And now to leap over twenty-five years, at which interval I paid my second visit to America in 1876, when again I had the privilege of being Longfellow's guest in the same historic abode where Washington had once his headquarters. My kind-hearted host insisted on my occupying the same arm-chair I had before, and which since, he said, had been the throne of Dickens and Thackeray, and every book-celebrity that had visited Cambridge. Among invited guests unable to come was Oliver Wendell Holmes, but I soon after made up for this loss by having a long talk with that shrewd and amusing writer at Boston; and once more, alas! no Lowell, whom I missed again, though I had waited for him that quarter of a century! Longfellow, out of compliment (so he kindly said) to his English guest, had specially provided pheasants and Stilton cheese, among such more Transatlantic delicacies as wild venison (from Tupper Lake, in the Adirondacks), and canvas-back ducks from Baltimore; to say less of terrapin soup, whereof the unhatched eggs of tortoises are the bonne-bouche! After dinner he gave me an apple from Beaupre, Evangeline's farm, the pips whereof I sent to Albury for planting. Longfellow was much interested to hear that my collateral ancestor had married Martha, the heiress of "the Vineyard" in Rhode Island. Mr. Fields, on this festive occasion, recited some of Mark Twain's humour, and I had to give sundry of my American ballads, and the host himself his exquisite "Psalm of Life;" my "Venus," in reply to his "Mars," having appeared, and been praised by him, some years before. And this meagre record is all I care, or have space, to give of that feast of reason and flow of soul.

With Charles Kingsley, however seldom we met, I had strong sympathy in many ways, as a man of men, to be loved and admired; but chiefly we could feel for each other in the matter of stammering,—a sort of affliction not sufficiently appreciated. Kingsley conquered his infirmity, as I did mine, and rose to frequent eloquence in his public ministrations: privately his speech would often fail him, and was his "thorn in the flesh" to the end.

I remember a most pleasant day spent with him about the fishponds and cascades of Wotton,—and I noted how skilfully he threw the fly some five-and-twenty feet under the bushes, to the wonder of a gaping trout, soon to find its lodging in the creel: and our kind host may still recollect, as I do, how charming was our intercourse that day with the genial author of "Yeast," "Alton Lock," "Hypatia," "Westward ho!" and other of our favourites. I have met Kingsley later, in his cloistered nest, as Canon of Westminster, and remember how heartily he expressed his abundant charity for all sorts of miserable sinners, especially about one of whom I came to speak, for there never lived a more universal excuser of human imperfection than Charles Kingsley. His bust, very like him, is in a side chapel of the Abbey, near the west door. With the learned and eloquent Canon Farrar, too, I have held converse in the same Broad Sanctuary, though but briefly. Harrison Ainsworth has often crossed my orbit. In particular, as a very early contributor to his magazine (wherein, by the way, my "Flight upon Flying" originally appeared, to be afterwards reproduced at the Royal Aquarium a year or two ago), I was among his invited guests at Kensal Manor house, for the inauguration of his magazine, meeting Douglas Jerrold, Blanchard, Albert Smith, and others of like note. Also, at Lord Mayor's feasts we have periodically met, and at Literary Fund dinners. I may mention that when we came near one another a few years since, at the Mansion-House, an American friend with me was startled at the resemblance between Ainsworth and myself: in fact, our photographic portraits have often been mutually sold for each other, and I remember in a shop window seeing my name written under a photo clearly not myself, however like; and my daughter with me said "It must be a mistake, for you never had such a waistcoat as that," it being a brilliant plaid: so we went in to set matters right, and the shopman, in correcting the mistake, observed he didn't wonder, we were so alike: furthermore, on the outside cover of a cheap edition of Ainsworth's "James II.," his portrait is the very counterpart of one painted, by Rochard, long years ago, of myself.

I was well acquainted, fifty-five years ago, with three eminent men, who afterwards became viceroys, as their fellow classman and collegian at Christ Church. At that time two of them were only younger sons in their "pupa" or pupil phases of Ramsay and Bruce, and wore the same commoner's gown as myself; the third, though a "tuft" by courtesy, had not yet come to his heritage. All these three succeeded one another in the high position of a Governor-General of India, and were famous architects of our imperial greatness. I remember on either side of me in Biscoe's memorable Aristotle class before mentioned, the young Ramsay, afterwards Dalhousie, that great pro-consul who annexed a third of our Indian Empire; and the young Bruce, afterwards Elgin, famous from Canada to China; the former slim, ascetic, and reserved; the latter a perfect contrast, being stout, genial, and outspoken; while Canning, tall and good-looking, with curly dark hair and florid complexion, is mentionable also for his fluency of speech and cordiality of manner—hereditaments, doubtless, of his distinguished father. Of Lord Elgin I have many pleasant memories, especially when he hospitably received me at Toronto, whither he had recently migrated from Montreal (as I thought unwisely), because the French Canadians there had insulted him. In this connection I may give an anecdote to the point. Soon after my return from America in 1851 I dined with my neighbour at Albury, Henry Drummond, the humoursome M.P., always not a little good-naturedly mischievous. He knew that I had not approved of Lord Elgin's petulant removal of his viceroyal establishment from Montreal to Toronto, and cunningly resolved to draw me out before witnesses on the matter. Now I had taken in to dinner an elderly Scotch lady unknown to me, and sat next to her of course. Soon my lively host somewhat unfairly asked me about my visit to Canada, and what I thought of the then notorious flight of the Governor to far distant Toronto,—forcing me to express my disapproval, which naturally as an honest man I did, on which my left-hand neighbour, a lady of rank whom I knew, whispered "Mind what you are saying, you took in his mother." Accordingly, I had frankly to turn and say, "And I'm sure Lady Elgin will agree with me, and you too, Mr. Drummond, for no captain should fly from his post because he's laughed at." This candid speech was fortunately applauded all round the table, and not least by the friendly Countess and the baffled mischief lover.

Lord Elgin most kindly interested himself in the restoration of the Brock monument at Queenstown Heights, which had then recently been damaged by gunpowder, and is since rebuilt: my good reason for asking his aid being that Sir Isaac Brock was my near relative (his mother bearing my name), and that he had saved Canada by his death in victory.



CHAPTER XLI.

A FEW OLDER FRIENDSHIPS.

It is only fair and right that I make special mention of some friendships of many years, connected more or less with literary matters. Among such names in the past occurs one, if not very eminent, to me at least very kindly, that of Benjamin Nightingale, an antiquarian friend for nearly forty years. We first became acquainted in Sotheby's auction room, where I perceived at once his generous nature, by this token: we had been competing for a miscellaneous lot of coins, which he bought,—and then lifting his hat he asked me which of them I had specially wanted; these I indicated, of course thinking that he meant me to buy them of him,—but he immediately insisted upon giving them, if I would allow him. This fair beginning led to better acquaintance, often improved under our mutual roof-trees. It was his ambition to be my Boswell, as he has sometimes told me; and probably there are bundles somewhere of his MSS. and of our antiquarian letters (he wrote very well), about which I have vainly made inquiry of a near relative, who knew nothing about them. Some day they'll turn up.

Nightingale was much pleased to find himself recorded in my "Farley Heath," as to both verse and prose. He has been in the Better World some twelve years, and his widow gave me the collections he called his Tupperiana.

I confess that the following poem wherein my genial friend figures,—and which many judges have liked as among my best balladisms, is one reason for this record of B.N.

Farley Heath.

"Many a day have I whiled away Upon hopeful Farley Heath, In its antique soil digging for spoil Of possible treasure beneath; For Celts, and querns, and funereal urns, And rich red Samian ware, And sculptured stones and centurions' bones May all lie buried there!

"How calmly serene, and glad have I been From morn till eve to stay, My men, no serfs, turning the turfs The happy livelong day; With eye still bright, and hope yet alight, Wistfully watching the mould, As the spade brings up fragments of things Fifteen centuries old!

"Pleasant and rare it was to be there On a joyous day of June, With the circling scene all gay and green Steep'd in the silent moon; When beauty distils from the calm glad hills, From the downs and dimpling vales; And every grove, lazy with love, Whispereth tenderest tales!

"O then to look back upon Time's old track, And dream of the days long past, When Rome leant here on his sentinel spear And loud was the clarion's blast;— As wild and shrill from Martyr's Hill Echoed the patriot shout; Or rush'd pell-mell with a midnight yell The rude barbarian rout!

"Yes; every stone has a tale of its own, A volume of old lore; And this white sand from many a brand Has polish'd gouts of gore; When Holmbury Height had its beacon light, And Cantii held old Leith, And Rome stood then with his iron men On ancient Farley Heath!

"How many a group of that exiled troop Have here sung songs of home, Chanting aloud to a wondering crowd The glories of old Rome! Or lying at length have basked their strength Amid this heather and gorse, Or down by the well in the larch-grown dell Water'd the black war-horse!

"Look, look! my day-dream right ready would seem The past with the present to join,— For see! I have found in this rare ground An eloquent green old coin, With turquoise rust on its Emperor's bust— Some Caesar, august lord, And the legend terse, and the classic reverse, 'Victory, valour's reward!'

"Victory—yes! and happiness, Kind comrade, to me and to you, When such rich spoil has crown'd our toil And proved the day-dream true; With hearty acclaim how we hail'd by his name The Caesar of that coin, And told with a shout his titles out, And drank his health in wine!

"And then how blest the noon-day rest, Reclin'd on a grassy bank, With hungry cheer and the brave old beer, Better than Odin drank; And the secret balm of the spirit at calm, And poetry, hope, and health,— Ay, have I not found in that rare ground A mine of more than wealth?"

