The whole prairie, the whole horizon to the south-west, was now one mass of dense smoke, through which the sun's disc looked scarcely brighter than a paper-lantern. Behind the thick curtain which thus concealed every thing from our view, we heard a loud hissing, like that of a multitude of snakes. The smoke was stifling and unbearable; our horses again turned panting round, and tore madly towards the creek. On reaching it we dismounted, but had the greatest difficulty to prevent them from leaping into the water. The streaks of red to our right became brighter and brighter, and gleamed through the huge, dark trunks of the cypress-trees. The crackling and hissing grew louder than ever. Suddenly the frightful truth flashed upon us, and at the very same moment Carleton and I exclaimed, "The prairie is on fire!"

As we uttered the words, there was a loud rustling behind us, and a herd of deer broke headlong through a thicket of tall reeds and bulrushes, and dashed up to their necks into the water. There they remained, not fifty paces from us, little more than their heads above the surface, gazing at us, as though imploring our help and compassion. We fancied we could see tears in the poor beasts' eyes.

We looked behind us. On came the pillars of flame, flickering and threatening through the smoke, licking up all before them; and, at times, a gust of so hot and blasting a wind as seemed to dry the very marrow in our bones. The roaring of the fire was now distinctly audible, mingled with hissing, whistling sounds, and cracking noises, as of mighty trees falling. Suddenly a bright flame shot up through the stifling smoke, and immediately afterwards a sea of fire burst upon our aching eyeballs. The whole palmetto field was in flames.

The heat was so great, that we every moment expected to see our clothes take fire. Our horses dragged us still nearer to the creek, sprang into the water, and drew us down the bank after them. Another rustling and noise in the thicket of reeds. A she-bear, with her cubs at her heels, came towards us; and at the same time a second herd of deer rushed into the water not twenty yards from where we were standing. We pointed our guns at the bears; they moved off towards the deer, who remained undisturbed at their approach; and there they stood, bears and deer, not five paces apart, but taking no more notice of each other than if they had been animals of the same species. More beasts now came flocking to the river. Deer, wolves, foxes, horses—all came in crowds to seek shelter in one element from the fury of another. Most of them, however, went further up the creek, where it took a north-easterly direction, and widened into a sort of lake. Those that had first arrived began to follow the new-comers, and we did the same.

Suddenly the baying of hounds was heard. "Hurra! there are dogs; men must be near." A volley from a dozen rifles was the answer to our explanation. The shots were fired not two hundred yards from us, yet we saw nothing of the persons who fired them. The wild beasts around us trembled and crouched before this new danger, but did not attempt to move a step. We ourselves were standing in the midst of them up to our waists in water. "Who goes there?" we shouted. Another volley, and this time not one hundred yards off. We saw the flashes of the pieces, and heard voices talking in a dialect compounded of French and Indian. We perceived that we had to do with Acadians. A third volley, and the bullets whistled about our ears. It was getting past a joke. "Halt!" shouted we, "stop firing till you see what you are firing at." There was a dead silence for a moment, then a burst of savage laughter. "Fire! fire!" cried two or three voices.

"If you fire," cried I, "look out for yourselves, for we shall do the same. Have a care what you are about."

"Morbleu! Sacre!" roared half a score of voices. "Who is that who dares to give us orders? Fire on the dogs!"

"If you do, we return it."

"Sacre!" screamed the savages. "They are gentlemen from the towns. Their speech betrays them. Shoot them—the dogs, the spies! What do they want in the prairie?"

"Your blood be on your own heads," cried I. And, with the feelings of desperate men, we levelled our guns in the direction in which we had seen the flashes of the last volley. At that moment—"Halt! What is here?" shouted a stentorian voice close to us.

"Stop firing, or you are dead men," cried five or six other voices.

"Sacre! ce sont des Americains," muttered the Acadians.

"Monsieur Carleton!" cried a voice.

"Here!" replied my friend. A boat shot out of the smoke, between us and our antagonists. Carleton's servant was in it. The next moment we were surrounded by a score of Acadians and half-a-dozen Americans.

It appeared that the Acadians, so soon as they perceived the prairie to be on fire, had got into boat and descended a creek that flowed into the Chicot creek, on which we now were. The beasts of the forest and prairie, flying to the water, found themselves inclosed in the angle formed by the two creeks, and their retreat being cut off by the fire, they fell an easy prey to the Acadians, wild, half savage fellows, who slaughtered them in a profusion and with a brutality that excited our disgust, a feeling which the Americans seemed to share.

"Well, stranger!" said one of the latter, an old man, to Carleton, "do you go with them Acadians or come with us?"

"Who are you, my friends?"

"Friends!" repeated the Yankee, shaking his head, "your friendships are soon made. Friends, indeed! We ain't that yet; but if you be minded to come with us, well and good."

"I met these American gentlemen," now put in Martin, "and when they heard that you had lost your way, and were out of provisions, they were so good as to come and seek you."

"You be'n't much used to the prairie, I reckon?" observed the American who had spoken before.

"No, indeed, my friend," said I.

"I told you a'ready," replied the man with some degree of pride, "we ain't your friends; but if you choose to accept American hospitality, you're welcome."

We glanced at the Acadians, who were still firing, and dragging the beasts they slaughtered into their boat and to the shore. They appeared perfect savages, and there was little temptation to seek guidance or assistance at their hands.

"If it is agreeable to you, we will accompany you," said I to the American, making a step towards the boat. We were eager to be off, for the heat and smoke were unbearable. The Yankee answered neither yes nor no. His attention seemed taken up by the proceedings of the Acadians.

"They're worse than Injuns," said he to a young man standing by him. "They shoot more in an hour than they could eat in a year in their tarnation French wastefulness."

"I've a notion o' makin' 'em leave off," replied the young man.

"The country's theirs, or their masters' at least," rejoined the other. "I reckon it's no business of ours."

This dialogue was carried on with the greatest possible degree of drawling deliberation, and under circumstances in which, certainly, none but a Yankee would have thought of wasting time in words. A prairie twenty miles long and ten broad, and a couple of miles of palmetto ground, all in a blaze—the flames drawing nearer every minute, and having, in some places, already reached up to the shores of the creek. On the other side a couple of dozen wild Acadians firing right and left, without paying the least attention where or whom their bullets struck. Carelton and myself, up to our waists in water, and the Americans, chatting together as unconcernedly as if they had been sitting under the roofs of their own blockhouses.

"Do you live far from here?" said I at last to the Yankee, rather impatiently.

"Not so far as I sometimes wish," answered he, with a contemptuous glance at the Acadians, "but far enough to get you an appetite for your supper, if you ain't got one already." And taking a thin roll of tobacco out of his pocket, he bit off a piece of it, laid his hands upon the muzzle of his rifle, leant his chin upon his hands, and seemed to have forgotten all about us.

This apathy became intolerable to men in our situation.

"My good man," said I, "will you put your hospitable offer into execution, and take——"

I could not continue, for I was literally suffocated with the heat and smoke. The very water of the creek was getting warm.

"I've a notion," said the yankee, with his usual drawl, and apparently only just perceiving our distress, "I've a notion we had better be movin' out o' the way o' the fire. Now, strangers, in with you." And he helped Carleton and myself into the boat, where we lay down, and became insensible from heat and exhaustion.

When we recovered our senses, we found ourselves in the bottom of the boat, and the old Yankee standing by us with a bottle of whisky in his hand, which he invited us to taste. We felt better for the cordial, and began to look around us.

Before us lay an apparently interminable cypress swamp, behind us a sheet of water, formed by the junction of the two creeks, and at present overhung by a mass of smoke that concealed the horizon from our view. From time to time there was a burst of flame that lit up the swamp, and caused the cypress-trees to appear as if they grew out of a sea of fire.

"Come," said the old Yankee, "we must get on. It is near sunset, and we have far to go."

"And which way does our road lie?" I asked.

"Across the cypress swamp, unless you'd rather go round it."

"The shortest road is the best," said Carleton.

"The shortest road is the best!" repeated the Yankee contemptuously, and turning to his companions. "Spoken like a Britisher. Well, he shall have his own way, and the more so as I believe it to be as good a one as the other. James," added he, turning to one of the men, "you go further down, through the Snapping Turtle swamp; we will cross here."

"And our horses?" said I.

"They are grazing in the rushes. They'll be took care of. We shall have rain to-night, and to-morrow they may come round without singeing a hoof."

I had found myself once or twice upon the borders of the swamp that now lay before us but had always considered it impenetrable, and I did not understand, as I gazed into its gloomy depths, how we could possibly cross it.

"Is there any beaten path or road through the swamp?" enquired I of the old man.

"Path or road! Do you take it for a gentleman's park? There's the path that natur' has made." And he sprang upon the trunk of a tree covered with moss and creepers, which rose out of the vast depth of mud that formed the swamp.

"Here's the path," said he.

"Then we will wait and come round with our horses," I replied. "Where shall we find them?"

