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cannot see the logical consistency of such a | tainly not to pay for the expenses of the position ; any more than the reasonableness, critical distillation. * after having admitted the preponderant evi- Nor will the theory of what some call the dence for the great truth of Theism, of except“ intuitional consciousness” avail us here. It ing some phenomena as apparently at variance is true, as they assert, that the constitution with the Divine perfections; and thus vir- of human nature is such that, before its tually adopting à Manichæan hypothesis. actual development, it has a capacity of deWe must recollect that we know nothing of veloping to certain effects only,—just as Christianity except from its records; and as the flower in the germ, as it expands to the these, once fairly ascertained to be authentic sun, will have certain colors and a certain and genuine, are all, as regards their con- fragrance, and no other ;-all which, indeed, tents, supported precisely by the same mi-though not very new or profound, is very raculous and other evidence; as they bear important. But it is not so clear that it will upon them precisely the same internal marks give us any help on the present occasion. of artlessness, truth, and sincerity; and, his. We have an original susceptibility of music, torically and in other respects, are inextrica- of beauty, of religion, it is said.' Granted; bly interwoven with one another; we see not but as but as the actual development of this suscepon what principles we can safely reject por- tibility exhibits all the diversities between tions as improbable, distasteful, not quadrat- Handel's notions of harmony and those of an ing with the dictates of “reason,” our “ intui- American Indian-between Raphael's notions tional consciousness," and what not. This of beauty and those of a Hottentot-between assumed liberty, however, is, as we appre- St. Paul's notions of a God and those of a hend, of the very essence of Rationalism; New Zealander—it would appear that the and it may be called the Manichæism of in- education of this susceptibility is at least as terpretation. So long as the canonicity of any important as the susceptibility itself, if not of the records, or any portion of them, or more so; for without the susceptibility itself, their true interpretation, is in dispute, we we should simply have no notion of music, may fairly doubt; but that point once de beauty, or religion ; and between such negacided by honest criticism, to say we receive tion and that notion of all these which New such and such portions, on account of the Zealanders and Hottentots possess, not a few weight of the general evidence, and yet reject other portions, though sustained by the same • It may be as well to remark, that we have fre quently observed a disposition to represent the very evidence, because we think there is some general abandonment of the theory of “ verbal inthing unreasonable or revolting in their sub- spiration” as a concession to Rationalism ; as if it stance, is plainly to accept evidence only necessarily followed from admitting that inspiration where it pleases us, and to reject it where it is not verbal, that therefore an indeterminate portion of the substance or doctrine is purely human. It is pleases us not. The only question fairly at issue must ever be, whether the general evi- plain , however, that this is no necessary consequence ; an advocate of plenary inspiration may contend, dence for Christianity will overbear the that, though he does not believe that the very difficulties which we cannot separate from the words of Scripture were dictated, yet that the truths. If it will not, we must reject it thoughts were either so suggested, (if the matter wholly; and if it will, we must receive it w was such as could be known only by revelation) or so controlled, (if the matter were such as was wholly. There is plainly no tenable position previously known,) that (excluding errors introduced between absolute infidelity and absolute into the text since) the Scriptures as first composed belief. And this is proved by the infinitely were—what no book of man ever was, or can be, various and Protean character of Rationalism, even in the plainest narrative of the simplest events and the perfectly indeterminate, but always enter" not here, however, into the question whether -a perfectly accurate expression of truth. arbitrary, limits it imposes on itself. It ex such a view of inspiration is better or worse than ists in all forms and degrees, from a modera- another. We are simply anxious to correct a fallacy tion which accepts nearly the entire system which has, judging from what we have recently of Christianity, and which certainly rejects be verbal, or the contrary; but, whether one or the read, operated rather extensively. Inspiration may nothing that can be said to constitute its dis- other, he who takes the affirmative or negative of tinctive truth, to an audacity of unbelief, that question may still consistently contend that it which, professing still vaguely to reverence may still be plenary. The question of the inspiraChristianity as "something divine,” sponges tion of the whole, or the inspiration of a part, is out nine tenths of the whole; or, after redu- widely ditferent from that as to the suggestion of the words or the suggestion of the thoughts. But cing the mass of it to a caput mortuum of lies, these questions we leave to professed theologians. fiction, and superstitions, retains only a few We merely enter our protest against a prevailing drops of fact and doctrine, —so few as cer- fallacy. Page 3
man era, any imaginable condition of our sys- | rewarded by a knowledge which on those tem-at the close, so to speak, of a given particular points may terminate it. And, in geological period—would harmonize with a such ways, it is surely conceivable that a fair interpretation of the first chapter of Gen- great part of the objections against Revelaesis, the objection will be neutralized. tion may, in time, disappear; and, though We have little doubt in our own minds other objections may be the result of the prothat the ultimately converging, though, it gress of the older seiences or the origination may be, transiently discrepant conclusions of new, the solution of previous objections, of the sciences of philology, ethnology, and together with the additions to the evidences geology (in all of which we may rest as- of Christianity, external and internal, which sured great discoveries are yet to be made) the study of history and of the Scriptures will tend to harmonize with the ultimate re- may supply, and the still brighter light cast sults of a more thorough study of the rec- by the progress of Christianity and the fulords of the race as contained in the book of fillment of its prophecies, may inspire inRevelation. Let us be permitted to imagine creasing confidence that the new objections one example of such possible harmony. We are also destined to yield to similar solvents. think that the philologist may engage to Meanwhile, such new difficulties, and those make out, on the strictest principles of induc- more awful and gigantic shadows which we tion, from the tenacity with which all com- have no reason to believe will ever be chased munities cling to their language, and the from the sacred page, --mysteries which slow observed rate of change by which they probably could not be explained from the alter; by which Anglo-Saxon, for example, necessary limitation of our faculties, and are, has become English, * Latin Italian, and an- at all events, submitted to us as a salutary cient Greek modern (though these langua- discipline of our humility,—will continue to ges have been affected by every conceivable form that exercise of faith which is probably cause of variation and depravation); that it nearly equal in every age and necessary in would require hundreds of thousands, nay all ages, if we would be made “little chilmillions, of years to account for the produc- dren," qualified to enter the kingdom of “ tion, by known natural causes, of the vast God.” multitude of totally distinct languages, and In conclusion, we may remark, that while tens of thousands of dialects, which man many are proclaiming that Christianity is efnow utters. On the other hand, the geolo- fete, and that, in the language of M. Proudgist is more and more persuaded of the hon (who complacently says it amidst the comparatively recent origin of the human ignominious failure of a thousand social panrace. What, then, is to harmonize these aceas of his own age and country), it will conflicting statements ? Will it not be curi- certainly “ die out in about three hundred ous if it should turn out that nothing can years ;” and while many more proclaim that, possibly harmonize them but the statement as a religion of supernatural origin and suof Genesis, that in order to prevent the nat-pernatural evidence, it is already dying, if ural tendency of the race to accumulate on not dead; we must beg leave to remind one spot and facilitate their dispersion and them that, even if Christianity be false, as destined occupancy of the globe, a preternat- they allege, they are utterly forgetting the , ural intervention expedited the operation of maxims of a cautious induction in saying the causes which would gradually have giv- that it will therefore cease to exert dominen birth to distinct languages ? Of the prob- ion over mankind. What proof is there of ability of this intervention, some profound this ? Whether true or false, it has already philologists have, on scientific grounds alone, survived numberless revolutions of human expressed their conviction. But in all such opinions, and all sorts of changes and asmatters, what we plead for is only-patience; saults. It is not confined, like other reliwe wish not to dogmatize; all we ask is, a gions, to any one race-to any one climephilosophic abstinence from dogmatism. In or any one form of political constitution. relation to many difficulties, what is now a While it transmigrates freely from race to race, reasonable exercise of faith may one day be and clime to clime, its chief home, too, is still in the bosom of enterprise, wealth, sci ence, and civilization; and it is at this mo* It contains, let us recollect, (after all causes of ment most powerful amongst the nations that changes, including a conquest, have been at work have most of these. If not true, it has such upon it,) a vast majority of the Saxon words spoken in the time of Alfred-nearly a thousand years an appearance of truth as to have satisfied ago! many of the acutest and most powerful inVOL. XIX. NO. III. 21 Page 4
business of Life Assurance. Mr. Morgan's (then much desired by the societies as a labors, both in the business and authorship guarantee of their soundness,) because the of Life Assurance, are still remembered in con- rates were not considered sufficiently high. nection with the London Equitable Society. From the publication of Dr. Price's work, Francis Baily, in 1810, published a work before alluded to, until the end of the last on Annuities, distinguished by scientific beau- century, there were instituted only two new ty, and calculated for daily use in the busi- Assurance Societies which survived any ness of Life Assurance. A similar work, length of time. comprehending all that was valuable in pre- Since the commencement of this century, vious writers, was produced in 1815 by Mr. companies and societies of all kinds have Joshua Milne. The standard compilation of sprung up and flourished. From 1800 to David Jones, published under the auspices 1810 inclusive, thirteen were established. of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful For the next ten years till 1820, only four Knowledge, is now, perhaps more than any were set up. During the succeeding decenother work, in daily use by Assurance Compa- nial period till 1830, twelve new companies , nies. To a student of principles, however, we attested the return of a fresh interest and would recommend the simpler work of Baily. impulse in the direction of Life Assurance. It might be invidious, and it is not neces. The next ten years, ending in 1840, were sary, to notice and estimate in comparison signalized by still more abundant evidences the services of eminent actuaries of our own of the zealous cultivation of Life Assurgeneration, such as Ansell, Finlaison, Davies, ance, no less than thirty-one associations Neison, Edmond, and the Joneses, or to having during that period effected a permadwell on the contemporary authorship of nent establishment in the country. * Since such writers as Babbage and De Morgan, 1840 a still larger number have appeared. whose works will abundantly repay the care- Altogether, the whole societies and compaful perusal of any one desirous of fully un- nies now doing business in Life Assurance in derstanding the theory of Life Assurance, the United Kingdom are about ninety-three. The first Life Assurance Society establish- We say Companies and Societies; for under ed in this country was the Amicable Corpo- these generic designations may be classed ration of London, founded during the reign all the proper Life Assurance Institutions. of Queen Anne in the year 1706. Centu- Society is the name appropriate to those asries before that time there existed in Eng-sociations which, composed exclusively of land ancient associations known as gilds, assuring members, depend on the contribufraternities, mysteries, and brotherhoods. tions of those members alone for the fulfillThese possessed more of the character of ment of their policies, and which retain, for friendly societies than of Life Assurance in the benefit of the members, all surplus funds stitutions; but they discover even in the arising from the excess of contributions. In early developments of society those prudent short, the Society is constituted and worked and benevolent tendencies of the English on the principle of Mutual Assurance. The community, which have rendered it in later Company, in its pure, unmixed character, times so favorable a soil for the cultivation of consists of an association of proprietors or Life Assurance. shareholders subscribing, and partially payAnterior to the bubble schemes exploded ing up, an aggregate capital on which they by Dr. Price, only five Life Assuring As-trade with the public (at least the healthy sociations had been established in England. portion of it) in assuring lives at certain speThese earlier societies began by charging cified rates,-thus affording to the assured an annual premium of £5 per cent. on every the guarantee of a separate capital, but ap a , life assured, without reference to age—so propriating to the shareholders, in addition rude were the first ideas of the risk under-| to the interest which that paid-up capital taken in a policy of Life Assurance. Even produces, the profit arising from their assurwhen they discovered how very rough and ing trade. The Proprietary Companies now, inequitable this mode of regulating the con- however, with not more than one or two extributions was, the first attempts to graduate ceptions, offer to assurers the option of either rates to the age of the assured were made paying merely the rate for which the Comupon calculations of the probability of life pany is willing to insure the life, and so acgreatly below its actual value, while the quiring no after-benefit beyond the exact sum premiums were still further enhanced by the in the policy; or paying a somewhat larger ignorant, but perhaps wholesome jealousy of rate, and thereby obtaining some participaGovernment, which refused to issue licenses, tion in the profits of the business. Having thus introduced into their original proprieta- | equal charges of those early times of ignorry constitution the more popular principle of ance and over-caution have gradually given mutual Assurance, they may be said with place to rates, generally speaking, graduated more correctness to belong to a new and according to the ages of parties, there yet mixed genus, partaking in about equal pro- remains room for improvements in applying portions of the proprietary and mutual ele- the facts of ascertained mortality, so as to do ments. In fact, Life Assurance Associations justice to the several ages of the assured ; are generally and familiarly classified under and, in the sale and purchase of annuities the three heads of “ Mutual,” “Proprieta- and reversions, to meet with more accuracy ry,” and “Mixed." Page 5
