Now, what a poor piece of mockery, of false tinsel and fringe and folly and pretence, is your stage-player beside one of these fellows! Who is going to sit three weary hours at the Haymarket, bored by the assumed plausibility of the actor, when the real, the actual, the positive thing that he so poorly simulates is to be met on the railroad, at the station, in the club, on the chain-pier, or the penny steamer? Is there any one, I ask, who will pay to see the plaster-cast when he can behold the marble original for nothing? You say, "Are you going to the masquerade?" and I answer, "I am at it." Circumspice! Look at the mock royalties hunting (Louis XIV. fashion) in the deep woods of Fontainebleau. Look at haughty lords and ladies—the haughtiest the earth has ever seen—vying in public testimonies of homage—as we saw a few days ago—to the very qualities that, if they mean anything, mean the subversion of their order. Look at the wasteful abundance of a prison dietary, and the laudable economy which half-starves the workhouse. Look at the famished curate, with little beyond Greek roots to support him, and see the millionaire, who can but write his name, with a princely fortune; and do you want Webster or Buckstone to give these "characters" more point?

Will you take a box for the 'Comedy of Errors,' when you can walk into the Chancery Court for nothing? Will you pay for 'Much Ado about Nothing,' when a friendly order can admit you to the House? And as for a 'New Way to Pay Old Debts,' commend me to Commissioner Goulburn in Bankruptcy; while 'Love's Last Shift' is daily performed at the Court of Probate, under the distinguished patronage of Judge Wills. Is there any need to puzzle one's head over the decline of the drama, then? You might as well ask if a moderate smoker will pay exorbitantly for dried cabbage-leaves, when he can have prime Cubans for the trouble of taking them!



PENSIONS FOR GOVERNORS.

I do not remember ever to have read more pompons nonsense than was talked a few days ago in Parliament on the subject of pensions for retired colonial governors.

On all ordinary occasions the strongest case a man can have with the British public is to be an ill-used man—that is to say, if you be a man of mark, or note, or station. To be ill-used, as one poor, friendless, and ignoble, is no more than the complement of your condition. It is in the fitness of things that pauperism, which we English have declared to be illegal, should neither be fondled nor caressed. To be ill-used profitably there must be something pictorial in your case; it must have its reliefs of light as well as shade. There must be little touches, a bright "has been," sunny spots of a happy past Without the force of these contrasts, there is no possibility of establishing the grand grievance which is embodied in ill-usage.

Now, Mr B. C. who brought on this motion was a sorry artist, and the whole sum and substance of his case was, that as we secured the services of eminent and able men, we ought to pay them "properly." Why, in that one word "properly" lay the whole question. What constitutes proper payment? Every career in life carries with it some circumstance either of advantage or the reverse, which either compensates for the loss of a material benefit, or is requited by some addition of a tangible profit. The educated man who accepts three hundred a-year in the Church is not recompensed, or considered to be recompensed, by this miserable pittance. It is in the respect, the influence, the power, and the reverence that attach to his calling he is rewarded. Place a layman in the parish beside him with that income, and mark the difference of their stations! The same of the soldier. Why or how does seven-and-sixpence diurnally represent one the equal of the best in any society of the land? Simply by a conventional treaty, by which we admit that a man, at the loss of so much hard cash, may enjoy a station which bears no imaginable proportion to his means.

On the other hand, there are large communities who, addressing themselves to acquire wealth and riches, care very little for the adventitious advantages of social state. As it is told of Theodore Hook, at a Lord Mayor's feast, that he laid down his knife and fork at the fifth course, and declared "he would take the rest out in money;" so there are scores of people who "go in" for the actual and the real. They have no sympathy with those who "take out" their social status partly in condition partly in cash, as is the case with the curate and the captain.

Almost every man, at his outset in life, makes some computation of how much his career can pay him in money, how much in the advantages of rank and station. The bailiff on the estate makes very often a far better income than the village doctor; but do you believe that AEsculapius would change places with him for all that? Is not the unbought deference to his opinion, the respect to his acquirements, the obedience to his counsel, something in the contract he makes with the world? Does he not recognise, every day of his life, that he is not measured by the dimensions of the small house he resides in, or the humble qualities of the hack he rides, but that he has an acceptance in society totally removed from every question of his fortune?

In the great lottery we call life, the prizes differ in many things besides degree. If the man of high ambition determine to strain every nerve to attain a station of eminence and power, it may be that his intellectual equal, fonder of ease, more disposed to tranquillity, will settle down with a career that at the very best will only remove him a step above poverty; and shall we dare to say that either is wrong? My brother the Lord Chancellor is a great man, no doubt. The mace is a splendid club, and the woolsack a most luxurious sofa; but as I walk my village rounds of a summer's morning, inhaling perfume of earth and plant, following with my eye the ever-mounting lark, have I not a lighter heart, a freer step, a less wearied head? Have I not risen refreshed from sleep? not nightmared by the cutting sarcasms of some noble earl on my fresh-gilt coronet, some slighting allusion to my "newness in that place"? Depend upon it, the grand law of compensation which we recognise throughout universal nature extends to the artificial conditions of daily life, and regulates the action and adjusts the inequalities of our social state.

What is a viceroy or a colonial governor? A man of eminence and ability, doubtless, but who is satisfied to estrange himself from home and country, and occupy himself with cares and interests totally new and strange to him, for some five or fifteen thousand pounds a-year, plus a great variety of other things, which to certain minds unquestionably represent high value—the—station, the power, the prestige of a great position, with all its surroundings of deference and homage. Large as his salary is, it is the least distinctive feature of his high office. In every attribute of rank the man is a king. In his presence the wisest and the most gifted do no more than insinuate the words of their wisdom, and beauty retires curtsying, after a few commonplaces from his lips. Why, through all the employments of life, who ever attains to the like of this? His presence is an honour, his notice is fame. To be his guest is a distinction for a day; to be his host is to be illustrious for a lifetime. Are these things nothing? Ask the noble earl as he sits in his howdah; ask my lord marquis as he rides forth with a glittering staff.

Did any one, even Mr B. C. himself, ever imagine that Mr Macready ought to be pensioned after he had played Cardinal Wolsey? Was it ever proposed, even in Parliament, that Mr Kean should have a retiring allowance when he had taken off his robes as Henry IV.? These eminent men were, however, just as real, just as actual, during their brief hour on the stage, as His Excellency the Viceroy or the "Lord High." They were there under a precisely similar compact. They had to represent a state which had no permanence, and a power that had no stability. They were to utter words which would be ridiculous from their lips to-morrow, and to assume a port and bearing that must be abandoned when they retired to change their clothes.

It is one of my very oldest memories as a boy that I dined in company with Charles Kemble. There was a good deal of talking, and a fair share of wine-drinking. In the course of the former came the question of the French Revolution of '30, and the conduct of the French King on that occasion. Kemble took no part in the discussion; he listened, or seemed to listen, filled his glass and emptied it, but never spoke. At last, when each speaker appeared to have said his say, and the subject approached exhaustion, the great actor, with the solemnity of a judge in a charge, and with a grand resonance of voice, said: "I'll tell you how it is, sirs; Charles X. has forfeited a—a—a right good engagement!" And that was exactly the measure that he and all his tribe took, and are now taking, of kings and rulers—and let us profit by it. The colonial king has his "engagement;" it is defined exactly like the actor's. He is to play certain parts, and for so many nights; he is to strut his hour in the very finest of properties, and is sure, which the actor is not always, of a certain amount of applause. No living creature believes seriously in him, far less he himself, except, perhaps, in some impassioned moment or other like that in which I once knew Othello so far carried away that he flung Iago into the orchestra.

Pension Carlisle, pension Storks, if you will; but be just as well as generous, and take care that you provide for Paul Bedford and Buckstone.

In Archbishop Whately's 'Historic Doubts,' we find that the existence of the first emperor can be disproven by the very train of argument employed to deny the apostles. Let me suggest the converse of this mode of reasoning, and ask, Is there a word you can say for the Viceroy you cannot equally say for the actor? Have you an argument for him who governs St Helena that will not equally apply to him who struts his hour at the Haymarket?

