Household Words, No. 15, July 6, 1850 : A weekly journal

By Charles Dickens

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Title: Household Words, No. 15, July 6, 1850
        A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens


        
Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78179]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78179

Credits: Richard Tonsing, Steven desJardins, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 15, JULY 6, 1850 ***


     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.




                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.


                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.


       N^{o.} 15.]      SATURDAY, JULY 6, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._




                  THE OLD LADY IN THREADNEEDLE STREET.


Perhaps there is no Old Lady who has attained to such great distinction
in the world, as this highly respectable female. Even the Old Lady who
lived on a hill, and who, if she’s not gone, lives there still; or that
other Old Lady who lived in a shoe, and had so many children she didn’t
know what to do—are unknown to fame, compared with the Old Lady of
Threadneedle Street. In all parts of the civilised earth the
imaginations of men, women, and children figure this tremendous Old Lady
of Threadneedle Street in some rich shape or other. Throughout the
length and breadth of England, old ladies dote upon her; young ladies
smile upon her; old gentlemen make much of her, young gentlemen woo her;
everybody courts the smiles, and dreads the coldness, of the powerful
Old Lady in Threadneedle Street. Even prelates have been said to be fond
of her; and Ministers of State to have been unable to resist her
attractions. She is next to omnipotent in the three great events of
human life. In spite of the old saw, far fewer marriages are made in
Heaven, than with an eye to Threadneedle Street. To be born in the good
graces of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, is to be born to fortune:
to die in her good books, is to leave a far better inheritance, as the
world goes, than “the grinning honour that Sir Walter hath,” in
Westminster Abbey. And there she is, for ever in Threadneedle Street,
another name for wealth and thrift, threading her golden-eyed needle all
the year round.

This Old Lady, when she first set up, carried on business in Grocers’
Hall, Poultry; but in 1732 she quarrelled with her landlords about a
renewal of her lease, and built a mansion of her own in Threadneedle
Street. She reared her new abode on the site of the house and garden of
a former director of her affairs, Sir John Houblon. This was a modest
structure, somewhat dignified by having a statue of William the Third
placed before it; but not the more imposing from being at the end of an
arched court, densely surrounded with habitations, and abutting on the
churchyard of St. Christopher le Stocks.

But now, behold her, a prosperous gentlewoman in the hundred and
fifty-seventh year of her age; “the oldest inhabitant” of Threadneedle
Street! There never was such an insatiable Old Lady for business. She
has gradually enlarged her premises, until she has spread them over four
acres; confiscating to her own use not only the parish church of St.
Christopher, but the greater part of the parish itself.

We count it among the great events of our young existence, that we had,
some days since, the honour of visiting the Old Lady. It was not without
an emotion of awe that we passed her Porter’s Lodge. The porter himself,
blazoned in royal scarlet, and massively embellished with gold lace, is
an adumbration of her dignity and wealth. His cocked hat advertises her
stable antiquity as plainly as if she had written up, in imitation of
some of her lesser neighbours, “established in 1694.” This foreshadowing
became reality when we passed through the Hall—the tellers’ hall. A
sensation of unbounded riches permeated every sense, except, alas! that
of touch. The music of golden thousands clattered in the ear, as they
jingled on counters until its last echoes were strangled in the puckers
of tightened money-bags, or died under the clasps of purses. Wherever
the eye turned, it rested on money; money of every possible variety;
money in all shapes; money of all colours. There was yellow money, white
money, brown money; gold money, silver money, copper money; paper money,
pen and ink money. Money was wheeled about in trucks; money was carried
about in bags; money was scavengered about with shovels. Thousands of
sovereigns were jerked hither and thither from hand to hand—grave games
of pitch and toss were played with staid solemnity; piles of bank
notes—competent to buy whole German dukedoms and Italian
principalities—hustled to and fro with as much indifference as if they
were (as they had been) old rags.