Surplus is the power of an office increased to / of scientific calcuation-the question of disgive one class the advantage over another in tribution is one of equity. As might be supthe division, and by the declaration of large posed, the latter is emphatically the questio bonuses to dazzle the public with imaginary vezala among assurers and assured, upon benefits . The amount of the bonuses period which every office professes to hold and ap; ically declared cannot form a true test of the ply the only true principle of division, and prosperity of any institution. That amount upon which it is, perhaps, impossible in pracmay arise from using a false mortality table, tice to realize perfectly the full results of the and exacting large rates, as much as from most unexceptionable theory. getting good lives and fortunate investments. Although absolute and exact equity may The first question in any investigation with be unattainable, the principle of division a view to a division, is the ascertainment of should be sound, and such as to "fford in its the amount of profit at any given period. application the nearest approximation to evenThis is a matter requiring very careful treat-handed justice. ment. A mercantile firm, however extensive By special compact, the whole parties inand varied may be their property and affairs, terested may be bound to a particular methor a bank, however speculative may be a od of Division : as, for instance, by the deed , portion of its investments, proceed to a val- of constitution, or the by-law of the assouation of their assets upon rules and princi- ciation, it may be provided that the first ples which ordinary intelligence and pru- 5000 policies shall alone participate in the dence suggest, and any considerable mistake surplus fund, or that none shall share in such will at once become apparent to those con- surplus until they have paid premiums equivcerned; but a Life Assurance Society, from alent with interest to the sum assured. In the peculiar nature both of its property and such cases it may be admitted, that as all obligations, might readily fall into errors, parties know the rule before they join the which, while they were of a very serious body so constituted, none of the members kind, might not be even suspected to exist can fairly complain when they find the laws for a long series of years. On the one side consistently carried out. Others, however, of the balance sheet stand as the property of are entitled to maintain, in the name of sound the Society its realized funds and invest- principle, that by so agreeing to conduct ments, with the present value of all the pre- business, the effect is to divide among a famiums due by the members; on the other vored class what was contributed proportionside as debt stands the present value of all ally by all, and that to the extent of the surthe sums assured. In these valuations very plus the principle applied is not that of equalgreat fallacies may sometimes Jurk. It is izing life and providing against premature notorious, that a large and respectable So- death,--the great and proper object of Life ciety in England, at two successive septen- Assurance, but of conferring a bonus and nial periods, divided, as profit, the whole bounty upon long life, which is the gambling surplus fund which could arise on their poli- principle of the Tontine. cies during the entire period of their curren- Farther, and without dwelling upon this cy, thus anticipating twice over, on a great subject, we may venture to say, that no little number of their policies, profits not then suspicion exists, that in several very prosperrealized, and appropriating to one class, with ous and otherwise ably conducted institureal (though perhaps not intentional) injus- tions, the older lives engross the lion's share tice, what belonged to another. of the spoil. No competent defence has ever It would be out of place to enter here been made of the system by which the long upon a full exposition of the principle and livers reap their enlarging shares of benefit methods of a correct valuation of premiums at successive periods of investigation, by proand policies. These are now well under- fits being allotted to them in proportion to stood, and in general are honestly applied, the amount both of their original assurance, although error and injustice still result in and of additions made by previously declarsome offices from the use of the exploded ed bonuses. Still less can the system be mortality of Northampton as the criterion of upheld by which they draw profit at each value. successive period of division, according, not When the amount of the profit or surplus merely to the premiums paid subsequent to fund has, at the assigned period, been ascer- the date of the previous division, during tained, the question next in order, and not which period the profit to be divided aroseinferior in importance, is, how is that fund to but in proportion to all the premiums be divided ? The question of amount is one I from the very commencement of the policy. The long-standing and numerous policies of the precise rate of mortality been foreknown. associations conducted upon these plans, so That scheme of division, therefore, is certainfar from being attractive to new members, ly the most equitable and most in accordance will probably, with increasing experience, be with the strict principles of Life Assurance, found to be the reverse. The oftener the which distributes the profits among all the periods of allocation recur, the greater the policy-holders, without preference of classes, evil and the injustice under such a system of and so as to include the members who die division. This accumulative system of bonus early as well as those who live long. That additions, if brought into action, every ten means exist, and that computations are pracor every seven years, is bad enough; but ticable for so dividing, is undoubted, and it when it is carried into effect every five years, is hoped they will be brought into more exour astonishment is, that it does not produce tensive use when true principle shall be results more startling than any that have yet thought a safer guide than false popularity, appeared in advertising type; and as it is and when the interests of the long livers, alimpossible to invent a new mathematics, but ways a powerful class, are postponed to the quite a possible thing to cook a bonus, we demands of enlightened equity. are led to ask, whether in the offices to which The importance of the views we are now we refer, arbitrary accommodations have not urging is much greater than may at first sight been resorted to already, to disguise and appear. The prevailing systems are, in counteract the inevitable results of their own reality, most unfavorable to the spread of vaunted principle? In truth, it needs no Life Assurance among the general body of prophet to predict, that if this accumulative society. The grand object should be to proplan of heaping up bonuses on the old poli- mote its extension among all who can avail cies were rigorously and permanently carried themselves of its benefits. Instead of doing out, the discouragement to new entrants this by offering Assurance at low but safe would become so great, that few would be rates, these are kept so high as to deter attracted to such offices — that with a de- many from attempting to assure, and to decreasing or even a stationary business, the feat many more who make the attempt, all fallacy would become more apparent than it in order to produce a surplus fund for the does, or can do, so long as business is flow- long livers. "New entrants not only pay an ing in with an annually increasing volume; adequate premium, but in addition what may and that thus an accumulative process of de- be called a Tontine-tax, in the distribution of cline would ensue, and the office would ef- which they may never share; and thus Life fectually wind itself up, and shut its ow" door. Assurance, instead of being simplified, and Page 6
. It selves immediately to the reproduction in must sound like a myth or fable; they must others of that piety which they feel to be of balf suspect that, if some Niebuhr should such incomparable importance. This belook into the matter, their heroic figure would comes the predominant, often the sole object vanish into thin air. of their lives. It is natural it should be so. Let them, however, proceed to the study In such minds all the concerns of the present of the veritable Howard, and all the myste- world sink into insignificance ; and their felry clears up. The philanthropist of the ora- low-men are nothing, except as they are, or tor gives place to one who, in the essential are not, fellow-Christians. Howard was an elements of his character, may be ranked exception to this rule. Owing to certain cirwith Christian missionaries and Christian cumstances in his own life ; to the manner of martyrs. Instead of the half-pagan ideal, or his education; to his deficiency in some inpersonification of benevolence, there rises tellectual qualifications, and his pre-eminence before them a character which a rigorous in others, he was led to take the domain of analysis might justly class with those of St. physical suffering—of earthly wretchedness Francis or Loyola, or whatever the Christian —for the province in which to exert his zeal. church has at any time exhibited of exalted For the preacher, or the writer, he was not piety and complete self-devotion. The same formed, either by education or by natural enspirit which, in past times, has driven men dowment; but he was a man of shrewd obinto the desert, or shut them up in cells with servation, of great administrative talent, of the scourge and the crucifix; the same spirit untiring perseverance, and of an insatiable which has impelled them to brave all the energy. The St. Francis of Protestant Engdangers of noxious climates and of savage land did not, therefore, go forth as a missionpassions, to extend the knowledge of religion ary; nor did he become the founder of a new amongst barbarous nations—was animating sect, distinguished by any doctrinal peculiariHoward when he journeyed incessantly from ty; but he girded himself up to visit, round prison to prison, tracking human misery into the world, the cell of the prisoner—to exall its hidden and most loathsome recesses. amine the food he ate, the air he breathed, He who, in another century, would have been to rid him of the jail-fever, to drive famine the founder of a new order of barefooted out of its secret haunts, and from its neglectmonks, became, in Protestant England, the ed prey. It was this peculiarity which led great exemplar of philanthropic heroism. men to segregate Howard from the class to Perhaps he too, in one sense, may be said which, by the great elements of his characto have founded a new religious order, ter, he belongs. To relieve the common though it is not bound together by common wants of our humanity was his object-to rules, and each member of it follows, as he war against hunger and disease, and unjust best may, the career of charitable enterprise cruelties inflicted by man on man, was his that lies open before him. The mystery, we chosen task-work; therefore was it vaguely say, clears up. Benevolent our Howard was, supposed that the sentiment of humanity was undoubtedly, by nature, as by nature also he his great predominant motive, and that he was somewhat imperious; but that which was driven about the world by compassion converted his benevolence into a ceasless mo. and benevolence. tive of strenuous action, of toil, and of sacri- His remains lie buried in Russia. Dr. fice; that which utilized his natural love of Clark, in his travels through that country, authority, transforming it into that requisite relates that “Count Vincent Potocki, a POfirmness and predominance over others with- lish nobleman of the highest taste and talents, out which no man, at least no reformer, can whose magnificent library and museum would be rigidly just, and, face to face, admonish, do honor to any country, through a mistaken threaten, and reprove; that which constitu- design of testifying his respect for the memted the mainspring and vital force of his ory of Howard, has signified his intention of character, was intense piety, and the all-pre- taking up the body that it might be conveyvailing sense of duty to his God. The crav- ed to his country seat, where a sumptuous ing of his soul was some great task-work, to monument has been prepared for its recepbe done in the eye of Heaven. Not the love i tion, upon a small island in the midst of a of man, nor the praise of man, but lake. His countess, being a romantic lady, Page 7
tinent. He was not without taste for the mutual respect without the consuming fire,-the arts; and it was at this time, Mr. Brown sup- cool and Jogical weighing of arguments, in place poses, that he brought with him from Italy of the rapid pleading of triumphant passion; the those paintings with which he afterward young man without the ordinary inspirations of embellished his favorite seat at Cardington. youth on the one hand; the widow, past her On returning from this tour, he took lodg.estly struggling to reject and put aside youth, prime, yet simple, undesigning, unambitious, earnings at Stoke Newington, in the house of wealth, protection, honor, social rank,—the very Mrs. Loidore, a widow, upward of fifty, of things for which women are taught to dress, to rather humble station in life, and a perpetua! pose, to intrigue, almost to circumvent heaven, invalid. She, however, nursed him with so on the other;-form together a picture which has much care, through a severe illness, by which its romantic interest, in spite of the incongruity of the main idea. Humble life is not without its he was attacked while residing under her roof, heroic acts. Ca sar refusing the Roman crown, that, on his recovery, he offered her marriage. even had he been really serious, and without after“ Against this unexpected proposal,” says thought in its rejection, is a paltry piece of mag, Mr. Brown," the lady made many remon- nanimity, compared with Mrs. Loidore's refusal of strances, principally upon the ground of the the hand of Howard. At length, however, her great disparity in their ages ; but Mr. Howard resistance was overcome by the indomitable will being firm to his purpose, the union took of her suitor. One of the contemporary biogra phers has thrown an air of romance over the place, it is believed, in the year 1752, he be scene of this domestic struggle, which, if the lady ing then in about the twenty-fifth year of his had been young and beautiful--that is, if the eleage, and his bride in her fifty-second. Upon ment of passion could be admitted into the arena this occasion, he behaved with a liberality --would have been truly charming. As it is, which seems to have been inberent in his na- the reader may receive it with such modifications ture, by settling the whole of his wife's little as he or she may deem necessary. On the very independence upon her sister. The marriage, chronicler, Mr. Howard "expressed his senti first opportunity,' says this grave but imaginative , thus singularly contracted, was productive of ments to her in the strongest terms of affection, mutual satisfaction to the parties who entered assuring her that, if she rejected his proposal, he it. Mrs. Howard was a woman of excellent would become an exile for ever to his family and character, amiable in her disposition, sincere friends. The lady was upward of forty (true in her piety, endowed with a good mental enough! she was also upward of fifty, good mascapacity, and forward in exercising its powers ter historian), and therefore urged the disagreein every good word and work.” ment of their years, as well as their circumstanThus runs the sober narrative of Mr. Brown. ces; but, after allowing her four-and-twenty hours for a final reply, his eloquence surmounted all her Not so does Mr. Dixon let pass the opportu- l'objections, and she consented to a union wherein nity for fine descriptive writing. Read and gratitude was to supply the deficiencies of pasadmire : sion!' Criticism would only spoil the pretty pic ture-so let it stand." “ As he became convalescent, his plan ripened into form. When the danger had entirely passed Criticism had already spoiled the picture, away, his health was restored to its accustomed such as it is. But this matters not to Mr. state; he offered her, as the only fitting reward Dixon. The quotation he has thought fit to of her services—a toy ? an ornament ? a purse? a house ? an estate? or any of those munificent embellish his pages with, is taken from an gifts with which wealthy and generous convales. anonymous pamphlet published in 1790, cents reward their favorite attendants ? No. He under the title of The Life of the late John offered her his hand, his name, his fortune! Of Howard, Esquire, with a Review of his Travcourse, the good lady was astonished at the por-els. Mr. Dixon, however, evidently extracts tentous shape of her patient's gratitude. She it second-hand from the note in Mr. Brown, started objections, being older, and having more worldly prudence than her lover. It is even said from the same performance, for the where it is quoted, with some other passages that she seriously refused her consent to the express match, urging the various arguments which might purpose of refutation and contradiction. fairly be alleged against it,—the inequality in the This is what Mr. Dixon would call artistic years, fortune, social position of the parties, and the picking up what had been discarded as so forth--but all to no purpose. Howard's mind worthless, and, with a gentle shade of doubt was made up. During his slow recovery, he had thrown over its authenticity, making use of weighed the matter carefully--had come to the conclusion that it was his duty to marry her, and it again. À note of Mr. Brown's, in the same page nothing could now change his determination. The struggle between the two must have been ex of his memoirs (p. 634), will supply us with tremely curious ; the sense of duty on both sides, another instance of this ingenious procedure. founded upon honest convictions, no doubt,--the | That note runs thus : Page 8
absent on one of his journeys. The Rev. please his taste, and tricking the whole out , Mr. Townsend,“ many years Mr. Howard's with dashes and a novel punctuation. pastor at Stoke Newington,” took the first “ Turin, 1769, Nov. 30.—My return without opportunity he had of mentioning it to How- seeing the southern part of Italy was on much deard himself, who contradicted it, and related liberation, as I feared a misimprovement of a Talto him the incident which he supposed must ent spent for mere curiosity, at the loss of many have given rise to the report. On the death Sabbaths, and as many donations must be suspendof Howard the story was again revived, ed for my pleasure, which would have been as where, or by whom, Mr. Brown does not tell I hope contrary to the general conduct of my Life, The Rev. Mr. Palmer thereupon ob- would cause pain as unbecoming a Disciple of and which on a retrospective view on a death Bed tained from Mr. Townsend the explanation Christ—whose mind should be formed in my soul. which he had received from Howard himself. These thoughts, with distance from my dear boy, The letter which the latter gentleman ad determine me to check my curiosity and be on dressed to the Rev. Mr. Palmer is given at the return. Oh, why should Vanity and Folly, length in Brown (note, page 645). This Pictures and Baubles, or even the stupendous letter the Rev. Nr. Palmer communicates which ere long will all be consumed, (sic) mountains, beautiful hills, or rich valleys, engross the to the Editor of the Universal Magazine, thoughts of a candidate for an eternal everlasting and mentions that extracts from it, un- kingdom-a -a worm ever to crawl on Earth whom authorized by him, had found their way into God has raised to the hope of Glory which ere the Gentleman's Magazine. long will be revealed to them which are washed The explanation of the story there given and sanctified by Faith in the blood of the Divine is briefly this, Howard was engaged one Redeemer! Look forward, oh ! my soul ! how day with his child in the root-house, which low, how mean, how little is everything but what served also as a summer-house, when the and Love-the Preparation of the Heart is of has a view to that glorious World of Light, Life, servant came in great haste, to say that God-Prepare the Heart, Oh ! God! of thy una gentleman on horseback wished to speak worthy Creature, and unto Thee be all the glory to him immediately. Not to lose time, he through the boundless ages of Eternity. told the little fellow to sit quiet, and he Sign'd J. H. would soon come to him again. To keep him “This night my trembling soul almost longs to out of mischief, he locked the door. The lake its flight to see and know the wonders of re deeming love--join the triumphant Choir-Sin and gentleman kept him in conversation longer sorrow fed away-God my Redeemer all in all-than he expected, and caused his forgetting Oh! happy Spirits that are safe in those mansions.” the child. Upon the departure of the guest, recollecting where the child had been left, back to Holland. He is now at the Hague. Accordingly he retraces his steps. He flies he flew to set him at liberty, and found him quietly sleeping on the matting of the floor. Here is a portion of his self-communing. It is Sunday evening, 11th February, 1770. It was on the 31st March, 1765, that How Many of these quotations we will not give ; ard lost his second wife. After spending sone time in the now melancholy retirement duce a strange, and not an agreeable impres we know they look out of place, and proof Cardington, he again quits England for sion, when met with in the walks of polite the Continent. Travel is still with him, as literature. But, without some extracts, it is with so many others, the mere relief for unavailing sorrow, or for the wasting disease impossible to form a correct idea of the of unemployed energies. It is during this character of Howard. journey to Italy that we able to “ Oh ! the wonders of redeeming love ! Some trace, more distinctly than usual, the faint hope, even I! through redeeming mercy in workings of Howard's mind. Some memo the perfect righteousness--the full atoning sacrifice randa, and fragments of a diary which he shall, ere long, be made the instrument of the rich grace and mercy of God, through the Divine kept, have given us this insight. Redeemer. Oh, shout my soul grace, grace It was his design to proceed to the south free, sovereign, rich, unbounded grace ! Not I, of Italy. He stops at Turin. He is dissat- not I, an ill-deserving, hell-deserving creature ! isfied with himself. This life of sight-seeing, but where sin has abounded, I trust grace superthis abounds. vagrancy of the tourist, does not content him. He will go no further. But we “Let not, my soul, the interests of a moment must give the extract itself from his journal. nas interests. Look forward to that glory which engross thy thoughts, or be preferred to my eterWe quote from the more faithful text of Mr. will be revealed to those who are faithful to death. Brown-Mr. Dixon having the habit of omit- i My soul, walk thou with God; be faithful, hold on, ting, here and there, a sentence if it does not hold out, and then--what words can utter :-J. H." Page 9
