The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book (part 2 of 5)

The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book (part 2 of 5)

‘Since the rejection of his appeal in Cassation, on which his principal hopes were founded, Peytel spoke little of his petition to the king. The notion of transportation was that which he seemed to cherish most. However, he made several inquiries from the gaoler of the prison, when he saw him at meal-times, with regard to the place of execution, the usual hour, and other details on the subject. From that period, the words “Champ de Foire” (the fair-field, where the execution was to be held) were frequently used by him in conversation.

‘Yesterday, the idea that the time had arrived seemed to be more strongly than ever impressed upon him; especially after the departure of the curé, who latterly has been with him every day. The documents connected with the trial had arrived in the morning. He was ignorant of this circumstance, but sought to discover from his guardians what they tried to hide from him; and to find out whether his petition was rejected, and when he was to die.

‘Yesterday, also, he had written to demand the presence of his counsel, M. Margerand, in order that he might have some conversation with him, and regulate his affairs, before he----; he did not write down the word, but left in its place a few points of the pen.

‘In the evening, whilst he was at supper, he begged earnestly to be allowed a little wax-candle, to finish what he was writing: otherwise, he said, Time might fail. This was a new, indirect manner of repeating his ordinary question. As light, up to that evening, had been refused him, it was thought best to deny him in this, as in former instances; otherwise his suspicions might have been confirmed. The keeper refused his demand.

‘This morning, Monday, at nine o’clock, the Greffier of the Assize Court, in fulfilment of the painful duty which the law imposes upon him, came to the prison, in company with the curé of Bourg, and announced to the convict that his petition was rejected, and that he had only three hours to live. He received this fatal news with a great deal of calmness, and showed himself to be no more affected than he had been on the trial. “I am ready; but I wish they had given me four-and-twenty hours’ notice,”--were all the words he used.

‘The Greffier now retired, leaving Peytel alone with the curé, who did not thenceforth quit him. Peytel breakfasted at ten o’clock.

‘At eleven, a picquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took their station upon the place before the prison, where a great concourse of people had already assembled. An open car was at the door. Before he went out, Peytel asked the gaoler for a looking-glass; and having examined his face for a moment, said, “at least, the inhabitants of Bourg will see that I have not grown thin.”

‘As twelve o’clock sounded the prison gates opened, an aide appeared, followed by Peytel leaning on the arm of the curate. Peytel’s face was pale, he had a long black beard, a blue cap on his head, and his greatcoat flung over his shoulders, and buttoned at the neck.

‘He looked about at the place and the crowd; he asked if the carriage would go at a trot; and on being told that that would be difficult, he said he would prefer walking, and asked what the road was. He immediately set out, walking at a firm and rapid pace. He was not bound at all.

‘An immense crowd of people encumbered the two streets through which he had to pass to the place of execution. He cast his eyes alternately upon them and upon the guillotine, which was before him.

‘Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Peytel embraced the curé, and bade him adieu. He then embraced him again; perhaps, for his mother and sister. He then mounted the steps rapidly, and gave himself into the hands of the executioner, who removed his coat and cap. He asked how he was to place himself, and, on a sign being made, he flung himself briskly on the plank, and stretched his neck. In another moment he was no more.

‘The crowd, which had been quite silent, retired, profoundly moved by the sight it had witnessed. As at all executions, there was a very great number of women present.

‘Under the scaffold there had been, ever since the morning, a coffin. The family had asked for his remains, and had them immediately buried, privately: and thus the unfortunate man’s head escaped the modellers in wax, several of whom had arrived to take an impression of it.’

Down goes the axe; the poor wretch’s head rolls gasping into the basket; the spectators go home, pondering; and Mr. Executioner and his aids have, in half an hour, removed all traces of the august sacrifice, and of the altar on which it had been performed. Say, Mr. Briefless, do you think that any single person, meditating murder, would be deterred therefrom by beholding this--nay, a thousand more executions? It is not for moral improvement, as I take it, nor for opportunity to make appropriate remarks upon the punishment of crime, that people make a holiday of a killing-day, and leave their homes and occupations to flock and witness the cutting off of a head. Do we crowd to see Mr. Macready in the new tragedy, or Mademoiselle Elssler in her last new ballet and flesh-coloured stockinet pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be excited, in different ways, by the actor and the dancer? And so, as we go to have a meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of something more questionable in the ballet, we go for a glut of blood to the execution. The lust is in every man’s nature, more or less. Did you ever witness a wrestling-or boxing-match? The first clatter of the kick on the shins, or the first drawing of blood, makes the stranger shudder a little; but soon the blood is his chief enjoyment, and he thirsts for it with a fierce delight. It is a fine grim pleasure that we have in seeing a man killed; and I make no doubt that the organs of destructiveness must begin to throb and swell as we witness the delightful savage spectacle.

Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed, I made attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed in both cases. In the first instance, the day for Fieschi’s death was, purposely, kept secret; and he was, if I remember rightly, executed at some remote quarter of the town. But it would have done a philanthropist good to witness the scene which we saw on the morning when his execution did not take place.

It was carnival time, and the rumour had pretty generally been carried abroad that he was to die on that morning. A friend, who accompanied me, came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order to be in at the death. We set out before light, floundering through the muddy Champs Elysées; where, besides, were many other persons floundering, and all bent upon the same errand. We passed by the Concert of Musard, then held in the Rue St. Honoré; and round this, in the wet, a number of coaches were collected. The ball was just up, and a crowd of people, in hideous masquerade, drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and daubed with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women and men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; parties swaggering, staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and fro across the street, and yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of these were bound for the show, and we thought ourselves lucky in finding a vehicle to the execution place, at the Barrière d’Enfer. As we crossed the river and entered the Enfer Street, crowds of students, black workmen, and more drunken devils from more carnival balls, were filling it; and on the grand place there were thousands of these assembled, looking out for Fieschi and his cortège. We waited and waited; but alas! no fun for us that morning: no throat-cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied justice; and the eager spectators were obliged to return, disappointed of their expected breakfast of blood. It would have been a fine scene, that execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness it, wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a bonne-bouche of a murder.

The other attempt was equally unfortunate. We arrived too late on the ground to be present at the execution of Lacenaire and his co-mate in murder, Avril. But as we came to the ground (a gloomy round space, within the barrier--three roads lead to it; and, outside, you see the wine-shops and restaurateurs of the barrier looking gay and inviting)--as we came to the ground, we only found, in the midst of it, a little pool of ice, just partially tinged with red. Two or three idle street-boys were dancing and stamping about this pool; and when I asked one of them whether the execution had taken place, he began dancing more madly than ever, and shrieked out with a loud fantastical theatrical voice, ‘Venez tous, Messieurs et Dames, voyez ici le sang du monstre Lacenaire, et de son compagnon le traître Avril,’ or words to that effect; and straightway all the other gamins screamed out the words in chorus, and took hands and danced round the little puddle.

O august Justice, your meal was followed by a pretty appropriate grace! Was any man, who saw the show, deterred, or frightened, or moralised in any way? He had gratified his appetite for blood, and this was all. There is something singularly pleasing, both in the amusement of execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind, which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it. This merry pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic.

But, for God’s sake, if we are to enjoy this, let us do so in moderation; and let us, at least, be sure of a man’s guilt before we murder him. To kill him, even with the full assurance that he is guilty, is hazardous enough. Who gave you the right to do so?--you, who cry out against suicides as impious and contrary to Christian law? What use is there in killing him? You deter no one else from committing the crime by so doing: you give us, to be sure, half an hour’s pleasant entertainment; but it is a great question whether we derive much moral profit from the sight. If you want to keep a murderer from further inroads upon society, are there not plenty of hulks and prisons, God wot; treadmills, galleys, and houses of correction? Above all, as in the case of Sebastian Peytel and his family, there have been two deaths already: was a third death absolutely necessary? and, taking the fallibility of judges and lawyers into his heart, and remembering the thousand instances of unmerited punishment that have been suffered upon similar and stronger evidence before, can any man declare, positively and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and that this was not the third murder in the family?

FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS

There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide as much as you please.

There is the old classical drama, well-nigh dead, and full time too: old tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout sonorous Alexandrines for half a dozen hours. The fair Rachel has been trying to revive this genre, and to untomb Racine; but be not alarmed, Racine will never come to life again, and cause audiences to weep as of yore. Madame Rachel can only galvanise the corpse, not revivify it. Ancient French tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the grave; and it is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair Jewess has raised. There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein the knavish valets, rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart free-spoken serving-women, discourse in Alexandrines as loud as the Horaces or the Cid. An Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the ronflement of the verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for my part, I had rather go to Madame Saqui’s, or see Deburan dancing on a rope: his lines are quite as natural and poetical.

Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows, and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books! How that unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by him and his disciples! You will see four pieces, at the Gymnase, of a night; and so sure as you see them, four husbands shall be wickedly used. When is this joke to cease? Mon Dieu! Play-writers have handled it for about two thousand years, and the public, like a great baby, must have the tale repeated to it over and over again.

Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung into life of late years; and which is said, but I don’t believe a word of it, to have Shakespeare for a father. If Mr. Scribe’s plays may be said to be so many ingenious examples how to break one commandment, the drame is a grand and general chaos of them all; nay, several crimes are added, not prohibited in the Decalogue, which was written before dramas were. Of the drama, Victor Hugo and Dumas are the well-known and respectable guardians. Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since Hernani, has contained a monster--a delightful monster, saved by one virtue. There is Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrèce Borgia, a maternal monster; Mary Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a hump-backed monster; and others that might be named, whose monstrosities we are induced to pardon--nay, admiringly to witness--because they are agreeably mingled with some exquisite display of affection. And, as the great Hugo has one monster to each play, the great Dumas has, ordinarily, half a dozen, to whom murder is nothing; common intrigue, and simple breakage of the before-mentioned commandment, nothing; but who live and move in a vast, delightful complication of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in England, much less described.

When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her greatness, and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these charming horrors for her. I have seen her make love to, and murder, her sons, in the Tour de Nesle. I have seen her poison a company of no less than nine gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son in the number; I have seen her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off numbers of respectable relations, in the four first acts; and, at the last, be actually burned at the stake, to which she comes shuddering, ghastly, barefooted, and in a white sheet. Sweet excitement of tender sympathies! Such tragedies are not so good as a real downright execution; but, in point of interest, the next thing to it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill the breast; with what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect for that grain of virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody, daughter-loving Brinvilliers; our warm-hearted, poisonous Lucretia Borgia; above all, what a smart appetite for a cool supper afterwards, at the Café Anglais, when the horrors of the play act as a piquant sauce to the supper!

Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point. After having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced at Paris for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that one has seen,--the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other crimes, by which one has been interested and excited,--a man may take leave to be heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has spent his time; and of the hideous kind of mental intoxication in which he has permitted himself to indulge.

Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed many pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.

Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic reaction; and as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we have had not merely Catholic pictures and quasi-religious books, but a number of Catholic plays have been produced, very edifying to the frequenters of the theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned more about religion from these performances than they have acquired, no doubt, in the whole of their lives before. In the course of a very few years we have seen--The Wandering Jew, Belshazzar’s Feast, Nebuchadnezzar, and the Massacre of the Innocents, Joseph and his Brethren, The Passage of the Red Sea, and The Deluge.

The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a vast quantity of religion before the footlights. There was his famous tragedy of Caligula, which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris critics, was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them. And why? Because, says Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the rogues. The public, he says, was much more religious, and understood him at once.

‘As for the critics,’ says he nobly, ‘let those who cried out against the immorality of Antony and Marguerite de Bourgogne, reproach me for the chastity of Messalina.’ (This dear creature is the heroine of the play of Caligula.) ‘It matters little to me. These people have but seen the form of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not seen the arch which it covered; they have examined the vases and candles of the altar, but have not opened the tabernacle!

‘The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was, beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with its head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream, the solution of a problem which he has long and vainly sought in his waking hours.’

You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint Dumas is another. We have people in England who write for bread, like Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; but they don’t set up for prophets. Mrs. Trollope has never declared that her novels are inspired by Heaven; Mr. Buckstone has written a great number of farces, and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle. Even Sir Edward Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with a play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own merits) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission, and was uttering five-act revelations.

All things considered, the tragedy of Caligula is a decent tragedy; as decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it to be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay, of the English school too); and if the writer take the character of a remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but he turns out an amiable fellow, in whom we have all the warmest sympathy. Caligula is killed at the end of the performance; Messalina is comparatively well-behaved: and the sacred part of the performance, the tabernacle-characters apart from the mere ‘vase’ and ‘candlestick’ personages, may be said to be depicted in the person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the good fortune to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene, when she, Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.

‘Stella (continuant) Voilà Que je vois s’avancer, sans pilote et sans rames, Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes Et, spectacle inouï qui me ravit encor, Tous quatre avaient au front une auréole d’or D’où partaient des rayons de si vive lumière Que je fus obligée à baisser la paupière; Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi, Les voyageurs divins étaient auprès de moi. Un jour de chacun d’eux et dans toute sa gloire Je te raconterai la merveilleuse histoire, Et tu l’adoreras, j’espère; en ce moment, Ma mère, il te suffit de savoir seulement Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie: Un édit les avait bannis de leur patrie, Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes irrités, Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garottés, Sur une frêle barque échouée au rivage. Les avaient à la mer poussés dans un orage. Mais à peine l’esquif eut-il touché les flots, Qu’au cantique, chanté par les saints matelots, L’ouragan replia ses ailes frémissantes, Que la mer aplanit ses vagues mugissantes, Et qu’un soleil plus pur, reparaissant aux cieux, Enveloppa l’esquif d’un cercle radieux!...

Junia. Mais c’était un prodige.

Stella. Un miracle, ma mère! Leurs fers tombèrent seuls, l’eau cessa d’être amère, Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert D’une manne pareille à celle du desert; C’est ainsi que, poussés par une main céleste, Je les vis aborder.

Junia. Oh! dis vîte le reste!

Stella. A l’aube, trois d’entre eux quittèrent la maison: Marthe prit le chemin qui mène à Tarascon, Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie, Et celle qui resta ... c’était la plus jolie [how truly French!], Nous faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour, Demanda si les monts ou les bois d’alentour Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde, Qui la pût séparer à tout jamais du monde.... Aquila se souvint qu’il avait pénétré Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignoré, Grotte creusée aux flancs de ces Alpes sublimes, Où l’aigle fait son aire au-dessus des abîmes. Il offrit cet asile, et dès le lendemain Tous deux, pour l’y guider, nous étions en chemin. Le soir du second jour nous touchâmes sa base: Là, tombant à genoux dans une sainte extase, Elle pria longtemps, puis vers l’antre inconnu, Dénouant sa chaussure, elle marcha pied nu. Nos prières, nos cris restèrent sans réponses: Au milieu des cailloux, des épines, des ronces, Nous la vîmes monter, un bâton à la main, Et ce n’est qu’arrivée au terme du chemin, Qu’enfin elle tomba sans force et sans haleine....

Junia. Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?

Stella. Madeline.’

Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore,

‘A bark drew near, that had nor sail nor oar; two women and two men the vessel bore: each of that crew, ‘twas wondrous to behold, wore round his head a ring of blazing gold; from which such radiance glittered all around, that I was fain to look towards the ground. And when once more I raised my frightened eyne, before me stood the travellers divine; their rank, the glorious lot that each befell, at better season, mother, will I tell. Of this anon: the time will come when thou shalt learn to worship as I worship now. Suffice it, that from Syria’s land they came; an edict from their country banished them. Fierce, angry men had seized upon the four, and launched them in that vessel from the shore. They launched these victims on the waters rude: nor rudder gave to steer, nor bread for food. As the doomed vessel cleaves the stormy main, that pious crew uplifts a sacred strain; the angry waves are silent as it sings; the storm, awe-stricken, folds its quivering wings. A purer sun appears the heavens to light, and wraps the little bark in radiance bright.

Junia. Sure, ‘twas a prodigy.

Stella. A miracle. Spontaneous from their hands the fetters fell. The salt sea-wave grew fresh; and, twice a day, manna (like that which on the desert lay) covered the bark, and fed them on their way. Thus, hither led, at Heaven’s divine behest, I saw them land----

Junia. My daughter, tell the rest.

Stella. Three of the four our mansion left at dawn. One, Martha, took the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; but one remained (the fairest of the three), who asked us if, i’ the woods or mountains near, there chanced to be some cavern lone and drear; where she might hide, for ever, from all men. It chanced, my cousin knew of such a den; deep hidden in a mountain’s hoary breast, on which the eagle builds his airy nest. And thither offered he the saint to guide. Next day upon the journey forth we hied; and came, at the second eve, with weary pace, unto the lonely mountain’s rugged base. Here the worn traveller, falling on her knee, did pray awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate retreat. No answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking midst the prickles and rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil; nor ever did she pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that savage den. Here, powerless and panting, fell she then.

Junia. What was her name, my daughter?

Stella. MAGDALEN.

Here the translator must pause--having no inclination to enter ‘the tabernacle’ in company with such a spotless high-priest as Monsieur Dumas.

Something ‘tabernacular’ may be found in Dumas’s famous piece of Don Juan de Marana. The poet has laid the scene of his play in a vast number of places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary, and little angels, in blue, swinging censers before her!)--on earth, under the earth, and in a place still lower, but not mentionable to ears polite; and the plot, as it appears from a dialogue between a good and a bad angel, with which the play commences, turns upon a contest between these two worthies for the possession of the soul of a member of the family of Marana.

Don Juan de Marana not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by Mozart and Molière, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but possesses further qualities which render his character eminently fitting for stage representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace and Lacenaire; he blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the slightest provocation, and without the most trifling remorse; he overcomes ladies of rigid virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies of no virtue at all; and the poet, inspired by the contemplation of such a character, has depicted his hero’s adventures and conversation with wonderful feeling and truth.

The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and intrigues; which would have sufficed humbler genius than M. Dumas’s, for the completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies. In the second act our hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away with his sister-in-law; in the third, he fights a duel with a rival, and kills him: whereupon the mistress of his victim takes poison, and dies, in great agonies, on the stage. In the fourth act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the purpose of carrying off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the statue of one of the ladies whom he has previously victimised, and made to behold the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths he has caused.

This is a most edifying spectacle. The ghosts rise solemnly, each in a white sheet, preceded by a wax candle; and, having declared their names and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don Juan, as thus:--

‘Don Sandoval (loquitur). I am Don Sandoval d’Ojedo. I played against Don Juan my fortune, the tomb of my fathers, and the heart of my mistress; I lost all. I played against him my life, and I lost it. Vengeance against the murderer! vengeance!--(The candle goes out.)’

The candle goes out, and an angel descends--a flaming sword in his hand--and asks: ‘Is there no voice in favour of Don Juan?’ when lo! Don Juan’s father (like one of those ingenious toys called ‘Jack-in-the-box’) jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his son.

When Martha, the nun, returns, having prepared all things for her elopement, she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.--‘I am no longer your husband,’ says he, upon coming to himself; ‘I am no longer Don Juan; I am Brother Juan the Trappist. Sister Martha, recollect that you must die!’

This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a person than an angel, an angel in disguise--the good spirit of the house of Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings, and forfeiting her place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don Juan on earth, and, if possible, to convert him. Already, in her angelic character, she had exhorted him to repentance, but in vain; for, while she stood at one elbow, pouring not merely hints, but long sermons, into his ear, at the other elbow stood a bad spirit, grinning and sneering at all her pious counsels, and obtaining by far the greater share of the Don’s attention.

In spite, however, of the utter contempt with which Don Juan treats her,--in spite of his dissolute courses, which must shock her virtue,--and his impolite neglect, which must wound her vanity, the poor creature (who, from having been accustomed to better company, might have been presumed to have had better taste), the unfortunate angel, feels a certain inclination for the Don, and actually flies up to heaven to ask permission to remain with him on earth.

And when the curtain draws up, to the sound of harps, and discovers white-robed angels walking in the clouds, we find the angel of Marana upon her knees, uttering the following address:--

‘LE BON ANGE

Vierge, à qui le calice à la liqueur amère Fut si souvent offert, Mère, que l’on nomma la douloureuse mère, Tant vous avez souffert!

Vous, dont les yeux divins, sur la terre des hommes, Ont versé plus de pleurs Que vos pieds n’ont depuis, dans le ciel où nous sommes, Fait éclore de fleurs!

Vase d’élection, étoile matinale, Miroir de pureté, Vous qui priez pour nous, d’une voix virginale, La suprême bonté;

A mon tour, aujourd’hui, bienheureuse Marie, Je tombe à vos genoux; Daignez donc m’écouter, car c’est vous que je prie, Vous qui priez pour nous.’

Which may be thus interpreted:--

‘O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught So often has been quaffed, That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us The Mother Dolorous!

Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe, Upon the earth below, Than ‘neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours, Have risen flowers!

O beaming morning star! O chosen vase! O mirror of all grace! Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray Man’s sins away;

Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint! Unto my sad complaint; Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call, Who hearest all.’

She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth, and follow the fortunes of Don Juan;--and as there is one difficulty, or, to use her own words,--

‘Mais, comme vous savez qu’aux voûtes éternelles, Malgré moi, tend mon vol, _Soufflez sur mon étoile et détachez mes ailes, Pour m’enchaîner au sol_;’

her request is granted, her star is blown out (O poetic allusion!), and she descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for Don Juan!