Another long-time friend also of the antiquarian sort was Walter Hawkins, with whom I was intimate for many years. His private collection of coins and curiosities was even larger and costlier than Nightingale's, and was given by his administratrix to the United Service Museum, where I believe the bulk of it (perhaps morally mine) still remains in cases not yet unpacked. He died suddenly, to my great financial loss; for he was very fond of me, offering himself sponsor and giving his name to a son of mine; and as a rich old bachelor he used, to make humorously half promises of benefits to come. In fact, he had called in his lawyer to take instructions for a new will, and partly at least had erased or destroyed the old one of a twelve years agone, when, one raw and wintry morning, he insisted upon seeing a lady from and to her carriage without his hat (punctilio being his forte and his fault), caught cold, took to his bed, and was dead in four days! Accordingly a relative with whom he had not been on the best of terms for years, administered to his half will, and succeeded to his possessions. Such is life and its futile expectations.

Walter Hawkins had many peculiarities: one was this. At great cost he was long building for himself a tomb at Kensal Green, which he would not let me see till it was finished: he then triumphantly exhibited to my astonished eyes a domed marble temple with four bronze angels blowing trumpets east, west, north, and south,—and waited for my approval, which honestly I could not give. I heard nothing more of this small mausoleum, for he was a taciturn man: but when, some year or two after, I went to his funeral and looked in vain for the temple-tomb, I found it had vanished, and in its stead was a plain marble slab with his simple name and birthday on it, and a blank left for the date of his death. Manifestly he had repented of the vaingloriousness of those herald angels and their dome; and practically took the hint of my dispraise in the adoption of that humbler tombstone.

Here is another characteristic trait: some navvy had found an old rusty anchor near the Thames Tunnel, one of Brunel's ruinous follies,—now, as we all know, finished and utilised by a railway. This anchor, a small one, probably lost by some "jolly young waterman," Mr. Hawkins maintained was Roman; and he had made for it a superb crimson case lined with satin, which hung on his drawing-room wall at Hammersmith as a decoration. He was also proud of possessing the paw of the Arctic bear which had attacked Captain Parry, but from which he escaped, as also did the bear, for no one is said to have shot the beast: however, there was the paw in proof: and there were divers other uncommon properties.

One of the most curious matters about my friend was this: the anagram of his name in full (and he always wrote Esquire and not Esq.) exactly describes him, with his peculiarity of greeting one with "Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" and with his usual signature "W.H.," which also he put on a medal for good conduct to youths, and gave my son one of those "W.H. medals." Now the words "Oh, Walter Hawkins, Esquire," makes anagrammatically, "W.H., who likes rare antiques!" exactly his idiosyncrasy as a man and a collector.

We all know how strangely "The Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, M.P.," spells, "I am the Whig M.P. who'll be a traitor to England's rule:"—may it not prove to be prophetic. And still more strange is the fact that the words "William Ewart Gladstone" spell "Erin, we will go mad at last!" which seems only too likely. Another curious anagram is this,—in a far different vein: "Christmas comes but once a year," makes "So by Christ came a rescue to man." There's no end to these petty word miracles.

But to revert to our theme and to conclude it. As a West India merchant, Mr. Hawkins one day sent me down to Albury a hogshead of sugar and some sacks of rice, to be given (or, as he preferred it, sold at half price for honour's sake and not to pauperise) to my poorer neighbours for a Christmas gift. Well, to please him, I tried to sell, and only raised the rancour of the shopkeepers, who declared I was competing with them as a grocer: then I gave, with the same experience that soup charity had before taught me, to wit, that poor quarrelled with poorer, and both with me, for more or less given. So I was glad when it all came to an end. It is very difficult, as many a Lady Bountiful knows, to be charitable on a wide scale: e.g. once, in my country life, I tried to recommend brown bread and oatmeal; and got nothing by it but ill-will, as if wishing to starve the poor by denial of wheat-flour.

Most of us have been checked in such silly efforts to do good through forgetfulness of the fact that usually the poorest are the proudest. Even the luxurious debris of London Club kitchens must be flung into swill-barrels for pigs, because starving men and women will not demean themselves to ask for it at the buttery-hatch. Moreover, that such are often extravagant too, everybody has found out—here's an instance: In my legal days, I now and then of course relieved poor folk, and sometimes passed through Seven Dials: casually, I looked in upon an old couple to whom I had occasionally given a trifle, believing them to be near starvation; and I found them roasting a brace of partridges—or was it quails? for they were waistcoated with bacon,—and I had the charity to hope they had not stolen them! Anyhow, I never called there again. And, while I am in Seven Dials, let me record another useful small experience. There was a lapidary handy, who had at times cut my beach-found choanites for me. One day I found him making scarabaei out of bits of agate and lapis lazuli. "Who gave you an order for these," said I. "Well, sir, I don't rightly know his name; but he was a furriner." "Was the name Signor——?" "That's it, sir." Then I set off straight to Sotheby's where I knew the Signor's Egyptian antiquities were soon to be sold, and duly forewarned the auctioneer of these forgeries. I need not detail how at the sale he put buyers on their guard, exposing the fraud, and condemning the peccant scarabaei to extinction. I wonder how many Grecian bronzes and copper Buddhas have been cast in Birmingham!

* * * * *

Yet another old friend for many years, so far literary in that he was a sculptor, is to be recorded in Joseph Durham: it was he who, more than thirty years ago, modelled in life and made in marble after death my beautiful three-year old daughter, little Alice, epitaphed in my poems. Of Durham's nobleness of character I can here give a charming trait. I used to go about once a week—sometimes less often—to Alfred Place to see how Durham was getting on with the statue (a sleeping infant), and one day, to my astonishment, I perceived that instead of any progress having been made in the work, it had, miraculously to me, retrograded; not half so near completion as it was last week. As I was wondering and perhaps not well pleased, Durham said, "I had hoped you would not call, till I had made it look as it did last week,—and then you needn't have known it." "Known what, friend?" "Well, only this; I came to a stain in the marble, and as I resolved you should have everything of the best,—I took another block, and have worked at it night and day, in hopes you wouldn't find me out. There's the other figure, under that cloth." Now, considering that the new block involved a cost of some twenty pounds,—and that the old one might have been artificially doctored, and that anyhow the risk and loss were equitably as much, mine as his,—and further that the young sculptor had little more than daily bread, if that,—I do say all this proves Durham to have been the noble fellow I found him to be for years. He is long gone, like so many other friends, to that Brighter World. His life-story in this was a touching one, as he told it to me; and I think known to very few besides myself. In youth he loved and was beloved; but friends and circumstances hindered; so she married some one else who, to Durham's constant horror and indignation, treated his wife brutally: till, one happy day, he died in some fit, probably from his own excesses. And then—here comes the sad climax—when Durham, having achieved fortune and fame, offered himself to his old love, the now rich widow, she deliberately turned away with a refusal, and broke his heart! Was it any wonder that his grief sometimes sought the solace of voluntary forgetfulness, or that certain false friends of his I wot of have in their teetotal Pharisaism made the evil most of an occasional infirmity, and have blackened even with printer's ink the memory of one of God's and Nature's true noblemen! Besides my little daughter in marble (so charmingly asleep that, in the Royal Academy, we heard one lady whisper to another, Hush, don't talk so loud, you'll wake her!)—besides that, his chef-d'oeuvre, as I always think, he modelled the bust of her father, now in the Crystal Palace Gallery,—but would not accept any payment for it! So like Durham,—who in many secret ways was ever generous and trying to do good: he was always self-forgetful and only too modest. Apropos, I remember that when Lord Granville asked the sculptor of Prince Albert's statue at South Kensington "Whether the Queen, who was so well pleased, could do anything for him"—suggestive, no doubt, of a knighthood—the dear unselfish Durham replied, "Thank you, my Lord,—if her Majesty's pleased, I'm satisfied." So that chance for a title was thrown heedlessly away,—but we always called him "Sir Joe" ever after: specially among the "Noviomagians," a band of antiquaries who used to dine together jovially at many pretended and picturesque sites of the undiscoverable Noviomagus, and among them I have met and numbered as my friends Chief Baron Pollok, George Godwin, Francis Bennoch, Thomas Wright, Thornbury and Fairholt and other noted names, some of them still among the living.

It gave me great pleasure as a Guernseyman to have been chiefly accessory to a duplicate in bronze of the Good Prince's statue by Durham being set up at the Pierhead of St. Peter's Port. Interest was exerted by me to get royal permission for a new cast from the original, Government giving the metal of old cannons; a collection from house to house was made throughout the island, granite to any extent was on the spot, meetings were held, and I had the pleasure to see Durham's grand work inaugurated there, and to find him welcomed by all the "Sixties"—ay, and the "Forties" too—with the hospitality for which Sarnia was in those days proverbial.

* * * * *

In this brief record of my literary life, I ought not to ignore sundry true and constant book-friends known to me only by correspondence, and that in some cases through many years. I cannot touch them all, and shrink even from mentioning one or two, for fear of seeming to omit others; but I will endeavour to do my best and wisest in the matter.

