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diff --git a/2075-h/2075-h.htm b/2075-h/2075-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aa51ca1 --- /dev/null +++ b/2075-h/2075-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4846 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Crotchet Castle, by Thomas Love Peacock</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Crotchet Castle, by Thomas Love Peacock, +Edited by Henry Morley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Crotchet Castle + + +Author: Thomas Love Peacock + +Editor: Henry Morley + +Release Date: September 26, 2014 [eBook #2075] +[This file was first posted on 20 June 1999] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROTCHET CASTLE*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1887 Cassell & Company edition by +David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.</span></p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<h1>CROTCHET CASTLE</h1> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/tpb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Decorative graphic" +title= +"Decorative graphic" + src="images/tps.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center">CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:<br +/> +<span class="GutSmall"><i>LONDON</i></span><span +class="GutSmall">, </span><span +class="GutSmall"><i>PARIS</i></span><span class="GutSmall">, +</span><span class="GutSmall"><i>NEW YORK & +MELBOURNE</i></span><span class="GutSmall">.</span><br /> +1887.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Thomas Love Peacock</span> was born at +Weymouth in 1785. His first poem, “The Genius of the +Thames,” was in its second edition when he became one of +the friends of Shelley. That was in 1812, when +Shelley’s age was twenty, Peacock’s +twenty-seven. The acquaintance strengthened, until Peacock +became the friend in whose judgment Shelley put especial +trust. There were many points of agreement. Peacock, +at that time, shared, in a more practical way, Shelley’s +desire for root and branch reform; both wore poets, although not +equally gifted, and both loved Plato and the Greek +tragedians. In “Crotchet Castle” Peacock has +expressed his own delight in Greek literature through the talk of +the Reverend Dr. Folliott.</p> +<p>But Shelley’s friendship for Peacock included a trust in +him that was maintained by points of unlikeness. Peacock +was shrewd and witty. He delighted in extravagance of a +satire which usually said more than it meant, but always rested +upon a foundation of good sense. Then also there was a +touch of the poet to give grace to the utterances of a +clear-headed man of the world. It was Peacock who gave its +name to Shelley’s poem of “Alastor, or the Spirit of +Solitude,” published in 1816. The “Spirit of +Solitude” being treated as a spirit of evil, Peacock +suggested calling it “Alastor,” since the Greek +ἀλάστωρ means an evil +genius.</p> +<p>Peacock’s novels are unlike those of other men: they are +the genuine expressions of an original and independent +mind. His reading and his thinking ran together; there is +free quotation, free play of wit and satire, grace of invention +too, but always unconventional. The story is always +pleasant, although always secondary to the play of thought for +which it gives occasion. He quarrelled with verse, +whimsically but in all seriousness, in an article on “The +Four Ages of Poetry,” contributed in 1820 to a short-lived +journal, “Ollier’s Literary Miscellany.” +The four ages were, he said, the iron age, the Bardic; the +golden, the Homeric; the silver, the Virgilian; and the brass, in +which he himself lived. “A poet in our time,” +he said, “is a semi-barbarian in a civilised community . . +. The highest inspirations of poetry are resolvable into three +ingredients: the rant of unregulated passion, the whining of +exaggerated feeling, and the cant of factitious sentiment; and +can, therefore, serve only to ripen a splendid lunatic like +Alexander, a puling driveller like Werter, or a morbid dreamer +like Wordsworth.” In another part of this essay he +says: “While the historian and the philosopher are +advancing in and accelerating the progress of knowledge, the poet +is wallowing in the rubbish of departed ignorance, and raking up +the ashes of dead savages to find gewgaws and rattles for the +grown babies of the age. Mr. Scott digs up the poacher and +cattle-stealers of the ancient Border. Lord Byron cruises +for thieves and pirates on the shores of the Morea and among the +Greek islands. Mr. Southey wades through ponderous volumes +of travels and old chronicles, from which he carefully selects +all that is false, useless, and absurd, as being essentially +poetical; and when he has a commonplace book full of +monstrosities, strings them into an epic.” And so +forth; Peacock going on to characterise, in further illustration +of his argument, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Moore, and +Campbell. He did not refer to Shelley; and Shelley read his +friend’s whimsical attack on poetry with all good humour, +proceeding to reply to it with a “Defence of Poetry,” +which would have appeared in the same journal, if the journal had +survived. In this novel of “Crotchet Castle” +there is the same good-humoured exaggeration in the treatment of +“our learned friend”—Lord Brougham—to +whom and to whose labours for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge +there are repeated allusions. In one case Peacock +associates the labours of “our learned friend” for +the general instruction of the masses with encouragement of +robbery (page 172), and in another with body-snatching, or, +worse,—murder for dissection (page 99). “The +Lord deliver me from the learned friend!” says Dr. +Folliott. Brougham’s elevation to a peerage in +November, 1830, as Lord Brougham and Vaux, is referred to on page +177, where he is called Sir Guy do Vaux. It is not to be +forgotten, in the reading, that this story was written in 1831, +the year before the passing of the Reform Bill. It ends +with a scene suggested by the agricultural riots of that +time. In the ninth chapter, again, there is a passage +dealing with Sir Walter Scott after the fashion of the criticisms +in the “Four Ages of Poetry.” But this critical +satire gave nobody pain. Always there was a ground-work of +good sense, and the broad sweep of the satire was utterly unlike +the nibbling censure of the men whose wit is tainted with +ill-humour. We may see also that the poet’s nature +cannot be expelled. In this volume we should find the touch +of a poet’s hand in the tale itself when dealing with the +adventures of Mr. Chainmail, while he stays at the Welsh mountain +inn, if the story did not again and again break out into actual +song, for it includes half-a-dozen little poems.</p> +<p>When Peacock wrote his attack on Poetry, he had, only two +years before, produced a poem of his +own—“Rhododaphne”—with a Greek fancy of +the true and the false love daintily worked out. It was his +chief work in verse, and gave much pleasure to a few, among them +his friend Shelley. But he felt that, as the world went, he +was not strong enough to help it by his singing, so he confined +his writing to the novels, in which he could speak his mind in +his own way, while doing his duty by his country in the East +India House, where he obtained a post in 1818. From 1836 to +1856, when he retired on a pension, he was Examiner of India +Correspondence. Peacock died in 1866, aged eighty-one.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">H. M.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Note</span> that in this tale Mac Quedy is +Mac Q. E. D., son of a demonstration; Mr. Skionar, the +transcendentalist, is named from Ski(as) onar, the dream of a +shadow; and Mr. Philpot,—who loves rivers, is +Phil(o)pot(amos).</p> +<h2>CHAPTER I.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE VILLA.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p><i>Captain Jamy</i>. I wad full fain hear +some question ’tween you tway.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Henry</span> +V.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> one of those beautiful valleys, +through which the Thames (not yet polluted by the tide, the +scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement of the sandy +streams of Surrey) rolls a clear flood through flowery meadows, +under the shade of old beech woods, and the smooth mossy +greensward of the chalk hills (which pour into it their tributary +rivulets, as pure and pellucid as the fountain of Bandusium, or +the wells of Scamander, by which the wives and daughters of the +Trojans washed their splendid garments in the days of peace, +before the coming of the Greeks); in one of those beautiful +valleys, on a bold round-surfaced lawn, spotted with juniper, +that opened itself in the bosom of an old wood, which rose with a +steep, but not precipitous ascent, from the river to the summit +of the hill, stood the castellated villa of a retired +citizen. Ebenezer Mac Crotchet, Esquire, was the +London-born offspring of a worthy native of the “north +countrie,” who had walked up to London on a commercial +adventure, with all his surplus capital, not very neatly tied up +in a not very clean handkerchief, suspended over his shoulder +from the end of a hooked stick, extracted from the first hedge on +his pilgrimage; and who, after having worked himself a step or +two up the ladder of life, had won the virgin heart of the only +daughter of a highly respectable merchant of Duke’s Place, +with whom he inherited the honest fruits of a long series of +ingenuous dealings.</p> +<p>Mr. Mac Crotchet had derived from his mother the instinct, and +from his father the rational principle, of enriching himself at +the expense of the rest of mankind, by all the recognised modes +of accumulation on the windy side of the law. After passing +many years in the Alley, watching the turn of the market, and +playing many games almost as desperate as that of the soldier of +Lucullus, the fear of losing what he had so righteously gained +predominated over the sacred thirst of paper-money; his caution +got the better of his instinct, or rather transferred it from the +department of acquisition to that of conservation. His +friend, Mr. Ramsbottom, the zodiacal mythologist, told him that +he had done well to withdraw from the region of Uranus or Brahma, +the Maker, to that of Saturn or Veeshnu, the Preserver, before he +fell under the eye of Jupiter or Seva, the Destroyer, who might +have struck him down at a blow.</p> +<p>It is said that a Scotchman, returning home after some +years’ residence in England, being asked what he thought of +the English, answered: “They hanna ower muckle sense, but +they are an unco braw people to live amang;” which would be +a very good story, if it were not rendered apocryphal by the +incredible circumstance of the Scotchman going back.</p> +<p>Mr. Mac Crotchet’s experience had given him a just title +to make, in his own person, the last-quoted observation, but he +would have known better than to go back, even if himself, and not +his father, had been the first comer of his line from the +north. He had married an English Christian, and, having +none of the Scotch accent, was ungracious enough to be ashamed of +his blood. He was desirous to obliterate alike the Hebrew +and Caledonian vestiges in his name, and signed himself E. M. +Crotchet, which by degrees induced the majority of his neighbours +to think that his name was Edward Matthew. The more +effectually to sink the Mac, he christened his villa +“Crotchet Castle,” and determined to hand down to +posterity the honours of Crotchet of Crotchet. He found it +essential to his dignity to furnish himself with a coat of arms, +which, after the proper ceremonies (payment being the principal), +he obtained, videlicet: Crest, a crotchet rampant, in A sharp; +Arms, three empty bladders, turgescent, to show how opinions are +formed; three bags of gold, pendent, to show why they are +maintained; three naked swords, tranchant, to show how they are +administered; and three barbers’ blocks, gaspant, to show +how they are swallowed.</p> +<p>Mr. Crotchet was left a widower, with two children; and, after +the death of his wife, so strong was his sense of the blessed +comfort she had been to him, that he determined never to give any +other woman an opportunity of obliterating the happy +recollection.</p> +<p>He was not without a plausible pretence for styling his villa +a castle, for, in its immediate vicinity, and within his own +enclosed domain, were the manifest traces, on the brow of the +hill, of a Roman station, or <i>castellum</i>, which was still +called the “Castle” by the country people. The +primitive mounds and trenches, merely overgrown with greensward, +with a few patches of juniper and box on the vallum, and a +solitary ancient beech surmounting the place of the +prætorium, presented nearly the same depths, heights, +slopes, and forms, which the Roman soldiers had originally given +them. From this castellum Mr. Crotchet christened his +villa. With his rustic neighbours he was, of course, +immediately and necessarily a squire: Squire Crotchet of the +Castle; and he seemed to himself to settle down as naturally into +an English country gentleman, as if his parentage had been as +innocent of both Scotland and Jerusalem, as his education was of +Rome and Athens.</p> +<p>But as, though you expel nature with a pitch-fork, she will +yet always come back; he could not become, like a true-born +English squire, part and parcel of the barley-giving earth; he +could not find in game-bagging, poacher-shooting, +trespasser-pounding, footpath-stopping, common-enclosing, +rack-renting, and all the other liberal pursuits and pastimes +which make a country gentleman an ornament to the world and a +blessing to the poor: he could not find in these valuable and +amiable occupations, and in a corresponding range of ideas, +nearly commensurate with that of the great King Nebuchadnezzar +when he was turned out to grass; he could not find in this great +variety of useful action, and vast field of comprehensive +thought, modes of filling up his time that accorded with his +Caledonian instinct. The inborn love of disputation, which +the excitements and engagements of a life of business had +smothered, burst forth through the calmer surface of a rural +life. He grew as fain as Captain Jamy, “to hear some +argument betwixt ony tway,” and being very hospitable in +his establishment, and liberal in his invitations, a numerous +detachment from the advanced guard of the “march of +intellect,” often marched down to Crotchet Castle.</p> +<p>When the fashionable season filled London with exhibitors of +all descriptions, lecturers and else, Mr. Crotchet was in his +glory; for, in addition to the perennial literati of the +metropolis, he had the advantage of the visits of a number of +hardy annuals, chiefly from the north, who, as the interval of +their metropolitan flowering allowed, occasionally accompanied +their London brethren in excursions to Crotchet Castle.</p> +<p>Amongst other things, he took very naturally to political +economy, read all the books on the subject which were put forth +by his own countrymen, attended all lectures thereon, and boxed +the technology of the sublime science as expertly as an able +seaman boxes the compass.</p> +<p>With this agreeable mania he had the satisfaction of biting +his son, the hope of his name and race, who had borne off from +Oxford the highest academical honours; and who, treading in his +father’s footsteps to honour and fortune, had, by means of +a portion of the old gentleman’s surplus capital, made +himself a junior partner in the eminent loan-jobbing firm of +Catchflat and Company. Here, in the days of paper +prosperity, he applied his science-illumined genius to the +blowing of bubbles, the bursting of which sent many a poor devil +to the gaol, the workhouse, or the bottom of the river, but left +young Crotchet rolling in riches.</p> +<p>These riches he had been on the point of doubling, by a +marriage with the daughter of Mr. Touchandgo, the great banker, +when, one foggy morning, Mr. Touchandgo and the contents of his +till were suddenly reported absent; and as the fortune which the +young gentleman had intended to marry was not forthcoming, this +tender affair of the heart was nipped in the bud.</p> +<p>Miss Touchandgo did not meet the shock of separation quite so +complacently as the young gentleman: for he lost only the lady, +whereas she lost a fortune as well as a lover. Some jewels, +which had glittered on her beautiful person as brilliantly as the +bubble of her father’s wealth had done in the eyes of his +gudgeons, furnished her with a small portion of paper-currency; +and this, added to the contents of a fairy purse of gold, which +she found in her shoe on the eventful morning when Mr. Touchandgo +melted into thin air, enabled her to retreat into North Wales, +where she took up her lodging in a farm-house in Merionethshire, +and boarded very comfortably for a trifling payment, and the +additional consideration of teaching English, French, and music, +to the little Ap-Llymrys. In the course of this occupation +she acquired sufficient knowledge of Welsh to converse with the +country people.</p> +<p>She climbed the mountains, and descended the dingles, with a +foot which daily habit made by degrees almost as steady as a +native’s. She became the nymph of the scene; and if +she sometimes pined in thought for her faithless Strephon, her +melancholy was anything but green and yellow: it was as genuine +white and red as occupation, mountain air, thyme-fed mutton, +thick cream, and fat bacon could make it: to say nothing of an +occasional glass of double X, which Ap-Llymry, who yielded to no +man west of the Wrekin in brewage, never failed to press upon her +at dinner and supper. He was also earnest, and sometimes +successful, in the recommendation of his mead, and most +pertinacious on winter nights in enforcing a trial of the virtues +of his elder wine. The young lady’s personal +appearance, consequently, formed a very advantageous contrast to +that of her quondam lover, whose physiognomy the intense +anxieties of his bubble-blowing days, notwithstanding their +triumphant result, had left blighted, sallowed, and +crow’s-footed, to a degree not far below that of the fallen +spirit who, in the expressive language of German romance, is +described as “scathed by the ineradicable traces of the +thunderbolts of Heaven;” so that, contemplating their +relative geological positions, the poor deserted damsel was +flourishing on slate, while her rich and false young knight was +pining on chalk.</p> +<p>Squire Crotchet had also one daughter, whom he had christened +Lemma, and who, as likely to be endowed with a very ample fortune +was, of course, an object very tempting to many young soldiers of +fortune, who were marching with the march of mind, in a good +condition for taking castles, as far as not having a groat is a +qualification for such exploits. She was also a glittering +bait to divers young squires expectant (whose fathers were too +well acquainted with the occult signification of mortgage), and +even to one or two sprigs of nobility, who thought that the +lining of a civic purse would superinduce a very passable +factitious nap upon a thread-bare title. The young lady had +received an expensive and complicated education, complete in all +the elements of superficial display. She was thus eminently +qualified to be the companion of any masculine luminary who had +kept due pace with the “astounding progress” of +intelligence. It must be confessed, that a man who has not +kept due pace with it, is not very easily found: this march being +one of that “astounding” character in which it seems +impossible that the rear can be behind the van. The young +lady was also tolerably good looking: north of Tweed, or in +Palestine, she would probable have been a beauty; but for the +valleys of the Thames she was perhaps a little too much to the +taste of Solomon, and had a nose which rather too prominently +suggested the idea of the tower of Lebanon, which looked towards +Damascus.</p> +<p>In a village in the vicinity of the Castle was the vicarage of +the Reverend Doctor Folliott, a gentleman endowed with a +tolerable stock of learning, an interminable swallow, and an +indefatigable pair of lungs. His pre-eminence in the latter +faculty gave occasion to some etymologists to ring changes on his +name, and to decide that it was derived from Follis Optimus, +softened through an Italian medium into Folle Ottimo, contracted +poetically into Folleotto, and elided Anglicé into +Folliott, signifying a first-rate pair of bellows. He +claimed to be descended lineally from the illustrious Gilbert +Folliott, the eminent theologian, who was a Bishop of London in +the twelfth century, whose studies were interrupted in the dead +of night by the Devil, when a couple of epigrams passed between +them, and the Devil, of course, proved the smaller wit of the +two.</p> +<p>This reverend gentleman, being both learned and jolly, became +by degrees an indispensable ornament to the new squire’s +table. Mr. Crotchet himself was eminently jolly, though by +no means eminently learned. In the latter respect he took +after the great majority of the sons of his father’s land; +had a smattering of many things, and a knowledge of none; but +possessed the true northern art of making the most of his +intellectual harlequin’s jacket, by keeping the best +patches always bright and prominent.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE MARCH OF MIND.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Quoth Ralpho: nothing but the abuse<br /> +Of human learning you produce.—<span +class="smcap">Butler</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“<span class="smcap">God</span> bless my soul, +sir!” exclaimed the Reverend Doctor Folliott, bursting, one +fine May morning, into the breakfast-room at Crotchet Castle, +“I am out of all patience with this march of mind. +Here has my house been nearly burned down by my cook taking it +into her head to study hydrostatics in a sixpenny tract, +published by the Steam Intellect Society, and written by a +learned friend who is for doing all the world’s business as +well as his own, and is equally well qualified to handle every +branch of human knowledge. I have a great abomination of +this learned friend; as author, lawyer, and politician, he is +<i>triformis</i>, like Hecate; and in every one of his three +forms he is <i>bifrons</i>, like Janus; the true Mr. +Facing-both-ways of Vanity Fair. My cook must read his +rubbish in bed; and, as might naturally be expected, she dropped +suddenly fast asleep, overturned the candle, and set the curtains +in a blaze. Luckily, the footman went into the room at the +moment, in time to tear down the curtains and throw them into the +chimney, and a pitcher of water on her nightcap extinguished her +wick; she is a greasy subject, and would have burned like a short +mould.”</p> +<p>The reverend gentleman exhaled his grievance without looking +to the right or to the left; at length, turning on his pivot, he +perceived that the room was full of company, consisting of young +Crotchet, and some visitors whom he had brought from +London. The Reverend Doctor Folliott was introduced to Mr. +Mac Quedy, the economist; Mr. Skionar, the transcendental poet; +Mr. Firedamp, the meteorologist; and Lord Bossnowl, son of the +Earl of Foolincourt, and member for the borough of +Rogueingrain.</p> +<p>The divine took his seat at the breakfast-table, and began to +compose his spirits by the gentle sedative of a large cup of tea, +the demulcent of a well-buttered muffin, and the tonic of a small +lobster.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—You are a man of taste, +Mr. Crotchet. A man of taste is seen at once in the array +of his breakfast-table. It is the foot of Hercules, the +far-shining face of the great work, according to Pindar’s +doctrine: +ἀρχομένου +ἔργου +πρόςωπον +χρὴ θέμεν +πηλαυγές. +The breakfast is the +πρόςωπον of the great +work of the day. Chocolate, coffee, tea, cream, eggs, ham, +tongue, cold fowl, all these are good, and bespeak good knowledge +in him who sets them forth: but the touchstone is fish: anchovy +is the first step, prawns and shrimps the second; and I laud him +who reaches even to these: potted char and lampreys are the +third, and a fine stretch of progression; but lobster is, indeed, +matter for a May morning, and demands a rare combination of +knowledge and virtue in him who sets it forth.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, sir, and what say you to a +fine fresh trout, hot and dry, in a napkin? or a herring out of +the water into the frying-pan, on the shore of Loch Fyne?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, I say every nation +has some eximious virtue; and your country is pre-eminent in the +glory of fish for breakfast. We have much to learn from you +in that line at any rate.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—And in many others, sir, I +believe. Morals and metaphysics, politics and political +economy, the way to make the most of all the modifications of +smoke; steam, gas, and paper currency; you have all these to +learn from us; in short, all the arts and sciences. We are +the modern Athenians.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I, for one, sir, am +content to learn nothing from you but the art and science of fish +for breakfast. Be content, sir, to rival the Boeotians, +whose redeeming virtue was in fish, touching which point you may +consult Aristophanes and his scholiast in the passage of +Lysistrata, ἀλλ’ +ἄφελε τὰς +ἐγχέλεις, and +leave the name of Athenians to those who have a sense of the +beautiful, and a perception of metrical quantity.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Then, sir, I presume you set no +value on the right principles of rent, profit, wages, and +currency?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—My principles, sir, in +these things are, to take as much as I can get, and pay no more +than I can help. These are every man’s principles, +whether they be the right principles or no. There, sir, is +political economy in a nutshell.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—The principles, sir, which +regulate production and consumption are independent of the will +of any individual as to giving or taking, and do not lie in a +nutshell by any means.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, I will thank you for +a leg of that capon.</p> +<p><i>Lord Bossnowl</i>.—But, sir, by-the-bye, how came +your footman to be going into your cook’s room? It +was very providential to be sure, but—</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, as good came of it, I +shut my eyes, and ask no questions. I suppose he was going +to study hydrostatics, and he found himself under the necessity +of practising hydraulics.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Firedamp</i>.—Sir, you seem to make very light of +science.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Yes, sir, such science as +the learned friend deals in: everything for everybody, science +for all, schools for all, rhetoric for all, law for all, physic +for all, words for all, and sense for none. I say, sir, law +for lawyers, and cookery for cooks: and I wish the learned +friend, for all his life, a cook that will pass her time in +studying his works; then every dinner he sits down to at home, he +will sit on the stool of repentance.</p> +<p><i>Lord Bossnowl</i>.—Now really that would be too +severe: my cook should read nothing but Ude.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No, sir! let Ude and the +learned friend singe fowls together; let both avaunt from my +kitchen. Θύρας δ’ +ἐπίθεσθε +βεβήλοις. +Ude says an elegant supper may be given with sandwiches. +<i>Horresco referens</i>. An elegant supper. +<i>Dî meliora piis</i>. No Ude for me. +Conviviality went out with punch and suppers. I cherish +their memory. I sup when I can, but not upon +sandwiches. To offer me a sandwich, when I am looking for a +supper, is to add insult to injury. Let the learned friend, +and the modern Athenians, sup upon sandwiches.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Nay, sir; the modern Athenians +know better than that. A literary supper in sweet +Edinbro’ would cure you of the prejudice you seem to +cherish against us.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Well, sir, well; there is +cogency in a good supper; a good supper in these degenerate days +bespeaks a good man; but much more is wanted to make up an +Athenian. Athenians, indeed! where is your theatre? who +among you has written a comedy? where is your Attic salt? which +of you can tell who was Jupiter’s great-grandfather? or +what metres will successively remain, if you take off the three +first syllables, one by one, from a pure antispastic acatalectic +tetrameter? Now, sir, there are three questions for you: +theatrical, mythological, and metrical; to every one of which an +Athenian would give an answer that would lay me prostrate in my +own nothingness.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, sir, as to your metre and +your mythology, they may e’en wait a wee. For your +comedy there is the “Gentle Shepherd” of the divine +Allan Ramsay.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—The “Gentle +Shepherd”! It is just as much a comedy as the Book of +Job.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, sir, if none of us have +written a comedy, I cannot see that it is any such great matter, +any more than I can conjecture what business a man can have at +this time of day with Jupiter’s great-grandfather.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—The great business is, +sir, that you call yourselves Athenians, while you know nothing +that the Athenians thought worth knowing, and dare not show your +noses before the civilised world in the practice of any one art +in which they were excellent. Modern Athens, sir! the +assumption is a personal affront to every man who has a Sophocles +in his library. I will thank you for an anchovy.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Metaphysics, sir; +metaphysics. Logic and moral philosophy. There we are +at home. The Athenians only sought the way, and we have +found it; and to all this we have added political economy, the +science of sciences.