"As you please, stranger. We shall cross the swamp. Only, if you can't do like your horses, and sup off bulrushes, you are likely to fast for the next twenty-four hours.

"And why so? There is game and wild-fowl for the shooting."

"No doubt there is, if you can eat them raw, like the Injuns. Where will you find, within two miles round, a square foot of dry land to make your fire on?"

To say the truth, we did not altogether like the company we had fallen amongst. These Yankee squatters bore in general but an indifferent character. They were said to fear neither God nor man, to trust entirely to their axe and their rifle, and to be little scrupulous in questions of property; in short, to be scarce less wild and dangerous than the Indians themselves.

The Yankee who had hitherto acted as spokesman, and who seemed to be in some way or other the chief of the party, was a man apparently near sixty years of age, upwards of six feet high, thin in person, but with such bone and muscle as indicated great strength in the possessor. His features were keen and sharp; his eye like a falcon's; his bearing and manners bespoke an exalted opinion of himself, and (at least as far as we were concerned) a tolerable degree of contempt for others. His dress consisted of a jacket of skins, secured round the waist by a girdle, in which was stuck a long knife; leather breeches, a straw hat without a brim, and mocassins. His companion was similarly accoutred.

"Where is Martin?" cried Carleton.

"Do you mean the Acadian lad who brought us to you?"

"The same."

The Yankee pointed towards the smoke. "Yonder, no doubt, with his countrymen; but I reckon their infernal hunt is over. I hear no more shots."

"Then we will go to him. But where are our horses?"

"I've a notion," said one of the younger men, "the stranger don't rightly know what he wants. Your horses are grazing half a mile off. You would not have had us make the poor beasts swim through the creek tied to the stern of the boat? 'Lijah is with them."

"And what will he do with them?"

"Joel is going back with the boat, and when the fire is out he will bring them round," said the elder Yankee. "You don't suppose—?" added he——He left the sentence unfinished, but a smile of scornful meaning flitted over his features.

I looked at Carleton. He nodded. "We will go with you," said I, "and trust entirely to your guidance."

"You do well," was the brief reply. "Joel," added he, turning to one of the young men, "where are the torches? We shall want them?"

"Torches!" exclaimed I.

The Yankee gave me a look, as much as to say—You must meddle with every thing. "Yes," replied he; "and, if you had ten lives, it would be as much as they are all worth to enter this swamp without torches." So saying, he struck fire, and selecting a couple of pine splinters from several lying in the boat, he lighted them, doing every thing with such extraordinary deliberation, and so oddly, that in spite of our unpleasant situation we could scarce help laughing. Meantime the boat pushed off with two men in it, leaving Carleton, myself, the old man, and another American, standing at the edge of the swamp.

"Follow me, step by step, and as if you were treading on eggs," said our leader; "and you, Jonathan, have an eye to the strangers, and don't wait till they are up to their necks in the mud to pick them out of it."

We did not feel much comforted by this speech; but, mustering all our courage, we strode on after our plain-spoken guide.

We had proceeded but a very short distance into the swamp before we found out the use of the torches. The huge trunks of the cypress-trees, which stood four or five yards asunder, shot up to a height of fifty feet, entirely free from branches, which then, however, spread out at right angles to the stem, making the trees appear like gigantic umbrellas, and covering the whole morass with an impenetrable roof, through which not even a sunbeam could find a passage. On looking behind us, we saw the daylight at the entrance of the swamp, as at the mouth of a vast cavern. The further we went the thicker became the air; and at last the effluvia was so stifling and pestilential, that the torches burnt pale and dim, and more than once threatened to go out.

"Yes, yes," muttered our guide to himself, "a night passed in this swamp would leave a man ague-struck for the rest of his days. A night—ay, an hour would do it, if your pores were ever so little open; but now there's no danger; the prairie fire's good for that, dries the sweat and closes the pores."

He went on conversing thus with himself, but still striding forward, throwing his torchlight on each log or tree trunk, and trying its solidity with his foot before he trusted his weight upon it—doing all this with a dexterity and speed that proved his familiarity with these dangerous paths.

"Keep close to me," said he to us, "but make yourselves light—as light at least as Britishers can make themselves. Hold your breath, and——ha! what is that log? Hollo, Nathan," continued he to himself, "what's come to you, man? Don't you know a sixteen foot alligator from a tree?"

He had stretched out his foot, but fortunately, before setting it down, he poked what he took for a log with the butt of his gun. The supposed block of wood gave way a little, and the old squatter, throwing himself back, was within an ace of pushing me into the swamp.

"Ah, friend!" said he, not in the least disconcerted, "you thought to sacumvent honest folk with your devilry and cunning."

"What is the matter?" asked I.

"Not much the matter," he replied, drawing his knife from its sheath. "Only an alligator: there it is again."

And in the place of the log, which had disappeared, the jaws of a huge alligator gaped before us. I raised my gun to my shoulder. The Yankee seized my arm.

"Don't fire," whispered he. "Don't fire, so long as you can help it. We ain't alone here. This will do as well," he added, as he stooped down, and drove his long knife into the alligator's eye. The monster gave a frightful howl, and lashed violently with its tail, besprinkling us with the black slimy mud of the swamp.

"Take that!" said the squatter with a grim smile, "and that, and that!" stabbing the brute repeatedly between the neck and the ribs, while it writhed and snapped furiously at him. Then wiping his knife, he stuck it in his belt, and looked keenly and cautiously around him.

"I've a notion there must be a tree trunk hereaway; it ain't the first time I've followed this track. There it is, but a good six foot off." And so saying, he gave a spring, and alighted in safety on the stepping place.

"Have a care, man," cried I. "There is water there. I see it glitter."

"Pho, water! What you call water is snakes. Come on."

I hesitated, and a shudder came over me. The leap, as regarded distance, was a trifling one, but it was over an almost bottomless chasm, full of the foulest mud, on which the mocassin snakes, the deadliest of the American reptiles, were swarming.

"Come on!"

Necessity lent me strength, and, pressing my left foot firmly against the log on which I was standing, and which was each moment sinking with our weight deeper into the soft slimy ground, I sprang across. Carleton followed me.

"Well done!" cried the old man. "Courage, and a couple more such leaps, and we shall be getting over the worst of it."

We pushed on, steadily but slowly, never setting our foot on a log till we had ascertained its solidity with the butts of our guns. The cypress swamp extended four or five miles along the shores of the creek: it was a deep lake of black mud, covered over and disguised by a deceitful bright green veil of creeping plants and mosses, which had spread themselves in their rank luxuriance over its whole surface, and over the branches and trunks of trees scattered about the swamp. These latter were not placed with any very great regularity, but had yet been evidently arranged by the hand of man.

"There seems to have been a sort of path made here," said I to our guide, "for"——

"Silence!" interrupted he, in a low tone; "silence, for your life, till we are on firm ground again. Don't mind the snakes," added he, as the torchlight revealed some enormous ones lying coiled up on the moss and lianas close to us. "Follow me closely."

But just as I stretched forward my foot, and was about to place it in the very print that his had left, the hideous jaw of an alligator was suddenly stretched over the tree-trunk, not six inches from my leg, and the creature snapped at me so suddenly, that I had but just time to fire my gun into his glittering lizard-like eye. The monster bounded back, uttered a sound between a bellow and a groan, and, striking wildly about him in the morass, disappeared.

The American looked round when I fired, and an approving smile played about his mouth as he said something to me which I did not hear, owing to the infernal uproar that now arose on all sides of us and at first completely deafened me.

Thousands, tens of thousands, of birds and reptiles, alligators, enormous bull-frogs, night-owls, ahingas, herons, whose dwellings were in the mud of the swamp, or on its leafy roof, now lifted up their voices, bellowing, hooting, shrieking, and groaning. Bursting forth from the obscene retreat in which they had hitherto lain hidden, the alligators raised their hideous snouts out of the green coating of the swamp, gnashing their teeth, and straining towards us, while the owls and other birds circled round our heads, flapping and striking us with their wings as they passed. We drew our knives, and endeavoured to defend at least our heads and eyes; but all was in vain against the myriads of enemies that surrounded us; and the unequal combat could not possibly have lasted long, when suddenly a shot was fired, followed immediately by another. The effect they produced was magical. The growls and cries of rage and fury were exchanged for howls of fear and complaint; the alligators withdrew gradually into their native mud; the birds flew in wider circles around us; the unclean multitudes were in full retreat. By degrees the various noises died away. But our torches had gone out, and all around us was black as pitch.

"In God's name, are you there, old man?" asked I.

"What! still alive?" he replied with a laugh that jarred unpleasantly upon my nerves, "and the other Britisher too? I told ye we were not alone. These brutes defend themselves if you attack them upon their own ground, and a single shot is sufficient to bring them about one's ears. But when they see you're in earnest, they soon get tired of it, and a couple more shots sent among them generally drive them away again; for they are but senseless squealin' creturs after all."