I perceive that the writer of a letter to the 'Times' advocates the claims of the ex-Governors, on the plausible plea that it is exactly the very men who best represent the dignity of the station—best reflect the splendour of the Sovereign—who come back poor and penniless from the high office: while the penurious Governor, who has given dissatisfaction everywhere, made the colony half rebellious by his narrow economies, and degraded his station by contemptible savings, comes back wealthy and affluent—self-pensioned, in fact, and independent.

To meet this end, the writer suggests that the Crown, as advised thereon, should have a discretionary power of rewarding the well-doer and refusing the claim of the unmeriting, which would distinctly separate the case of the worthy servant of the Sovereign from that of him who only employed his office to enrich himself.

There is a certain shallow—it is a very shallow—plausibility about this that attracts at first sight; and there would unquestionably be some force in it, if dinner-giving and hospitalities generally were the first requisites of a colonial ruler; but I cannot admit this. I cannot believe that the man who administers India or Canada, or even Jamaica or Barbadoes, is only an expatriated Lord Mayor. I will not willingly consent to accept it as qualification for a high trust that a man has a good cook and an admirable cellar, and an ostentatious tendency to display the merits of both. Mind, I am no ascetic who say this: I like good dinners; I like occasionally—only occasionally though—very good dinners. I feel with a clever countryman who said he liked being asked out to dine, "it was flattering, and it was nourishing;" but with all this I should never think of "elevating my host" to the dignity of high statesmanship on the mere plea of his hospitality.

We have had some able men in our dependencies who were not in the least given to social enjoyments, who neither understood them for themselves nor thought of them for others—Sir Charles Napier, for instance. And who, let me ask, would have lost the services of such a man to the State, because he had not the tastes of a Sir William Curtis, nor could add a "Cubitt" to his stature?

All discretionary powers are, besides, abuses. They are the snares and pitfalls of official jobbery; and there would be no end of bickering and complaining on the merits of this and the shortcomings of that man. Not to say that such a system as this writer recommends would place a Government in the false position of rewarding extravagance and offering a premium for profusion, and holding up for an example to our colonial fellow-subjects the very habits and tastes which are the bane and destruction of young communities.

Can any one imagine a Cabinet Council sitting to determine whether the ex-Governor of St Helena had or had not entertained the officers of the 509th Foot on their return from India, or whether he of Heligoland had really fed his family on molluscs during all the time of his administration, and sold the shells as magnesia? There could be but one undeniable test of an ex-Governor's due claim to a pension, since on the question of a man's hospitalities evidence would vary to eternity. There are those whose buttermilk is better than their neighbours' bordeaux. I repeat, there could be but one test as to the claim; and as we read in a police sheet, as a sufficient ground for arrest, the two words, "Drunk and Disorderly," so should any commission on pensions accept as valid grounds for a pension, "Insolvent and a Bankrupt."

To talk of these men as ill-used, or their case as a hard one, is simply nonsense! You might as well say that the man you asked to dinner to-day has a legitimate ground of complaint against you because you have not invited him to breakfast to-morrow.



A GRUMBLE.

I wonder is the world as pleasant as it used to be? Not to myself, of course—I neither ask nor expect it; but I mean to those who are in the same position to enjoy it as I was—years ago. I am delicate about the figures, for Mrs O'D. occasionally reads these sketches, and might feel a wifelike antipathy to a record of this nature. I repeat—I wonder is life as good fun as it was when I made my first acquaintance with it? My impression is that it is not. I do not presume to say that all the same elements are not as abundant as heretofore. There are young people, and witty people, and, better, there are beautiful people, in abundance. There are great houses as of yore, maintained, perhaps, with even more than bygone splendour: the horses are as good—the dogs as good—the trout-streams as well stocked—the grouse as abundant—foreign travel is more easy—all travel is more facile—there are more books and more illustrated newspapers; and yet, with all these advantages—very tangible advantages too—I do not think the present occupants make the house as pleasant as their fathers did, and for the very simple reason, that they never try.

Indifferentism is the tone of the day. No one must be eager, pleased, displeased, interested, or anxious about anything. Life is to be treated as a tiresome sort of thing, but which is far too much beneath one to be thought of seriously—a wearisome performance, which good manners require you should sit out, though nothing obliges you to applaud or even approve of it. This is the theory, and we have been most successful in reducing it to practice. We are immensely bored, and we take good care so shall be our neighbour. Just as we have voted that there is nothing new, nothing strange, nothing amusing, we defy any one to differ with us, on pain of pronouncing him vulgar. North American Indians are not more case-hardened against any show of suffering under torture than are our well-bred people against any manifestation of showing pleasure in anything. "It wasn't bad," is about the highest expression of our praise; and I doubt if we would accord more to heaven—if we got there. The grand test of your modern Englishman is, to bear any amount of amusement without wincing: no pleasure is to wring a smile from him, nor is any expectancy to interest, or any unlooked-for event to astonish. He would admit that "the Governor"—meaning his father—was surprised; he would concede the fact, as recording some prejudice of a bygone age. As the tone of manners and observance has grown universal, so has the very expression of the features. They are intensely like each other. We are told that a shepherd will know the actual faces of all the sheep in his flock, distinguishing each from each at a glance. I am curious to know if the Bishop of London knows even the few lost sheep that browse about Rotten Eow of an afternoon, and who are so familiar to us in Leech's sketches. There they are—whiskered, bearded, and bored; fine-looking animals in their way, but just as much living creatures in 'Punch' as they are yonder. It is said that they only want the stimulus of a necessity, something of daring to tempt, or something of difficulty to provoke them, to be just as bold and energetic as ever their fathers were. I don't deny it. I am only complaining of the system which makes sheep of them, reduces life to a dreary table-land, making the stupid fellows the standard, and coming down to their level for the sake of uniformity. Formerly they who had more wit, more smartness, more worldly knowledge than their neighbours, enjoyed a certain pre-eminence; the flash of their agreeability lighted up the group they talked in, and they were valued and sought after. Now the very homage rendered, even in this small way, was at least a testimony that superiority was recognised and its claims admitted. What is the case now? Apathy is excellence, and the nearest approach to insensibility is the greatest eminence attainable.

In the Regency, when George IV. was Prince, the clever talkers certainly abounded; and men talk well or ill exactly as there is a demand for the article. The wittiest conversationalist that ever existed would be powerless in a circle of these modern "Unsurprised ones." Their vacant self-possession would put down all the Grattans and Currans and Jeffreys and Sydney Smiths in the world. I defy the most brilliant, the readiest, the most genial of talkers to vivify the mass of inert dulness he will find now at every dinner and in every drawing-room.

The code of modern manners is to make ease the first of all objects; and, in order that the stupidest man may be at his ease, the ablest is to be sacrificed. He who could bring vast stores of agreeability to the common stock must not show his wares, because there are a store of incapables who have nothing for the market.

They have a saying in Donegal, that "the water is so strong it requires two whiskies;" but I would ask what amount of "spirits" would enliven this dreariness; what infusion of pleasantry would make Brown and Jones endurable when multiplied by what algebraists call an x—an unknown quantity—of other Browns and Joneses?

We are constantly calling attention to the fact of the influence exerted over morals and manners in France by the prevailing tone of the lighter literature, and we mark the increasing licentiousness that has followed such works as those of Eugene Sue and the younger Dumas. Let us not forget to look at home, and see if, in the days when the Waverleys constituted almost all our lighter reading, the tone of society was not higher, the spirit more heroic, the current of thought and expression purer, than in these realistic days, when we turn for amusement to descriptions of every quaint vulgarity that makes up the life of the boarding-house or the strolling theatre.

The glorious heroism of Scott's novels was a fine stream to turn into the turbid river of our worldliness and money-seeking. It was of incalculable benefit to give men even a passing glance of noble devotion, high-hearted courage, and unsullied purity.

I can remember the time when, as freshmen in our first year, we went about talking to each other of 'Ivanhoe' and 'Kenilworth;' and I can remember, too, when the glorious spirit of those novels had so possessed us, that our romance elevated and warmed us to an unconscious imitation of the noble thoughts and deeds we had been reading.

Smile if you like at our boyish enthusiasm, it was better than the mocking spirit engendered by all this realism, or the insensate craving after stimulus taught by sensation novels.