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—A hyperbarbarous +technology, that no Athenian ear could have borne. Premises +assumed without evidence, or in spite of it; and conclusions +drawn from them so logically, that they must necessarily be +erroneous.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—I cannot agree with you, Mr. Mac +Quedy, that you have found the true road of metaphysics, which +the Athenians only sought. The Germans have found it, sir: +the sublime Kant and his disciples.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—I have read the sublime Kant, sir, +with an anxious desire to understand him, and I confess I have +not succeeded.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—He wants the two great +requisites of head and tail.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—Transcendentalism is the philosophy +of intuition, the development of universal convictions; truths +which are inherent in the organisation of mind, which cannot be +obliterated, though they may be obscured, by superstitious +prejudice on the one hand, and by the Aristotelian logic on the +other.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, sir, I have no notion of +logic obscuring a question.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—There is only one true logic, which +is the transcendental; and this can prove only the one true +philosophy, which is also the transcendental. The logic of +your Modern Athens can prove everything equally; and that is, in +my opinion, tantamount to proving nothing at all.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—The sentimental against the +rational, the intuitive against the inductive, the ornamental +against the useful, the intense against the tranquil, the +romantic against the classical; these are great and interesting +controversies, which I should like, before I die, to see +satisfactorily settled.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Firedamp</i>.—There is another great question, +greater than all these, seeing that it is necessary to be alive +in order to settle any question; and this is the question of +water against human life. Wherever there is water, there is +malaria, and wherever there is malaria, there are the elements of +death. The great object of a wise man should be to live on +a gravelly hill, without so much as a duck-pond within ten miles +of him, eschewing cisterns and waterbutts, and taking care that +there be no gravel-pits for lodging the rain. The sun sucks +up infection from water, wherever it exists on the face of the +earth.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Well, sir, you have for +you the authority of the ancient mystagogue, who said: +’Εστιν ὔδωρ +ψυχῇ +θάνατος. For my +part I care not a rush (or any other aquatic and inesculent +vegetable) who or what sucks up either the water or the +infection. I think the proximity of wine a matter of much +more importance than the longinquity of water. You are here +within a quarter of a mile of the Thames, but in the cellar of my +friend, Mr. Crotchet, there is the talismanic antidote of a +thousand dozen of old wine; a beautiful spectacle, I assure you, +and a model of arrangement.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Firedamp</i>.—Sir, I feel the malignant influence +of the river in every part of my system. Nothing but my +great friendship for Mr. Crotchet would have brought me so nearly +within the jaws of the lion.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—After dinner, sir, after +dinner, I will meet you on this question. I shall then be +armed for the strife. You may fight like Hercules against +Achelous, but I shall flourish the Bacchic thyrsus, which changed +rivers into wine: as Nonnus sweetly sings, +Οίνω +κυματόεντι +μέλας +κελάρυζεν +Υδάςπης.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>, <i>jun.</i>—I hope, Mr. Firedamp, +you will let your friendship carry you a little closer into the +jaws of the lion. I am fitting up a flotilla of +pleasure-boats, with spacious cabins, and a good cellar, to carry +a choice philosophical party up the Thames and Severn, into the +Ellesmere canal, where we shall be among the mountains of North +Wales; which we may climb or not, as we think proper; but we +will, at any rate, keep our floating hotel well provisioned, and +we will try to settle all the questions over which a shadow of +doubt yet hangs in the world of philosophy.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Firedamp</i>.—Out of my great friendship for you, +I will certainly go; but I do not expect to survive the +experiment.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—<i>Alter erit tum +Tiphys</i>, <i>et altera quæ vehat Argo Delectos +Heroas</i>. I will be of the party, though I must hire an +officiating curate, and deprive poor dear Mrs. Folliott, for +several weeks, of the pleasure of combing my wig.</p> +<p><i>Lord Bossnowl</i>.—I hope, if I am to be of the +party, our ship is not to be the ship of fools: He! he!</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—If you are one of the +party, sir, it most assuredly will not: Ha! ha!</p> +<p><i>Lord Bossnowl</i>.—Pray sir, what do you mean by Ha! +ha!?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Precisely, sir, what you +mean by He! he!</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—You need not dispute about terms; +they are two modes of expressing merriment, with or without +reason; reason being in no way essential to mirth. No man +should ask another why he laughs, or at what, seeing that he does +not always know, and that, if he does, he is not a responsible +agent. Laughter is an involuntary action of certain +muscles, developed in the human species by the progress of +civilisation. The savage never laughs.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No, sir, he has nothing to +laugh at. Give him Modern Athens, the “learned +friend,” and the Steam Intellect Society. They will +develop his muscles.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE ROMAN CAMP.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>He loved her more then seven yere,<br /> +Yet was he of her love never the nere;<br /> +He was not ryche of golde and fe,<br /> +A gentyll man forsoth was he.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>The Squyr of Lowe Degre</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Reverend Doctor Folliott having +promised to return to dinner, walked back to his vicarage, +meditating whether he should pass the morning in writing his next +sermon, or in angling for trout, and had nearly decided in favour +of the latter proposition, repeating to himself, with great +unction, the lines of Chaucer:</p> +<blockquote><p>And as for me, though that I can but lite,<br /> +On bokis for to read I me delite,<br /> +And to ’hem yeve I faithe and full credence,<br /> +And in mine herte have ’hem in reverence,<br /> +So hertily, that there is gamé none,<br /> +That fro my bokis makith me to gone,<br /> +But it be seldome, on the holie daie;<br /> +Save certainly whan that the month of Maie<br /> +Is cousin, and I here the foulis sing,<br /> +And that the flouris ginnin for to spring,<br /> +Farwell my boke and my devocion:</p> +</blockquote> +<p>when his attention was attracted by a young gentleman who was +sitting on a camp stool with a portfolio on his knee, taking a +sketch of the Roman Camp, which, as has been already said, was +within the enclosed domain of Mr. Crotchet. The young +stranger, who had climbed over the fence, espying the portly +divine, rose up, and hoped that he was not trespassing. +“By no means, sir,” said the divine, “all the +arts and sciences are welcome here; music, painting, and poetry; +hydrostatics and political economy; meteorology, +transcendentalism, and fish for breakfast.”</p> +<p><i>The Stranger</i>.—A pleasant association, sir, and a +liberal and discriminating hospitality. This is an old +British camp, I believe, sir?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Roman, sir; Roman; +undeniably Roman. The vallum is past controversy. It +was not a camp, sir, a <i>castrum</i>, but a <i>castellum</i>, a +little camp, or watch-station, to which was attached, on the peak +of the adjacent hill, a beacon for transmitting alarms. You +will find such here and there, all along the range of chalk +hills, which traverses the country from north-east to south-west, +and along the base of which runs the ancient Iknield road, +whereof you may descry a portion in that long straight white +line.</p> +<p><i>The Stranger</i>.—I beg your pardon, sir; do I +understand this place to be your property?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—It is not mine, sir: the +more is the pity; yet is it so far well, that the owner is my +good friend, and a highly respectable gentleman.</p> +<p><i>The Stranger</i>.—Good and respectable, sir, I take +it, means rich?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—That is their meaning, +sir.</p> +<p><i>The Stranger</i>.—I understand the owner to be a Mr. +Crotchet. He has a handsome daughter, I am told.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—He has, sir. Her +eyes are like the fish-pools of Heshbon, by the gate of +Bethrabbim; and she is to have a handsome fortune, to which +divers disinterested gentlemen are paying their addresses. +Perhaps you design to be one of them?</p> +<p><i>The Stranger</i>.—No, sir; I beg pardon if my +questions seem impertinent; I have no such design. There is +a son too, I believe, sir, a great and successful blower of +bubbles?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—A hero, sir, in his +line. Never did angler in September hook more gudgeons.</p> +<p><i>The Stranger</i>.—To say the truth, two very amiable +young people, with whom I have some little acquaintance, Lord +Bossnowl, and his sister, Lady Clarinda, are reported to be on +the point of concluding a double marriage with Miss Crotchet and +her brother; by way of putting a new varnish on old +nobility. Lord Foolincourt, their father, is terribly poor +for a lord who owns a borough.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Well, sir, the Crotchets +have plenty of money, and the old gentleman’s weak point is +a hankering after high blood. I saw your acquaintance, Lord +Bossnowl, this morning, but I did not see his sister. She +may be there, nevertheless, and doing fashionable justice to this +fine May morning, by lying in bed till noon.</p> +<p><i>The Stranger</i>.—Young Mr. Crotchet, sir, has been, +like his father, the architect of his own fortune, has he +not? An illustrious example of the reward of honesty and +industry?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—As to honesty, sir, he +made his fortune in the city of London, and if that commodity be +of any value there, you will find it in the price current. +I believe it is below par, like the shares of young +Crotchet’s fifty companies. But his progress has not +been exactly like his father’s. It has been more +rapid, and he started with more advantages. He began with a +fine capital from his father. The old gentleman divided his +fortune into three not exactly equal portions; one for himself, +one for his daughter, and one for his son, which he handed over +to him, saying, “Take it once for all, and make the most of +it; if you lose it where I won it, not another stiver do you get +from me during my life.” But, sir, young Crotchet +doubled, and trebled, and quadrupled it, and is, as you say, a +striking example of the reward of industry; not that I think his +labour has been so great as his luck.</p> +<p><i>The Stranger</i>.—But, sir, is all this solid? is +there no danger of reaction? no day of reckoning to cut down in +an hour prosperity that has grown up like a mushroom?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Nay, sir, I know +not. I do not pry into these matters. I am, for my +own part, very well satisfied with the young gentleman. Let +those who are not so look to themselves. It is quite enough +for me that he came down last night from London, and that he had +the good sense to bring with him a basket of lobsters. Sir, +I wish you a good morning.</p> +<p>The stranger having returned the reverend gentleman’s +good morning, resumed his sketch, and was intently employed on it +when Mr. Crotchet made his appearance with Mr. Mac Quedy and Mr. +Skionar, whom he was escorting round his grounds, according to +his custom with new visitors; the principal pleasure of +possessing an extensive domain being that of showing it to other +people. Mr. Mac Quedy, according also to the laudable +custom of his countrymen, had been appraising everything that +fell under his observation; but, on arriving at the Roman camp, +of which the value was purely imaginary, he contented himself +with exclaiming: “Eh! this is just a curiosity, and very +pleasant to sit in on a summer day.”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—And call up the days of old, when +the Roman eagle spread its wings in the place of that beechen +foliage. It gives a fine idea of duration, to think that +that fine old tree must have sprung from the earth ages after +this camp was formed.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—How old, think you, may the tree +be?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—I have records which show it to be +three hundred years old.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—That is a great age for a beech in +good condition. But you see the camp is some fifteen +hundred years, or so, older; and three times six being eighteen, +I think you get a clearer idea of duration out of the simple +arithmetic, than out of your eagle and foliage.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—That is a very unpoetical, if not +unphilosophical, mode of viewing antiquities. Your +philosophy is too literal for our imperfect vision. We +cannot look directly into the nature of things; we can only catch +glimpses of the mighty shadow in the camera obscura of +transcendental intelligence. These six and eighteen are +only words to which we give conventional meanings. We can +reason, but we cannot feel, by help of them. The tree and +the eagle, contemplated in the ideality of space and time, become +subjective realities, that rise up as landmarks in the mystery of +the past.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, sir, if you understand that, +I wish you joy. But I must be excused for holding that my +proposition, three times six are eighteen, is more intelligible +than yours. A worthy friend of mine, who is a sort of +amateur in philosophy, criticism, politics, and a wee bit of many +things more, says: “Men never begin to study antiquities +till they are saturated with civilisation.”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—What is civilisation?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—It is just respect for +property. A state in which no man takes wrongfully what +belongs to another, is a perfectly civilised state.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—Your friend’s antiquaries must +have lived in El Dorado, to have had an opportunity of being +saturated with such a state.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—It is a question of degree. +There is more respect for property here than in Angola.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—That depends on the light in which +things are viewed.</p> +<p>Mr. Crotchet was rubbing his hands, in hopes of a fine +discussion, when they came round to the side of the camp where +the picturesque gentleman was sketching. The stranger was +rising up, when Mr. Crotchet begged him not to disturb himself, +and presently walked away with his two guests.</p> +<p>Shortly after, Miss Crotchet and Lady Clarinda, who had +breakfasted by themselves, made their appearance at the same +spot, hanging each on an arm of Lord Bossnowl, who very much +preferred their company to that of the philosophers, though he +would have preferred the company of the latter, or any company to +his own. He thought it very singular that so agreeable a +person as he held himself to be to others, should be so +exceedingly tiresome to himself: he did not attempt to +investigate the cause of this phenomenon, but was contented with +acting on his knowledge of the fact, and giving himself as little +of his own private society as possible.</p> +<p>The stranger rose as they approached, and was immediately +recognised by the Bossnowls as an old acquaintance, and saluted +with the exclamation of “Captain Fitzchrome!” +The interchange of salutations between Lady Clarinda and the +Captain was accompanied with an amiable confusion on both sides, +in which the observant eyes of Miss Crotchet seemed to read the +recollection of an affair of the heart.</p> +<p>Lord Bossnowl was either unconscious of any such affair, or +indifferent to its existence. He introduced the Captain +very cordially to Miss Crotchet; and the young lady invited him, +as the friend of their guests, to partake of her father’s +hospitality, an offer which was readily accepted.</p> +<p>The Captain took his portfolio under his right arm, his camp +stool in his right hand, offered his left arm to Lady Clarinda, +and followed at a reasonable distance behind Miss Crotchet and +Lord Bossnowl, contriving, in the most natural manner possible, +to drop more and more into the rear.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—I am glad to see you can make +yourself so happy with drawing old trees and mounds of grass.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Happy, Lady Clarinda! oh, +no! How can I be happy when I see the idol of my heart +about to be sacrificed on the shrine of Mammon?</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Do you know, though Mammon has a +sort of ill name, I really think he is a very popular character; +there must be at the bottom something amiable about him. He +is certainly one of those pleasant creatures whom everybody +abuses, but without whom no evening party is endurable. I +dare say, love in a cottage is very pleasant; but then it +positively must be a cottage ornée: but would not the same +love be a great deal safer in a castle, even if Mammon furnished +the fortification?</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Oh, Lady Clarinda! there is a +heartlessness in that language that chills me to the soul.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Heartlessness! No: my heart +is on my lips. I speak just what I think. You used to +like it, and say it was as delightful as it was rare.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—True, but you did not then +talk as you do now, of love in a castle.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Well, but only consider: a dun is +a horridly vulgar creature; it is a creature I cannot endure the +thought of: and a cottage lets him in so easily. Now a +castle keeps him at bay. You are a half-pay officer, and +are at leisure to command the garrison: but where is the castle? +and who is to furnish the commissariat?</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Is it come to this, that you +make a jest of my poverty? Yet is my poverty only +comparative. Many decent families are maintained on smaller +means.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Decent families: ay, decent is the +distinction from respectable. Respectable means rich, and +decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called +decent. And then your decent family always lives in a snug +little place: I hate a little place; I like large rooms and large +looking-glasses, and large parties, and a fine large butler, with +a tinge of smooth red in his face; an outward and visible sign +that the family he serves is respectable; if not noble, highly +respectable.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—I cannot believe that you say +all this in earnest. No man is less disposed than I am to +deny the importance of the substantial comforts of life. I +once flattered myself that in our estimate of these things we +were nearly of a mind.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Do you know, I think an opera-box +a very substantial comfort, and a carriage. You will tell +me that many decent people walk arm-in-arm through the snow, and +sit in clogs and bonnets in the pit at the English theatre. +No doubt it is very pleasant to those who are used to it; but it +is not to my taste.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—You always delighted in +trying to provoke me; but I cannot believe that you have not a +heart.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—You do not like to believe that I +have a heart, you mean. You wish to think I have lost it, +and you know to whom; and when I tell you that it is still safe +in my own keeping, and that I do not mean to give it away, the +unreasonable creature grows angry.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Angry! far from it; I am +perfectly cool.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Why, you are pursing your brows, +biting your lips, and lifting up your foot as if you would stamp +it into the earth. I must say anger becomes you; you would +make a charming Hotspur. Your every-day-dining-out face is +rather insipid: but I assure you my heart is in danger when you +are in the heroics. It is so rare, too, in these days of +smooth manners, to see anything like natural expression in a +man’s face. There is one set form for every +man’s face in female society: a sort of serious comedy +walking gentleman’s face: but the moment the creature falls +in love he begins to give himself airs, and plays off all the +varieties of his physiognomy from the Master Slender to the +Petruchio; and then he is actually very amusing.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Well, Lady Clarinda, I will +not be angry, amusing as it may be to you: I listen more in +sorrow than in anger. I half believe you in earnest: and +mourn as over a fallen angel.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—What, because I have made up my +mind not to give away my heart when I can sell it? I will +introduce you to my new acquaintance, Mr. Mac Quedy: he will talk +to you by the hour about exchangeable value, and show you that no +rational being will part with anything, except to the highest +bidder.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Now, I am sure you are not in +earnest. You cannot adopt such sentiments in their naked +deformity.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Naked deformity! Why, Mr. +Mac Quedy will prove to you that they are the cream of the most +refined philosophy. You live a very pleasant life as a +bachelor, roving about the country with your portfolio under your +arm. I am not fit to be a poor man’s wife. I +cannot take any kind of trouble, or do any one thing that is of +any use. Many decent families roast a bit of mutton on a +string; but if I displease my father I shall not have as much as +will buy the string, to say nothing of the meat; and the bare +idea of such cookery gives me the horrors.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>By this time they were near the Castle, and met Miss Crotchet +and her companion, who had turned back to meet them. +Captain Fitzchrome was shortly after heartily welcomed by Mr. +Crotchet, and the party separated to dress for dinner, the +Captain being by no means in an enviable state of mind, and full +of misgivings as to the extent of belief that he was bound to +accord to the words of the lady of his heart.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE PARTY.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>En quoi cognoissez-vous la folie anticque? +En quoi cognoissez-vous la sagesse présente?—<span +class="smcap">Rabelais</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“<span class="smcap">If</span> I were sketching a bandit +who had just shot his last pursuer, having outrun all the rest, +that is the very face I would give him,” soliloquised the +Captain, as he studied the features of his rival in the +drawing-room, during the miserable half-hour before dinner, when +dulness reigns predominant over expectant company, especially +when they are waiting for some one last comer, whom they all +heartily curse in their hearts, and whom, nevertheless, or indeed +therefore-the-more, they welcome as a sinner, more heartily than +all the just persons who had been punctual to their +engagement. Some new visitors had arrived in the morning, +and, as the company dropped in one by one, the Captain anxiously +watched the unclosing door for the form of his beloved: but she +was the last to make her appearance, and on her entry gave him a +malicious glance, which he construed into a telegraphic +communication that she had stayed away to torment him. +Young Crotchet escorted her with marked attention to the upper +end of the drawing-room, where a great portion of the company was +congregated around Miss Crotchet. These being the only +ladies in the company, it was evident that old Mr. Crotchet would +give his arm to Lady Clarinda, an arrangement with which the +Captain could not interfere. He therefore took his station +near the door, studying his rival from a distance, and determined +to take advantage of his present position, to secure the seat +next to his charmer. He was meditating on the best mode of +operation for securing this important post with due regard to +<i>bien-séance</i>, when he was twitched by the button by +Mr. Mac Quedy, who said to him: “Lady Clarinda tells me, +sir, that you are anxious to talk with me on the subject of +exchangeable value, from which I infer that you have studied +political economy, and as a great deal depends on the definition +of value, I shall be glad to set you right on that +point.” “I am much obliged to you, sir,” +said the Captain, and was about to express his utter +disqualification for the proposed instruction, when Mr. Skionar +walked up and said: “Lady Clarinda informs me that you wish +to talk over with me the question of subjective reality. I +am delighted to fall in with a gentleman who daily appreciates +the transcendental philosophy.” “Lady Clarinda +is too good,” said the Captain; and was about to protest +that he had never heard the word “transcendental” +before, when the butler announced dinner. Mr. Crotchet led +the way with Lady Clarinda: Lord Bossnowl followed with Miss +Crotchet: the economist and transcendentalist pinned in the +Captain, and held him, one by each arm, as he impatiently +descended the stairs in the rear of several others of the +company, whom they had forced him to let pass; but the moment he +entered the dining-room he broke loose from them, and at the +expense of a little <i>brusquerie</i>, secured his position.</p> +<p>“Well, Captain,” said Lady Clarinda, “I +perceive you can still manœuvre.”</p> +<p>“What could possess you,” said the Captain, +“to send two unendurable and inconceivable bores to +intercept me with rubbish about which I neither know nor care any +more than the man in the moon?”</p> +<p>“Perhaps,” said Lady Clarinda, “I saw your +design, and wished to put your generalship to the test. But +do not contradict anything I have said about you, and see if the +learned will find you out.”</p> +<p>“There is fine music, as Rabelais observes, in the +<i>cliquetis d’asssiettes</i>, a refreshing shade in the +<i>ombre de salle à manger</i>, and an elegant fragrance +in the <i>fumée de rôti</i>,” said a voice at +the Captain’s elbow. The Captain turning round, +recognised his clerical friend of the morning, who knew him again +immediately, and said he was extremely glad to meet him there; +more especially as Lady Clarinda had assured him that he was an +enthusiastic lover of Greek poetry.</p> +<p>“Lady Clarinda,” said the Captain, “is a +very pleasant young lady.”</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—So she is, sir: and I +understand she has all the wit of the family to herself, whatever +that <i>totum</i> may be. But a glass of wine after soup +is, as the French say, the <i>verre de santé</i>. +The current of opinion sets in favour of Hock: but I am for +Madeira; I do not fancy Hock till I have laid a substratum of +Madeira. Will you join me?</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—With pleasure.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Here is a very fine salmon +before me: and May is the very <i>point nommé</i> to have +salmon in perfection. There is a fine turbot close by, and +there is much to be said in his behalf: but salmon in May is the +king of fish.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—That salmon before you, doctor, was +caught in the Thames, this morning.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. +Folliott</i>.—Παπαπαῖ! +Rarity of rarities! A Thames salmon caught this +morning. Now, Mr. Mac Quedy, even in fish your Modern +Athens must yield. <i>Cedite Graii</i>.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Eh! sir, on its own around, your +Thames salmon has two virtues over all others; first, that it is +fresh; and, second, that it is rare; for I understand you do not +take half a dozen in a year.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—In some years, sir, not +one. Mud, filth, gas-dregs, lock-weirs, and the march of +mind, developed in the form of poaching, have ruined the +fishery. But, when we do catch a salmon, happy the man to +whom he falls.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—I confess, sir, this is excellent: +but I cannot see why it should be better than a Tweed salmon at +Kelso.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, I will take a glass +of Hock with you.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—With all my heart, sir. +There are several varieties of the salmon genus: but the common +salmon, the <i>salmo salar</i>, is only one species, one and the +same everywhere, just like the human mind. Locality and +education make all the difference.