While the old man was speaking, he struck fire, and lit one of the torches.

"Luckily we have rather better footing here," continued he. "And now, forward quickly; for the sun is set, and we have still some way to go."

And again he led the march with a skill and confidence in himself which each moment increased our reliance on him. After proceeding in this manner for about half an hour, we saw a pale light glimmering in the distance.

"Five minutes more and your troubles are over; but now is the time to be cautious, for it is on the borders of these cursed swamps the alligators best love to lie."

In my eagerness to find myself once more on dry land, I scarcely heard the Yankee's words; and as the stepping places were now near together, I hastened on, and got a little in front of the party. Suddenly I felt a log on which I had just placed my foot, give way under me. I had scarcely time to call out "Halt!" when I was up to the arm-pits in the swamp, with every prospect of sinking still deeper.

"You will hurry on," said the old man with a laugh; and at the same time, springing forward, he caught me by the hair. "Take warning for the future," added he, as he helped me out of the mud; "and look there!"

I did look, and saw half a dozen alligators writhing and crawling in the noxious slime within a few feet of us. I felt a sickening sensation, and for a moment I could not utter a word: the Yankee produced his whisky-flask.

"Take a swallow of this," said he; "but no, better wait till we are out of the swamp. Stop a little till your heart beats quieter. So, you are better now. When you've made two or three such journeys with old Nathan, you'll be quite another man. Now—forward again."

A few minutes later we were out of the swamp, and looking over a field of palmettos that waved and rustled in the moonbeams. The air was fresh, and once more we breathed freely.

"Now then," said our guide, "a dram, and then in half an hour we are at the Salt Lick."

"Where?" asked I.

"At the Salt Lick, to shoot a deer or two for supper. Hallo! what is that?"

"A thunderclap."

"A thunderclap! You have heard but few of them in Louisiana, I guess, or you would know the difference betwixt thunder and the crack of a backwoodsman's rifle. To be sure, yonder oak wood has an almighty echo. That's James's rifle—he has shot a stag.—There's another shot."

This time it was evidently a rifle-shot, but re-echoed like thunder from the depths of the immense forest.

"We must let them know that we're still in whole skins, and not in the maw of an alligator," said the old man, who had been loading his rifle, and now fired it off.

In half an hour we were at the Salt Lick, where we found our guide's two sons busy disembowelling and cutting up a fine buck that they had killed, an occupation in which they were so engrossed that they scarce seemed to notice our arrival. We sat down, not a little glad to repose after the fatigues and dangers we had gone through. When hind and fore quarters, breast and back, were all divided in right huntsman-like style, the young men looked at their father. "Will you take a bite and a sup here?" said the latter, addressing Carleton and myself, "or will you wait till we get home?"

"How far is there still to go?"

"How far? With a good trotting horse, and a better road, three quarters of an hour would bring you there. You may reckon it a couple of hours."

"Then we would prefer eating something here."

"As you will."

Without more words, or loss of time, a haunch was cut off one of the hind-quarters; dry leaves and branches collected; and in one minute a fire was blazing brightly, the joint turning before it on a wooden spit. In half an hour the party was collected round a roast haunch of venison, which, although eaten without bread or any of the usual condiments, certainly appeared to us to be the very best we had ever tasted.

* * * * *



THE ARISTOCRACY OF ENGLAND.

Both the nobility and gentry of this country stand upon a basis so entirely peculiar, that, were it for that cause only, we could not greatly wonder at the perverse misconstructions upon these institutions so prevalent abroad. Indeed the peculiarity of our aristocracy is so effectual for obscurity, that we also, as a nation, are ignorant upon much which marks it characteristically; our own ignorance partly explains, and partly has caused, the continental ignorance. Could it, indeed, be expected that any people should be sensible of their own peculiarities as peculiarities? Of all men, for instance, a Persian would be the last man from whom we could reasonably look for an account of Persia; because those habits of Persians as Orientals, as Mussulmans, and as heretic Mussulmans, which would chiefly fix the attention of Europeans, must be unexciting to the mind of a native.

And universally we know that, in every community, the features which would most challenge attention from a stranger, have been those which the natives systematically have neglected. If, but for two days' residence, it were possible that a modern European could be carried back to Rome and Roman society, what a harvest of interesting facts would he reap as to the habits of social intercourse! Yet these are neglected by Roman writers, as phenomena too familiar, which there was no motive for noticing. Why should a man notice as a singularity what every man witnesses daily as an experience? A satirist, like Juvenal, is obliged, indeed, to notice particular excesses: but this is done obliquely, and so far only as to identify the case he means; besides that often they are caricatured. Or an antiquarian observer, like Athenaeus, finds, after ten centuries of social life amongst the same race, a field of observation in the present, which he sees as contrasted with the past which he reads of. It is in that way only that we English know any thing of our own past habits. Some of these are brought forward indirectly in the evidence upon judicial trials—some in dramatic scenes; and, as happened in the case of Athenaeus, we see English historians, at periods of great conscious revolution, (Holinshed, for instance,[5] whose youth had passed in the church reformation,) exerting themselves to recover, through old men's recollections, traditions of a social life which they felt to be passing away for ever. Except, however, in these two cases, the one indirect, the other by accident, coinciding with an epoch of great importance, we find little in the way of description, or philosophic examination, toward any sustained record of English civilization as intermitting from one era to another, and periodically resumed. The same truth holds good of civilization on the Continent, and for the same reason, viz. that no nation describes itself, or can do so. To see an object you must not stand in its centre; your own station must be external. The eye cannot see itself, nor a mechanic force measure itself, as if it were its own resistance.

[Footnote 5: An introduction, prefixed to Holinshed, descriptive of domestic life amongst the English, as it may be presumed to have existed for the century before, (1450-1550,) was written (according to our recollection) by Harrison. Almost a century earlier, we have Chief Justice Fortescue's account of the French peasantry, a record per antiphrasin of the English. About the great era of 1688, we have the sketch of contemporary English civilization by Chamberlayne. So rare and distant are the glimpses which we obtain of ourselves at different periods.]

It is easy, therefore, to understand why, amongst the writers of any given nation, we are least entitled to look for an account of the habits or separate institutions distinguishing that nation: since the stimulation of difference least of all exists for those who never see that difference broadly relieved in adverse habits or institutions. To such nation its own aristocracy, like its own climate, seems a positive fact, neither good nor bad, and worthy of little notice, as apparently open to little improvement. And yet to each nation its own aristocracy is often the arbitrating cause, but always the exponent or index of its future political welfare. Laws are important; administration of laws is important; to be Protestant or Popish is important; and so of many other agencies: but, as was said by Harrington in his Oceana, there is something in the original idea and in the executive composition of a gentry which cannot be created artificially, and (if wanting) cannot be supplied by substitution. Upon the quality of an aristocracy in critical periods, in those periods when the national stability is menaced by revolution, or the national independence by aggression, depends the national salvation. Let us lay before the reader an illustration.