distracts his attention—he foregoes the music. space absolutely forbids. Perhaps some othThe language of Burke, in his well-known er opportunity will occur, when we can repanegyric, is true as it is eloquent. view the history of our prisons, to which the volumes of Howard form the most valuable “ He has visited all Europe—not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of tem contribution. We must content ourselves ples-not to make accurate measurements of the with a few general remarks on his labors, remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of and with the briefest possible account of this the curiosity of modern art-not to collect medals the great and eventful period of his life. or collate manuscripts—but to dive into the depths To lead our readers over the numerous, of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospi- toilsome, and often perilous journeys which tals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, Howard now undertook, for this national and to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt, to remember the forgotten, philanthropic object of improving our prito attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, sons and houses of correction,would be utterand compare and collate the distresses of all men, ly impracticable. But, to give them at once in all countries His plan is original, and it is some adequate idea of his incessant activity, full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a we have thrown into a note a summary, tavoyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity. ken from Dr. Aikin, of what may be considAlready the benefit of his labor is felt more or less ered as his public labors.* in every country. I hope he will anticipate his final reward, by seeing all its effects fully realized These long, incessant, and often repeated in his own.” journeys-- were they necessary, some will be tempted to ask, for the object he But the boon—for a great task of this kind had in view ? Surely a few instances, well was a veritable boon to such a spirit as How- reasoned on, would have been sufficient ard's—was nearly missed. Before he went to put us on the right track for the reformaabroad on his first journey of philanthropy, tion of our prisons. But it should be conhe ran the risk of being imprisoned himself sidered, in the first place, that Howard was within the walls of the House of Commons, teaching a people pre-eminently practical in as member for the town of Bedford. The borough had formerly been under the con- * 1773. High Sheriff of Bedfordshire-visited many trol of the house of Russell. Responding to county and town jails. 1774. Completed his survey of English jails. Stood the of “Wilkes and Liberty !" the corporacry candidate to represent the town of Bedford. tion had risen against their lord. To free 1775. Traveled to Scotland, Ireland, France, Holthemselves from his control, they had bold- land, Flanders, and Germany. ly created five hundred honorary freemen, 1776. Repeated his visit to the above countries, and to Switzerland. During these two years recoined, in short, five hundred votes, which visited all the English jails. were to be at their own disposal. The mea- 1777. Printed his State of Prisons. sure seems to have passed undisputed. They 1778. Traveled through Holland, Flanders, Gerwere, of course, victorious. Whom they many, Italy, Switzerland, and part of France. elected, in the first glow of patriotism, we do 1779. Revisited all the counties of England and Wales, and traveled into Scotland and Irenot know; but after a few years, the corpora- land. Acted as supervisor of the Penitentiation rewarded their own patriotic efforts by selling the borough to the highest bidder. 1780. Printed his first Appendix. Such, at least, was the accusation brought 1781. Traveled into Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Poagainst them in the town of Bedford itself, 1782. Again surveyed all the English prisons, and land, Germany, and Holland. where a strong party rose which made strenu- went into Scotland and Ireland. ous efforts to wrest the election out of their 1783. Visited Portugal, Spain, France, Flanders, hands. By this party, Whitbread and How- and Holland; also Scotland and Ireland, and viewed several English prisons. ard were put in nomination. The candidates 1784. Printed the second Appendix, and a new edi. of the corporation were Sir W. Wake and tion of the whole works. Mr. Sparrow. After a severe struggle on 1785. From the close of the first of these years the hustings, and in the committee of the 1786. to the beginning of the last, on his House of Commons, the election was decided 1787. tour through Holland, France, Italy, in fayor of Whitbread and Wake. Howard Malta, Turkey, and Germany. Afterward went to Scotland and Ireland. lost his election-happily, we think-by a 1788. Revisited Ireland; and during this and the majority only of four votes. On his return former year, traveled over all England. from the Continent, he published his first re- 1789. Printed his work on Lazarettos, &c. Travelport on the state of prisons. We had de ed through Holland, Germany, Prussia, and Livonia, to Russia and Lesser Tartary. signed to give some account of this, and the 1790. January 20. Died at Cherson. subsequent publications of Howard, but our Page 10
more amiable light—than her letters to her , accommodate himself to the established order of son, from which we find in these volumes things for the present. She never employed him frequent extracts. But who is this sorceress, in any high capacity; but he was much in her unchanged while all things are changing ing him the Household appointment, first of Vice confidence so long as he lived; and, besides givround her ? Let Mr. Craik answer: Chamberlain, afterward of Treasurer, she grati“ To the generality of my readers the very worthy Puritan by making him a Knight of Gar fied the vanity, or rewarded the fidelity, of the name of Lettice Knollys will probably be new. Yet she was one of Queen Elizabeth's nearest relations--as near as Mary Stuart, one degree has mentioned when his eldest daughter was “No account of her that has fallen in my way nearer than Mary's son, who inherited Elizabeth's crown. She was the eldest daughter of Sir born; but a notice of her age in a letter written Francis Knollys, by his wife, originally Catherine in her lifetime, to be afterward cited, shows it to Carey, whose mother was the elder sister of Anne tle Lettice would be duly nurtured upon the sour have been in 1539 or 1540. Questionless the litBoleyn. Lettice was therefore first cousin once removed to her Majesty. Elizabeth, when she sundry startling or puzzling indications, a soul of milk of the paternal faith; and, notwithstanding ascended the throne, at the age of fivc-and-twenty, Puritanism may have lived in her to the end of in 1558, had neither father nor mother, brother nor sister, uncle nor aunt, alive; more than one her days. The light is not always gone out when it is not to be seen. of these nearest branches the axe had lopt of; the But, whatever may have been her condition as to one kind of grace, we only individuals in existence more nearly related to her than Lettice Knollys, were Lettice's mo cannot reasonably donbt that she was amply en dowed with another kind—that she was in outther and that lady's brother, Henry Carey, soon after created Lord Hunsdon, who were her full ward show elaborate,' even if she might be of cousins by the mother's side ; and the Countess inward less exact. Her history would seem sufof Lennox and Duchess of Suffolk, the daughters ficiently to prove that the fatal gift of beauty' had not been withheld from her.” of her father's sisters, Margaret and Mary. But these two latter ladies both speedily fell into disgrace, or under suspicion ; their blood was too During the life of her father, Lettice beroyal, or too red, as the phrase ran; so that her cousins of the Buleyn stock, the Careys and the Earl of Essex of that name. came the wife of Walter Devereux, the first Mr. Craik's Knollyses, had all the sunshine of the royal relationship to themselves. plan renders it necessary for him to state, “Sir Francis Knollys, besides being married to with more particularity than, for any purpoher first-cousin, had another claim upon her Ma- ses of our paper, it is an object to follow, jesty's consideration. He was one of the staunch- the ancestry of Walter Devereux. His faest Protestants she had about hier. Not that Pro-ther had married the daughter of the first testantism was by any means one of Elizabeth's Earl of Huntingdon, and Walter Devereux strongest passions. But in the circumstances it was their son. A few weeks before Elizawas necessary that she should be as much a Protestant as she could, and also that she should seek beth's accession he had succeeded his grandor accept the service and support of better Protes- father as second Viscount of Hereford. At tants than herself. She had, as it were, married this time he was but seventeen years of age. Protestantism, and taken its name. Most of His marriage with Lettice Knollys was, the Court Protestantism of that day, however, was we are told, some time between 1560 and of a somewhat damaged character. Even Cecil had conformed in the preceding reign; and most of of Cecil by Sir Henry Sidney, in 1568, and 1565. He was recommended to the notice the other courtiers and ministers of the new Queen, however zealous professors they had be- soon afterward employed by the persons to come since her accession, or had previously been whom the custody of Mary Queen of Scots in the days of ber brother, had, in like manner, had been assigned. He was accused of aiddeemed it better in those of her sister to go to ing in the project of marrying Mary to the mass than either to the stake or into exile. But Duke of Norfolk by Lesley, Bishop of Ross. Knollys, who had been in office under Edward, We have his reply: the offended tone in had resigned everything, and, shaking the dust of his native land from off his shoes, had betaken which he replied to an offensive imputation him to where the Gospel light shone full and probably displeased Cecil—" That which the free in its native land of Germany, whence he Bishop of Ross hath reported of me is most had returned, when the darkness passed away at untrue. For any unfit speech which past home, a fiercer Protestant than ever. Indeed, like from mee, either of the Duke of Norfolk or most of the refugees whoin this change brought of the Earl of Leicester, I desire but to back to England, he was now probably ready for have it justified to my face when time shall a second Reformation, if such a thing should come in his way. Elizabeth held what had been I have spoken nothing which I will already done to be quite enough ; but there was not say again ; and yet, that have I not said no danger in the more extreme principles of her which might give either of them cause of cousin Knollys, who was very well contented to offence.” This was not a tone which Leices Page 11
wives, is recorded in the inscription on a fervor which, in our peaceful day, can sumptuous monument. Douglas, at the time scarcely be brought before us, even with the Talbot was writing, had already borne a son strongest exercise of imagination :to Leicester. Leicester denied any marriage with her, but acknowledged his paternity. “ It was a strange, self-contradictory time, difHer narrative, after Leicester's death, was, ficult to be understood or imagined in our day, that having insisted on her marriage with when the violent agencies then in operation have him, and having resisted some arrangements sided into comparative consistency and decorum. long spent their force, and all things have subof his to dispose of her in marriage to ano- Religion was a mighty power, was indeed unither, she found her health declining: Her versally confessed, and in general undoublingly hair and nails beginning to fall off, were believed, to be the thing that was entitled to carry symptoms to her imagination that her food it over all other things. Men, almost without exhad been drugged, and that her life would ception, looked upon the truths of religion much probably be the sacrifice, if she any longer in the light in which we now look upon the laws of nature, as evident necessities, escape from opposed Leicester's plans. To save berself which was wholly out of the question. A person in the only way which was open to her, from would have been held a fool or a lunatic who had the subtle poisons which, she made no doubt, appeared to think otherwise. This explains not Leicester had been already administering, merely the universal profession of religion, by she became the wife of Sir Edward Stafford. persons of whatever character or manner of life, The widow of Essex was probably the at but the generally manifest sincerity of the pro fession. The blight of unbelief had scarcely yet traction that separated Leicester from Doug touched men's minds. The common faith, Prolas Howard. But Leicester seems to have testant or Catholic, was as much the sustenance had a stronger passion than love—inordinate of all alike, as the common air. It was in this ambition. The language of the mystical respect almost as in the palmy days of ancient theologian is often scarcely distinguishable Paganism, as in Greece in the time of Homer, or, from that which expresses the hopes and the indeed, for ages afterward, when he who did not discern and acknowledge a present deity in any raptures of human passion. Leicester lived one of certain common natural occurrences, in a day in which, however ill-regulated the would have been deemed not to see or hear aright, conduct of men might be, none doubted the not to have the proper use of his senses. realities of religion, and we see no reason to distrust Leicester's professions, strangely as when the earth, thus gorgeously illumined by they may appear contrasted with his prac- imagination, and hung with splendors not its tice. Whatever might be his conduct, or own, might be thought to lie so near to the gate, whatever the deceptions he practiced on his so close under the crystal battlements, of heaven; own mind or the mind of others, there is no and when men, unsubdued by sense, walked so much in the light of the spiritual and invisible, doubt that at this period Leicester was re- and were exalted and upheld by so much that has garded as the leading man of the Puritan now for ever passed away. But the actual effect party; and he did all he could to cultivate was considerably different from what a lively whai Mr. Craik happily calls “the rhetori- fancy might picture it. It would almost seem as cal part of religion. What a strange thing if religion had lost, instead of gained, in practical is the human heart !-how impossible to power and efficacy, by being thus universally redetect its hidden springs of action! Was ceived and submitted to as a matter of course. In accepting its doctrines with the same dead acquithis courting of the Puritans, then a party escence, as we may call it, with which the inind rising into power, but hypocrisy? We surrenders itself to the propositions of the matheshould fear to answer in the affirmative. Inatics, or to any simple physical truth, the less And yet we are told, that when Leicester scrupulous spirits of the first age of the Reforma. and Walsingham abandoned the Puritans, tion seem many of them hardly to have connected they did absolutely renounce any further more of sentiment or affection with their religious belief than with their belief in the law of nature, intercession for them, professing that they according to which a stone dropt from the hand had been horribly abused with their hypo: falls to the ground. They even appear to have crisy.” If this be Leicester's language, and considered themselves entitled to treat the reli. not Heylin's own, from whom we have it, is gious truth and the physical truth on many occahis accusation of his brother Puritans of hy- sions in the same way; and, as they could arrest pocrisy a proof of his own sincerity, when he the action of the law of gravitation at any time was to be reckoned as “ walking with them?” by the application of some opposing force, in like There is a striking passage in Mr. Craik's manner by some analogous contrivance to suspend and neutralize any principle or precept of religion book, which well describes the state of so whenever they chose. The principle, indeed, ciety at this time, and the bearing of men's was not to be overturi d, or for a moment gainminds on these religious questions with a 1 sayed or questioned; but still it was to be kept Page 12