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Education! Well, +sir, I have no doubt schools for all are just as fit for the +species <i>salmo salar</i> as for the genus <i>homo</i>. +But you must allow that the specimen before us has finished his +education in a manner that does honour to his college. +However, I doubt that the <i>salmo salar</i> is only one species, +that is to say, precisely alike in all localities. I hold +that every river has its own breed, with essential differences; +in flavour especially. And as for the human mind, I deny +that it is the same in all men. I hold that there is every +variety of natural capacity from the idiot to Newton and +Shakespeare; the mass of mankind, midway between these extremes, +being blockheads of different degrees; education leaving them +pretty nearly as it found them, with this single difference, that +it gives a fixed direction to their stupidity, a sort of +incurable wry neck to the thing they call their +understanding. So one nose points always east, and another +always west, and each is ready to swear that it points due +north.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—If that be the point of truth, very +few intellectual noses point due north.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Only those that point to the +Modern Athens.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Where all native noses +point southward.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Eh, sir, northward for wisdom, and +southward for profit.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>, <i>jun.</i> Champagne, doctor?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Most willingly. But +you will permit my drinking it while it sparkles. I hold it +a heresy to let it deaden in my hand, while the glass of my +<i>compotator</i> is being filled on the opposite side of the +table. By-the-bye, Captain, you remember a passage in +Athenæus, where he cites Menander on the subject of +fish-sauce: ὀψάριον +ἐπὶ +ἰχθύος. (The Captain +was aghast for an answer that would satisfy both his neighbours, +when he was relieved by the divine continuing.) The science +of fish-sauce, Mr. Mac Quedy, is by no means brought to +perfection; a fine field of discovery still lies open in that +line.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Nay, sir, beyond lobster-sauce, I +take it, ye cannot go.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—In their line, I grant +you, oyster and lobster-sauce are the pillars of Hercules. +But I speak of the cruet sauces, where the quintessence of the +sapid is condensed in a phial. I can taste in my +mind’s palate a combination, which, if I could give it +reality, I would christen with the name of my college, and hand +it down to posterity as a seat of learning indeed.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, sir, I wish you success, but +I cannot let slip the question we started just now. I say, +cutting off idiots, who have no minds at all, all minds are by +nature alike. Education (which begins from their birth) +makes them what they are.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No, sir, it makes their +tendencies, not their power. Cæsar would have been +the first wrestler on the village common. Education might +have made him a Nadir Shah; it might also have made him a +Washington; it could not have made him a merry-andrew, for our +newspapers to extol as a model of eloquence.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Now, sir, I think education would +have made him just anything, and fit for any station, from the +throne to the stocks; saint or sinner, aristocrat or democrat, +judge, counsel, or prisoner at the bar.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I will thank you for a +slice of lamb, with lemon and pepper. Before I proceed with +this discussion,—Vin de Grave, Mr. Skionar,—I must +interpose one remark. There is a set of persons in your +city, Mr. Mac Quedy, who concoct, every three or four months, a +thing, which they call a review: a sort of sugar-plum +manufacturers to the Whig aristocracy.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—I cannot tell, sir, exactly, what +you mean by that; but I hope you will speak of those gentlemen +with respect, seeing that I am one of them.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, I must drown my +inadvertence in a glass of Sauterne with you. There is a +set of gentlemen in your city—</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Not in our city, exactly; neither +are they a set. There is an editor, who forages for +articles in all quarters, from John o’ Groat’s house +to the Land’s End. It is not a board, or a society: +it is a mere intellectual bazaar, where A, B, and C, bring their +wares to market.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Well, sir, these gentlemen +among them, the present company excepted, have practised as much +dishonesty as, in any other department than literature, would +have brought the practitioner under the cognisance of the +police. In politics, they have ran with the hare and hunted +with the hound. In criticism, they have, knowingly and +unblushingly, given false characters, both for good and for evil; +sticking at no art of misrepresentation, to clear out of the +field of literature all who stood in the way of the interests of +their own clique. They have never allowed their own +profound ignorance of anything (Greek for instance) to throw even +an air of hesitation into their oracular decision on the +matter. They set an example of profligate contempt for +truth, of which the success was in proportion to the effrontery; +and when their prosperity had filled the market with competitors, +they cried out against their own reflected sin, as if they had +never committed it, or were entitled to a monopoly of it. +The latter, I rather think, was what they wanted.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Hermitage, doctor?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Nothing better, sir. +The father who first chose the solitude of that vineyard, knew +well how to cultivate his spirit in retirement. Now, Mr. +Mac Quedy, Achilles was distinguished above all the Greeks for +his inflexible love of truth; could education have made Achilles +one of your reviewers?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—No doubt of it, even if your +character of them were true to the letter.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—And I say, +sir—chicken and asparagus—Titan had made him of +better clay. I hold with Pindar, “All that is most +excellent is so by nature.” Τὸ +δὲ φυᾷ +κράτιστον +ἅπαν. Education can give purposes, but +not powers; and whatever purposes had been given him, he would +have gone straight forward to them; straight forward, Mr. Mac +Quedy.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—No, sir, education makes the man, +powers, purposes, and all.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—There is the point, sir, +on which we join issue.</p> +<p>Several others of the company now chimed in with their +opinions, which gave the divine an opportunity to degustate one +or two side dishes, and to take a glass of wine with each of the +young ladies.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">CHARACTERS.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Ay imputé a honte plus que médiocre +être vu spectateur ocieux de tant vaillans, disertz, et +chevalereux personnaiges.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Rabelais</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i> (<i>to the Captain</i>).—I declare +the creature has been listening to all this rigmarole, instead of +attending to me. Do you ever expect forgiveness? But +now that they are all talking together, and you cannot make out a +word they say, nor they hear a word that we say, I will describe +the company to you. First, there is the old gentleman on my +left hand, at the head of the table, who is now leaning the other +way to talk to my brother. He is a good-tempered, +half-informed person, very unreasonably fond of reasoning, and of +reasoning people; people that talk nonsense logically: he is fond +of disputation himself, when there are only one or two, but +seldom does more than listen in a large company of +<i>illuminés</i>. He made a great fortune in the +city, and has the comfort of a good conscience. He is very +hospitable, and is generous in dinners; though nothing would +induce him to give sixpence to the poor, because he holds that +all misfortune is from imprudence, that none but the rich ought +to marry, and that all ought to thrive by honest industry, as he +did. He is ambitious of founding a family, and of allying +himself with nobility; and is thus as willing as other grown +children to throw away thousands for a gew-gaw, though he would +not part with a penny for charity. Next to him is my +brother, whom you know as well as I do. He has finished his +education with credit, and as he never ventures to oppose me in +anything, I have no doubt he is very sensible. He has good +manners, is a model of dress, and is reckoned ornamental in all +societies. Next to him is Miss Crotchet, my sister-in-law +that is to be. You see she is rather pretty, and very +genteel. She is tolerably accomplished, has her table +always covered with new novels, thinks Mr. Mac Quedy an oracle, +and is extremely desirous to be called “my +lady.” Next to her is Mr. Firedamp, a very absurd +person, who thinks that water is the evil principle. Next +to him is Mr. Eavesdrop, a man who, by dint of a certain +something like smartness, has got into good society. He is +a sort of bookseller’s tool, and coins all his acquaintance +in reminiscences and sketches of character. I am very shy +of him, for fear he should print me.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—If he print you in your own +likeness, which is that of an angel, you need not fear him. +If he print you in any other, I will cut his throat. But +proceed—</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Next to him is Mr. Henbane, the +toxicologist, I think he calls himself. He has passed half +his life in studying poisons and antidotes. The first thing +he did on his arrival here was to kill the cat; and while Miss +Crotchet was crying over her, he brought her to life again. +I am more shy of him than the other.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—They are two very dangerous +fellows, and I shall take care to keep them both at a respectful +distance. Let us hope that Eavesdrop will sketch off +Henbane, and that Henbane will poison him for his trouble.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Well, next to him sits Mr. Mac +Quedy, the Modern Athenian, who lays down the law about +everything, and therefore may be taken to understand +everything. He turns all the affairs of this world into +questions of buying and selling. He is the Spirit of the +Frozen Ocean to everything like romance and sentiment. He +condenses their volume of steam into a drop of cold water in a +moment. He has satisfied me that I am a commodity in the +market, and that I ought to set myself at a high price. So +you see, he who would have me must bid for me.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—I shall discuss that point +with Mr. Mac Quedy.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Not a word for your life. +Our flirtation is our own secret. Let it remain so.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Flirtation, Clarinda! +Is that all that the most ardent—</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Now, don’t be rhapsodical +here. Next to Mr. Mac Quedy is Mr. Skionar, a sort of +poetical philosopher, a curious compound of the intense and the +mystical. He abominates all the ideas of Mr. Mac Quedy, and +settles everything by sentiment and intuition.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Then, I say, he is the wiser +man.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—They are two oddities, but a +little of them is amusing, and I like to hear them dispute. +So you see I am in training for a philosopher myself.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Any philosophy, for +Heaven’s sake, but the pound-shilling-and-pence philosophy +of Mr. Mac Quedy.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Why, they say that even Mr. +Skionar, though he is a great dreamer, always dreams with his +eyes open, or with one eye at any rate, which is an eye to his +gain: but I believe that in this respect the poor man has got an +ill name by keeping bad company. He has two dear friends, +Mr. Wilful Wontsee, and Mr. Rumblesack Shantsee, poets of some +note, who used to see visions of Utopia, and pure republics +beyond the Western deep: but, finding that these El Dorados +brought them no revenue, they turned their vision-seeing faculty +into the more profitable channel of espying all sorts of virtues +in the high and the mighty, who were able and willing to pay for +the discovery.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—I do not fancy these +virtue-spyers.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Next to Mr. Skionar sits Mr. +Chainmail, a good-looking young gentleman, as you see, with very +antiquated tastes. He is fond of old poetry, and is +something of a poet himself. He is deep in monkish +literature, and holds that the best state of society was that of +the twelfth century, when nothing was going forward but fighting, +feasting, and praying, which he says are the three great purposes +for which man was made. He laments bitterly over the +inventions of gunpowder, steam, and gas, which he says have +ruined the world. He lives within two or three miles, and +has a large hall, adorned with rusty pikes, shields, helmets, +swords, and tattered banners, and furnished with yew-tree chairs, +and two long old worm-eaten oak tables, where he dines with all +his household, after the fashion of his favourite age. He +wants us all to dine with him, and I believe we shall go.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—That will be something new, +at any rate.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Next to him is Mr. Toogood, the +co-operationist, who will have neither fighting nor praying; but +wants to parcel out the world into squares like a chess-board, +with a community on each, raising everything for one another, +with a great steam-engine to serve them in common for tailor and +hosier, kitchen and cook.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—He is the strangest of the +set, so far.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—This brings us to the bottom of +the table, where sits my humble servant, Mr. Crotchet the +younger. I ought not to describe him.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—I entreat you do.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Well, I really have very little to +say in his favour.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—I do not wish to hear +anything in his favour; and I rejoice to hear you say so, +because—</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Do not flatter yourself. If +I take him, it will be to please my father, and to have a town +and country house, and plenty of servants and a carriage and an +opera-box, and make some of my acquaintance who have married for +love, or for rank, or for anything but money, die for envy of my +jewels. You do not think I would take him for +himself. Why, he is very smooth and spruce as far as his +dress goes; but as to his face, he looks as if he had tumbled +headlong into a volcano, and been thrown up again among the +cinders.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—I cannot believe, that, +speaking thus of him, you mean to take him at all.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Oh! I am out of my teens. I +have been very much in love; but now I am come to years of +discretion, and must think, like other people, of settling myself +advantageously. He was in love with a banker’s +daughter, and cast her off at her father’s bankruptcy, and +the poor girl has gone to hide herself in some wild place.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—She must have a strange +taste, if she pines for the loss of him.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—They say he was good-looking, till +his bubble schemes, as they call them, stamped him with the +physiognomy of a desperate gambler. I suspect he has still +a penchant towards his first flame. If he takes me, it will +be for my rank and connection, and the second seat of the borough +of Rogueingrain. So we shall meet on equal terms, and shall +enjoy all the blessedness of expecting nothing from each +other.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—You can expect no security +with such an adventurer.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—I shall have the security of a +good settlement, and then if <i>andare al diavolo</i> be his +destiny, he may go, you know, by himself. He is almost +always dreaming and <i>distrait</i>. It is very likely that +some great reverse is in store for him: but that will not concern +me, you perceive.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—You torture me, Clarinda, +with the bare possibility.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Hush! Here is music to +soothe your troubled spirit. Next to him, on this side, +sits the dilettante composer, Mr. Trillo; they say his name was +O’Trill, and he has taken the O from the beginning, and put +it at the end. I do not know how this may be. He +plays well on the violoncello, and better on the piano; sings +agreeably; has a talent at versemaking, and improvises a song +with some felicity. He is very agreeable company in the +evening, with his instruments and music-books. He maintains +that the sole end of all enlightened society is to get up a good +opera, and laments that wealth, genius, and energy are squandered +upon other pursuits, to the neglect of this one great matter.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—That is a very pleasant fancy +at any rate.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—I assure you he has a great deal +to say for it. Well, next to him, again, is Dr. Morbific, +who has been all over the world to prove that there is no such +thing as contagion; and has inoculated himself with plague, +yellow fever, and every variety of pestilence, and is still alive +to tell the story. I am very shy of him, too; for I look on +him as a walking phial of wrath, corked full of all infections, +and not to be touched without extreme hazard.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—This is the strangest fellow +of all.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Next to him sits Mr. Philpot, the +geographer, who thinks of nothing but the heads and tails of +rivers, and lays down the streams of Terra Incognita as +accurately as if he had been there. He is a person of +pleasant fancy, and makes a sort of fairy land of every country +he touches, from the Frozen Ocean to the Deserts of Sahara.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—How does he settle matters +with Mr. Firedamp?</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—You see Mr. Firedamp has got as +far as possible out of his way. Next to him is Sir Simon +Steeltrap, of Steeltrap Lodge, Member for Crouching-Curtown, +Justice of Peace for the county, and Lord of the United Manors of +Spring-gun-and-Treadmill; a great preserver of game and public +morals. By administering the laws which he assists in +making, he disposes, at his pleasure, of the land and its live +stock, including all the two-legged varieties, with and without +feathers, in a circumference of several miles round Steeltrap +Lodge. He has enclosed commons and woodlands; abolished +cottage gardens; taken the village cricket-ground into his own +park, out of pure regard to the sanctity of Sunday; shut up +footpaths and alehouses (all but those which belong to his +electioneering friend, Mr. Quassia, the brewer); put down fairs +and fiddlers; committed many poachers; shot a few; convicted +one-third of the peasantry; suspected the rest; and passed nearly +the whole of them through a wholesome course of prison +discipline, which has finished their education at the expense of +the county.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—He is somewhat out of his +element here: among such a diversity of opinions he will hear +some he will not like.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—It was rather ill-judged in Mr. +Crotchet to invite him to-day. But the art of assorting +company is above these <i>parvenus</i>. They invite a +certain number of persons without considering how they harmonise +with each other. Between Sir Simon and you is the Reverend +Doctor Folliott. He is said to be an excellent scholar, and +is fonder of books than the majority of his cloth; he is very +fond, also, of the good things of this world. He is of an +admirable temper, and says rude things in a pleasant half-earnest +manner, that nobody can take offence with. And next to him +again is one Captain Fitzchrome, who is very much in love with a +certain person that does not mean to have anything to say to him, +because she can better her fortune by taking somebody else.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—And next to him again is the +beautiful, the accomplished, the witty, the fascinating, the +tormenting, Lady Clarinda, who traduces herself to the said +Captain by assertions which it would drive him crazy to +believe.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Time will show, sir. And now +we have gone the round of the table.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—But I must say, though I know +you had always a turn for sketching characters, you surprise me +by your observation, and especially by your attention to +opinions.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Well, I will tell you a secret: I +am writing a novel.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—A novel!</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Yes, a novel. And I shall +get a little finery by it: trinkets and fal-lals, which I cannot +get from papa. You must know I have been reading several +fashionable novels, the fashionable this, and the fashionable +that; and I thought to myself, why I can do better than any of +these myself. So I wrote a chapter or two, and sent them as +a specimen to Mr. Puffall, the book-seller, telling him they were +to be a part of the fashionable something or other, and he +offered me, I will not say how much, to finish it in three +volumes, and let him pay all the newspapers for recommending it +as the work of a lady of quality, who had made very free with the +characters of her acquaintance.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Surely you have not done +so?</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Oh, no! I leave that to Mr. +Eavesdrop. But Mr. Puffall made it a condition that I +should let him say so.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—A strange recommendation.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Oh, nothing else will do. +And it seems you may give yourself any character you like, and +the newspapers will print it as if it came from themselves. +I have commended you to three of our friends here as an +economist, a transcendentalist, and a classical scholar; and if +you wish to be renowned through the world for these, or any other +accomplishments, the newspapers will confirm you in their +possession for half-a-guinea a piece.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Truly, the praise of such +gentry must be a feather in any one’s cap.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—So you will see, some morning, +that my novel is “the most popular production of the +day.” This is Mr. Puffall’s favourite +phrase. He makes the newspapers say it of everything he +publishes. But “the day,” you know, is a very +convenient phrase; it allows of three hundred and sixty-five +“most popular productions” in a year. And in +leap-year one more.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THEORIES.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>But when they came to shape the model,<br /> +Not one could fit the other’s noddle.—<span +class="smcap">Butler</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">Meanwhile</span>, the last course, and the +dessert, passed by. When the ladies had withdrawn, young +Crotchet addressed the company.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>, <i>jun.</i> There is one point in +which philosophers of all classes seem to be agreed: that they +only want money to regenerate the world.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—No doubt of it. Nothing is +so easy as to lay down the outlines of perfect society. +There wants nothing but money to set it going. I will +explain myself clearly and fully by reading a paper. +(Producing a large scroll.) “In the infancy of +society—”</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Pray, Mr. Mac Quedy, how +is it that all gentlemen of your nation begin everything they +write with the “infancy of society?”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Eh, sir, it is the simplest way to +begin at the beginning. “In the infancy of society, +when government was invented to save a percentage; say two and a +half per cent.—”</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I will not say any such +thing.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, say any percentage you +please.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I will not say any +percentage at all.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—“On the principle of the +division of labour—”</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Government was invented to +spend a percentage.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—To save a percentage.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No, sir, to spend a +percentage; and a good deal more than two and a half +percent. Two hundred and fifty per cent.: that is +intelligible.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—“In the infancy of +society—”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Toogood</i>.—Never mind the infancy of +society. The question is of society in its maturity. +Here is what it should be. (Producing a paper.) I +have laid it down in a diagram.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—Before we proceed to the question of +government, we must nicely discriminate the boundaries of sense, +understanding, and reason. Sense is a +receptivity—</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>, <i>jun.</i>—We are proceeding too +fast. Money being all that is wanted to regenerate society, +I will put into the hands of this company a large sum for the +purpose. Now let us see how to dispose of it.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—We will begin by taking a +committee-room in London, where we will dine together once a +week, to deliberate.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—If the money is to go in +deliberative dinners, you may set me down for a committee man and +honorary caterer.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Next, you must all learn political +economy, which I will teach you, very compendiously, in lectures +over the bottle.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I hate lectures over the +bottle. But pray, sir, what is political economy?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Political economy is to the state +what domestic economy is to the family.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No such thing, sir. +In the family there is a <i>paterfamilias</i>, who regulates the +distribution, and takes care that there shall be no such thing in +the household as one dying of hunger, while another dies of +surfeit. In the state it is all hunger at one end, and all +surfeit at the other. Matchless claret, Mr. Crotchet.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Vintage of fifteen, Doctor.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—The family consumes, and so does +the state.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Consumes, air! Yes: +but the mode, the proportions: there is the essential difference +between the state and the family. Sir, I hate false +analogies.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, sir, the analogy is not +essential. Distribution will come under its proper +head.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Come where it will, the +distribution of the state is in no respect analogous to the +distribution of the family. The <i>paterfamilias</i>, sir: +the <i>paterfamilias</i>.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, sir, let that pass. +The family consumes, and in order to consume, it must have +supply.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Well, sir, Adam and Eve +knew that, when they delved and span.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Very true, sir (reproducing his +scroll). “In the infancy of society—”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Toogood</i>.—The reverend gentleman has hit the +nail on the head. It is the distribution that must be +looked to; it is the <i>paterfamilias</i> that is wanting in the +State. Now here I have provided him. (Reproducing his +diagram.)</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—Apply the money, sir, to building and +endowing an opera house, where the ancient altar of Bacchus may +flourish, and justice may be done to sublime compositions. +(Producing a part of a manuscript opera.)</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—No, sir, build <i>sacella</i> for +transcendental oracles to teach the world how to see through a +glass darkly. (Producing a scroll.)</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—See through an opera-glass +brightly.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—See through a wine-glass +full of claret; then you see both darkly and brightly. But, +gentlemen, if you are all in the humour for reading papers, I +will read you the first half of my next Sunday’s +sermon. (Producing a paper.)</p> +<p><i>Omnes</i>.—No sermon! No sermon!</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Then I move that our +respective papers be committed to our respective pockets.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Political economy is divided into +two great branches, production and consumption.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Yes, sir; there are two +great classes of men: those who produce much and consume little; +and those who consume much and produce nothing. The +<i>fruges consumere nati</i> have the best of it. Eh, +Captain! You remember the characteristics of a great man +according to Aristophanes: ὅστις +γε πίνειν +οἶδε καὶ +βίνειν +μόνον. Ha! ha! ha! Well, +Captain, even in these tight-laced days, the obscurity of a +learned language allows a little pleasantry.