Foremost, then, among those unseen favourers of your author is the Baroness Stanislas von Barnekow, of Engelholme, in Sweden; with whom during fifteen years I have interchanged certainly fifty letters, if not more, hers at least being full of the utmost kindliness, cleverness, and (for a foreigner) even truly poetic eloquence. This tribute to her talents and warm feelings is only a debt of gratitude. She it was who voluntarily translated into Swedish my two first series of "Proverbial Philosophy," and many of my lyrics in "Cithara;" and naturally I was willing to answer her in kind (for the Baroness is an excellent and well-known poetess in her own land), but, as unfortunately the Swedish tongue is not among my few accomplishments, I was glad to turn to a diligent and authorial eldest daughter of mine, who learnt the language for me, and responded to our unseen friend with many of her poems rendered into English verse, as she had similarly favoured mine in Swedish. My said daughter afterwards improved upon the idea by several more like translations, since published in book-form, as some from the Sagas, and in particular many original poems of much merit from the pen of King Oscar and Princess Eugenie, which greatly pleased them, as their photographs and autographs testified; the Baroness's brother, Count Von Wrede, who is the King's Chamberlain, having kindly given facilities. I trust that my old "friend unseen," Stanislas, will not be displeased by this proof that I remember with appreciation her many expressions of esteem for my unworthiness.

Next, I do not know that I have mentioned the late learned Norman poet, George Metivier, as having long ago translated my "Proverbial Philosophy" into French; he died at a great age, I think past ninety, and was highly honoured by his native Guernsey, through life and death; I remember him with much gratitude for his labour of love in respect of my book. Through many years also I have corresponded with another Norman poet, John Sullivan, whose very clever French poems I have often versified into English for him, and he has returned the compliment by sending translated fly-leaves of mine over the Gallic world.

Let one more in this authorial category be the excellent and learned Canon R.C. Jenkins, whom I have known from his childhood, and who in these latter years has routed out for me, chiefly out of Zedler's "Genealogical Encyclopaedia," the heraldry and ancestry of my own Thuringian pedigree; the Canon being one of our keenest antiquaries in that line, and having German at his fingers' ends. He comes, as I do, from old Lutheran stock, and is full both of prose and poetry of a high class. My best regards to him and his.

The Rev. Wm. Barnes, of Dorset dialect fame, is another memory; as also in years past the late Chevalier de Chatelain, a relative of my Norwood friend, Victor de Pontigny, a well-known musical authority.

No doubt I have corresponded with most of the literary men of my day, from Tennyson to—well, I will not sound a bathos, but I do not publish private notes without permission, and in fact there would be no end of such printed amenities of literature battledored and shuttlecocked from one to another. I may, however, mention as a good habit of mine (is it not a good one?) that, whenever I like a book, I take leave to thank its author, and have usually received, en revanche, warm letters of their gratitude from many, especially if young ones. Surely it is proper in a veteran so to encourage a juvenile or even a mature brother, should he seem to deserve it. As also, be it known, that sometimes I have taken up the pen faithfully and honestly to rebuke: in these realistic and atheistic days there are some modern writers, both of prose and poetry, older or younger, who have reason to thank me for timely expostulations,—if they have attended to my friendly strictures.



CHAPTER XLII.

POLITICAL.

Throughout my lengthened spell of life I never was anything of a zealous politician. Well acquainted, as I have been, with many men of all manner of opinions, and having had much the schooling of Ulysses, who had "seen the cities of many men and had known their minds," I know perfectly well that there are in every school of thought good men, and bad men too, whatever may be their alleged principles, and I am quite willing to believe in an honest man, and stand by him if need be. In that spirit, for many years when I was a West Surrey voter (indeed I am so still), I used to give one of my votes to Briscoe, the Whig, and the other to Drummond, the Tory, because I knew and trusted both of them for upright men as well as personal friends, and they sat together as our Parliamentary representatives. As a matter of course, nobody understood my duplex voting,—for they were partisans and I was not,—so in that as in some other matters I have always been a dark horse, quite independent, and of the broadgauge pattern rather than of the narrow. For instance, having known him from youth to age, I do not even yet despair of Gladstone; though I have remained much where we both began, whilst he has gone down lower, step by step, to a zero of—what is it?—inverted ambition, whither I cannot willingly descend with him; and yet, I do not count him an enemy: he follows his conscience, as I do mine. Here was my judgment of the Man thirty years since, printed in No. 53 of my "Three Hundred Sonnets":

"Gladstone, through youth and manhood many a year My constant heart hath followed thee with praise As 'good and faithful;' in thy words and ways Pure-minded, just, and simple, and sincere: And as, with early half prophetic ken I hailed thy greatness in my college days, The coming man to guide and govern men, How gladly that instinctive prescience then Now do I see fulfill'd—because, thou art Our England's eloquent tongue, her wise free hand To pour, wherever is her world-wide mart, The horn of plenty over every land; Because, by all the powers of mind and lip Thou art the crown of Christian statemanship."

That high praise was once well-deserved, and was cordially given: but since, alas! according to my lights I have seen fit more than once to "palinode." The great man's rock of peril, whereon to wreck both his country and himself, is that fatal eloquence by which all are captured, but (as with birdlime) are captured to their loss. But I will not reproduce invidiously—as if false to a fifty years' friendship—any harsh reproach, however conscientious, whereby I may have publicly withdrawn my praise. Rather will I pass on,—and after my own fashion will here show my ambidextrous muse in a brace of political unpublished lyrics on either side.

"Popularis Aura."

"Liberty! dragg'd from the fetters of kings, Liberty! dug from the cell of the priest— Rise to thy height upon zenith-borne wings! Spread to thy breadth from the west to the east! Slow, through the ages, unbound limb by limb, Thou hast been rescued from tyranny's maw, Only glad service still yielding to Him Who ruleth in love by the sceptre of law!

"Nations have torn thee by fierce civil strife From the usurpers who trod them to mud; Saints at the stake gave up agonised life That superstitions be drown'd in hot blood! Theirs was the battle—the conquest is ours— Free souls and bodies the death-wrestled prize Won from bad kingcraft, despoiled of its powers, Wrench'd from false priestcraft in spite of its lies!

"God made the freeman, but man made the slave, Forcing his brother the shackle to wear; But all those fetters are loosed in the grave, King, priest, and serf meeting equally there; Here, too, and now, in these swift latter days, Freedom all round is humanity's right; Thought, speech, and action, enfranchised all ways, Eager for service in Liberty's might."

That may be truly labelled Liberal: the next, in honour of Beaconsfield, may be fairly ticketed Tory:

I.

"Great Achiever, first in place England's son of Israel's race! Man whom none could make afraid, Self-reliant and self-made,— Potent both by tongue and pen In the hearts and mouths of men, Wielder in each anxious hour Of the mighty people's power, Wise to scheme, and bold to do, Who can this be,—history, who?

II.

"Heaper of a new renown Even on Victoria's crown, Mightiest friend of blessed peace By commanding wars to cease, Paralysing faction still, Swift in act and strong of will, Forcing every foe to cower Under Britain's patient power, Like himself, firm, frank, and true, Who can this be,—justice, who?"

For other of my politicals, take this common-sense essay from my pen, hitherto unpublished:—

* * * * *

IS THE ONE-VOTE SYSTEM RIGHT OR WRONG?

In a nation self-governed through its own representatives, it seems reasonable to admit that each citizen should have a vote; each citizen, we say, simply as such; whether male or female, labourer, pauper, civil, military, naval, or official, every one not convicted of crime nor an attested lunatic, of full age, of sufficient capacity (evidenced by being able to read and write), celibate or married, rich or poor,—every person in our commonwealth should equitably, it may well be conceded, have his or her single vote in the government of the country. Poverty is no crime, therefore the Workhouse should not disfranchise; sex is no just disqualification, therefore the woman should have her vote as freely as the man, for surely marriage ought not to suffer derogation and disgrace by denial of the common right of citizenship as its penalty; the soldier, sailor, policeman, government-official, and any other class which may now be deprived of their birthright by law or custom, should certainly be admitted to the poll like other patriotic citizens; in short, manhood suffrage, it may be theoretically argued, is just and wise—manhood of course including womanhood, as suggested above; for even a wife either sides with her husband or controls him in common cases; and in the less usual instances where he rules, there need be no more tyranny about political matters than about domesticities, and so the home would scarcely be any the worse even for partisan zeal.

However, whilst admitting the theoretical propriety of a one vote for each citizen in the state, there remains to be considered the higher practical justice of many having more than one. Numbers alone are not the strength of a people; if of inferior quality they are rather its weakness. For the Parliament of England representation is demanded of all the virtues, talents, and acquirements, not certainly of the vice, ignorance, poverty, and other evils more rife among the lower rungs of the social ladder than to those above them. The single vote system (so far as the franchise has any influence at all) depresses and demoralises every class, as reducing all to one dead level. The ballot plan is now law and cannot well be done away with; but it is manifestly a humiliation for intelligence to have to sign with "his mark" in order that ignorance may thus feel itself on an equality; and for honest geniality to be hushed into silent secresy, that it may not put to shame the cunning fraud of a partizan who wishes to hide his real opinion. However, it is now too late to mend the ballot-box: let it be, and let the single voter use it if he pleases.

Another and a wiser scheme presents itself, practically (if possible) even now to avert the national ruin wrought by the machinations of a rash and blind self-seeking spirit of party, often, seen "hoist by its own petard," though too liable to destroy the foundations of society in the explosion. Shortly and simply, the scheme is this. Let every man, high or low, add to his one vote others as he may and can. Be there a vote for the Victoria Cross, another for the Albert Medal, another for long good-service in the household or the farm, another for any such intellectual exploits among the poor as Samuel Smiles has recorded; all these being accessible to the humblest, and so elevating them thus far. And now to ascend a few rungs, let additional votes be given to owners of a stated number of acres, to possessors of a certain amount of money, to those who have been deemed worthy of public honours, and the like. A little further, let every mayor of a town have his official vote, and the Presidents of the Royal Society and Royal Academy, and perhaps two or three other chiefs of science and art; and so forth.