The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be satisfied as to the moral of this play; but is it not a very bitter satire upon the country, which calls itself the politest nation in the world, that the incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy, and the vulgar wit of this piece, should find admirers among the public, and procure reputation for the author? Could not the Government, which has re-established, in a manner, the theatrical censorship, and forbids or alters plays which touch on politics, exert the same guardianship over public morals? The honest English reader, who has a faith in his clergyman, and is a regular attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a little surprised at the march of intellect among our neighbours across the Channel, and at the kind of consideration in which they hold their religion. Here is a man who seizes upon saints and angels, merely to put sentiments in their mouths which might suit a nymph of Drury Lane. He shows heaven, in order that he may carry debauch into it; and avails himself of the most sacred and sublime parts of our creed, as a vehicle for a scene-painter’s skill, or an occasion for a handsome actress to wear a new dress.

M. Dumas’s piece of Kean is not quite so sublime; it was brought out by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to their credit be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was intended by him, and received by the public, as a faithful portraiture of English manners. As such, it merits special observation and praise. In the first act you find a Countess and an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely to the great actor. All the ladies in London are in love with him, especially the two present;--as for the Ambassadress, she prefers him to her husband (a matter of course in all French plays), and to a more seducing person still--no less a person than the Prince of Wales! who presently waits on the ladies, and joins in their conversation concerning Kean. ‘This man,’ says his Royal Highness, ‘is the very pink of fashion. Brummell is nobody when compared to him; and I myself only an insignificant private gentleman: he has a reputation among ladies, for which I sigh in vain; and spends an income twice as great as mine.’ This admirable historic touch at once paints the actor and the Prince; the estimation in which the one was held, and the modest economy for which the other was so notorious.

Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the ‘Coal-hole,’ where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a fisty combat with a notorious boxer; this scene was received by the audience with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on, by the journals, as a faultless picture of English manners. The ‘Coal-hole’ being on the banks of the Thames, a nobleman--Lord Melbourn!--has chosen the tavern as a rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have their ship in waiting, in order to carry off a young lady, with whom his lordship is enamoured. It need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time, saves the innocent Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer;--a violent tirade against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away, disappointed, to meditate revenge. Keen’s triumphs continue through all the acts; the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince becomes furious at his ill success, and the Ambassador dreadfully jealous. They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where, unluckily, the Ambassadress herself has taken refuge. Dreadful quarrels ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and so cruelly insults the Prince of Wales, that his Royal Highness determines to send him to Botany Bay. His sentence, however, is commuted to banishment to New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna accompanies him; rewarding him, previously, with her hand and twenty thousand a year!

This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the people of Paris; the piece was considered to be decidedly moral, because the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and to triumph in the most virtuous manner; for, according to the French code of morals, success among women is at once the proof and the reward of virtue.

The sacred personage introduced in Dumas’s play, behind a cloud, figures bodily in the piece of the Massacre of the Innocents, represented at Paris last year. She appears under a different name, but the costume is exactly that of Carlo-Dolce’s Madonna; and an ingenious fable is arranged, the interest of which hangs upon the grand Massacre of the Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act. One of the chief characters is Jean le Précurseur, who threatens woe to Herod and his race, and is beheaded by the orders of that sovereign.

In the Festin de Balthazar we are similarly introduced to Daniel, and the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain number of captive Jews is seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian officer enters, exclaiming, ‘Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jérusalem,’ and the request is refused in the language of the Psalm. Belshazzar’s Feast is given in a grand tableau, after Martin’s picture. That painter, in like manner, furnished scenes for the Déluge. Vast numbers of schoolboys and children are brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight in them. The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, was the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no doubt, occasioned the number of imitations which the other theatres have produced.

The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom they are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an opinion, there is, in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind of rude moral. The Boulevard writers don’t pretend to ‘tabernacles’ and divine gifts, like Madame Sand and Dumas, before mentioned. If they take a story from the sacred books, they garble it without mercy, and take sad liberties with the text; but they do not deal in descriptions of the agreeably wicked, or ask pity and admiration for tender-hearted criminals and philanthropic murderers, as their betters do. Vice is vice on the Boulevard; and it is fine to hear the audience, as a tyrant king roars out cruel sentences of death, or a bereaved mother pleads for the life of her child, making their remarks on the circumstances of the scene. ‘Ah, le gredin!’ growls an indignant countryman. ‘Quel monstre!’ says a grisette, in a fury. You see very fat old men crying like babies; and, like babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar. Actors and audience enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially are the former affected, that, at Franconi’s, where the battles of the Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks of the mimic army, as in the real imperial legions. After a man has served, with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he is promoted to be an officer--an acting officer. If he conducts himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel, or a General of Division; if ill, he is degraded to the ranks again; or, worst degradation of all, drafted into a regiment of Cossacks or Austrians. Cossacks is the lowest depth, however; nay, it is said that the men who perform these Cossack parts receive higher wages than the mimic grenadiers and old guard. They will not consent to be beaten every night, even in play; to be pursued in hundreds, by a handful of French; to fight against their beloved Emperor. Surely there is fine hearty virtue in this, and pleasant childlike simplicity.

So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened classes is profoundly immoral and absurd, the drama of the common people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted. I have made notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or two favourite points of popular morality. A drama that obtained a vast success at the Porte St. Martin was La Duchesse de la Vauballière. The Duchess is the daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in the first place, and then married by M. le Duc de la Vauballière, a terrible roué, the farmer’s landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe d’Orléans, the Regent of France.

Now, the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who compelled the pair to marry and make it up.

Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares that, beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place between her husband and herself.

Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like manner: he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper characters into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with her, that he determines to make away with her altogether.

For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a doctor, bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous prescription for Madame la Duchesse. She swallows the potion; and, oh, horror! the doctor turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be imagined, upon finding that he has been thus committing murder on his true love!

Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the heroine; no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; and, accordingly, the Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the fourth, through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.

And now it is that vice begins to be really punished. The Duke, who, after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and take refuge in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by the virtuous notary, and there receives such a lesson as he will never forget to his dying day.

Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his Holiness the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la Vauballière; then another deed, by which it is proved that he was not the eldest son of old La Vauballière, the former Duke; then another deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballière (who seems to have been a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that, in consequence, the present man, styling himself Duke, is illegitimate; and, finally, Morisseau brings forward another document, which proves that the reg’lar Duke is no other than Adrian, the doctor!

Thus it is that love, law, and physic, combined, triumph over the horrid machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.

Hermann l’Ivrogne is another piece of the same order; and, though not very refined, yet possesses considerable merit. As in the case of the celebrated Captain Smith, of Halifax, who ‘took to drinking ratafia, and thought of poor Miss Bailey,’--a woman and the bottle have been the cause of Hermann’s ruin. Deserted by his mistress, who has been seduced from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a German artist, gives himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but when he finds that force, and not infidelity, has been the cause of his mistress’s ruin, the reader can fancy the indignant ferocity with which he pursues the infâme ravisseur. A scene, which is really full of spirit, and excellently well acted, here ensues: Hermann proposes to the Count, on the eve of their duel, that the survivor should bind himself to espouse the unhappy Marie; but the Count declares himself to be already married, and the student, finding a duel impossible (for his object was to restore, at all events, the honour of Marie), now only thinks of his revenge, and murders the Count. Presently, two parties of men enter Hermann’s apartment; one is a company of students, who bring him the news that he has obtained the prize of painting; the other the policemen, who carry him to prison, to suffer the penalty of murder.

I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is similarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an aristocrat,--a wicked Count, or licentious Marquis,--who is brought to condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of the aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, the wrongs which they did a hundred years since. The aristocracy is dead now; but the theatre lives upon traditions; and don’t let us be too scornful at such simple legends that are handed down by the people, from race to race. Vulgar prejudice against the great it may be; but prejudice against the great is only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long, therefore, may fat épiciers blubber over mimic woes, and honest prolétaires shake their fists, shouting--‘Gredin, scélérat, monstre de Marquis!’ and such republican cries.

Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of dislike against men in power. What a number of plays and legends have we (the writer has submitted to the public, in the preceding pages, a couple of specimens; one of French, and the other of Polish origin), in which that great and powerful aristocrat, the Devil, is made to be miserably tricked, humiliated, and disappointed! A play of this class, which, in the midst of all its absurdities and claptraps, had much of good in it, was called Le Maudit des Mers. Le Maudit is a Dutch captain, who, in the midst of a storm, while his crew were on their knees at prayers, blasphemed and drank punch; but what was his astonishment at beholding an archangel with a sword, all covered with flaming resin, who told him that, as he, in this hour of danger, was too daring, or too wicked, to utter a prayer, he never should cease roaming the seas until he could find some being who would pray to Heaven for him!

Once, only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for this purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as many acts, describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the miserable Dutchman. Willing to go any lengths, in order to obtain this prayer, he, in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a follower of Pizarro; and, in the third, assassinates the heroic William of Nassau; but ever before the dropping of the curtain, the angel and sword make their appearance:--‘Treachery,’ says the spirit, ‘cannot lessen thy punishment;--crime will not obtain thy release! A la mer! à la mer!’ and the poor devil returns to the ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed, and sea-sick, for a hundred years more.

But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act. Having landed in America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed in Italian costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories of Washington, he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to pray for him. Then the curse is removed, the punishment is over, and a celestial vessel, with angels on the decks, and ‘sweet little cherubs’ fluttering about the shrouds and the poop, appears to receive him.

This piece was acted at Franconi’s, where, for once, an angel-ship was introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.

One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is satirised by our neighbours, who have some droll traditions regarding us. In one of the little Christmas pieces produced at the Palais Royal (satires upon the follies of the past twelve months, on which all the small theatres exhaust their wit), the celebrated flight of Messrs. Green and Monck Mason was parodied, and created a good deal of laughter at the expense of John Bull. Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and Milor Hanneton, appear as descending from a balloon, and one of them communicates to the public the philosophical observations which were made in the course of his aërial tour.

‘On leaving Vauxhall,’ says his lordship, ‘we drank a bottle of Madeira, as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a few biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch. In two hours we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds; lunch, bottled porter; at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold, cherry brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, and thought, with pity, of the poor people who were sickening in the steamboats below; more bottled porter; over Calais; dinner, roast-beef of Old England; near Dunkirk,--night falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed. The sun broke beautifully through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle, and took our breakfast over Cologne. In a few more hours we concluded this memorable voyage, and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for dinner.’

The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbours make many better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun. Let us leave plays, for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism, concerning England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man of letters. The hero of the poem addresses his mistress:--

‘Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale, Est ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pâle, C’est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard; On s’y couche à minuit, et l’on s’y lève tard; Ses raouts tant vantés ne sont qu’une boxade, Sur ses grands quais jamais échelle ou sérénade, Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter Qui passent sans lever le front à Westminster; Et n’était sa forêt de mâts perçant la brume, Sa tour dont à minuit le vieil œil s’allume, Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illuminés bien plus, Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j’ai lus, Il n’en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus léthargique Que cette nation qu’on nomme Britannique!’

The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) is Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months in England, as an attaché to the embassy of M. de Polignac. He places the heroine of his tale in a petit réduit près le Strand, ‘with a green and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you fancied you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had passed the perfumed threshold of this charming retreat!’ He next places her--

‘Dans un Square écarté, morne et couverte de givre, Où se cache un Hôtel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;’

and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is truly unhappy in that village.

‘Arthur dessèche et meurt.--Dans la ville de Sterne, Rien qu’en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer; Il n’aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne, Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le soda-water.[12]

Liston ne le fait plus sourciller! Il rumine Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un échiquier, Contre le peuple anglais, les nègres, la vermine Et les mille cokneys du peuple boutiquier,

Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les pâtissières, Les parieurs d’Epsom, le gin, le parlement, La quaterly, le roi, la pluie et les libraires, il ne touche plus, hélas! un sou d’argent!

Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L’heureux poète!

‘L’heureux poète’ indeed! I question if a poet in this wide world is so happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful discoveries. ‘The bath of Asia, with green jalousies,’ in which the lady dwells; ‘the old hotel, with copper lions, in a lonely square;’--were ever such things heard of, or imagined, but by a Frenchman? The sailors, the negroes, the vermin, whom he meets in the street,--how great and happy are all these discoveries! Liston no longer makes the happy poet frown; and ‘gin,’ ‘cokneys,’ and the ‘quaterly’ have not the least effect upon him! And this gentleman has lived many months amongst us; admires Williams Shakspear, the ‘grave et vieux prophète,’ as he calls him, and never, for an instant, doubts that his description contains anything absurd.

I don’t know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in England; but his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our habits. Thus in Kean the stage-manager is made to come forward and address the pit, with a speech beginning, ‘My Lords and Gentlemen;’ and a company of Englishwomen are introduced (at the memorable Coal-hole), and they all wear pinafores; as if the British female were in the invariable habit of wearing this outer garment, or slobbering her gown without it. There was another celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the subject of Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was made to play a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a duel with Lord Londonderry. In the last act of this play, the House of Lords was represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent speech in the Queen’s favour. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from shouting they proceed to pelting; and pasteboard brickbats and cabbages came flying among the representatives of our hereditary legislature. At this unpleasant juncture, Sir Hardinge, the Secretary at War, rises and calls in the military; the act ends in a general row, and the ignominious fall of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a brickbat from the mob!

The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of conveying any notion of their general effect. You must have the solemnity of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and the perfect gravity and good faith with which the audience listen to them. Our stage Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and pig-tail, and spangled court coat. The Englishman of the French theatre has, invariably, a red wig, and almost always leather gaiters, and a long white upper Benjamin: he remains as he was represented in the old caricatures, after the peace, when Vernet designed him somewhat after the following fashion.

And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of the Naufrage de la Méduse, the first act is laid on board an English ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light blue, or green, coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing the colour accurately), in little blue coats, and TOP-BOOTS!

* * * * *

Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by any more remarks. The force of blundering can go no farther. Would a playwright or painter of the Chinese empire have stranger notions about the barbarians than our neighbours, who are separated from us but by two hours of salt water?

MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES

The palace of Versailles has been turned into a bric-à-brac shop of late years; and its time-honoured walls have been covered with many thousand yards of the worst pictures that eye ever looked on. I don’t know how many leagues of battles and sieges the unhappy visitor is now obliged to march through, amidst a crowd of chattering Paris cockneys, who are never tired of looking at the glories of the Grenadier Français; to the chronicling of whose deeds this old palace of the old kings is now altogether devoted. A whizzing, screaming steam-engine rushes hither from Paris, bringing shoals of badauds in its wake. The old coucous are all gone, and their place knows them no longer. Smooth asphaltum terraces, tawdry lamps, and great hideous Egyptian obelisks, have frightened them away from the pleasant station which they used to occupy under the trees of the Champs Elysées; and though the old coucous were just the most uncomfortable vehicles that human ingenuity ever constructed, one can’t help looking back to the days of their existence with a tender regret, for there was pleasure, then, in the little trip of three leagues; and who ever had pleasure in a railroad journey?--Does any reader of this venture to say that, on such a voyage, he ever dared to be pleasant? Do the most hardened stokers joke with one another?--I don’t believe it. Look into every single car of the train, and you will see that every single face is solemn. They take their seats gravely, and are silent, for the most part, during the journey; they dare not look out of window, for fear of being blinded by the smoke that comes whizzing by, or of losing their heads in one of the windows of the down train: they ride for miles in utter damp and darkness; through awful pipes of brick, that have been run pitilessly through the bowels of gentle mother earth, the cast-iron Frankenstein of an engine gallops on, puffing and screaming. Does any man pretend to say that he enjoys the journey?--he might as well say that he enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but that is all: he will not allow the world to laugh at him, for any exhibition of slavish fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at his ease; but he is afraid, nay, ought to be, under the circumstances. I am sure Hannibal or Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a car; there kept close prisoners for a certain number of hours, and whirled along at this dizzy pace. You can’t stop, if you would;--you may die, but you can’t stop; the engine may explode upon the road, and up you go along with it; or, may be a bolter, and take a fancy to go down a hill, or into a river: all this you must bear, for the privilege of travelling twenty miles an hour.

This little journey, then, from Paris to Versailles, that used to be so merry of old, has lost its pleasures since the disappearance of the cuckoos; and I would as lieve have for companions the statues that lately took a coach from the bridge opposite the Chamber of Deputies, and stepped out in the Court of Versailles, as the most part of the people who now travel on the railroad. The stone figures are not a whit more cold and silent than these persons, who used to be, in the old cuckoos, so talkative and merry. The prattling grisette and her swain from the Ecole de Droit; the huge Alsacian carabinier, grim smiling under his sandy moustaches and glittering brazen helmet; the jolly nurse, in red calico, who had been to Paris to show mamma her darling Lolo, or Guguste;--what merry companions used one to find squeezed into the crazy old vehicles that formerly performed the journey! But the age of horseflesh is gone--that of engineers, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the pleasure of coucoudom is extinguished for ever. Why not mourn over it, as Mr. Burke did over his cheap defence of nations, and unbought grace of life; that age of chivalry, which he lamented, à propos of a trip to Versailles, some half a century back?

Without stopping to discuss (as might be done, in rather a neat and successful manner) whether the age of chivalry was cheap or dear, and whether, in the time of the unbought grace of life, there was not more bribery, robbery, villainy, tyranny, and corruption, than exists even in our own happy days,--let us make a few moral and historical remarks upon the town of Versailles, where, between railroad and coucou, we are surely arrived by this time.

The town is, certainly, the most moral of towns. You pass, from the railroad station, through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys, and ragged old women, under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, mouldy houses, palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life) the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence highborn duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids to lovely Du Barri, and mighty princes rolled away, in gilt caroches, hot for the honour of lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his stockings when he rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined. Tailors, chandlers, tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers are now established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun; oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the dusty, thirsty stones.

After pacing, for some time, through such dismal streets, we déboucher on the grand place; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the glories of France. In the midst of the great, lonely plain, this famous residence of King Louis looks low and mean.--Honoured pile! time was when tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate;--fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women, from Paris, broke through the charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace.

We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are portrayed in pictures and marble: catalogues are written about these miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy to Waterloo,--all the triumphs of Louis XIV.,--all the mistresses of his successor,--and all the great men who have flourished since the French empire began. Military heroes are most of these: fierce constables in shining steel, marshals in voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in bearskin caps; some dozens of whom gained crowns, principalities, dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in African sands, or in icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for the good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon. By far the greater part of ‘all the glories’ of France (as of most other countries) is made up of these military men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice of mankind, that they pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue called courage, filling their history-books with tales about it, and nothing but it.

Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has not been humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel was of yore: but it is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, and would afford matter for a whole library of sermons. The cheap defence of nations expended a thousand millions in the erection of this magnificent dwelling-place. Armies were employed, in the intervals of their warlike labours, to level hills, or pile them up; to turn rivers, and to build aqueducts, and transplant woods, and construct smooth terraces, and long canals. A vast garden grew up in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace in the garden, and a stately city round the palace: the city was peopled with parasites, who daily came to do worship before the creator of these wonders--the Great King. ‘Dieu seul est grand,’ said courtly Massillon; but next to him, as the prelate thought, was certainly Louis, his vicegerent here upon earth--God’s lieutenant-governor of the world,--before whom courtiers used to fall on their knees, and shade their eyes, as if the light of his countenance, like the sun, which shone supreme in heaven, the type of him, was too dazzling to bear.

Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?--or, rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun? When Majesty came out of his chamber, in the midst of his superhuman splendours, viz. in his cinnamon-coloured coat, embroidered with diamonds; his pyramid of a wig;[13] his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches from the ground, ‘that he scarcely seemed to touch;’ when he came out, blazing upon the dukes and duchesses that waited his rising,--what could the latter do but cover their eyes, and wink, and tremble?--And did he not himself believe, as he stood there, on his high heels, under his ambrosial periwig, that there was something in him more than man--something above Fate?

This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days, from his terrace, before his gloomy palace of St. Germains, he could catch a glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire of St. Denis, where his race lay buried, he would say to his courtiers, with a sublime condescension, ‘Gentlemen, you must remember that I, too, am mortal.’ Surely the lords in waiting could hardly think him serious, and vowed that his Majesty always loved a joke. However, mortal or not, the sight of that sharp spire wounded his Majesty’s eyes; and is said, by the legend, to have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles.

In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage,--with guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen, lackeys, Fénelons, Molières, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys, Louvois, Colberts,--transported himself to his new palace: the old one being left for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when their time should come. And when the time did come, and James sought his brother’s kingdom, it is on record that Louis hastened to receive and console him, and promised to restore, incontinently, those islands from which the canaille had turned him. Between brothers such a gift was a trifle; and the courtiers said to one another reverently,[14] ‘The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies my footstool.’ There was no blasphemy in the speech; on the contrary, it was gravely said, by a faithful believing man, who thought it no shame to the latter to compare his Majesty with God Almighty. Indeed, the books of the time will give one a strong idea how general was this Louis-worship. I have just been looking at one, which was written by an honest Jesuit and protégé of Père la Chaise, who dedicates a book of medals to the august Infants of France, which does, indeed, go almost as far in print. He calls our famous monarch ‘Louis le Grand:--1, l’invincible; 2, le sage; 3, le conquérant; 4, la merveille de son siècle; 5, la terreur de sea ennemis; 6, l’amour de ses peuples; 7, l’arbitre de la paix et de la guerre; 8, l’admiration de l’univers; 9, et digne d’en être le maître; 10, le modèle d’un héros achevé; 11, digne de l’immortalité, et de la vénération de tous les siècles!’