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Very true, sir; the +pleasantry and the obscurity go together; they are all one, as it +were—to me at any rate (aside).</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Now, sir—</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Pray, sir, let your +science alone, or you will put me under the painful necessity of +demolishing it bit by bit, as I have done your exordium. I +will undertake it any morning; but it is too hard exercise after +dinner.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Well, sir, in the meantime I hold +my science established.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—And I hold it +demolished.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>, <i>jun.</i> Pray, gentlemen, pocket +your manuscripts, fill your glasses, and consider what we shall +do with our money.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Build lecture-rooms, and schools +for all.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—Revive the Athenian theatre; +regenerate the lyrical drama.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Toogood</i>.—Build a grand co-operative +parallelogram, with a steam-engine in the middle for a maid of +all work.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Firedamp</i>.—Drain the country, and get rid of +malaria, by abolishing duck-ponds.</p> +<p><i>Dr. Morbific</i>.—Found a philanthropic college of +anticontagionists, where all the members shall be inoculated with +the virus of all known diseases. Try the experiment on a +grand scale.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Build a great dining-hall; endow +it with beef and ale, and hang the hall round with arms to defend +the provisions.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Henbane</i>.—Found a toxicological institution +for trying all poisons and antidotes. I myself have killed +a frog twelve times, and brought him to life eleven; but the +twelfth time he died. I have a phial of the drug, which +killed him, in my pocket, and shall not rest till I have +discovered its antidote.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I move that the last +speaker be dispossessed of his phial, and that it be forthwith +thrown into the Thames.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Henbane</i>.—How, sir? my invaluable, and, in the +present state of human knowledge, infallible poison?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Let the frogs have all the +advantage of it.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Consider, Doctor, the fish might +participate. Think of the salmon.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Then let the owner’s +right-hand neighbour swallow it.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Eavesdrop</i>.—Me, sir! What have I done, +sir, that I am to be poisoned, sir?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, you have published a +character of your facetious friend, the Reverend Doctor F., +wherein you have sketched off me; me, sir, even to my nose and +wig. What business have the public with my nose and +wig?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Eavesdrop</i>.—Sir, it is all good-humoured; all +in <i>bonhomie</i>: all friendly and complimentary.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, the bottle, <i>la +Dive Bouteille</i>, is a recondite oracle, which makes an +Eleusinian temple of the circle in which it moves. He who +reveals its mysteries must die. Therefore, let the dose be +administered. <i>Fiat experimentum in animâ +vili</i>.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Eavesdrop</i>.—Sir, you are very facetious at my +expense.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, you have been very +unfacetious, very inficete at mine. You have dished me up, +like a savoury omelette, to gratify the appetite of the reading +rabble for gossip. The next time, sir, I will respond with +the <i>argumentum baculinum</i>. Print that, sir: put it on +record as a promise of the Reverend Doctor F., which shall be +most faithfully kept, with an exemplary bamboo.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Eavesdrop</i>.—Your cloth protects you, sir.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—My bamboo shall protect +me, sir.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Doctor, Doctor, you are growing too +polemical.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, my blood boils. +What business have the public with my nose and wig?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Doctor! Doctor!</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>, <i>jun.</i> Pray, gentlemen, return +to the point. How shall we employ our fund?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Philpot</i>.—Surely in no way so beneficially as +in exploring rivers. Send a fleet of steamboats down the +Niger, and another up the Nile. So shall you civilise +Africa, and establish stocking factories in Abyssinia and +Bambo.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—With all submission, +breeches and petticoats must precede stockings. Send out a +crew of tailors. Try if the King of Bambo will invest in +inexpressibles.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>, <i>jun.</i>—Gentlemen, it is not +for partial, but for general benefit, that this fund is proposed: +a grand and universally applicable scheme for the amelioration of +the condition of man.</p> +<p><i>Several Voices</i>.—That is my scheme. I have +not heard a scheme but my own that has a grain of common +sense.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—Gentlemen, you inspire me. Your +last exclamation runs itself into a chorus, and sets itself to +music. Allow me to lead, and to hope for your voices in +harmony.</p> +<blockquote><p> After careful +meditation,<br /> + And profound deliberation,<br /> +On the various pretty projects which have just been shown,<br /> + Not a scheme in agitation,<br /> + For the world’s +amelioration,<br /> +Has a grain of common sense in it, except my own.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Several Voices</i>.—We are not disposed to join in +any such chorus.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Well, of all these +schemes, I am for Mr. Trillo’s. Regenerate the +Athenian theatre. My classical friend here, the Captain, +will vote with, me.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—I, sir? oh! of course, +sir.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Surely, Captain, I rely on you to +uphold political economy.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Me, sir! oh, to be sure, +sir.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Pray, sir, will political +economy uphold the Athenian theatre?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Surely not. It would be a +very unproductive investment.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Then the Captain votes +against you. What, sir, did not the Athenians, the wisest +of nations, appropriate to their theatre their most sacred and +intangible fund? Did not they give to melopoeia, +choregraphy, and the sundry forms of didascalics, the precedence +of all other matters, civil and military? Was it not their +law, that even the proposal to divert this fund to any other +purpose should be punished with death? But, sir, I further +propose that the Athenian theatre being resuscitated, the +admission shall be free to all who can expound the Greek +choruses, constructively, mythologically, and metrically, and to +none others. So shall all the world learn Greek: Greek, the +Alpha and Omega of all knowledge. At him who sits not in +the theatre shall be pointed the finger of scorn: he shall be +called in the highway of the city, “a fellow without +Greek.”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—But the ladies, sir, the ladies.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Every man may take in a +lady: and she who can construe and metricise a chorus, shall, if +she so please, pass in by herself.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—But, sir, you will shut me out of my +own theatre. Let there at least be a double passport, Greek +and Italian.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No, sir; I am +inexorable. No Greek, no theatre.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—Sir, I cannot consent to be shut out +from my own theatre.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—You see how it is, Squire +Crotchet the younger; you can scarcely find two to agree on a +scheme, and no two of those can agree on the details. Keep +your money in your pocket. And so ends the fund for +regenerating the world.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Nay, by no means. We are all +agreed on deliberative dinners.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Very true; we will dine +and discuss. We will sing with Robin Hood, “If I +drink water while this doth last;” and while it lasts we +will have no adjournment, if not to the Athenian theatre.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—Well, gentlemen, I hope this chorus +at least will please you:—</p> +<blockquote><p>If I drink water while this doth last,<br /> +May I never again drink wine:<br /> +For how can a man, in his life of a span,<br /> +Do anything better than dine?<br /> +We'll dine and drink, and say if we think<br /> +That anything better can be,<br /> +And when we have dined, wish all mankind<br /> +May dine as well as we.<br /> +And though a good wish will fill no dish<br /> +And brim no cup with sack,<br /> +Yet thoughts will spring as the glasses ring,<br /> +To illume our studious track.<br /> +On the brilliant dreams of our hopeful schemes<br /> +The light of the flask shall shine;<br /> +And we’ll sit till day, but we’ll find the way<br /> +To drench the world with wine.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The schemes for the world’s regeneration evaporated in a +tumult of voices.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE SLEEPING VENUS.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Quoth he: In all my life till now,<br /> +I ne’er saw so profane a show.—<span +class="smcap">Butler</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> library of Crotchet Castle was +a large and well-furnished apartment, opening on one side into an +ante-room, on the other into a music-room. It had several +tables stationed at convenient distances; one consecrated to the +novelties of literature, another to the novelties of +embellishment; others unoccupied, and at the disposal of the +company. The walls were covered with a copious collection +of ancient and modern books; the ancient having been selected and +arranged by the Reverend Doctor Folliott. In the ante-room +were card-tables; in the music-room were various instruments, all +popular operas, and all fashionable music. In this suite of +apartments, and not in the drawing-room, were the evenings of +Crotchet Castle usually passed.</p> +<p>The young ladies were in the music-room; Miss Crotchet at the +piano, Lady Clarinda at the harp, playing and occasionally +singing, at the suggestion of Mr. Trillo, portions of <i>Matilde +di Shabran</i>. Lord Bossnowl was turning over the leaves +for Miss Crotchet; the Captain was performing the same office for +Lady Clarinda, but with so much more attention to the lady than +the book, that he often made sad work with the harmony, by +turnover of two leaves together. On these occasions Miss +Crotchet paused, Lady Clarinda laughed, Mr. Trillo scolded, Lord +Bossnowl yawned, the Captain apologised, and the performance +proceeded.</p> +<p>In the library Mr. Mac Quedy was expounding political economy +to the Reverend Doctor Folliott, who was <i>pro more</i> +demolishing its doctrines <i>seriatim</i>.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail was in hot dispute with Mr. Skionar, touching +the physical and moral well-being of man. Mr. Skionar was +enforcing his friend Mr. Shantsee’s views of moral +discipline; maintaining that the sole thing needful for man in +this world was loyal and pious education; the giving men good +books to read, and enough of the hornbook to read them; with a +judicious interspersion of the lessons of Old Restraint, which +was his poetic name for the parish stocks. Mr. Chainmail, +on the other hand, stood up for the exclusive necessity of beef +and ale, lodging and raiment, wife and children, courage to fight +for them all, and armour wherewith to do so.</p> +<p>Mr. Henbane had got his face scratched, and his finger bitten, +by the cat, in trying to catch her for a second experiment in +killing and bringing to life; and Doctor Morbific was comforting +him with a disquisition to prove that there were only four +animals having the power to communicate hydrophobia, of which the +cat was one; and that it was not necessary that the animal should +be in a rabid state, the nature of the wound being everything, +and the idea of contagion a delusion. Mr. Henbane was +listening very lugubriously to this dissertation.</p> +<p>Mr. Philpot had seized on Mr. Firedamp, and pinned him down to +a map of Africa, on which he was tracing imaginary courses of +mighty inland rivers, terminating in lakes and marshes, where +they were finally evaporated by the heat of the sun; and Mr. +Firedamp’s hair was standing on end at the bare imagination +of the mass of malaria that must be engendered by the +operation. Mr. Toogood had begun explaining his diagrams to +Sir Simon Steeltrap; but Sir Simon grew testy, and told Mr. +Toogood that the promulgators of such doctrines ought to be +consigned to the treadmill. The philanthropist walked off +from the country gentleman, and proceeded to hold forth to young +Crotchet, who stood silent, as one who listens, but in reality +without hearing a syllable. Mr. Crotchet, senior, as the +master of the house, was left to entertain himself with his own +meditations, till the Reverend Doctor Folliott tore himself from +Mr. Mac Quedy, and proceeded to expostulate with Mr. Crotchet on +a delicate topic.</p> +<p>There was an Italian painter, who obtained the name of <i>Il +Bragatore</i>, by the superinduction of inexpressibles on the +naked Apollos and Bacchuses of his betters. The fame of +this worthy remained one and indivisible, till a set of heads, +which had been, by a too common mistake of Nature’s +journeymen, stuck upon magisterial shoulders, as the Corinthian +capitals of “fair round bellies with fat capon +lined,” but which Nature herself had intended for the +noddles of porcelain mandarins, promulgated simultaneously from +the east and the west of London, an order that no +plaster-of-Paris Venus should appear in the streets without +petticoats. Mr. Crotchet, on reading this order in the +evening paper, which, by the postman’s early arrival, was +always laid on his breakfast-table, determined to fill his house +with Venuses of all sizes and kinds. In pursuance of this +resolution, came packages by water-carriage, containing an +infinite variety of Venuses. There were the Medicean Venus, +and the Bathing Venus; the Uranian Venus, and the Pandemian +Venus; the Crouching Venus, and the Sleeping Venus; the Venus +rising from the sea, the Venus with the apple of Paris, and the +Venus with the armour of Mars.</p> +<p>The Reverend Doctor Folliott had been very much astonished at +this unexpected display. Disposed, as he was, to hold, that +whatever had been in Greece, was right; he was more than doubtful +of the propriety of throwing open the classical <i>adytum</i> to +the illiterate profane. Whether, in his interior mind, he +was at all influenced, either by the consideration that it would +be for the credit of his cloth, with some of his vice-suppressing +neighbours, to be able to say that he had expostulated; or by +curiosity, to try what sort of defence his city-bred friend, who +knew the classics only by translations, and whose reason was +always a little ahead of his knowledge, would make for his +somewhat ostentatious display of liberality in matters of taste; +is a question on which the learned may differ: but, after having +duly deliberated on two full-sized casts of the Uranian and +Pandemian Venus, in niches on each side of the chimney, and on +three alabaster figures, in glass cases, on the mantelpiece, he +proceeded, peirastically, to open his fire.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—These little alabaster +figures on the mantelpiece, Mr. Crotchet, and those large figures +in the niches—may I take the liberty to ask you what they +are intended to represent?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Venus, sir; nothing more, sir; just +Venus.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—May I ask you, sir, why +they are there?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—To be looked at, sir; just to be +looked at: the reasons for most things in a gentleman’s +house being in it at all; from the paper on the walls, and the +drapery of the curtains, even to the books in the library, of +which the most essential part is the appearance of the back.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Very true, sir. As +great philosophers hold that the <i>esse</i> of things is +<i>percipi</i>, so a gentleman’s furniture exists to be +looked at. Nevertheless, sir, there are some things more +fit to be looked at than others; for instance, there is nothing +more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book. It is, +as I may say, from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed +pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know +that you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless +you please. It is a resource against <i>ennui</i>, if +<i>ennui</i> should come upon you. To have the resource and +not to feel the <i>ennui</i>, to enjoy your bottle in the +present, and your book in the indefinite future, is a delightful +condition of human existence. There is no place, in which a +man can move or sit, in which the outside of a book can be +otherwise than an innocent and becoming spectacle. Touching +this matter, there cannot, I think, be two opinions. But +with respect to your Venuses there can be, and indeed there are, +two very distinct opinions. Now, Sir, that little figure in +the centre of the mantelpiece—as a grave +<i>paterfamilias</i>, Mr. Crotchet, with a fair nubile daughter, +whose eyes are like the fish-pools of Heshbon—I would ask +you if you hold that figure to be altogether delicate?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—The sleeping Venus, sir? +Nothing can be more delicate than the entire contour of the +figure, the flow of the hair on the shoulders and neck, the form +of the feet and fingers. It is altogether a most delicate +morsel.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Why, in that sense, +perhaps, it is as delicate as whitebait in July. But the +attitude, sir, the attitude.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Nothing can be more natural, +sir.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—That is the very thing, +sir. It is too natural: too natural, sir: it lies for all +the world like— I make no doubt, the pious +cheesemonger, who recently broke its plaster facsimile over the +head of the itinerant vendor, was struck by a certain similitude +to the position of his own sleeping beauty, and felt his noble +wrath thereby justly aroused.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Very likely, sir. In my +opinion, the cheesemonger was a fool, and the justice who sided +with him was a greater.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Fool, sir, is a harsh +term: call not thy brother a fool.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Sir, neither the cheesemonger nor +the justice is a brother of mine.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, we are all +brethren.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Yes, sir, as the hangman is of the +thief; the squire of the poacher; the judge of the libeller; the +lawyer of his client; the statesman of his colleague; the +bubble-blower of the bubble-buyer; the slave-driver of the negro; +as these are brethren, so am I and the worthies in question.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—To be sure, sir, in these +instances, and in many others, the term brother must be taken in +its utmost latitude of interpretation: we are all brothers, +nevertheless. But to return to the point. Now these +two large figures, one with drapery on the lower half of the +body, and the other with no drapery at all; upon my word, sir, it +matters not what godfathers and godmothers may have promised and +vowed for the children of this world, touching the devil and +other things to be renounced, if such figures as those are to be +put before their eyes.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Sir, the naked figure is the +Pandemian Venus, and the half-draped figure is the Uranian Venus; +and I say, sir, that figure realises the finest imaginings of +Plato, and is the personification of the most refined and exalted +feeling of which the human mind is susceptible; the love of pure, +ideal, intellectual beauty.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I am aware, sir, that +Plato, in his Symposium, discourseth very eloquently touching the +Uranian and Pandemian Venus: but you must remember that, in our +universities, Plato is held to be little better than a misleader +of youth; and they have shown their contempt for him, not only by +never reading him (a mode of contempt in which they deal very +largely), but even by never printing a complete edition of him; +although they have printed many ancient books, which nobody +suspects to have been ever read on the spot, except by a person +attached to the press, who is, therefore, emphatically called +“the reader.”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Well, sir?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Why, sir, to “the +reader” aforesaid (supposing either of our universities to +have printed an edition of Plato), or to any one else who can be +supposed to have read Plato, or, indeed, to be ever likely to do +so, I would very willingly show these figures; because to such +they would, I grant you, be the outward and visible signs of +poetical and philosophical ideas: but, to the multitude, the +gross, carnal multitude, they are but two beautiful women, one +half undressed, and the other quite so.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Then, sir, let the multitude look +upon them and learn modesty.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I must say that, if I +wished my footman to learn modesty, I should not dream of sending +him to school to a naked Venus.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Sir, ancient sculpture is the true +school of modesty. But where the Greeks had modesty, we +have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had +patriotism, we have cant; where they had anything that exalts, +delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, +cant. And, sir, to show my contempt for cant in all its +shapes, I have adorned my house with the Greek Venus, in all her +shapes, and am ready to fight her battle against all the +societies that ever were instituted for the suppression of truth +and beauty.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—My dear sir, I am afraid +you are growing warm. Pray be cool. Nothing +contributes so much to good digestion as to be perfectly cool +after dinner.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Sir, the Lacedæmonian virgins +wrestled naked with young men; and they grew up, as the wise +Lycurgus had foreseen, into the most modest of women, and the +most exemplary of wives and mothers.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Very likely, sir; but the +Athenian virgins did no such thing, and they grew up into wives +who stayed at home—stayed at home, sir; and looked after +their husbands’ dinner—his dinner, sir, you will +please to observe.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—And what was the consequence of +that, sir? that they were such very insipid persons that the +husband would not go home to eat his dinner, but preferred the +company of some Aspasia, or Lais.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Two very different +persons, sir, give me leave to remark.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Very likely, sir; but both too good +to be married in Athens.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, Lais was a +Corinthian.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Od’s vengeance, sir, some +Aspasia and any other Athenian name of the same sort of person +you like—</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I do not like the sort of +person at all: the sort of person I like, as I have already +implied, is a modest woman, who stays at home and looks after her +husband’s dinner.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Well, sir, that was not the taste +of the Athenians. They preferred the society of women who +would not have made any scruple about sitting as models to +Praxiteles; as you know, sir, very modest women in Italy did to +Canova; one of whom, an Italian countess, being asked by an +English lady, “how she could bear it?” answered, +“Very well; there was a good fire in the room.”</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, the English lady +should have asked how the Italian lady’s husband could bear +it. The phials of my wrath would overflow if poor dear Mrs. +Folliott —: sir, in return for your story, I will tell you +a story of my ancestor, Gilbert Folliott. The devil haunted +him, as he did Saint Francis, in the likeness of a beautiful +damsel; but all he could get from the exemplary Gilbert was an +admonition to wear a stomacher and longer petticoats.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Sir, your story makes for my side +of the question. It proves that the devil, in the likeness +of a fair damsel, with short petticoats and no stomacher, was +almost too much for Gilbert Folliott. The force of the +spell was in the drapery.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Bless my soul, sir!</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Give me leave, sir. +Diderot—</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Who was he, sir?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Who was he, sir? the sublime +philosopher, the father of the Encyclopædia, of all the +encyclopædias that have ever been printed.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Bless me, sir, a terrible +progeny: they belong to the tribe of Incubi.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—The great philosopher, +Diderot—</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, Diderot is not a man +after my heart. Keep to the Greeks, if you please; albeit +this Sleeping Venus is not an antique.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Well, sir, the Greeks: why do we +call the Elgin marbles inestimable? Simply because they are +true to nature. And why are they so superior in that point +to all modern works, with all our greater knowledge of +anatomy? Why, sir, but because the Greeks, having no cant, +had better opportunities of studying models?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, I deny our greater +knowledge of anatomy. But I shall take the liberty to +employ, on this occasion, the <i>argumentum ad hominem</i>. +Would you have allowed Miss Crotchet to sit for a model to +Canova?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Yes, sir.</p> +<p>“God bless my soul, sir!” exclaimed the Reverend +Doctor Folliott, throwing himself back into a chair, and flinging +up his heels, with the premeditated design of giving emphasis to +his exclamation; but by miscalculating his impetus, he +overbalanced his chair, and laid himself on the carpet in a right +angle, of which his back was the base.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">SCIENCE AND CHARITY.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Chi sta nel mondo un par d’ore contento,<br +/> +Nè gli vien tolta, ovver contaminata,<br /> +Quella sua pace in veruno momento,<br /> +Puo dir che Giove drittamente il guata.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Forteguerri</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Reverend Doctor Folliott took +his departure about ten o’clock, to walk home to his +vicarage. There was no moon, but the night was bright and +clear, and afforded him as much light as he needed. He +paused a moment by the Roman camp to listen to the nightingale; +repeated to himself a passage of Sophocles; proceeded through the +park gate, and entered the narrow lane that led to the +village. He walked on in a very pleasant mood of the state +called reverie; in which fish and wine, Greek and political +economy, the Sleeping Venus he had left behind, and poor dear +Mrs. Folliott, to whose fond arms he was returning, passed, as in +a camera obscura, over the tablets of his imagination. +Presently the image of Mr. Eavesdrop, with a printed sketch of +the Reverend Doctor F., presented itself before him, and he began +mechanically to flourish his bamboo. The movement was +prompted by his good genius, for the uplifted bamboo received the +blow of a ponderous cudgel, which was intended for his +head. The reverend gentleman recoiled two or three paces, +and saw before him a couple of ruffians, who were preparing to +renew the attack, but whom, with two swings of his bamboo, he +laid with cracked sconces on the earth, where he proceeded to +deal with them like corn beneath the flail of the thresher. +One of them drew a pistol, which went off in the very act of +being struck aside by the bamboo, and lodged a bullet in the +brain of the other. There was then only one enemy, who +vainly struggled to rise, every effort being attended with a new +and more signal prostration. The fellow roared for +mercy. “Mercy, rascal!” cried the divine; +“what mercy were you going to show me, villain? +What! I warrant me, you thought it would be an easy matter, +and no sin, to rob and murder a parson on his way home from +dinner. You said to yourself, doubtless, “We’ll +waylay the fat parson (you irreverent knave), as he waddles home +(you disparaging ruffian), half-seas-over, (you calumnious +vagabond).” And with every dyslogistic term, which he +supposed had been applied to himself, he inflicted a new bruise +on his rolling and roaring antagonist. “Ah, +rogue!” he proceeded, “you can roar now, marauder; +you were silent enough when you devoted my brains to dispersion +under your cudgel. But seeing that I cannot bind you, and +that I intend you not to escape, and that it would be dangerous +to let you rise, I will disable you in all your members. I +will contund you as Thestylis did strong smelling herbs, in the +quality whereof you do most gravely partake, as my nose beareth +testimony, ill weed that you are. I will beat you to a +jelly, and I will then roll you into the ditch, to lie till the +constable comes for you, thief.”