Thus, then, we might get, by way of counterpoise to the voting power of a bare and overwhelming proletariat, the worthier and far sweeter voices of those who have virtues and excellences of various kinds to recommend them,—so that if the lowest constituent counts for one, the highest may add up to six or eight. And thus, while no one of the mob is denied his one vote, those who rise above the crowd receive the more than one they have earned by good-doing or position, and plump them all accordingly to the worthiest candidate.

The method of ascertaining and ensuring such votes might be this. Let each man who has more than his single suffrage apply for the paper specially prepared to indicate the additional votes. They might be much as thus:—

Surplus Claims—One Vote each.

For the Victoria Cross Signature of Claimant. For the Albert Medal ditto. For faithful domestic service in one family twenty-five years ditto. For field-work on the same farm thirty years ditto. As a famous self-taught naturalist ditto. As owner in fee of 50 acres ditto. As possessed of L1000 in Government funds ditto. As publicly selected for honour by the Queen ditto. As mayor of such a city ditto. As President of the Royal Society ditto. As President of the Royal Academy ditto. &c. &c. &c.

Heavy penalties should attach to false claimants, who would be readily found by their own signatures.

All these surplus votes, openly avowed, of course, and not kept secret as the single one in the ballot-box, would be counted up in the scores of the several candidates.

The surplus-voting papers should be applied for, be supplied, and be returned when filled up—by post, and so all such voting be accomplished on paper, as in the elections for Oxford University, &c. It is a barbarism and anachronism at this time of day to insist on the great cost and inconvenience of a personal appearance, in many cases impossible.

If our people in every class, and our legislators of whatever party, are dissatisfied with the present system of representation as by no means showing the nation at its best, and thus practically a mistake, let them consider this suggestion; one made long ago by the writer as proved by his published works.

The Voter's Motto.

I.

For Church and State! our father's honoured toast; Dear England's ancient bulwark and her boast: Must we now cease to build and man the wall At base Sanballat's and Tobiah's call? Shall Atheistic scorn and Jesuit guile Make Nehemiah quit his work awhile, That their Arabian host may tear all down, And trample in the dust our Zion's crown? May God avert it! No surrender! No! We will not yield the battle to the foe, Nor shall the children of our fathers thus Betray the heritage they left to us!

II.

For Church and State! While so we dread no storm, Let no man shrink from wise and just Reform; But with a firm and faithful, yet kind, hand, Prune cankers and corruptions from the land: Humble the pride of priestcraft! we are each Brother to him who doth Christ's gospel preach, And—though a trivial shibboleth offend— One who serves God and man shall be my friend: Ay, and some loaves and fishes should be given By the rich state to Ministers of Heaven! So shall both Church and State survive this strife, And dwell at peace with all, as man and wife.

III.

For Church and State!—Yea: though the King of Heaven As bridegroom to the Church Himself was given, Yet is He symbolled in this earth-bound sphere By the throned presence of our Sovereign here; And, ev'n as man and wife in figure show Christ and his spiritual spouse below, So by the eye of faith we gladly scan Our double duty—both to God and man— In yielding hearts to love, minds to obey Religion's mandate and the Ruler's sway, Defending timely, ere it be too late, Our threatened fortresses of Church and State!

As to the disputed matter of Protection, I am for Free Trade so far only as regards the matter of provisions; but I desire Fair Trade on the reciprocity system where manufactured articles and their raw material are concerned. We absolutely require free food,—but are being ruined by the bad bargain of one-sided Free Trade otherwise. Our ships (Mr. Brockelbank tells me) go out empty, and return full; exports fail, but imports are redundant.

As a final word about my politics, which I suppose may be called Liberal-Conservative, I am free to confess that I am only too half-hearted and am rather of Talleyrand's mind in the matter, "surtout point de zele." However, I heartily side with any one who protests against hereditary pensions, especially in the case of royal illegitimates, as also against the glaring impropriety of ceasing to exact legacy and probate duties beyond a certain sum, thus favouring the millionaire, as well as of excusing the highest of our society from all manner of taxation. These pieces of favouritism to the rich and great are only too reasonable causes of popular discontent, and must ere long cease. I would shut up half the public-houses in spite of all the brewers in the Lords and Commons; and for Church matters, parishioners should have some control over their pastors. If ever our Establishment is overthrown, that catastrophe will be due to clerical faults and defaults, rather than to lay apathy or hostility. If rectors were less tyrannical, congregations would love them better; and if curates were more inclined to Luther than to Rome, the Protestant heart of England would the gladlier appreciate their zeal and capabilities. As to the social mischief of Trades' Unions, an organised conspiracy of employed against employers, fatal to both, I have often exposed that evil in newspapers, though anonymously. It is an outrage on the honest working man with a family, that even in starving times he is obliged by paid demagogues to refuse work and wages unless he will give the least labour for the most pay, as the worst of his mates are glad to be forced to do: while the wicked absurdity of strikes, smashing factory windows and destroying machinery in order to coerce unfortunate masters to pay higher wages than they can afford, is climaxed by those brigand processions of idle roughs who go about bawling, "We've no work to do, and wouldn't do it if we had." The British workman (of course with many exceptions) has become a byword for everything unpleasant, which both large contractors and small employers avoid if they can: drink, bank holidays, radical spouters, the conceit of being better than their betters, and above all that suicidal iniquity of strikes, seem in these latter days to have generally demoralised a race of citizens of whose virtues our commonwealth once was proud. No wonder that John Bull had to go to Germany to finish his Law Courts.



CHAPTER XLIII.

A CURE FOR IRELAND.

In connection with the above, I will here print for the first time a paper written long ago on the now rife subject of a cure for Irish misery; at all events partially. Ireland has been with me a theme for many kinds of literature; from that usual sort of authorship, letters in the Times, to journalising on occasion, balladising in or out of season, and now and then a political squib or graver article. I have known that hapless land well in old days from Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear; have been a guest in several noted homes, as with geological Enniskillen and astronomical Crampton; know the natives well, and how they have been taught by priests and demagogues to hate the Sassenach, and, like most well-meaning men, who, after every kind effort, find themselves utterly misunderstood, am (as a merely private and quite unprejudiced politician) entirely at a loss to know how to please that impracticable people, or to mend their miserable condition. However, that in my authorial fashion I have tried, let the following paper prove; written and published nearly thirty years ago.

* * * * *

"Nations think and feel and act much as individuals do; for, after all, the largest crowd of men is, only an aggregate of units. If contempt provokes a man to anger, and avowed neglect forces him into indolence and hopelessness, we shall see the same result in masses as we do in single persons; and the causes which may have generated hatred and despair will everywhere and everywhen find cures in their contraries, honour being accorded in the place of contempt, and kindly care instead of cold indifference. Thus, the far too common phrase, 'No Irish need apply,' has doubtless wrought infinite ill-feeling; and the Levite's chilling rule of 'passing by on the other side' evermore arouses indignation nationally no less than individually.

"Now, it cannot be denied in an ethnological sense that the Celtic nature is peculiarly sensitive; any more than it can be denied historically that its good feelings have been too often systematically crushed, and its generous impulses seared. If the Teutonic mind illustrates in sterner traits the manhood of human intelligence, the Celt shows its gayer youthfulness, if not indeed the lighter phases of its reckless childhood: and it has been a second nature for the Saxon to hold mastery over the Celt, as a weaker race is everywhere subject to a strong one. Moreover, opposition in religious creed has had its evil influences, scarcely yet extinct, however caustically such a cure may in vain have been hitherto attempted.

"We must take nations as we find them: the Keltoi and the Sakai, always at contrariety, do not seem to have altered in character from the earliest prehistoric reports of old Herodotus even to our own times, more than three thousand years. Racial peculiarities are known to survive the actual transplantation to new lands; see in especial the Irish of America; as the Roman poet has it, 'Those who cross the sea may change their sky, but not their mind.' Therefore it is that a far-seeing and philosophical statesmanship should ever deal specifically—and as if individually—with national character; for example, if we would convert the typical Irish mind from (must we say it?) hatred of England to the love of her, we must commence as we would in domestic life, by somehow managing to please our too sensitive sister, by showing her our sympathies, and by treating her with honour instead of contemptuous indifference; thus investing her with 'the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.'"

It is a quarter of a century since the writer of this paper published in the course of a book of his, now somewhile out of print ("The Rides and Reveries of AEsop Smith"), the following short chapter, on page 322, here reproduced textually. It was headed "The Unsunned Corner," and runs thus:—

Ireland came upon the tapis, and AEsop said, when his turn came to speak: One of my fields, on the wrong slope of a hill-side and surrounded by trees, scarcely ever sees the sun; and by consequence its crops are short when arable, and when in pasture its grass sour, and the hay musty.

And why then, he went on to say, shouldn't Ireland have a palace—a Balmoral at Killarney, or another Osborne at Killiney?

Poor Erin is that unsunned corner of our Empire's field; and it seems a thousand pities that the kingdom of Ireland should be denied some such special royal home as is even found rather superfluously at the camp at Aldershot. What if one of those lovely arbutus-wooded islands at the foot of M'Gillicuddy's Reeks were fitted with a Swiss cottage for the Queen? Or if Bantry Bay supplied its marble for a royal castle near Cape Clear? Or if the railroad to Galway were supplied with a gilt carriage or two to waft Majesty and children to some western palace in Connemara?