Now, I am not old enough to remember the great talkers of the time when George III. was King, or those who made Carlton House famous; but I belonged to a generation where these men were remembered, and where it was common enough to hear stories of their Attic nights, those noctes caenaeque deorum which really in brilliancy must have far transcended anything that Europe could boast of conversational power. The youth of the time I speak of were full of these traditions. "If I am not the rose, I grew near one," was no foolish boast; and certainly there was both in the tone of conversation and the temper of society a sentiment that showed how the great men had influenced their age, and how, even after their sun had gone down, a warm tint remained to remind the world of the glorious splendour that had departed.

Being an Irishman, it is to Ireland I must go for my illustration, and it is my pride to remember that I have seen some of those who were, in an age of no common convivial excellence, amongst the first and the greatest. They are gone, and I may speak of them by name—Lord Plunkett, the Chief-Justice Bushe, Mr Casey, Sir Philip Crampton, Barre Beresford—I need not go on. I have but to recall the leading men at the bar, to make up a list of the most brilliant talkers that ever delighted society. Nor was the soil exhausted with these; there came, so to say, a second crop—a younger order of men—less versed in affairs, it is true, less imbued with that vigorous conviviality that prevailed in their fathers' days—but of these I must not speak, for they have now grown up to great dignities and stations, they have risen to eminence and honour and repute, and might possibly be ashamed if it were known that they were once so agreeable. Let me, however, record one who is no more, but who possessed the charm of companionship to a degree I never knew equalled in all my varied experiences of life,—one who could bring the stores of a well-stocked mind, rich in scholarship, to bear upon any passing incident, blended with the fascination of a manner that was irresistible. Highly imaginative, and with a power of expression that was positively marvellous, he gave to ordinary conversation an elevation that actually conferred honour on those who were associated with it; and high above all these gifts and graces, a noble nature, generous, hopeful, and confiding. With an intellect that challenged any rivalry, he had, in all that touched worldly matters, the simplicity of a child. To my countrymen it is needless I should tell of whom I speak; to others, I say his name was Mortimer O'Sullivan. The mellow cadence of his winning voice, the beam of his honest eye, the generous smile that never knew scorn, are all before me as I write, and I will write no more.



OF OUR BROTHERS BEYOND THE BORDER.

There is a story current of a certain very eminent French naturalist, who is so profoundly impressed by the truth of the Darwinian theory, that he never passes the cage where the larger apes are confined in the Jardin des Plantes without taking off his hat, making a profound obeisance, and wishing them a bon jour.

This recognition is touching and graceful. The homage of the witches to him who should be king hereafter, had in it a sort of mockery that made it horrible; but here we have an act of generous courtesy, based alike on the highest discoveries of science and the rules of the truest good-breeding.

The learned professor, with all the instincts of great acquirements and much self-knowledge united, admits them at once to equality and fraternity—the liberty, perhaps, they will have to wait some time for; but in that they are no worse off than some millions of their fellow-countrymen.

One might speculate long—I don't know exactly how profitably—on the sense of gratitude these creatures must feel for this touching kindness, how they must long for the good man's visit, how they must wonder by what steps he arrived at this astonishing knowledge, how surprised they must feel that he does not make more converts; and, last of all, what pains they must take to exhibit in their outward bearing and behaviour that they are not unworthy of the high consideration he bestows on them! Before him no monkey-tricks, no apish indecorums—none even of those passing levities which young gorillas will indulge in just like other youths. No; all must be staid, orderly, and respectful—heads held well up—hands at rest—tails nowhere; in fact, a port and bearing that would defy the most scrutinising observer to say that they were less eligible company than that he had just quitted at the cafe.

I own I have not seen them during the moment of the Professor's passage. I am unable to state authentically whether all this be as I surmise, but I have a strong impression it must be. Indeed, reflecting on the habits and modes of the species, I should be rather disposed to believe them given to an exuberant show of gratitude than to anything like indifference, and expect to witness demonstrations of delight more natural possibly than graceful.

Now, I have not the most remote intention of impugning the Professor's honesty. I give him credit—full credit—for high purpose, and for high courage. "These poor brothers of ours," says he, "have tails, it is true, and they have not the hypocampus major; but let me ask you, Monsieur le Duc, or you, Monseigneur the Archbishop, will you dare to affirm on oath that you yourself are endowed with a hypocampus major or minor? Are you prepared to stand forward and declare that the convolutions of your brain are of the regulation standard—that the medullary part is not disproportioned to the cineritious—that your falx is not thicker or thinner than it ought—and that your optic thalami are not too prominent? And if you are not ready to do this, what avails all your assumption of superiority? In these—they are not many—lie the alleged differences between you and your caged cousins yonder." Thus speaks, or might speak, the Professor; and, I repeat, I respect his candour; but still I would venture to submit one small, perhaps ungenerous doubt, and ask, Would he, acting on the noble instincts that move him, vote these creatures an immediate and entire emancipation, or would he not rather wait a while—a few years, say—till the habit of sitting on chairs had worn off some of the tail, and a greater familiarity with society suggested not to store up their dinner in their jaws? Would he like to see them at once take their places in public life, become public functionaries, and ministers, and grand cordons?

Would he not rather, with that philosophy his country eminently teaches, say, "I will do the pity and the compassion. To me be the sympathetic part of a graceful sorrow. To posterity I bequeath the recognition of these poor captives. Let them be liberated, by all means; but let it be when I shall be no longer here to witness it. Let others face that glorious millennium of gorilla greatness."

I am afraid he would reason in this fashion; it is one thing to have an opinion, and to have what Frenchmen call the "courage of your opinion." He would say, "If Nature work surely, she works slowly; her changes are measured, regular, and progressive. With her there are no paroxysms; all is orderly—all is gradual It took centuries of centuries to advance these poor creatures to the point they occupy; their next stage on the journey is perhaps countless years away. I will not attempt to forestall what I cannot assist. I will let Time do its work. They are not ill-treated, besides; that large creature with the yellow eyebrows grinned at me very pleasantly this morning, and the she-ourang-outang was whipping her infant most naturally as I came by."

"What a cold-blooded philanthropy is this!" cries another. "You say these are our brothers and our kinsmen; you declare that anatomy only can detect some small and insignificant discrepancies between us, and that even in these there are some of whose functions we know nothing, and others, such as the prehensile power, where the ape has the best of it. What do you mean by keeping them there 'cribbed, cabined, and confined'? Is a slight frontal inclination to disqualify a person from being a prefect? Is an additional joint in the coccyx to prevent a man sitting on the woolsack, or an extra inch in the astragalus to interfere with his wearing spurs? If there be minute differences between us, intercourse will abolish them. It will be of inestimable service to yourselves to come into contact with these fresh, fine, generous natures, uncontaminated by the vices of an effete and worn-out civilisation. Great as are the benefits you extend to them, they will repay you tenfold in the advantages to yourselves. Away with your unworthy prejudices about a 'black pigment' and long heels! Take them to your hearts and your hearths. You will find them brave—ay, braver than your own race. Their teeth are whiter and their nails longer; there is not a relation in life in which you will dare to call yourself their better."

I will go no farther, not merely because I have no liking for my theme, but because I am pilfering. All these arguments—the very words themselves—I have stolen from an American writer, who, in Horace Greeley fashion, is addressing his countrymen on the subject of negro equality. He not alone professes to show the humanity of the project, but its policy—its even necessity. He declares to the whites, "You want these people; without them you will sink lower and lower into that effete degeneracy into which years of licentiousness have sunk you. These gorillas—black men, I mean—are virtuous; they are abstemious; they have a little smell, but no sensuality; they will make admirable wives for your warriors; and who knows but one may be the mother of a President as strikingly handsome as Ape Lincoln himself!" There is no doubt much to be said for our long-heeled friends, whether with or without a hypocampus major. I am not very certain that we compliment them in the best taste when the handsomest thing we can say of them is, that they are very like ourselves! It is our human mode, however, of expressing admiration, and resembles the exclamation of the Oberland peasant on seeing a pretty girl, "How handsome she'd be if she only had a goitre!"



THE RULE NISI.