ommended Sir George Carew. He proba- | At sea, too, the weather was bad, and those bly wished to keep his uncle in England, who looked for signs in the heavens, when and get rid of Carew.* The termination of they ought to have looked to the earth to the dispute was one that no one could ex- see why the English government of Ireland pect--Essex himself went there. Instead of was not successful, read nothing but disastelling of his difficulties, which it would not ter in the frowning sky. Essex was not more be possible to explain without going into the fortunate in Ireland than his father had been. case at greater length than either the time His men were not seasoned to the climate. we can now command, or the nature of the The Queen would bave him attack Ulster, book we are reviewing would justify, we where Tyrone had sought to throw off the shall quote a few lines of Essex”in a letter | English yoke. The Irish Council insisted to the Queen : that he should first quell some disturbances in Munster; and as this gave Essex a good “ From a mind delighting in sorrow-from opportunity of exercising his troops in what spirits wasted with passion--from a heart torn in he thought a less dangerous service, he adoptpieces with care, grief, and travel from a man ed this course. The Queen was displeased, that hateth himself and all things that keep him and peremptory orders came from England alive, what service can your Majesty expect, that he should march into Ulster. Before since my service past deserves no more than ban. ishment and proscription to the cursedest of all these orders could be obeyed—before, indeed, islands. It is your rebel's pride and succession they arrived-Essex had learned that his raw must give me leave to ransom myself out of this troops, commanded by Sir Henry Harringhateful prison-out of my loathed body--which, ton, had been routed by the O'Briens. What if it happen to, your Majesty shall have no cause the circumstances were we cannot precisely to mislike the fashion of my death, since the learn ; but the fury of Essex was unboundcourse of my life could never please you. ed, and he caused the remains of these “Happy if he could finish forth bis fate troops to be decimated. This relentless In some unhaunted desert, most obscure course, we think, disproves the accusation From all society—from love and hate which his enemies at the time were circulaOf worldly folk; then should he sleep secure; Then wake again, and yield God ever praise ting against Essex—that his object was not Content with hips, and haws, and bramble-berry; to make war on the Irish enemies, but to be In contemplation passing out his days, at the head of an army which would enable And change of holy thoughts, to make him bim to command England. Such a course merry; as he adopted must have made him most unWho, when he dies, his tomb may be a bush, Where harmless Robin dwelis with gentle however, to return to England with a portion popular with the army. That he intended, Thrush. “ Your Majesty's exiled servant, of his army, and was with difficulty dissuaded “ ROBERT Essex.”+ from it by his friends, appears certain ; and to his having this purpose in his mind is atThis letter was written before Essex had tributed his having made a truce with Tyactually set out for his government. In rone, instead of actively prosecuting the war March, 1598–9, his commission as Lord Lieu- / against him. We ought to say that Essex, tenant passed the Great Seal. The annal. I like most unsuccessful agents, wrote exceedists of the period tell us, that when he was ingly good letters; and that if the Irish have leaving the city, the weather was fair, but not to this day been well governed, it is not before he reached Islington there was a heavy how the thing may be easily done. A sharp for want of admirable state-papers saying storm of rain, with thunder and lightning. letter from the Queen irritated Essex, and he * Since writing the above, we have met a confir- | left his Irish government at sixes and sevens, mation of our views of Essex's motives on this oc- and hurried to England. Ilis arrival was casion :—“ Note here how much will a man benefit wholly unexpected. Wemu:t give the scene, his enemy provided he doth put him out of his own as Mr. Craik has done, from the narrative of way. My Lord of Essex did lately want Sir weorge Rowland White:-“On Michaelmas Eve, Carew to be Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, rather than his own uncle, Sir William Knollys, because he about ten o'clock in the morning, my Lord had given him some cause of offence; and by thus of Essex lighted at Court-gate in post, and thrusting him into high office, he would remove him made all haste up to the presence, and so to from court.”—Extracts from Sir John Harring the privy-chamber, and stayed not till he ton's Papers, printed in Nicholls' Progresses of Elizabeth, vol. iii. p. 250. came to the Queen's bedchamber; there he + Kippis, B. B., who quotes the letter from the found the Queen newly up, the hair about Harleian Manuscripts. her face; he kneeled, kissed her hand, and VOL. XIX. NO. III. 24 Page 13
proclamation enacted by her wish. The ob- / richest poetry in announcing the blessings ject was an attack on the Queen's palace, which all after ages were to derive from the with the intention, on his part, of becoming union. Alas for human hopes and for propossessed of her person. The rebellion com- phecies of the poets! The young Earl went menced and ended on the same day.. Be- to finish his education abroad ; the lady refore a month was at an end Essex was tried mained in the court, where her father was and executed. chamberlain. Her position was not without Essex, when dying, seemed to be strongly danger; and when the Earl returned, after a under the influence of religion. His repent few years, to claim his wife, he found that her ance of his treason seemed to be, and no affections were fixed on Robert Carr, Visdoubt was, sincere ; but the strange confes-count Rochester. The hope of escape from sions he made, implicating in his treason per- the conjugal yoke was suggested to the lady sons of all ranks, and most opposite politics, by her husband's being, soon after his arricould scarcely have been true. We believe val, attacked by a malignant small-pox. He him to have been living, for three or four of recovered ; and she tried the effect of sorthe latter years of his life, under delusions of cery-her magic failed. Then came an inso strange a kind as—though it would be vocation of more potent fiends, the rulers of impossible to contend that the insanity was the ecclesiastical courts; and, in violation of such as not to leave him a responsible every principle on wbich such cases are deagent—to deprive his testimony against others termined, and to the disgrace of every one of any value whatever. He denied, and we connected with the matter, the marriage was believe with truth, that he had any design pronounced null and void. The sentence against the Queen's life. His own he thought of nullity was had on the 16th September; in danger from the plots of some of the lead- and on the 26th she was married to Carr. ing persons about the court; and to this fear “ She was married in her hair," as it was exhe referred his attempt. His stepfather, pressed, " that is, with her hair flowing in Blount, who was executed a few days after ringlets on her shoulders, the customary atEssex, describes himself as having dissuaded tire of a maiden bride.” Essex from some wild plots a few years be- The old countess lived to see her grandfore, but denied all knowledge of the objects son, at the age of thirty-seven, again venture of the wild movement in which he yet par- into the matrimonial noose, with scarcely a ticipated. He was summoned, he said, by more prosperous event. But we cannot, at the Earl, to London, on matters connected present, follow Mr. Craik through any furwith the Earl's property, the management of ther chapters of his romantic history. The parts of which was in his hands. His re- old lady died on Christmas day, 1634. For quest, that he should be executed by decap- the last forty-five years of her life she had itation, was complied with, in recognition of lived at Drayton Basset. the military rank he had borné, when he had served under Essex in Ireland. “She and Blount seem to have taken up their Lettice Knollys survived her husband and residence here upon their marriage ; and here her son for many a long year. She lived to she died forty-five years after. Drayton Basset, witness much of the eventful life of her grand- worth, had been in ancient times the domain of lying about a couple of miles to the south of Tamson, the third Earl of Essex, of the name of the Lords Basset, but had latterly fallen to the Devereux. In one of Rowland White's let- crown, by which a long lease of it had been grantters we find the marriage of that grandson ed in the reign of Henry the Eighth; this lease mentioned. He married the last Lady Fran- Leicester had acquired, and left, as appears by ces Howard, one of Lord Suffolk's daugh- his will, to his wife ; and Sir Christopher Blount ters, to the great contentment of Lady Lei- is supposed to have afterward purchased the fee. cester. How little do men see the future! had inhabited, and in which she continued to re T'he old manor house which he and the Countess It was scarce possible that a marriage should side throughout her third widowhood, was still have been celebrated under circumstances standing toward the end of the last century. more auspicious than those which augured There is a view of it in Shaw's Stafordshire from happiness to the boy of fourteen and the girl a sketch taken in 1791. The mansion, Shaw of thirteen, who then were giving themselves remarks, was at this time a curious specimen of away. The festivities at court, where the the occasional simplicity of our ancient nobility in their houses It was principally of marriage was held, were of unusual brilliancy. wood and plaster, with a rude old hall , lung They are minutely described by Ben Jonson, round with portraits, stags' heads, &c.; and who, in a most elaborate, yet most graceful quadrangular, with several side staircases, liko drama, The Masque of Hymen, lavished his an old college, and the rooms mostly small.' It Page 14
of artistic and intellectual cultivation in Nor- of animal life; "a development limited only thern Asia.” by their mutual pressure, and similar to that of vegetable life in the forests of the Orinoco, “ But in the history of the past,” says our au- where the Hymenæa and the gigantic laurel thor, “ it is not alone as an opposing barrier that are never exposed to the destructive hand of we must regard the plains of Central Asia. More than once they have proved the source from which man, but only to the pressure of the luxuriant devastation has spread over distant lands. The climbers which twine around their massive pastoral nations of these steppes-Moguls, Getæ, trunks. Agoutis, small spotted antelopes, Alani, and Usuni—have shaken the world. As cuirassed armadilloes, which, like rats, startle in the course of past ages, early intellectual cul- the hare in its subterranean holes, herds of ture has come, like the cheering light of the sun, lazy chiguires, beautifully striped viverræ, from the East, so at a later period, from the same direction, barbaric rudeness has threatened to large maneless lion, spotted jaguars (often which poison the air with their odor, the overspread and involve Europe in darkness. A brown pastoral race, of Tukiuish or Turkish de called tigers), strong enough to drag away a scent-the Hiongnu, dwelling in tents of skins, in- young bull after killing him ;—these, and habited the elevated steppes of Gobi. Long ter- many other forms of animal life, wander rible to the Chinese power, a part of this tribe was through the treeless plains.” driven back into Central Asia. The shock or impulse thus given passed froin nation to nation, Thus, almost exclusively inhabited by these until it reached the ancient land of the Finns, near wild animals, the steppe would offer little attracthe Ural mountains. From thence Huns, Avari, tion or means of subsistence to those nomadic Ghazares, and various admixtures of Asiatic native hordes, who, like the Asiatics of Hindostan, races, broke forth. Armies of Huns appeared prefer vegetable nutriment, if it were not for the successively on the Volga, in Pannonia. on the occasional presence of single individuals of the Marne, and on the Po, desolating those fair and fan palm, the mauritia. The benefits of this lifefertile fields, which, since the time of Antenor, supporting tree are widely celebrated; it alone, civilized man had adorned with successive monu froin the mouth of the Orinoco to north of the Thus went forth from Mongolian deserts Sierra de Imataca, feeds the unsubdued natives of a deadly blast, which withered, on Cisalpine the Guaranis. When this people were more nuground, the tender, long-cherished flower of art!" merous, and lived in closer contiguity, not only did -Vol. i. p. 6. they support their buts on the cut trunks of palm trees, as pillars, on which rested a scaffolding The great steppe of South America displays forming the floor, but they also, it is said, twined itself to the traveler's eye when he looks from the leaf-stalks of the mauritia cords and mats, southward, on quitting the mountain valleys which, skillfully interwoven and suspended from of Caraccas. It occupies a space of 250,000 when the Delta is overflowed, to live in the trees stem to stem, enabled them in the rainy season, English square miles, stretching from the like the apes. The floor of these raised cottages coast chain of the Caraccas to the forests of is partly covered with a coating of damp clay, on Guiana, and from the snowy mountains of which the women make fires for household purMerida to the great Delta at the mouth of poses, the flames appearing at night to be susthe Orinoco. . To the south-west a branch is pended high in air. The Guaranis still owe the prolonged to the unvisited sources of the preservation of their physical, and perhaps also Guaviare, and the lonely mountains to which their moral independence, to the half-submerged the excited funcy of the Spanish soldiery gave and rapid step, and to their elevated dwellings in marshy soil, over which they move with a light the name of Paramo de la Suma Paz—the the trees-a habitation never likely to be chosen seat of perfect peace. The Pampas of Buenos from motives of religious enthusiasm by an Ayres are of such extent, “ that while their American Stylites. But the mauritia affords 10 northern margin is bordered by palm trees, the Guaranis not merely a secure dwelling-place, their southern extremity is almost continually but also various kinds of food. Before the flower covered with ice. In these grassy plains, of the rich palm tree breaks through its tender troops of dogs, descended from those intro sheath, and only at that period of vegetable meta morphosis, the pith of the stem of the tree conduced by the colonists, have become com- tains a meal resembling sago, which, like the pletely wild. They live socially, inhabiting farina of the jatropho root, is dried in thin breadsubterranean hollows, in which they hide their like slices. The fermented juice of the tree forms young, and often attacking man with a blood- the sweet, intoxicating palm wine of the Guaranis. thirsty rage. When the society becomes too The scaly fruits, which resemble in their appearnumerous, some families migrate and form Page 15
male flowers, in spaces in which the sexes are they are never found in persons or places separated, is carried over land and sea by winds where the pestilence does not prevail. These and by the agency of winged insects to the soli- bodies vary from the five-hundredth to the tary female plant on other shores. Thus, where-ten-thousandth of an inch in diameter; the ever the glance of the inquirer into nature pene smallest occurring in the air, the larger in the trates, he sees the continual dissemination of life either fully formed or in the germ. vomit, and the largest in the dejections of the We do not yet know where life is most abundant, patient. Admitting what yet requires a more -- whether on continents or in the unfathomed extensive induction to prove it, that these depths of the ocean. Through the excellent bodies are always found in cholera localities work of Ehrenberg, we have seen the sphere of and never elsewhere, it still remains to be organic life extend, and its horizon widen before our eyes, both in the tropical parts of the ocean, proved that they are the cause of cholera. and in the fixed or floating masses of ice of the An- Various facts, however, have been long known, tarctic seas. Silicious shelled polygastrica, and which render such an opinion highly probable. even coscinodiscæ with their green ovaries, have The Ergol , the Spermoedia Clavus,* for exbeen found alive enveloped in masses of ice only ample, a fungus which is found abundantly twelve degrees from the Pole; the small black in rye, is a poison which exercises a peculiar glacier flea and Podurellæ inhabit the narrow tu action in contracting the uterus. When it bular holes examined by Agassiz, in the Swiss glaciers. Ehrenberg has shown that on several composes a considerable portion of rye bread, microscopic infusoria others live as parasites; and it produces one of the most terrific diseases that in the Gallionellæ, such is their prodigious to which man is subject. The ergot is propower of development, or capability of division, duced within the seeds of various grasses, that in the space of four days an animalcule inris such as Secale Agrostis, Dactylis, Festuca, ible to the naked eye, can form two cubic feet of the Elymus, &c.; and is rather supposed to be a Bilin polishing slate ! In the sea, gelatinous diseased condition of the grasses than a disworms, living or dead, shine like stars, and by tinct fungus. But, however this may be, its their phosphoric light change the surface of the effects wide ocean into a sea of fire. Ineffaceable is the upon the human frame are terrible. impression made on my mind by the calm nights Nausea and vomiting are followed by numbof the torrid zone on the waters of the Pacific. I ness in the extremities, which, after being still see the dark azure of the firmament, the con- wasted with excruciating pains, eventually stellation of the ship near the zenith, and that of fall off at the joints, withering and becoming the cross declining toward the horizon, shedding through the perfumed air their soft and planetary This disease, called the Dry Gangrene, has black and hard, as if they were charred. lustre ; while bright furrows of flashing light , marked the track of the dolphins through the been at different periods epidemic in Sologne, midst of the foaming waves. Not only the ocean, a tract of wet clayey land lying between the but also the waters of our marshes, hide from us Loire and Cher. The fingers, or toes, or an innumerable multitude of strange forms. The legs, or even the thighs, drop off at the joints. naked eye can with difficulty distinguish the Cy- According to Duhamel, it destroyed nineteen clidias, the Euglenes, and the host of Naiads, out of twenty of the persons infected; and, divisible by branches like the Lemna or Duckweed, of which they seek the shade. Other crea strange to say, the sufferer in one case surtures inhabit receptacles where the light cannot vived, though his thighs fell off at the hips ! penetrate, and an atmosphere variously composed, But it is not merely in rye that this poison is but differing from that which we breathe : such generated. When wheat, rice, or any other are the spotted ascaris which lives beneath the grain is prematurely cut down, or has become skin of the earth-worm, the Leucoptera, of a mouldy or musty from age, or from the place bright silvery color, in the interior of the shore where it has been stored, or when it has Naiad, and a Pentastoma which inhabits the large been mixed with the seeds of poisonous pulmonary cells of the rattlesnake of the tropics. There are animalculæ in the blood of frogs and of plants, such as the Raphanus Raphanistrum, ciasalmon; and even, according to Nordmann, in the and the Lolium lemulenium, the most exc fluids of the eyes of fishes, and in the gills of the ting diseases have been occasioned by its use. bleak.”—Vol. ii. pp. 5–7. But the most remarkable case on record of the frightful effects of damaged grain, It is impossible to peruse this interesting poisoned no doubt by some deleterious funextract without noticing its connection with gus, is recorded in the Philosophical Transthe remarkable discovery recently made by actions, for 1762,t by Dr. Charlton Wollaston, Dr. Brittan, that, in the discharges from cholera patients, there are found minute cellular bodies, having the aspect and character Farinaria poæ of Sowerby. It is called Ergot, * The Sphacelia segetum of Klotzsch, and the of fungi; that the same bodies exist in the from its resemblance to a cock's spur. air and water of infected districts; and that + Vol. lii. Part ii. pp. 523, 524. Page 16