A pretty Jesuit declaration, truly, and a good honest judgment upon the great King! In thirty years more--1. The invincible had been beaten a vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old woman, who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quite forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies (for 4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn. 6. The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as scarcely any other monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been, before or since. 7. The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb ambassadors to kick their heels in Dutch shopkeepers’ ante-chambers. 8. Is again a general term. 9. The man fit to be master of the universe, was scarcely master of his own kingdom. 10. The finished hero was all but finished, in a very commonplace and vulgar way. And 11. The man worthy of immortality was just at the point of death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him; only withered old Maintenon to mutter prayers at his bedside, and croaking Jesuits to prepare him,[15] with Heaven knows what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic that lies on the other side of the grave. In the course of his fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend, and he ruined and left her. Poor La Vallière, what a sad tale is yours! ‘Look at this Galerie des Glaces,’ cried Monsieur Vatout, staggering with surprise at the appearance of the room, two hundred and forty-two feet long, and forty high; ‘here it was that Louis displayed all the grandeur of Royalty; and such was the splendour of his Court, and the luxury of the times, that this immense room could hardly contain the crowd of courtiers that pressed around the monarch.’ Wonderful! wonderful! Eight thousand four hundred and sixty square feet of courtiers! Give a square yard to each, and you have a matter of three thousand of them. Think of three thousand courtiers per day, and all the chopping and changing of them for near forty years; some of them dying; some getting their wishes and retiring to their provinces to enjoy their plunder; some disgraced, and going home to pine away out of the light of the sun;[16] new ones perpetually arriving,--pushing, squeezing, for their place, in the crowded Galerie des Glaces. A quarter of a million of noble countenances, at the very least, must those glasses have reflected. Rouge, diamonds, ribands, patches upon the faces of smiling ladies: towering periwigs, sleek shaven crowns, tufted moustaches, scars, and grizzled whiskers, worn by ministers, priests, dandies, and grim old commanders.--So many faces, O ye gods! and every one of them lies! So many tongues, vowing devotion and respectful love to the great King in his six-inch wig; and only poor La Vallière’s amongst them all which had a word of truth for the dull ears of Louis of Bourbon.

‘Quand j’aurai de la peine aux Carmélites,’ says unhappy Louise, about to retire from these magnificent courtiers and their grand Galerie des Glaces, ‘je me souviendrai de ce que ces gens-là m’ont fait souffrir!’--A troop of Bossuets inveighing against the vanities of Courts could not preach such an affecting sermon. What years of anguish and wrong has the poor thing suffered, before these sad words came from her gentle lips! How these courtiers have bowed and flattered, kissed the ground on which she trod, fought to have the honour of riding by her carriage, written sonnets, and called her goddess: who in the days of her prosperity was kind and beneficent, gentle and compassionate to all; then (on a certain day, when it is whispered that his Majesty hath cast the eyes of his gracious affection upon another) behold the three thousand courtiers are at the feet of the new divinity.--‘O divine Athenais! what blockheads have we been to worship any but you.--That a goddess?--a pretty goddess forsooth;--a witch, rather, who, for a while, kept our gracious monarch blind! Look at her: the woman limps as she walks; and, by sacred Venus, her mouth stretches almost to her diamond earrings!’[17] The some tale may be told of many more deserted mistresses; and fair Athenais de Montespan was to hear it of herself one day. Meantime, while La Vallière’s heart is breaking, the model of a finished hero is yawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero should. Let her heart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance; what right has she to repent? Away with her to her convent! She goes, and the finished hero never sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism to have reached! Our Louis was so great, that the little woes of mean people were beyond him: his friends died, his mistresses left him; his children, one by one, were cut off before his eyes, and great Louis is not moved in the slightest degree! As how, indeed, should a god be moved?

I have often liked to think about this strange character in the world, who moved in it, bearing about a full belief in his own infallibility; teaching his generals the art of war, his ministers the science of government, his wits taste, his courtiers dress; ordering deserts to become gardens, turning villages into palaces at a breath; and indeed the august figure of the man, as he towers upon his throne, cannot fail to inspire one with respect and awe:--how grand those flowing locks appear; how awful that sceptre; how magnificent those flowing robes! In Louis, surely, if in any one, the majesty of kinghood is represented.

But a king is not every inch a king, for all the poet may say; and it is curious to see how much precise majesty there is in that majestic figure of Ludovicus Rex. In the plate opposite, we have endeavoured to make the exact calculation. The idea of kingly dignity is equally strong in the two outer figures; and you see, at once, that majesty is made out of the wig, the high-heeled shoes, and cloak, all fleur-de-lis bespangled. As for the little, lean, shrivelled, paunchy old man, of five feet two, in a jacket and breeches, there is no majesty in him at any rate; and yet he has just stept out of that very suit of clothes. Put the wig and shoes on him, and he is six feet high;--the other fripperies, and he stands before you majestic, imperial, and heroic! Thus do barbers and cobblers make the gods that we worship: for do we not all worship him? Yes; though we all know him to be stupid, heartless, short, of doubtful personal courage, worship and admire him we must; and have set up, in our hearts, a grand image of him, endowed with wit, magnanimity, valour, and enormous heroical stature.

And what magnanimous acts are attributed to him! or, rather, how differently do we view the actions of heroes and common men, and find that the same thing shall be a wonderful virtue in the former, which, in the latter, is only an ordinary act of duty! Look at yonder window of the King’s chamber;--one morning a Royal cane was seen whirling out of it, and plumped among the courtiers and guard of honour below. King Louis had absolutely, and with his own hand, flung his own cane out of the window, ‘because,’ said he, ‘I won’t demean myself by striking a gentleman!’ Oh, miracle of magnanimity! Lauzun was not caned, because he besought Majesty to keep his promise,--only imprisoned for ten years in Pignerol, along with banished Fouquet;--and a pretty story is Fouquet’s, too.

Out of the window the King’s august head was one day thrust, when old Condé was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below. ‘Don’t hurry yourself, my cousin,’ cries Magnanimity; ‘one who has to carry so many laurels cannot walk fast.’ At which all the courtiers, lackeys, mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and scullions clasp their hands and burst into tears. Men are affected by the tale to this very day. For a century and three-quarters have not all the books that speak of Versailles, or Louis Quatorze, told the story?--‘Don’t hurry yourself, my cousin!’ O admirable King and Christian! what a pitch of condescension is here, that the greatest King of all the world should go for to say anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old gentleman, worn out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast!

What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of mankind, that histories like these should be found to interest and awe them. Till the world’s end, most likely, this story will have its place in the history-books; and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly be moved by it. I am sure that Magnanimity went to bed that night pleased and happy, intimately convinced that he had done an action of sublime virtue, and had easy slumbers and sweet dreams,--especially if he had taken a light supper, and not too vehemently attacked his en cas de nuit.

That famous adventure, in which the en cas de nuit was brought into use, for the sake of one Poquelin, alias Molière:--how often has it been described and admired? This Poquelin, though King’s valet de chambre, was by profession a vagrant; and as such looked coldly on by the great lords of the palace, who refused to eat with him. Majesty hearing of this, ordered his en cas de nuit to be placed on the table, and positively cut off a wing, with his own knife and fork, for Poquelin’s use. O thrice happy Jean Baptiste! The King has actually sate down with him cheek by jowl, had the liver-wing of a fowl, and given Molière the gizzard; put his imperial legs under the same mahogany, sub iisdem trabibus. A man, after such an honour, can look for little else in this world: he has tasted the utmost conceivable earthly happiness, and has nothing to do now but to fold his arms and look up to heaven, and sing ‘Nunc dimittis’ and die.

Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous pride; but only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and worshipped it. If, honest man, he believed himself to be almost a god, it was only because thousands of people had told him so--people only half liars, too; who did, in the depths of their slavish respect, admire the man almost as much as they said they did. If, when he appeared in his five-hundred-million coat, as he is said to have done, before the Siamese Ambassadors, the courtiers began to shade their eyes and long for parasols, as if this Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it is no wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling about his person; he had half a million of eager testimonies to this idea. Who was to tell him the truth?--Only in the last years of his life did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution, that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career of triumphs.

‘On n’est plus heureux à notre âge,’ says the old man, to one of his old generals, welcoming Tallard, after his defeat; and he rewards him with honours, as if he had come from a victory. There is, if you will, something magnanimous in this welcome to his conquered general, this stout protest against Fate. Disaster succeeds disaster; armies after armies march out to meet fiery Eugene and that dogged fatal Englishman, and disappear in the smoke of the enemies’ cannon. Even at Versailles you may almost hear it roaring at last; but when courtiers, who have forgotten their god, now talk of quitting this grand temple of his, old Louis plucks up heart and will never hear of surrender. All the gold and silver at Versailles he melts, to find bread for his armies: all the jewels on his five-hundred-million coat he pawns resolutely; and, bidding Villars go and make the last struggle but one, promises, if his general is defeated, to place himself at the head of his nobles, and die King of France. Indeed, after a man, for sixty years, has been performing the part of a hero, some of the real heroic stuff must have entered into his composition, whether he would or not. When the great Elliston was enacting the part of King George the Fourth, in the play of The Coronation, at Drury Lane, the galleries applauded very loudly his suavity and majestic demeanour, at which Elliston, inflamed by the popular loyalty (and by some fermented liquor in which, it is said, he was in the habit of indulging), burst into tears, and, spreading out his arms, exclaimed: ‘Bless ye, bless ye, my people!’ Don’t let us laugh at his Ellistonian majesty, nor at the people who clapped hands and yelled ‘Bravo!’ in praise of him. The tipsy old manager did really feel that he was a hero at that moment; and the people, wild with delight and attachment for a magnificent coat and breeches, surely were uttering the true sentiments of loyalty: which consists in reverencing these and other articles of costume. In this fifth act, then, of his long Royal drama, old Louis performed his part excellently; and when the curtain drops upon him, he lies, dressed majestically, in a becoming kingly attitude, as a king should.

The King his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much occasion for moralising: perhaps the neighbouring Parc aux Cerfs would afford better illustrations of his reign. The life of his great-grandsire, the Grand Llama of France, seems to have frightened Louis the Well-beloved; who understood that loneliness is one of the necessary conditions of divinity, and, being of a jovial companionable turn, aspired not beyond manhood. Only in the matter of ladies did he surpass his predecessor, as Solomon did David. War he eschewed, as his grandfather bade him; and his simple taste found little in this world to enjoy beyond the mulling of chocolate and the frying of pancakes. Look, here is the room called Laboratoire du Roi, where, with his own hands, he made his mistress’s breakfast--here is the little door through which, from her apartments in the upper story, the chaste Du Barri came stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble, gloomy old man. But of women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had palled upon him. What had he to do, after forty years of reign;--after having exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs; every shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory; indeed it was high time that he should die. And die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of his grandfather before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus of curses, which were the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were raised to his memory.

As for the courtiers--the knights and nobles, the unbought grace of life--they, of course, forgot him in one minute after his death, as the way is. When the King dies, the officer appointed opens his chamber window, and calling out into the court below, Le Roi est mort, breaks his cane, takes another and waves it, exclaiming Vive le Roi! Straightway all the loyal nobles begin yelling Vive le Roi! and the officer goes round solemnly and sets yonder great clock in the Cour de Marbre to the hour of the King’s death. This old Louis had solemnly ordained; but the Versailles clock was only set twice: there was no shouting of Vive le Roi when the successor of Louis XV. mounted to heaven to join his sainted family.

Strange stories of the deaths of kings have always been very recreating and profitable to us: what a fine one is that of the death of Louis XV., as Madame Campan tells it! One night the gracious monarch came back ill from Trianon; the disease turned out to be the small-pox; so violent that ten people of those who had to enter his chamber caught the infection and died. The whole Court flies from him; only poor old fat Mesdames the King’s daughters persist in remaining at his bedside, and praying for his soul’s welfare.

On the 10th May 1774, the whole Court had assembled at the château; the Œil de Bœuf was full. The Dauphin had determined to depart as soon as the King had breathed his last. And it was agreed by the people of the stables, with those who watched in the King’s room, that a lighted candle should be placed in a window, and should be extinguished as soon as he had ceased to live. The candle was put out. At that signal, guards, pages, and squires mounted on horseback, and everything was made ready for departure. The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting together for the news of the King’s demise. An immense noise, as if of thunder, was heard in the next room; it was the crowd of courtiers, who were deserting the dead King’s apartment in order to pay their court to the new power of Louis XVI. Madame de Noailles entered, and was the first to salute the Queen by her title of Queen of France, and begged their Majesties to quit their apartments to receive the princes and great lords of the Court desirous to pay their homage to the new sovereigns. Leaning on her husband’s arm, a handkerchief to her eyes, in the most touching attitude, Marie Antoinette received these first visits. On quitting the chamber where the dead King lay, the Duc de Villequier bade M. Andervillé, first surgeon of the King, to open and embalm the body: it would have been certain death to the surgeon. ‘I am ready, sir,’ says he; ‘but, whilst I am operating, you must hold the head of the corpse: your charge demands it.’ The Duke went away without a word, and the body was neither opened nor embalmed. A few humble domestics and poor workmen watched by the remains, and performed the last offices to their master. The surgeons ordered spirits of wine to be poured into the coffin.

They huddled the King’s body into a postchaise; and in this deplorable equipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis the Well-beloved was carried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to Saint-Denis, and then thrown into the tomb of the kings of France!

If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the roofs of the palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse himself, by gazing upon the doings of all the townspeople below with a telescope. Behold that balcony where, one morning, he, his Queen, and the little Dauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison Lafayette by their side, who kissed her Majesty’s hand, and protected her; and then, lovingly surrounded by his people, the King got into a coach and came to Paris: nor did his Majesty ride much in coaches after that.

There is a portrait of the King, in the upper galleries, clothed in red and gold, riding a fat horse, brandishing a sword, on which the word ‘Justice’ is inscribed, and looking remarkably stupid and uncomfortable. You see that the horse will throw him at the very first fling; and as for the sword, it never was made for such hands as his, which were good at holding a corkscrew or a carving-knife, but not clever at the management of weapons of war. Let those pity him who will: call him saint and martyr if you please; but a martyr to what principle was he? Did he frankly support either party in his kingdom, or cheat and tamper with both? He might have escaped, but he must have his supper, and so his family was butchered, and his kingdom lost, and he had his bottle of Burgundy in comfort at Varennes. A single charge upon the fatal tenth of August, and the monarchy might have been his once more; but he is so tender-hearted, that he lets his friends be murdered before his eyes almost: or, at least, when he has turned his back upon his duty and his kingdom, and has skulked for safety into the reporters’ box at the National Assembly. There were hundreds of brave men who died that day, and were martyrs, if you will: poor neglected tenth-rate courtiers, for the most part, who had forgotten old slights and disappointments, and left their places of safety to come and die, if need were, sharing in the supreme hour of the monarchy. Monarchy was a great deal too humane to fight along with these, and so left them to the pikes of Santerre and the mercy of the men of the Sections. But we are wandering a good ten miles from Versailles, and from the deeds which Louis XVI. performed there.

He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith, that he might, if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have earned a couple of louis every week by the making of locks and keys. Those who will, may see the workshop where he employed many useful hours; Madame Elizabeth was at prayers; meanwhile, the Queen was making pleasant parties with her ladies; Monsieur the Count d’Artois was learning to dance on the tight-rope; and Monsieur de Provence was cultivating l’eloquence du billet and studying his favourite Horace. It is said that each member of the august family succeeded remarkably well in his or her pursuits: big Monsieur’s little notes are still cited. At a minuet or sillabub, poor Antoinette was unrivalled; and Charles, on the tight-rope, was so graceful and so gentil, that Madame Saqui might envy him. The time only was out of joint. Oh, cursed spite, that ever such harmless creatures as these were bidden to right it!

A walk to the Little Trianon is both pleasing and moral: no doubt the reader has seen the pretty fantastical gardens which environ it; the groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tells you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette to retire, with her favourite, Madame de Lamballe): the lake and Swiss village are pretty little toys, moreover; and the cicerone of the place does not fail to point out the different cottages which surround the piece of water, and tell the names of the Royal masqueraders who inhabited each. In the long cottage close upon the lake dwelt the Seigneur du Village, no less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI., the Dauphin, was the Bailli; near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the Count d’Artois, who was the Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Condé, who enacted the part of Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other rôle, for it does not signify much); near him was the Prince de Roham, who was the Aumônier; and yonder is the pretty little dairy, which was under the charge of the fair Marie Antoinette herself.

I forget whether Monsieur, the fat Count of Provence, took any share of this royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six actors of the comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for whom Fate had such dreadful visitations in store. Fancy the party, in the days of their prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and seated under the tall poplars by the lake, discoursing familiarly together: suppose, of a sudden, some conjuring Cagliostro of the time is introduced among them, and foretells to them the woes that are about to come. ‘You, Monsieur l’Aumônier, the descendant of a long line of princes, the passionate admirer of that fair Queen who sits by your side, shall be the cause of her ruin and your own,[18] and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son of the Condés, shall live long enough to see your Royal race overthrown, and shall die by the hands of a hangman.[19] You, oldest son of St. Louis, shall perish by the executioner’s axe; that beautiful head, O Antoinette, the same ruthless blade shall sever.’ ‘They shall kill me first,’ says Lamballe, at the Queen’s side. ‘Yes, truly,’ replies the soothsayer, ‘for Fate prescribes ruin for your mistress and all who love her.’[20] ‘And,’ cries Monsieur d’Artois, ‘do I not love my sister too? I pray you not to omit me in your prophecies.’

To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says scornfully, ‘You may look forward to fifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave. You shall be a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown only; not the worthless head that shall wear it. Thrice shall you go into exile: you shall fly from the people, first, who would have no more of you and your race; and you shall return home over half a million of human corpses, that have been made for the sake of you, and of a tyrant as great as the greatest of your family. Again driven away, your bitterest enemy shall bring you back. But the strong limbs of France are not to be chained by such a paltry yoke as you can put on her; you shall be a tyrant, but in will only, and shall have a sceptre, but to see it robbed from your hand.’

‘And pray, Sir Conjurer, who shall be the robber?’ asked Monsieur the Count d’Artois.

* * * * *

This I cannot say, for here my dream ended. The fact is, I had fallen asleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris, and at this instant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a great clattering of national guards, lancers, and outriders, in red. HIS MAJESTY LOUIS PHILIPPE was going to pay a visit to the palace, which contains several pictures of his own glorious actions, and which has been dedicated, by him, to All the Glories of France.

THE END

THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK

OF 1842

TO DR.

CHARLES LEVER

OF TEMPLEOGUE HOUSE, NEAR DUBLIN

MY DEAR LEVER,

Harry Lorrequer needs no complimenting in a dedication; and I would not venture to inscribe these volumes to the Editor of the Dublin University Magazine, who, I fear, must disapprove of a great deal which they contain.

But allow me to dedicate my little book to a good Irishman (the hearty charity of whose visionary redcoats, some substantial personages in black might imitate to advantage), and to a friend from whom I have received a hundred acts of kindness and cordial hospitality.

Laying aside for a moment the travelling title of Mr. Titmarsh, let me acknowledge these favours in my own name, and subscribe myself, my dear Lever,

Most sincerely and gratefully yours,

W. M. THACKERAY.

LONDON, April 27, 1843.

THE IRISH SKETCH BOOK

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I. A SUMMER DAY IN DUBLIN, OR THERE AND THEREABOUTS

The coach that brings the passenger by wood and mountain, by brawling waterfall and gloomy plain, by the lonely lake of Festiniog, and across the swinging world’s-wonder of a Menai Bridge, through dismal Anglesea to dismal Holyhead--the Birmingham mail,--manages matters so cleverly, that after ten hours’ ride the traveller is thrust incontinently on board the packet, and the steward says there’s no use in providing dinner on board because the passage is so short.

That is true; but why not give us half-an-hour on shore? Ten hours spent on a coach-box render the dinner question one of extreme importance; and as the packet reaches Kingstown at midnight, when all the world is asleep, the inn-larders locked up, and the cook in bed; and as the mail is not landed until five in the morning (at which hour the passengers are considerately awakened by a great stamping and shouting overhead), might not Lord Lowther give us one little half-hour? Even the steward agreed that it was a useless and atrocious tyranny; and, indeed, after a little demur, produced a half-dozen of fried eggs, a feeble makeshift for a dinner.

Our passage across from the Head was made in a rain so pouring and steady, that sea and coast were entirely hidden from us, and one could see very little beyond the glowing tip of the cigar which remained alight nobly in spite of the weather. When the gallant exertions of that fiery spirit were over for ever, and, burning bravely to the end, it had breathed its last in doing its master service, all became black and cheerless around; the passengers had dropped off one by one, preferring to be dry and ill below rather than wet and squeamish above; even the mate, with his gold-laced cap (who is so astonishingly like Mr. Charles Dickens, that he might pass for that gentleman)--even the mate said he would go to his cabin and turn in. So there remained nothing for it but to do as all the world had done.

Hence it was impossible to institute the comparison between the Bay of Naples and that of Dublin (the Bee of Neeples the former is sometimes called in this country), where I have heard the likeness asserted in a great number of societies and conversations. But how could one see the Bay of Dublin in the dark? and how, supposing one could see it, should a person behave who has never seen the Bay of Naples? It is but to take the similarity for granted, and remain in bed till morning.

When everybody was awakened at five o’clock by the noise made upon the removal of the mail-bags, there was heard a cheerless dribbling and pattering overhead, which led one to wait still further until the rain should cease. At length the steward said the last boat was going ashore, and receiving half a crown for his own services (the regular tariff), intimated likewise that it was the custom for gentlemen to compliment the stewardess with a shilling, which ceremony was also complied with. No doubt she is an amiable woman, and deserves any sum of money. As for inquiring whether she merited it or not in this instance, that surely is quite unfair. A traveller who stops to inquire the deserts of every individual claimant of a shilling on his road, had best stay quiet at home. If we only got what we deserved,--Heaven save us!--many of us might whistle for a dinner.