Think you such gleams of sunshine wouldn't fertilise that poor neglected field, nor make its crops abundant, and its peasants happy? Think you that the gold mine of Royal bounty, and the graciousness of Royal favour, would not work a blessed change for grateful Ireland? Try it, O good Queen!—a Viceregal Court, excellent as ours is now, is but a sorry substitute for the real Majesty, nickel for silver, electrotyped plate instead of the true golden buffet: not without snobbism too, and toadyism and vulgarism and other detestable small heresies. If but once in three years Victoria's rural Court were housed in an Irish palace, her presence would do more for happiness, prosperity, and patriotism than all of these that Maynooth grants have ever hindered.

* * * * *

Thus AEsop Smith in 1858 delivered his mind on the matter. It is by no means pretended or supposed that a palatial residence would of itself cure Irish evils and misfortunes; but it might be a step towards this good result, and at any rate would remove one very allegible accusation of neglect: Ireland should enjoy the like privileges with her sister kingdoms England and Scotland: and however inadequate, per se, such a simple prescription may seem as "AEsop Smith" suggests, his advice contains at least one very obvious and easy cure for Irish disaffection; and I am not aware that either by pamphlet or in Parliament it has yet been seriously mooted. The Celts are a folk of essentially loyal instincts; but (much as Americans often are heard to complain in their own behalf) they have, as an independent nation, no seen and known object for their loyalty. Since the days of Brian Boroime at his mythic court of Tara, the Irish people have hardly set eyes upon the monarch of their country: perhaps (if we except the conquering William of the Boyne) our elderly Adonis, George the Fourth, was the sole specimen of English Majesty that has illuminated Ireland; until our gracious Queen herself made two very short but notable visitations in 1849 and 1853: yet even in the Georgian instance, unfavourable as personally it must have been, the enthusiastic reception he met with some sixty years ago at the hands of his Irish subjects is still remembered after two generations with a grateful and effusive loyalty. Imagine, if only from such an example as this, what might be the beneficent effect of our good Queen periodically visiting her kingdom of Ireland, and permanently having there some such happy homestead as Osborne or Balmoral; if also, in her absence, one of the princes of our Royal house represented his Imperial mother as Viceroy; and if in their train the tide of aristocracy, wealth, and fashion flowed in upon impoverished Ireland. It is not easy to calculate the advantages of such a social revolution as this; and surely, in spite of many obvious objections, such an experiment might be worth the trial.

A beginning might avowedly be made in the right direction, by building or purchasing some suitable castle as a permanent palace for Ireland's Queen; say, for old association's sake, at Tara, if anyhow adaptable,—or any other picturesque neighbourhood connected with some ancient chieftain of the Irish quasi-heptarchy; wherein a Royal Establishment might be commenced, in present proof of the serious intention as to an early future residence: the mind of the people might be thus prepared for the speedy coming of their Sovereign and her Court, and would be softened and gratified by the evident confidence and good-feeling thus shown; as well as their condition materially benefited by the necessary expenditure that must be laid out locally in labour and materials, giving work to the needy, and so helping to cure Erin's chief disease,—poverty to the verge of famine. As to actual life-peril,—every due precaution being taken,—the happy result of such a humanising experiment might fairly be left to the generous native loyalty of a kindly treated people, and to the gracious guardianship of God's good providence. I am sure that present Royalty would neither be boycotted nor burked. We remember with what generous cordiality our Prince and Princess were received by all classes and creeds in their recent brave visit to Ireland.

* * * * *

I cannot honestly pretend to have always taken quite so amiable a view of Celtic matters. I plead guilty to having more than once assailed in print Daniel O'Connell and his kind, and to have written a pair of once famous poetical fly-leaves, "Erin go bragh" and "Hurrah for Repeal!" copies of which (beyond my archived ones) can now only be found in the Ballad Collection of the British Museum, which I used to supply with my Sibyllines, at a chief librarian's request: I forget the name, but he collected such placards. I fear the two above were not very complimentary: but what can one do for a perverse people, who complain of it as a wrong that they are excused the Queen's taxes? Also I wrote certain famous letters on Ireland, especially four long ones signed "T.," in the Times of January 1847.

* * * * *

In Ireland I have caught a salmon at Killarney and cooked it too on an arbutus stake; I have bruised my shins at the Giant's Causeway; I have been an honoured guest at classical Florence Court; have picked up native gold at Avoca; have done the Round Towers, possibly Phoenician Baal-temples; have handled Brian Boroime's harp; and have been shocked everywhere by the poverty and degradation of that musical barbarian's miserable because idle people. What can be done for those who will not help themselves?



CHAPTER XLIV.

SOME SPIRITUALISTIC REMINISCENCES.

Having often been asked to put on record my few and far-between experiences of spiritualism, as on several occasions I have verbally related them, I have hitherto neglected or declined to do so, on account of having really seen little, whereas many others have seen far more. And on the whole it is to me rather an unwelcome task from several considerations; first, because I have never wished to add, by my apparent testimony, to the rising tide of unwholesome superstition in that or any other direction; secondly, because I had always a crowd of more important matters to look after, and, perhaps, was inclined to indolence in the "dolce far niente" respecting things of less consequence to myself; and thirdly, in chief, because, albeit I have seen and heard a few of the petty miracles (avouched for otherwise by thousands of better witnesses) inexplicable to my own reason, I yet entirely abjure and renounce this so-called spiritualism as any part of my personal belief. In particular, it seems to me quite an inconclusion to give to the spirits of the dead, or to any other existences, good or evil (unless, indeed, by possibility to ourselves as magnetically and sympathetically influenced by some metaphysical potencies whereof we know next to nothing), the seemingly miraculous powers exhibited, however weakly and childishly, in numberless seances, privileged to possess among the company an ecstatic medium between (as is assumed) themselves and beings immaterial.

The little I have seen and heard shall, however, now, upon a reasonable call, be related simply and honestly, without any theory beyond what is parenthetically alluded to in my last sentence, and with no attempt at explanation, but only the expression of this truth, viz., that no collusion apparently was possible (according to my judgment) in any of the following manifestations, and that I promise only to state plain facts, however, others may seek to expound them. Of course, where cunning and dishonesty may contrive conjuring tricks it is not worth while to treat such "manifestations" seriously, but I speak of what seemed to be genuine, if trifling, marvels.

To begin, then, with my earliest experience, written down the same evening, and sent to the Brighton Gazette, from which I give an extract. The date is Thursday, January 25th, 1849; the host, the late Mr. Howell, of Hove; the performer, Alexis, pupil of M. Marcillet, who accompanied him. After clairvoyance, induced by passes, Alexis is blindfolded carefully, and then, with the host's own pack of cards, wins blindfolded at games of ecarte with myself. Next, a French book, brought by an incredulous physician, was placed open upon the forehead of Alexis, who read aloud some lines of it. This experiment, with variations, was several times repeated. The third was my own test. I had sealed up something unknown to all the world but myself in twelve envelopes of white paper. Alexis, placing the parcel on his forehead, in broken and difficult enunciation, said "it was writing, two names, both commencing with M; one of them an English name, the other French, or some language not English; that the first contained four letters, the second six (being really nine)," but he failed to give the names, which were Mary Magdalene. It was suggested that if they had been written in French his mind might have more easily discerned them. After this, several locks of hair and sealed-up parcels, watches, and lockets, were (with some unsuccessful attempts) guessed at, seemingly to the satisfaction of the ladies and gentlemen who had respectively brought them for explanation. The last experiment regarded a large bon-bon box covered up, in which the host himself had concealed a mystery. Alexis described it as wrapped in several folds, graven all round, oval, a portrait of a young person of eighteen, but done a long time ago, set in gold, "femme habillee en blanc; elle est morte, la tete au droit." In all these respects the object was faithfully described, in particular to the "long time ago," which, by a date on the portrait, was found to be 1769. And there were some other experiments, but Alexis, as appearing to be well-nigh worn out with mental exertion, was then mercifully unmesmerised.

I may mention, by the way, that the said host at whose house Alexis attended was a firm believer in the power of the human will, and as connected therewith, in mesmerism, whereby he used to cure people of headaches and other infirmities; and, at length, through his philanthropic and energetic attraction to himself of other folks' disorders (for he fancied he imbibed for his own behoof the pains he drained ab extra), he unhappily became a paralytic, dying not long after. One of his less perilous attempts at the miraculous, I remember was this: he brought a street Arab into his drawing-room, and put a half-crown down on the carpet for him to pick up if he could, and keep for himself; however, this the boy found, to his wonderment, to be practically impossible, seeing that Mr. Howell had secretly willed that he could not and should not pick up the prize. But such efforts of a man's strong will are well evidenced in numerous other instances, and serve to prove that no spiritual interferences beyond our noble selves are essential to such mysteries.

Amongst other reminiscences of the marvellous, I may refer to a private exhibition in the Berners Street Hotel, to which I was invited by Mrs. Washington Phillips (of whom more anon), to investigate Mr. Vernon's influence over a little girl some twelve years old. The child's specialty was an alleged capability of reading without eyesight, the back of her head low down on the nape doing duty in the way of vision. To omit numerous other successful examples (some failing, which I thought so far evidences of the absence of collusion), I will detail my own conclusive experiment. But let me anticipate an objection relating to the exhibitor himself. Some of our party, a very distinguished one, and known to each other, kept Mr. Vernon in conversation at a distance, while the child was reading our thoughts, or the actual words of print unknown to ourselves, quite independently of his manipulations; he having first comatised her into a mesmeric state of trance. The invited guests were told, as in the Alexis case, that we might bring our own tests; and I had put into my pocket a small volume of Milton, from which she might read on the nape of her neck, if she could. We had previously bandaged her eyes, even to plaistering them up; and were only bidden to be careful not to let the handkerchief cover the place of reverted seeing on her neck. I stood behind the child, and, without knowing where I opened my little Milton, placed the expanded volume on the back of her head; and forthwith, slowly and with difficulty, as a child might, she read two lines of blank verse, which I and all immediately verified! Now, I state a fact which I cannot explain; for I myself had not seen the lines, so my own brain was not read: neither could Mr. Vernon nor any one else have been concerned in the matter. I believe this sort of thing to be well-known to spiritualists, and they may, for aught I know, refer it to angelic or necromantic interposition: whereas, what physicians tell us of hypochondria is, perhaps, a mysterious explanation nearer the mark.