</p> +<p>“Hold! hold! reverend sir,” exclaimed the penitent +culprit, “I am disabled already in every finger, and in +every joint. I will roll myself into the ditch, reverend +sir.”</p> +<p>“Stir not, rascal,” returned the divine, +“stir not so much as the quietest leaf above you, or my +bamboo rebounds on your body, like hail in a thunder-storm. +Confess, speedily, villain; are you a simple thief, or would you +have manufactured me into a subject for the benefit of +science? Ay, miscreant caitiff, you would have made me a +subject for science, would you? You are a school-master +abroad, are you? You are marching with a detachment of the +march of mind, are you? You are a member of the Steam +Intellect Society, are you? You swear by the learned +friend, do you?”</p> +<p>“Oh, no! reverend sir,” answered the criminal, +“I am innocent of all these offences, whatever they are, +reverend sir. The only friend I had in the world is lying +dead beside me, reverend sir.”</p> +<p>The reverend gentleman paused a moment, and leaned on his +bamboo. The culprit, bruised as he was, sprang on his legs, +and went off in double quick time. The Doctor gave him +chase, and had nearly brought him within arm’s length, when +the fellow turned at right angles, and sprang clean over a deep +dry ditch. The divine, following with equal ardour, and +less dexterity, went down over head and ears into a thicket of +nettles. Emerging with much discomposure, he proceeded to +the village, and roused the constable; but the constable found, +on reaching the scene of action, that the dead man was gone, as +well as his living accomplice.</p> +<p>“Oh, the monster!” exclaimed the Reverend Doctor +Folliott, “he has made a subject for science of the only +friend he had in the world.” “Ay, my +dear,” he resumed, the next morning at breakfast, “if +my old reading, and my early gymnastics (for, as the great +Hermann says, before I was demulced by the Muses, I was +<i>ferocis ingenii puer</i>, <i>et ad arma quam ad literas +paratior</i>), had not imbued me indelibly with some of the holy +rage of <i>Frère Jean des Entommeures</i>, I should be, at +this moment, lying on the table of some flinty-hearted anatomist, +who would have sliced and disjointed me as unscrupulously as I do +these remnants of the capon and chine, wherewith you consoled +yourself yesterday for my absence at dinner. Phew! I have a +noble thirst upon me, which I will quench with floods of +tea.”</p> +<p>The reverend gentleman was interrupted by a messenger, who +informed him that the Charity Commissioners requested his +presence at the inn, where they were holding a sitting.</p> +<p>“The Charity Commissioners!” exclaimed the +reverend gentleman, “who on earth are they?”</p> +<p>The messenger could not inform him, and the reverend gentleman +took his hat and stick, and proceeded to the inn.</p> +<p>On entering the best parlour, he saw three well-dressed and +bulky gentlemen sitting at a table, and a fourth officiating as +clerk, with an open book before him, and a pen in his hand. +The church-wardens, who had been also summoned, were already in +attendance.</p> +<p>The chief commissioner politely requested the Reverend Doctor +Folliott to be seated, and after the usual meteorological +preliminaries had been settled by a resolution, <i>nem. con.</i>, +that it was a fine day but very hot, the chief commissioner +stated, that in virtue of the commission of Parliament, which +they had the honour to hold, they were now to inquire into the +state of the public charities of this village.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—The state of the public +charities, sir, is exceedingly simple. There are +none. The charities here are all private, and so private, +that I for one know nothing of them.</p> +<p><i>First Commissioner</i>.—We have been informed, sir, +that there is an annual rent charged on the land of Hautbois, for +the endowment and repair of an almshouse.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Hautbois! Hautbois!</p> +<p><i>First Commissioner</i>.—The manorial farm of +Hautbois, now occupied by Farmer Seedling, is charged with the +endowment and maintenance of an almshouse.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i> (<i>to the +Churchwarden</i>). How is this, Mr. Bluenose?</p> +<p><i>First Churchwarden</i>.—I really do not know, +sir. What say you, Mr. Appletwig?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Appletwig</i> (<i>parish clerk and schoolmaster</i>; +<i>an old man</i>). I do remember, gentlemen, to have been +informed, that there did stand, at the end of the village, a +ruined cottage, which had once been an almshouse, which was +endowed and maintained, by an annual revenue of a mark and a +half, or one pound sterling, charged some centuries ago on the +farm of Hautbois; but the means, by the progress of time, having +become inadequate to the end, the almshouse tumbled to +pieces.</p> +<p><i>First Commissioner</i>.—But this is a right which +cannot be abrogated by desuetude, and the sum of one pound per +annum is still chargeable for charitable purposes on the manorial +farm of Hautbois.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Very well, sir.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Appletwig</i>.—But, sir, the one pound per annum +is still received by the parish, but was long ago, by an +unanimous vote in open vestry, given to the minister.</p> +<p><i>The Three Commissioners</i> (<i>unâ voce</i>). +The minister!</p> +<p><i>First Commissioner</i>.—This is an unjustifiable +proceeding.</p> +<p><i>Second Commissioner</i>.—A misappropriation of a +public fund.</p> +<p><i>Third Commissioner</i>.—A flagrant perversion of a +charitable donation.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—God bless my soul, +gentlemen! I know nothing of this matter. How is +this, Mr. Bluenose? Do I receive this one pound per +annum?</p> +<p><i>First Churchwarden</i>.—Really, sir, I know no more +about it than you do.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Appletwig</i>.—You certainly receive it, +sir. It was voted to one of your predecessors. Farmer +Seedling lumps it in with his tithes.</p> +<p><i>First Commissioner</i>.—Lumps it in, sir! Lump +in a charitable donation!</p> +<p><i>Second and Third Commissioner</i>.—Oh-oh-oh-h-h!</p> +<p><i>First Commissioner</i>.—Reverend sir, and gentlemen, +officers of this parish, we are under the necessity of +admonishing you that this is a most improper proceeding: and you +are hereby duly admonished accordingly. Make a record, Mr. +Milky.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Milky</i> (<i>writing</i>). The clergyman and +church-wardens of the village of Hm-ra-m-m- gravely +admonished. Hm-m-m-m.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Is that all, +gentlemen?</p> +<p><i>The Commissioners</i>.—That is all, sir; and we wish +you a good morning.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—A very good morning to +you, gentlemen.</p> +<p>“What in the name of all that is wonderful, Mr. +Bluenose,” said the Reverend Doctor Folliott, as he walked +out of the inn, “what in the name of all that is wonderful, +can those fellows mean? They have come here in a chaise and +four, to make a fuss about a pound per annum, which, after all, +they leave as it was: I wonder who pays them for their trouble, +and how much.”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Appletwig</i>.—The public pay for it, sir. +It is a job of the learned friend whom you admire so much. +It makes away with public money in salaries, and private money in +lawsuits, and does no particle of good to any living soul.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Ay, ay, Mr. Appletwig; +that is just the sort of public service to be looked for from the +learned friend. Oh, the learned friend! the learned +friend! He is the evil genius of everything that falls in +his way.</p> +<p>The Reverend Doctor walked off to Crotchet Castle, to narrate +his misadventures, and exhale his budget of grievances on Mr. Mac +Quedy, whom he considered a ringleader of the march of mind.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE VOYAGE.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Οἰ μέν +ἔπειτ’ +ἀναβάτες +ἐπέπλον +ὑγρὰ +κέλευθα.</p> +<p>Mounting the bark, they cleft the watery ways.—<span +class="smcap">Homer</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">Four</span> beautiful cabined pinnaces, +one for the ladies, one for the gentlemen, one for kitchen and +servants, one for a dining-room and band of music, weighed +anchor, on a fine July morning, from below Crotchet Castle, and +were towed merrily, by strong trotting horses, against the stream +of the Thames. They passed from the district of chalk, +successively into the districts of clay, of sand-rock, of oolite, +and so forth. Sometimes they dined in their floating +dining-room, sometimes in tents, which they pitched on the dry, +smooth-shaven green of a newly-mown meadow: sometimes they left +their vessels to see sights in the vicinity; sometimes they +passed a day or two in a comfortable inn.</p> +<p>At Oxford, they walked about to see the curiosities of +architecture, painted windows, and undisturbed libraries. +The Reverend Doctor Folliott laid a wager with Mr. Crotchet +“that in all their perlustrations they would not find a man +reading,” and won it. “Ay,” said the +reverend gentleman, “this is still a seat of learning, on +the principle of—once a captain, always a captain. We +may well ask, in these great reservoirs of books whereof no man +ever draws a sluice, <i>Quorsum pertinuit stipere Platona +Menandro</i>? What is done here for the classics? +Reprinting German editions on better paper. A great boast, +verily! What for mathematics? What for +metaphysics? What for history? What for anything +worth knowing? This was a seat of learning in the days of +Friar Bacon. But the Friar is gone, and his learning with +him. Nothing of him is left but the immortal nose, which, +when his brazen head had tumbled to pieces, crying +“Time’s Past,” was the only palpable fragment +among its minutely pulverised atoms, and which is still +resplendent over the portals of its cognominal college. +That nose, sir, is the only thing to which I shall take off my +hat, in all this Babylon of buried literature.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—But, doctor, it is something to +have a great reservoir of learning, at which some may draw if +they please.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—But, here, good care is +taken that nobody shall please. If even a small drop from +the sacred fountain, +πίδακος ἐξ +ἱερῆς +ὀλίγη +λιβὰς, as Callimachus has it, were +carried off by any one, it would be evidence of something to hope +for. But the system of dissuasion from all good learning is +brought here to a pitch of perfection that baffles the keenest +aspirant. I run over to myself the names of the scholars of +Germany, a glorious catalogue: but ask for those of +Oxford,—Where are they? The echoes of their courts, +as vacant as their heads, will answer, Where are they? The +tree shall be known by its fruit: and seeing that this great +tree, with all its specious seeming, brings forth no fruit, I do +denounce it as a barren fig.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—I shall set you right on this +point. We do nothing without motives. If learning get +nothing but honour, and very little of that; and if the good +things of this world, which ought to be the rewards of learning, +become the mere gifts of self-interested patronage; you must not +wonder if, in the finishing of education, the science which takes +precedence of all others, should be the science of currying +favour.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Very true, sir. +Education is well finished, for all worldly purposes, when the +head is brought into the state whereinto I am accustomed to bring +a marrow-bone, when it has been set before me on a toast, with a +white napkin wrapped round it. Nothing trundles along the +high road of preferment so trimly as a well-biassed sconce, +picked clean within and polished without; <i>totus teres atque +rotundus</i>. The perfection of the finishing lies in the +bias, which keeps it trundling in the given direction. +There is good and sufficient reason for the fig being barren, but +it is not therefore the less a barren fig.</p> +<p>At Godstow, they gathered hazel on the grave of Rosamond; and, +proceeding on their voyage, fell into a discussion on legendary +histories.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—History is but a tiresome thing in +itself: it becomes more agreeable the more romance is mixed up +with it. The great enchanter has made me learn many things +which I should never have dreamed of studying, if they had not +come to me in the form of amusement.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—What enchanter is +that? There are two enchanters: he of the north, and he of +the south.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—Rossini!</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Ay, there is another +enchanter. But I mean the great enchanter of Covent Garden: +he who, for more than a quarter of a century, has produced two +pantomimes a year, to the delight of children of all ages; +including myself at all ages. That is the enchanter for +me. I am for the pantomimes. All the northern +enchanter’s romances put together would not furnish +materials for half the Southern enchanter’s pantomimes.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Surely you do not class literature +with pantomime?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—In these cases, I +do. They are both one, with a slight difference. The +one is the literature of pantomime, the other is the pantomime of +literature. There is the same variety of character, the +same diversity of story, the same copiousness of incident, the +same research into costume, the same display of heraldry, +falconry, minstrelsy, scenery, monkery, witchery, devilry, +robbery, poachery, piracy, fishery, gipsy-astrology, demonology, +architecture, fortification, castrametation, navigation; the same +running base of love and battle. The main difference is, +that the one set of amusing fictions is told in music and action; +the other in all the worst dialects of the English +language. As to any sentence worth remembering, any moral +or political truth, anything having a tendency, however remote, +to make men wiser or better, to make them think, to make them +ever think of thinking; they are both precisely alike +<i>nuspiam</i>, <i>nequaquam</i>, <i>nullibi</i>, +<i>nullimodis</i>.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Very amusing, however.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Very amusing, very +amusing.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—My quarrel with the northern +enchanter is, that he has grossly misrepresented the twelfth +century.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—He has misrepresented +everything, or he would not have been very amusing. Sober +truth is but dull matter to the reading rabble. The angler, +who puts not on his hook the bait that best pleases the fish, may +sit all day on the bank without catching a gudgeon.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—But how do you mean that he has +misrepresented the twelfth century? By exhibiting some of +its knights and ladies in the colours of refinement and virtue, +seeing that they were all no better than ruffians, and something +else that shall be nameless?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—By no means. By depicting +them as much worse than they were, not, as you suppose, much +better. No one would infer from his pictures that theirs +was a much better state of society than this which we live +in.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—No, nor was it. It was a +period of brutality, ignorance, fanaticism, and tyranny; when the +land was covered with castles, and every castle contained a gang +of banditti, headed by a titled robber, who levied contributions +with fire and sword; plundering, torturing, ravishing, burying +his captives in loathsome dungeons, and broiling them on +gridirons, to force from them the surrender of every particle of +treasure which he suspected them of possessing; and fighting +every now and then with the neighbouring lords, his conterminal +bandits, for the right of marauding on the boundaries. This +was the twelfth century, as depicted by all contemporary +historians and poets.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—No, sir. Weigh the evidence +of specific facts; you will find more good than evil. Who +was England’s greatest hero—the mirror of chivalry, +the pattern of honour, the fountain of generosity, the model to +all succeeding ages of military glory? Richard the +First. There is a king of the twelfth century. What +was the first step of liberty? Magna Charta. That was +the best thing ever done by lords. There are lords of the +twelfth century. You must remember, too, that these lords +were petty princes, and made war on each other as legitimately as +the heads of larger communities did or do. For their system +of revenue, it was, to be sure, more rough and summary than that +which has succeeded it, but it was certainly less searching and +less productive. And as to the people, I content myself +with these great points: that every man was armed, every man was +a good archer, every man could and would fight effectively, with +sword or pike, or even with oaken cudgel; no man would live +quietly without beef and ale if he had them not; he fought till +he either got them, or was put out of condition to want +them. They were not, and could not be, subjected to that +powerful pressure of all the other classes of society, combined +by gunpowder, steam, and <i>fiscality</i>, which has brought them +to that dismal degradation in which we see them now. And +there are the people of the twelfth century.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—As to your king, the enchanter has +done him ample justice, even in your own view. As to your +lords and their ladies, he has drawn them too favourably, given +them too many of the false colours of chivalry, thrown too +attractive a light on their abominable doings. As to the +people, he keeps them so much in the background, that he can +hardly be said to have represented them at all, much less +misrepresented them, which indeed he could scarcely do, seeing +that, by your own showing, they were all thieves, ready to knock +down any man for what they could not come by honestly.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—No, sir. They could come +honestly by beef and ale, while they were left to their simple +industry. When oppression interfered with them in that, +then they stood on the defensive, and fought for what they were +not permitted to come by quietly.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—If A., being aggrieved by B., +knocks down C., do you call that standing on the defensive?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—That depends on who or what C. +is.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Gentlemen, you will never +settle this controversy till you have first settled what is good +for man in this world; the great question, <i>de finibus</i>, +which has puzzled all philosophers. If the enchanter has +represented the twelfth century too brightly for one, and too +darkly for the other of you, I should say, as an impartial man, +he has represented it fairly. My quarrel with him is, that +his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that +furnishes no quotations, is <i>me judice</i>, no book—it is +a plaything. There is no question about the +amusement,—amusement of multitudes; but if he who amuses us +most is to be our enchanter κατ’ +ἐξοχὴν, then my enchanter is the +enchanter of Covent Garden.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER X.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE VOYAGE, CONTINUED.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Continuant nostre routte, navigasmes par trois +jours <i>sans rien descouvrir</i>.—<span +class="smcap">Rabelais</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“<span class="smcap">There</span> is a beautiful +structure,” said Mr. Chainmail, as they glided by Lechlade +church; “a subject for the pencil, Captain. It is a +question worth asking, Mr. Mac Quedy, whether the religious +spirit which reared these edifices, and connected with them +everywhere an asylum for misfortune, and a provision for poverty, +was not better than the commercial spirit, which has turned all +the business of modern life into schemes of profit and processes +of fraud and extortion. I do not see, in all your boasted +improvements, any compensation for the religious charity of the +twelfth century. I do not see any compensation for that +kindly feeling which, within their own little communities, bound +the several classes of society together, while full scope was +left for the development of natural character, wherein +individuals differed as conspicuously as in costume. Now, +we all wear one conventional dress, one conventional face; we +have no bond of union but pecuniary interest; we talk anything +that comes uppermost for talking’s sake, and without +expecting to be believed; we have no nature, no simplicity, no +picturesqueness: everything about us is as artificial and as +complicated as our steam-machinery: our poetry is a kaleidoscope +of false imagery, expressing no real feeling, portraying no real +existence. I do not see any compensation for the poetry of +the twelfth century.”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—I wonder to hear you, Mr. +Chainmail, talking of the religious charity of a set of lazy +monks and beggarly friars, who were much more occupied with +taking than giving; of whom those who were in earnest did nothing +but make themselves and everybody about them miserable with +fastings and penances, and other such trash; and those who were +not, did nothing but guzzle and royster, and, having no wives of +their own, took very unbecoming liberties with those of honester +men. And as to your poetry of the twelfth century, it is +not good for much.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—It has, at any rate, what ours +wants, truth to nature and simplicity of diction.</p> +<p>The poetry, which was addressed to the people of the dark +ages, pleased in proportion to the truth with which it depicted +familiar images, and to their natural connection with the time +and place to which they were assigned. In the poetry of our +enlightened times, the characteristics of all seasons, soils, and +climates may be blended together with much benefit to the +author’s fame as an original genius. The cowslip of a +civic poet is always in blossom, his fern is always in full +feather; he gathers the celandine, the primrose, the +heath-flower, the jasmine, and the chrysanthemum all on the same +day and from the same spot; his nightingale sings all the year +round, his moon is always full, his cygnet is as white as his +swan, his cedar is as tremulous as his aspen, and his poplar as +embowering as his beech. Thus all nature marches with the +march of mind; but among barbarians, instead of mead and wine, +and the best seat by the fire, the reward of such a genius would +have been to be summarily turned out of doors in the snow, to +meditate on the difference between day and night and between +December and July. It is an age of liberality, indeed, when +not to know an oak from a burdock is no disqualification for +sylvan minstrelsy. I am for truth and simplicity.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Let him who loves them +read Greek: Greek, Greek, Greek.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—If he can, sir.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Very true, sir; if he +can. Here is the Captain who can. But I think he must +have finished his education at some very rigid college, where a +quotation or any other overt act showing acquaintance with +classical literature was visited with a severe penalty. For +my part, I make it my boast that I was not to be so +subdued. I could not be abated of a single quotation by all +the bumpers in which I was fined.</p> +<p>In this manner they glided over the face of the waters, +discussing everything and settling nothing. Mr. Mac Quedy +and the Reverend Doctor Folliott had many digladiations on +political economy: wherein, each in his own view, Doctor Folliott +demolished Mr. Mac Quedy’s science, and Mr. Mac Quedy +demolished Dr. Folliott’s objections.</p> +<p>We would print these dialogues if we thought anyone would read +them; but the world is not yet ripe for this <i>haute sagesse +Pantagrueline</i>. We must therefore content ourselves with +an <i>échantillon</i> of one of the Reverend +Doctor’s perorations.</p> +<p>“You have given the name of a science to what is yet an +imperfect inquiry, and the upshot of your so-called science is +this: that you increase the wealth of a nation by increasing in +it the quantity of things which are produced by labour: no matter +what they are, no matter how produced, no matter how +distributed. The greater the quantity of labour that has +gone to the production of the quantity of things in a community, +the richer is the community. That is your doctrine. +Now, I say, if this be so, riches are not the object for a +community to aim at. I say the nation is best off, in +relation to other nations, which has the greatest quantity of the +common necessaries of life distributed among the greatest number +of persons; which has the greatest number of honest hearts and +stout arms united in a common interest, willing to offend no one, +but ready to fight in defence of their own community against all +the rest of the world, because they have something in it worth +fighting for. The moment you admit that one class of +things, without any reference to what they respectively cost, is +better worth having than another; that a smaller commercial +value, with one mode of distribution, is better than a greater +commercial value, with another mode of distribution; the whole of +that curious fabric of postulates and dogmas, which you call the +science of political economy, and which I call <i>politicæ +æconomiæ inscientia</i>, tumbles to +pieces.”</p> +<p>Mr. Toogood agreed with Mr. Chainmail against Mr. Mac Quedy, +that the existing state of society was worse than that of the +twelfth century; but he agreed with Mr. Mac Quedy against Mr. +Chainmail, that it was in progress to something much better than +either—to which “something much better” Mr. +Toogood and Mr. Mac Quedy attached two very different +meanings.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail fought with Doctor Folliott, the battle of the +romantic against the classical in poetry; and Mr. Skionar +contended with Mr. Mac Quedy for intuition and synthesis, against +analysis and induction in philosophy.</p> +<p>Mr. Philpot would lie along for hours, listening to the +gurgling of the water round the prow, and would occasionally +edify the company with speculations on the great changes that +would be effected in the world by the steam-navigation of rivers: +sketching the course of a steamboat up and down some mighty +stream which civilisation had either never visited, or long since +deserted; the Missouri and the Columbia, the Oroonoko and the +Amazon, the Nile and the Niger, the Euphrates and the Tigris, the +Oxus and the Indus, the Ganges and the Hoangho; under the over +canopying forests of the new, or by the long-silent ruins of the +ancient, world; through the shapeless mounds of Babylon, or the +gigantic temples of Thebes.</p> +<p>Mr. Trillo went on with the composition of his opera, and took +the opinions of the young ladies on every step in its progress; +occasionally regaling the company with specimens; and wondering +at the blindness of Mr. Mac Quedy, who could not, or would not, +see that an opera in perfection, being the union of all the +beautiful arts—music, painting, dancing, +poetry—exhibiting female beauty in its most attractive +aspects, and in its most becoming costume—was, according to +the well-known precept, <i>Ingenuas didicisse</i>, etc., the most +efficient instrument of civilisation, and ought to take +precedence of all other pursuits in the minds of true +philanthropists. The Reverend Doctor Folliott, on these +occasions, never failed to say a word or two on Mr. +Trillo’s side, derived from the practice of the Athenians, +and from the combination, in their theatre, of all the beautiful +arts, in a degree of perfection unknown to the modern world.</p> +<p>Leaving Lechlade, they entered the canal that connects the +Thames with the Severn; ascended by many locks; passed by a +tunnel, three miles long, through the bowels of Sapperton Hill; +agreed unanimously that the greatest pleasure derivable from +visiting a cavern of any sort was that of getting out of it; +descended by many locks again through the valley of Stroud into +the Severn; continued their navigation into the Ellesmere canal; +moored their pinnaces in the Vale of Llangollen by the aqueduct +of Pontycysyllty; and determined to pass some days in inspecting +the scenery, before commencing their homeward voyage.</p> +<p>The Captain omitted no opportunity of pressing his suit on +Lady Clarinda, but could never draw from her any reply but the +same doctrines of worldly wisdom, delivered in a tone of +<i>badinage</i>, mixed with a certain kindness of manner that +induced him to hope she was not in earnest.