terprise, worthy of a great artist, to study adorned with flowers as large and as beautiful as the aspect and character of all these vegeta our lilies. ble forms, not only in hot-houses, * and in ical countries, not only by single mountains, but “ The great elevation attained in several tropbotanical descriptions, but in their native even by extensive districts, enables the inhabitgrandeur in the tropics, and pointing out the ants of the torrid zone--surrounded by palms, ba-, value to the landscape painter, of" a work nanas, and the other beautiful forms proper to which should present to the eye, first separate these latitudes—to behold also those vegetable ly, and then in combination and contrast, the forms which, demanding a cooler temperature, would seem to belong to other zones. Elevation leading forms which have been here enumerated,” he concludes the subject in the fol- above the level of the sea gives this cooler temper ature, even in the hottest parts of the earth ; and lowing manner : Cypresses, Pines, Oaks, Berberries and Alders, (nearly allied to our own), cover the mountainous “ It is the artist's privilege, having studied these districts, and elevated plains of Southern Mexico, groups, to analyze them, and thus in his hands, and the chain of the Andes at the Equator. Thus the grand and beautiful form of nature which he it is given to man in those regions to behold, would portray, resolves itself, (if I may venture without quitting his native land, all the forms of on the expression), like the other works of men, vegetation dispersed over the globe, and all the into a few simple elements. shining worlds which stud the heavenly vault “ It is under the burning rays of a tropical sun from pole to pole. that vegetation displays its most majestic forms. “These, and many other of the enjoyments which In the cold north the bark of trees is covered with lichens and mosses, whilst between the tropics the North. Many constellations, and many vegeta nature affords, are wanting to the nations of the Cymbidium and fragrant vanilla enliven the ble forms-and of the latter those which are most trunks of the Anacardias, and of the gigantic fig beautiful, (palm-tree ferns, plantains, arborescent trees. The fresh verdure of the Pothos leaves, grasses and the finely divided feathery foliage of the and of the Dracontias, contrasts with the many mimosas), remain for ever unknown to them. Incolored flowers of the Orchideæ. Climbing Bau- dividual plants, languishing in our hot-houses, hinias, Passifloras, and yellow flowering Banis can give but a very faint idea of the majestic terias, twine round the trunks of the forest trees. vegetation of the tropical zone. But the high Delicate blossoms spring from the roots of the cultivation of our languages, the glowing fancy Theobroma, and form the thick and rough bark of the poet, and the imitative art of the painter, of the Crescentias and the Gustavia. open to us sources whence flow abundant com“ In the tropics vegetation is generally of a pensations, and from whence our imagination fresher verdure, more luxuriant and succulent, can derive the living images of that more vigorous and adorned with larger and more shining leaves nature which other climes display. In the frigid than in our northern climates. The social north, in the midst of the barren heath, the soliplants, which often impart so uniform and mo tary student can appeciate inentally, all that has notonous a character to European countries, been discovered in the most distant regions, and are almost entirely absent in the equatorial re- can create within himself a world, free and imgions. Trees almost as lofty as our oaks, are perishable, as the spirit by which it is conceived.” -Pp. 29-31. * Would it not be an enterprise worthy of the wealth and liberality of our public-spirited nobility The chapter which closes with the preand country gentlemen, to fill their hot-houses and ceding passage is followed by a dissertation green-houses, not with the rare plants, which all of much interest, on the structure and their neighbors have, but with groups of plants mode of action of Volcanoes in different parts from particular zones, or regions of the globe, or belonging to different natural families or classes ? of the globe.” Although the multiplication Forest trees, and arborescent plants , which have of voyages and travels has exercised a greater been acclimated in our island, might in like manner influence on the study of organic nature, viz., be gathered into local groups, and in the private of botany and zoology, than upon the study collections of a single county, botanists, landscape of the inorganic bodies which compose the painters, artists, gardeners, and amateurs, might study the whole flora 'of the globe. A subdivision of crust the earth, yet each zone of the earth labor has now become necessary in every depart- derives a peculiar physiognomy from the livment of intellectual culture. Omniscience in phi- ing forms, which are either fixed or movable losophy or science is knowledge in a state of extreme upon its surface : But we find on either dilution, useless to the world, and gratifying only to hemisphere, from the Equator to the Poles, the vanity of its possessor. The piles upon rest the temple of science, could never have been the same kind of rocks associated in groups, driven had they been endowed with many heads : and the traveler “often recognizes with joy he that has driven one to the rock beneath, may the argillaceous schists of his birthplace, and rest from his labor, and be sure that his works will the rocks which were familiar to his eye in follow him. A subdivison of toil in the collection of objects of natural history, of antiquities, and of his native land.” Geological science, howart, would do much to promote the advancement of ever, has derived great advantages from its these important branches of secular knowledge. study under different climates. Although Page 17
above the north-west margin. This singular loose and movable as shifting sand, issued in large cone, which from Naples appeared to be the quantities from a crevice in the upper margin of true summit of the mountain, fell in with a the crater.”—Pp. 229, 230. dreadful noise on the eruption of the 22d Oc- Owing to the thunderstorm noticed in tober, 1822, “so that the floor of the crater, this extract, an abundant, and violent fall of which had been constantly accessible since rain took place, and as the rain is heaviest 1811, is now almost 800 feet lower than the above the cone of ashes, torrents of mud northern, and 218 lower than the southern descend from it in every direction; and edge of the volcano." when the summit of the volcano is in the region of perpetual snow, the melting of " In the last eruption, on the night of the 23d to the snow produces very disastrous inundathe 24th October, 1822, twenty-four hours after tions. At the foot of volcanoes, too, and the falling in of the great cone of scoriæ, which on their flanks, there are frequently vast has been mentioned, and when the small but numerous currents of lava had already flowed off , cavities, wirich, having a communication by the fiery eruption of ashes and rapilli com- many channels with mountain torrents, bemenced; it continued without intermission for come subterranean lakes or reservoirs of twelve days, but was greatest in the first four water. When earthquakes, as happens in days. During this period the detonations in the the Andes, shake the entire mass of the volinterior of the volcano were so violent, that the cano, these reservoirs are opened, dischargmere concussion of the air (for no earthquake ing water, fishes, and mud. On the 19th movement was perceived) rent the ceilings of the rooms in the palace of Portici. In the neigh feet high, fell in, an area of nearly thirty boring villages of Resina, Torre del Greco, Tor June, 1698, when the Carguairazo, to the re del Annunziata, and Bosche tre Case, a remark- north of Chimborazo, and upward of 19,000 able phenomenon was witnessed. Throughout square miles was covered with mud and the whole of that part of the country the air | fishes! was so filled with ashes as to cause in the mid Vesuvius, and other similar volcanoes, dle of the day profound darkness, lasting for several hours : lanterns were carried in the streets, of their craters with the interior of the earth. have permanent communications by means as had often been done in Quito during the eruptions of Pinchincha. The flight of the in. They alternately break forth and slumber, and habitants had never been more general. Lava often “end by becoming solfataras, emitting currents are regarded by those who dwell near aqueous vapors, gases, and acids." There Vesuvius with less dread than an eruption of is, however, another and a rarer class, which ashes, a phenomenon which had never been known to such a degree in modern times; and the ob-lutions of our planet. are closely connected with the earliest revoscure tradition of the manner in which the de Trachytic mountains struction of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiæ, open suddenly, emit lava and ashes, and took place, filled the imaginations of men with close again perhaps for ever. The gigantic appalling images.* The hot aqueous vapors mountain of Antisana on the Andes, and which rose from the crater during the eruption, Monte Epomeo in Ischia, in 1302, are examand spread themselves in the atmosphere, formed, ples of that phenomenon. Eruptions of this in cooling, a dense cloud, surrounding the col- kind sometimes takes place in the plains, as umn of fire and ashes which rose to a height of happened in Quito, in Iceland, at a distance between nine and ten thousand feet. Flashes of forked lightning issuing from the col: from Hecla, and in Eubæa in the Lelantine umns of ashes darted in every direction, and the fields. Many of the islands upheaved from rolling thunders were distinctly heard, and distin- the sea belong to the same class. guished from the sounds which proceeded from munication of the external opening with the the interior of the volcano. In no other eruption interior of the earth is not permanent, and had the play of the electric forces formed so stri as soon as the cleft or opening closes, the king a feature. volcanic action wholly ceases. Humboldt is “On the morning of the 26th October, a surprising rumor prevailed that a torrent of boiling of opinion that “ veins or dykes of basalt, water was gushing from the crater, and pouring dolerite, and porphyry, which traverse almost down the slope of the cone of ashes. Monticelli all formations, and that masses of syenite, soon discovered that this was an optical illusion. augitic porphyry, and amygdaloid, which It was in reality a flow of dry ashes, which, being characterize the recent transition and oldest sedimentary rocks, - have probably been * The thickness of the bed of ashes which fell formed in a similar manner." during the twelve days was little above three feet That the earth is a melted mass at no very on the slope of the cones, and only about eighteen inches on the planes. This is the greatest fall of great depth below its surface, is placed be. ashes since the aption of Vesuvius , which occa- yond a doubt, not only by the preceding sioned the death of the elder Pliny. facts, but by a great mass of observations Page 18
ins. The . warm baths of Pultamarca, at, desire of his youth. When they had reached which the Inca spent a part of the year, the highest part of the mountain by the Alhave a temperature of 156° Fahrenheit, and to de Guangamarca, the heavens suddenly are seen in the distance. The town is adorned became clear, and the western declivity of the with a few churches, a state prison, and a Cordilleras, covered with quartz blocks fourmunicipal building, erected upon part of the teen feet high, and the plains as far as the ruins of the palace. On the porphyritic rock sea-shore near Truxillo,“ lay beneath their upon which the palace stood, a shaft has been eyes in astonishing apparent proximity. We sunk which formerly led into subterranean saw for the first time the Pacific Ocean itself, chambers, and to a gallery said to extend to and we saw it clearly. . . . . The joy it inthe other porphyritic dome of Santa Polonia. spired was vividly shared by my companions, The room is yet shown where Atahualpa was Bonpland and Carlos Montufar," imprisoned for nine months from November, and the sight "was peculiarly impressive to 1532, and the mark on the wall is still point- one who, like myself , owed a part of the fored out to show the height to which he of- mation of his mind and character, and many fered to fill the room with gold in bars, of the directions which his wishes had assuplates, and vessels, if set free. In order to med, to intercourse with (George Forster) avoid being burnt alive, the Inca consented one of the companions of Cook." : o be baptized by his fanatical persecutor, the Dominican monk, Vincente de Valverde, He In the preceding analysis of the “ Aspects was strangled publicly in the open air, and of Nature,” we have found it very difficult to at the mass for the dead the brothers Pio do justice either to the author or to ourselves zarro were present in mourning habits.* as Reviewers. Owing to the great length of The population of Caxamarca did not, at the the “annotations and additions,” which extime of our author's visit, exceed seven or tend to more than twice the length of the orieight thousand inhabitants. ginal chapters which form the text, we have After leaving the sea, the travelers ascend- been under the necessity of incorporating the ed a height about 10,000 feet high, and were information contained in both, partly in our "struck with the sight of two grotesquely own language and partly in that of the aushaped porphyritic summits, Aroma" and thor, and have therefore found it impossible Cunturcaga, which consisted of five, six, or to give such copious and continuous extracts seven solid columns, some of them join ted as the reader might have desired. This difand from thirty-seven to forty-two feet high.' ficulty, too, has been greatly increased by Owing to the distribution of the often con- the admixture of scientific with popular de. verging series of columns of the Cerro Aro- tails, and by the use of technical terms which ma placed one aboveanother, “it resembles the general reader will sometimes find it difa two-storied building, which, moreover, is ficult to interpret. Regarding the work, how. surmounted by a dome or cupola of non-co- ever, as one of great value from its science, and lumnar rock.' great interest from its subject, and as possessIt had been the earliest wish of our au- ing that peculiar charm of language and of senthor to obtain a view of the Pacific from the timent which we look for in vain in similar procrest of the Andes. He had listened as a ductions, we cannot withhold the expression of boy to the adventurous expedition of Vasco our anxiety that the popular matter in the “anNunez de Balboa, the first European who be- notations and additions” should be incorporheld the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean, ated with the original text, and the technical and he was now about to gratify this longing and parenthetic references in the text, either converted into foot-notes, or transferred to the " annotations." We should thus have a * It is with some reluctance that, in imitation of Humboldt, we throw into the obscurity of a note, a work truly popular, without losing any of specimen of court etiquette at the palace of the its scientific accuracy. Incas. In conformity,” says our author, " with a The translation by Mrs. Sabine is, like her highly ancient court ceremonial, Atahualpa spat, translation of Kosmos, admirably executed. not on the ground, but into the hand of one of the principal ladies present;"- -"all,” says Garcilaso, We are never offended with the harshness on account of his majesty.”—Vol . ii. P 314. When of a foreign idiom, and we never discover the possessors of a little brief authority thus de- that the author and the translator are difgrade their office and their race, we feel that they ferent persons. have withdrawn themselves from the sphere of human sympathies, and we almost forget the cruelties of the aniards when we find them perpe We have thus endeavored to give our trated against bipeds like Atahualpa. Page 19
CHILDREN BY SAID MARRIAGE.