The same child, refreshed into an abnormal ecstasy, taking the hands of several of our party professed to read their thoughts, with admitted success in some instances. With me she failed, but then I was not considered en rapport. Female believers are always much more susceptible than masculine sceptics. However, I certainly had proof of the child's marvellous power in this slight matter following. Two young ladies had successfully brought her in spirit, into their mother's drawing-room in Berkeley Square, the child graphically explaining all she saw as she was mentally led along, and on being asked if she noticed anything new and pretty on the mantel-piece, she got up and placed herself in an attitude of dancing, and she said there was a figure and it was clothed in lace. This was true; it was a bisque statuette of Taglioni. On being led round the room, still in spirit and clairvoyante, the child strangely described wax-flowers under a glass, and laughed heartily at "Taffy riding his goat,"—a china ornament which she could have known nothing of.

With respect to the lady who invited us, I can relate a strange story wherewith the Brighton doctors in 1848 were familiar. Mrs. P. had an invalid daughter subject to violent headaches, and as she had read of the remedial powers of mesmerism from Chauncey Townsend's book, privately resolved to try and cure her, and soon set her to sleep by the usual "passes." However, when after twelve and even eighteen hours the girl could not be awakened, Mrs. P. and her husband (a clergyman, who knew nothing of the cause) were alarmed and summoned doctor after doctor, to wake her, if they could. But all was in vain, until some one turning to the peccant and magical volume found that by the simple process of reversing the passes the abnormal slumber might be made to cease. This was done at once, and all came more than right, for the girl woke up without her usual headache, and was cured from that hour. At this time of day, after thirty years and more, society having become wiser, and bur medical men more physiologically hygienic, we all now wot of mesmerism, and innumerable cases of cure through that mysterious form of catalepsy.

For another small experience, I have several times been among a crowd of others at public exhibitions of those who speak off-hand in prose or verse, "inspirationally" as they call it, but as the outer world prefer to believe, improvisatorially, and certainly amid such gifted persons Mrs. Cora Tappan stands out prominently in my memory. At the Brighton Pavilion I gave her for a theme to be versified on the spot extempore my own heraldic motto, "L'espoir est ma force," and to my astonishment, in a burst of rhymed eloquence she rolled off at least a dozen four-line stanzas on Hope and its spiritual power. Some one else among the audience gave the subject of cremation, and forthwith the lady descanted with terrific force on funeral pyres and the horrors of Gehenna; whilst a male performer affected to personate sundry well-known dead orators of past days (for as the inspirers were supposed to be disembodied spirits no living orators were allowable), and he certainly imitated both voices and topics with singular success. But everybody has heard of this sort of thing, sufficiently remarkable as a mental effort; and we have all similarly witnessed the more material marvels of Maskelyne and Cook, known to be mechanical contrivances which are still riddles to the world.

Again, there are those who draw and paint in a condition of spiritual ecstasy; and I remember visiting a public exhibition in Bond Street, exclusively of most curious and intricate pictures, asserted to have been inspired by dead artists, some being elaborate flourishings of scenes and figures, said to be thus depicted as with lightning speed. As to living artists, there are in existence several excitable youths and damsels who write and draw very rapidly in an ecstatic state; and I myself possess a dreamy conglomerate of microscopic faces crowded together, and stated to have been drawn thus instantaneously to prove to us "the cloud of witnesses," "the innumerable company of angels," by whom we are continually surrounded.

I pretermit with brief mention sundry inexplicable wonders, such as those wherewith the spiritualistic papers are frequently full, only stating that I was one of those who investigated the case of the Rev. Mr. Vaughan's pew-opener, at St. James's, Brighton, whose daughter was thought to be "bewitched." Certainly, strange knockings accompanied her when she came in at my call, much like those I heard many years ago at Rochester, U.S.; and her mother (a pious and credible widow) assured me, with tears of unfeigned anxiety, that the chairs and stools followed her about!—a statement only half credible, when we reflect that there is an animal magnetism as well as a mineral one, and that we know nothing of the reasons of either. Our ignorance on such matters is so profound that we may fairly be credulous unless we obstinately refuse altogether our belief in human testimony; but if we dare to do this, higher interests are endangered than spiritualistics. Our religion is mainly based upon credible evidence.

There is certainly much that is mysterious in the toy they call "Planchette," a triangular thin slab of polished wood on a couple of small wheels, with a pencil at the apex. Hands laids upon this by two persons properly conditioned, will give apparent vitality and volition to the small machine, and make the pencil seem to write of itself in answer to expressed (or meditated) questions. At a wealthy mansion in South Kensington, for instance, I saw two charming young Italian ladies, sisters, covering rapidly sheet after sheet with the abstrusest essays on occult subjects, given to them to write upon inspirationally; and the chief wonder was (as a learned friend by me well observed) where the knowledge came from, so seemingly infused into two unscientific young girls. Afterwards the said learned friend tried Planchette with me, and we were considerably startled to find that when I asked of the so-called spirits, "What think ye of Christ?" the pencil under our unconsciously-guided hands made answer, "With the utmost reverence!" I need not assure mankind that neither my friend nor I (both incredulous and unwilling witnesses) lent ourselves or one another to any deception, and were mentally inclined, if at all, to the expectation that the "spirits" might rather blaspheme than bless. It is right to mention that, beyond the pair of young ladies and our two selves, only the host and hostess were in the room; of whom I have this further wonder to report, viz., that the host, whom I must not specify by name without his leave, is afflicted with blindness, notwithstanding which and his alleged incompetence towards poetry as an old naval officer, his wife showed me several copybooks full of blank verse written by him in a hand unlike his own, and supposed by them to be inspired by Young, as a continuation of his "Night Thoughts." The captain and his lady also told us how frequently flowers and sweetmeats (!) were showered on them from the ceiling at their domestic dual seances: and on another occasion a lady showed my wife and me a paper of seed pearls, alleged to have been flung into her lap from the heavens—through the ceiling—by her departed lord and master! Similarly, a lady well known in the professedly spiritualistic circles, deposited round her chair, in the dark, at Mr. S.C. Hall's, a profusion of bouquets—probably from Covent Garden;—and that, notwithstanding the hostess had herself searched the lady before the seance, as it was known that Mrs. G's special gift from the spirits was the multitudinous creation of flowers! Really, there must be a stand somewhere made to credulity; but, at all events, the venerable host and hostess believed this, on what seemed to them reasonable evidence, and quite forgave me for not believing it too.

And this brings me, naturally enough, to give a detailed account of the two best and last seances I ever took the trouble to attend; for I have, during many years, entirely avoided such exhibitions, as generally childish, mentally unwholesome, and to some people dangerously seductive. I had several times asked my worthy friends last alluded to, to give me and a friend of mine, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, the privilege of "assisting" at a seance under their experienced guidance: and accordingly we were invited to meet Mr. Home, the high priest of spiritualism, a quiet, well-mannered gentlemanly person enough, known to our host from his birth. The other guests were a countess, the widow of a colonel, and a distinguished physician; in all we numbered eight. My friend and I were requested privately, by our host, to conceal our probable incredulity if we desired the favour of the "spirits" in the way of manifestations; and as these were what we came for, besides our own polite desire to do at Rome as the Romans do, we readily assented to the reasonable request. After the usual greetings and small talk of the day, and tea and coffee and so forth, we all took seats round the drawing-room circular table, a very weighty one, as I proved afterwards, on a gigantic central pillar, and covered with a heavy piece of velvet tapestry; and before commencing the special business we came for, I was pleased to hear our host propose that we should all kneel round the table and offer up prayer: this he did, simply and beautifully, in some words, extemporary, closing with a Church collect and the Lord's Prayer. On my expressed approval of this course, when we rose, Mr. Home said it was always his custom, as a precautionary measure against the self-intrusion of evil spirits: admittedly a wisdom, even if it seemed somewhat unwise and perilous to be more or less courting the company of such unpleasant guests, if a seance (as experienced afterwards) did not happen to be made safe by exorcism. And now the gaslights bracketed round the room were put as low as possible, making a dim, religious semi-darkness; however, as there was a bright fire in the grate, and some small scintillae of gas, and one's eyesight soon gets accustomed to any diminution of light, we could soon see nearly as well as usual. This "gloaming" is a common condition in seances, and for aught any one knows may be an electrical sine qua non as needed for animal magnetism; albeit some paid professionals may possibly find darkness a very useful veil for cheatery. While we were chatting round the table,—and Mr. Home enjoined this as better than the silent sobriety I looked for—suddenly the table shuddered, and a cold wind swept over our hands laid upon it. "They are coming now," said Mr. Home, which everybody seemed glad of, though that cold wind felt to me not a little "uncanny," but I said nothing in disparagement, for fear of stopping a "manifestation." Soon loud knocks were heard, apparently from the middle of the table, and on sundry spirits being alleged to be present, Mr. Home proceeded to question them through the ordinary clumsy fashion, of the alphabet, and some unimportant answers were elicited, which I fail to remember and in common honesty must not invent. We were soon to see stranger things; and I suppose the seance was exceptionally successful, as I afterwards noticed some of it in print. For while we were looking and expecting, suddenly the table began to tilt this way and that, and then as if by an effort the ponderous mass, with all our hands still upon the velvet pall, positively mounted slowly into the air, insomuch that we were obliged to rise from our chairs and stand to reach the surface. I could see it at least two feet from the carpet, and Mr. Home invited me to take especial notice that none of the company could possibly be lifting the table; indeed, the strength of all of us combined would have been barely enough for such a heavy task. Of course, every one else but myself and friend supposed that the "spirits" had kindly done this miracle to please us; but I unfortunately said "Oh! Mrs. Hall! it will crush your chandelier!" (one of Venice glass, very precious)—at which unbelieving remark, probably, the spirits took umbrage, for at once the table ceased ascending, and with a slow oscillation descended very gently on to the carpet. This sort of petty miracle is a frequent experience among the spiritualists, and how it is effected I cannot imagine. There could be no contrivance or machinery in our host's drawing-room, as must be the case imitatively at the Egyptian Hall; none of the company could be conspiring to deceive, and more than all, that huge, heavy table rising up against the law of gravitation was enough to chase away all incredulity. One fact is stronger than fifty theories; and one reliable success overweighs a thousand failures. I testify to that which I have seen.