A great many sea-captains discourage the use of life-preservers and floating-belts on board ships of war, on the simple ground that men should not be taught to rely for their safety on anything but what conduces to save the ship. "Let there be but one thought, one effort," say they, "and let that be for the common safety." If they be right—and I suspect they are—we have made a famous blunder by our late legislation about divorce. Of all the crafts that ever were launched, marriage is one from which fewest facilities of desertion should be provided.

Romanism makes very few mistakes in worldly matters. There is no feature of that Church so remarkable as its deep study and thorough acquaintance with all the moods and wants and wishes of humanity. Whatever its demerits, one cannot but admit that no other religion ever approached it in intimacy with the human heart in all its emotions and in all its strivings, whether for good or evil.

Rome declares against all breach of the marriage tie. The Church, with a spirit of concession it knows how to carry through all its dealings, modifies, softens, assuages, but never severs conjugalism. It makes the tie occasionally a slip-knot, but it never cuts the string, and I strongly suspect that it is wise in its legislation.

For a great many years we gave the policy that amount of imitation we are wont to accord to Romanist practices; that is, we follow them in part—we adopt the coat, but, to show that we are not mere imitators, we cut off one of the skirts; and if we do not make the garment more graceful, we at least consult our dignity, and that is something. We made divorce the privilege of men rich enough to come to Parliament for relief; we did with the question what some one proposed we should do with poisons—make them so costly that only wealthy men should be able to afford the luxury of suicide. So long as men believed that divorce was immoral, I don't think any one complained that it should be limited to persons in affluence. We are a lord-loving race, we English, and are quite ready to concede that our superiors should have more vices than ourselves, just as they have more horses and more pheasants; and we deemed it nothing odd or strange that he, whose right it was to walk into the House of Peers, should walk out of matrimony when it suited him.

Who knows?—perhaps we were flattered by the thought that great folk so far conceded to a vulgar prejudice as to marry at all. Perhaps we hailed their entrance into conjugalism as we are wont to do their appearance at a circus or a public garden—a graceful acknowledgment that they occasionally felt something like ourselves: at all events, we liked it, and we showed we liked it by the zeal with which we read those descriptions in newspapers of marriages in high life, and the delight with which we talked to each other of people we never saw, nor probably ever should see. It was not too much, therefore, to concede to them this privilege of escape. It was very condescending of them to come to the play at all; we had no right to insist that they should sit out the whole performance.

By degrees, however, what with rich cotton-lords, and cheap cyclopaedias, and penny trains, and popular lectures, there got up a sort of impression—it was mere impression for a long time—that great folk had more than their share of the puddings' plums; and agitators began to bestir themselves. What were the privileges of the higher classes which would sit most gracefully on their inferiors? Naturally we bethought us of their vices. It was not always so easy to adopt my lord's urbanity, his unassuming dignity, his well-bred ease; but one might reasonably aspire to be as wicked. Sabbath-breaking had long since ceased to be the privilege of the better classes, and so men's minds reverted to the question of divorce. "Let us get rid of our wives!" cried they; "who knows but the day may come when we shall kill woodcocks?"

Now the law, in making divorce a very costly process, had simply desired to secure its infrequency. It was not really meant to be a rich man's privilege. What was sought for was to oppose as many obstacles as could be found, to throw in as many rocks as possible into the channel, so that only he who was intently bent on navigating the stream would ever have the energy to clear the passage. Nobody ever dreamed of making it an open roadstead. In point of fact, the oft-boasted equality before the law is a myth. The penalty which a labourer could endure without hardship might break my lord's heart; and in the very case before us of divorce, nothing can possibly be more variable than the estimate formed of the divorced individuals, according to the class of society they move in.

What would be a levity here, would be a serious immorality there; and a little lower down again, a mere domestic arrangement, slightly more decorous and a shade more legal than the old system of the halter and the public sale. It was declared, however, that this "relief"—that is the popular phrase in such matters—should be extended to the poor man. It was decided that the privilege to get rid of a wife was, as Mr Gladstone says of the electoral right, the inalienable claim of a freeman, and the only course was to lower the franchise.

Let us own, too, we were ashamed, as we had good right to be ashamed, of our old crim. con. law. Foreigners, especially Frenchmen, had rung the changes on our coarse venality and corruption; and we had come to perceive—it took some time, though—that moneyed damages were scarcely the appropriate remedy for injured honour.

Last of all, free-trade notions had turned all our heads: we were for getting rid of all restrictions on every side; and we went about repeating to each other those wise saws about buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, and having whatever we wanted, and doing whatever we liked with our own. We are, there is no denying it, a nation of shopkeepers; and the spirit of trade can be tracked through every relation of our lives. It is commerce gives the tone to all our dealings; and we have carried its enactments into the most sacred of all our institutions, and imparted a "limited liability" even to marriage.

Cheapness became the desideratum of our age, We insisted on cheap gloves and shoes and wine and ribbons, and why not cheap divorces? Philosophers tell us that the alternate action of the seasons is one of the purest and most enduring of all sources of enjoyment; that perpetual summer or spring would weary and depress; but in the ever-changing aspect of nature, and in the stimulation which diversity excites, we find an unfailing gratification. If, therefore, it be pleasant to be married, it may also be agreeable to be unmarried. It takes some time, however, before society accommodates itself to these new notions. The newly divorced, be it man or woman, comes into the world like a patient after the smallpox—you are not quite certain whether the period of contagion is past, or if it be perfectly safe to go up and talk to him. In fact, you delay doing so till some strong-minded friend or other goes boldly forward and shakes the convalescent by the hand. Even still there will be timid people who know perhaps that their delicacy of constitution renders them peculiarly sensitive, and who will keep aloof after all. Of course, these and similar prejudices will give way to time. We have our Probate Court; and the phrase co-respondent is now familiar as a household word.

Now, however tempting the theme, I am not going to inquire whether we have done wisely or the reverse by this piece of legislation; whether, by instilling certain precepts of self-control, a larger spirit of accommodation, and a more conciliatory disposition generally, we might have removed some of the difficulties without the heroic remedy of the decree nisi; whether, in fact, it might not have been better to teach people to swim, or even float, rather than make this great issue of cheap life-belts. I am so practical that I rather address myself to profit by what is, than endeavour by any change to make it better. We live in a statistical age. We are eternally inquiring who it is wants this, who consumes that, who goes to such a place, who is liable to this or that malady. Classification is a passion with us; and we have bulky volumes to teach us what sorts of people have chest affections, what are most prone to stomachic diseases, who have ophthalmia, and who the gout. We are also instructed as to the kind of persons most disposed to insanity, and we have a copious list of occupations given us which more or less incline those who profess them to derangement. Even the Civil-Service Examiners have contributed their share to this mass of entertaining knowledge, and shown from what parts of the kingdom bad spellers habitually come, what counties are celebrated for cacography, and in what districts etymology is an unknown thing. Would it not, then, be a most interesting and instructive statistic that would give us a tabular view of divorce, showing in what classes frailty chiefly prevailed, with the relative sexes, and also a glimpse at the ages? Imagine what a light the statement would throw on the morality of classes, and what an incalculable benefit to parents in the choice of a career for their children! For instance, no sensible father would select a life of out-door exposure for a weak-chested son, or make a sailor of one with an incurable sea-sickness. In the same way would he be guided by the character of his children as to the perils certain careers would expose them to.

A passing glance at the lists of divorce shows us that no "promovent"—it is a delicate title, and I like it—no promovent figures oftener than a civil engineer. Now, how instructive to inquire why!

What is there in embankments and earthworks and culverts that should dispose the wife of him who makes them to infidelity? Why should a tunnel only lead to domestic treachery? why must a cutting sever the heart that designs it? I do not know; I cannot even guess. My ingenuity stands stockstill at the question, and I can only re-echo, Why?

Next amongst the "predisposed" come schoolmasters, plasterers, &c. What unseen thread runs through the woof of these natures, apparently so little alike? It is the boast of modern science to settle much that once was puzzling, and reconcile to a system what formerly appeared discordant. How I wish some great Babbage-like intellect would bestir itself in this inquiry.