This Hall of the Old Lady’s overpowered us with a sense of wealth;
oppressed us with a golden dream of Riches. From this vision an
instinctive appeal to our own pockets, and a few miserable shillings,
awakened us to Reality. When thus aroused we were in one of the Old
Lady’s snug, elegant, waiting-rooms, which is luxuriously
Turkey-carpeted and adorned with two excellent portraits of two ancient
cashiers; regarding one of whom the public were warned:—

                        “Sham Abraham you may,
                        I’ve often heard say:
                But you mustn’t sham ‘Abraham Newland.’”

There are several conference-rooms for gentlemen who require a little
private conversation with the Old Lady—perhaps on the subject of
discounts.

It is no light thing to send in one’s card to the Foster-Mother of
British commerce; the Soul of the State; “the Sun,” according to Sir
Francis Baring, around which the agriculture, trade, and finance of this
country revolves; the mighty heart of active capital, through whose
arteries and veins flows the entire circulating medium of this great
country. It was not, therefore, without agitation that we were ushered
from the waiting-room, into that celebrated private apartment of the Old
Lady of Threadneedle Street—the Parlour—the Bank Parlour, the inmost
mystery—the _cella_ of the great Temple of Riches.

The ordinary associations called up by the notion of an old lady’s
comfortable parlour, were not fulfilled by this visit. There is no
domestic snugness, no easy chair, no cat, no parrot, no japanned
bellows, no portrait of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold in the
Royal Box at Drury Lane Theatre; no kettle-holder, no worsted rug for
the urn, no brass footman for the buttered toast, in the parlour in
Threadneedle Street. On the contrary, the room is extensive—supported by
pillars; is of grand and true proportions; and embellished with
architectural ornaments in the best taste. It has a long table for the
confidential managers of the Old Lady’s affairs (she calls these
gentlemen her Directors) to sit at; and usually, a side table fittingly
supplied with a ready-laid lunch.

The Old Lady’s “Drawing” Room is as unlike—but then she is such a
peculiar Old Lady!—any ordinary Drawing-room as need be. It has hardly
any furniture, but desks, stools, and books. It is of immense
proportions, and has no carpet. The vast amount of visitors the Old Lady
receives between nine and four every day, would make lattice-work in one
forenoon of the stoutest carpet ever manufactured. Everybody who comes
into the Old Lady’s Drawing-room delivers his credentials to her
gentlemen-ushers, who are quick in examining the same, and exact in the
observance of all points of form. So highly-prized, however, is a
presentation (on any grand scale) to the Old Lady’s Drawing-room,
notwithstanding its plainness, that there is no instance of a
Drawing-room at Court being more sought after. Indeed, it has become a
kind of proverb that the way to Court often lies through the Old Lady’s
apartments, and some suppose that the Court Sticks are of gold and
silver in compliment to her.

As to the individual appearance of the Old Lady herself, we are
authorised to state that the portrait of a Lady (accompanied by eleven
balls on a sprig, and a beehive) which appears in the upper left-hand
corner of all the Bank of England Notes, is NOT the portrait of _the_
Lady. She invariably wears a cap of silver paper, with her yellow hair
gathered carefully underneath. When she carries any defensive or
offensive weapon, it is not a lance, but a pen; and her modesty would on
no account permit her to appear in such loose drapery as is worn by the
party in question—who we understand is depicted as a warning to the
youthful merchants of this country to avoid the fate of George Barnwell.