It is our deliberate conviction, that, from the foundations of civil society, human annals present no second case of infamy equal to that which is presented by the condition of Spain and Portugal from the year 1807 up to our own immediate era. It is a case the more interesting, because two opposite verdicts have been pronounced upon it by men of the greatest ability amongst ourselves. Some, as the present and the late Laureate, have found in the Peninsular struggle with Napoleon, the very perfection of popular grandeur; others, agreeing with ourselves, have seen in this pretended struggle nothing but the last extravagance of thrasonic and impotent national arrogance. Language more frantically inflated, and deeds more farcically abject, surely were never before united. It seems therefore strange, that a difference, even thus far, should exist between Englishmen standing upon the same facts, starting from the sane principles. But perhaps, as regards Mr Wordsworth, he did not allow enough for the long series of noxious influences under which Spain had suffered. And this, at any rate, is notorious—he spoke of the Spanish people, the original stock (unmodified by courtly usages, or foreign sentiments, or city habits) of the Spanish peasantry and petty rural proprietors. This class, as distinguished from the aristocracy, was the class he relied on; and he agreed with us in looking upon the Spanish aristocracy as traitors—that is, as recreants and apostates—from any and every cause meriting the name of national. If he found a moral grandeur in Spain, it was amongst that poor forsaken peasantry, incapable of political combination, who could not make a national party in the absence of their natural leaders. Now, if we adopt the mild temperament of some Spanish writers, calling this "a schism in the natural interests," how shocking that such a schism could have arisen at so dreadful a crisis! That schism, which, as a fact, is urged, in the way of excuse, merely as a possibility, is already itself the opprobrium for Spain never to be washed out. For in Spain, what was the aristocracy? Let us not deceive ourselves, by limiting this term to the feudal nobility or grandees; the aristocracy comprehended every man that would naturally have become a commissioned officer in the army. Here, therefore, read the legend and superscription of the national dishonour. The Spanish people found themselves without a gentry for leading their armies. England possessed, and possesses a gentry, the noblest that the world has seen, who are the natural leaders of her intrepid commonalty, alike in her fleets and in her armies. But why? How and in what sense qualified? Not only by principle and by honour—that glorious distinction which poor men can appreciate, even when less sternly summoned to its duties; not only by courage as fiery and as passively enduring as the courage of the lower ranks, but by a physical robustness superior to that of any other class taken separately; and, above all, by a scale of accomplishments in education, which strengthen the claim to command, even amongst that part of the soldiery least capable of appreciating such advantages. In France again, where no proper aristocracy now exits, there is, however, a gentry, qualified for leading; the soldiers have an entire reliance on the courage of their officers. But in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal, at the period of Napoleon, the soldiers knew to a certainty that their officers could not be depended on; and for a reason absolutely without remedy, viz. that in Spain, at least, society is not so organized by means of the press locally diffused, and by social intercourse, as that an officer's reputation could be instantaneously propagated (as with us) whithersoever he went. There was then no atmosphere of public opinion, for sustaining public judgments and public morals. The result was unparalleled; here for the first time was seen a nation, fourteen millions strong, so absolutely palsied as to lie down and suffer itself to be walked over by a body of foreigners, entering in the avowed character of robbers. Colonel Napier, it is true, has contradicted himself with regard to the value of the guerillas; alternately ridiculing then as an imbecile force, and yet accrediting them as neutralizers of regular armies, to an enormous amount. But can a more deplorable record be needed of Spanish ignominy, than that a nation, once the leader of Europe as to infantry and military skill, should, by mere default of an intrepid gentry, be thrown upon the necessity of a brigand force? Equally abject was the state of Portugal. Let any man read the French general Foy's account of the circumstances under which Junot's van, separated by some days' march from the rest of the army, entered Lisbon in 1807. The rural population of Portugal, in most provinces, is a fine athletic race; and foreigners take a false estimate of this race, from the depraved mob of Lisbon. This capital, however, at that time, contained 60,000 fighting men, a powerful fortress, and ships in the river. Yet did Junot make his entry with 6000 of the poorest troops, in a physical sense, that Europe could show. Foy admits, that the majority were poor starveling boys, who could scarcely hold their muskets from cold and continual wet, hurried by forced marches, ill fed, desponding, and almost ripe for the hospital. Vast crowds had assembled to see the entry. "What!" exclaimed the Portuguese, "are these little drowned rats the elite of Napoleon's armies?" Inevitably, the very basest of nations, would, on such an invitation to resistance, have risen that same night, whilst the poor, childish, advanced guard was already beaten to their hands. The French officers apprehended such an attempt, but nothing happened; the faint-hearted people threw away this golden opportunity, never to be retrieved. And why? Because they had no gentry to lead, to rally, or to counsel them. The populace in both countries, though miserably deteriorated by the long defect of an aristocracy whom they could respect, were still sound at the heart; they felt the whole sorrow of their own degradation; and that they would have fought, was soon proved in the case of the Portuguese, when we lent them officers and training; as it was proved also thirty years afterwards in the case of the Spaniards, when Don Carlos, in a time of general peace, obtained good officers from every part of Europe. Each country was forced into redeeming itself by the overflowing upon it of a foreign gentry. And yet, even at the moment of profoundest degradation, such was the maniacal vanity still prevailing amongst the Spaniards, that at one time the Supreme Junta forwarded the following proposal to the British Government:—Men they had; their own independence of foreign aid, in that sense, they had always asserted; money it was, and not armies, which they needed; and they now proposed an arrangement, by which the Spanish armies, as so notoriously the heroes of Europe, should be rendered universally disposable for the task of facing the French in the field, whilst the British (as confessedly unequal to duties so stern) should be entrusted with the garrison duty of the fortresses. "Illa se jactet in aula Anglia;" and, since the help of the English navy (which really was good) would be available as to the maritime fortresses, doubtless England might have a chance for justifying the limited confidence reposed in her, when sheltered from the fiercer storms of war by the indomitable lions of Ocana. It is superfluous to say, that the gratitude of Spain, at the close of the war, was every thing that ought to have been expected from this moonstruck vanity at its opening.

Such are the results for nations, when they betray to the whole world an aristocracy bankrupt of honour, emasculated, and slothful. Spoliators so reckless as Napoleon, are not always at hand for taking advantage of this domestic ruin; but it is impossible that a nation, absolutely rich as Spain was in the midst of her relative poverty, can advertise itself for centuries as a naked, defenceless waif, having neither leaders nor principles for organizing a resistance, but that eventually she will hear of a customer for her national jewels. In reality, Spain had been protected for 150 years, by the local interposition of France; had France not occupied the antechamber to the Peninsula, making it impossible for any but a maritime power to attack Spain in strength, Madrid would have echoed to the cannon of the spoiler, at least a century before the bloody 3d of May 1808.[6] In the same way, Austria has furnished for centuries a screen to the Italian Peninsula. Yet, in that case, the want of unity amongst so many subdivisions that were independent states, might be pleaded as an excuse. Pitiable weakness there was in both cases; and "to be weak is to be miserable;" but degradation by degradation, universal abasement of the national energies, as an effect through wilful abasement as a cause; this miserable spectacle has been exhibited in mellow maturity by no Christian nations but those of Spain and Portugal. Both have degenerated into nations of poltrons, and from what ancestors? From those who once headed the baptized in Europe, and founded empires in the other hemisphere.

———"Into what depth thou see'st, From what height fallen!"———

So that, if this gloomy shadow has crept over luminaries once so bright through the gradual eclipse of their aristocracies, we need no proof more pathetic or terrific of the degree in which great nations, with the whole burden of their honour and their primary interests, are dependent, in the final extremity, upon the quality of their gentry—considered as their sole natural leaders in battle.

[Footnote 6: To say the truth, during the Marlborough war of the Succession, and precisely one hundred years before Murat's bloody occupation of Madrid, Spain presented the same infamous spectacle as under Napoleon; armies of strangers, English, French, Germans, marching, and counter-marching incessantly, peremptorily disposing of the Spanish crown, alternately placing rival kings upon the throne, and all the while no more deferring to a Spanish will than to the yelping of village curs.]

With this previous indication of the unrivalled responsibility pressing upon aristocracies, it is our purpose to dwell a little upon those accidents of advantage arising out of constitution, and those differences of quality, experimentally made known to us in a thousand trials, which sum and express the peculiarities of the British nobility and gentry.

This first point, as to the constitution of our aristocracy, the basis on which it reposes cannot be better introduced than by a literary fact open to all the world, but never yet read in its true meaning. When it became advisable, after the violent death of Charles I., that some public exposure should be applied to the past disputes between the Throne and the Parliament, and some account given of the royal policy—the first question arose naturally upon the selection of a writer having the proper qualifications. Two of these qualifications were found in a French scholar of distinction, Monsieur de Saumaise, better known by his Latinized name of Salmasius. He was undoubtedly a scholar of prodigious attainments: and the first or unconditional qualification for such a task, of great ability and extensive information, could not be denied to him. Here was a subject fitted to fix attention upon any writer, and on the other hand, a writer brilliantly qualified to fix attention upon any subject. Unhappily, a third indispensable condition, viz.—that the writer should personally know England—was entirely overlooked. Salmasius had a fluent command of Latin; and, supported by a learned theme, he generally left a dazzling impression even upon those who hated his person, or disputed his conclusions. But, coming into collision with politics, personal as well as speculative, and with questions of real life, fitted to call for other accomplishments than those of a recluse scholar, it seemed probable that this great classical critic would be found pedantic and scurrilous; and upon the affairs of so peculiar a people, it was certain that he would be found ignorant and self-contradicting. Even Englishmen have seldom thoroughly understood the feud of the great Parliamentary war: the very word "rebellion," so often applied to it, involves the error of presuming that in its principles the war was unconstitutional, and in its objects was finally defeated. Whereas the subsequent Revolution of 1688-9 was but a resumption of the very same principles and indispensable purposes under more advantageous auspices—was but a re-affirmation of the principle votes from 1642 to 1645. The one capital point of a responsibility, virtual though not formal, lodged in the crown, and secured through a responsible ministry—this great principle, which Charles I. once conceded in the case of Lord Strafford, but ever afterwards to his dying day repented and abjured, was at length for ever established, and almost by acclamation. In a case so novel, however, to Englishmen, and as yet so unsettled, could it be looked for that a foreigner should master new political principles, to which on the Continent there was nothing analogous?[7] This, it may be alleged, was not looked for. Salmasius was in the hands of a party; and his prejudices, it may be thought, were confluent with theirs. Not altogether. The most enlightened of the English royalists were sensible of some call for a balance to the regal authority; it cannot be pretended that Hyde, Ormond, or Southampton, wished their king to be the fierce "Io el rey" (so pointedly disowning his council) of Castile, or the "L'etat? C'est moi" of France, some few years later. Even for a royalist, it was requisite in England to profess some popular doctrines; and thus far Salmasius fell below his clients. But his capital disqualification lay in his defect of familiarity with the English people, habits, laws, and history.