Surely ethical questions are as well worthy of investigation as purely physical or mechanical ones, and yet we ignore them most ignominiously. We think no expense too great to test an Armstrong or a Whitworth gun; we spend thousands to ascertain how far it will carry, what destructive force it possesses, and how long it will resist explosion;—why not appoint a commission of this nature on "conjugate;" why not ascertain, if we can, what is the weak point in matrimony, and why are explosions so frequent? Is the "cast" system a bad one, and must we pronounce "welding" a failure? or, last of all, however wounding to our national vanity, do "they understand these things better in France"?



ON CLIMBING BOYS.

With the common fate of all things human, it is said that every career and walk in life has some one peculiar disparagement—something that, attaching to the duties of the station as a sort of special grievance, serves to show that none of us, no matter how favoured, are to imagine there can be any lot exempted from its share of troubles. Ask the soldier, the sailor, the parson, the doctor, the lawyer, or the actor, and each will give you a friendly warning to adopt any other career than his own.

In most cases the quid amarum, the one bitter drop, is to be found in the career itself, something that belongs to that one craft or calling; just as the white-lead colic, for instance, is the fatal malady of painters. There are, however, a few rare cases in which the detracting element attaches itself to the followers and not to the profession, as though it would seem there was a something in the daily working of that peculiar craft which warped the minds and coerced the natures of men to be different from what temperament and character should have made of them.

The two classes which most prominently exhibit what I mean are somewhat socially separated, but they have a number of small analogies in common. They are Sweeps and Statesmen! It would be tempting—but I resist the temptation—to show how many points of resemblance unite them—how each works in the dark, in a small, narrow, confined sphere, without view or outlet; how the tendency of each is to scratch his way upwards and gain the top, caring wonderfully little how black and dirty the process has made him. One might even go farther, and mark how, when indolence or weariness suggested sloth, the stimulus of a little fire underneath, whether a few lighted straws or a Birmingham mass-meeting, was sure to quicken progress and excite activity.

Again, I make this statement on the faith of Lord Shaftesbury, who pronounced it before their Lordships in the Upper House:—"It is no uncommon thing to buy and sell them. There is a regular traffic in them; and through the agency of certain women, not the models of their sex, you can get any quantity of them you want." Last of all, on the same high authority, we are told of their perfect inutility, "since there is nothing that they do could not be better done by a machine."

I resist, as I say, all temptations of this kind, and simply address myself to the one point of similarity between them which illustrates the theory with which I have started—and now to state this as formally as I am able. Let me declare that in all the varied employments of life I have never met with men who have the same dread of their possible successors as sweeps and statesmen. The whole aim and object of each is directed, first of all, to keep those who do their work as little as possible, well knowing that the time will come when these small creatures will find the space too confined for them, and set up for themselves.

A volume might be written on the subtle artifices adopted to keep them "little"—the browbeatings, the insults, the crushing cruelties, the spare diet intermixed with occasional stimulants, the irregular hours, and the heat and confinement of the sphere they work in. Still, nature is stronger than all these crafty contrivances. The little sweep will grow into the big sweep, and the small under-sec. will scratch his way up to the Cabinet I will not impose on my reader the burden of carrying along with him this double load. I will address myself simply to one of these careers—the Statesman's. It is a strange but a most unquestionable fact, that no other class of men are so ill-disposed to those who are the most likely to succeed them—not of an Opposition, for that would be natural enough, but of their own party, of their own colour, of their own rearing. Let us be just: when a man has long enjoyed place, power, and pre-eminence, dispensed honours and pensions and patronage, it is not a small trial to discover that one of those little creatures he has made—whose first scraper and brush he himself paid for—I can't get rid of the sweep out of my head—will turn insolently on him and declare that he will no longer remain a subordinate, but go and set up for himself. This is excessively hard, and might try the temper of a man even without a fit of the gout.

It is exactly what has just happened; an apprentice, called Gladstone, having made a sort of connection in Manchester and Birmingham, a district abounding in tall chimneys, has given warning to his master Pam that he will not sweep any longer. He is a bold, aspiring sort of lad, and he is not satisfied with saying—as many others have done—that he is getting too broad-shouldered for his work; but he declares that the chimneys for the future must be all made bigger and the flues wider, just because he likes climbing, and doesn't mean to abandon it. There is no doubt of it. Manchester and Stockport and Birmingham have put this in his head. Their great smelting-houses and steam-power factories require big chimneys; and being an overbearing set of self-made vulgar fellows, they say they ought to be a law to all England. You don't want to make cotton-twist, or broad-gauge iron; so much the worse for you. It is the grandest object of humanity. Providence created men to manufacture printed cottons and cheap penknives. We of Manchester understand what our American friends call manifest destiny; we know and feel ours will be—to rule England. Once let us only introduce big chimneys, and you'll see if you won't take to spinning-jennies and mules and treddles; and there's that climbing boy Gladstone declares he'll not leave the business, but go up, no matter how dirty the flue, the day we want him.

Some shrewd folk, who see farther into the millstone than their neighbours, have hinted that this same boy is of a crotchety, intriguing type, full of his own ingenuity, and enamoured of his own subtlety; so that make the chimney how great you will, he'll not go up it, but scratch out another flue for himself, and come out, heaven knows where or how. Indeed, they tell that on one occasion of an alarm of fire in the house—caused by a pantry-boy called Russell burning some wasterpaper instead of going up the chimney as he was ordered—this same Will began to tell how the Greeks had no chimneys, and a mass of antiquarian rubbish of the same kind, so that his master, losing patience, exclaimed, "Of all plagues in the world he knew of none to compare with these 'climbing boys!'"



LINGUISTS

There are two classes of people not a little thought of, and even caressed, in society, and for whom I have ever felt a very humble estimate—the men who play all manner of games, and the men who speak several languages. I begin with the latter, and declare that, after a somewhat varied experience of life, I never met a linguist that was above a third-rate man; and I go farther, and aver, that I never chanced upon a really able man who had the talent for languages.

I am well aware that it sounds something little short of a heresy to make this declaration. It is enough to make the blood of Civil-Service Commissioners run cold to hear it. It sounds illiberal—and, worse, it seems illogical. Why should any intellectual development imply deficiency? Why should an acquirement argue a defect? I answer, I don't know—any more than I know why sanguineous people are hot-tempered, and leuco-phlegmatic ones are more brooding in their wrath. If—for I do not ask to be anything higher than empirical—if I find that parsimonious people have generally thin noses, and that the snub is associated with the spendthrift, I never trouble myself with the demonstration, but I hug the fact, and endeavour to apply it.

In the same spirit, if I hear a man in a salon change from French to German and thence diverge into Italian and Spanish, with possibly a brief excursion into something Scandinavian or Sclav—at home in each and all—I would no more think of associating him in my mind with anything responsible in station or commanding in intellect, than I should think of connecting the servant that announced me with the last brilliant paper in the 'Quarterly.'

No man with a strongly-marked identity—and no really able man ever existed without such—can subordinate that identity so far as to put on the foreigner; and without this he never can attain that mastery of a foreign language that makes the linguist. To be able to repeat conventionalities—bringing them in at the telling moment, adjusting phrases to emergencies, as a joiner adapts the pieces of wood to his carpentry—may be, and is, a very neat and a very dexterous performance, but it is scarcely the exercise to which a large capacity will address itself. Imitation must be, in one sense or other, the stronghold of the linguist—imitation of expression, of style, of accent, of cadence, of tone. The linguist must not merely master grammar, but he must manage gutturals. The mimicry must go farther: in simulating expression it must affect the sentiment. You are not merely borrowing the clothes, but you are pretending to put on the feelings, the thoughts, the prejudices of the wearer. Now, what man with a strong nature can merge himself so entirely in his fictitious being as not to burst the seams and tear the lining of a garment that only impedes the free action of his limbs, and actually threatens the very extinction of his respiration?

It is not merely by their greater adaptiveness that women are better linguists than men; it is by their more delicate organisation, their more subdued identity, and their less obstreperous temperaments, which are consequently less egotistical, less redolent of the one individual self. And what is it that makes the men of mark or note, the cognate signs of human algebra, but these same characteristics; not always good, not always pleasant, not always genial, but always associated with something that declares preeminence, and pronounces their owner to be a "representative man"?