A long pier, with a steamer or two at hand, and a few small vessels lying on either side of the jetty; a town irregularly built, with many handsome terraces, some churches, and showy-looking hotels; a few people straggling on the beach; two or three cars at the railroad station, which runs along the shore as far as Dublin; the sea stretching interminably eastward; to the north the Hill of Howth, lying grey behind the mist; and, directly under his feet, upon the wet, black, shining, slippery deck, an agreeable reflection of his own legs, disappearing seemingly in the direction of the cabin from which he issues; are the sights which a traveller may remark on coming on deck at Kingstown pier on a wet morning--let us say on an average morning; for according to the statement of well-informed natives, the Irish day is more often rainy than otherwise. A hideous obelisk, stuck upon four fat balls, and surmounted with a crown on a cushion (the latter were no bad emblems perhaps of the monarch in whose honour they were raised), commemorates the sacred spot at which George IV. quitted Ireland: you are landed here from the steamer; and a carman, who is dawdling in the neighbourhood, with a straw in his mouth, comes leisurely up to ask whether you’ll go to Dublin? Is it natural indolence, or the effect of despair because of the neighbouring railroad, which renders him so indifferent?--He does not even take the straw out of his mouth as he proposes the question, and seems quite careless as to the answer.

He said he would take me to Dublin ‘in three quarthers,’ as soon as we began a parley; as to the fare, he would not hear of it--he said he would leave it to my honour; he would take me for nothing. Was it possible to refuse such a genteel offer? The times are very much changed since those described by the facetious Jack Hinton, when the carmen tossed up for the passenger, and those who won him took him; for the remaining cars on the stand did not seem to take the least interest in the bargain, or offer to overdrive or underbid their comrade in any way.

Before that day, so memorable for joy and sorrow, for rapture at receiving its monarch and tearful grief at losing him, when George IV. came and left the maritime resort of the citizens of Dublin, it bore a less genteel name than that which it owns at present, and was called Dunleary. After that glorious event Dunleary disdained to be Dunleary any longer, and became Kingstown henceforward and for ever. Numerous terraces and pleasure-houses have been built in the place--they stretch row after row along the banks of the sea, and rise one above another on the hill. The rents of these houses are said to be very high; the Dublin citizens crowd into them in summer; and a great source of pleasure and comfort must it be to them to have the fresh sea-breezes and prospects so near to the metropolis.

The better sort of houses are handsome and spacious; but the fashionable quarter is yet in an unfinished state, for enterprising architects are always beginning new roads, rows and terraces; nor are those already built by any means complete. Besides the aristocratic part of the town is a commercial one, and nearer to Dublin stretch lines of low cottages which have not a Kingstown look at all, but are evidently of the Dunleary period. It is quite curious to see in the streets where the shops are, how often the painter of the signboards begins with big letters, and ends, for want of space, with small; and the Englishman accustomed to the thriving neatness and regularity which characterise towns, great and small, in his own country, can’t fail to notice the difference here. The houses have a battered rakish look, and seem going to ruin before their time. As seamen of all nations come hither who have made no vow of temperance, there are plenty of liquor-shops still, and shabby cigar-shops, and shabby milliners’ and tailors’ with fly-blown prints of old fashions. The bakers and apothecaries make a great brag of their calling, and you see MEDICAL HALL, or PUBLIC BAKERY, BALLYRAGGET FLOUR-STORE (or whatever the name may be) pompously inscribed over very humble tenements. Some comfortable grocers’ and butchers’ shops, and numbers of shabby sauntering people, the younger part of whom are bare-legged and bareheaded, make up the rest of the picture which the stranger sees as his car goes jingling through the street.

After the town come the suburbs of pleasure-houses; low, one-storied cottages for the most part; some neat and fresh; some that have passed away from the genteel state altogether, and exhibiting downright poverty; some in a state of transition, with broken windows and pretty romantic names upon tumbledown gates. Who lives in them? One fancies that the chairs and tables inside are broken, and the teapot on the breakfast-table has no spout, and the tablecloth is ragged and sloppy, and the lady of the house is in dubious curl-papers, and the gentleman with an imperial to his chin and a flaring dressing-gown all ragged at the elbows.

To be sure, a traveller who in ten minutes can see not only the outsides of houses, but the interiors of the same, must have remarkably keen sight; and it is early yet to speculate. It is clear, however, that these are pleasure-houses for a certain class; and looking at the houses, one can’t but fancy the inhabitants resemble them somewhat. The car, on its road to Dublin, passes by numbers of these--by more shabbiness than a Londoner will see in the course of his home peregrinations for a year.

The capabilities of the country, however, are very, very great, and in many instances have been taken advantage of; for you see, besides the misery, numerous handsome houses and parks along the road, having fine lawns and woods, and the sea in our view, at a quarter of an hour’s ride from Dublin. It is the continual appearance of this sort of wealth which makes the poverty more striking; and thus between the two (for there is no vacant space of fields between Kingstown and Dublin) the car reaches the city. There is but little commerce on this road, which was also in extremely bad repair. It is neglected for the sake of its thriving neighbour the railroad, on which a dozen pretty little stations accommodate the inhabitants of the various villages through which we pass.

The entrance to the capital is very handsome. There is no bustle and throng of carriages, as in London; but you pass by numerous rows of neat houses, fronted with gardens, and adorned with all sorts of gay-looking creepers. Pretty market-gardens, with trim beds of plants and shining glass-houses, give the suburbs a riante and cheerful look; and, passing under the arch of the railway, we are in the city itself. Hence you come upon several old-fashioned, well-built, airy, stately streets, and through Fitzwilliam Square, a noble place, the garden of which is full of flowers and foliage. The leaves are green, and not black as in similar places in London; the red-brick houses tall and handsome. Presently the car stops before an extremely big red house, in that extremely large square, Stephen’s Green, where Mr. O’Connell says there is one day or other to be a Parliament. There is room enough for that, or for any other edifice which fancy or patriotism may have a mind to erect, for part of one of the sides of the square is not yet built, and you see the fields and the country beyond.

* * * * *

This then is the chief city of the aliens.--The hotel to which I had been directed is a respectable old edifice, much frequented by families from the country, and where the solitary traveller may likewise find society. For he may either use the Shelburne as an hotel or a boarding-house, in which latter case he is comfortably accommodated at the very moderate daily charge of six-and-eight-pence. For this charge a copious breakfast is provided for him in the coffee-room, a perpetual luncheon is likewise there spread, a plentiful dinner is ready at six o’clock; after which, there is a drawing-room and a rubber of whist, with tay and coffee and cakes in plenty to satisfy the largest appetite. The hotel is majestically conducted by clerks and other officers; the landlord himself does not appear, after the honest comfortable English fashion, but lives in a private mansion hard by, where his name may be read inscribed on a brass-plate, like that of any other private gentleman.

A woman melodiously crying ‘Dublin Bay herrings’ passed just as we came up to the door, and as that fish is famous throughout Europe, I seized the earliest opportunity and ordered a broiled one for breakfast. It merits all its reputation: and in this respect I should think the Bay of Dublin is far superior to its rival of Naples. Are there any herrings in Naples Bay? Dolphins there may be; and Mount Vesuvius, to be sure, is bigger than even the Hill of Howth: but a dolphin is better in a sonnet than at a breakfast, and what poet is there that, at certain periods of the day, would hesitate in his choice between the two?

With this famous broiled herring the morning papers are served up; and a great part of these, too, gives opportunity of reflection to the new-comer, and shows him how different this country is from his own. Some hundred years hence, when students want to inform themselves of the history of the present day, and refer to files of Times and Chronicle for the purpose, I think it is possible that they will consult, not so much those luminous and philosophical leading articles which call our attention at present both by the majesty of their eloquence and the largeness of their type, but that they will turn to those parts of the journals into which information is squeezed into the smallest possible print, to the advertisements, namely, the law and police reports, and to the instructive narratives supplied by that ill-used body of men who transcribe knowledge at the rate of a penny a line.

The papers before me (the Morning Register, Liberal and Roman Catholic; Saunders’s News-Letter, neutral and Conservative) give a lively picture of the movement of city and country on this present fourth day of July, and the Englishman can scarcely fail, as he reads them, to note many small points of difference existing between his own country and this. How do the Irish amuse themselves in the capital? The love for theatrical exhibitions is evidently not very great. Theatre Royal--Miss Kemble and the Sonnambula, an Anglo-Italian importation. Theatre Royal, Abbey Street--The Temple of Magic and the Wizard, last week. Adelphi Theatre, Great Brunswick Street--The Original Seven Lancashire Bell-ringers: a delicious excitement indeed! Portobello Gardens--‘THE LAST ERUPTION BUT SIX,’ says the advertisement in capitals. And, finally, ‘Miss Hayes will give her first and farewell concert at the Rotunda, previous to leaving her native country.’ Only one instance of Irish talent do we read of, and that, in a desponding tone, announces its intention of quitting its native country. All the rest of the pleasures of the evening are importations from cockney-land. The Sonnambula from Covent Garden, the Wizard from the Strand, the Seven Lancashire Bell-ringers, from Islington or the City Road, no doubt; and as for ‘The last Eruption but Six,’ it has erumped near the Elephant and Castle any time these two years, until the cockneys would wonder at it no longer.

The commercial advertisements are but few--a few horses and cars for sale; some flaming announcements of insurance companies; some ‘emporiums’ of Scotch tweeds and English broadcloths; an auction for damaged sugar; and an estate or two for sale. They lie in the columns languidly, and at their ease as it were: how different from the throng, and squeeze, and bustle of the commercial part of a London paper, where every man (except Mr. George Robins) states his case as briefly as possible, because thousands more are to be heard besides himself, and as if he had no time for talking!

The most active advertisers are the schoolmasters. It is now the happy time of the Midsummer holidays; and the pedagogues make wonderful attempts to encourage parents, and to attract fresh pupils for the ensuing half-year. Of all these announcements that of MADAME SHANAHAN (a delightful name) is perhaps the most brilliant. ‘To Parents and Guardians.--Paris.--Such parents and guardians as may wish to entrust their children for education in its fullest extent to MADAME SHANAHAN, can have the advantage of being conducted to Paris by her brother, the Rev. J. P. O’Reilly, of Church Street Chapel:’ which admirable arrangement carries the parents to Paris and leaves the children in Dublin. Ah, Madame, you may take a French title; but your heart is still in your country, and you are to the fullest extent an Irishwoman still!

Fond legends are to be found in Irish books regarding places where you may now see a round tower and a little old chapel, twelve feet square, where famous universities are once said to have stood, and which have accommodated myriads of students. Mrs. Hall mentions Glendalough, in Wicklow, as one of these places of learning; nor can the fact be questioned, as the universities existed hundreds of years since, and no sort of records are left regarding them. A century hence some antiquary may light upon a Dublin paper, and form marvellous calculations regarding the state of education in the country. For instance, at Bective-House seminary, conducted by Dr. J. L. Burke, Ex-Scholar T.C.D., no less than two hundred and three young gentlemen took prizes at the Midsummer examination: nay, some of the most meritorious carried off a dozen premiums a piece. A Dr. Delamere, Ex-Scholar T.C.D., distributed three hundred and twenty rewards to his young friends; and if we allow that one lad in twenty is a prizeman, it is clear that there must be six thousand four hundred and forty youths under the Doctor’s care.

Other schools are advertised in the same journals, each with its hundred of prize-bearers; and if other schools are advertised, how many more must there be in the country which are not advertised! There must be hundreds of thousands of prizemen, millions of scholars: besides national schools, hedge schools, infant schools, and the like. The English reader will see the accuracy of the calculation.

In the Morning Register, the Englishman will find something to the full as curious and startling to him: you read gravely in the English language how the Bishop of Aureliopolis has just been consecrated; and that the distinction has been conferred upon him by--the Holy Pontiff!--the Pope of Rome, by all that is holy! Such an announcement sounds quite strange in English, and in your own country, as it were; or isn’t it your own country? Suppose the Archbishop of Canterbury were to send over a clergyman to Rome, and consecrate him Bishop of the Palatine or the Suburra, I wonder how his Holiness would like that?

There is a report of Dr. Miley’s sermon upon the occasion of the new bishop’s consecration; and the Register happily lauds the discourse for its ‘refined and fervent eloquence.’ The doctor salutes the Lord Bishop of Aureliopolis on his admission among the ‘Princes of the Sanctuary,’ gives a blow en passant at the Established Church, whereof the revenues, he elegantly says, ‘might excite the zeal of Dives or Epicurus to become a Bishop,’ and having vented his sly wrath upon the ‘courtly artifice and intrigue’ of the Bench, proceeds to make the most outrageous comparisons with regard to my Lord of Aureliopolis; his virtues, his sincerity, and the severe privations and persecutions which acceptance of the episcopal office entails upon him.

‘That very evening,’ says the Register, ‘the new bishop entertained at dinner, in the Chapel-house, a select number of friends; amongst whom were the officiating prelates and clergymen who assisted in the ceremonies of the day. The repast was provided by Mr. Jude, of Grafton Street, and was served up in a style of elegance and comfort that did great honour to that gentleman’s character as a restaurateur. The wines were of the richest and rarest quality. It may be truly said to have been an entertainment where the feast of reason and the flow of soul predominated. The company broke up at nine.’

And so, my lord is scarcely out of chapel but his privations begin! Well. Let us hope that, in the course of his episcopacy, he incur no greater hardships, and that Dr. Miley may come to be a bishop too in his time; when perhaps he will have a better opinion of the Bench.

The ceremony and feelings described are curious, I think; and more so perhaps to a person who was in England only yesterday, and quitted it just as their Graces, Lordships, and Reverences were sitting down to dinner. Among what new sights, ideas, customs, does the English traveller find himself after that brief six hours’ journey from Holyhead!

There is but one part more of the papers to be looked at; and that is the most painful of all. In the law reports of the Tipperary Special Commission sitting at Clonmel, you read that Patrick Byrne is brought up for sentence, for the murder of Robert Hall, Esq.: and Chief Justice Doherty says: ‘Patrick Byrne, I will not now recapitulate the circumstances of your enormous crime; but guilty as you are of the barbarity of having perpetrated with your hand the foul murder of an unoffending old man--barbarous, cowardly, and cruel as that act was--there lives one more guilty man, and that is he whose diabolical mind hatched the foul conspiracy of which you were but the instrument and the perpetrator. Whoever that may be, I do not envy him his protracted existence. He has sent that aged gentleman, without one moment’s warning, to face his God: but he has done more, he has brought you, unhappy man, with more deliberation and more cruelty, to face your God, with the weight of that man’s blood upon you. I have now only to pronounce the sentence of the law:’--it is the usual sentence, with the usual prayer of the judge, that the Lord may have mercy upon the convict’s soul.

Timothy Woods, a young man of twenty years of age, is then tried for the murder of Michael Laffan. The Attorney-General states the case:--On the 19th of May last, two assassins dragged Laffan from the house of Patrick Cummins, fired a pistol-shot at him, and left him dead as they thought. Laffan, though mortally wounded, crawled away after the fall; when the assassins, still seeing him give signs of life, rushed after him, fractured his skull by blows of a pistol, and left him on a dunghill dead. There Laffan’s body lay for several hours, and nobody dared to touch it. Laffan’s widow found the body there two hours after the murder, and an inquest was held on the body as it lay on the dunghill. Laffan was driver on the lands of Kilnertin, which were formerly held by Pat Cummins, the man who had the charge of the lands before Laffan was murdered; and the latter was dragged out of Cummins’s house in the presence of a witness who refused to swear to the murderers, and was shot in sight of another witness, James Meara, who with other men was on the road: and when asked whether he cried out, or whether he went to assist the deceased, Meara answers, ‘Indeed I did not; we would not interfere--it was no business of ours!’

Six more instances are given of attempts to murder; on which the judge, in passing sentence, comments in the following way:--

‘The Lord Chief Justice addressed the several persons, and said--It was now his painful duty to pronounce upon them severally and respectively the punishment which the law and the court awarded against them, for the crimes of which they had been convicted. Those crimes were one and all of them of no ordinary enormity--they were crimes which, in point of morals, involved the atrocious guilt of murder; and if it had pleased God to spare their souls from the pollution of that offence, the court could not still shut its eyes to the fact, that although death had not ensued in consequence of the crimes of which they had been found guilty, yet it was not owing to their forbearance that such a dreadful crime had not been perpetrated. The prisoner, Michael Hughes, had been convicted of firing a gun at a person of the name of John Ryan (Luke); his horse had been killed, and no one could say that the balls were not intended for the prosecutor himself. The prisoner had fired one shot himself, and then called on his companion in guilt to discharge another. One of these shots killed Ryan’s mare, and it was by the mercy of God that the life of the prisoner had not become forfeited by his own act. The next culprit was John Pound, who was equally guilty of the intended outrage perpetrated on the life of an unoffending individual--that individual a female, surrounded by her little children, five or six in number. With a complete carelessness to the probable consequences, while she and her family were going, or had gone, to bed, the contents of a gun were discharged through the door, which entered the panel in three different places. The deaths resulting from this act might have been extensive, but it was not a matter of any moment how many were deprived of life. The woman had just risen from her prayers, preparing herself to sleep under the protection of that arm which would shield the child and protect the innocent, when she was wounded. As to Cornelius Flynn and Patrick Dwyer, they likewise were the subjects of similar imputations and similar observations. There was a very slight difference between them, but not such as to amount to any real distinction. They had gone upon a common illegal purpose, to the house of a respectable individual, for the purpose of interfering with the domestic arrangements he thought fit to make. They had no sort of right to interfere with the disposition of a man’s affairs; and what would be the consequences if the reverse were to be held? No imputation had ever been made upon the gentleman whose house was visited, but he was desired to dismiss another, under the pains and penalties of death, although that other was not a retained servant, but a friend who had come to Mr. Hogan on a visit. Because this visitor used sometimes to inspect the men at work, the lawless edict issued that he should be put away. Good God! to what extent did the prisoners and such misguided men intend to carry out their objects? Where was their dictation to cease? and they, and those in a similar rank, to take upon themselves to regulate how many and what men a farmer should take into his employment? Were they to be the judges whether a servant had discharged his duty to his principal? or was it because a visitor happened to come, that the host should turn him away, under the pains and penalties of death? His lordship, after adverting to the guilt of the prisoners in this case--the last two persons convicted, Thos. Stapleton and Thos. Gleeson--said their case was so recently before the public, that it was sufficient to say they were morally guilty of what might be considered wilful and deliberate murder. Murder was most awful, because it could only be suggested by deliberate malice, and the act of the prisoners was the result of that base, malicious, and diabolical disposition. What was the cause of resentment against the unfortunate man who had been shot at, and so desperately wounded? Why, he had dared to comply with the wishes of a just landlord; and because the landlord, for the benefit of his tenantry, proposed that the farms should be squared, those who acquiesced in his wishes were to be equally the victims of the assassin. What were the facts in this case? The two prisoners at the bar, Stapleton and Gleeson, sprung out at the man as he was leaving work, placed him on his knees, and without giving him a moment of preparation, commenced the work of blood, intending deliberately to despatch that unprepared and unoffending individual to eternity. What country was it that they lived in, in which such crimes could be perpetrated in the open light of day? It was not necessary that deeds of darkness should be shrouded in the clouds of night, for the darkness of the deeds themselves was considered a sufficient protection. He (the Chief Justice) was not aware of any solitary instance at the present Commission, to show that the crimes committed were the consequences of poverty. Poverty should be no justification, however; it might be some little palliation, but on no trial at this Commission did it appear that the crime could be attributed to distress. His lordship concluded a most impressive address, by sentencing the six prisoners called up to transportation for life.

‘The clock was near midnight as the court was cleared, and the whole of the proceedings were solemn and impressive in the extreme. The Commission is likely to prove extremely beneficial in its results on the future tranquillity of the country.’

I confess, for my part, to that common cant and sickly sentimentality, which, thank God! is felt by a great number of people nowadays, and which leads them to revolt against murder, whether performed by a ruffian’s knife or a hangman’s rope: whether accompanied with a curse from the thief as he blows his victim’s brains out, or a prayer from my lord on the bench in his wig and black cap. Nay, is all the cant and sickly sentimentality on our side, and might not some such charge be applied to the admirers of the good old fashion? Long ere this is printed, for instance, Byrne and Woods have been hanged:[21] sent ‘to face their God,’ as the Chief Justice says, ‘with the weight of their victim’s blood upon them,’--a just observation; and remember that it is we who send them. It is true that the judge hopes Heaven will have mercy upon their souls; but are such recommendations of particular weight because they come from the bench? Psha! If we go on killing people without giving them time to repent, let us at least give up the cant of praying for their souls’ salvation. We find a man drowning in a well, shut the lid upon him, and heartily pray that he may get out. Sin has hold of him, as the two ruffians of Laffan yonder, and we stand aloof, and hope that he may escape. Let us give up the ceremony of condolence, and be honest, like the witness, and say, ‘Let him save himself or not, it’s no business of ours.’ ... Here a waiter, with a very broad, though insinuating accent, says, ‘Have you done with the Sandthers, sir, there’s a gentleman waiting for’t these two hours?’ And so he carries off that strange picture of pleasure and pain, trade, theatres, schools, courts, churches, life and death, in Ireland, which a man may buy for a fourpenny-piece.

* * * * *

The papers being read, it became my duty to discover the town; and a handsomer town, with fewer people in it, it is impossible to see on a summer’s day. In the whole wide square of Stephen’s Green, I think there were not more than two nursery-maids, to keep company with the statue of George I., who rides on horseback in the middle of the garden, the horse having his foot up to trot, as if he wanted to go out of town too. Small troops of dirty children (too poor and dirty to have lodgings at Kingstown) were squatting here and there upon the sunshiny steps, the only clients at the thresholds of the professional gentlemen whose names figure on brass-plates on the doors. A stand of lazy carmen, a policeman or two with clinking boot-heels, a couple of moaning beggars leaning against the rails and calling upon the Lord, and a fellow with a toy and book stall, where the lives of St. Patrick, Robert Emmet, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald may be bought for double their value, were all the population of the Green.