[Footnote 7: It may be thought, indeed, that as a resident in Holland, Salmasius should have had a glimpse of the new truth; and certainly it is singular that he did not perceive the rebound, upon his Dutch protectors, of many amongst his own virulent passages against the English; unless he fancied some special privilege for Dutch rebellion. But in fact he did so. There was a notion in great currency at the time—that any state whatever was eternally pledged and committed to the original holdings of its settlement. Whatever had been its earliest tenure, that tenure continued to be binding through all ages. An elective kingdom had thus some indirect means for controlling its sovereign. A republic was a nuisance, perhaps, but protected by prescription. And in this way even France had authorized means, through old usages of courts or incorporations, for limiting the royal authority as to certain known trifles. With respect to the Netherlands, the king of Spain had never held absolute power in those provinces. All these were privileged cases for resistance. But England was held to be a regal despotism.]

The English aristocracy furnished a question for drawing all these large varieties of ignorance to a focus. In coming upon the ground of English institutions, Salmasius necessarily began "verba nostra conari," and became the garrulous parrot that Milton represents him. Yet, strange it is, that the capital blunder which he makes upon this subject, was not perceived by Milton. And this reciprocal misunderstanding equally arose in the pre-occupation of their minds by the separate principles on which, for each side, were founded their separate aristocracies. The confusion between the parties arose in connexion with the House of Commons. What was the House of Commons? Salmasius saw that it was contrasted with the House of Lords. But then, again, what were the Lords? The explanation given to him was, that they were the "noblesse" of the land. That he could understand; and, of course, if the other house were antithetically opposed to the Lords, it followed that the House of Commons was not composed of noblesse. But, on the Continent, this was equivalent to saying, that the Commons were roturiers, bourgeois—in fact, mechanic persons, of obscure families, occupied in the lowest employments of life. Accordingly Salmasius wrote his whole work under the most serene conviction that the English House of Commons was tantamount to a Norwegian Storthing, viz. a gathering from the illiterate and labouring part of the nation. This blunder was committed in perfect sincerity. And there was no opening for light; because a continual sanction was given to this error by the aristocratic scorn which the cavaliers of ancient descent habitually applied to the prevailing party of the Roundheads; which may be seen to this hour in all the pasquinades upon Cromwell, though really in his own neighbourhood a "gentleman of worship." But for Salmasius it was a sufficient bar to any doubt arising, that if the House of Commons were not nobles, then were they not gentlemen—since to be a gentleman and to be a titled man or noble, on the Continent, were convertible terms. He himself was a man of titular rank, deriving his title from the territory of Saumaise; and in this needy scholar, behold a nobleman of France! Milton, on the other hand, quite incapable of suspecting that Salmasius conceived himself to stand on a higher level than an English senator of the Commons, and never having his attention drawn to the chasm which universally divides foreign from English nobility, naturally interpreted all the invectives of Salmasius against the Lower House as directed against their principles and their conduct. Thus arose an error, which its very enormity has hitherto screened from observation.

What, then, is this chasm dividing our nobility from that upon the Continent? Latterly that point has begun to force itself upon the attention of the English themselves, as travellers by wholesale on the Continent. The sagacious observers amongst them could not avoid to remark, that not unfrequently families were classed by scores amongst the nobility, who, in England, would not have been held to rank with the gentry. Next, it must have struck them that, merely by their numbers, these continental orders of nobility could never have been designed for any thing higher than so many orders of gentry. Finally, upon discovering that there was no such word or idea as that of gentry, expressing a secondary class distinct from a nobility, it flashed upon them that our important body of a landed gentry, bearing no titular honours of any kind, was inexpressible by any French, German, or Italian word; that upon the whole, and allowing for incommunicable differences, this order of gentry was represented on the Continent by the great mass of the "basse noblesse;" that our own great feudal nobility would be described on the Continent as a "haute noblesse;" and that amongst all these perplexities, it was inevitable for an Englishman to misunderstand and to be misunderstood. For, if he described another Englishman as not being a nobleman, invariably the foreigner would presume it to be meant that he was not a gentleman—not of the privileged class—in fact, that he was a plebeian or roturier, though very possibly a man every way meritorious by talents or public services. Whereas, on the contrary, we English know that a man of most ancient descent and ample estates, one, in the highest sense, a man of birth and family, may choose, on a principle of pride, (and not unfrequently has chosen,) obstinately to decline entering the order of nobility. Take, in short, the well-known story of Sir Edward Seymour, as first reported in Burnet's Own Times; to every foreigner this story is absolutely unintelligible. Sir Edward, at the Revolution, was one, in the vast crowd of country gentlemen presented to the Prince of Orange, (not yet raised to the throne.) The prince, who never had the dimmest conception of English habits or institutions, thought to compliment Sir Edward by showing himself aware of that gentleman's near relationship to a ducal house. "I believe, Sir Edward," said the prince, "that you are of the Duke of Somerset's family?" But Sir Edward, who was the haughtiest of the human race, speedily put an extinguisher on the prince's courtesy by replying, in a roar, "No, your highness: my lord duke is of mine." This was true: Sir Edward, the commoner, was of that branch which headed the illustrious house of Seymour; and the Duke of Somerset, at that era, was a cadet of this house. But to all foreigners alike, from every part of the Continent, this story is unfathomable. How a junior branch should be ennobled, the elder branch remaining not ennobled, that by itself seems mysterious; but how the unennobled branch should, in some sense peculiarly English, bear itself loftily as the depository of a higher consideration (though not of a higher rank) than the duke's branch, this is a mere stone of offence to the continental mind. So, again, there is a notion current upon the Continent, that in England titular honours are put up to sale, as once they really were, by Charles I. in his distresses, when an earldom was sold for L.6000; and so pro rata for one step higher or lower. Meantime, we all know in England how entirely false this is; and, on the other hand, we know also, and cannot but smile at the continental blindness to its own infirmity, that the mercenary imputation which recoils from ourselves, has, for centuries, settled upon France, Germany, and other powers. More than one hundred and thirty thousand French "nobles," at the epoch of the Revolution, how did most of them come by their titles? Simply by buying them in a regular market or bazar, appointed for such traffic. Did Mr St——, a respectable tailor, need baronial honours? He did not think of applying to any English minister, though he was then actually resident in London; he addressed his litanies to the chancery of Austria. Did Mr ——, the dentist, or Mr R——, the banker, sigh for aristocratic honours? Both crossed the Channel, and marketed in the shambles of France and Germany.

Meantime the confusion, which is inveterate upon this subject, arose out of the incompatible grounds upon which the aristocracies of England and the Continent had formed themselves. For the continental there seemed to exist no exclusive privilege, and yet there was one. For the English there existed practically a real privilege, and yet in law there was none. On the Continent, no titled order had ever arisen without peculiar immunities and powers, extending oftentimes to criminal jurisdictions; but yet, by that same error which has so often vitiated a paper currency, the whole order, in spite of its unfair privileges, was generally depreciated. This has been the capital blunder of France at all times. Her old aristocracy was so numerous, that every provincial town was inundated with "comptes," &c.; and no villager even turned to look on hearing another addressed by a title. The other day we saw a return from the Legion of Honour: "Such in these moments, as in all the past," France, it appeared, had already indorsed upon this suspicious roll not fewer than forty-nine thousand six hundred and odd beneficiaries. Let the reader think of forty-nine thousand six hundred Knights of the Bath turned loose upon London. Now ex adverso England must have some virtual and operative privilege for her nobility, or else how comes it, that in any one of our largest provincial towns—towns so populous as to have but four rivals on the Continent—a stranger saluted seriously by the title of "my lord," will very soon have a mob at his heels? Is it that the English nobility can dispense with immunities from taxation, with legal supremacies, and with the sword of justice; in short, with all artificial privileges, having these two authentic privileges from nature—stern limitation of their numbers, and a prodigious share in the most durable of the national property? Vainly does the continental noble flourish against such omnipotent charters the rusty keys of his dungeon, or the sculptured image of his family gallows. Power beyond the law is not nobility, is not antiquity. Tax-gatherers, from the two last centuries, have been the founders of most titled houses in France; and the prestige of antiquity is, therefore, but rarely present. But were it otherwise, and that a "noblesse" could plead one uniform descent from crusaders, still, if they were a hundred thousand strong—and, secondly, had no property—and, thirdly, comprehended in their lists a mere gentry, having generally no pretensions at all to ancient or illustrious descent, they would be—nothing. And exactly on that basis reposes the difference between the Continent and England. Eternally the ridiculous pretence of being "noble" by family, seems to claim for obscure foreigners some sort of advantage over the plain untitled Englishman; but eternally the travelled Englishman recollects, that, so far as this equivocal "nobility" had been really fenced with privileges, those have been long in a course of superannuation; whilst the counter-vailing advantages for his own native aristocracy are precisely those which time or political revolutions never can superannuate.