When Lord Ward replied to Prince Schwartzenberg's flippant remark on the bad French of English diplomatists by the apology, "that we had not enjoyed the advantage of having our capital cities so often occupied by French troops as some of our neighbours," he uttered not merely a smart epigram but a great philosophical truth. It was not alone that we had not possessed the opportunity to pick up an accent, but that we had not subordinated our minds and habits to French modes and ways of thought, and that the tone and temper of the French people had not been beaten into us by the roll of a French drum. One may buy an accomplishment too dearly. It is possible to pay too much even for a Parisian pronunciation! Not only have I never found a linguist a man of eminence, but I have never seen a linguist who talked well. Fluent they are, of course, like the Stecknadel gun of the Prussians, they can fire without cessation, but, like the same weapon, they are comparatively aimless. It is a feu roulant, with plenty of noise and some smoke, but very "few casualties" announce the success. The greatest linguist of modern Europe, Mezzofanti, was a most inferior man. Of the countries whose dialect he spoke to perfection, he knew nothing. An old dictionary would have been to the full as companionable. I find it very hard not to be personal just now, and give a list—it would be a long one—of all the tiresome people I know, who talk four, five, some of them six modern languages perfectly. It is only with an effort I abstain from mentioning the names of some well-known men who are the charming people at Borne and Vienna every winter, and each summer are the delight of Ems, of Berlin, and of Ischl. What tyrants these fellows are, too, over the men who have not got their gift of tongues! how they out-talk them and overbear them! with what an insolent confidence they fall back upon the petty superiority of their fluency, and lord it over those who are immeasurably their masters! Just as Blondin might run along the rigging of a three-decker, and pretend that his agility entitled him to command a squadron!

Nothing, besides, is more imposing than the mock eloquence of good French. The language in itself is so adaptive, it is so felicitous, it abounds in such innumerable pleasant little analogies, such nice conceits and suggestive drolleries, that he who acquires these has at will a whole armoury of attack and defence. It actually requires years of habit to accustom us to a display that we come at last to discover implies no brilliancy whatever in him who exhibits, though it argues immense resources in the treasury from which he derives this wealth.

I have known scores of delightful talkers—Frenchmen—who had no other charm than what their language lent them. They were neither profound, nor cultivated, nor witty—some were not even shrewd or acute; but all were pleasant—pleasant in the use of a conversational medium, of which the world has not the equal—a language that has its set form of expression for every social eventuality, and that hits to a nicety every contingency of the "salon;" for it is no more the language of natural people than the essence of the perfumer's shop is the odour of a field flower. It is pre-eminently the medium of people who talk with tall glasses before them, and an incense of truffles around them, and well-dressed women—clever and witty, and not over-scrupulous in their opinions—for their company. Then, French is unapproachable; English would be totally unsuited to the occasion, and German even more so. There is a flavour of sauer kraut about that unhappy tongue that would vulgarise a Queen if she talked it.

To attain, therefore, the turns and tricks of this language—for it is a Chinese puzzle in its involvements—what a life must a man have led! What "terms" he must have "put in" at cafes and restaurants! What seasons at small theatres—tripots and worse! What nights at bals-masques, Chateaux des Fleurs, and Cadrans rouges et bleus! What doubtful company he must have often kept! What company a little more than doubtful occasionally! What iniquities of French romance must he have read, with all the cardinal virtues arrayed as the evil destinies of humanity, and every wickedness paraded as that natural expansion of the heart which alone raises man above the condition of the brute! I ask, if proficiency must imply profligacy, would you not rather find a man break down in his verbs than in his virtue? Would you not prefer a little inaccuracy in his declensions to a total forgetfulness of the decalogue? And, lastly of all, what man of real eminence could have masqueraded—for it is masquerading—for years in this motley, and come out, after all, with even a rag of his identity?

Many people would scruple to play at cards with a stranger whose mode of dealing and general manipulation of the pack bespoke daily familiarity with the play-table. They would infer that he was a regular and professional gambler. In the very same way, and for the selfsame reason, would I carefully avoid any close intimacy with the Englishman of fluent French, well knowing he could not have graduated in that perfection save at a certain price. But it is not at the moral aspect of the question I desire particularly to look. I assert—and I repeat my assertion—that these talkers of many tongues are poor creatures. There is no initiative in them—they suggest nothing—they are vendors of second-hand wares, and are not always even good selectors of what they sell. It is only in narrative that they are at all endurable. They can raconter, certainly; and so long as they go from salon to salon repeating in set phrase some little misadventure or accident of the day, they are amusing; but this is not conversation, and they do not converse.

"Every time a man acquires a new language, is he a new man?" is supposed to have been a saying of Charles V.—a sentiment that, if he uttered it, means more of sarcasm than of praise; for it is the very putting off a man's identity that establishes his weakness. All real force of character excludes dualism. Every eminent, every able man has a certain integrity in his nature that rejects this plasticity.

It is a very common habit, particularly with newspaper writers, to ascribe skill in languages, and occasionally in games, to distinguished people. It was but the other day we were told that Garibaldi spoke ten languages fluently. Now Garibaldi is not really master of two. He speaks French tolerably; and his native language is not Italian, but a patois-Genoese. Cavour was called a linguist with almost as little truth; but people repeat the story, just as they repeat that Napoleon I. was a great chess-player. If his statecraft and his strategy had been on a par with his chess, we should never have heard of Tilsit or Wagram.

Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington, and George Canning, each of whom administered our foreign policy with no small share of success, were not linguists; and as to Charles Fox, he has left a French sentence on record that will last even as long as his own great name. I do not want to decry the study of languages; I simply desire to affirm that linguists—and through all I have said I mean colloquial linguists—are for the most part poor creatures, not otherwise distinguished than by the gift of tongues; and I want to protest against the undue pre-eminence accorded to the possessors of a small accomplishment, and the readiness with which the world, especially the world of society, awards homage to an acquirement in which a boarding-school Miss can surpass Lord Brougham. I mean to say a word or two about those who have skill in games; but as they are of a higher order of intelligence, I'll wait till I have got "fresh wind" ere I treat of them.



THE OLD CONJURORS AND THE NEW.

As there are few better tests of the general health of an individual than in the things he imagines to be injurious to him, so there is no surer evidence of the delicate condition of a State than in the character of those who are assumed to be dangerous to it. Now, after all that has been said of Rome and the corruptions of Roman government, I do not know anything so decidedly damnatory as the fact, to which allusion was lately made in Parliament, that the Papal Government had ordered Mr Home, the spiritualist, to quit the city and the States of his Holiness, and not to return to them.

In what condition, I would ask, must a country be when such a man is regarded as dangerous? and in what aspect of his character does the danger consist?

Do we want ghosts or spirits to reveal to us any more of the iniquities of that State than we already know? Is there a detail of its corrupt administration that the press of Europe has not spread broadcast over the world? What could Mr Home and all his spirits tell us of peculation, theft, subornation, bigotry, and oppression, that the least observant traveller has not brought home with him?

And then, as to the man himself, how puerile it is to give him this importance! The solitary bit of cleverness about him is his statement that he has no control whatever over the spirits that attend him. Asking him not to summon them, is pretty like asking Mr Windham not to send for his creditors. They come pretty much as they like, and probably their visits are about equally profitable.

In this respect Home belongs to a very low order of his art. When Bosco promises to make a bouquet out of a mouse-trap, or Houdin engages to concoct a batter-pudding in your hat, each keeps his word. There is no subterfuge about the temper the spirits may happen to be in, or of their willingness or unwillingness to present themselves. The thing is done, and we see it—or we think we see it, which comes much to the same.

With this provision of escape Mr Home secures himself against all failure. Should, for instance, the audience prove to be of a more discriminating and observant character than he liked or anticipated, and the exhibition in consequence be rendered critical, all he had to do was, to aver that the spirits would not come; it was no breakdown on his part Homer was sulky, or Dante was hipped, or Lord Bacon was indisposed to meet company, and there was the end of it. You were invited to meet celebrities, but it was theirs to say if they would present themselves.