</p> +<p>But the morning after they had anchored under the hills of the +Dee—whether the lady had reflected more seriously than +usual, or was somewhat less in good humour than usual, or the +Captain was more pressing than usual—she said to him: +“It must not be, Captain Fitzchrome; ‘the course of +true love never did run smooth:’ my father must keep his +borough, and I must have a town house and a country house, and an +opera box, and a carriage. It is not well for either of us +that we should flirt any longer: ‘I must be cruel only to +be kind.’ Be satisfied with the assurance that you +alone, of all men, have ever broken my rest. To be sure, it +was only for about three nights in all; but that is too +much.”</p> +<p>The Captain had <i>le cœur navré</i>. He +took his portfolio under his arm, made up the little +<i>valise</i> of a pedestrian, and, without saying a word to +anyone, wandered off at random among the mountains.</p> +<p>After the lapse of a day or two, the Captain was missed, and +everyone marvelled what was become of him. Mr. Philpot +thought he must have been exploring a river, and fallen in and +got drowned in the process. Mr. Firedamp had no doubt he +had been crossing a mountain bog, and had been suddenly deprived +of life by the exhalations of marsh miasmata. Mr. Henbane +deemed it probable that he had been tempted in some wood by the +large black brilliant berries of the <i>Atropa Belladonna</i>, or +Deadly Nightshade; and lamented that he had not been by, to +administer an infallible antidote. Mr. Eavesdrop hoped the +particulars of his fate would be ascertained; and asked if anyone +present could help him to any authentic anecdotes of their +departed friend. The Reverend Doctor Folliott proposed that +an inquiry should be instituted as to whether the march of +intellect had reached that neighbourhood, as, if so, the Captain +had probably been made a subject for science. Mr. Mac Quedy +said it was no such great matter to ascertain the precise mode in +which the surplus population was diminished by one. Mr. +Toogood asseverated that there was no such thing as surplus +population, and that the land, properly managed, would maintain +twenty times its present inhabitants; and hereupon they fell into +a disputation.</p> +<p>Lady Clarinda did not doubt that the Captain had gone away +designedly; she missed him more than she could have anticipated, +and wished she had at least postponed her last piece of cruelty +till the completion of their homeward voyage.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XI.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">CORRESPONDENCE.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>“Base is the slave that +pays.”—<span class="smcap">Ancient Pistol</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Captain was neither drowned nor +poisoned, neither miasmatised nor anatomised. But, before +we proceed to account for him, we must look back to a young lady, +of whom some little notice was taken in the first chapter; and +who, though she has since been out of sight, has never with us +been out of mind: Miss Susannah Touchandgo, the forsaken of the +junior Crotchet, whom we left an inmate of a solitary farm, in +one of the deep valleys under the cloud-capt summits of Meirion, +comforting her wounded spirit with air and exercise, rustic +cheer, music, painting, and poetry, and the prattle of the little +Ap Llymrys.</p> +<p>One evening, after an interval of anxious expectation, the +farmer, returning from market brought for her two letters, of +which the contents were these:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: +right">“<i>Dotandcarryonetown</i>, <i>State of +Apodidraskiana</i>.<br /> +“<i>April</i> 1, 18..</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Child</span>,</p> +<p>“I am anxious to learn what are your present position, +intention, and prospects. The fairies who dropped gold in +your shoe, on the morning when I ceased to be a respectable man +in London, will soon find a talismanic channel for transmitting +you a stocking full of dollars, which will fit the shoe as well +as the foot of Cinderella fitted her slipper. I am happy to +say I am again become a respectable man. It was always my +ambition to be a respectable man, and I am a very respectable man +here, in this new township of a new state, where I have purchased +five thousand acres of land, at two dollars an acre, hard cash, +and established a very flourishing bank. The notes of +Touchandgo and Company, soft cash, are now the exclusive currency +of all this vicinity. This is the land in which all men +flourish; but there are three classes of men who flourish +especially,—methodist preachers, slave-drivers, and +paper-money manufacturers; and as one of the latter, I have just +painted the word BANK on a fine slab of maple, which was green +and growing when I arrived, and have discounted for the settlers, +in my own currency, sundry bills, which are to be paid when the +proceeds of the crop they have just sown shall return from New +Orleans; so that my notes are the representatives of vegetation +that is to be, and I am accordingly a capitalist of the first +magnitude. The people here know very well that I ran away +from London; but the most of them have run away from some place +or other; and they have a great respect for me, because they +think I ran away with something worth taking, which few of them +had the luck or the wit to do. This gives them confidence +in my resources, at the same time that, as there is nothing +portable in the settlement except my own notes, they have no fear +that I shall run away with them. They know I am thoroughly +conversant with the principles of banking, and as they have +plenty of industry, no lack of sharpness, and abundance of land, +they wanted nothing but capital to organise a flourishing +settlement; and this capital I have manufactured to the extent +required, at the expense of a small importation of pens, ink, and +paper, and two or three inimitable copper plates. I have +abundance here of all good things, a good conscience included; +for I really cannot see that I have done any wrong. This +was my position: I owed half a million of money; and I had a +trifle in my pocket. It was clear that this trifle could +never find its way to the right owner. The question was, +whether I should keep it, and live like a gentleman; or hand it +over to lawyers and commissioners of bankruptcy, and die like a +dog on a dunghill. If I could have thought that the said +lawyers, etc., had a better title to it than myself, I might have +hesitated; but, as such title was not apparent to my +satisfaction, I decided the question in my own favour, the right +owners, as I have already said, being out of the question +altogether. I have always taken scientific views of morals +and politics, a habit from which I derive much comfort under +existing circumstances.</p> +<p>“I hope you adhere to your music, though I cannot hope +again to accompany your harp with my flute. My last +<i>andante</i> movement was too <i>forte</i> for those whom it +took by surprise. Let not your <i>allegro vivace</i> be +damped by young Crotchet’s desertion, which, though I have +not heard it, I take for granted. He is, like myself, a +scientific politician, and has an eye as keen as a needle to his +own interest. He has had good luck so far, and is gorgeous +in the spoils of many gulls; but I think the Polar Basin and +Walrus Company will be too much for him yet. There has been +a splendid outlay on credit, and he is the only man, of the +original parties concerned, of whom his Majesty’s sheriffs +could give any account.</p> +<p>“I will not ask you to come here. There is no +husband for you. The men smoke, drink, and fight, and break +more of their own heads than of girls’ hearts. Those +among them who are musical, sing nothing but psalms. They +are excellent fellows in their way, but you would not like +them.</p> +<p>“<i>Au reste</i>, here are no rents, no taxes, no +poor-rates, no tithes, no church establishment, no routs, no +clubs, no rotten boroughs, no operas, no concerts, no theatres, +no beggars, no thieves, no king, no lords, no ladies, and only +one gentleman, videlicet, your loving father,</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">“Timothy +Touchandgo</span>.</p> +<p>“P.S.—I send you one of my notes; I can afford to +part with it. If you are accused of receiving money from +me, you may pay it over to my assignees. Robthetill +continues to be my factotum; I say no more of him in this place: +he will give you an account of himself.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">“<i>Dotandcarryonetown</i>, +<i>etc.</i></p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Miss</span>,</p> +<p>“Mr. Touchandgo will have told you of our arrival here, +of our setting up a bank, and so forth. We came here in a +tilted waggon, which served us for parlour, kitchen, and +all. We soon got up a log-house; and, unluckily, we as soon +got it down again, for the first fire we made in it burned down +house and all. However, our second experiment was more +fortunate; and we are pretty well lodged in a house of three +rooms on a floor; I should say the floor, for there is but +one.</p> +<p>“This new state is free to hold slaves; all the new +states have not this privilege: Mr. Touchandgo has bought some, +and they are building him a villa. Mr. Touchandgo is in a +thriving way, but he is not happy here: he longs for parties and +concerts, and a seat in Congress. He thinks it very hard +that he cannot buy one with his own coinage, as he used to do in +England. Besides, he is afraid of the Regulators, who, if +they do not like a man’s character, wait upon him and flog +him, doubling the dose at stated intervals, till he takes himself +off. He does not like this system of administering justice: +though I think he has nothing to fear from it. He has the +character of having money, which is the best of all characters +here, as at home. He lets his old English prejudices +influence his opinions of his new neighbours; but, I assure you, +they have many virtues. Though they do keep slaves, they +are all ready to fight for their own liberty; and I should not +like to be an enemy within reach of one of their rifles. +When I say enemy, I include bailiff in the term. One was +shot not long ago. There was a trial; the jury gave two +dollars damages; the judge said they must find guilty or not +guilty; but the counsel for the defendant (they would not call +him prisoner) offered to fight the judge upon the point: and as +this was said literally, not metaphorically, and the counsel was +a stout fellow, the judge gave in. The two dollars damages were +not paid after all; for the defendant challenged the foreman to +box for double or quits, and the foreman was beaten. The +folks in New York made a great outcry about it, but here it was +considered all as it should be. So you see, Miss, justice, +liberty, and everything else of that kind, are different in +different places, just as suits the convenience of those who have +the sword in their own hands. Hoping to hear of your health +and happiness, I remain,</p> +<p style="text-align: right">“Dear Miss, your dutiful +servant,<br /> +“<span class="smcap">Roderick Robthetill</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Miss Touchandgo replied as follows to the first of these +letters:</p> +<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">My Dear +Father</span>,</p> +<p>“I am sure you have the best of hearts, and I have no +doubt you have acted with the best intentions. My lover, +or, I should rather say, my fortune’s lover, has indeed +forsaken me. I cannot say I did not feel it; indeed, I +cried very much; and the altered looks of people who used to be +so delighted to see me, really annoyed me so, that I determined +to change the scene altogether. I have come into Wales, and +am boarding with a farmer and his wife. Their stock of +English is very small; but I managed to agree with them, and they +have four of the sweetest children I ever saw, to whom I teach +all I know, and I manage to pick up some Welsh. I have +puzzled out a little song, which I think very pretty; I have +translated it into English, and I send it you, with the original +air. You shall play it on your flute at eight o’clock +every Saturday evening, and I will play and sing it at the same +time, and I will fancy that I hear my dear papa accompanying +me.</p> +<p>“The people in London said very unkind things of you: +they hurt me very much at the time; but now I am out of their +way, I do not seem to think their opinion of much +consequence. I am sure, when I recollect, at leisure, +everything I have seen and heard among them, I cannot make out +what they do that is so virtuous, as to set them up for judges of +morals. And I am sure they never speak the truth about +anything, and there is no sincerity in either their love or their +friendship. An old Welsh bard here, who wears a waistcoat +embroidered with leeks, and is called the Green Bard of Cadeir +Idris, says the Scotch would be the best people in the world, if +there was nobody but themselves to give them a character: and so +I think would the Londoners. I hate the very thought of +them, for I do believe they would have broken my heart, if I had +not got out of their way. Now I shall write you another +letter very soon, and describe to you the country, and the +people, and the children, and how I amuse myself, and everything +that I think you will like to hear about: and when I seal this +letter, I shall drop a kiss on the cover.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">“Your loving daughter,</p> +<p style="text-align: right">“<span class="smcap">Susannah +Touchandgo</span>.</p> +<p>“P.S.—Tell Mr. Robthetill I will write to him in a +day or two. This is the little song I spoke of:</p> +<p>“Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,<br /> +My heart is gone, far, far from me;<br /> +And ever on its track will flee<br /> +My thoughts, my dreams, beyond the sea.</p> +<p>“Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,<br /> +The swallow wanders fast and free;<br /> +Oh, happy bird! were I like thee,<br /> +I, too, would fly beyond the sea.</p> +<p>“Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,<br /> +Are kindly hearts and social glee:<br /> +But here for me they may not be;<br /> +My heart is gone beyond the sea.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER XII.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE MOUNTAIN INN.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>‘Ως ἡδὺ +τῴ μισοῦτι +τοὺς +φαύλους +πρόπους<br /> +’Ερημία.</p> +<p>How sweet to minds that love not sordid ways<br /> +Is solitude!—<span class="smcap">Menander</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Captain wandered despondingly +up and down hill for several days, passing many hours of each in +sitting on rocks; making, almost mechanically, sketches of +waterfalls, and mountain pools; taking care, nevertheless, to be +always before nightfall in a comfortable inn, where, being a +temperate man, he whiled away the evening with making a bottle of +sherry into negus. His rambles brought him at length into +the interior of Merionethshire, the land of all that is beautiful +in nature, and all that is lovely in woman.</p> +<p>Here, in a secluded village, he found a little inn, of small +pretension and much comfort. He felt so satisfied with his +quarters, and discovered every day so much variety in the scenes +of the surrounding mountains, that his inclination to proceed +farther diminished progressively.</p> +<p>It is one thing to follow the high road through a country, +with every principally remarkable object carefully noted down in +a book, taking, as therein directed, a guide, at particular +points, to the more recondite sights: it is another to sit down +on one chosen spot, especially when the choice is unpremeditated, +and from thence, by a series of explorations, to come day by day +on unanticipated scenes. The latter process has many +advantages over the former; it is free from the disappointment +which attends excited expectation, when imagination has +outstripped reality, and from the accidents that mar the scheme +of the tourist’s single day, when the valleys may be +drenched with rain, or the mountains shrouded with mist.</p> +<p>The Captain was one morning preparing to sally forth on his +usual exploration, when he heard a voice without, inquiring for a +guide to the ruined castle. The voice seemed familiar to +him, and going forth into the gateway, he recognised Mr. +Chainmail. After greetings and inquiries for the absent: +“You vanished very abruptly, Captain,” said Mr. +Chainmail, “from our party on the canal.”</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—To tell you the truth, I had +a particular reason for trying the effect of absence from a part +of that party.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—I surmised as much: at the same +time, the unusual melancholy of an in general most vivacious +young lady made me wonder at your having acted so +precipitately. The lady’s heart is yours, if there be +truth in signs.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Hearts are not now what they +were in the days of the old song: “Will love be controlled +by advice?”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Very true; hearts, heads, and arms +have all degenerated, most sadly. We can no more feel the +high impassioned love of the ages, which some people have the +impudence to call dark, than we can wield King Richard’s +battleaxe, bend Robin Hood’s bow, or flourish the oaken +graft of the Pindar of Wakefield. Still we have our tastes +and feelings, though they deserve not the name of passions; and +some of us may pluck up spirit to try to carry a point, when we +reflect that we have to contend with men no better than +ourselves.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—We do not now break lances +for ladies.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—No; nor even bulrushes. We +jingle purses for them, flourish paper-money banners, and tilt +with scrolls of parchment.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—In which sort of tilting I +have been thrown from the saddle. I presume it was not love +that led you from the flotilla?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—By no means. I was tempted +by the sight of an old tower, not to leave this land of ruined +castles, without having collected a few hints for the adornment +of my baronial hall.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—I understand you live <i>en +famille</i> with your domestics. You will have more +difficulty in finding a lady who would adopt your fashion of +living, than one who would prefer you to a richer man.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Very true. I have tried the +experiment on several as guests; but once was enough for them: +so, I suppose, I shall die a bachelor.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—I see, like some others of my +friends, you will give up anything except your hobby.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—I will give up anything but my +baronial hall.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—You will never find a wife +for your purpose, unless in the daughter of some old-fashioned +farmer.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—No, I thank you. I must have +a lady of gentle blood; I shall not marry below my own condition: +I am too much of a herald; I have too much of the twelfth century +in me for that.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Why, then your chance is not +much better than mine. A well-born beauty would scarcely be +better pleased with your baronial hall than with my more humble +offer of love in a cottage. She must have a town-house, and +an opera-box, and roll about the streets in a carriage; +especially if her father has a rotten borough, for the sake of +which he sells his daughter, that he may continue to sell his +country. But you were inquiring for a guide to the ruined +castle in this vicinity; I know the way and will conduct you.</p> +<p>The proposal pleased Mr. Chainmail, and they set forth on +their expedition.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIII.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE LAKE—THE RUIN.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Or vieni, Amore, e quà meco +t’assetta.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Orlando +Innamorato</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Would it not be a fine thing, +Captain, you being picturesque, and I poetical; you being for the +lights and shadows of the present, and I for those of the past; +if we were to go together over the ground which was travelled in +the twelfth century by Giraldus de Barri, when he accompanied +Archbishop Baldwin to preach the crusade?</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Nothing, in my present frame +of mind, could be more agreeable to me.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—We would provide ourselves with +his <i>Itinerarium</i>; compare what has been, with what is; +contemplate in their decay the castles and abbeys, which he saw +in their strength and splendour; and, while you were sketching +their remains, I would dispassionately inquire what has been +gained by the change.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Be it so.</p> +<p>But the scheme was no sooner arranged, than the Captain was +summoned to London by a letter on business, which he did not +expect to detain him long. Mr. Chainmail, who, like the +Captain, was fascinated with the inn and the scenery, determined +to await his companion’s return; and, having furnished him +with a list of books, which he was to bring with him from London, +took leave of him, and began to pass his days like the heroes of +Ariosto, who</p> +<blockquote><p>—tutto il giorno, al bel oprar intenti,<br +/> +Saliron balze, e traversar torrenti.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>One day Mr. Chainmail traced upwards the course of a mountain +stream to a spot where a small waterfall threw itself over a slab +of perpendicular rock, which seemed to bar his farther +progress. On a nearer view, he discovered a flight of +steps, roughly hewn in the rock, on one side of the fall. +Ascending these steps, he entered a narrow winding pass, between +high and naked rocks, that afforded only space for a rough +footpath, carved on one side, at some height above the +torrent.</p> +<p>The pass opened on a lake, from which the stream issued, and +which lay like a dark mirror, set in a gigantic frame of mountain +precipices. Fragments of rock lay scattered on the edge of +the lake, some half-buried in the water: Mr. Chainmail scrambled +some way over these fragments, till the base of a rock sinking +abruptly in the water, effectually barred his progress. He +sat down on a large smooth stone; the faint murmur of the stream +he had quitted, the occasional flapping of the wings of the +heron, and at long intervals, the solitary springing of a trout, +were the only sounds that came to his ear. The sun shone +brightly half-way down the opposite rocks, presenting, on their +irregular faces, strong masses of light and shade. Suddenly +he heard the dash of a paddle, and, turning his eyes, saw a +solitary and beautiful girl gliding over the lake in a coracle: +she was proceeding from the vicinity of the point he had quitted, +towards the upper end of the lake. Her apparel was rustic, +but there was in its style something more +<i>recherchée</i>, in its arrangement something more of +elegance and precision, than was common to the mountain peasant +girl. It had more of the <i>contadina</i> of the opera, +than of the genuine mountaineer; so at least thought Mr. +Chainmail; but she passed so rapidly, and took him so much by +surprise, that he had little opportunity for accurate +observation. He saw her land, at the farther extremity, and +disappear among the rocks: he rose from his seat, returned to the +mouth of the pass, stepped from stone to stone across the stream, +and attempted to pass round by the other side of the lake; but +there again the abruptly sinking precipice closed his way.</p> +<p>Day after day he haunted the spot, but never saw again either +the damsel or the coracle. At length, marvelling at himself +for being so solicitous about the apparition of a peasant girl in +a coracle, who could not, by any possibility, be anything to him, +he resumed his explorations in another direction.</p> +<p>One day he wandered to the ruined castle, on the sea-shore, +which was not very distant from his inn; and sitting on the rock, +near the base of the ruin, was calling up the forms of past ages +on the wall of an ivied tower, when on its summit appeared a +female figure, whom he recognised in an instant for his nymph of +the coracle. The folds of the blue gown pressed by the +sea-breeze against one of the most symmetrical of figures, the +black feather of the black hat, and the ringleted hair beneath it +fluttering in the wind; the apparent peril of her position, on +the edge of the mouldering wall, from whose immediate base the +rock went down perpendicularly to the sea, presented a singularly +interesting combination to the eye of the young antiquary.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail had to pass half round the castle, on the land +side, before he could reach the entrance: he coasted the dry and +bramble-grown moat, crossed the unguarded bridge, passed the +unportcullised arch of the gateway, entered the castle court, +ascertained the tower, ascended the broken stairs, and stood on +the ivied wall. But the nymph of the place was gone. +He searched the ruins within and without, but he found not what +he sought: he haunted the castle day after day, as he had done +the lake, but the damsel appeared no more.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIV.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE DINGLE.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>The stars of midnight shall be dear<br /> +To her, and she shall lean her ear<br /> +In many a secret place,<br /> +Where rivulets dance their wayward round,<br /> +And beauty, born of murmuring sound,<br /> +Shall pass into her face.—<span +class="smcap">Wordsworth</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">Miss Susannah Touchandgo</span> had read +the four great poets of Italy, and many of the best writers of +France. About the time of her father’s downfall, +accident threw into her way <i>Les Réveries du Promeneur +Solitaire</i>; and from the impression which these made on her, +she carried with her into retirement all the works of +Rousseau. In the midst of that startling light, which the +conduct of old friends on a sudden reverse of fortune throws on a +young and inexperienced mind, the doctrines of the philosopher of +Geneva struck with double force upon her sympathies: she imbibed +the sweet poison, as somebody calls it, of his writings, even to +a love of truth; which, every wise man knows, ought to be left to +those who can get anything by it. The society of children, +the beauties of nature, the solitude of the mountains, became her +consolation, and, by degrees, her delight. The gay society +from which she had been excluded, remained on her memory only as +a disagreeable dream. She imbibed her new monitor’s +ideas of simplicity of dress, assimilating her own with that of +the peasant-girls in the neighbourhood: the black hat, the blue +gown, the black stockings, the shoes, tied on the instep.</p> +<p>Pride was, perhaps, at the bottom of the change: she was +willing to impose in some measure on herself, by marking a +contemptuous indifference to the characteristics of the class of +society from which she had fallen.</p> +<blockquote><p>And with the food of pride sustained her soul<br +/> +In solitude.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is true that she somewhat modified the forms of her rustic +dress: to the black hat she added a black feather, to the blue +gown she added a tippet, and a waistband fastened in front with a +silver buckle; she wore her black stockings very smooth and tight +on her ankles, and tied her shoes in tasteful bows, with the +nicest possible ribbon. In this apparel, to which, in +winter, she added a scarlet cloak, she made dreadful havoc among +the rustic mountaineers, many of whom proposed to “keep +company” with her in the Cambrian fashion, an honour which, +to their great surprise, she always declined. Among these, +Harry Ap-Heather, whose father rented an extensive sheepwalk, and +had a thousand she-lambs wandering in the mountains, was the most +strenuous in his suit, and the most pathetic in his lamentations +for her cruelty.</p> +<p>Miss Susannah often wandered among the mountains alone, even +to some distance from the farmhouse. Sometimes she +descended into the bottom of the dingles, to the black rocky beds +of the torrents, and dreamed away hours at the feet of the +cataracts. One spot in particular, from which she had at +first shrunk with terror, became by degrees her favourite +haunt. A path turning and returning at acute angles, led +down a steep wood-covered slope to the edge of a chasm, where a +pool, or resting-place of a torrent, lay far below. A +cataract fell in a single sheet into the pool; the pool boiled +and bubbled at the base of the fall, but through the greater part +of its extent, lay calm, deep, and black, as if the cataract had +plunged through it to an unimaginable depth, without disturbing +its eternal repose. At the opposite extremity of the pool, +the rocks almost met at their summits, the trees of the opposite +banks intermingled their leaves, and another cataract plunged +from the pool into a chasm, on which the sunbeams never +gleamed. High above, on both sides, the steep woody slopes +of the dingle soared into the sky; and from a fissure in the +rock, on which the little path terminated, a single gnarled and +twisted oak stretched itself over the pool, forming a fork with +its boughs at a short distance from the rock. Miss Susannah +often sat on the rock, with her feet resting on this tree; in +time, she made her seat on the tree itself, with her feet hanging +over the abyss; and at length, she accustomed herself to lie +along upon its trunk, with her side on the mossy bole of the +fork, and an arm round one of the branches. From this +position a portion of the sky and the woods was reflected in the +pool, which, from its bank, was but a mass of darkness. The +first time she reclined in this manner, her heart beat audibly; +in time she lay down as calmly as on the mountain heather; the +perception of the sublime was probably heightened by an +intermingled sense of danger; and perhaps that indifference to +life, which early disappointment forces upon sensitive minds, was +necessary to the first experiment. There was, in the +novelty and strangeness of the position, an excitement which +never wholly passed away, but which became gradually subordinate +to the influence, at once tranquillising and elevating, of the +mingled eternity of motion, sound, and solitude.