forth its pleasant fruits. Her el lest daughter in the “ vice-maternal” chair, although it is married Mr. Thomas Kay, minister of Kilrenny, a common error, from which the world has a parish immediately adjoining to Anstruther. derived many of the crooked and perverse With the family at Kilrenny manse, the family of minds by whom it has been vexed, and made Dr. Chalmers' father continued to maintain the closest intimacy. It was to Mrs. Kay's son-in worse than it might have been, if that praclaw, Dr. Adamson, of St. Andrews, that Dr. Chal-tice had been avoided. The boy in this inmers was himself indebted for his presentation stance ran away from the nursery to the to the living of Kilmany. school, in the hope of escaping from calami“Mr. Chalmers' eldest son, the Rev. John ties which daily annoyed him at home. He Chalmers, D.D., succeeded his father as minister was not sent, but he fled to the school, when at Elie, but was afterward translated to the parish of age. Infant schools were of Kilconquhar. He inherited his mother's talent, and in his day was distinguished both as an then unknown, and so he must have been re scholar; but eloquent preacher, and an able and zealous advo- garded as a remarkably young cate of that policy which then predominated the teacher, Mr. Bryce, was old, and so nearwithin the Church of Scotland. Mr. Chalmers? | ly blind, that when he attempted to strike second son, Mr. James Chalmers, having married offending scholars with his “ rod,” the blows Barbara Anderson, of Easter Anstruther, settled meant for them generally fell on his own tain that town as a dyer, shipowner, and general ble. He had an assistant, who abandoned merchant. He was succeeded in a prosperous business by his second son, Mr. John Chalmers, his principal's system of discipline ; but was who, in 1771, married Elizabeth Hall, the daugh- unfortunate in his career, although a man of ter of a wine merchant at Crail. They had a considerable parts :very numerous family-nine sons and five daughters—of whom only one died in childhood. The “ Though he continued for many years afterfollowing table is extracied from Mr. Chalmers' ward to preside, Mr. Bryce had furnished himself family record : with an assistant, Mr. Daniel Ramsay, afterward 56 John Chalmers and Elizabeth Hall were mar- parochial schoolmaster at Corstorphine, to whose ried on the 20th August, 1771. care all the younger children were in the first instance consigned. The assistant was as easy as his superior was harsh. As teachers, they were about equally inefficient. Mr. Ramsay sought 1. James, June 11. 1772 June 14 distinction in his profession by becoming the au2. Lucy, Nov. 9, 1773 Nov. 14 thor of a treatise on “ Mixed Schools." His work 3. Barbara, June 21, 1775 June 25 won for him but little reputation ; and an unfortu4. George, April 1, 1777 April 6 nate act, in which, perhaps, there was more im5. William, Aug. 31, 1778 Sept. 6 prudence than guilt, lost him his situation, and 6. Thomas, Mar. 17, 1780 Mar. 19 plunged him in poverty. For many years Dr. 7. Isabel, Dec. 13, 1781 Dec. 16 Chalmers contributed regularly for his support. 8. David, May 31, 1783 June 1 His latter days were spent in Gillespie's Hospi9. John, May 19, 1785 May 22 tal, where he died about five years ago. The 10. Helen, Aug. 31, 1786 Sept. 8 Rev. Dr. Steven, who visited bim frequently 11. Jean, June 29, 1788 June 29 while upon his death-bed, in a letter with which I 12. Patrick, . June 16, 1790 June 20 have been favored, says:— On one occasion he 13. Charles, Jan. 16, 1792 Jan. 22 spoke to me, in a very feeling manner indeed, of 14. Alexander, . April 9, 1794 April 13' Dr. Chalmers, and the impression made upon my “ Dr. Chalmers, the sixth child and fourth son mind was such that I have not yet forgotten the in this crowded household, was born at Anstru. | words he employed : “No man," exclaimed he, ther, on Friday, the 17th March, 1780." “knows the amount of kindness which I have received from my old pupil. He has often done Unlike many other crowded families, this me good, both as respects my soul and my body; one was not early thinned ; and one of the many a pithy sentence he uttered when he threw disadvantages attending a numerous flock of himself in my way-many a pound note has the rivals to a mother's care was, that the nurse D ctor given me, and he always did the thing as if had the management of Thomas at an early May God reward him!” The feeble old man was he were afraid that somebody should see him. age; and a bad nurse she appears to have quite overpowered, and wept like a child when been, since the victim of her anger never en- he gave utterance to these words.' tirely forgot the treatment he received. "There had been a dash of eccentricity about Many young persons derive their first impres- Ramsay: Some years ago, when the whole powsions in life from a bad nurse, like the girl single hand of the Duke of Wellington, he wrote ers of the empire lodged for a short time in the who fixed her character indelibly on the mind of Thomas Chalmers. It is a great almost as much wisdom as wit—ihat he could to his Grace, in the true dominie spirit, but with mistake to place the most inexperienced ser- tell him how to do the most difficult thing he had vant in the nursery, if she be to rule there! in hand, namely, to cure the ills of Ireland. He Page 20
occasionally in undue proportions. We , Campbell. Much franker and more manly than subjoin part of Dr. Hanna's criticism on this in the first years of my acquaintance with him.” subject : His collegiate career was diversified by a " His third session at the university, which had tutorship, which, from his correspondence, witnessed his first well-sustained intellectual ef- was evidently distasteful to him, and he reforts, bad witnessed also his earliest attempts in tired from the family early in 1799, to be liEnglish composition. Here he had to begin at censed as a preacher :the very beginning. Letters written by him, even after his second year at college, exhibit a glaring deficiency in the first and simplest elements of bytery of St. Andrews to be admitted to his ex “Soon after his return, he applied to the Prescorrect writing. And he had to become very much his own instructor, guiding himself by such amination, preparatory to his obtaining a license models as the prelections of Dr. Hunter and Dr. as a preacher of the Gospel. Some difficulties Brown, and the writings of Godwin or other favor were raised against its being received. He had ite authors, presented. A few of his first efforts not completed his nineteenth year, whereas Presin this way have been preserved. They exhibit byteries were not wont to take students upon prolittle that is remarkable in style. The earliest bationary trials until they had attained the age of compositions of those who have afterward become friends in the Presbytery fell upon the old statute twenty-one. It happily occurred that one of his distinguished as poets, or orators, or eloquent of the Church, which ordains,that none be adwriters, have generally displayed a profuse excess of the rhetorical or the imaginative, which it took mitted to the Ministry before they be twenty-five time and labor to reduce to becoming proportions. years of age, except such as for rare and singular In the college exercises of Dr. Chalmers this order qualities shall be judged by the General and Prois reversed. The earliest of them are the simplest vincial Assembly to be meet and worthy thereof.' “ Under cover of the last clause of the statute, and plainest, with scarcely a gleam of fancy or sentiment ever rising to play over the page. They and translating its more dignified phraseology into give token of a very vigorous youthful intellect Chalmers' reception as “a lad o' pregnant pairts.' terms of common use, his friend pleaded for Mr. disciplining itself at once in exact thinking and the plea was admitted; and, after the usual forcorrect perspicuous expression; never allowing malitie itself to travel beyond the bounds of the analysis pel on the 31st July, 1799. he was licensed as a preacher of the Gos It was one of the or argument which it is engaged in prosecuting; tales of his earlier life which he was in the habit never wandering away 10 pluck a single flower in later years of playfully repeating, that such a out of the garden of the imagination, by which title had been so early given to him, and such a illustration or adornment might be supplied. Those who, as the result of their analysis, have con dispensation as to age had been granted.” cluded that in Dr. Chalmers' mental constitution the purely intellectual largely predominated—that Some time elapsed before Mr. Chalmers fancy was comparatively feeble, and that imagin- made any use of his license. He proceeded ation, potent as she was, was but a minister of to visit a brother at Liverpool, and first conother and higher powers, might find historic veri- ducted public worship in the Scotch Church, fication of their analyses in the earliest of his col- in Chapel Lane, Wigan, on Sabbath, the 25th lege compositions." August, 1799. He preached on the followHis college life commenced in 1793 ; and ing Sabbath in Mr. Kirkpatrick's church, in 1807, while Dr. Chalmers was on a visit Liverpool. His brother, writing from Liverto London, we find some memoranda of this pool, said—“It is impossible for me to form an opinion of Thomas as yet; but the sersame John Campbell , who has lived to be one of the first English lawyers—the repre mon he gave us in Liverpool, which was the same as we had in Wigan, was in general sentative first of Dudley, and next of Edin well liked.” ... His brother thought burgh, in the House of Commons--the At the discourse rather more practical than doc — of Ireland--the great legal historian of the trinal, and he complained of the preacher's — awkward appearance and dress; adding, that day—a member of the House of Peers-and “his mathematical studies seem to occupy. now promises to succeed Lord Denman in more of his time than the religious.” Mr. the Court of Queen's Bench : Chalmers returned to Scotland, and in 1800 he was studying in Edinburgh, while we hear “ Tuesday, May 12.—Breakfasted with the very little more of his preaching until the Miss Hunters, and took three of them to the Royal middle of 1801, when the circumstance ocAcademy, and had great satisfaction in observing curred that first introduced him into a course the increasing celebrity of Mr. Wilkies pictures of regular professional service :In going along to Somerset House I met John Campbell. [Now Lord Campbell.] Wednesday, May 13.-Breakfasted with John “ While Dr. Chalmers was imbibing wholesome Page 21
The idea of Dr. Chalmers walking up to , vate chapel, where, at half-past eight, I was graLiverpool would have amused, if it had not tified with the entrance of their Majesties and the startled, the younger class of his admirers in Princess Elizabeth. His manner is devotional recent times. Men do not now walk, and and unaffected. I heard them all repeat the serthey do not, therefore, know the country so vice most distinctly; and was much pleased with their frank, easy, and benevolent appearance. well as their traveling ancestors; but the The view of Twickenham was most charming. advantage is now, that more people travel Pope's house was among the delightful residences than in 1807. that we gazed on with rapture from the opposite Another extract shows the contrast in side. The river was enshrined with pleasuretraveling : boats, and the gay London parties walking and drinking tea on both sides gave cheerfulness and May 3.--Left Oxford at seven in the morning; vicinity to the metropolis, pollutes all our rural animation to the prospect. The idea, however, of and landed in Ludgate Hill about seven in the evening." impressions of this fascinating scene-takes off all the pure interest which the idea of simplicity Some parts of Mr. Chalmers' life in London vices, profligacy, and corruptions of civilized life. confers, and mingles with original nature the present singular contrasts with his subsequent We ascended Richmond Hill; eyed with rapture principles. His great purpose is served by their the country before us; saw in the rich scene that disclosure. His life illustrated two different presented itself the wealth of the first city in the modes of thought and action, and he wished world, spreading its embellishments over the the illustrations to be known and read. We neighborhood. Took a boat to Kew, when we take, in the first place, the work of two or passed Ilesworth, and had a charming sail down three Sabbaths from his journal. They mark and reached Walworth by eleven in the evening.” ihe river. From Kew, we coached it to town, the progress of society in opinion and thought on the observance question : These pictures of London in the olden “ Sunday, Nov. 3.-Walked on London Bridge, time, as forty years are long ago, have a round the Tower , along Cornhill and Cheapside strange interest now to those who remember to St. Paul's, where I heard service. After din that London has, in the direction indicated, ner, we sallied out to Westminster Bridge, St. trebled or quadrupled all the signs of wealth James's Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, and magnificence since 1807. and returned by Oxford Street and Blackfriars On his return to Scotland, the minister of Bridge. Astonished at the display; the dress, Kilmany walked a part of the way, and we the carriages, and company, gave a high idea of subjoin his account of another Sabbath-day's the wealth and extravagance of London.” journey : We need not say that London has now a May 31.-Started at seven, and walked to finer display of wealth than in 1807; but we Bishopwearmouth. The country. possesses .no doubt whether the Sunday exhibitions of that great decisive features. The bridge over the period were not greater than at the present Wear is an astonishing piece of workmanship. day. I got under it in a boat, and made my observations From the next extract, we do not learn [a minute description of the bridge is given]: that the Scotch parish minister considered Falling in with a man who drove a post-office gig, rode to South Shields. Crossed over to North attendance on public worship necessary, un- Shields for twopence, in a sculler. From North less in an incidental way, while in London : Shields I proceeded to Tynemouth, with which I was delighted; the east fragment of the Abbey is “Sunday, May 10th.--The badness of the day particularly beautiful. Sailed up the river to prevented us from prosecuting any of our schemes. Newcastle.” Walked out before dinner to Dulwich village, where we had the full view of the country, enriched We have allowed our remarks to extend and adorned by the neighborhood of the metropolis. After dinner, a round by Oxford-street. too far on the early portion of this volume; We returned by Blackfriars, when, en passant, we but it is that part of Dr. Chalmers' life with had an opportunity of hearing the delightful music which the public are least acquainted. At in Rowland Hill's, and the roaring enthusiasm of Kilmany, his theological opinions underwent another preacher, whose sect was founded by a a complete change. He entered the parish female mystic--Joanna Southcote.” as a moderate minister of the old school, and On the following Sunday he did, indeed, was, we may charitably hope, an unfavorattend chapel, probably with some desire to able specimen of his class. At his ordination, see the king : although described by an old minister as “a lad o' pregnant pairts,” he did not consider “Sunday, May 17.-Went to the King's pri- any special preparation for his charge neces Page 22