On the other hand, when the proper element of credulity offered—when the seance was comprised of the select few, emotional, sensitive, and hysterical as they ought to be—when the nervous lady sat beside the timid gentleman, and neuralgia confronted confirmed dyspepsia—the artist could afford to be daring, and might venture on flights that astounded even himself. What limit is there, besides, to contagional sympathy? Look at the crowded theatre, with its many-minded spectators, and see how one impulse, communicated occasionally by a hireling, will set the whole mass in a ferment of enthusiastic delight. Mark, too, how the smile, that plays like an eddy on a lake, deepens into a laugh, and is caught up by another and another, till the whole storm breaks out in a hearty ocean of merriment. These, if you like, are spirits; but the great masters of them are not men like Mr Home—they have ever been, and still are, of a very different order. Shakespeare and Moliere and Cervantes knew something of the mode to summon these imps, and could make them come at their bidding besides.

Was it—to come back to what I started with—was it in any spirit of rivalry that the Papal Government drove Mr Home out of Home? Was it that, assuming to have a monopoly in the wares he dealt in, they would not stand a contraband trade? If so, their ground is at least defensible; for what chance of attraction would there be for the winking Virgin in competition with him who could "make a young lady ascend to the ceiling, and come slowly down like a parachute!"—a spiritual fact I have heard from witnesses who really, so far as character went, might challenge any incredulity.

If the Cardinals were jealous of the Conjuror, the thing is intelligible enough, and one must feel a certain degree of sympathy with the old-established firm that had spent such enormous sums, and made such stupendous preparations, when a pretender like this could come into competition with them, without any other properties than could be carried conveniently about him.

But let us be practical The Pope's Government demanded of Mr Home that he should have no dealings with the Evil One during his stay at Rome. Now, I ask, what should we say of the efficacy of our police system if we were to hear that the Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard lived in nightly terror of the pickpockets who frequented that quarter, and came to Parliament with a petition to accord him some greater security against their depredations? Would not the natural reply be an exclamation of astonishment that he who could summon to his aid every alphabetical blue-coat that ever handled a truncheon, should deem any increased security necessary to his peace? And so, would I ask, of what avail these crowds of cardinals—these regiments of monsignori—these battalions of bishops, Arch and simple?—of what use all the incense and these chanted litanies, these eternal processions, and these saintly shin-bones borne in costly array—if one poor mortal, supposed to live on visiting terms with the Evil One, can strike such terror into the whole army led on by Infallibility?

If I had been possessed of any peculiar dread of coming unexpectedly on the Devil—as the old ladies of New York used to feel long ago about suddenly meeting with the British army—I should certainly have comforted myself by the thought that I could always go and sit down on the steps of the Vatican. It would immediately have occurred to me, that as Holyrood offers its sanctuary against the sheriff, the Quirinal would be the sure retreat against Old Nick; and I have even pictured to myself the rage of his disappointed malice as he saw me sheltering safely beneath a protection he dared not invade. And now I am told to relinquish all the blessed enjoyment of this immunity; that the Pope and the Cardinals and Antonelli himself are not a whit better off than the rest of us; that if Mr Home gets into Rome, there is nothing to prevent his having the Devil at his tea-parties. What an ignoble confession is this! Who will step forward any longer and contend that this costly system is to be maintained, and all these saintly intercessors to be kept on the most expensive of all pension-lists, if a poor creature like Home can overthrow it all?

Can any one conceive such a spectacle as these gorgeous men of scarlet and purple cringing before this poor pretender, and openly avowing before Europe that there is no peace for them till he consents to cross the Tiber?

Why—I speak, of course, in the ignorance of a laic—but, I ask, why not fumigate him and cleanse him? When I saw him last, the process would not have been so supererogatory. Why not exorcise and defy him? Why not say, Come, and bring your friend if you dare; you shall see how we will treat you. Only try it It is what we have been asking for nigh two thousand years. Let the great culprit step forward and plead to his indictment.

I can fancy the Pope saying this—I can picture to myself the proud attitude of the Pontiff declaring, "I have had enough of these small devilries, like Louis Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel—I am sick of Mazzini and his petty followers. Let us deal with the chief of the gang at once; if we cannot convict him, he will be at least open to a compromise." This, I say, I can comprehend; but it is clear and clean beyond me that he should shirk the interview, and own he was afraid of it. It would not surprise me to-morrow to hear that Lord Derby dreaded the Radicals, and actually feared the debating powers of "Mr Potter of the Strikes."



GAMBLING FOR THE MILLION.

Nothing shows what a practical people we are more than our establishment of insurances against railroad accidents. The spirit of commercial enterprise, by which a man charters himself for a railroad voyage with an insured cargo of his bones, ligaments, cartilage, and adipose tissue, abundantly proves that we are nature's own traders and shopkeepers.

Any ordinary people less imbued with Liverpool and Manchester notions would have bestirred themselves how to prevent, or at least lessen, the number of those casualties. They would have set to work to see what provisions could be adopted to give greater security to travel. We, on the contrary are too business-like to waste time on this inquiry. We are convinced that, let us build ships ever so strong, there will still be shipwrecks. So we feel assured that a certain number of railway accidents, as they are called, will continue to occur—be as broad gauge as you will! We accept the situation, therefore, as the French say, and insure; that is to say, we book a bet at very long odds—say, three to a thousand—that we shall be rolled up, cut in two, flattened into a thin sheeting, and ground into an impalpable powder, between Croydon and Brighton. If we arrive safe, the assurance office pockets a few shillings; if we win our wager, our executor receives a thousand pounds.

It is about the grimmest kind of gambling ever man heard of; and yet we see folk of the most unquestionable propriety—dignitaries of the Church, judges, civil and uncivil servants of the Crown, and scores of others, whom nothing would tempt into the Cursaal at Ems or Baden, as coolly as possible playing this terrific game, and backing themselves heavily for a dorsal paralysis, a depressed fracture of the cranium, or at least a compound dislocation of the hip-joint.

Now, if the Protestant Church entertained what the Romanists call cases of conscience, I should like greatly to ask, Is this right? Is it justifiable to make a contingent profit out of your cerebral vertebrae or your popliteal space?

We have long been derided and scoffed at for making connubialism marketable, and putting a price on a wife's infidelity, but it strikes me this is something worse; for what, after all, is a rib—a false rib, too—compared with the whole bony skeleton?

"Allah is Allah," said the Turkish admiral to Lady Hester Stanhope, "but I have got two anchors astern," showing that, with all his fatalism, he did not despise what are technically called human means. So the reverend Archdeacon, going down for his sea-baths, might say, "I'm not quite sure they'll carry me safely, but it shall not be all misfortune—I'll take out some of it in money."

The system, however, has its difficulties; for though it is a round game, the stakes are apportioned with reference to the rank and condition of the winner—as, for instance, the Solicitor-General's collarbone is worth a shoemaker's whole body, and a Judge's patella is of more value than a dealer in marine stores and his rising family. This is a tremendous pull against the company, who not only give long, but actually incalculable odds; for while Mr Briggs of the second class can be crumpled up for two hundred pounds, the Hon. Sackville de Cressy in the coupe cannot be even concussed under a thousand; while if the noble Duke in the express carriage be only greatly alarmed, the cost may be positively astounding.

This I certainly call hard—very hard. When you book a bet at Newmarket you never have to consider the rank of your opponent, save as regards his solvency. He may be a peer—he is very probably a publican—it is perfectly immaterial to you; but not so here. The company is positively staking against the incommensurable. They have no means of knowing whether that large broad-shouldered man yonder is or is not a royal duke; and when the telegraph announces a collision, it may chance that the news has declared what will send every shareholder into bankruptcy, or only graze them without hurting anybody.

We all know how a number of what are technically termed serious people went to Exeter Hall to listen to the music of the 'Traviata,' what no possible temptation would have induced them to hear within the walls of a theatre. I will not question the propriety of a matter only to be settled by a reference to conscience; but as the music and the words—for the airs were sung—were the same, the hearers were not improbably in the enjoyment of as emotional an amusement as though they had gone for it to the Queen's Theatre. Now, may not these railway insurances be something of the same kind? May it not be a means by which deans and canons and other broad-hatted dignitaries may enjoy a little gambling without "going in" for Blind Hooky or Roulette? Regard for decorum would prevent their sojourning at Homburg or Wiesbaden. They could not, of course, be seen "punting" at the play-table at Ems; but here is a legitimate game which all may join in, and where, certainly, the anxiety that is said to impart the chief ecstasy to the gamester's passion rises to the very highest It is heads and tails for a smashing stake, and ought to interest the most sluggish of mortals.