</p> +<p>One sultry noon, she descended into this retreat with a mind +more than usually disturbed by reflections on the past. She +lay in her favourite position, sometimes gazing on the cataract; +looking sometimes up the steep sylvan acclivities, into the +narrow space of the cloudless ether; sometimes down into the +abyss of the pool, and the deep bright-blue reflections that +opened another immensity below her. The distressing +recollections of the morning, the world and all its littlenesses, +faded from her thoughts like a dream; but her wounded and wearied +spirit drank in too deeply the tranquillising power of the place, +and she dropped asleep upon the tree like a ship-boy on the +mast.</p> +<p>At this moment Mr. Chainmail emerged into daylight, on a +projection of the opposite rock, having struck down through the +woods in search of unsophisticated scenery. The scene he +discovered filled him with delight: he seated himself on the +rock, and fell into one of his romantic reveries; when suddenly +the semblance of a black hat and feather caught his eye among the +foliage of the projecting oak. He started up, shifted his +position, and got a glimpse of a blue gown. It was his lady +of the lake, his enchantress of the ruined castle, divided from +him by a barrier which, at a few yards below, he could almost +overleap, yet unapproachable but by a circuit perhaps of many +hours. He watched with intense anxiety. To listen if +she breathed was out of the question: the noses of a dean and +chapter would have been soundless in the roar of the +torrent. From her extreme stillness, she appeared to sleep: +yet what creature, not desperate, would go wilfully to sleep in +such a place? Was she asleep, then? Nay, was she +alive? She was as motionless as death. Had she been +murdered, thrown from above, and caught in the tree? She +lay too regularly and too composedly for such a +supposition. She was asleep, then, and, in all probability, +her waking would be fatal. He shifted his position. +Below the pool two beetle-browed rocks nearly overarched the +chasm, leaving just such a space at the summit as was within the +possibility of a leap; the torrent roared below in a fearful +gulf. He paused some time on the brink, measuring the +practicability and the danger, and casting every now and then an +anxious glance to his sleeping beauty. In one of these +glances he saw a slight movement of the blue gown, and, in a +moment after, the black hat and feather dropped into the +pool. Reflection was lost for a moment, and, by a sudden +impulse, he bounded over the chasm.</p> +<p>He stood above the projecting oak; the unknown beauty lay like +the nymph of the scene; her long black hair, which the fall of +her hat had disengaged from its fastenings, drooping through the +boughs: he saw that the first thing to be done, was to prevent +her throwing her feet off the trunk, in the first movements of +waking. He sat down on the rock, and placed his feet on the +stem, securing her ankles between his own: one of her arms was +round a branch of the fork, the other lay loosely on her +side. The hand of this arm he endeavoured to reach, by +leaning forward from his seat; he approximated, but could not +touch it: after several tantalising efforts, he gave up the point +in despair. He did not attempt to wake her, because he +feared it might have bad consequences, and he resigned himself to +expect the moment of her natural waking, determined not to stir +from his post, if she should sleep till midnight.</p> +<p>In this period of forced inaction, he could contemplate at +leisure the features and form of his charmer. She was not +one of the slender beauties of romance; she was as plump as a +partridge; her cheeks were two roses, not absolutely damask, yet +verging thereupon; her lips twin-cherries, of equal size; her +nose regular, and almost Grecian; her forehead high, and +delicately fair; her eyebrows symmetrically arched; her +eyelashes, long, black, and silky, fitly corresponding with the +beautiful tresses that hung among the leaves of the oak, like +clusters of wandering grapes. Her eyes were yet to be seen; +but how could he doubt that their opening would be the rising of +the sun, when all that surrounded their fringy portals was +radiant as “the forehead of the morning sky?”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XV.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE FARM.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Da ydyw’r gwaith, rhaid d’we’yd +y gwir,<br /> +Ar fryniau Sir Meirionydd;<br /> +Golwg oer o’r gwaela gawn<br /> +Mae hi etto yn llawn llawenydd.</p> +<p>Though Meirion’s rocks, and hills of heath,<br /> + Repel the distant sight,<br /> +Yet where, than those bleak hills beneath,<br /> + Is found more true delight?</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">At</span> length the young lady +awoke. She was startled at the sudden sight of the +stranger, and somewhat terrified at the first perception of her +position. But she soon recovered her self-possession, and, +extending her hand to the offered hand of Mr. Chainmail, she +raised herself up on the tree, and stepped on the rocky bank.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail solicited permission to attend her to her home, +which the young lady graciously conceded. They emerged from +the woody dingle, traversed an open heath, wound along a mountain +road by the shore of a lake, descended to the deep bed of another +stream, crossed it by a series of stepping-stones, ascended to +some height on the opposite side, and followed upwards the line +of the stream, till the banks opened into a spacious +amphitheatre, where stood, in its fields and meadows, the +farmhouse of Ap-Llymry.</p> +<p>During this walk, they had kept up a pretty animated +conversation. The lady had lost her hat, and, as she turned +towards Mr. Chainmail, in speaking to him, there was no envious +projection of brim to intercept the beams of those radiant eyes +he had been so anxious to see unclosed. There was in them a +mixture of softness and brilliancy, the perfection of the beauty +of female eyes, such as some men have passed through life without +seeing, and such as no man ever saw, in any pair of eyes, but +once; such as can never be seen and forgotten. Young +Crotchet had seen it; he had not forgotten it; but he had +trampled on its memory, as the renegade tramples on the emblems +of a faith which his interest only, and not his heart or his +reason, has rejected.</p> +<p>Her hair streamed over her shoulders; the loss of the black +feather had left nothing but the rustic costume, the blue gown, +the black stockings, and the ribbon-tied shoes. Her voice +had that full soft volume of melody which gives to common speech +the fascination of music. Mr. Chainmail could not reconcile +the dress of the damsel with her conversation and manners. +He threw out a remote question or two, with the hope of solving +the riddle, but, receiving no reply, he became satisfied that she +was not disposed to be communicative respecting herself, and, +fearing to offend her, fell upon other topics. They talked +of the scenes of the mountains, of the dingle, the ruined castle, +the solitary lake. She told him, that lake lay under the +mountains behind her home, and the coracle and the pass at the +extremity, saved a long circuit to the nearest village, whither +she sometimes went to inquire for letters.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail felt curious to know from whom these letters +might be; and he again threw out two or three fishing questions, +to which, as before, he obtained no answer.</p> +<p>The only living biped they met in their walk was the +unfortunate Harry Ap-Heather, with whom they fell in by the +stepping-stones, who, seeing the girl of his heart hanging on +another man’s arm, and, concluding at once that they were +“keeping company,” fixed on her a mingled look of +surprise, reproach, and tribulation; and, unable to control his +feelings under the sudden shock, burst into a flood of tears, and +blubbered till the rocks re-echoed.</p> +<p>They left him mingling his tears with the stream, and his +lamentations with its murmurs. Mr. Chainmail inquired who +that strange creature might be, and what was the matter with +him. The young lady answered, that he was a very worthy +young man, to whom she had been the innocent cause of much +unhappiness.</p> +<p>“I pity him sincerely,” said Mr. Chainmail and, +nevertheless, he could scarcely restrain his laughter at the +exceedingly original figure which the unfortunate rustic lover +had presented by the stepping-stones.</p> +<p>The children ran out to meet their dear Miss Susan, jumped all +round her, and asked what was become of her hat. Ap-Llymry +came out in great haste, and invited Mr. Chainmail to walk in and +dine: Mr. Chainmail did not wait to be asked twice. In a +few minutes the whole party, Miss Susan and Mr. Chainmail, Mr. +and Mrs. Ap-Llymry, and progeny, were seated over a clean +homespun table cloth, ornamented with fowls and bacon, a pyramid +of potatoes, another of cabbage, which Ap-Llymry said “was +poiled with the pacon, and as coot as marrow,” a bowl of +milk for the children, and an immense brown jug of foaming ale, +with which Ap-Llymry seemed to delight in filling the horn of his +new guest.</p> +<p>Shall we describe the spacious apartment, which was at once +kitchen, hall, and dining-room,—the large dark rafters, the +pendent bacon and onions, the strong old oaken furniture, the +bright and trimly-arranged utensils? Shall we describe the +cut of Ap-Llymry’s coat, the colour and tie of his +neckcloth, the number of buttons at his knees,—the +structure of Mrs. Ap-Llymry’s cap, having lappets over the +ears, which were united under the chin, setting forth especially +whether the bond of union were a pin or a ribbon? We shall +leave this tempting field of interesting expatiation to those +whose brains are high-pressure steam-engines for spinning prose +by the furlong, to be trumpeted in paid-for paragraphs in the +quack’s corner of newspapers: modern literature having +attained the honourable distinction of sharing, with blacking and +Macassar oil, the space which used to be monopolised by +razor-strops and the lottery; whereby that very enlightened +community, the reading public, is tricked into the perusal of +much exemplary nonsense; though the few who see through the +trickery have no reason to complain, since as “good wine +needs no bush,” so, <i>ex vi oppositi</i>, these bushes of +venal panegyric point out very clearly that the things they +celebrate are not worth reading.</p> +<p>The party dined very comfortably in a corner most remote from +the fire: and Mr. Chainmail very soon found his head swimming +with two or three horns of ale, of a potency to which even he was +unaccustomed. After dinner Ap-Llymry made him finish a +bottle of mead, which he willingly accepted, both as an excuse to +remain and as a drink of the dark ages, which he had no doubt was +a genuine brewage from uncorrupted tradition.</p> +<p>In the meantime, as soon as the cloth was removed, the +children had brought out Miss Susannah’s harp. She +began, without affectation, to play and sing to the children, as +was her custom of an afternoon, first in their own language, and +their national melodies, then in English; but she was soon +interrupted by a general call of little voices for “Ouf! di +giorno.” She complied with the request, and sang the +ballad from Paër’s <i>Camilla</i>: “Un dì +carco il mulinaro.” The children were very familiar +with every syllable of this ballad, which had been often fully +explained to them. They danced in a circle with the burden +of every verse, shouting out the chorus with good articulation +and joyous energy; and at the end of the second stanza, where the +traveller has his nose pinched by his grandmother’s ghost, +every nose in the party was nipped by a pair of little +fingers. Mr. Chainmail, who was not prepared for the +process, came in for a very energetic tweak from a chubby girl +that sprang suddenly on his knees for the purpose, and made the +roof ring with her laughter.</p> +<p>So passed the time till evening, when Mr. Chainmail moved to +depart. But it turned out on inquiry that he was some miles +from his inn, that the way was intricate, and that he must not +make any difficulty about accepting the farmer’s +hospitality till morning. The evening set in with rain: the +fire was found agreeable; they drew around it. The young +lady made tea; and afterwards, from time to time, at Mr. +Chainmail’s special request, delighted his ear with +passages of ancient music. Then came a supper of lake +trout, fried on the spot, and thrown, smoking hot, from the pan +to the plate. Then came a brewage, which the farmer called +his nightcap, of which he insisted on Mr. Chainmail’s +taking his full share. After which the gentleman remembered +nothing till he awoke, the next morning, to the pleasant +consciousness that he was under the same roof with one of the +most fascinating creatures under the canopy of heaven.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVI.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE NEWSPAPER.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Ποίας δ’ + +ἀποσπασθεῖσα +φύτλυς<br /> +’Ορέων +κευθμῶνας +ἔχει +σκιοέντων;</p> +<p>Sprung from what line, adorns the maid<br /> +These, valleys deep in mountain-shade?</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Pind</span>. +<i>Pyth.</i> IX</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Chainmail</span> forgot the Captain +and the route of Giraldus de Barri. He became suddenly +satisfied that the ruined castle in his present neighbourhood was +the best possible specimen of its class, and that it was needless +to carry his researches further.</p> +<p>He visited the farm daily: found himself always welcome; +flattered himself that the young lady saw him with pleasure, and +dragged a heavier chain at every new parting from Miss Susan, as +the children called his nymph of the mountains. What might +be her second name, he had vainly endeavoured to discover.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail was in love: but the determination he had long +before formed and fixed in his mind, to marry only a lady of +gentle blood, without a blot in her escutcheon, repressed the +declarations of passion which were often rising to his +lips. In the meantime he left no means untried to pluck out +the heart of her mystery.</p> +<p>The young lady soon divined his passion, and penetrated his +prejudices. She began to look on him with favourable eyes; +but she feared her name and parentage would present an +insuperable barrier to his feudal pride.</p> +<p>Things were in this state when the Captain returned, and +unpacked his maps and books in the parlour of the inn.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Really, Captain, I find so many +objects of attraction in this neighbourhood, that I would gladly +postpone our purpose.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Undoubtedly this +neighbourhood has many attractions; but there is something very +inviting in the scheme you laid down.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—No doubt there is something very +tempting in the route of Giraldus de Barri. But there are +better things in this vicinity even than that. To tell you +the truth, Captain, I have fallen in love.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—What! while I have been +away?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Even so.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—The plunge must have been +very sudden, if you are already over head and ears.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—As deep as +Llyn-y-dreiddiad-vrawd.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—And what may that be?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—A pool not far off: a +resting-place of a mountain stream which is said to have no +bottom. There is a tradition connected with it; and here is +a ballad on it, at your service.</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: +center">LLYN-Y-DREIDDIAD-VRAWD.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE POOL OF THE DIVING FRIAR.</span></p> +<p>Gwenwynwyn withdrew from the feasts of his hall:<br /> +He slept very little, he prayed not at all:<br /> +He pondered, and wandered, and studied alone;<br /> +And sought, night and day, the philosopher’s stone.</p> +<p>He found it at length, and he made its first proof<br /> +By turning to gold all the lead of his roof:<br /> +Then he bought some magnanimous heroes, all fire,<br /> +Who lived but to smite and be smitten for hire.</p> +<p>With these on the plains like a torrent he broke;<br /> +He filled the whole country with flame and with smoke;<br /> +He killed all the swine, and he broached all the wine;<br /> +He drove off the sheep, and the beeves, and the kine;</p> +<p>He took castles and towns; he cut short limbs and lives;<br /> +He made orphans and widows of children and wives:<br /> +This course many years he triumphantly ran,<br /> +And did mischief enough to be called a great man.</p> +<p>When, at last, he had gained all for which he held striven,<br +/> +He bethought him of buying a passport to heaven;<br /> +Good and great as he was, yet he did not well know,<br /> +How soon, or which way, his great spirit might go.</p> +<p>He sought the grey friars, who beside a wild stream,<br /> +Refected their frames on a primitive scheme;<br /> +The gravest and wisest Gwenwynwyn found out,<br /> +All lonely and ghostly, and angling for trout.</p> +<p>Below the white dash of a mighty cascade,<br /> +Where a pool of the stream a deep resting-place made,<br /> +And rock-rooted oaks stretched their branches on high,<br /> +The friar stood musing, and throwing his fly.</p> +<p>To him said Gwenwynwyn, “Hold, father, here’s +store,<br /> +For the good of the church, and the good of the poor;”<br +/> +Then he gave him the stone; but, ere more he could speak,<br /> +Wrath came on the friar, so holy and meek.</p> +<p>He had stretched forth his hand to receive the red gold,<br /> +And he thought himself mocked by Gwenwynwyn the Bold;<br /> +And in scorn of the gift, and in rage at the giver,<br /> +He jerked it immediately into the river.</p> +<p>Gwenwynwyn, aghast, not a syllable spake;<br /> +The philosopher’s stone made a duck and a drake;<br /> +Two systems of circles a moment were seen,<br /> +And the stream smoothed them off, as they never had been.</p> +<p>Gwenwynwyn regained, and uplifted his voice,<br /> +“Oh friar, grey friar, full rash was thy choice;<br /> +The stone, the good stone, which away thou hast thrown,<br /> +Was the stone of all stones, the philosopher’s +stone.”</p> +<p>The friar looked pale, when his error he knew;<br /> +The friar looked red, and the friar looked blue;<br /> +And heels over head, from the point of a rock,<br /> +He plunged, without stopping to pull off his frock.</p> +<p>He dived very deep, but he dived all in vain,<br /> +The prize he had slighted he found not again;<br /> +Many times did the friar his diving renew,<br /> +And deeper and deeper the river still grew.</p> +<p>Gwenwynwyn gazed long, of his senses in doubt,<br /> +To see the grey friar a diver so stout;<br /> +Then sadly and slowly his castle he sought,<br /> +And left the friar diving, like dabchick distraught.</p> +<p>Gwenwynwyn fell sick with alarm and despite,<br /> +Died, and went to the devil, the very same night;<br /> +The magnanimous heroes he held in his pay<br /> +Sacked his castle, and marched with the plunder away.</p> +<p>No knell on the silence of midnight was rolled<br /> +For the flight of the soul of Gwenwynwyn the Bold.<br /> +The brethren, unfeed, let the mighty ghost pass,<br /> +Without praying a prayer, or intoning a mass.</p> +<p>The friar haunted ever beside the dark stream;<br /> +The philosopher’s stone was his thought and his dream:<br +/> +And day after day, ever head under heels<br /> +He dived all the time he could spare from his meals.</p> +<p>He dived, and he dived, to the end of his days,<br /> +As the peasants oft witnessed with fear and amaze.<br /> +The mad friar’s diving-place long was their theme,<br /> +And no plummet can fathom that pool of the stream.</p> +<p>And still, when light clouds on the midnight winds ride,<br /> +If by moonlight you stray on the lone river-side,<br /> +The ghost of the friar may be seen diving there,<br /> +With head in the water, and heels in the air.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Well, your ballad is very +pleasant: you shall show me the scene, and I will sketch it; but +just now I am more interested about your love. What heroine +of the twelfth century has risen from the ruins of the old +castle, and looked down on you from the ivied battlements?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—You are nearer the mark than you +suppose. Even from those battlements a heroine of the +twelfth century has looked down on me.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Oh! some vision of an ideal +beauty. I suppose the whole will end in another tradition +and a ballad.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Genuine flesh and blood; as +genuine as Lady Clarinda. I will tell you the story.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail narrated his adventures.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Then you seem to have found +what you wished. Chance has thrown in your way what none of +the gods would have ventured to promise you.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Yes, but I know nothing of her +birth and parentage. She tells me nothing of herself, and I +have no right to question her directly.</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—She appears to be expressly +destined for the light of your baronial hall. Introduce me +in this case, two heads are better than one.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—No, I thank you. Leave me to +manage my chance of a prize, and keep you to your own chance of +a—</p> +<p><i>Captain Fitzchrome</i>.—Blank. As you +please. Well, I will pitch my tent here, till I have filled +my portfolio, and shall be glad of as much of your company as you +can spare from more attractive society.</p> +<p>Matters went on pretty smoothly for several days, when an +unlucky newspaper threw all into confusion. Mr. Chainmail +received newspapers by the post, which came in three times a +week. One morning, over their half-finished breakfast, the +Captain had read half a newspaper very complacently, when +suddenly he started up in a frenzy, hurled over the breakfast +table, and, bouncing from the apartment, knocked down Harry Ap +Heather, who was coming in at the door to challenge his supposed +rival to a boxing-match.</p> +<p>Harry sprang up, in a double rage, and intercepted Mr. +Chainmail’s pursuit of the Captain, placing himself in the +doorway, in a pugilistic attitude. Mr. Chainmail, not being +disposed for this mode of combat, stepped back into the parlour, +took the poker in his right hand, and displacing the loose bottom +of a large elbow chair, threw it over his left arm as a +shield. Harry, not liking the aspect of the enemy in this +imposing attitude, retreated with backward steps into the +kitchen, and tumbled over a cur, which immediately fastened on +his rear.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail, half-laughing, half-vexed, anxious to overtake +the Captain, and curious to know what was the matter with him, +pocketed the newspaper, and sallied forth, leaving Harry roaring +for a doctor and tailor, to repair the lacerations of his outward +man.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail could find no trace of the Captain. +Indeed, he sought him but in one direction, which was that +leading to the farm; where he arrived in due time, and found Miss +Susan alone. He laid the newspaper on the table, as was his +custom, and proceeded to converse with the young lady: a +conversation of many pauses, as much of signs as of words. +The young lady took up the paper, and turned it over and over, +while she listened to Mr. Chainmail, whom she found every day +more and more agreeable, when suddenly her eye glanced on +something which made her change colour, and dropping the paper on +the ground, she rose from her seat, exclaiming: “Miserable +must she be who trusts any of your faithless sex! never, never, +never, will I endure such misery twice.” And she +vanished up the stairs. Mr. Chainmail was petrified. +At length, he cried aloud: “Cornelius Agrippa must have +laid a spell on this accursed newspaper;” and was turning +it over, to look for the source of the mischief, when Mrs. Ap +Llymry made her appearance.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Ap Llymry</i>.—What have you done to poor dear +Miss Susan? she is crying ready to break her heart.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—So help me the memory of Richard +Coeur-de-Lion, I have not the most distant notion of what is the +matter.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Ap Llymry</i>.—Oh, don’t tell me, sir; you +must have ill-used her. I know how it is. You have +been keeping company with her, as if you wanted to marry her; and +now, all at once, you have been insulting her. I have seen +such tricks more than once, and you ought to be ashamed of +yourself.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—My dear madam, you wrong me +utterly. I have none but the kindest feelings and the most +honourable purposes towards her. She has been disturbed by +something she has seen in this rascally paper.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Ap Llymry</i>.—Why, then, the best thing you can +do is to go away, and come again tomorrow.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Not I, indeed, madam. Out of +this house I stir not, till I have seen the young lady, and +obtained a full explanation.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. Ap Llymry</i>.—I will tell Miss Susan what you +say. Perhaps she will come down.</p> +<p>Mr. Chainmail sat with as much patience as he could command, +running over the paper, from column to column. At length he +lighted on an announcement of the approaching marriage of Lady +Clarinda Bossnowl with Mr. Crotchet the younger. This +explained the Captain’s discomposure, but the cause of Miss +Susan’s was still to be sought: he could not know that it +was one and the same.</p> +<p>Presently, the sound of the longed-for step was heard on the +stairs; the young lady reappeared, and resumed her seat: her eyes +showed that she had been weeping. The gentleman was now +exceedingly puzzled how to begin, but the young lady relieved him +by asking, with great simplicity: “What do you wish to have +explained, sir?”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—I wish, if I may be permitted, to +explain myself to you. Yet could I first wish to know what +it was that disturbed you in this unlucky paper. Happy +should I be if I could remove the cause of your inquietude!</p> +<p><i>Miss Susannah</i>.—The cause is already +removed. I saw something that excited painful +recollections; nothing that I could now wish otherwise than as it +is.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Yet, may I ask why it is that I +find one so accomplished living in this obscurity, and passing +only by the name of Miss Susan?</p> +<p><i>Miss Susannah</i>.—The world and my name are not +friends. I have left the world, and wish to remain for ever +a stranger to all whom I once knew in it.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—You can have done nothing to +dishonour your name.</p> +<p><i>Miss Susannah</i>.—No, sir. My father has done +that of which the world disapproves, in matters of which I +pretend not to judge. I have suffered for it as I will +never suffer again. My name is my own secret: I have no +other, and that is one not worth knowing. You see what I +am, and all I am. I live according to the condition of my +present fortune, and here, so living, I have found +tranquillity.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Yet, I entreat you, tell me your +name.</p> +<p><i>Miss Susannah</i>.—Why, sir?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Why, but to throw my hand, my +heart, my fortune, at your feet, if—.</p> +<p><i>Miss Susannah</i>.—If my name be worthy of them.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Nay, nay, not so; if your hand and +heart are free.</p> +<p><i>Miss Susannah</i>.—My hand and heart are free; but +they must be sought from myself, and not from my name.</p> +<p>She fixed her eyes on him, with a mingled expression of +mistrust, of kindness, and of fixed resolution, which the +far-gone <i>inamorato</i> found irresistible.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Then from yourself alone I seek +them.</p> +<p><i>Miss Susannah</i>.—Reflect. You have prejudices on +the score of parentage. I have not conversed with you so +often without knowing what they are. Choose between them +and me. I too have my own prejudices on the score of +personal pride.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—I would choose you from all the +world, were you even the daughter of the <i>exécuteur des +hautes œuvres</i>, as the heroine of a romantic story I +once read turned out to be.</p> +<p><i>Miss Susannah</i>.—I am satisfied. You have now +a right to know my history, and if you repent, I absolve you from +all obligations.