beyond the icy archipelago along the whole , by land, the expedition came, on the 30th of of the north coast of America. August, to a most magnificent inlet, borThe appointment of Sir John Barrow, per- dered by lofty mountains of peculiar gransonally distinguished by his geographical re- deur, while the water, being clear and free searches, to a high official situation in the from ice, presented a most tempting appear. Admiralty, opened a new era in the research- ance. This proved to be Lancaster Sound, es for a north-west passage. Sir John ap- the inlet to Barrow's Straits ; but, by some plied to this important question the whole strange mischance, Sir John Ross fancied powers of an undoubtedly vigorous and pene- that he saw stretching across the inlet a trating judgment; and although often, nay, chain of mountains, and after penetrating a always baffled, he still returned to the charge distance of thirty miles, he steered out of with an indomitable perseverance, which, the channel, and returned home early in Oceven if ill-directed, still claims our respect. tober. It was well known that the great sea which Sir Edward Parry and several other of the bore Baffin's name had been very superficially officers having differed (at least on their reexplored, and there was every reason to be- turn to England) in opinion with Sir John lieve that there were communications be- Ross, as to the real character of Lancaster tween that sea and the Greenland Sea on the Sound, a second expedition was sent out in one side, and the Northern Sea on the other. 1819, under the first-mentioned distinguished A first expedition was accordingly fitted out navigator. This expedition was composed of in 1818 by the Admiralty, to solve this in the Hecla and Griper, and these two vessels interesting problem. Captain, now Sir John were, like their predecessors, obliged to sail Ross, and Lieutenant, now Sir Edward Parry, up the eastern side of Baffin's Bay, along the were employed on this arduous service, nor border of the great icy field, till they could was this first of the recent expeditions void turn westward to Lancaster Sound, which of peril or interest. Already at Cape Fare- they reached on the 30th of July. The exwell, the southernmost point of Greenland, pedition entered the sound with an adverse the expedition came in view of those nume- wind, but open waters and a heavy sea filled rous and lofty icebergs which appear to be the minds of all with hope and suspense, ever floating round that formidable headland. On the 3rd of August a change of wind Proceeding up the bay, they were first enabled them to push forward, and raised stopped near Waygat Island by a great bar- these feelings to the highest. The mastrier of ice; but making themselves fast to heads were crowded with officers and men, a berg, they waited till the barrier broke up, and the successive reports brought down which it did to the eastward, and they were from the crow's nest were eagerly listened thus enabled to move forward slowly along to on deck. The wind, freshening more and the coast, laboring through narrow and in more, carried them rapidly forward, till at tricate channels, every now and then a gale midnight they found themselves in longitude of wind springing up and driving the ice 83 deg. 12 min., nearly 150 miles from the against the vessels, threatening them with mouth of the sound, and having sailed over instant destruction. Capt. Sir J. Ross's chain of high mountains. We have been so far particular in this first The lengthened swell which still rolled in instance of more recent Polar voyages in from the north and west combined, with the order that we might give at the onset a clear oceanic color of the waters, to inspire the idea of what the difficulties of navigation are flattering persuasion that they had passed in the higher parts of Baffin's Bay at the best the regions of straits and inlets, and that they season of the year, and how far such a sea bad entered into the wide expanse of the can be considered as available for the pur- Northern Sea. A compact and impenetrable poses of a north-west passage. Yet all dis- body of floe ice, however, soon drove them covery tends to establish that it is only by to the southward, where they discovered that Lancaster Sound, at nearly the north-western great sea called Prince Regent's Inlet, which extremity of this bay or sea, that a passage subsequent discovery has shown to connect can be effected. After a superficial examina- Baffin's Bay with Hudson's Bay by the tion of the more spacious sounds that are to Hecla and Fury Straits, as also to have its be met with at the northern extremity of own opening to the Northern Sea. Returning Baffin's Bay, and more especially of that hence, a happy change of weather enabled designated as Sir Thomas Smith's, the most the ships to proceed westward by the chanpromising of all, but which Sir John Ross nel, to which Sir Edward Parry gave the satisfied himself to be completely enclosed well-merited name of Barrow's Straits, discovering and naming on their way Welling- the bold coast of what was called Banks' ton Inlet, Cornwallis Island, Bathurst Island, Land, and as even a brisk gale from the and other fragments of the great icy archi- east did not produce the slightest movement pelago, which, with Melville and Sabine on the glassy face of the deep, they were Islands and Banks' Land, the distinguished led to believe, that, on the other side, there discoverer grouped together under the name must be a large body of land, by which it of North Georgian Islands. On the 4th of was held in a fixed state. The further proSeptember, Sir Edward Parry was enabled gress of this most remarkable expedition to announce to his joyful crew, that, having ceased therefore at this point, leaving one reached the longitude of 110 deg. west, they fact tolerably evident, that, after passing were become entitled to the reward of £5000, Barrow's Straits, it must be by a more promised by Parliament to the first ship's southerly parallel than Banks' Land that a company who should attain that meridian. north-west passage remained to be sought Unfortunately, in regions where summer is of for. such brief duration, on the 20th of Septem- Notwithstanding this important fact, the ber, being arrested by an impenetrable bar- next expedition, that of the Fury and Hecla rier of ice, young ice began to form with | under Sir Edward Parry and Captain Lyon, such rapidity as to oblige them to retrace was unfortunately sent to Hudson's Bay. their steps to Melville Island, where they At the onset of this expedition Chesterfield had to cut their way through the ice into a Inlet and Repulse Bay were explored in vain winter station. Page 23
that large gulf called by Sir John Ross Gulf and Barrow's Straits as the proper, and, as of Boothia, and which is uniformly described far as our knowledge extends, the only open by the Esquimaux as stretching downward, maritime route to be pursued in endeavoring till it approaches within forty miles of Re- to effect a passage to Behring's Straits, the pulse and Wager Bays—the latter the scene expedition was directed to make this the first of the Terror's ill-starred voyage. point to be attained. The opening which we The existence of this strait is considered have previously noticed, as issuing from the by the discoverers as determining the exist- northern side of Barrow's Straits, called Welence of a north-west passage ; for as the lington Inlet, and which in appearance is Gulf of Boothia may be reached either by said to be little inferior to Lancaster Sound, the straits of the Fury and Hecla, or by was, we think, very properly objected to; as Prince Regent's Inlet, so the strait of Dease the only chance of its becoming available and Simpson leads at once into the Northern would be that it leads into an open sea, and Sea, bounded in these latitudes to the north which, as it opens to the northward, is not by Victoria and Wollaston Lands. But it is very likely. The expedition was, therefore, extremely doubtful if a passage so narrow, directed more judiciously to the southern and so much blocked up with ice, as that be part of the strait; and, we are to follow tween Boothia and the mainland, can ever be the statement made by Sir Roderick Impey made available to purposes of navigation. Murchison to the Royal Geographical Soci In the year 1843 or 1844, Sir John Bar- ety, not to turn off after passing the northrow submitted a plan to the First Lord of western extremity of North Somerset, but to the Admiralty for carrying on research in continue onward to beyond Cape Walker, the same seas, with a request that it might between which and Melville Island the ships be laid before the president and council of were to take a middle course by the first the Royal Society, by whom a resolution was opening that might present itself after passpassed in favor of the measure. It was then ing the latter cape; and thence to steer to further referred to those best acquainted the southward, half way between Banks' with the subject—Sir John Franklin, Sir Ed - Land and the northern coast of America, ward Parry, Sir James Ross, and Lieuten- proceeding more or less directly, or as far as ant-Colonel Sabine. All of whom approved the ice would admit, for the centre of Behrof the plan. ing's Straits. With these separate opinions, the project The distance to this latter point from the was sent to the head of her Majesty's gov- centre point between Cape Walker and Melernment, and being approved by him, meas- ville Island is about 900 miles. The results ures were forth with taken to carry it into ex- of Sir Edward Parry's great journey, previecution. Two ships, the Erebus and Terror ously described, as well as the results of the -the same which had been so successfully examination of the northern coast of Ameremployed for three years in the southern ica by Sir John Franklin, Sir George Back, Arctic regions under Sir James Ross-were Sir John Richardson, Messrs. Simpson, immediately placed under the command of Dease, and others also previously alluded to, Sir John Franklin, and the expedition sailed and the favorable appearance of the Polar in the spring of 1845. To obviate delay Sea for navigation close along the shore as from calms or contrary winds, or where nar- far as the power of vision extended, together, row channels between floes or masses of ice with the absence of islands, except small might have to be passed, each ship was sup- rocky patches, close in shore, from the 105th plied with a small steam-engine to work a meridian W. to Behring's Straits ; the whole screw, so as to insure a progress of from of these ascertained state of things-added four to five knots an hour; and this screw more particularly to the additional means was so contrived that it could be let down or placed at the disposal of the experienced drawn up as occasion might require. Each commander by means of screw propulsion-ship was commanded by a captain thorough- afforded to geographers and to men of scily experienced in seas encumbered with ice: ence alike what appeared to be well-groundČaptain Sir John Franklin in the Erebus, ed hopes of a successful issue to this last and Captain Crozier in the Terror, with able great Arctic expedition. and intelligent officers under them; among Unfortunately these hopes have been whom, Lieutenant, now Captain Fitzjames, doomed to a prolonged disappointment. who served in the Euphrates Expedition, and The last information received from the exafterward in the war in China. pedition stated them to be at White Fish IsConsidering the route by Lancaster Sound I land, on the east coast of Greenland, in 69 deg. 9 min. north, and 53 deg. 10 min. west, Franklin's expedition having touched at this all well. Since that period three winters general point of rendezvous. Nothing was have elapsed, and a fourth is now going by, found but the paper left there recording the and notwithstanding that the ships were ful visit of Sir Edward Parry in 1819. From ly stored and provisioned for three years, and this point the examination of the coast was the confidence that was felt and is still felt continued with equal care, for they were in in the united efforts of skill, science, and dar- full expectation of seeing those of whom ing, guided by experience, great anxiety and they were in search. At Cape York, a party alarm began to be felt in many quarters for was sent on shore with the same object, and the safety of our brave countrymen. This no better success. The numerous inlets on was so far also sympathized with, both by the northern shore of Barrow's Straits were Government and by others who had distin- also examined, but the entrance of Wellingguished themselves in Arctic travels, that ex- ton Channel was obstructed by an impenepeditions of succor were resolved upon, and trable barrier of ice. A heavy body of ice her majesty's ships, Enterprise and Investi- was also found stretching from the west of gutor, were sent out in the spring of 1848 Cornwallis Island in a compact mass to Leoupon the track of the missing vessels. Sir pold Island. After some days of anxious John Richardson volunteered his services at and arduous work, they succeeded in getting the same time to carry succor to the shores through the pack, and entered the harbor of of the Polar Seas by land, and another ves- Port Leopold on the 11th of September. It sel, the Plorer, employed in surveying du- is remarkable that Sir James Ross says, that ties in the Pacific, was ordered to proceed had they not got into port on that day it by Behring's Straits, possibly to meet the would have been impossible to have done so expedition in that direction. No other pos- any day afterward, the main pack, during sible means of aid and succor were neglect the night, having closed the land, and comed. The interest of the ships frequenting pletely sealed the mouth of the harbor. Imthe Polar Seas in the prosecution of the agine a port which is accessible for only one whale-fishery was gained over by large prom- day in the year, and that amid great difficulises of rewards, more especially on the part ties! of Lady Franklin, a wife worthy of a gallant The steam launch now proved of infinite + husband. It was attempted, and for a time value, conveying a large cargo herself and with promises of success, to move even the towing two deeply-laden cutters through the Russian and American governments in the sheet of ice, which now covered the harbor, cause of the missing adventurers. Page 24