Thus far as to the constitution of the British nobility and those broad popular distinctions which determine for each nobility its effectual powers. The next point is, to exhibit the operation of these differential powers in the condition of manners which they produce. But, as a transitional stage lying between the two here described—between the tenure of our aristocracy as a casual principle, and the popular working of our aristocracy as an effect—we will interpose a slight notice of the habits peculiar to England by which this effect is partly sustained.

One marked characteristic of the English nobility is found in the popular education of their sons. Amongst the great feudal aristocracies of Spain or of Austria, it was impossible that the heirs of splendid properties should be reared when boys in national institutions. In general, there are no national institutions, of ancient and royal foundation, dedicated to education in either land. Almost of necessity, the young graf or fuerst, (earl or prince,) conde or duca, is committed to the charge of a private tutor, usually a monk. The habits of continental universities have always been riotous and plebeian; the mode of paying the professors, who answer to the college tutors of Oxford and Cambridge, has always been degrading—equally degrading to them and to literature; whilst, in relation to all academic authority, such modes of payment were ruinous, by creating a systematic dependence of the teacher upon the pupil. To this account may be added, that in all countries, where great elementary schools are wanting, the universities are improperly used as their substitutes. Consequently these pupils are too often boys, and not young men, in age; whilst in habits, not belonging to the aristocracy, they are generally gross, unpolished, and illiberal. The great bulk are meant for the professions of the land; and hence, from an early period, the education has been too ecclesiastical in its cast. Even at this day, it is too strictly professional. The landed aristocracy resort to such institutions in no healthy proportions; and the reason lies in their too exclusive dedication to the military service. It is true that, in the rude concussion given to all Germany and Spain by the French revolutionary aggressions, many changes have occurred. In particular, for North Germany, viz. Prussia, Russian Poland, and Saxony, such a new and vast body has arisen of civil functionaries, that a new name and classification for this order has been found necessary amongst British travellers and German economists. But this change has not commensurately affected the German universities. The military character still overshadows the professional. The law is in no esteem, and leads to no political consideration. The church is in the same degradation. The German pastor is too essentially humble in his social condition to present any resistance to feudal or military arrogance. A German clergyman is not, in that emphatic sense which makes itself felt amongst ourselves, a gentleman. The rural pastor of Germany is too often, in effectual weight of character, little more than the "Amen" clerk of our English establishment. If he is treated courteously, as amongst very elevated persons he is, this concession he owes to their high bred refinement, and not to any dignity which clothes himself. There we speak of the reformed churches, whether Calvinist, Lutheran, or the new syncratistic church, manufactured by the present government of Prussia. But in Popish countries, the same tendency is seen on a larger scale: the whole ecclesiastical body, parochial or monastic, retires from the contests of life; and fails, therefore, to contribute any part of the civil resistance needed for making head against the military profession. On the other hand, in England, through the great schools of Eton, Harrow, &c., children even of ducal families are introduced to public life, and to popular sympathies, through the discipline of what may be called miniature republics. No country on earth, it is rightly observed by foreigners, shows so much of aristocratic feeling as England. It cannot, therefore, be denied—that a British duke or earl at Eton, and more especially in his latter stages when approaching the period of his majority, is the object of much deference. Entering upon the time when practically he becomes sui juris, he has far too much power and influence to be treated with levity. But it is equally true, that a spirit of republican justice regulates his childish intercourse with his fellow alumni: he fights battles on equal terms with any of them, when he gives or receives offence. He plays at cricket, he sails or rows his boat, according to known general regulations. True, that his private tutor more often withdraws a patrician boy from the public sports: but, so long as he is a party of them, he neither is, nor, from the nature of such amusements, could be indulged with any special immunities. The Condes and Ducas of Spain, meantime, have been uniformly reared at home: for this we have the authority of Spanish economists, as also of many travellers. The auspicious conductor of the young grandee's education are usually his mother's confessor and his mother's waiting-women. Thence comes the possibility that a Spanish prince should have degraded himself in the eyes of Europe as a sempster and embroiderer of petticoats. Accordingly, the highest order of the Spanish nobility is said to be physically below the standard of their countrymen, in a degree too apparent to escape general notice; whilst in the same relations our own nobility has been generally pronounced the finest animal race amongst us.

Another great feature in the system of our English training, is the severe separation of children from servants. Many are the families of mere English gentry, totally removed from the nobility, who never permit their children to enter the servants' hall nor the kitchen. And the probable remark upon so rigorous a separation, which an inconsiderate person will make, that it is founded upon aristocratic arrogance, happens to be in the very teeth of the truth. We shall content ourselves with saying, that the comfort as well as benefit of both parties were promoted by such an arrangement; whilst, so far from arguing hauteur, it was the high civil condition of the English servant, which, by forcing respect from his master, first widened the interval between the two ranks, and founded a wholesome repulsion between them. In our own times, we have read descriptions of West India planters admitting the infant children of their slaves to play and sprawl about their saloons: but now, since the slave has acquired the station of a free man, and (from the fact of not having won this station meritoriously, but passively received it as a boon) is too generally disposed to use it in a spirit of defiance, does any man expect such scenes for the future? Through the prevalence of habit, old cases of that nature may happen to survive locally: but in the coming generation, every vestige of these indulgent relations will have disappeared in the gloomy atmosphere of jealous independence. That infant, who had been treated with exemplary kindness as a creature entirely at the mercy of his master, and the living monument of his forbearance, will be thrown sternly upon his legal rights when he has the power of enforcing those rights in so many instances against his patron. This case, from its abruptness, involves unamiable features: but the English case had developed itself too gradually and naturally to be otherwise than purely dignified for both parties. In the age of Beaumont and Fletcher, (say 1610-1635,) gentlemen kicked and caned their servants: the power to do so, was a privilege growing out of the awful distance attached to rank: and in Ireland, at the opening of the present century, such a privilege was still matter of prescriptive usage, and too frequently furnished the matter for a menace. But the stealthy growth of civilization and of civil liberty in England, moved onwards so surely, under the stimulation of manufacturing industry, (making menial service a secondary object for the poor,) that before 1750, a gentleman, forgetting himself so far as to strike a servant, would have been recalled to better thoughts by an action for assault. On the Continent, for the very reason that no such rights had been matured for servants, it was possible to treat them with much more indulgence: because the relations between the two parties were less honourable, allowing to the servant nothing in the way of absolute right; for that very reason, it was possible to treat him as a child who founds his power upon his weakness. In fact, the whole philosophy on this subject will be found practically embodied in the household economy of Rome about the time of Hannibal, as unfolded by Plautus. The relations of master and servant are there exhibited in a state of absolute pessimism: any thing worse, it is beyond the wit of men to imagine. Respect or deference on the part of the slave towards his master, there is none: contempt more maliciously expressed for his master's understanding, familiarity more insolent, it is difficult to imagine. This was in part a tendency derived from republican institutions: but in part also it rests upon the vicious independence in the master of all authority founded upon moral forces. Instant physical coercion, the power of cross, gallows, pistrinum, and the domestic scourge—these were the forces which made the Roman master careless of verbal disrespect, indifferent to censure, from them whose opinions were as impotent as those of an infant. The slave, again, on his side, is described as so thoroughly degraded, that he makes the disfiguration of his own person by the knout, the cancellation of his back by stripes and scars—a subject of continual merriment. Between two parties thus incapacitated by law and usage for manly intercourse, the result was exactly such by consummation as on many parts of the Continent it still is by tendency. The master welcomed from his slave that spirit of familiar impertinence which stirred the dull surface of domestic life, whilst, at any moment, a kick or a frown could silence the petty battery when it was beginning to be offensive. Without a drawback, therefore, to apprehend where excesses too personal or stinging could be repressed as certainly as the trespasses of a hound, the Plautine master drew from his servant, without anxiety, the comic services which, in the middle ages, were drawn from the professional "fool." This original vice in the constitution of society, though greatly mitigated, in the course of two centuries from the era of Plautus, by the progress of intellectual luxury, was one main fountain of that coarseness which, in every age, deformed the social intercourse of Romans; and, especially, it was the fountain of that odious scurrility and tongue-license which defeated the majestic impression else sure to have waited on the grand position of the senate. Cicero himself was as great a ruffian in his three functions of oratory, viz. at the bar, in the popular assemblies, and in the senate—he was as foul a libeller—as malignant—and as plebeian in his choice of topics—as any "verna" in Rome when sparring with another "verna." This scandal of Roman society was not, undoubtedly, a pure product, from the vernile scurrility of which we hear so much in Roman writers—other causes conspired; but certainly the fluency which men of rank exhibited in this popular accomplishment of Billingsgate had been at all times sustained by the models of this kind resounding for ever in the streets of Rome, and in the purlieus of great mansions. Mr Coleridge, who had seen nothing but superior amiableness in the familiar sort of friendship existing between a French gentleman and his servant, where, in fact, it had survived as a relic from old political degradations, might consistently proclaim in rapture, when writing to a lady upon the Philosophic Dialogues of Cicero, "What perfect gentlemen were[8] these old Romans!" He who suffers a single feature of amiableness to screen the general misconstruction of social relations, may easily find a spirit of chivalrous courtesy in what, after all, was only a self-protecting meanness, applied to one special case of private intercourse under a brutalizing system applied to all other intercourse between men of public distinction. It is certain that the prevailing relations upon the Continent between master and servant, did, before the French Revolution, and do still, express a vicious structure of society; they have repeated, in other forms, the Roman type of civilisation; whilst we, with a sterner exterior, have been the first to stamp respectability upon menial and mechanic labour.