At the door of the Kildare Street Club, I saw eight gentlemen looking at two boys playing at leapfrog: at the door of the University six lazy porters, in jockey-caps, were sunning themselves on a bench--a sort of blue-bottle race; and the Bank on the opposite side did not look as if sixpence-worth of change had been negotiated there during the day. There was a lad pretending to sell umbrellas under the colonnade, almost the only instance of trade going on; and I began to think of Juan Fernandez, or Cambridge in the long vacation. In the courts of the College, scarce the ghost of a gyp or the shadow of a bed-maker.

In spite of the solitude, the square of the College is a fine sight--a large ground, surrounded by buildings of various ages and styles, but comfortable, handsome, and in good repair; a modern row of rooms; a row that has been Elizabethan once; a hall and senate-house, facing each other, of the style of George I.; and a noble library, with a range of many windows, and a fine manly simple façade of cut stone. The library was shut. The librarian, I suppose, is at the seaside; and the only part of the establishment which I could see was the museum, to which one of the jockey-capped porters conducted me, up a wide dismal staircase (adorned with an old pair of jack-boots, a dusty canoe or two, a few helmets, and a South Sea Islander’s armour) which passes through a hall hung round with cobwebs (with which the blue-bottles are too wise to meddle), into an old mouldy room, filled with dingy glass-cases, under which the articles of curiosity or science were partially visible. In the middle was a very seedy camelopard (the word has grown to be English by this time), the straw splitting through his tight old skin and the black cobblers’-wax stuffing the dim orifices of his eyes. Other beasts formed a pleasing group around him, not so tall, but equally mouldy and old. The porter took me round to the cases, and told me a great number of fibs concerning their contents: there was the harp of Brian Borou, and the sword of some one else, and other cheap old gimcracks with their corollary of lies. The place would have been a disgrace to Don Saltero. I was quite glad to walk out of it, and down the dirty staircase again, about the ornaments of which the jockey-capped gyp had more figments to tell; an atrocious one (I forget what) relative to the pair of boots; near which--a fine specimen of collegiate taste--were the shoes of Mr. O’Brien, the Irish giant. If the collection is worth preserving,--and indeed the mineralogical specimens look quite as awful as those in the British Museum,--one thing is clear, that the rooms are worth sweeping. A pail of water costs nothing, a scrubbing-brush not much, and a charwoman might be hired for a trifle, to keep the room in a decent state of cleanliness.

Among the curiosities is a mask of the Dean--not the scoffer and giber, not the fiery politician, nor the courtier of St. John and Harley, equally ready with servility and scorn; but the poor old man, whose great intellect had deserted him, and who died old, wild, and sad. The tall forehead is fallen away in a ruin, the mouth has settled in a hideous, vacant smile. Well, it was a mercy for Stella that she died first; it was better that she should be killed by his unkindness than by the sight of his misery; which, to such a gentle heart as that, would have been harder still to bear.

The Bank and other public buildings of Dublin are justly famous. In the former may still be seen the room which was the House of Lords formerly, and where the Bank directors now sit, under a clean marble image of George III. The House of Commons has disappeared, for the accommodation of clerks and cashiers. The interior is light, splendid, airy, well furnished, and the outside of the building not less so. The Exchange, hard by, is an equally magnificent structure; but the genius of commerce has deserted it, for all its architectural beauty. There was nobody inside when I entered, but a pert statue of George III. in a Roman toga, simpering and turning out his toes; and two dirty children playing, whose hoop-sticks caused great clattering echoes under the vacant sounding dome. The neighbourhood is not cheerful, and has a dingy poverty-stricken look.

Walking towards the river, you have on either side of you, at Carlisle Bridge, a very brilliant and beautiful prospect. The Four Courts and their dome to the left, the Custom-house and its dome to the right; and in this direction seaward, a considerable number of vessels are moored, and the quays are black and busy with the cargoes discharged from ships. Seamen cheering, herring-women bawling, coal-carts loading--the scene is animated and lively. Yonder is the famous Corn Exchange; but the Lord Mayor is attending to his duties in Parliament, and little of note is going on. I had just passed his lordship’s mansion in Dawson Street,--a queer old dirty brick house, with dumpy urns at each extremity, and looking as if a story of it had been cut off--a rasée house. Close at hand, and peering over a paling, is a statue of our blessed sovereign George II. How absurd these pompous images look, of defunct majesties, for whom no breathing soul cares a halfpenny! It is not so with the effigy of William III., who has done something to merit a statue. At this minute the Lord Mayor has William’s effigy under a canvas, and is painting him of a bright green picked out with yellow--his lordship’s’ own livery.

The view along the quays to the Four Courts has no small resemblance to a view along the quays at Paris, though not so lively as are even those quiet walks. The vessels do not come above-bridge, and the marine population remains constant about them, and about numerous dirty liquor-shops, eating-houses, and marine-store establishments, which are kept for their accommodation along the quay. As far as you can see, the shining Liffey flows away eastward, hastening (like the rest of the inhabitants of Dublin) to the sea.

In front of Carlisle Bridge, and not in the least crowded, though in the midst of Sackville Street, stands Nelson upon a stone pillar. The Post Office is on his right hand (only it is cut off); and on his left, Gresham’s and the Imperial Hotel. Of the latter let me say (from subsequent experience) that it is ornamented by a cook who could dress a dinner by the side of M. Borel or M. Soyé. Would there were more such artists in this ill-fated country! The street is exceedingly broad and handsome; the shops at the commencement, rich and spacious; but in Upper Sackville Street, which closes with the pretty building and gardens of the Rotunda, the appearance of wealth begins to fade somewhat, and the houses look as if they had seen better days. Even in this, the great street of the town, there is scarcely any one, and it is as vacant and listless as Pall Mall in October. In one of the streets off Sackville Street is the house and exhibition of the Irish Academy, which I went to see, as it was positively to close at the end of the week. While I was there, two other people came in; and we had, besides, the money-taker and porter, to whom the former was reading, out of a newspaper, those Tipperary murders which were mentioned in a former page. The echo took up the theme, and hummed it gloomily through the vacant place.

The drawings and reputation of Mr. Burton are well known in England: his pieces were the most admired in the collection. The best draughtsman is an imitator of Maclise, Mr. Bridgeman, whose pictures are full of vigorous drawing, and remarkable too for their grace. I gave my catalogue to the two young ladies before mentioned, and have forgotten the names of other artists of merit, whose works decked the walls of the little gallery. Here, as in London, the Art Union is making a stir; and several of the pieces were marked as the property of members of that body. The possession of some of these one would not be inclined to covet; but it is pleasant to see that people begin to buy pictures at all, and there will be no lack of artists presently, in a country where nature is so beautiful, and genius so plenty. In speaking of the fine arts and of views of Dublin, it may be said that Mr. Petrie’s designs for Curry’s Guide-book of the City are exceedingly beautiful, and, above all, trustworthy: no common quality in a descriptive artist at present.

Having a couple of letters of introduction to leave, I had the pleasure to find the blinds down at one house, and the window in papers at another; and at each place the knock was answered in that leisurely way by one of those dingy female lieu-tenants who have no need to tell you that families are out of town. So the solitude became very painful, and I thought I would go back and talk to the waiter at the Shelburne, the only man in the whole kingdom that I knew. I had been accommodated with a queer little room and dressing-room on the ground-floor, looking towards the Green: a black-faced good-humoured chambermaid had promised to perform a deal of scouring which was evidently necessary (which fact she might have observed for six months back, only she is no doubt of an absent turn), and when I came back from the walk, I saw the little room was evidently enjoying itself in the sunshine, for it had opened its window, and was taking a breath of fresh air, as it looked out upon the Green. Here is a portrait of the little window.

As I came up to it in the street, its appearance made me burst out laughing, very much to the surprise of a ragged cluster of idlers lolling upon the steps next door; and I have drawn it here, not because it is a particularly picturesque or rare kind of window, but because, as I fancy, there is a sort of moral in it. You don’t see such windows commonly in respectable English inns--windows leaning gracefully upon hearth-brooms for support. Look out of that window without the hearth-broom and it would cut your head off: how the beggars would start that are always sitting on the steps next door! Is it prejudice that makes one prefer the English window, that relies on its own ropes and ballast (or lead if you like), and does not need to be propped by any foreign aid? or is this only a solitary instance of the kind, and are there no other specimens in Ireland of the careless, dangerous, extravagant hearth-broom system?

In the midst of these reflections (which might have been carried much farther, for a person with an allegorical turn might examine the entire country through this window), a most wonderful cab, with an immense prancing cab-horse, was seen to stop at the door of the hotel, and Pat the waiter tumbling into the room swiftly with a card in his hand, says, ‘Sir, the gentleman of this card is waiting for you at the door.’ Mon Dieu! it was an invitation to dinner! and I almost leapt into the arms of the man in the cab--so delightful was it to find a friend in a place where, a moment before, I had been as lonely as Robinson Crusoe.

The only drawback, perhaps, to pure happiness, when riding in such a gorgeous equipage as this, was that we could not drive up Regent Street, and meet a few creditors, or acquaintances at least. However, Pat, I thought, was exceedingly awe-stricken by my disappearance in this vehicle; which had evidently, too, a considerable effect upon some other waiters at the Shelburne, with whom I was not as yet so familiar. The mouldy camelopard at the Trinity College ‘Musayum’ was scarcely taller than the bay horse in the cab; the groom behind was of a corresponding smallness. The cab was of a lovely olive-green, picked out white, high on high springs and enormous wheels, which, big as they were, scarcely seemed to touch the earth. The little tiger swung gracefully up and down, holding on by the hood, which was of the material of which the most precious and polished boots are made. As for the lining--but here we come too near the sanctity of private life; suffice that there was a kind friend inside, who (though by no means of the fairy sort) was as welcome as any fairy in the finest chariot. W---- had seen me landing from the packet that morning, and was the very man who in London, a month previous, had recommended me to the Shelburne. These facts are not of much consequence to the public, to be sure, except that an explanation was necessary of the miraculous appearance of the cab and horse.

Our course, as may be imagined, was towards the seaside; for whither else should an Irishman at this season go? Not far from Kingstown is a house devoted to the purpose of festivity: it is called Salt Hill, stands upon a rising ground, commanding a fine view of the bay and the railroad, and is kept by persons bearing the celebrated name of Lovegrove. It is in fact a sea-Greenwich; and though there are no marine whitebait, other fishes are to be had in plenty, and especially the famous Bray trout, which does not ill deserve its reputation.

Here we met three young men, who may be called by the names of their several counties--Mr. Galway, Mr. Roscommon, and Mr. Clare; and it seemed that I was to complain of solitude no longer: for one straightway invited me to his county, where was the finest salmon-fishing in the world; another said he would drive me through the county Kerry in his four-in-hand drag; and the third had some propositions of sport equally hospitable. As for going down to some races, on the Curragh of Kildare I think, which were to be held on the next and the three following days, there seemed to be no question about that. That a man should miss a race within forty miles, seemed to be a point never contemplated by these jovial sporting fellows.

Strolling about in the neighbourhood before dinner, we went down to the sea-shore, and to some caves which had lately been discovered there; and two Irish ladies, who were standing at the entrance of one of them, permitted me to take the following portraits, which were pronounced to be pretty accurate.

They said they had not acquiesced in the general Temperance movement that had taken place throughout the country; and, indeed, if the truth must be known, it was only under promise of a glass of whisky apiece that their modesty could be so far overcome as to permit them to sit for their portraits. By the time they were done, a crowd of both sexes had gathered round and expressed themselves quite ready to sit upon the same terms. But though there was great variety in their countenances, there was not much beauty; and besides, dinner was by this time ready, which has at certain periods a charm even greater than art.

The bay, which had been veiled in mist and grey in the morning, was now shining under the most beautiful clear sky, which presently became rich with a thousand gorgeous hues of sunset. The view was as smiling and delightful a one as can be conceived,--just such a one as should be seen à travers a good dinner, with no fatiguing sublimity or awful beauty in it, but brisk, brilliant, sunny, enlivening. In fact, in placing his banqueting-house here, Mr. Lovegrove had, as usual, a brilliant idea. You must not have too much view, or a severe one, to give a relish to a good dinner; nor too much music, nor too quick, nor too slow, nor too loud; any reader who has dined at a table-d’hôte in Germany will know the annoyance of this--a set of musicians immediately at your back will sometimes play you a melancholy polonaise; and a man with a good ear must perforce eat in time, and your soup is quite cold before it is swallowed; then, all of a sudden, crash goes a brisk galop! and you are obliged to gulp your victuals at the rate of ten miles an hour. And in respect of conversation during a good dinner, the same rules of propriety should be consulted. Deep and sublime talk is as improper as sublime prospects. Dante and champagne (I was going to say Milton and oysters, but that is a pun) are quite unfit themes of dinner-talk. Let it be light, brisk, not oppressive to the brain. Our conversation was, I recollect, just the thing. We talked about the last Derby the whole time, and the state of the odds for the St. Leger; nor was the Ascot Cup forgotten; and a bet or two was gaily booked.

Meanwhile the sky, which had been blue and then red, assumed, towards the horizon, as the red was sinking under it, a gentle delicate cast of green. Howth Hill became of a darker purple, and the sails of the boats rather dim. The sea grew deeper and deeper in colour. The lamps at the railroad dotted the line with fire; and the lighthouses of the bay began to flame. The trains to and from the city rushed flashing and hissing by--in a word, everybody said it was time to light a cigar, which was done, the conversation about the Derby still continuing.

‘Put out that candle,’ said Roscommon to Clare; which the latter instantly did by flinging the taper out of window upon the lawn, which is a thoroughfare; and where a great laugh arose among half a score of beggar-boys, who had been under the window for some time past, repeatedly requesting the company to throw out sixpence between them.

Two other sporting young fellows had now joined the company; and as by this time claret began to have rather a mawkish taste, whisky-and-water was ordered, which was drunk upon the perron before the house, whither the whole party adjourned, and where for many hours we delightfully tossed for sixpences--a noble and fascinating sport. Nor would these remarkable events have been narrated, had I not received express permission from the gentlemen of the party to record all that was said and done. Who knows but, a thousand years hence, some antiquary or historian may find a moral in this description of the amusement of the British youth at the present enlightened time?

HOT LOBSTER

P.S.--You take a lobster, about three feet long if possible, remove the shell, cut or break the flesh of the fish in pieces not too small. Some one else meanwhile makes a mixture of mustard, vinegar, catsup, and lots of cayenne pepper. You produce a machine called a despatcher, which has a spirit-lamp under it that is usually illuminated with whisky. The lobster, the sauce, and near half a pound of butter are placed in the despatcher, which is immediately closed. When boiling, the mixture is stirred up, the lobster being sure to heave about in the pan in a convulsive manner, while it emits a remarkably rich and agreeable odour through the apartment. A glass and a-half of sherry is now thrown into the pan, and the contents served out hot, and eaten by the company. Porter is commonly drunk, and whisky-punch afterwards, and the dish is fit for an emperor.

* * * * *

N.B.--You are recommended not to hurry yourself in getting up the next morning, and may take soda-water with advantage.--Probatum est.

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Chapter II

A COUNTRY-HOUSE IN KILDARE--SKETCHES OF AN IRISH FAMILY AND FARM

It had been settled among my friends, I don’t know for what particular reason, that the Agricultural Show at Cork was an exhibition I was specially bound to see; when, therefore, a gentleman to whom I had brought a letter of introduction, kindly offered me a seat in his carriage, which was to travel by short days’ journeys to that city, I took an abrupt farewell of Pat the waiter, and some other friends in Dublin, proposing to renew our acquaintance, however, upon some future day.

We started then one fine afternoon on the road from Dublin to Naas, which is the main southern road from the capital to Leinster and Munster, and met, in the course of the ride of a score of miles, a dozen of coaches very heavily loaded, and bringing passengers to the city. The exit from Dublin this way is not much more elegant than the outlet by way of Kingstown, for though the great branches of the city appear flourishing enough as yet, the small outer ones are in a sad state of decay. Houses drop off here and there, and dwindle woefully in size; we are got into the back premises of the seemingly prosperous place, and it looks miserable, careless, and deserted. We passed through a street which was thriving once, but has fallen since into a sort of decay, to judge outwardly,--St. Thomas’s Street. Emmet was hanged in the midst of it; and on pursuing the line of street, and crossing the great Canal, you come presently to a fine tall square building in the outskirts of the town, which is no more nor less than Kilmainham Jail, or castle. Poor Emmet is the Irish darling still--his history is on every bookstall in the city, and yonder trim-looking brick jail a spot where Irishmen may go and pray. Many a martyr of theirs has appeared and died in front of it,--found guilty of ‘wearing of the green.’

There must be a fine view from the jail windows, for we presently come to a great stretch of brilliant green country, leaving the Dublin hills lying to the left, picturesque in their outline, and of wonderful colour. It seems to me to be quite a different colour to that in England--different-shaped clouds--different shadows and lights. The country is well tilled, well peopled; the hay-harvest on the ground, and the people taking advantage of the sunshine to gather it in; but in spite of everything, green meadows, white villages and sunshine, the place has a sort of sadness in the look of it.

The first town we passed, as appears by reference to the Guide-book, is the little town of Rathcoole; but in the space of three days Rathcoole has disappeared from my memory, with the exception of a little low building which the village contains, and where are the quarters of the Irish constabulary. Nothing can be finer than the trim, orderly, and soldierlike appearance of this splendid corps of men.

One has glimpses all along the road of numerous gentlemen’s places, looking extensive and prosperous, of a few mills by streams here and there; but though the streams run still, the mill-wheels are idle for the chief part; and the road passes more than one long low village, looking bare and poor, but neat and whitewashed. It seems as if the inhabitants were determined to put a decent look upon their poverty. One or two villages there were evidently appertaining to gentlemen’s seats; these are smart enough, especially that of Johnstown, near Lord Mayo’s fine domain, where the houses are of the Gothic sort, with pretty porches, creepers, and railings. Noble purple hills to the left and right keep up, as it were, an accompaniment to the road.

As for the town of Naas, the first after Dublin that I have seen, what can be said of it but that it looks poor, mean, and yet somehow cheerful? There was a little bustle in the small shops, a few cars were jingling along the broadest street of the town--some sort of dandies and military individuals were lolling about right and left; and I saw a fine Court-house, where the assizes of Kildare county are held.

But by far the finest, and I think the most extensive edifice in Naas, was a haystack in the inn-yard, the proprietor of which did not fail to make me remark its size and splendour. It was of such dimensions as to strike a cockney with respect and pleasure; and here standing just as the new crops were coming in, told a tale of opulent thrift and good husbandry. Are there many more such haystacks, I wonder, in Ireland? The crops along the road seemed healthy, though rather light: wheat and oats plenty, and especially flourishing; hay and clover not so good; and turnips (let the important remark be taken at its full value) almost entirely wanting.

The little town, as they call it, of Kilcullen, tumbles down a hill and struggles up another; the two being here picturesquely divided by the Liffey, over which goes an antique bridge. It boasts, moreover, of a portion of an abbey wall, and a piece of round tower, both on the hill summit, and to be seen (says the Guide-book) for many miles round. Here we saw the first public evidences of the distress of the country. There was no trade in the little place, and but few people to be seen, except a crowd round a meal-shop, where meal is distributed once a week by the neighbouring gentry. There must have been some hundreds of persons waiting about the doors; women for the most part: some of their children were to be found loitering about the bridge much farther up the street; but it was curious to note, amongst these undeniably starving people, how healthy their looks were. Going a little farther, we saw women pulling weeds and nettles in the hedges, on which dismal sustenance the poor creatures live, having no bread, no potatoes, no work--well! these women did not look thinner or more unhealthy than many a well-fed person. A company of English lawyers, now, look more cadaverous than these starving creatures.

Stretching away from Kilcullen bridge, for a couple of miles or more, near the fine house and plantations of the Latouche family, is to be seen a much prettier sight, I think, than the finest park and mansion in the world. This is a tract of excessively green land, dotted over with brilliant white cottages, each with its couple of trim acres of garden, where you see thick potato ridges covered with blossom, great blue plots of comfortable cabbages, and such pleasant plants of the poor man’s garden. Two or three years since, the land was a marshy common, which had never since the days of the Deluge fed any being bigger than a snipe, and into which the poor people descended, draining and cultivating, and rescuing the marsh from the water, and raising their cabins and setting up their little enclosures of two or three acres upon the land which they had thus created. ‘Many of ‘em has passed months in jail for that,’ said my informant (a groom on the back seat of my host’s phaeton); for it appears that certain gentlemen in the neighbourhood looked upon the titles of these new colonists with some jealousy, and would have been glad to depose them; but there were some better philosophers among the surrounding gentry, who advised that instead of discouraging the settlers it would be best to help them; and the consequence has been, that there are now two hundred flourishing little homesteads upon this rescued land, and as many families in comfort and plenty.

Just at the confines of this pretty rustic republic, our pleasant afternoon’s drive ended; and I must begin this tour by a monstrous breach of confidence by first describing what I saw.

Well, then, we drove through a neat lodge-gate, with no stone lions or supporters, but riding well on its hinges, and looking fresh and white; and passed by a lodge, not Gothic, but decorated with flowers and evergreens, with clean windows and a sound slate roof; and then went over a trim road, through a few acres of grass, adorned with plenty of young firs and other healthy trees, under which were feeding a dozen of fine cows or more. The road led up to a house, or rather a congregation of rooms, built seemingly to suit the owner’s convenience, and increasing with his increasing wealth, or whim, or family. This latter is as plentiful as everything else about the place; and as the arrows increased, the good-natured lucky father has been forced to multiply the quivers.