But more, and more wondrous, was to follow. All at once Mr. Home flung himself back in his chair, looking wild and white; and then rising slowly and solemnly, went to the still bright fire, into which he thrust his unprotected hands, and taking out a double handful of live coals, placed them—as a fire offering—upon Mr. Hall's snow-white head, combing the hair over them with his fingers, all which our host appeared to receive more than patiently—religiously. Thereafter Mr. Home placed them in the Countess's blonde-lace cap, and carried them, as a favour vouchsafed by the spirits, to each of us, to hold in our hands. When he came to me, Mr. Hall said: "My friend, have faith." "Yes," I answered, "and courage, too;" whereupon I was blest with a good handful of those wonderful coals, still hot enough to burn any skin; but, somehow or other, I felt no pain and had no mark. Here was another law of nature put to shame, in the miraculous fact that fire was seemingly deprived of the power of burning. How this could be, I cannot guess; but I record manfully the fact as witnessed. After this, an accordion held under the table by Mr. Home with one hand, the other being upon the table, positively played a tune of itself—"Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon"—requested by Dr. Chambers, "that being the tune his dead child loved so." I was requested to look under the table to see the "spirit-hand" operating near the carpet; but I saw nothing except the vitalised accordion expanding and contracting of itself, being held tightly at the upper handle by Mr. Home. Some of the company, however, claimed to see and to shake hands with the child, and Mr. Home requested me to ask for a similar favour by placing my hand open under the table; this, accordingly, I ventured to do, with the result of feeling my thumb sensibly touched and thrilled, which I was told was a good sign of favour from the spirits—albeit in my own mind I remembered what our omniscient Shakespeare sings at the mouth of one of the Macbeth witches,

"By the pricking of my thumbs Something wicked this way comes"—

and failed to feel quite comfortable. Soon, however, Mr. Home said: "The accordion is leaving my hand;" and I saw the mysterious thing crawling on the floor like a lame dog till it got into a corner. Of course, I suspected a secret string; but all at once it moved out and came back, moaning AEolianly as it went, and stood up beside the chair of Mrs. Colonel N.S., who patted it lovingly; thence passing behind me it went and stood beside the Countess, who also caressed it; and then Mr. Home said: "Now ask the spirit to come to you;" whereto I acceded, and the accordion crept near me, as if unwillingly, and stood up; but when I touched it the thing shrank from my unsympathetic hand, and fell down flop.

After this, I noticed that my naval friend was staring with all his eyes at something over our military widow's head, and that his hair (it is red, which colour is very spiritualistic) stood on end as with fear. "What's the matter, P.?" I asked. "Don't you see it?" responded he. "What?" "The grey figure behind Mrs. N.S., bearded like an Egyptian Sphinx." "That's the Colonel!" exclaimed Mr. Hall, and the widow bowed religiously, with a "Dear! is it you?" On this, as my friend was terribly frightened, we soon took leave; and when we went home, I found that he was so pursued by "spirits" rapping all about him, that he actually vacated his own room and slept in mine, for protection against the invisible, on two chairs till morning broke; when he feared the spirits no longer. I may mention that this insight into an immaterial world (he having been inclined before to pyrrhonism) quite altered his career, and that soon after he took holy orders. In this connection I may state, that according to a printed account I have seen, both Mr. and Mrs. Hall were converted from avowed materialism by spirit manifestation, and that when the question of "Cui bono?" is raised, his experience and that of divers others (the aforesaid Dr. Chambers in particular) will avouch for the practical usefulness of these inexplicable marvels.

But I must have done, with only one other reminiscence soon after that at Ashley Place. This time the venue is Fitzroy Square, and the company (to omit needless detail) was a polyglot one, consisting chiefly of a German merchant, a Hebrew financier, a French governess, my naval friend aforesaid, who was quick at Latin, and I, who more or less remembered my Greek. Of course English was represented in the two only other guests; and it will be seen how strangely philology enters into this my next and concluding anecdote. After plenty of other rappings and noises (I noticed by the way that all the metal things in the room, as castors and cruets—it was a dining-room—and wine coolers and bronze chandelier, were clicked and clanged), and after the usual stupid alphabet questions and answers had been exhibited; after also the heavy mahogany table on five substantial pillars had been miraculously moved about the room and tilted, as we failed to effect at the finale when we tried; all at once a thundering knock quite shook the table and startled us, on which Dr. Connell, our (unprofessional) medium for the nonce, as he had seen more of spiritualistics than we had, called for the alphabetical test to ascertain who it could be that knocked so furiously, for the blows were often repeated. So then, by the slow method of letter by letter, he made out the name "Jamblic," and then gave it up in despair, as he said it was a mischievous imp that was sporting with us; but the knocks still continued, and some one suggested that perhaps this strange name was foreign, and that his own language would please the incensed spirit better than English. Accordingly, he was addressed by the assembled circle severally in French, German, Hebrew, and Latin, all in vain; when I bethought me of Greek and the Pythagoreans and spoke out "Ei su Iamblicos" (Art thou Iamblicus?)—on which, as if with joy at having been discovered, there was a rush of noises and knocks all round the room (my perfervid imagination fancied the flapping of wings), and immediately after there ensued a dead silence! So we soon broke up and went home. Opening my classical dictionary at Iamblicus, I read what I certainly had not seen or thought of for more than thirty years, that he was an author on "the mysteries of the Egyptians," and was bracketed with Porphyry as a professor of the black art. Was then this unpleasant visitor to Fitzroy Square no other than that magician redivivus? An awkward possibility.

And now to bring these scattered reminiscences to a practical conclusion. What can I, what can my readers decide, on a rational consideration of the whole matter? It is, no doubt, very baffling to judge how rightly to think about it. I have stated a few facts that have come under my own personal knowledge; but there are thousands of others similar and even more extraordinary, which numerous persons quite as credible as I am can vouch for in like manner to be true facts while remaining unexplained miracles. For myself, I must suspend judgment; waiting to see what in these wonderful times—some further development of electricity, for example, may haply produce for us. After recent marvels of the telephone, microphone, photophone, and I know not what others, why should not some Edison or Lane Fox stumble upon a form of psychic force emanating from our personal nervous organisation, and capable of operating physically on all things round us, the immaterial conquering the material it pervades? Some such vague theory as to spiritualistic manifestations may be a far more rational as well as pleasing explanation of these modern marvels than to suppose that our dead friends come at any medium's summons to move tables, talk bad grammar, and play accordions; or that angels, good and evil, are allowed to be employed in mystifying or terrifying the frivolous assisters at a seance.

Beyond and after this, I might add, but for its too great length, the indisputable testimony of certain friends of mine as to inexplicable writings on locked slates and paper, the revelation of secrets, nay visible apparitions, and both records of the secret past and revelations of the still more secret future afterwards fulfilled,—to all which I cannot, as an honest man and a believer in human evidence, refuse to give a distinct testimony, even though conjurors perpetually baffle our confused judgment.

In this connection I will extract from one of my Archive-books the curious story of a mysterious key in which my family are still interested: for the secret is not yet solved. In the fourteenth volume, then, of my Archives occurs this long note, accompanied by the drawing which I made years ago of the weird-looking key: with a loose ring handle, a threefold staircase body, and a strangely ringed column.