[Footnote 8: And, in reality, this impression, as from some high-bred courtesy and self-restraint, is likely enough to arise at first in every man's mind. But the true ground of the amiable features was laid for the Roman in the counter-force of exquisite brutality. Where the style of public intercourse had been so deformed by ruffianism, in private intercourse it happened, both as a natural consequence, and as a difference sought after by prudence, that the tendencies to such rough play incident to all polemic conversation (as in the De Oratore) should be precluded by a marked extremity of refined pleasure. Hence indeed it is, that compliments, and something like mutual adulation, prevail so much in the imaginary colloquies of Roman statesmen. The personal flatteries interchanged in the De Oratore, De Legibus, &c., of Cicero, are often so elegantly turned, and introduced so artfully, that they read very much like the high bred compliments ascribed to Louis XIV., in his intercourse with eminent public officers. These have generally a regal air of loftiness about them, and prove the possibility of genius attaching even to the art of paying compliments. But else, in reviewing the spirit of traffic, which appears in the reciprocal flatteries passing between Crassus, Antony, Cotta, &c., too often a sullen suspicion crosses the mind of a politic sycophancy, adopted on both sides as a defensive armour.]

Perhaps, however, the one capital force, operating for good upon the British aristocracy, is—the paramount reference of all accomplishments, of ambition through all its modes, and of party connexions, to the public service. This, again, which constitutes a fourth head amongst the characteristics of English society, may be viewed as both cause and effect with reference to our civil institutions. Here we regard it as a cause. It is a startling assertion to make, but we have good reason to think it true, that, in the last great war with Jacobinism, stretching through very nearly one whole quarter of a century, beyond all doubt the nobility was that order amongst us who shed their blood in the largest proportion for the commonwealth. Let not the reader believe that for a moment we are capable of undervaluing the pretensions of any class, whether high or low. All furnished martyrs to that noblest of causes. And it is not possible that this should be otherwise; because amongst us society is so exquisitely fused, so delicate are the nuances by which our ranks play out and in to each other, that no man can imagine the possibility of an arrest being communicated at any point to the free circulation of any one national feeling whatsoever. Great chasms must exist between social ranks, where it is possible for a sentiment of nationality to be suddenly frozen up as it approaches one particular class; as a corollary from which doctrine, we have always treated with derision the scurrilous notion that our rural body of landowners, our country squires, could, by possibility, differ essentially from the rest of us. Bred amongst us, educated amongst us, intermarrying with us indiscriminately, how by any means apparent to common sense should it be possible for them to maintain an inheritance of separate ignorance, separate prejudices, or separate purposes, such as interested manufacturers and trivial satirists assume? On the same principle, it is not possible that, in questions of elementary patriotism, any palsy should check the electric movement of the national feelings through every organ of its social life—except only in the one case where its organization is imperfect. Let there be a haughty nobility, void of popular sympathies, such as the haute noblesse of Russia or Hungary is sometimes said to be, and it will be possible that jealousy on behalf of privileges should operate so noxiously as to place such a body in opposition to the people for the sake of what it holds separately, rather than in sympathy with the people for the sake of what both hold in common. With us, this is otherwise; the very highest and most feudal amongst our nobles are associated by common rights, interests, and subjection to the laws, with the general body of the people. Make an exception for the right of demanding an audience from the sovereign, for the right of entree at St James's, for the right of driving through the Horse Guards, or for Lord Kinsale's right of wearing his hat in the royal presence—reckon off the petty discount for privileges so purely ceremonial, and absolute nothing remains to distinguish the nobility. For as to the practice of entails, the legal benefit of primogeniture, &c., these have no more essential connexion with the nobility, than the possession of land or manorial rights. They are privileges attached to a known situation, which is open equally to every man not disqualified as an alien. Consequently, we infer that, the fusion and continuity of our ranks being perfect, it is not possible to suppose, with respect to a great patriotic interest, any abrupt pause in the fluent circulation of our national sympathies. We, therefore, cannot be supposed to arrogate for the nobility any separate privilege of patriotism. But still we venture to affirm, that, if the total numbers of our nobility and their nearest connexions were summed; and if from that sum were subtracted all officers, being brothers, sons, nephews, of British peers, who laid down their lives, or suffered incurable wounds in the naval or military service of their country, the proportion will be found greater than that upon the aggregate remainder belonging to the rest of the nation. Life is the same blessing for all ranks alike. But certainly, though for all it is intrinsically the same priceless jewel, there is in the setting of this jewel something more radiantly brilliant to him who inherits a place amongst the British nobility, than to him whose prospects have been clouded originally by the doubts and fears of poverty. And, at all events, the libation of blood in the course of the last war was, we must repeat, on the part of the high aristocracy, disproportionately large.

In that proportion are those men unprincipled who speak of the English nobility as an indolent class—detached from public employments, and taking neither share nor interest in the public service. Such representations, where they are not deliberate falsehoods, point to a fact which is not uncommon; from the limited number of our nobility, and consequently the rare opportunities for really studying their habits, it is easy to see that in sketches of this order, (whether libellous amongst mob-orators, or serious in novels,) the pretended portrait has been founded on a vague romantic abstraction of what may be supposed peculiar to the condition of a patrician order under all political circumstances. Haughtiness, exclusiveness, indolence, and luxury, compose the romantic type which the delineator figures to his mind; and at length it becomes evident to any man, who has an experimental knowledge of this order, that probably the ancient Persian satraps, or the omrahs of Hindostan, have much more truly been operatively present to the describers than any thing ancient or modern amongst the realities of England. A candid person, who wishes to estimate the true, and not the imaginary nobles of England, will perceive one fact through the public journals, viz. that no class takes a more active share in that sort of the public business which naturally commends itself to their support. At least one-half of the deliberative meetings connected with the innumerable charities of London, very many of the public dinners by which such charities are promoted or commemorated, obtain the benevolent aid of noblemen as chairmen and presidents. Provincial assemblies for the same purposes, and, still more frequently, assemblies growing out of the endless political questions incident to a nation in our circumstances, receive the same influential countenance. These labours, by no means slight, added to the evening Parliamentary attendance through half the year, and the morning attendance on Parliamentary committees, together with the magisterial duties of many lords-lieutenant, sufficiently attest that in this point of public duties, (exercised without fee or compensation,) our own nobility is the only one in Europe having almost any connexion at all with the national service, except through the army. Some of this small body are pretty constantly attached to the cabinet; others act as ambassadors, as under-secretaries, or as colonial governors. And so far are they from wishing, apparently, to limit the field for their own exertions, that the late Dukes of Manchester and Richmond spontaneously extended it, by giving the countenances of their high stations to the governments of Canada, and even of Jamaica. A marquis of ancient family has lately accepted the government of Madras; and gradually, as our splendid colonies expand their proportions, it is probable that many more of them will benefit at intervals, (in their charities and public works,) from the vast revenues of our leading nobles acting as their governors. Add to these the many cases of junior nobles who sit in the House of Commons; of those who keep alive the public spirit of great provinces by standing costly contested elections; of those professionally pursuing the career of arms in the naval or land service; and then, collating all this activity with the very limited extent of our peerage taken even with their families, not the very bigotry of democracy will deny that the characteristic energy of our nation is faithfully reflected from its highest order.