First came out a young gentleman, the heir of the house, who, after greeting his papa, began examining the horses with much interest; whilst three or four servants, quite neat and well dressed and, wonderful to say, without any talking, began to occupy themselves with the carriage, the passengers, and the trunks. Meanwhile, the owner of the house had gone into the hall, which is snugly furnished as a morning-room, and where one, two, three young ladies came in to greet him. The young ladies having concluded their embraces, performed (as I am bound to say from experience, both in London and Paris) some very appropriate and well-finished curtsies to the strangers arriving; and these three young persons were presently succeeded by some still younger, who came without any curtsies at all; but, bounding and jumping, and shouting out ‘Papa’ at the top of their voices, they fell forthwith upon that worthy gentleman’s person, taking possession this of his knees, that of his arms, that of his whiskers, as fancy or taste might dictate.

‘Are there any more of you?’ says he, with perfect good-humour; and, in fact, it appeared that there were some more in the nursery, as we subsequently had occasion to see.

Well, this large happy family are lodged in a house than which a prettier or more comfortable is not to be seen even in England; of the furniture of which it may be in confidence said, that each article is only made to answer one purpose:--thus, that chairs are never called upon to exercise the versatility of their genius by propping up windows; that chests of drawers are not obliged to move their unwieldy persons in order to act as locks to doors; that the windows are not variegated by paper, or adorned with wafers, as in other places which I have seen; in fact, that the place is just as comfortable as a place can be.

And if these comforts and reminiscences of three days’ date are enlarged upon at some length, the reason is simply this:--this is written at what is supposed to be the best inn at one of the best towns of Ireland, Waterford. Dinner is just over; it is assize-week, and the table-d’hôte was surrounded for the chief part by English attorneys--the cyouncillors (as the bar are pertinaciously called) dining upstairs in private. Well, on going to the public room, and being about to lay down my hat on the sideboard, I was obliged to pause--out of regard to a fine thick coat of dust, which had been kindly left to gather for some days past, I should think, and which it seemed a shame to misplace. Yonder is a chair basking quietly in the sunshine; some round object has evidently reposed upon it (a hat or plate probably), for you see a clear circle of black horsehair in the middle of the chair, and dust all round it. Not one of those dirty napkins that the four waiters carry would wipe away the grime from the chair, and take to itself a little dust more! The people in the room are shouting out for the waiters, who cry, ‘Yes, sir,’ peevishly, and don’t come; but stand bawling and jangling, and calling each other names, at the sideboard. The dinner is plentiful and nasty--raw ducks, raw peas, on a crumpled tablecloth, over which a waiter has just spirted a pint of obstreperous cider. The windows are open, to give free view of a crowd of old beggar-women, and of a fellow playing a cursed Irish pipe. Presently this delectable apartment fills with choking peat-smoke; and on asking what is the cause of this agreeable addition to the pleasures of the place, you are told that they are lighting a fire in a back-room.

Why should lighting a fire in a back-room fill a whole enormous house with smoke? Why should four waiters stand and jaw and gesticulate among themselves, instead of waiting on the guests? Why should ducks be raw, and dust lie quiet in places where a hundred people pass daily? All these points make one think very regretfully of neat, pleasant, comfortable, prosperous H---- town, where the meat was cooked, and the rooms were clean, and the servants didn’t talk. Nor need it be said here, that it is as cheap to have a house clean as dirty, and that a raw leg of mutton costs exactly the same sum as one cuit à point. And by this moral earnestly hoping that all Ireland may profit, let us go back to H----, and the sights to be seen there.

There is no need to particularise the chairs and tables any further, nor to say what sort of conversation and claret we had; nor to set down the dishes served at dinner. If an Irish gentleman does not give you a more hearty welcome than an Englishman, at least he has a more hearty manner of welcoming you; and while the latter reserves his fun and humour (if he possess those qualities) for his particular friends, the former is ready to laugh and talk his best with all the world, and give way entirely to his mood. And it would be a good opportunity here for a man who is clever at philosophising to expound various theories upon the modes of hospitality practised in various parts of Europe. In a couple of hours’ talk, an Englishman will give you his notions on trade, politics, the crops: the last run with the hounds, or the weather: it requires a long sitting, and a bottle of wine at the least, to induce him to laugh cordially, or to speak unreservedly; and if you joke with him before you know him, he will assuredly set you down as a low impertinent fellow. In two hours, and over a pipe, a German will be quite ready to let loose the easy floodgates of his sentiment, and confide to you many of the secrets of his soft heart. In two hours a Frenchman will say a hundred and twenty smart, witty, brilliant, false things, and will care for you as much then as he would if you saw him every day for twenty years--that is, not one single straw; and in two hours an Irishman will have allowed his jovial humour to unbutton, and gambolled and frolicked to his heart’s content. Which of these, putting Monsieur out of the question, will stand by his friend with the most constancy, and maintain his steady wish to serve him? That is a question which the Englishman (and I think with a little of his ordinary cool assumption) is disposed to decide in his own favour; but it is clear that for a stranger the Irish ways are the pleasantest, for here he is at once made happy and at home, or at ease rather; for home is a strong word, and implies much more than any stranger can expect, or even desire to claim.

Nothing could be more delightful to witness than the evident affection which the children bore to one another and to their parents, and the cheerfulness and happiness of their family parties. The father of one lad went with a party of his friends and family on a pleasure party, in a handsome coach-and-four. The little fellow sate on the coach-box and played with the whip very wistfully for some time: the sun was shining, the horses came out in bright harness, with glistening coats; one of the girls brought a geranium to stick in papa’s button-hole, who was to drive. But although there was room in the coach, and though papa said he should go if he liked, and though the lad longed to go--as who wouldn’t--he jumped off the box and said he would not go: mamma would like him to stop at home and keep his sister company; and so down he went like a hero. Does this story appear trivial to any one who reads this? If so, he is a pompous fellow, whose opinion is not worth the having; or he has no children of his own; or he has forgotten the day when he was a child himself; or he has never repented of the surly selfishness with which he treated brothers and sisters, after the habit of young English gentlemen.

‘That’s a list that uncle keeps of his children,’ said the same young fellow, seeing his uncle reading a paper; and to understand this joke, it must be remembered that the children of the gentleman called uncle came into the breakfast-room by half-dozens. ‘That’s a rum fellow,’ said the eldest of these latter to me, as his father went out of the room, evidently thinking his papa was the greatest wit and wonder in the whole world. And a great merit, as it appeared to me, on the part of these worthy parents was, that they consented not only to make, but to take jokes from their young ones; nor was the parental authority in the least weakened by this kind familiar intercourse.

A word with regard to the ladies so far. Those I have seen appear to the full as well educated and refined, and far more frank and cordial, than the generality of the fair creatures on the other side of the Channel. I have not heard anything about poetry, to be sure, and in only one house have seen an album; but I have heard some capital music, of an excellent family sort--that sort which is used, namely, to set young people dancing, which they have done merrily for some nights. In respect of drinking, among the gentry, teetotalism does not, thank Heaven! as yet appear to prevail; but although the claret has been invariably good, there has been no improper use of it[22]. Let all English be recommended to be very careful of whisky, which experience teaches to be a very deleterious drink. Natives say that it is wholesome, and may be sometimes seen to use it with impunity; but the whisky-fever is naturally more fatal to strangers than inhabitants of the country; and whereas an Irishman will sometimes imbibe a half-dozen tumblers of the poison, two glasses will often be found sufficient to cause headaches, heartburns, and fevers to a person newly arrived in the country. The said whisky is always to be had for the asking, but is not produced at the bettermost sort of tables.

Before setting out on our second day’s journey, we had time to accompany the well-pleased owner of H---- town over some of his fields and out-premises. Nor can there be a pleasanter sight to owner or stranger. Mr. P---- farms four hundred acres of land about his house; and employs on this estate no less than a hundred and ten persons. He says there is full work for every one of them; and to see the elaborate state of cultivation in which the land was, it is easy to understand how such an agricultural regiment were employed. The estate is like a well-ordered garden--we walked into a huge field of potatoes, and the landlord made us remark that there was not a single weed between the furrows; and the whole formed a vast flower-bed of a score of acres. Every bit of land up to the hedge-side was fertilised and full of produce: the space left for the plough having afterwards been gone over, and yielding its fullest proportion of ‘fruit.’ In a turnip-field were a score or more of women and children, who were marching through the ridges, removing the young plants where two or three had grown together, and leaving only the most healthy. Every individual root in the field was thus the object of culture; and the owner said that this extreme cultivation answered his purpose, and that the employment of all these hands (the women and children earn 6d. and 8d. a day all the year round), which gained him some reputation as a philanthropist, brought him profit as a farmer too; for his crops were the best that land could produce. He has further the advantage of a large stock for manure, and does everything for the land which art can do.

Here we saw several experiments in manuring. An acre of turnips prepared with bone-dust; another with ‘Murray’s Composition,’ whereof I do not pretend to know the ingredients; another with a new manure called guano. As far as turnips and a first year’s crop went, the guano carried the day. The plants on the guano acre looked to be three weeks in advance of their neighbours, and were extremely plentiful and healthy. I went to see this field two months after the above passage was written: the guano acre still kept the lead; the bone-dust ran guano very hard; and composition was clearly distanced.

Behind the house is a fine village of corn and hay ricks, and a street of outbuildings, where all the work of the farm is prepared. Here were numerous people coming with pails for buttermilk, which the good-natured landlord made over to them. A score of men or more were busied about the place; some at a grindstone, others at a forge--other fellows busied in the cart-houses and stables, all of which were as neatly kept as in the best farm in England. A little farther on was a flower-garden, a kitchen-garden, a hothouse just building, a kennel of fine pointers and setters;--indeed a noble feature of country neatness, thrift, and plenty.

We went into the cottages and gardens of several of Mr. P----‘s labourers, which were all so neat, that I could not help fancying they were pet cottages erected under the landlord’s own superintendence, and ornamented to his order. But he declared that it was not so; that the only benefit his labourers got from him was constant work, and a house rent-free; and that the neatness of the gardens and dwellings was of their own doing. By making them a present of the house, he said, he made them a present of the pig and live stock, with which almost every Irish cotter pays his rent, so that each workman could have a bit of meat for his support;--would that all labourers in the empire had as much! With regard to the neatness of the houses, the best way to ensure this, he said, was for the master constantly to visit them--to awaken as much emulation as he could amongst the cottagers, so that each should make his place as good as his neighbour’s--and to take them good-humouredly to task if they failed in the requisite care.

And so this pleasant day’s visit ended. A more practical person would have seen, no doubt, and understood much more than a mere citizen could, whose pursuits have been very different from those noble and useful ones here spoken of. But a man has no call to be a judge of turnips or live stock, in order to admire such an establishment as this, and heartily to appreciate the excellence of it. There are some happy organisations in the world which possess the great virtue of prosperity. It implies cheerfulness, simplicity, shrewdness, perseverance, honesty, good health. See how, before the good-humoured resolution of such characters, ill-luck gives way, and fortune assumes their own smiling complexion! Such men grow rich without driving a single hard bargain; their condition being to make others prosper along with themselves. Thus, his very charity, another informant tells me, is one of the causes of my host’s good fortune. He might have three pounds a year from each of forty cottages, but instead prefers a hundred healthy workmen; or he might have a fourth of the number of workmen, and a farm yielding a produce proportionately less; but instead of saving the money of their wages, prefers a farm the produce of which, as I have heard from a gentleman whom I take to be good authority, is unequalled elsewhere.

Besides the cottages, we visited a pretty school, where children of an exceeding smallness were at their work,--the children of the Catholic peasantry. The few Protestants of the district do not attend the national school, nor learn their alphabet or their multiplication table in company with their little Roman Catholic brethren. The clergyman, who lives hard by the gate of H---- town, in his communication with his parishioners cannot fail to see how much misery is relieved and how much good is done by his neighbour; but though the two gentlemen are on good terms, the clergyman will not break bread with his Catholic fellow-Christian. There can be no harm, I hope, in mentioning this fact, as it is rather a public than a private matter; and, unfortunately, it is only a stranger that is surprised by such a circumstance, which is quite familiar to residents of the country. There are Catholic inns and Protestant inns in the towns; Catholic coaches and Protestant coaches on the roads; nay, in the North, I have since heard of a High Church coach and a Low Church coach adopted by travelling Christians of either party.

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III. FROM CARLOW TO WATERFORD

The next morning being fixed for the commencement of our journey towards Waterford, a carriage made its appearance in due time before the hall-door: an amateur stage-coach, with four fine horses, that were to carry us to Cork. The crew of the ‘drag,’ for the present, consisted of two young ladies, and two who will not be old, please Heaven! for these thirty years; three gentlemen, whose collected weights might amount to fifty-four stone; and one of smaller proportions, being as yet only twelve years old: to these were added a couple of grooms and a lady’s-maid. Subsequently we took in a dozen or so more passengers, who did not seem in the slightest degree to inconvenience the coach or the horses; and thus was formed a tolerably numerous and merry party. The governor took the reins, with his geranium in his button-hole, and the place on the box was quarrelled for without ceasing, and taken by turns.

Our day’s journey lay through a country more picturesque, though by no means so prosperous and well-cultivated as the district through which we had passed on our drive from Dublin. This trip carried us through the county of Carlow and the town of that name: a wretched place enough, with a fine court-house, and a couple of fine churches; the Protestant church, a noble structure; and the Catholic cathedral, said to be built after some Continental model. The Catholics point to the structure with considerable pride: it was the first, I believe, of the many handsome cathedrals for their worship which have been built of late years in this country by the noble contributions of the poor man’s penny, and by the untiring energies and sacrifices of the clergy. Bishop Doyle, the founder of the church, has the place of honour within it; nor, perhaps, did any Christian pastor ever merit the affection of his flock more than that great and high-minded man. He was the best champion the Catholic Church and cause ever had in Ireland; in learning, and admirable kindness and virtue, the best example to the clergy of his religion: and if the country is now filled with schools, where the humblest peasant in it can have the benefit of a liberal and wholesome education, it owes this great boon mainly to his noble exertions, and to the spirit which they awakened.

As for the architecture of the cathedral, I do not fancy a professional man would find much to praise in it: it seems to me overloaded with ornaments, nor were its innumerable spires and pinnacles the more pleasing to the eye because some of them were off the perpendicular. The interior is quite plain, not to say bare and unfinished. Many of the chapels in the country that I have since seen are in a similar condition; for when the walls are once raised, the enthusiasm of the subscribers to the building seems somewhat characteristically to grow cool, and you enter at a porch that would suit a palace, with an interior scarcely more decorated than a barn. A wide large floor, some confession-boxes against the blank walls here and there, with some humble pictures at the ‘stations,’ and the statue, under a mean canopy of red woollen stuff, were the chief furniture of the cathedral.

The severe homely features of the good bishop were not very favourable subjects for Mr. Hogan’s chisel; but a figure of prostrate, weeping Ireland, kneeling by the prelate’s side, and for whom he is imploring protection, has much beauty. In the chapels of Dublin and Cork some of this artist’s works may be seen, and his countrymen are exceedingly proud of him.

Connected with the Catholic cathedral is a large tumbledown-looking divinity college: there are upwards of a hundred students here, and the college is licensed to give degrees in arts as well as divinity; at least so the officer of the church said, as he showed us the place through the bars of the sacristy-windows, in which apartment may be seen sundry crosses, a pastoral letter of Dr. Doyle, and a number of ecclesiastical vestments formed of laces, poplins, and velvets, handsomely laced with gold. There is a convent by the side of the cathedral, and, of course, a parcel of beggars all about, and indeed all over the town, profuse in their prayers and invocations of the Lord, and whining flatteries of the persons whom they address. One wretched old tottering hag began whining the Lord’s Prayer as a proof of her sincerity, and blundered in the very midst of it, and left us thoroughly disgusted after the very first sentence.

It was market-day in the town, which is tolerably full of poor-looking shops, the streets being thronged with donkey-carts, and people eager to barter their small wares. Here and there were picture-stalls, with huge hideous coloured engravings of the Saints; and indeed the objects of barter upon the banks of the clear bright river Barrow, seemed scarcely to be of more value than the articles which change hands, as one reads of, in a town of African huts and traders on the banks of the Quarra. Perhaps the very bustle and cheerfulness of the people served only, to a Londoner’s eyes, to make it look the more miserable. It seems as if they had no right to be eager about such a parcel of wretched rags and trifles as were exposed to sale.

There are some old towers of a castle here, looking finely from the river; and near the town is a grand modern residence belonging to Colonel Bruen, with an oak-park on one side of the road, and a deer-park on the other. These retainers of the Colonel’s lay, in their rushy green enclosures, in great numbers and seemingly in flourishing condition.

The road from Carlow to Leighlin Bridge is exceedingly beautiful: noble purple hills rising on either side, and the broad silver Barrow flowing through rich meadows of that astonishing verdure which is only to be seen in this country. Here and there was a country-house, or a tall mill by a stream-side: but the latter buildings were for the most part empty, the gaunt windows gaping without glass, and their great wheels idle. Leighlin Bridge, lying up and down a hill by the river, contains a considerable number of pompous-looking warehouses, that looked for the most part to be doing no more business than the mills on the Carlow road, but stood by the roadside staring at the coach, as it were, and basking in the sun, swaggering, idle, insolvent, and out-at-elbows. There are one or two very pretty, modest, comfortable-looking country-places about Leighlin Bridge, and on the road thence to a miserable village called the Royal Oak, a beggarly sort of bustling place.

Here stands a dilapidated hotel and posting-house: and indeed on every road, as yet, I have been astonished at the great movement and stir;--the old coaches being invariably crammed, cars jingling about equally full, and no want of gentlemen’s carriages to exercise the horses of the Royal Oak and similar establishments. In the time of the rebellion, the landlord of this Royal Oak, a great character in those parts, was a fierce United Irishman. One day it happened that Sir John Anderson came to the inn, and was eager for horses on. The landlord, who knew Sir John to be a Tory, vowed and swore he had no horses; that the judges had the last going to Kilkenny; that the yeomanry had carried off the best of them; that he could not give a horse for love or money. ‘Poor Lord Edward!’ said Sir John, sinking down in a chair, and clasping his hands, ‘my poor dear misguided friend, and must you die for the loss of a few hours and the want of a pair of horses?’

‘Lord What?’ says the landlord.

‘Lord Edward Fitzgerald,’ replied Sir John. ‘The Government has seized his papers, and got scent of his hiding-place; if I can’t get to him before two hours, Sirr will have him.’

‘My dear Sir John,’ cried the landlord, ‘it’s not two horses but it’s eight I’ll give you, and may the judges go hang for me! Here, Larry! Tim! First and second pair for Sir John Anderson; and long life to you, Sir John, and the Lord reward you for your good deed this day.’

Sir John, my informant told me, had invented this predicament of Lord Edward’s in order to get the horses; and by way of corroborating the whole story, pointed out an old chaise which stood at the inn-door with its window broken, a great crevice in the panel, some little wretches crawling underneath the wheels, and two huge blackguards lolling against the pole,--‘and that,’ says he, ‘is no doubt the very postchaise Sir John Anderson had.’ It certainly looked ancient enough.

Of course, as we stopped for a moment in the place, troops of slatternly ruffianly-looking fellows assembled round the carriage, dirty heads peeped out of all the dirty windows, beggars came forward with a joke and a prayer, and troops of children raised their shouts and halloos. I confess, with regard to the beggars, that I have never yet had the slightest sentiment of compassion for the very oldest or dirtiest of them, or been inclined to give them a penny: they come crawling round you with lying prayers and loathsome compliments, that make the stomach turn; they do not even disguise that they are lies; for, refuse them, and the wretches turn off with a laugh and a joke, a miserable grinning cynicism that creates distrust and indifference, and must be, one would think, the very best way to close the purse, not to open it, for objects so unworthy.

How do all these people live? one can’t help wondering;--these multifarious vagabonds, without work or workhouse, or means of subsistence? The Irish Poor Law Report says that there are twelve hundred thousand people in Ireland--a sixth of the population--who have no means of livelihood but charity, and whom the State, or individual members of it, must maintain. How can the State support such an enormous burthen; or the twelve hundred thousand be supported? What a strange history it would be, could one but get it true,--that of the manner in which a score of these beggars have maintained themselves for a fortnight past!

Soon after quitting the Royal Oak our road branches off to the hospitable house where our party, consisting of a dozen persons, was to be housed and fed for the night. Fancy the look which an English gentleman of moderate means would assume, at being called on to receive such a company! A pretty road of a couple of miles, thickly grown with ash and oak trees, under which the hats of coach-passengers suffered some danger, leads to the house of D----. A young son of the house, on a white pony, was on the look-out, and great cheering and shouting took place among the young people as we came in sight.

Trotting away by the carriage-side, he brought us through a gate with a pretty avenue of trees leading to the pleasure-grounds of the house--a handsome building commanding noble views of river, mountains, and plantations. Our entertainer only rents the place; so I may say, without any imputation against him, that the house was by no means so handsome within as without,--not that the want of finish in the interior made our party the less merry, or the host’s entertainment less hearty and cordial.

The gentleman who built and owns the house, like many other proprietors in Ireland, found his mansion too expensive for his means, and has relinquished it. I asked what his income might be, and no wonder that he was compelled to resign his house; which a man with four times the income in England would scarcely venture to inhabit. There were numerous sitting-rooms below; a large suite of rooms above, in which our large party, with their servants, disappeared without any seeming inconvenience, and which already accommodated a family of at least a dozen persons and a numerous train of domestics. There was a great courtyard, surrounded by capital offices, with stabling and coach-houses sufficient for a half-dozen of country gentlemen. An English squire of ten thousand a year might live in such a place--the original owner, I am told, had not many more hundreds.

