ties were not acute, he had no vividness of ive franchise were now conferred on the imagination to picture to his mind the hor­ very intelligent of the colored men and on rors of the battle-field or the sufferings in those of them who served our cause as hospitals ; his conscience was more tender soldiers;” but he wished it done by the than his feelings. States themselves, and he never harbored �608 ORATION OF THE HON. GEORGE BANCROFT. the thought of ^exacting it from a new government as a condition of its recognition. The last day of his life beamed with sun­ shine, as he sent by the - speaker of this House his friendly greetings to the men of the Rocky Mountains and the Pa­ cific slope; as he contemplated the return of hundreds of thousands of soldiers to fruit­ ful industry; as he welcomed in advance hundreds of thousands of emigrants from Europe; as his eye kindled with enthusi­ asm at the coming wealth of the nation. And'so, with these thoughts for his country, he was removed from the toils and temp­ tations of this life and was at peace. PALMERSTON AND LINCOLN. Hardly had the late President been con­ signed to the grave, when the Prime Minis­ ter of England died, full of years and hon­ ours. Palmerston traced his lineage to the time of the conqueror: Lincoln went back only to his grandfather. Palmerston re­ ceived his education from the best scholars of Harrow, Edinburgh, and Cambridge; Lincoln’s early teachers were the silent forest, the prairie, the river, and the stars. Palmerston was in public life for sixty years ; Lincoln for but a tenth of that time. Palmerston was a skilful guide of an estab­ lished aristocracy; Lincoln a leader or rather a companion of the people. Palmerston was exclusively an Englishman, and made his boast in the House of Commons that the interest of England was his Shibboleth; Lincoln thought always of mankind as well as his own country, and served human na­ ture itself. Palmerston from his narrowness as an Englishman did not endear his coun­ try to any one court or to any one people, but rather caused uneasiness and dislike; Lincoln left America more beloved than ever by all the peoples of Europe. Palm­ erston was self-possessed and adroit in reconciling the conflicting claims of the fac­ tions of the aristocracy; Lincoln, frank and ingenuous, knew how to poise himself on the conflicting opinions of the people. Palm­ erston was capable of insolence towards the weak, quick to the sense of honour, not heedful of right; Lincoln rejected counsel given only as a matter of policy, and was not capable of being wilfully unjust. Palm­ erston, essentially superficial, delighted in banter, and knew how to divert grave op­ position, by playful levity. Lincoln was a man of infinite jest on his lips, with saddest earnestness at his heart. Palmerston was a fair representative of the aristocratic lib­ erality of the day, choosing for his tribunal, not the conscience of humanity, but the House of Commons ; Lincoln took to heart I the eternal truths of liberty, obeyed them as the commands of Providence, and accept * ed the human race as the judge of his fidel­ ity. Palmerston did nothing that will en­ dure ; his great achievement, the separation of Belgium, placed that little kingdom where it must gravitate to France; Lincoln finished a work which all time cannot over­ throw. Palmerston is a shining example of the ablest of a cultivated aristocracy; Lin­ coln shows the genuine fruits of institutions where the laboring man shares and assists to form the great ideas and designs of his country. Palmerston was buried in West­ minster Abbey by the order of his Queen, and was followed by the British aristocracy to his grave, which after a few years will hardly be noticed by the side of the graves of Fox and Chatham; Lincoln was followed by the sorrow of his country across the con­ tinent to his resting-place in the heart of the Mississippi valley, to be remembered through all time by his countrymen, and by all the peoples of the world. CONCLUSION. As the sum of all, the hand of Lincoln raised the flag; the American people was the hero of the war; and therefore the re­ sult is a new era of republicanism. The dis­ turbances in the country grew not out of any­ thing republican, but out of slavery, which is a part of the system of hereditary wrong, and the expulsion of this domestic anomaly opens to the renovated nation a career of unthought of dignity and glory. Hence­ forth our country has a moral unity as the land of free labour. The party for slavery and the party against slavery are no more, and are merged in the party of Union and freedom. The States which would have Ieff“* us are not brought back as conquered States, for then we should hold them only so long as that conquest could be maintained ; they come to their rightful place under the Consti­ tution as original, necessary and inseparable members of the State. We build monu­ ments to the dead, but no monuments of victory. We respect the example of the Romans, who never, even in conquered lands, raised emblems of triumph. And our generals are not to be classed in the herd of vulgar conquerors, but are of the school of Timoleon and William of Orange' and Washington. They have used the sword only to give peace to their country and restore her to her place in the great assembly of the nations. Our meeting closes in hope, now that a people begins to live according to the laws of reason., and re­ publicanism is intrenched in a continent. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource America, France and England Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907 [1832-1907] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [Boston, Mass.] Collation: [545]-608 p. ; 23 cm. Notes: From Littell's Living Age, vol. XXX11, third series, no. 1134, (24 February 1866): re-published from Fortnightly Review 3: 442-459 (January 1 1866). From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed in double columns. Includes comment and letters on the Alabama debate in the House of Commons. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [T.H. Carter & Co.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1866 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5438 Subject The topic of the resource International relations France England USA Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (America, France and England), identified by <span style="color:#0000ff;"><span lang="zxx"><u>Humanist Library and Archives</u></span></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Foreign Relations France Great Britain United States-Foreign Relations United States-Politics and Government