"My father died in his sleep, December 8, 1844, at Southwick House, in Windsor Park, on the same night after its owner, Lord Limerick, had also died there in his arms, my father having been his medical friend for thirty years. My father used to carry in his pocket a strange key, whereof the figure was very unusual, as it folded up, and though large he carried it in his pocket habitually: and he used to say in his quietly humorous and reserved manner, 'under that key lies a fortune;' my mother and I and others remember this well. When I came to be executor, there was nearly nothing to guide me as to the amount of my father's property,—and I certainly did not succeed in realising all that he was supposed to have acquired. It was wonderful that with his large income he left so little. So, we all thought that some hoard locked by this key contained the missing treasure; my father's habitual taciturnity, and secretiveness favouring this idea. But, nowhere could the lock to fit it be found; nowhere either at banks or lawyers or anywhere about our old house in Burlington Street or at Albury, appeared the chest or cupboard containing the fancied accumulations; and to this hour, June 12, 1873, nearly thirty years after my father's sudden death, has the mystery not been cleared up. Once, on an occasion of a spiritualistic seance at Mr. Carter Hall's, I handed the said key to Mr. Home when entranced, and he shuddered at it, and uttered the name 'Elizabeth Henderson,'—which I thought at the time a bad guess, as one utterly unknown to me: but oddly enough it proved to be the name of the Queen's housekeeper at Windsor. However, on inquiry nothing further came of this, for she was not in office when my father died at the Park. To-day I have taken the key to a Miss Hudson, a clairvoyante, who never saw me before, nor was told my name, nor my errand, except that I laid that key silently before her. She can tell me very little, except that the mystery is soon to be cleared up, and that certain spirits (from description possibly my mother and brother William) much wish it. I gave no sort of clues, but the medium guessed at my father's character, and at the long lapse of time since the loss of the chest, and at the hiding of it in some 'bank,'—whether underground or at a banker's did not appear. The medium's 'attendant spirit'—one 'Daisy, an Indian papoose'—says it is 'in a dark place, like a vault, and mouldy.' I am urged to inquire further. Miss Hudson, a common-looking but respectable woman of about thirty,—living in a lodging near Bloomsbury Square,—utterly ignorant who I was and all about me,—said (in her spirit voice) that I was a writer of books, and did great good, and was inspired by two spirits, one of the fair and lively sort all in white, and the other an old philosopher—a strange guess at my mixed medley of writings. Miss Hudson promised me that I should soon know the secret of the key, because the spirits wished it, and because there was a blue magnetic circle round the key."

* * * * *

P.S.—It is only proper to state that up to this present writing, January 13, 1886, I have heard nothing at all from the spirits aforesaid, and that the family key is as mysterious as ever. My own reasonable explanation of the medium's half true guesses is that she might have read my own dim thoughts about the matter: naturally I would think of my dead mother and brother and myself; and thought-reading is a form of animal magnetism which some people possess more than others.

Of late, as we all know, Mr. Cumberland and others have exhibited their mysterious powers of perceiving and expounding the secret thoughts of those who chose to be thus mentally vivisected: and I myself have this small experience to record. Asked in a drawing-room to think of something, the hostess answered my thought by "I don't know what it means, but there's a great deal of green with a white star going round and round in it." "Quite true," was my reply, "I was thinking of Ewhurst windmill."

In my anonymous prophetic ode, "Things to Come" (Bosworth, 1852, long out of print), at its eleventh section, thought-reading and other like metaphysicals are strangely anticipated, ending with—

"Into some other wicked man's mind His foolish brother is peeping to find, Caught in foul excitement's snare, The Lying Future there!"



CHAPTER XLV.

FICKLE FORTUNE.

Ever since Schiller wrote his famous song about a poet's heritage (ay, and long before that, as it will be long years hence), authorship has been noted for anything rather than wealth; albeit, nowadays, we have had such fortunate scribes as Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope, who severally have left piles of well-earned money behind them; though they all had encountered previous mischances before. Accordingly, in this true record of my life, I must not omit its reverses, for, though born with a silver spoon in my mouth (perhaps a bismuth one, such as in my chemical days I melted in hot tea), and always having had plentiful surroundings, there has been often much also of financial embarrassment, though not always nor usually from the author's fault. I am not going to accuse others any more than myself, only hinting that it has been costly to be a sleeping-partner, especially when the chief fails; that it is discouraging to economic thrift when the investments wherein you place your savings come to an untimely end; that in particular the Albert Life Insurance was a notorious swindle, wherein more than twenty years' of banked-up prudent earnings, besides the original policy, vanished in an hour; that my early efforts to win fortune were stumped from impediment of speech; and that some of those on whom I depended, as well as others dependent on me, met with misfortunes, deserved or undeserved. Anyhow, I have just now no reason to complain of bursting barns or inflated money-bags. Everybody knows (so I need not blink it) that some time ago a few friends kindly got up a so-called testimonial for my benefit; but that sort of thing had been overdone in other instances; and it is small wonder that (although certainly not quite such a fiasco as with Ginx's Baby) the trouble and care and humiliation are scarcely compensated where the costs and defaults are considerable: however, I desire heartily to thank its promoters and contributors, one and all; even those who promised but never paid.

With reference to other efforts, my two Transatlantic visits, and divers reading tours at home, show that self-help never was neglected, as, indeed, former pages will have proved. Accordingly, as Providence helps those who help themselves, or at all events endeavour to do so, I still lean on the heraldic motto, given to General Volkmar von Tophere by Henri Quatre, "L'espoir est ma force." I will here add two American anecdotes whereby it might seem that heretofore I have unwittingly jilted Fortune when she would have blest me with her favour.

I had just landed in New York after a stormy fortnight in the Asia (it was A.D. 1851) and taken up my quarters at the Astor House, to rest before friends found me out. But my arrival had been published, and before, in private, I had taken my first refreshment, the host, a colonel of course, came and asked if I would allow a few of my admirers to greet me. Doubtless, natural vanity was willing, and through my room, having doors right and left, forthwith came a stream of well-wishers all shaking hands and saying kind words for an hour and more; at last they departed, all but one, who had come first and boldly had taken a chair beside me: when the crowd were gone, he bluntly (or let it be frankly) said, "I'm one of the richest men in New York, sir, and I know authors must be poor; I like your books, and have told my bankers (naming them) to honour any cheques on me you may like to draw." "My dear sir," I replied, "you are most considerate, and all I can say is, if I have the misfortune to lose this packet (it was a roll of Herries's circular notes) I shall gladly accept your offer; but just now I have more than I want—L300." "Well then, sir, come and stay at my house, Fifth Avenue." "This is very kind, but several friends here have specially invited me, so I am compelled to decline." "Then, sir, my yacht in the harbour is at your service." "Pardon me, but I would rather forget all memories of the sea at present,—with due thanks." "Then, sir, my carriage has been waiting at the hotel all this time, let me have the honour of taking you to see Mrs. So-and-so, who is anxious to meet you." Of course I could not refuse this, nor the occasional loan of his handsome turn-out whenever other friends let me go. Who knows how nearly I then missed smiles from the blind goddess, by my sturdy refusal of her favours, for I heard afterwards that the wealthy Mr.—— was childless! Again, at Baltimore, after my Historical dinner (see a former page), comes up to me a very shabby-looking man, as I thought to beg. He sidled up and whispered that he wanted me to go home with him. I'm afraid I rather snubbed him; but was sorry for it afterwards, when told that he was the rich old miser So-and-so, who had never taken a fancy to any one before. What a dolt I must have been to snub away the possible codicil of a millionaire!

* * * * *

On page 3 of this book I proposed no mention of private domesticities or of personal religious experiences—the one being of interest merely to my family, the other a matter between God and the soul. However, the recent sudden death of one for fifty years my faithful friend and companion in marriage, urges me to record here simply her many excellent qualities, which must not be passed by without a regretful word as if I were a Stoic, or as if my dear good wife of half a century could be silently forgotten by her bereaved husband and children. I began this biography when she was in her usual health and spirits, but soon after its commencement a fit of apoplexy took her unconsciously from our happy circle,—and we are made to feel by this affliction, as also by another over leaf, how truly "in the midst of life we are in death." Her body awaits the Resurrection in Albury Churchyard, and her spirit lives with us in affectionate remembrance.



CHAPTER XLVI.

DE BEAUVOIR CHANCERY SUIT: AND BELGRAVIA.

My lamented son, Henry de Beauvoir, active and athletic, was killed in South Africa by the most unlikely accident of being jolted off the front seat in a rutty road and crushed to death under the wheel of an ox-waggon creeping at two miles an hour! This sad event occurred on May 31, 1871: and the newspapers at the time, both British and South African, fully recorded not only the accident but the heroism of the brave youth, the kind but unavailing assiduities of friends, and the municipal honours accorded to him at his funeral, when the mayor and council, the volunteers and chief inhabitants of King William's Town (every window shuttered) followed him to the grave, where Archdeacon Kitton read the solemn service; and some months after, a marble headstone was placed over his remains. His two brothers have written some touching stanzas to his memory: but they are private.

I mention all this sadness now by way of publicly acknowledging the kindness of Archdeacon Kitton and, other friends at King William's Town, not forgetting a most friendly officer of the American navy, from whom we have received many excellent letters and presents from all round the world, ever since he was among the first to break to us the death of my son, now fifteen years ago: I desire, then, cordially to thank T.G. for these kindnesses: as also Mr. Robertson, of Brechin, N.B., whose son was Henry's African comrade, with him at the time of the catastrophe, and following him to the grave.

Henry having been for good ancestral reasons christened de Beauvoir, reminds me of a memorable matter of our family history which, as it is on record, I will here relate. In the days of King James I. (to quote with pedantic omissions from a pedigree), one Peter de Beauvoir, descended from a younger branch of the ducal house of Rutland, had an eldest son, James, whose daughter Rachel married Pierre Martin (my spiritual sponsor after Martin Luther), and her daughter married a Carey of Guernsey, whose descendant married my grandfather. Peter's second son, Richard, married a Priaulx, also related to us, and her daughter married a Benyon, in Charles II.'s time, whose descendant is now the millionaire, Sir Richard Benyon de Beauvoir of Reading, &c. &c. Now, this is the strange fact which has always puzzled me as well as others. The old De Beauvoir was a very thrifty miser, and died two hundred years ago possessed of great wealth, which has increased enormously up to our day, seeing he had landed property in the north of London, now including De Beauvoir Town.