Our host has wisely turned the chief part of the pleasure-ground round the house into a farm; nor did the land look a bit the worse, as I thought, for having rich crops of potatoes growing in place of grass, and fine plots of waving wheat and barley. The care, skill, and neatness everywhere exhibited, and the immense luxuriance of the crops, could not fail to strike even a cockney; and one of our party, a very well-known practical farmer, told me that there was at least five hundred pounds’ worth of produce upon the little estate of some sixty acres, of which only five-and-twenty were under the plough.

As at H---- town, on the previous day, several men and women appeared sauntering in the grounds, and as the master came up asked for work, or sixpence, or told a story of want. There are lodge-gates at both ends of the demesne; but it appears the good-natured practice of the country admits a beggar as well as any other visitor. To a couple our landlord gave money, to another a little job of work; another he sent roughly out of the premises: and I could judge thus what a continual tax upon the Irish gentleman these travelling paupers must be, of whom his ground is never free.

There, loitering about the stables and outhouses, were several people who seemed to have acquired a sort of right to be there: women and children who had a claim upon the buttermilk; men who did an odd job now and then; loose hangers-on of the family: and in the lodging-houses and inns I have entered, the same sort of ragged vassals are to be found; in a house however poor, you are sure to see some poorer dependant who is a stranger, taking a meal of potatoes in the kitchen; a Tim or Mike loitering hard by, ready to run on a message, or carry a bag. This is written, for instance, at a lodging over a shop in Cork. There sits in the shop a poor old fellow quite past work, but who totters up and down stairs to the lodgers, and does what little he can for his easily-won bread. There is another fellow outside who is sure to make his bow to anybody issuing from the lodging, and ask if his honour wants an errand done? Neither class of such dependants exist with us. What housekeeper in London is there will feed an old man of seventy that’s good for nothing, or encourage such a disreputable hanger-on as yonder shuffling, smiling cad?

Nor did Mr. M----‘s ‘irregulars’ disappear with the day; for when, after a great deal of merriment, and kind happy dancing and romping of young people, the fineness of the night suggested the propriety of smoking a certain cigar (it is never more acceptable than at that season), the young squire voted that we should adjourn to the stables for the purpose, where accordingly the cigars were discussed. There were still the inevitable half-dozen hangers-on: one came grinning with a lantern, all nature being in universal blackness except his grinning face; another ran obsequiously to the stables to show a favourite mare--I think it was a mare--though it may have been a mule, and your humble servant not much the wiser. The cloths were taken off; the fellows with the candles crowded about; and the young squire bade me admire the beauty of her fore-leg, which I did with the greatest possible gravity. ‘Did you ever see such a fore-leg as that in your life?’ says the young squire, and further discoursed upon the horse’s points, the amateur grooms joining in chorus.

There was another young squire of our party, a pleasant gentlemanlike young fellow, who danced as prettily as any Frenchman, and who had ridden over from a neighbouring house: as I went to bed, the two lads were arguing whether young Squire B---- should go home or stay at D---- that night. There was a bed for him--there was a bed for everybody, it seemed, and a kind welcome too. How different was all this to the ways of a severe English house!

Next morning the whole of our merry party assembled round a long, jovial breakfast-table, stored with all sorts of good things; and the biggest and jovialest man of all, who had just come in fresh from a walk in the fields, and vowed that he was as hungry as a hunter, and was cutting some slices out of an inviting ham on the side-table, suddenly let fall his knife and fork with dismay. ‘Sure, John, don’t you know it’s Friday?’ cried a lady from the table; and back John came with a most lugubrious queer look on his jolly face, and fell to work upon bread and butter, as resigned as possible, amidst no small laughter, as may be well imagined. On this I was bound, as a Protestant, to eat a large slice of pork, and discharged that duty nobly, and with much self-sacrifice.

The famous ‘drag’ which had brought us so far seemed to be as hospitable and elastic as the house which we now left, for the coach accommodated, inside and out, a considerable party from the house, and we took our road leisurely, in a cloudless, scorching day, towards Waterford. The first place we passed through was the little town of Gowran, near which is a grand, well-ordered park, belonging to Lord Clifden, and where his mother resides, with whose beautiful face, in Lawrence’s pictures, every reader must be familiar. The kind English lady has done the greatest good in the neighbourhood, it is said, and the little town bears marks of her beneficence, in its neatness, prettiness, and order. Close by the church there are the ruins of a fine old abbey here, and a still finer one a few miles on, at Thomastown, most picturesquely situated amidst trees and meadow, on the river Nore. The place within, however, is dirty and ruinous--the same wretched suburbs, the same squalid congregation of beggarly loungers, that are to be seen elsewhere. The monastic ruin is very fine, and the road hence to Thomastown rich with varied cultivation and beautiful verdure, pretty gentlemen’s mansions shining among the trees on either side of the way. There was one place along this rich tract that looked very strange and ghastly--a huge old pair of gate pillars, flanked by a ruinous lodge, and a wide road winding for a mile up a hill. There had been a park once, but all the trees were gone; thistles were growing in the yellow sickly land, and rank thin grass on the road. Far away you saw in this desolate tract a ruin of a house: many a butt of claret has been emptied there, no doubt, and many a merry party come out with hound and horn. But what strikes the Englishman with wonder is not so much, perhaps, that an owner of the place should have been ruined and a spendthrift, as that the land should lie there useless ever since. If one is not successful with us another man will be, or another will try, at least. Here lies useless a great capital of hundreds of acres of land; barren, where the commonest effort might make it productive, and looking as if for a quarter of a century past no soul ever looked or cared for it. You might travel five hundred miles through England and not see such a spectacle.

A short distance from Thomastown is another abbey; and presently, after passing through the village of Knocktopher, we came to a posting-place called Ballyhale, of the moral aspect of which the following scrap taken in the place will give a notion.

A dirty, old, contented, decrepit idler was lolling in the sun at a shop-door, and hundreds of the population of the dirty, old, decrepit, contented place were employed in the like way. A dozen of boys were playing at pitch-and-toss; other male and female beggars were sitting on a wall looking into a stream; scores of ragamuffins, of course, round the carriage; and beggars galore at the door of the little alehouse or hotel. A gentleman’s carriage changed horses as we were baiting here. It was a rich sight to see the cattle, and the way of starting them: ‘Halloo! Yoop, Hoop!’ a dozen of ragged ostlers and amateurs running by the side of the miserable old horses, the postillion shrieking, yelling, and belabouring them with his whip. Down goes one horse among the new-laid stones; the postillion has him up with a cut of the whip and a curse, and takes advantage of the start caused by the stumble to get the brute into a gallop, and to go down the hill. ‘I know it for a fact,’ a gentleman of our party says, ‘that no horses ever got out of Ballyhale without an accident of some kind.’

‘Will your honour like to come and see a big pig?’ here asked a man of the above gentleman, well known as a great farmer and breeder. We all went to see the big pig, not very fat as yet, but, upon my word, it is as big as a pony. The country round is, it appears, famous for the breeding of such, especially a district called the Welsh mountains, through which we had to pass on our road to Waterford.

This is a curious country to see, and has curious inhabitants: for twenty miles there is no gentleman’s house: gentlemen dare not live there. The place was originally tenanted by a clan of Welshes; hence its name; and they maintain themselves in their occupancy of the farms in Tipperary fashion, by simply putting a ball into the body of any man who would come to take a farm over any one of them. Some of the crops in the fields of the Welsh country seemed very good, and the fields well tilled; but it is common to see, by the side of one field that is well cultivated, another that is absolutely barren; and the whole tract is extremely wretched. Appropriate histories and reminiscences accompany the traveller; at a chapel near Mullinavat is the spot where sixteen policemen were murdered in the tithe campaign; farther on you come to a limekiln, where the guard of a mail-coach was seized and roasted alive. I saw here the first hedge-school I have seen; a crowd of half-savage-looking lads and girls looked up from their studies in the ditch, their college or lecture-room being in a mud cabin hard by.

And likewise, in the midst of this wild tract, a fellow met us who was trudging the road with a fish-basket over his shoulder, and who stopped the coach, hailing two of the gentlemen in it by name, both of whom seemed to be much amused by his humour. He was a handsome rogue, a poacher, or salmon-taker, by profession, and presently poured out such a flood of oaths, and made such a monstrous display of grinning wit and blackguardism, as I have never heard equalled by the best Billingsgate practitioner, and as it would be more than useless to attempt to describe. Blessings, jokes, and curses trolled off the rascal’s lips with a volubility which caused his Irish audience to shout with laughter, but which were quite beyond a cockney. It was a humour so purely national as to be understood by none but natives, I should think. I recollect the same feeling of perplexity while sitting, the only Englishman, in a company of jocular Scotchmen. They bandied about puns, jokes, imitations, and applauded with shrieks of laughter what, I confess, appeared to me the most abominable dulness--nor was the salmon-taker’s jocularity any better. I think it rather served to frighten than to amuse; and I am not sure but that I looked out for a band of jocular cut-throats of his sort, to come up at a given guffaw, and playfully rob us all round. However, he went away quite peaceably, calling down for the party the benediction of a great number of saints, who must have been somewhat ashamed to be addressed by such a rascal.

Presently we caught sight of the valley through which the Suire flows, and descended the hill towards it, and went over the thundering old wooden bridge to Waterford.

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IV. FROM WATERFORD TO CORK

The view of the town, from the bridge and the heights above it, is very imposing; as is the river both ways. Very large vessels sail up almost to the doors of the houses, and the quays are flanked by tall red warehouses, that look at a little distance as if a world of business might be doing within them. But as you get into the place, not a soul is there to greet you except the usual society of beggars, and a sailor or two, or a green-coated policeman sauntering down the broad pavement. We drove up to the Coach Inn, a huge, handsome, dirty building, of which the discomforts have been pathetically described elsewhere. The landlord is a gentleman and considerable horse-proprietor, and though a perfectly well-bred, active, and intelligent man, far too much of a gentleman to play the host well: at least as an Englishman understands that character.

Opposite the town is a tower of questionable antiquity and undeniable ugliness; for though the inscription says it was built in the year one thousand and something, the same document adds that it was rebuilt in 1819--to either of which dates the traveller is thus welcomed. The quays stretch for a considerable distance along the river, poor patched-windowed, mouldy-looking shops forming the basement-story of most of the houses. We went into one, a jeweller’s, to make a purchase--it might have been of a gold watch for anything the owner knew; but he was talking with a friend in his back-parlour, gave us a look as we entered, allowed us to stand some minutes in the empty shop, and at length to walk out without being served. In another shop a boy was lolling behind a counter, but could not say whether the articles we wanted were to be had; turned out a heap of drawers, and could not find them; and finally went for the master, who could not come. True commercial independence, and an easy way enough of life.

In one of the streets leading from the quay is a large, dingy Catholic chapel, of some pretensions within; but, as usual, there had been a failure for want of money, and the front of the chapel was unfinished, presenting the butt-end of a portico, and walls on which the stone coating was to be laid. But a much finer ornament to the church than any of the questionable gewgaws which adorned the ceiling was the piety, stern, simple, and unaffected, of the people within. Their whole soul seemed to be in their prayers, as rich and poor knelt indifferently on the flags. There is of course an Episcopal cathedral, well and neatly kept, and a handsome Bishop’s palace: near it was a convent of nuns, and a little chapel-bell clinking melodiously. I was prepared to fancy something romantic of the place; but as we passed the convent gate, a shoeless slattern of a maid opened the door--the most dirty and unpoetical of housemaids.

Assizes were held in the town, and we ascended to the court-house through a steep street, a sort of rag-fair, but more villainous and miserable than any rag-fair in St. Giles’s: the houses and stock of the Seven Dials look as if they belonged to capitalists when compared with the scarecrow wretchedness of the goods here hung out for sale. Who wanted to buy such things? I wondered. One would have thought that the most part of the articles had passed the possibility of barter for money, even out of the reach of the half-farthings coined of late. All the street was lined with wretched hucksters and their merchandise of gooseberries, green apples, children’s dirty cakes, cheap crockeries, brushes, and tin-ware; among which objects the people were swarming about busily. Before the court is a wide street, where a similar market was held, with a vast number of donkey-carts urged hither and thither, and great shrieking, chattering, and bustle. It is five hundred years ago since a poet who accompanied Richard II. in his voyage hither spoke of ‘Watreforde ou moult vilaine et orde y sont la gente.’ They don’t seem to be much changed now, but remain faithful to their ancient habits.

About the court-house swarms of beggars of course were collected, varied by personages of a better sort: grey-coated farmers, and women with their picturesque blue cloaks, who had trudged in from the country probably. The court-house is as beggarly and ruinous as the rest of the neighbourhood; smart-looking policemen kept order about it, and looked very hard at me as I ventured to take a sketch.

The figures as I saw them were thus disposed. The man in the dock, the policeman seated easily above him, the woman looking down from a gallery. The man was accused of stealing a sack of wool, and, having no counsel, made for himself as adroit a defence as any one of the councillors (they are without robes or wigs here, by the way) could have made for him. He had been seen examining a certain sack of wool in a coffee-shop at Dungarvan, and next day was caught sight of in Waterford Market, standing under an archway from the rain, with the sack by his side.

‘Wasn’t there twenty other people under the arch?’ said he to a witness, a noble-looking beautiful girl--the girl was obliged to own there were. ‘Did you see me touch the wool, or stand nearer to it than a dozen of the dacent people there?’ and the girl confessed she had not. ‘And this it is, my lord,’ says he to the bench; ‘they attack me because I’m poor and ragged, but they never think of charging the crime on a rich farmer.’

But alas for the defence! another witness saw the prisoner with his legs round the sack, and being about to charge him with the theft, the prisoner fled into the arms of a policeman, to whom his first words were, ‘I know nothing about the sack.’ So, as the sack had been stolen, as he had been seen handling it four minutes before it was stolen, and holding it for sale the day after, it was concluded that Patrick Malony had stolen the sack, and he was accommodated with eighteen months accordingly.

In another case we had a woman and her child on the table; and others followed, in the judgment of which it was impossible not to admire the extreme leniency, acuteness, and sensibility of the judge presiding, Chief Justice Pennefather:--the man against whom all the Liberals in Ireland, and every one else who has read his charge too, must be angry, for the ferocity of his charge against a Belfast newspaper editor. It seems as if no parties here will be dispassionate when they get to a party question, and that natural kindness has no claim, when Whig and Tory come into collision.

The juryman is here placed on a table instead of a witness-box; nor was there much further peculiarity to remark, except in the dirt of the court, the absence of the barristerial wig and gown, and the great coolness with which a fellow who seemed a sort of clerk, usher, and Irish interpreter to the court, recommended a prisoner, who was making rather a long defence, to be quiet. I asked him why the man might not have his say. ‘Sure,’ says he, ‘he’s said all he has to say, and there’s no use in any more.’ But there was no use in attempting to convince Mr. Usher that the prisoner was best judge on this point; in fact the poor devil shut his mouth at the admonition, and was found guilty with perfect justice.

A considerable poorhouse has been erected at Waterford, but the beggars of the place as yet prefer their liberty, and less certain means of gaining support. We asked one who was calling down all the blessings of all the saints and angels upon us, and telling a most piteous tale of poverty, why she did not go to the poorhouse. The woman’s look at once changed from a sentimental whine to a grin. ‘Dey owe two hundred pounds at dat house,’ said she, ‘and faith, an honest woman can’t go dere;’ with which wonderful reason ought not the most squeamish to be content?

* * * * *

After describing, as accurately as words may, the features of a landscape, and stating that such a mountain was to the left, and such a river or town to the right, and putting down the situations and names of the villages, and the bearings of the roads, it has no doubt struck the reader of books of travels that the writer has not given him the slightest idea of the country, and that he would have been just as wise without perusing the letterpress landscape through which he has toiled. It will be as well then, under such circumstances, to spare the public any lengthened description of the road from Waterford to Dungarvan; which was the road we took, followed by benedictions delivered gratis from the beggar-hood of the former city. Not very far from it you see the dark plantations of the magnificent domain of Curraghmore, and pass through a country blue, hilly, and bare, except where gentlemen’s seats appear with their ornaments of wood. Presently, after leaving Waterford, we came to a certain town called Kilmacthomas, of which all the information I have to give is, that it is situated upon a hill and river, and that you may change horses there. The road was covered with carts of seaweed, which the people were bringing for manure from the shore some four miles distant; and beyond Kilmacthomas we beheld the Cummeragh Mountains, ‘often named in maps the Nennavoulagh,’ either of which names the reader may select at pleasure.

Thence we came to ‘Cushcam,’ at which village be it known that the turnpike-man kept the drag a very long time waiting. ‘I think the fellow must be writing a book,’ said the coachman, with a most severe look of drollery at a cockney tourist, who tried, under the circumstances, to blush, and not to laugh. I wish I could relate or remember half the mad jokes that flew about among the jolly Irish crew on the top of the coach, and which would have made a journey through the Desert jovial. When the ‘pike-man had finished his composition (that of a turnpike-ticket, which he had to fill), we drove on to Dungarvan; the two parts of which town, separated by the river Colligan, have been joined by a causeway three hundred yards along, and a bridge erected at an enormous outlay by the Duke of Devonshire. In former times, before his Grace spent his eighty thousand pounds upon the causeway, this wide estuary was called ‘Dungarvan Prospect,’ because the ladies of the country, walking over the river at low water, took off their shoes and stockings (such as had them), and tucking up their clothes, exhibited,--what I have never seen, and cannot, therefore, be expected to describe. A large and handsome Catholic chapel, a square with some pretensions to regularity of building, a very neat and comfortable inn, and beggars and idlers still more numerous than at Waterford, were what we had leisure to remark in half an hour’s stroll through the town.

Near the prettily situated village of Cappoquin is the Trappist house of Mount Meilleraie, of which we could only see the pinnacles. The brethren were presented some years since with a barren mountain, which they have cultivated most successfully. They have among themselves workmen to supply all their frugal wants, ghostly tailors and shoemakers, spiritual gardeners and bakers, working in silence, and serving Heaven after their way. If this reverend community, for fear of the opportunity of sinful talk, choose to hold their tongues, the next thing will be to cut them out altogether, and so render the danger impossible--if, being men of education and intelligence, they incline to turn butchers and cobblers, and smother their intellects by base and hard menial labour, who knows but one day a sect may be more pious still, and rejecting even butchery and bakery, as savouring too much of worldly convenience and pride, take to a wild-beast life at once? Let us concede that suffering, and mental and bodily debasement, are the things most agreeable to Heaven, and there is no knowing where such piety may stop. I was very glad we had not time to see the grovelling place; and as for seeing shoes made or fields tilled by reverend amateurs, we can find cobblers and ploughboys to do the work better.

By the way, the Quakers have set up in Ireland a sort of monkery of their own. Not far from Carlow we met a couple of cars drawn by white horses, and holding white Quakers and Quakeresses, in white hats, clothes, shoes, with wild maniacal-looking faces, bumping along the road. Let us hope that we may soon get a community of Fakeers and howling Dervises into the country. It would be a refreshing thing to see such ghostly men in one’s travels, standing at the corners of roads, and praising the Lord by standing on one leg, or cutting and hacking themselves with knives like the prophets of Baal. Is it not as pious for a man to deprive himself of his leg as of his tongue, and to disfigure his body with the gashes of a knife, as with the hideous white raiment of the illuminated Quakers?

While these reflections were going on, the beautiful Blackwater river suddenly opened before us, and driving along it for three miles through some of the most beautiful, rich country ever seen, we came to Lismore. Nothing can be certainly more magnificent than this drive. Parks and rocks covered with the grandest foliage; rich handsome seats of gentlemen in the midst of fair lawns, and beautiful bright plantations and shrubberies; and at the end, the graceful spire of Lismore church, the prettiest I have seen in, or, I think, out of Ireland. Nor in any country that I have visited have I seen a view more noble--it is too rich and peaceful to be what is called romantic, but lofty, large, and generous, if the term may be used; the river and banks as fine as the Rhine; the castle not as large, but as noble and picturesque as Warwick. As you pass the bridge, the banks stretch away on either side in amazing verdure, and the castle-walks remind one somewhat of the dear old terrace of St. Germains, with its groves, and long grave avenues of trees.

The salmon-fishery of the Blackwater is let, as I hear, for a thousand a year. In the evening, however, we saw some gentlemen who are likely to curtail the profits of the farmer of the fishery--a company of ragged boys, to wit--whose occupation, it appears, is to poach. These young fellows were all lolling over the bridge, as the moon rose rather mistily, and pretended to be deeply enamoured of the view of the river. They answered the questions of one of our party with the utmost innocence and openness, and one would have supposed the lads were so many Arcadians, but for the arrival of an old woman, who suddenly coming up among them poured out, upon one and all, a volley of curses, both deep and loud, saying that perdition would be their portion, and calling them ‘shchamers’ at least a hundred times. Much to my wonder, the young men did not reply to the voluble old lady for some time, who then told us the cause of her anger. She had a son,--‘Look at him there, the villain.’ The lad was standing, looking very unhappy. ‘His father, that’s now dead, paid a fistful of money to bind him ‘prentice at Dungarvan: but these shchamers followed him there; made him break his indentures, and go poaching and thieving and shchaming with them.’ The poor old woman shook her hands in the air, and shouted at the top of her deep voice; there was something very touching in her grotesque sorrow, nor did the lads make light of it at all, contenting themselves with a surly growl, or an oath, if directly appealed to by the poor creature.