What a useful addition, then, would it be for one's Bradshaw to have a tabular view of the "odds" on the different lines, so that a speculative individual, desiring to provide for his family, might know where to address himself with best chance of an accident! One can imagine an assurance company puffing its unparalleled advantages and unrivalled opportunity, when four excursion trains were to start at five minutes' intervals, and the prospect of a smash was little short of a certainty. "Great attraction! the late rains have injured the chief portion of the line, so that a disaster is confidently looked for every hour. Make your game, gentlemen—make your game; nothing received after the bell rings."



THE INTOXICATING LIQUORS BILL.

Anything more absurd than the late debate in the House on the best means of suppressing intemperance it is very hard to imagine. First of all, in the van, came the grievance to be redressed; and we had a statistical statement of all the gallons of strong drink consumed—all the moneys diverted from the legitimate uses of the family—all the debauchees who rolled drunk through our streets, and all the offences directly originating in this degrading vice. Now, what conceivable order of mind could prompt a man to engage in such a laborious research? Who either doubts the enormity of drunkenness or its frequency? It is a theme that we hear of incessantly. The pulpit rings with it, the press proclaims it, the judges declare it in all their charges, and a special class of lecturers have converted it into a profession. None denied the existence of the disease; what we craved was the cure. Some discrepancy of opinion prevailed as to whether the vice was on the increase or the decrease. Statistics were given, and, of course, statistics supported each assertion. This, however, was a mere skirmish—the grand battle was, How was drunkenness to be put down?

Mr Lawson's plan was: If four-fifths of the ratepayers of any district were agreed that no spirituous liquors should be sold there, that such should become a law, and no licence for their sale should be issued. The mover of this proposal, curiously enough, called this "bringing public opinion to bear on the question." What muddle of intelligence could imagine this to be an exercise of public opinion I cannot imagine. Such, however, is the plan. Drunkenness is to be repressed by making it impossible. Did it never occur to the honourable gentleman, that all legislative enactments whatever work not by enforcing what is good, but by punishing what is evil? No law that ever was made would render people honest and true to their engagements; but we arrive at a result not very dissimilar by making dishonesty penal.

The Decalogue declares: "Thou shalt not commit a murder." Human law pronounces what will come of it if you do. It is, doubtless, very imperfect legislation, but there is no help for it. We accept such cases, however, as the best defences we can find for our social condition, never for a moment presuming to think that we are rendering a vice impossible by attaching to it a penalty.

Mr Lawson, however, says, There shall be no drunkenness, because there shall be no liquor. Why not extend the principle—for it is a great discovery—and declare that, wherever four-fifths of the ratepayers of a town or borough are of opinion that ingratitude is a great offence to morals and a stain to human nature, in that district where they reside there shall be no benefits conferred, nor any act of kindly aid or assistance rendered by one man to his neighbour? I have no doubt that, by such legislation, you would put down ingratitude. We use acts in the moral world pretty much as in the physical; and it is entirely by the impossibility of committing the offence that this gentleman proposes to prevent its occurrence. But, in the name of common sense, why do we inveigh against monasteries and nunneries?—why are we so severe on a system that substitutes restraint for reason, and instead of correction supplies coercion? Surely this plan is based on exactly the same principle. Would it, I ask, cure a man of lying—I mean the vice, not the practice—to place him in a community where no party was permitted to talk?

The example of the higher classes was somewhat ostentatiously paraded in the debate, and members vied with each other in declaring how often they dined out without meeting a drunkard in the company. This is very gratifying and reassurring; but I am not aware that anybody ascribed the happy change to the paucity of the decanters, and the difficulty of getting the bottle; or whether it was that four-fifths of the party had declared an embargo on the sherry, and realised the old proverb by elevating necessity to the rank of virtue.

Let me ask, who ever imagined that the best way to render a soldier brave in battle was to take care that he never saw an enemy, and only frequented the society of Quakers? And yet this is precisely what Mr Lawson suggests. If his system be true, what becomes of all moral discipline and all self-restraint? It is not through my own convictions that I am sober; it is through no sense of the degradation that pertains to drunkenness, and the loss of social estimation that follows it, that I am temperate. It is because four-fifths of the ratepayers declare that I shall have no drink nearer than the next parish; and this reminds of another weak point in the plan.

The Americans, who understand something of the evils of drink, on the principle that made Doctor Panloss a good man, because he knew what wickedness was, lately passed a law in Congress forbidding the use of fermented liquors on board all the ships of war. It was one of those sweeping pieces of legislation that men enact when driven to do something, they know not exactly what, by the enormity of some great abuse. Now, I have taken considerable pains to inquire how the plan operates, and what success has waited on it. From every officer that I have questioned I have received the same exact testimony: so long as the ships are at sea the men only grumble at the privation; but once they touch port, and boats' crews are permitted to go ashore, drunkenness breaks out with tenfold violence. For a while all real discipline is at an end; parties are despatched to bring back defaulters, who themselves get reeling drunk; petty officers are insulted, and scenes of violence enacted that give the unhappy locality where they have landed the aspect of a town taken by assault and given up to pillage. I am not now describing altogether from hearsay; I have witnessed something of what I speak.

As drunkenness, when the ship was at sea, was the rarest of all events, and the good conduct of the men when on shore was the great object to be obtained, this system may be, so far as the navy is concerned, pronounced a decided failure. Whatever may be said about the policy of sowing a man's wild oats, nobody, so far as I know, ever hinted that the crop should be perennial.

Legislation can no more make men temperate than it can make them cleanly or courteous. If Parliament could work miracles of this sort, it would make one really in love with constitutional government. But what a crotchety thing all this amateur lawmaking is! Why did it not occur to this well-intentioned gentleman to inquire how it is that drunkenness is unknown, or nearly unknown, in what are called the better classes? How is it that the orgies our grandfathers liked so well, and deemed the great essence of hospitality, are no longer heard of? The three-bottle man now could no more be found than the Plesiosaurus. He belongs to a past totally and essentially irrevocable.

And by what has this happy change been effected? Surely not by withdrawing temptation. Not only have we an infinitely wider choice in fluids than our forefathers, but they are served and ministered with appliances far more tasteful and seductive. It is, however, to the higher tone of society the revolution is owing. Men saw that drunkenness was disgraceful: it rendered society disorderly and riotous; it interfered with all real conversational pleasure; it led to unmannerly excesses, and to quarrels. A higher cultivation repudiated all these things; and even they who, so to say, "liked their wine" too well, were slow to disparage themselves by an indulgence which good taste declared to be ungentlemanlike.

Is it completely impossible to introduce some such sentiment as this into other orders of society? We see it certainly in some foreign countries—why not in our own? Radical orators are incessantly telling us of the mental powers and the intellectual cultivation of the working-classes, and I am well-disposed to believe there is much truth in what they say. Why not then adapt, to men so highly civilised, some of those sentiments that sway the classes more favoured of fortune? The French artisan would deem it a disgrace to be drunk—so the Italian; even the German would only go as far as a sort of beery bemuddlement that made him a more ideal representative of the Vaterland: why must the Englishman, of necessity, be the inferior in civilisation to these? I am not willing to believe the task of such a reformation hopeless, though I am perfectly convinced that no greater folly could be committed than to attempt it by an Act of Parliament.

When legislation has led men to be agreeable in society, unassuming in manners, and gentle in deportment, it may make them temperate in their liquor, but not before. The thing cannot be done in committee, nor by a vote of the House. It is only to be accomplished by the filtering process, by which the good habits of a nation drop down and permeate the strata beneath; so that, in course of time, the whole mass, leavened by the same ingredients, becomes one as completely in sentiment as in interest. "Four-fifths of the ratepayers" will not effect this. After all, Mr Lawson is only a second-hand discoverer. His bill was a mere plagiarism from beginning to end. The whole text of his argument was said and sung by poor Curran, full fifty odd years ago:—

"My children, be chaste till you're tempted; While sober, be wise and discreet; And humble your bodies with fasting Whenever you've nothing to eat."

THE END.