privilege, will nevertheless cherish the mem- crucian, the atheist, the sorcerer? Are you ory of it, to the end of her life.” aware that I have been a thousand times so“And she is—"commenced the Emperor. licited to arrest you, and to put you upon “Here, your majesty," and the young your trial ?” man drew toward him a thick rope “ I am not ignorant of the fact.” which, when forcibly pulled, swung back a “ That I have been entreated to take your hanging drapery that veiled the upper end head ?” of the room, and revealed the space beyond it. “I know both wherefore, and by whom.” As the heavy curtain rolled aside, Joseph You know this, and yet you venture to II. forgot his imperial dignity, and started deliver yourself thus into my hands ?" from his seat. He saw before him a minia- Why should I hesitate ?" asked the ture forest, with trailing plants linking the young man, with a proud smile; “your imtrees together, and garlanding their very perial majesty is not to be duped by the idle summits with gorgeous blossoms, while birds and empty superstitions of the ignorant. of bright plumage were flitting from bough You have never put faith in these vulgar to bough, or pluming themselves upon the fallacies.” branches. But that which more especially “No, assuredly," said the Emperor, with riveted the attention of the Emperor, was the dignity; "and yet the outery is loud against figure of a young girl, apparently buried in a you. You live in regal splendor ; you disprofound sleep, and lying with one hand be pense annually a fortune in charity.” neath her head, and the other grasping a “ For which men call me an atheist,” ingarland of wild flowers, upon a green bank terposed Gottlieb, with another of his beam , overcanopied by a tulip-tree. Nothing.could ing smiles. be more faultlessly beautiful than both ber “ You are known to possess extraordinary form and face; her long and glossy hair, of talents, which you disdain to use,” pursued that rich purple black which takes a golden Joseph II., without heeding the interruption ; gleam in the light, was confined round her “and marvelous secrets, which you will not brow by a circle of half-blown lotus blos- divulge.” soms, and then fell over her throat and “ And thus men esteem me a sorcerer!" shoulders in wonderful profusion. The long “ By St. Stephen! I scarcely marvel at lashes of her closed eyes rested their belief,” exclaimed the Emperor, as fair as Parian marble, and as white; while though I do not share it. But you owe me her parted lips were of the richest tint that an explanation of all this mystery, were it ever nestled in the bosom of a sea-shell. only for my faith in your innocence; and, “ Once more,” exclaimed the Emperor, as first, who is that magnificent beauty, who he sank back in his chair, when, his enter- does not seem to be of this world, or even tainer having relaxed his hold of the golden conscious of her own existence ?" rope, the dark curtain again shut out this "Simply my sister, sire ; who, too timid fairy vision; once more, who you ? Do to have sustained your gaze, would still have not fear to confide in me. Have I not shown chidden me had I not enabled her to feel that I have trust in yourself? Tell me all, that she had once had the honor of being for at once. You could not do so at a more fa- an instant in the presence of her Emperor. A vorable moment. I am your guest, and will not slight narcotic sufficed to reconcile my fears repay your hospitality by harshness. Speak.” with my indulgence. For I love her, sire,” Again the young man bent his knee. said the young man, energetically, “I love Sire, I have faith in your imperial word.” her as those only can love who have but one " And you are right. Who are you?" sole object upon which to pour out the full “I am the grand-nephew of Faust.” tide of their affection. We are alone in the “ How !" cried the Emperor, once more world, save that we make our house the starting from his seat, and gazing down upon home of the poor ; for even to the very gates him, half in anger and half in amazement; of the palace of the Cæsars, which nothing you are Gottlieb Faust! and you dare to should approach save what is joyful and gloown this to me ?” rious, poverty will creep, and it is a happy “Fearlessly, sire," said the young man, privilege to be permitted to beckon it away. firmly; “ for you will not falsify your “ Rise, mynheer, rise," said the Emperor; pledge." "give me truth, and fear nothing. I value “ Gottlieb Faust !" repeated Joseph II., truth more than knee-worship.” unable to conquer his surprise. He was obeyed. be Gottlieb Faust, the initiated, the Rosi- “ And now, this affluence, this splendor," Page 25
ence-chamber, bis step was as free and as which, however splendid it may be, is still firm as though no peril awaited him at the only a gilded prison. You are too young to termination of his progress. yield to so ignoble an indolence. What? As the tapestried hanging of the imperial silent !" saloon fell behind him, every tongue was un "I was thinking of my orphan sister, sire." loosed. “ Can that be Gottlieb Faust? Can “ Nor have I forgotien her,” eagerly rethat be the son of the alchemist of the Leo- plied Joseph II. ; she shall be cared for. poldstadt ? And admitted on the instant to We will attach her to the suite of one of the the Emperor, while we have been so long Arch-Duchesses.” waiting ?" "Not so, sire, if your imperial majesty “Pshaw !” exclaimed another, “our good will pardon me,” said the young man, gloommaster is anxious to be rid of him. He is a | ily; she is a wild bird, fit only for the free dangerous inmate for a palace." wood; she would pine and die in a gilded cage.” They will surely not accord to him the No fear of that, my friend,” persisted honor of decapitation,” remarked a third ; Joseph II. ; " we shall not keep her long. “ he is of plebeian birth, and should die by Young, rich, and beautiful, she will soon bethe cord." come noble in her turn." Patience, gentlemen," said the old min- “ The saints forbid !” was the emphatic ister; “ we shall soon know all." reply. “She must go to her grave as she Meanwhile, the object of all these com- came from her cradle, unconscious of the penments and speculations had bent his knee alty which is attached to the name she bears.” upon the threshold of the imperial apart- On what do you decide, then ?" demandment, in which Joseph II. was seated before ed the Emperor, somewhat impatiently. a table covered with papers, and entirely “I will serve in your armies, sire, should unattended. you consider me worthy of such an honor ; “Come forward, mine host, come for- and during my absence from the Capital, my ward !” said the Emperor, good-humoredly. sister shall seek refuge in a Convent.” “I owe you a courteous welcome for that “ By St. Stephen ! it is a poor alternative,” which you bestowed upon myself last night. smiled the monarch ; " but be it as you will; Ay, and for more than that. Do you see although it is certain that you must, by such these multiplied columns of figures which a measure, mar her fortunes; for, should make the eye dance that endeavors to rest on others only feel as I do, she were a bride for them? Well, my assayer has given me full whom the noblest in the empire might not assurance that, through your means, a sponge scorn to contend." may be passed over them all ; and this is no I know it,” said the young man, with a trifling obligation. I have faith in all that you kindling eye;" but hers is not a nature to conhave told me. I believe you to be an honest tend against proud mothers or insolent sisman and a gentleman; but this acknowledg- ters, who might presume upon her meaner ment is insufficient to satisfy the pride of an birth ; and thus the blossom which I have Austrian monarch. You have laid me under a reared so tenderly would be withered in its heavy debt, Count Von Faustemburg. Nay, first bloom. I have read her heart, aye, do not kneel ; your new title will serve to like an open volume; and I feel sure that, tickle the ears of the courtiers, so that it once our separation over, she will cling to may le useful in its way. But here, sir," the calm refuge of a cloister. So let it be, he continued with sudden dignity, as he took sire ; if you would indeed bind me to you from the table a cross of the order of Maria forever-so let it be. She is too pure for Theresa ; “ here is an honor less empty, and the contact of a world—for the contact of a to which I am convinced you will not be in- court. So let it be; and the doomed name sensible. I bestow it freely, for I know that of Faust will then perish upon earth-perish, the jewel will rest upon an honest heart.” and be forgotten." “ Your imperial majesty beggars me,” “ You are a poor courtier, my friend." stammered the young man, overcome for the I shall make the better soldier, sire. first time by his feelings. Trust me-try me and I shall not fail.” “ And now," said the Emperor, waving “I believe you, Count; and now I will his hand, as if to deprecate all further ac- present you to a few of my private circle." knowledgment on the part of the new-made As the Emperor ceased speaking, he rang noble ; " and now, Count, what are your a silver bell beside him, which was no sooner future intentions? You surely cannot pur- | answered than he rapidly ran over a number pose to waste your life in a solitary home, of the noblest names in Austria, and desired Page 26
tized by the standing requirements of a poli- | accidental advantages of long reigns and tical equilibrium ; and, perhaps, the dread worthy representatives ; while its opportuniof Ottoman aggression produced the first ties of aggrandizement were so peculiar that faint foreshadowings of those State-combina- far weaker hands might have turned them to tions which characterize the modern history account. On one side of them lay the Roof Europe. But it was not so at the outset. man empire, shrunk to the dimensions of Adrianople had been made a Mahometan Constantinople and its environs ; on the other capital, and the metropolis of the Eastern the fragmentary or effete principalities of the Cæsars had become a mere enclave in Turk- Seljukian Turks, who had been quartered ish territory, before the aid of European for two centuries on these spoils of the Eastprinces was solicited against the new invaders ern Cæsars, and whose power had been re-and solicited in vain ! and when at length cently shattered by the shock of the Mogul the Christian allies and the infidel forces invasion. The House of Othman struck joined battle in the field of Nicopolis, the Ot- right and left. Before the sixty years of its toman power had been impregnably strength two first chiefs had terminated, the northened by the impunity and successes of a cen- western portions of Asia Minor had been eftury. fectually subdued, and a capital had been As any particular narrative of these events found at Prusa for the new dominion. Alwould carry us beyond our limits and our de- ready the passage of the Hellespont had besign, we can only venture on a few brief re- come an ordinary incident of their expedimarks in elucidation of the subject directly tions, and by the middle of the fourteenth before us, and in aid of the general interest century, the European shore of the Straits of our disquisition. Toward the close of was studded with Turkish garrisons. Startthe thirteenth century,--that is to say, at the ing from the ground thus gained, Amurath, very moment when the election of a Swiss first of his name, and third of his race, knight to the Germanic throne was laying added the whole province of Thrace to his the foundations of the imperial House of territories, erected a second metropolis at Austria, events of equal singularity were Adrianople, and advanced the Ottoman fronpreparing the seat of the rival Cæsars for tiers to the Balkan. Our sketch runs rapidly the progeny of a Turkish freebooter. The to a close. A few years more, and we find Asiatic continent, from its central highlands these Turks of the third generation, at the to the shores of the Mediterranean, had very limits of their present empire; and on been utterly convulsed by the tremendous the very scenes of their present fortunes. irruptions of Zingis Khan ; and, in the course By 1390, they had occupied Widdin, and of the subsequent commotions, a Turcoman before five years more had elapsed, the Moschief named Ortogrul, from the banks of the lem and Christian hosts were delivering, as Oxus, found himself wandering in the hills of we have said, the first of their countless batAnatolia at the head of four hundred fami- / tles on the banks of the Danube. lies. A service, which he accidentally ren- During these transactions, although the dered to a native prince, was acknowledged relative positions of Turkey and Christendom by a grant of land; and the estate was soon were wholly and alarmingly changed, and expanded into a respectable territory, by though the attitude of the new invaders on the talents which had originally acquired it. the borders of Germany did really portend The inheritance of Ortogrul devolved, in more serious results than the transient de1289, upon his son Osman or Othman, who, vastations of Tartar inroads, yet the deportat the death, ten years later, of his patron, ment of the European Powers appears to the Sultan of Iconium, no longer hesitated have undergone no corresponding alteration. to proclaim his independent sovereignty. The battle of Nicopolis had indeed been Such was the origin of the House of Othman. fought; but the crusade which this encounThe name itself, which is a vernacular epi- ter commenced and terminated, originated rathet of the royal vulture, and signifies a ther in the influence of family connections “bone-breaker,” has been recognized by the than in any impulse of political foresight or Turks as not disagreeably symbolical of the religious zeal. "The King of Hungary, whose national character and mission ; and so com- realm was menaced by the arms of Bajazet pletely do they identify their State with the I., was son of one German emperor, brother race of its founder, that they have foregone to another, and destined to be Emperor himall other denominations for the dignity, style, self; and he possessed therefore the obvious and title of the Ottoman Porte. means of attracting to his standard the caThe new dynasty enjoyed the signal though pricious chivalry of the West. But there was no effective combination of forces, nor | nent of European opinion was no other than any permanent sense of the danger which the Roman Pontiff,—without whose co-operequired it. The progress of the Ottoman ration it would have been scarcely possible arms exercised little perceptible influence on to organize an effectual crusade. The applithe councils of Europe, nor did the impend- cation, therefore, of the Eastern emperors to ing fate of an imperial and Christian city pro- the Powers of Europe, took the form of voke any serviceable sympathy. After the conciliatory overtures to the Romish See; Thracian and Bulgarian conquests, to which and, excepting in the case of the Emperor we have alluded, Constantinople, for the first Manuel, the negotiations of the imperial vitime in its existence, was completely envi- sitors were confined to the limits of the Paroned by enemies; and it became clear to pal Court. Neither could the Greek State the Greek emperors, that the invaders with be exactly represented to European sympawhom they had now to deal, were of a very thies as a Christian city brought finally to different mould from the swarming hordes bay, and desperately battling against the which had so often swept past them and re- overwhelming forces of the infidel |
Which two statements from the passage require more evidence to prove their accuracy?
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