So, cursing and raging, the woman went away. The son, a lad of fourteen, evidently the fag of the big bullies round about him, stood dismally away from them, his head sunk down. I went up and asked him, ‘Was that his mother?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Was she good and kind to him when he was at home?’ He said, ‘Oh yes.’ ‘Why not come back to her?’ I asked him; but he said ‘he couldn’t.’ Whereupon I took his arm, and tried to lead him away by main force; but he said, ‘Thank you, sir, but I can’t go back,’ and released his arm. We stood on the bridge some minutes longer, looking at the view; but the boy, though he kept away from his comrades, would not come. I wonder what they have done together, that the poor boy is past going home? The place seemed to be so quiet and beautiful, and far away from London, that I thought crime couldn’t have reached it; and yet, here it lurks somewhere among six boys of sixteen, each with a stain in his heart, and some black history to tell. The poor widow’s yonder was the only family about which I had a chance of knowing anything in this remote place; nay, in all Ireland; and, God help us, hers was a sad lot!--A husband gone dead,--an only child gone to ruin. It is awful to think that there are eight millions of stories to be told in this island. Seven million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight more lives that I, and all brother cockneys, know nothing about. Well, please God, they are not all like this.

That day, I heard another history. A little old disreputable man in tatters, with a huge steeple of a hat, came shambling down the street, one among the five hundred blackguards there. A fellow standing under the sun portico (a sort of swaggering, chattering, cringing touter, and master of ceremonies to the gutter) told us something with regard to the old disreputable man. His son had been hanged the day before at Clonmel, for one of the Tipperary murders. That blackguard in our eyes instantly looked quite different from all other blackguards--I saw him gesticulating at the corner of a street, and watched him with wonderful interest.

The church with the handsome spire, that looks so graceful among the trees, is a cathedral church, and one of the neatest-kept and prettiest edifices I have seen in Ireland. In the old graveyard Protestants and Catholics lie together--that is, not together; for each has a side of the ground, where they sleep, and, so occupied, do not quarrel. The sun was shining down upon the brilliant grass--and I don’t think the shadows of the Protestant graves were any longer or shorter than those of the Catholics. Is it the right or the left side of the graveyard which is nearest heaven, I wonder? Look, the sun shines upon both alike, ‘and the blue sky bends over all.’

Raleigh’s house is approached by a grave old avenue, and well-kept wall, such as is rare in this country; and the court of the castle within has the solid, comfortable, quiet look, equally rare. It is like one of our colleges at Oxford: there is a side of the quadrangle with pretty ivy-covered gables; another part of the square is more modern; and by the main body of the castle is a small chapel exceedingly picturesque. The interior is neat and in excellent order; but it was unluckily done up some thirty years ago (as I imagine from the style), before our architects had learned Gothic, and all the ornamental work is consequently quite ugly and out of keeping. The church has probably been arranged by the same hand. In the castle are some plainly furnished chambers, one or two good pictures, and a couple of oriel windows, the views from which up and down the river are exceedingly lovely. You hear praises of the Duke of Devonshire as a landlord wherever you go among his vast estates; it is a pity that, with such a noble residence as this, and with such a wonderful country round about it, his Grace should not inhabit it more.

Of the road from Lismore to Fermoy it does not behove me to say much, for a pelting rain came on very soon after we quitted the former place, and accompanied us almost without ceasing to Fermoy. Here we had a glimpse of a bridge across the Blackwater, which we had skirted in our journey from Lismore. Now enveloped in mist and cloud--now spanned by a rainbow, at another time basking in sunshine, Nature attired the charming prospect for us in a score of different ways; and it appeared before us like a coquettish beauty who was trying what dress in her wardrobe might most become her. At Fermoy we saw a vast barrack, and an overgrown inn, where, however, good fare was provided; and thence hastening came by Rathcormack, and Watergrass Hill, famous for the residence of Father Prout, whom my friend, the Rev. Francis Sylvester, has made immortal; from which descending we arrived at the beautiful wooded village of Glanmire, with its mills and steeples, and streams, and neat school-houses, and pleasant country residences. This brings us down upon the superb stream which leads from the sea to Cork.

The view for three miles on both sides is magnificently beautiful. Fine gardens, and parks, and villas cover the shore on each bank; the river is full of brisk craft moving to the city or out to sea; and the city finely ends the view, rising upon two hills on either side of the stream. I do not know a town to which there is an entrance more beautiful, commodious, and stately.

Passing by numberless handsome lodges, and, nearer the city, many terraces in neat order, the road conducts us near a large tract of some hundred acres which have been reclaimed from the sea, and are destined to form a park and pleasure-ground for the citizens of Cork. In the river, and up to the bridge, some hundreds of ships were lying; and a fleet of steamboats opposite the handsome house of the St. George’s Steam Packet Company. A church stands prettily on the hill above it, surrounded by a number of new habitations very neat and white. On the road is a handsome Roman Catholic chapel, or a chapel which will be handsome so soon as the necessary funds are raised to complete it. But, as at Waterford, the chapel has been commenced, and the money has failed, and the fine portico which is to decorate it one day, as yet only exists on the architect’s paper. St. Patrick’s Bridge, over which we pass, is a pretty building; and Patrick Street, the main street of the town, has an air of business and cheerfulness, and looks densely thronged.

As the carriage drove up to those neat, comfortable, and extensive lodgings which Mrs. MacO’Boy has to let, a magnificent mob was formed round the vehicle, and we had an opportunity of at once making acquaintance with some of the dirtiest rascally faces that all Ireland presents. Besides these professional rogues and beggars, who make a point to attend on all vehicles, everybody else seemed to stop too, to see that wonder, a coach and four horses. People issued from their shops, heads appeared at windows. I have seen the Queen pass in state in London, and not bring together a crowd near so great as that which assembled in the busiest street of the second city of the kingdom, just to look at a green coach and four bay horses. Have they nothing else to do?--or is it that they will do nothing but stare, swagger, and be idle in the streets?

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

V. CORK--THE AGRICULTURAL SHOW--FATHER MATHEW

A man has no need to be an agriculturalist in order to take a warm interest in the success of the Irish Agricultural Society, and to see what vast good may result from it to the country. The National Education scheme--a noble and liberal one, at least as far as a stranger can see, which might have united the Irish people, and brought peace into this most distracted of all countries--failed unhappily of one of its greatest ends. The Protestant clergy have always treated the plan with bitter hostility: and I do believe, in withdrawing from it, have struck the greatest blow to themselves as a body, and to their own influence in the country, which has been dealt to them for many a year. Rich, charitable, pious, well educated, to be found in every parish in Ireland, had they chosen to fraternise with the people and the plan, they might have directed the educational movement; they might have attained the influence which is now given over entirely to the priest; and when the present generation, educated in the National Schools, were grown up to manhood, they might have had an interest in almost every man in Ireland. Are they as pious, and more polished, and better educated than their neighbours the priests? There is no doubt of it; and by constant communion with the people they would have gained all the benefits of the comparison, and advanced the interests of their religion far more than now they can hope to do. Look at the National School: throughout the country it is commonly by the chapel side--it is a Catholic school, directed and fostered by the priest; and as no people are more eager for learning, more apt to receive it, or more grateful for kindness than the Irish, he gets all the gratitude of the scholars who flock to the school, and all the future influence over them, which naturally and justly comes to him. The Protestant wants to better the condition of these people; he says that the woes of the country are owing to its prevalent religion; and in order to carry his plans of amelioration into effect, he obstinately refuses to hold communion with those whom he is desirous to convert to what he believes are sounder principles and purer doctrines. The clergyman will reply, that points of principle prevented him: with this fatal doctrinal objection, it is not of course the province of a layman to meddle; but this is clear, that the parson might have had an influence over the country, and he would not; that he might have rendered the Catholic population friendly to him, and he would not; but, instead, has added one cause of estrangement and hostility more to the many which already existed against him. This is one of the attempts at union in Ireland, and one can’t but think with the deepest regret and sorrow of its failure.

Mr. O’Connell and his friends set going another scheme for advancing the prosperity of the country,--the notable project of home manufactures, and of a coalition against foreign importation. This was a union certainly, but a union of a different sort to that noble and peaceful one which the National Education Board proposed. It was to punish England, while it pretended to secure the independence of Ireland, by shutting out our manufactures from the Irish markets; which were one day or other, it was presumed, to be filled by native produce. Large bodies of tradesmen and private persons in Dublin and other towns in Ireland associated together, vowing to purchase no articles of ordinary consumption or usage but what were manufactured in the country. This bigoted old-world scheme of restriction--not much more liberal than Swing’s crusade against the threshing-machines or the coalitions in England against machinery--failed, as it deserved to do. For the benefit of a few tradesmen, who might find their account in selling at dear rates their clumsy and imperfect manufactures, it was found impossible to tax a people that are already poor enough; nor did the party take into account the cleverness of the merchants across sea, who were by no means disposed to let go their Irish customers. The famous Irish frieze uniform which was to distinguish these patriots, and which Mr. O’Connell lauded so loudly and so simply, came over made at half-price from Leeds and Glasgow, and was retailed as real Irish by many worthies who had been first to join the union. You may still see shops here and there with their pompous announcement of ‘Irish Manufactures’; but the scheme is long gone to ruin--it could not stand against the vast force of English and Scotch capital and machinery, any more than the Ulster spinning-wheel against the huge factories and steam-engines which one may see about Belfast.

The scheme of the Agricultural Society is a much more feasible one; and if, please God, it can be carried out, likely to give not only prosperity to the country, but union likewise in a great degree. As yet, Protestants and Catholics concerned in it have worked well together; and it is a blessing to see them meet upon any ground without heartburning and quarrelling. Last year, Mr. Purcell, who is well known in Ireland as the principal mail-coach contractor for the country,--who himself employs more workmen in Dublin than perhaps any other person there, and has also more land under cultivation than most of the great landed proprietors in the country,--wrote a letter to the newspapers, giving his notions of the fallacy of the exclusive-dealing system, and pointing out at the same time how he considered the country might be benefited--by agricultural improvement, namely. He spoke of the neglected state of the country, and its amazing natural fertility; and, for the benefit of all, called upon the landlords and landholders to use their interest and develop its vast agricultural resources. Manufactures are at best but of slow growth, and demand not only time but capital; meanwhile, until the habits of the people should grow to be such as to render manufactures feasible, there was a great neglected treasure, lying under their feet, which might be the source of prosperity to all. He pointed out the superior methods of husbandry employed in Scotland and England, and the great results obtained upon soils naturally much poorer; and, taking the Highland Society for an example, the establishment of which had done so much for the prosperity of Scotland, he proposed the formation in Ireland of a similar association.

The letter made an extraordinary sensation throughout the country. Noblemen and gentry of all sides took it up; and numbers of these wrote to Mr. Purcell, and gave him their cordial adhesion to the plan. A meeting was held, and the Society formed: subscriptions were set on foot, headed by the Lord-Lieutenant (Fortescue) and the Duke of Leinster, each with a donation of £200; and the trustees had soon £5000 at their disposal; with, besides, an annual revenue of £1000. The subscribed capital is funded; and political subjects strictly excluded. The Society has a show yearly in one of the principal towns of Ireland; it corresponds with the various local agricultural associations throughout the country; encourages the formation of new ones; and distributes prizes and rewards. It has further in contemplation to establish a large Agricultural School for farmers’ sons; and has formed in Dublin an Agricultural Bazaar and Museum.

* * * * *

It was the first meeting of the Society which we were come to see at Cork. Will it be able to carry its excellent intentions into effect? Will the present enthusiasm of its founders and members continue? Will one political party or another get the upper hand in it? One can’t help thinking of these points with some anxiety--of the latter especially: as yet, happily, the clergy of either side have kept aloof, and the union seems pretty cordial and sincere.

There are in Cork, as no doubt in every town of Ireland sufficiently considerable to support a plurality of hotels, some especially devoted to the Conservative and Liberal parties. Two dinners were to be given à propos of the Agricultural Meeting; and in order to conciliate all parties, it was determined that the Tory landlord should find the cheap ten-shilling dinner for one thousand, the Whig landlord the genteel guinea dinner for a few select hundreds.

I wish Mr. Cuff, of the Freemasons’ Tavern, could have been at Cork to take a lesson from the latter gentleman; for he would have seen that there are means of having not merely enough to eat, but enough of the very best, for the sum of a guinea; that persons can have not only wine, but good wine; and, if inclined (as some topers are on great occasions) to pass to another bottle,--a second, a third, or a fifteenth bottle for what I know, is very much at their service. It was a fine sight to see Mr. MacDowall presiding over an ice-well, and extracting the bottles of champagne. With what calmness he did it! How the corks popped, and the liquor fizzed, and the agriculturalists drank the bumpers off! And how good the wine was too--the greatest merit of all! Mr. MacDowall did credit to his liberal politics by his liberal dinner.

‘Sir,’ says a waiter whom I had asked for currant-jelly for the haunch--(there were a dozen such smoking on various parts of the table--think of that, Mr. Cuff!)--‘Sir,’ says the waiter, ‘there’s no jelly, but I’ve brought you some very fine lobster-sauce.’ I think this was the most remarkable speech of the evening, not excepting that of my Lord Bernard, who, to three hundred gentlemen more or less connected with farming, had actually the audacity to quote the words of the great agricultural poet of Rome--

‘O fortunatos nimium sua si,’ et cætera.

How long are our statesmen in England to continue to back their opinions by the Latin Grammar? Are the Irish agriculturalists so very happy, if they did but know it--at least those out of doors? Well, those within were jolly enough. Champagne and claret, turbot and haunch, are gifts of the justissima tellus, with which few husbandmen will be disposed to quarrel;--no more let us quarrel either with eloquence after dinner.

If the Liberal landlord had shown his principles in his dinner, the Conservative certainly showed his; by conserving as much profit as possible for himself. We sat down one thousand to some two hundred and fifty cold joints of meat. Every man was treated with a pint of wine, and very bad too, so that there was the less cause to grumble because more was not served. Those agriculturalists who had a mind to drink whisky-and-water had to pay extra for their punch. Nay, after shouting in vain for half an hour to a waiter for some cold water, the unhappy writer could only get it by promising a shilling. The sum was paid on delivery of the article; but as everybody round was thirsty too, I got but a glassful from the decanter, which only served to make me long for more. The waiter (the rascal!) promised more, but never came near us afterwards: he had got his shilling, and so he left us in a hot room, surrounded by a thousand hot fellow-creatures, one of them making a dry speech. The agriculturalists were not on this occasion nimium fortunati.

To have heard a nobleman, however, who discoursed the meeting, you would have fancied that we were the luckiest mortals under the broiling July sun. He said he could conceive nothing more delightful than to see, ‘on proper occasions’--(mind, on proper occasions!)--‘the landlord mixing with his tenantry; and to look around him at a scene like this, and see the condescension with which the gentry mingled with the farmers!’ Prodigious condescension truly! This neat speech seemed to me an oratoric slap on the face to about nine hundred and seventy persons present; and being one of the latter, I began to hiss by way of acknowledgment of the compliment, and hoped that a strong party would have destroyed the harmony of the evening, and done likewise. But not one hereditary bondsman would join in the compliment--and they were quite right too. The old lord who talked about condescension is one of the greatest and kindest landlords in Ireland. If he thinks he condescends by doing his duty and mixing with men as good as himself, the fault lies with the latter. Why are they so ready to go down on their knees to my lord? A man can’t help ‘condescending’ to another who will persist in kissing his shoestrings. They respect rank in England--the people seem almost to adore it here.

As an instance of the intense veneration for lords which distinguishes this county of Cork, I may mention what occurred afterwards. The members of the Cork Society gave a dinner to their guests of the Irish Agricultural Association. The founder of the latter, as Lord Downshire stated, was Mr. Purcell: and as it was agreed on all hands that the Society so founded was likely to prove of the greatest benefit to the country, one might have supposed that any compliment paid to it might have been paid to it through its founder. Not so. The Society asked the lords to dine, and Mr. Purcell to meet the lords.

After the grand dinner came a grand ball, which was indeed one of the gayest and prettiest sights ever seen; nor was it the less agreeable, because the ladies of the city mixed with the ladies from the country, and vied with them in grace and beauty. The charming gaiety and frankness of the Irish ladies have been noted and admired by every foreigner who has had the good fortune to mingle in their society; and I hope it is not detracting from the merit of the upper classes to say that the lower are not a whit less pleasing. I never saw in any country such a general grace of manner and ladyhood. In the midst of their gaiety, too, it must be remembered that they are the chastest of women, and that no country in Europe can boast of such a general purity.

In regard of the Munster ladies, I had the pleasure to be present at two or three evening parties at Cork, and must say that they seem to excel the English ladies not only in wit and vivacity, but in the still more important article of the toilette. They are as well dressed as Frenchwomen, and incomparably handsomer; and if ever this book reaches a thirtieth edition, and I can find out better words to express admiration, they shall be inserted here. Among the ladies’ accomplishments, I may mention that I have heard in two or three private families such fine music as is rarely to be met with out of a capital. In one house we had a supper and songs afterwards, in the old honest fashion. Time was in Ireland when the custom was a common one; but the world grows languid as it grows genteel; and I fancy it requires more than ordinary spirit and courage now for a good old gentleman, at the head of his kind family table, to strike up a good old family song.

The delightful old gentleman who sung the song here mentioned could not help talking of the temperance movement with a sort of regret, and said that all the fun had gone out of Ireland since Father Mathew banished the whisky from it. Indeed, any stranger going amongst the people can perceive that they are now anything but gay. I have seen a great number of crowds and meetings of people in all parts of Ireland, and found them all gloomy. There is nothing like the merry-making one reads of in the Irish novels. Lever and Maxwell must be taken as chroniclers of the old times--the pleasant but wrong old times--for which one can’t help having an antiquarian fondness.

On the day we arrived at Cork, and as the passengers descended from ‘the drag,’ a stout, handsome, honest-looking man, of some two-and-forty years, was passing by, and received a number of bows from the crowd around. It was with whose face a thousand little print-shop windows had already rendered me familiar. He shook hands with the master of the carriage very cordially, and just as cordially with the master’s coachman, a disciple of temperance, as at least half Ireland is at present. The day after the famous dinner at MacDowall’s, some of us came down rather late, perhaps in consequence of the events of the night before (I think it was Lord Bernard’s quotation from Virgil, or else the absence of the currant-jelly for the venison, that occasioned a slight headache among some of us, and an extreme longing for soda-water),--and there was the Apostle of Temperance seated at the table drinking tea. Some of us felt a little ashamed of ourselves, and did not like to ask somehow for the soda-water in such an awful presence as that. Besides, it would have been a confession to a Catholic priest, and, as a Protestant, I am above it.

The world likes to know how a great man appears even to a valet de chambre, and I suppose it is one’s vanity that is flattered in such rare company to find the great man quite as unassuming as the very smallest personage present; and so like to other mortals, that we would not know him to be a great man at all, did we not know his name, and what he had done. There is nothing remarkable in Mr. Mathew’s manner, except that it is exceedingly simple, hearty, and manly, and that he does not wear the downcast, demure look which, I know not why, certainly characterises the chief part of the gentlemen of his profession. Whence comes that general scowl which darkens the faces of the Irish priesthood? I have met a score of these reverend gentlemen in the country, and not one of them seemed to look or speak frankly, except Mr. Mathew and a couple more. He is almost the only man, too, that I have met in Ireland, who, in speaking of public matters, did not talk as a partisan. With the state of the country, of landlord, tenant, and peasantry, he seemed to be most curiously and intimately acquainted; speaking of their wants, differences, and the means of bettering them, with the minutest practical knowledge. And it was impossible in hearing him to know, but from previous acquaintance with his character, whether he was Whig or Tory, Catholic or Protestant. Why does not Government make a Privy Councillor of him?--that is, if he would honour the Right Honourable body by taking a seat amongst them. His knowledge of the people is prodigious, and their confidence in him as great; and what a touching attachment that is which these poor fellows show to any one who has their cause at heart--even to any one who says he has!

Avoiding all political questions, no man seems more eager than he for the practical improvement of this country. Leases and rents, farming improvements, reading societies, music societies--he was full of these, and of his schemes of temperance above all. He never misses a chance of making a convert, and has his hand ready and a pledge in his pocket for sick or poor. One of his disciples in a livery-coat came into the room with a tray--Mr. Mathew recognised him and shook him by the hand directly; so he did with the strangers who were presented to him; and not with a courtly popularity-hunting air, but, as it seemed, from sheer hearty kindness, and a desire to do every one good.

When breakfast was done--(he took but one cup of tea, and says that, from having been a great consumer of tea and refreshing liquids before, a small cup of tea, and one glass of water at dinner, now serve him for his day’s beverage)--he took the ladies of our party to see his burying-ground--a new and handsome cemetery, lying a little way out of the town, and where, thank God! Protestants and Catholics may lie together, without clergymen quarrelling over their coffins.

It is a handsome piece of ground, and was formerly a botanic garden; but the funds failed for that undertaking, as they have for a thousand other public enterprises in this poor disunited country; and so it has been converted into a hortus siccus for us mortals. There is already a pretty large collection. In the midst is a place for Mathew himself--honour to him living or dead! Meanwhile, numerous stately monuments have been built, flowers planted here and there over dear remains, and the garden in which they lie is rich, green, and beautiful. Here is a fine statue, by Hogan, of a weeping genius that broods over the tomb of an honest merchant and clothier of the city. He took a liking to the artist, his fellow-townsman, and ordered his own monument, and had the gratification to see it arrive from Rome a few weeks before his death. A prettier thing even than the statue is the tomb of a little boy, which has been shut in by a large and curious grille of ironwork. The father worked it, a blacksmith, whose darling the child was, and he spent three years in hammering out this mausoleum. It is the beautiful story of the pot of ointment told again at the poor blacksmith’s anvil; and who can but like him for placing this fine gilded cage over the body of his poor little one? Presently you come to a Frenchwoman’s tomb, with a French epitaph, by a French husband, and a pot of artificial flowers in a niche--a wig, and a pot of rouge, as it were, just to make the dead look passably well. It is his manner of showing his sympathy for an immortal soul that has passed away. The poor may be buried here for nothing; and here, too, once more THANK GOD! each may rest without priests or parsons scowling hell-fire at his neighbour unconscious under the grass.

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