</p> +<p>She told him her history; but he was out of the reach of +repentance. “It is true,” as at a subsequent +period he said to the captain, “she is the daughter of a +money-changer: one who, in the days of Richard the First, would +have been plucked by the beard in the streets: but she is, +according to modern notions, a lady of gentle blood. As to +her father’s running away, that is a minor consideration: I +have always understood, from Mr. Mac Quedy, who is a great oracle +in this way, that promises to pay ought not to be kept; the +essence of a safe and economical currency being an interminable +series of broken promises. There seems to be a difference +among the learned as to the way in which the promises ought to be +broken; but I am not deep enough in this casuistry to enter into +such nice distinctions.”</p> +<p>In a few days there was a wedding, a pathetic leave-taking of +the farmer’s family, a hundred kisses from the bride to the +children, and promises twenty times reclaimed and renewed, to +visit them in the ensuing year.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVII.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">THE INVITATION.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>A cup of wine, that’s brisk and fine,<br /> +And drink unto the lemon mine.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Master Silence</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">This</span> veridicous history began in +May, and the occurrences already narrated have carried it on to +the middle of autumn. Stepping over the interval to +Christmas, we find ourselves in our first locality, among the +chalk hills of the Thames; and we discover our old friend, Mr. +Crotchet, in the act of accepting an invitation, for himself, and +any friends who might be with him, to pass their Christmas Day at +Chainmail Hall, after the fashion of the twelfth century. +Mr. Crochet had assembled about him, for his own Christmas +festivities, nearly the same party which was introduced to the +reader in the spring. Three of that party were +wanting. Dr. Morbific, by inoculating himself once too +often with non-contagious matter, had explained himself out of +the world. Mr. Henbane had also departed, on the wings of +an infallible antidote. Mr. Eavesdrop, having printed in a +magazine some of the after-dinner conversations of the castle, +had had sentence of exclusion passed upon him, on the motion of +the Reverend Doctor Folliott, as a flagitious violator of the +confidences of private life.</p> +<p>Miss Crotchet had become Lady Bossnowl, but Lady Clarinda had +not yet changed her name to Crotchet. She had, on one +pretence and another, procrastinated the happy event, and the +gentleman had not been very pressing; she had, however, +accompanied her brother and sister-in-law, to pass Christmas at +Crotchet Castle. With these, Mr. Mac Quedy, Mr. Philpot, +Mr. Trillo, Mr. Skionar, Mr. Toogood, and Mr. Firedamp were +sitting at breakfast, when the Reverend Doctor Folliott entered +and took his seat at the table.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Well, Mr. Mac Quedy, it is +now some weeks since we have met: how goes on the march of +mind?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Nay, sir; I think you may see that +with your own eyes.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Sir, I have seen it, much +to my discomfiture. It has marched into my rickyard, and +set my stacks on fire, with chemical materials, most +scientifically compounded. It has marched up to the door of +my vicarage, a hundred and fifty strong; ordered me to surrender +half my tithes; consumed all the provisions I had provided for my +audit feast, and drunk up my old October. It has marched in +through my back-parlour shutters, and out again with my silver +spoons, in the dead of the night. The policeman who has +been down to examine says my house has been broken open on the +most scientific principles. All this comes of +education.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—I rather think it comes of +poverty.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No, sir. Robbery, +perhaps, comes of poverty, but scientific principles of robbery +come of education. I suppose the learned friend has written +a sixpenny treatise on mechanics, and the rascals who robbed me +have been reading it.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Your house would have been very +safe, Doctor, if they had had no better science than the learned +friend’s to work with.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Well, sir, that may +be. Excellent potted char. The Lord deliver me from +the learned friend.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—Well, Doctor, for your comfort, +here is a declaration of the learned friend’s that he will +never take office.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Then, sir, he will be in +office next week. Peace be with him. Sugar and +cream.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—But, Doctor, are you for Chainmail +Hall on Christmas Day?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—That am I, for there will +be an excellent dinner, though, peradventure, grotesquely +served.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—I have not seen my neighbour since +he left us on the canal.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—He has married a wife, and +brought her home.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Indeed! If she suits him, +she must be an oddity: it will be amusing to see them +together.</p> +<p><i>Lord Bossnowl</i>.—Very amusing. He! He! +Mr. Firedamp. Is there any water about Chainmail Hall?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—An old moat.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Firedamp</i>.—I shall die of malaria.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—Shall we have any music?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—An old harper.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Trillo</i>.—Those fellows are always horridly out +of tune. What will he play?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Old songs and marches.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—Among so many old things, I hope we +shall find Old Philosophy.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—An old woman.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Philpot</i>.—Perhaps an old map of the river in +the twelfth century.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No doubt.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—How many more old things?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Old hospitality; old wine; +old ale; all the images of old England; an old butler.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Toogood</i>.—Shall we all be welcome?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Heartily; you will be +slapped on the shoulder, and called Old Boy.</p> +<p><i>Lord Bossnowl</i>.—I think we should all go in our +old clothes. He! He!</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—You will sit on old +chairs, round an old table, by the light of old lamps, suspended +from pointed arches, which, Mr. Chainmail says, first came into +use in the twelfth century, with old armour on the pillars and +old banners in the roof.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—And what curious piece of +antiquity is the lady of the mansion?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No antiquity there; +none.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Who was she?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—That I know not.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Have you seen her?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I have.</p> +<p><i>Lady Clarinda</i>.—Is she pretty?</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. +Folliott</i>.—More,—beautiful. A subject for +the pen of Nonnus or the pencil of Zeuxis. Features of all +loveliness, radiant with all virtue and intelligence. A +face for Antigone. A form at once plump and symmetrical, +that, if it be decorous to divine it by externals, would have +been a model for the Venus of Cnidos. Never was anything so +goodly to look on, the present company excepted; and poor dear +Mrs. Folliott. She reads moral philosophy, Mr. Mac Quedy, +which indeed she might as well let alone; she reads Italian +poetry, Mr. Skionar; she sings Italian music, Mr. Trillo; but, +with all this, she has the greatest of female virtues, for she +superintends the household and looks after her husband’s +dinner. I believe she was a mountaineer: +Ηαρθένος +ὀυρεσίφοιτος, +ἐρήμαδι +σύντροφος +ὕλῃ <a name="citation175"></a><a +href="#footnote175" class="citation">[175]</a> as Nonnus sweetly +sings.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">CHAINMAIL HALL.</span></h2> +<blockquote><p>Vous autres dictes que ignorance est mère +de tous maulx, et dictes vray: mais toutesfoys vous ne la +bannissez mye de vos entendemens, et vivez en elle, avecques +elle, et par elle. C’est pourquoy tant de maulx vous +meshaignent de jour en jour.—<span +class="smcap">Rabelias</span>, 1. 5. c. 7.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> party which was assembled on +Christmas Day in Chainmail Hall comprised all the guests of +Crotchet Castle, some of Mr. Chainmail’s other neighbours, +all his tenants and domestics, and Captain Fitzchrome. The +hall was spacious and lofty; and with its tall fluted pillars and +pointed arches, its windows of stained glass, its display of arms +and banners intermingled with holly and mistletoe, its blazing +cressets and torches, and a stupendous fire in the centre, on +which blocks of pine were flaming and crackling, had a striking +effect on eyes unaccustomed to such a dining-room. The fire +was open on all sides, and the smoke was caught and carried back +under a funnel-formed canopy into a hollow central pillar. +This fire was the line of demarcation between gentle and simple +on days of high festival. Tables extended from it on two +sides to nearly the end of the hall.</p> +<p>Mrs. Chainmail was introduced to the company. Young +Crotchet felt some revulsion of feeling at the unexpected sight +of one whom he had forsaken, but not forgotten, in a condition +apparently so much happier than his own. The lady held out +her hand to him with a cordial look of more than forgiveness; it +seemed to say that she had much to thank him for. She was +the picture of a happy bride, <i>rayonnante de joie et +d’amour</i>.</p> +<p>Mr. Crotchet told the Reverend Doctor Folliott the news of the +morning. “As you predicted,” he said, +“your friend, the learned friend, is in office; he has also +a title; he is now Sir Guy de Vaux.”</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Thank heaven for that! he +is disarmed from further mischief. It is something, at any +rate, to have that hollow and wind-shaken reed rooted up for ever +from the field of public delusion.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—I suppose, Doctor, you do not like +to see a great reformer in office; you are afraid for your vested +interests.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Not I, indeed, sir; my +vested interests are very safe from all such reformers as the +learned friend. I vaticinate what will be the upshot of all +his schemes of reform. He will make a speech of seven +hours’ duration, and this will be its quintessence: that, +seeing the exceeding difficulty of putting salt on the +bird’s tail, it will be expedient to consider the best +method of throwing dust in the bird’s eyes. All the +rest will be</p> + +<blockquote><p>Τιτιτιτιτιμπρο.<br +/> +Ποποποί, +ποποποί<br /> + +Τιοτιοτιοτιοτιοτίγξ.<br +/> +Κικκαβαῦ, +κικκαβαῦ.<br /> + +Τοροτοροτοροτορολιλιλίγξ,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as Aristophanes has it; and so I leave him, in +Nephelococcygia.</p> +<p>Mr. Mac Quedy came up to the divine as Mr. Crotchet left him, +and said: “There is one piece of news which the old +gentleman has not told you. The great firm of Catchflat and +Company, in which young Crotchet is a partner, has stopped +payment.”</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Bless me! that accounts +for the young gentleman’s melancholy. I thought they +would overreach themselves with their own tricks. The day +of reckoning, Mr. Mac Quedy, is the point which your paper-money +science always leaves out of view.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—I do not see, sir, that the +failure of Catchflat and Company has anything to do with my +science.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—It has this to do with it, +sir, that you would turn the whole nation into a great +paper-money shop, and take no thought of the day of +reckoning. But the dinner is coming. I think you, who +are so fond of paper promises, should dine on the bill of +fare.</p> +<p>The harper at the head of the hall struck up an ancient march, +and the dishes were brought in, in grand procession.</p> +<p>The boar’s head, garnished with rosemary, with a citron +in its mouth, led the van. Then came tureens of +plum-porridge; then a series of turkeys, and in the midst of them +an enormous sausage, which it required two men to carry. +Then came geese and capons, tongues and hams, the ancient glory +of the Christmas pie, a gigantic plum pudding, a pyramid of mince +pies, and a baron of beef bringing up the rear.</p> +<p>“It is something new under the sun,” said the +divine, as he sat down, “to see a great dinner without +fish.”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Fish was for fasts in the twelfth +century.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Well, sir, I prefer our +reformed system of putting fasts and feasts together. Not +but here is ample indemnity.</p> +<p>Ale and wine flowed in abundance. The dinner passed off +merrily: the old harper playing all the while the oldest music in +his repertory. The tables being cleared, he indemnified +himself for lost time at the lower end of the hall, in company +with the old butler and the other domestics, whose attendance on +the banquet had been indispensable.</p> +<p>The scheme of Christmas gambols, which Mr. Chainmail had laid +for the evening, was interrupted by a tremendous clamour +without.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—What have we here? +Mummers?</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Nay, I know not. I expect +none.</p> +<p>“Who is there?” he added, approaching the door of +the hall.</p> +<p>“Who is there?” vociferated the divine, with the +voice of Stentor.</p> +<p>“Captain Swing,” replied a chorus of discordant +voices.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Ho, ho! here is a piece of +the dark ages we did not bargain for. Here is the +Jacquerie. Here is the march of mind with a witness.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Do you not see that you have +brought disparates together? the Jacquerie and the march of +mind.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Not at all, sir. +They are the same thing, under different names. +Πολλῶν +ονομάτων +μορφὴ μία. What was +Jacquerie in the dark ages is the march of mind in this very +enlightened one—very enlightened one.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—The cause is the same in both; +poverty in despair.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Very likely; but the effect is +extremely disagreeable.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—It is the natural result, +Mr. Mac Quedy, of that system of state seamanship which your +science upholds. Putting the crew on short allowance, and +doubling the rations of the officers, is the sure way to make a +mutiny on board a ship in distress, Mr. Mac Quedy.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Eh! sir, I uphold no such system +as that. I shall set you right as to cause and +effect. Discontent arises with the increase of +information. That is all.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I said it was the march of +mind. But we have not time for discussing cause and effect +now. Let us get rid of the enemy.</p> +<p>And he vociferated at the top of his voice, “What do you +want here?” “Arms, arms,” replied a +hundred voices, “Give us the arms.”</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—You see, Mr. Chainmail, +this is the inconvenience of keeping an armoury not fortified +with sand bags, green bags, and old bags of all kinds.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Just give them the old spits and +toasting irons, and they will go away quietly.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—My spears and swords! not without +my life. These assailants are all aliens to my land and +house. My men will fight for me, one and all. This is +the fortress of beef and ale.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Eh! sir, when the rabble is up, it +is very indiscriminating. You are e’en suffering for +the sins of Sir Simon Steeltrap and the like, who have pushed the +principle of accumulation a little too far.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—The way to keep the people down is +kind and liberal usage.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—That is very well (where it can be +afforded) in the way of prevention; but in the way of cure the +operation must be more drastic. (Taking down a +battle-axe.) I would fain have a good blunderbuss charged +with slugs.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—When I suspended these arms for +ornament, I never dreamed of their being called into use.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Skionar</i>.—Let me address them. I never +failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do +was to go away.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Eh! sir, I can bring them to that +conclusion in less time than you.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Crotchet</i>.—I have no fancy for fighting. +It is a very hard case upon a guest, when the latter end of a +feast is the beginning of a fray.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Mac Quedy</i>.—Give them the old iron.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Give them the +weapons! <i>Pessimo</i>, <i>medius fidius</i>, +<i>exemplo</i>. Forbid it the spirit of <i>Frère +Jean des Entommeures</i>! No! let us see what the church +militant, in the armour of the twelfth century, will do against +the march of mind. Follow me who will, and stay who +list. Here goes: <i>Pro aris et focis</i>! that is, for +tithe pigs and fires to roast them.</p> +<p>He clapped a helmet on his head, seized a long lance, threw +open the gates, and tilted out on the rabble, side by side with +Mr. Chainmail, followed by the greater portion of the male +inmates of the hall, who had armed themselves at random.</p> +<p>The rabble-rout, being unprepared for such a sortie, fled in +all directions, over hedge and ditch.</p> +<p>Mr. Trillo stayed in the hall, playing a march on the harp, to +inspirit the rest to sally out. The water-loving Mr. +Philpot had diluted himself with so much wine as to be quite +<i>hors de combat</i>. Mr. Toogood, intending to equip +himself in purely defensive armour, contrived to slip a ponderous +coat of mail over his shoulders, which pinioned his arms to his +sides; and in this condition, like a chicken trussed for +roasting, he was thrown down behind a pillar in the first rush of +the sortie. Mr. Crotchet seized the occurrence as a pretext +for staying with him, and passed the whole time of the action in +picking him out of his shell.</p> +<p>“Phew!” said the divine, returning; “an +inglorious victory; but it deserves a devil and a bowl of +punch.”</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—A wassail-bowl.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No, sir. No more of +the twelfth century for me.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Nay, Doctor. The twelfth +century has backed you well. Its manners and habits, its +community of kind feelings between master and man, are the true +remedy for these ebullitions.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Toogood</i>.—Something like it: improved by my +diagram: arts for arms.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—No wassail-bowl for +me. Give me an unsophisticated bowl of punch, which belongs +to that blissful middle period, after the Jacquerie was down, and +before the march of mind was up. But, see, who is +floundering in the water?</p> +<p>Proceeding to the edge of the moat, they fished up Mr. +Firedamp, who had missed his way back, and tumbled in. He +was drawn out, exclaiming, “that he had taken his last dose +of malaria in this world.”</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Tut, man; dry clothes, a +turkey’s leg and rump, well devilled, and a quart of strong +punch, will set all to rights.</p> +<p>“Wood embers,” said Mr. Firedamp, when he had been +accommodated with a change of clothes, “there is no +antidote to malaria like the smoke of wood embers; pine +embers.” And he placed himself, with his mouth open, +close by the fire.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—Punch, sir, punch: there +is no antidote like punch.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—Well, Doctor, you shall be +indulged. But I shall have my wassail-bowl, +nevertheless.</p> +<p>An immense bowl of spiced wine, with roasted apples hissing on +its surface, was borne into the hall by four men, followed by an +empty bowl of the same dimensions, with all the materials of +arrack punch, for the divine’s especial brewage. He +accinged himself to the task with his usual heroism, and having +finished it to his entire satisfaction, reminded his host to +order in the devil.</p> +<p><i>The Rev. Dr. Folliott</i>.—I think, Mr. Chainmail, we +can amuse ourselves very well here all night. The enemy may +be still excubant: and we had better not disperse till +daylight. I am perfectly satisfied with my quarters. +Let the young folk go on with their gambols; let them dance to +your old harper’s minstrelsy; and if they please to kiss +under the mistletoe, whereof I espy a goodly bunch suspended at +the end of the hall, let those who like it not leave it to those +who do. Moreover, if among the more sedate portion of the +assembly, which, I foresee, will keep me company, there were any +to revive the good old custom of singing after supper, so to fill +up the intervals of the dances, the steps of night would move +more lightly.</p> +<p><i>Mr. Chainmail</i>.—My Susan will set the example, +after she has set that of joining in the rustic dance, according +to good customs long departed.</p> +<p>After the first dance, in which all classes of the company +mingled, the young lady of the mansion took her harp, and +following the reverend gentleman’s suggestion, sang a song +of the twelfth century.</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">FLORENCE AND +BLANCHFLOR.</p> +<p>Florence and Blanchflor, loveliest maids,<br /> + Within a summer grove,<br /> +Amid the flower-enamelled shades<br /> + Together talked of love.</p> +<p>A clerk sweet Blanchflor’s heart had gain’d;<br /> + Fair Florence loved a knight:<br /> +And each with ardent voice maintained<br /> + She loved the worthiest wight.</p> +<p>Sweet Blanchflor praised her scholar dear,<br /> + As courteous, kind, and true!<br /> +Fair Florence said her chevalier<br /> + Could every foe subdue.</p> +<p>And Florence scorned the bookworm vain,<br /> + Who sword nor spear could raise;<br /> +And Blanchflor scorned the unlettered brain<br /> + Could sing no lady’s praise.</p> +<p>From dearest love, the maidens bright<br /> + To deadly hatred fell,<br /> +Each turned to shun the other’s sight,<br /> + And neither said farewell.</p> +<p>The king of birds, who held his court<br /> + Within that flowery grove,<br /> +Sang loudly: “’Twill be rare disport<br /> + To judge this suit of love.”</p> +<p>Before him came the maidens bright,<br /> + With all his birds around,<br /> +To judge the cause, if clerk or knight<br /> + In love be worthiest found.</p> +<p>The falcon and the sparrow-hawk<br /> + Stood forward for the fight:<br /> +Ready to do, and not to talk,<br /> + They voted for the knight.</p> +<p>And Blanchflor’s heart began to fail,<br /> + Till rose the strong-voiced lark,<br /> +And, after him, the nightingale,<br /> + And pleaded for the clerk.</p> +<p>The nightingale prevailed at length,<br /> + Her pleading had such charms;<br /> +So eloquence can conquer strength,<br /> + And arts can conquer arms.</p> +<p>The lovely Florence tore her hair,<br /> + And died upon the place;<br /> +And all the birds assembled there<br /> + Bewailed the mournful case.</p> +<p>They piled up leaves and flowerets rare<br /> + Above the maiden bright,<br /> +And sang: “Farewell to Florence fair,<br /> + Who too well loved her knight.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Several others of the party sang in the intervals of the +dances. Mr. Chainmail handed to Mr. Trillo another ballad +of the twelfth century, of a merrier character than the +former. Mr. Trillo readily accommodated it with an air, and +sang:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">THE PRIEST AND THE +MULBERRY TREE.</p> +<p>Did you hear of the curate who mounted his mare,<br /> +And merrily trotted along to the fair?<br /> +Of creature more tractable none ever heard;<br /> +In the height of her speed she would stop at a word,<br /> +And again with a word, when the curate said Hey,<br /> +She put forth her mettle, and galloped away.</p> +<p>As near to the gates of the city he rode,<br /> +While the sun of September all brilliantly glowed,<br /> +The good priest discovered, with eyes of desire,<br /> +A mulberry tree in a hedge of wild briar,<br /> +On boughs long and lofty, in many a green shoot,<br /> +Hung large, black, and glossy, the beautiful fruit.</p> +<p>The curate was hungry, and thirsty to boot;<br /> +He shrunk from the thorns, though he longed for the fruit;<br /> +With a word he arrested his courser’s keen speed,<br /> +And he stood up erect on the back of his steed;<br /> +On the saddle he stood, while the creature stood still,<br /> +And he gathered the fruit, till he took his good fill.</p> +<p>“Sure never,” he thought, “was a creature so +rare,<br /> +So docile, so true, as my excellent mare.<br /> +Lo, here, how I stand” (and he gazed all around),<br /> +“As safe and as steady as if on the ground,<br /> +Yet how had it been, if some traveller this way,<br /> +Had, dreaming no mischief, but chanced to cry Hey?”</p> +<p>He stood with his head in the mulberry tree,<br /> +And he spoke out aloud in his fond reverie.<br /> +At the sound of the word, the good mare made a push,<br /> +And down went the priest in the wild-briar bush.<br /> +He remembered too late, on his thorny green bed,<br /> +Much that well may be thought cannot wisely be said.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lady Clarinda, being prevailed on to take the harp in her +turn, sang the following stanzas.</p> +<blockquote><p>In the days of old,<br /> +Lovers felt true passion,<br /> +Deeming years of sorrow<br /> +By a smile repaid.<br /> +Now the charms of gold,<br /> +Spells of pride and fashion,<br /> +Bid them say good morrow<br /> +To the best-loved maid.</p> +<p>Through the forests wild,<br /> +O’er the mountains lonely,<br /> +They were never weary<br /> +Honour to pursue.<br /> +If the damsel smiled<br /> +Once in seven years only,<br /> +All their wanderings dreary<br /> +Ample guerdon knew.</p> +<p>Now one day’s caprice<br /> +Weighs down years of smiling,<br /> +Youthful hearts are rovers,<br /> +Love is bought and sold:<br /> +Fortune’s gifts may cease,<br /> +Love is less beguiling;<br /> +Wisest were the lovers<br /> +In the days of old.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The glance which she threw at the captain, as she sang the +last verse, awakened his dormant hopes. Looking round for +his rival, he saw that he was not in the hall; and, approaching +the lady of his heart, he received one of the sweetest smiles of +their earlier days.</p> +<p>After a time, the ladies, and all the females of the party, +retired. The males remained on duty with punch and wassail, +and dropped off one by one into sweet forgetfulness; so that when +the rising sun of December looked through the painted windows on +mouldering embers and flickering lamps, the vaulted roof was +echoing to a mellifluous concert of noses, from the clarionet of +the waiting-boy at one end of the hall, to the double bass of the +Reverend Doctor, ringing over the empty punch-bowl, at the +other.</p> +<h2>CONCLUSION.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">From</span> this eventful night, young +Crotchet was seen no more on English mould. Whither he had +vanished was a question that could no more be answered in his +case than in that of King Arthur after the battle of +Camlan. The great firm of Catchflat and Company figured in +the Gazette, and paid sixpence in the pound; and it was clear +that he had shrunk from exhibiting himself on the scene of his +former greatness, shorn of the beams of his paper +prosperity. Some supposed him to be sleeping among the +undiscoverable secrets of some barbel-pool in the Thames; but +those who knew him best were more inclined to the opinion that he +had gone across the Atlantic, with his pockets full of surplus +capital, to join his old acquaintance, Mr. Touchandgo, in the +bank of Dotandcarryonetown.</p> +<p>Lady Clarinda was more sorry for her father’s +disappointment than her own; but she had too much pride to allow +herself to be put up a second time in the money-market; and when +the Captain renewed his assiduities, her old partiality for him, +combining with a sense of gratitude for a degree of constancy +which she knew she scarcely deserved, induced her, with Lord +Foolincourt’s hard-wrung consent, to share with him a more +humble, but less precarious fortune, than that to which she had +been destined as the price of a rotten borough.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES.</h2> +<p><a name="footnote175"></a><a href="#citation175" +class="footnote">[175]</a> A mountain-wandering maid,<br /> +Twin-nourished with the solitary wood.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROTCHET CASTLE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2075-h.htm or 2075-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/7/2075 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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