Is there a feature in foreign circles odious beyond all others? It is the air of pretence, the craving after effect, the swell, the system of coquetting with accomplishments, the tumid character of bravura, which characterises the principle, and (to borrow an affected word from connoisseurs of art) the motivo of their social intercourse. Is there a feature of manners in the English nobility, absolutely inimitable by art, and renewing for ever the impressions of simplicity and truth? It lies in that winning retirement from the artificial, the studied, the theatrical, from all jealousy of design or collusive deplay, which good sense and chastity of taste have suggested to them, as the sole style of demeanour on a level with their dignified station. Continental society is bad by its ideals. In the execution, there may be frequent differences, moderating what is offensive in the conception. But the essential and informing principle of foreign society is the scenical, and the nisus after display. It is a state of perpetual tension; while, on the other hand, the usual state of English society, in the highest classes, is one of dignified repose. There is the same difference in this point between the two systems of manners, as between the English and French tone of national intercourse, in the matter of foreign relations. In France, when the popular blood is up, nothing is to be heard but bounce, menace, and defiance; for England, all the hurricanes of foreign wrath that ever blew, could not disturb her lion port of majestic tranquillity. But when we distinguish between what is English and what is foreign, it becomes proper that we should say more specifically what it is that we mean by the term "foreign;" what compass we allow to that idea. It is too palpable, and for many reasons, that the French standard of taste has vitiated the general taste of the Continent. How has this arisen? In part from the central position of France; in part from the arrogance of France in every age, as pretending to the precedency amongst the kingdoms of Christendom; in part from the magnificence of the French kings since the time of Louis XII.—that is, beginning with Francis I.; and in part, since the period 1660-80, from the noisy pretensions of the French literature, at the time creating itself, followed by that natural consequence of corresponding pretensions for the French language. Literature it was that first opened to the language a European career; but inversely the language it was that subsequently clenched and riveted the diffusion of the literature. Two accidents of European society favoured the change. Up to the restoration of our Charles II., diplomacy had been generally conducted in Latin. Efforts had been made, indeed, as early as Cardinal Richelieu's time, to substitute French. His pupil, Mazarine, had repeated the attempt; and Cromwell had resolutely resisted it. But how? Because, at that period, the resistance was easy. Historians are apt to forget that, in 1653, there was no French literature. Corneille, it is true, was already known; but the impression which he had as yet made, even upon Paris, did not merit the name of a popular impression—and for this decisive reason, that, as yet, Louis XIV. was a boy. Not until seven years later, did he virtually begin to reign; whilst, as France was then constituted, nothing could be popular which did not bear the countersign and imprimatur of a king and his court. The notion, therefore, adopted by all historians of English literature, (not excluding the arrogant Schlegel,) that Charles II., on his restoration, laid the foundation of a "French school," being already nonsense by the very tenor of the doctrine, happens also to be chronologically impossible. English writers could not take for a model what as yet had no collective existence. Now, until the death of Charles II., no French literature could be said to have gathered or established itself; and as yet no ostentation of a French literature began to stir the air of Europe. By the time, however, that Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, Bossuet, and Fontenelle, had begun to fix the attention of foreign courts upon the French language, a necessity, no longer to be disguised, for some modern language as the common organ of diplomacy, had made itself universally acknowledged. Not only were able negotiations continually neutralized by ignorance or unfamiliar command of the Latin; but at last, as the field of diplomacy was daily expanding, and as commerce kept ahead of all other interests, it became simply impossible, by any dexterity of evasions and compromises, to make a dead language do the offices of negotiation without barbarism and reciprocal misunderstanding. Now was commencing the era of congresses. The Westphalian congress, in 1648, had put up with Latin; for the interests which it settled, and the boundaries which it counterbalanced, were political and general. The details of tariffs were but little concerned. But those times were passing away. A modern language must be selected for international treating, and for the growing necessities of travellers. French probably would, by this time, have gained the distinction at any rate; for the same causes which carried strangers in disproportionate numbers to Paris—viz. the newly-created splendour of that capital, and the extensive patronage of the French kings—must have commensurately diffused the knowledge of the French language. At such a critical moment, however, we cannot doubt that the French literature would give a determining impulse to the choice. For besides that the literature adapts itself beyond all others to the classes of society having little time for reflection, and whose sensibilities are scattered by dissipation, it offers even to the meditative the high quality of self-consistency. Springing from a low key of passion, it still justifies its own pretensions to good taste, (that is, to harmony with itself and its own principles.) Fifty years later, or about the middle of the eighteenth century, we see a second impulse given to the same literature, and therefore to the same language. A new race of writers were at that time seasoning the shallowest of all philosophies with systematic rancour against thrones and Christianity. To a military (and therefore in those days ignorant) aristocracy, such as all continental states were cursed with, equally the food and the condiment were attractive beyond any other. And thus, viz. through such accidents of luck operating upon so shallow a body of estimators as the courtiers and the little adventurers of the Continent, did the French literature and language attain the preponderance which once they had. It is true, that the literature has since lost that advantage. Germany, the other great centre of the Continent, has now a literature of her own, far more extensive, and better fitted for her peculiar strength and weakness. But the French language, though also drooping, still holds its ground as the convenient resource of lazy travellers and lazy diplomatists. This language, acting through that literature, has been the engine for fusing the people of the Continent into a monotonous conformity to one standard of feeling.

In this sense, and with a reference to this deduction, we ascribe unity to the foreign system of manners and social intercourse. Had every state in Europe been resigned to her own native temper and habits, there could have been no propriety in talking of "foreign" manners, as existing by way of antithesis to English. There must have been as many varieties of what might be called "foreign," as there happen to be considerable kingdoms, or considerable territories insulated by strong natural boundaries, or capital cities composing separate jurisdictions for the world of manners, by means of local differences continually ripening into habits. But this tendency in Europe to break up and subdivide her spirit of manners, was withered and annihilated by the unity of a French taste. The ambition of a French refinement had so thoroughly seized upon Germany, and even upon the Vandalism of arctic Sweden, by the year 1740, that in the literature of both countries, a ridiculous hybrid dialect prevailed, of which you could not say whether it were a superstructure of Teutonic upon a basis of French, or of French upon a basis of Teutonic.[9] The justification of "foreign," or "continental," used as an adequate antithesis to English, is therefore but too complete.

[Footnote 9: In the days of Gottsched, a German leader about 1740, who was a pedant constitutionally insensible to any real merits of French literature, and yet sharing in the Gallomania, the ordinary tenor of composition was such as this: (supposing English words substituted for German:) "I demande with entire empressement, your pardon for having tant soit peu meconnu, or at least egare from your orders, autrefois communicated. Faute d'entendre your ultimate but, I now confess, de me trouver perplexed by un mauvais embarras."—And so on.]

Having thus explained our use of the word "foreign," we put it to any considerate man, how it should have been possible that any select tone of society could grow up amongst a body so comprehensive and so miscellaneous as the soi-disant nobility of continental states? Could it be expected that 130,000 French "nobles" of 1788, needy and squalid in their habits as many of them were, should be high-bred gentlemen? In Germany, we know that all the watering-places are infested with black-leg gamblers, fortune-hunters, chevaliers d'industrie, through all varieties of this category. Most of these bear titles of baron, compte, &c. Are they spurious titles? Nobody knows. Such is the obscurity and extent of an aristocracy multiplying their numbers in every generation, and resting upon no basis of property, that it is equally possible for the true "baron" to lie under suspicion as a pretender, and for the false one to prosper by imposture. On the other hand, who could hope to pass himself off for six weeks as an English earl? Yet it is evident, that where counterfeit claims are so easy, the intrusion of persons unqualified, or doubtfully qualified, must be so numerous and constant that long ago every pure standard of what is noble or gentlemanly, must have perished in so keen a struggle and so vast a mob. Merely by its outrageous excess numerically, every continental "noblesse" is already lowered and vitiated in its tone. For in vast bodies, fluctuating eternally, no unity of tone can be maintained, except exactly in those cases where some vulgar prejudice carries away all alike by its strength of current.

Such a current we have already noticed in the style of scenical effort manifested by most foreigners. To be a "conteur," to figure in "proverbs," to attitudinize, to produce a "sensation"—all these are purposes of ambition in foreign circles. Such a current we have noticed in the general determination of the Continent towards French tastes; and that is a worse tendency even than it used to be, for the true aristocracy of France is gone for ever as it formerly existed in the haute noblesse; and the court of a democratic king is no more equal to the task of diffusing good manners, than that of the American or Haytian president. Personally, the king and his family might be models of high breeding; but the insolence of democracy would refuse the example, and untrained vulgarity would fail even in trying to adopt it.

Besides these false impulses given to the continental tone of society, we have noticed a third, and that is the preposterous value given amongst foreigners to what is military. This tendency is at once a cause of vulgarity and an exponent of vulgarity. Thence comes the embroidery of collars, the betasseling, the befrogging, the flaunting attempts at "costuming." It is not that the military character is less fitted to a gentlemanly refinement than any other; but the truth is, that no professional character whatsoever, when pushed into exclusive esteem, can continue to sustain itself on the difficult eminence of pure natural high breeding. All professions alike have their besetting vices, pedantries, and infirmities. In some degree they correct each other when thrown together on terms of equality. But on the Continent, the lawyer and the clergyman is every where degraded; the senator has usually no existence; and the authentic landed proprietor, liberated from all duties but the splendid and non-technical duties of patriotism, comes forward at foreign courts only in thee character of a military officer. At some courts this is carried so far, that no man can be presented out of uniform. Has the military profession, on the other hand, benefited by such partiality? So far from it, that, were the continental armies liable to that sort of surveillance which our own Horse Guards exercises over the social morals of the officers, we do not believe that one of those armies could exist for five years. The facts placed beyond denial by the capture of foreign officers' baggage, by the violated parole of honour, and by many other incidents of the late war, combine to prove the low tone of gentlemanly honour and probity in the ill-paid armies of the Continent.