In truth, like the Delphian mystery, SHE of Threadneedle Street is
invisible, and delivers her oracles through her high priests: and, as
Herodotus got his information from the priests in Egypt, so did we learn
all we know about the Bank from the great officers of the Myth of
Threadneedle Street. All of them are remarkable for great intelligence
and good humour, particularly one MR. MATTHEW MARSHALL; for whom the Old
Lady is supposed to have a sneaking kindness, as she is continually
promising to pay him the most stupendous amounts of money. From what
these gentlemen told us, we are prepared unhesitatingly to affirm in the
teeth of the assertions of Plutarch, and Pliny, and Justin, that
although Crœsus might have been well enough to do in the world in his
day, he was but a pettifogger compared with the Great Lady of St.
Christopher le Stocks. The Lydian king never employed nine hundred
clerks, or accommodated eight hundred of them under one roof; and if he
could have done either, he would have been utterly unable to muster one
hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year to pay them. He never had
bullion in his cellars, at any one time, to the value of sixteen
millions and a half sterling, as our Old Lady has lately averaged; nor
“other securities”—much more marketable than the precious stones Crœsus
showed to Solon—to the amount of thirty millions. Besides, _all_ his
capital was “dead weight;” that in Threadneedle Street is active, and is
represented by an average paper currency of twenty millions per annum.

After this statement of facts, we trust that modern poets when they want
a hyperbole for wealth will cease to cite Crœsus, and draw their future
inspirations from the shrine and cellars of the Temple opposite the
Auction Mart; or, as the late Mr. George Robins designated it when
professionally occupied, “The Great House over the way.”

When we withdrew from the inmost fane of this Temple, we were ushered by
the priest, who superintends the manufacture of the mysterious Deity’s
oracles, into those recesses of her Temple in which these are made. Here
we perceived, that, besides carrying on the ordinary operations of
banking, the Old Lady is an extensive printer, engraver, bookbinder, and
publisher. She maintains a steam-engine to drive letter-press and
copper-plate printing machines, besides the other machinery which is
employed in various operations, from making thousand pound notes to
weighing single sovereigns. It is not until you see three steam-printing
machines—such as we use for this publication—and hear that they are
constantly revolving, to produce, at so many thousand sheets per hour,
the printed forms necessary for the accurate account-keeping of this
great Central Establishment and its twelve provincial branches, that you
are fully impressed with the magnitude of the Old Lady’s transactions.
In this one department no fewer than three hundred account-books are
printed, ruled, bound, and used every week. During that short time they
are filled with MS. by the eight hundred subordinates and their chiefs.
By way of contrast we saw the single ledger which sufficed to post up
the daily transactions of the Old Lady on her first establishment in
business. It is no bigger than that of a small tradesman’s, and served
to contain a record of the year’s accounts. Until within the last few
years, visitors to the Bullion Office were shown the old box into which
the books of the Bank were put every night for safety during the Old
Lady’s early career. This receptacle is no bigger than a seaman’s chest.
A spacious fire-proof room is now nightly filled with each day’s
accounts, and they descend to it by means of a great hydraulic trap in
the Drawing Office; the mountain of calculation when collected being too
huge to be moved by human agency.

These works are, of course, only produced for private reference; but the
Old Lady’s publishing business is as extensive as it is profitable and
peculiar. Although her works are the reverse of heavy or erudite—being
“flimsy” to a proverb—yet the eagerness with which they are sought by
the public, surpasses that displayed for the productions of the greatest
geniuses who ever enlightened the world: she is, therefore, called upon
to print enormous numbers of each edition,—generally one hundred
thousand copies; and reprints of equally large impressions are demanded,
six or seven times a year. She is protected by a stringent copyright; in
virtue of which, piracy is felony, and was, until 1831, punished with
death. The very paper is copyright, and to imitate even that entails
transportation. Indeed its merits entitle it to every protection, for it
is a very superior article. It is so thin that each sheet, before it is
sized, weighs only eighteen grains; and so strong, that, when sized and
doubled, a single sheet is capable of suspending a weight of fifty-six
pounds.

The literature of these popular prints is concise to terseness. A
certain individual, duly accredited by the Old Lady, whose autograph
appears in one corner, promises to pay to the before-mentioned Mr.
Matthew Marshall, or bearer on demand, a certain sum, for the Governor
and Company of the Bank of England. There is a date and a number; for
the Old Lady’s sheets are published in Numbers; but, unlike other
periodicals, no two copies of hers are alike. Each has a set of
numerals, shown on no other.—It must not be supposed from the utter
absence of rhetoric in this Great Woman’s literature, that it is devoid
of ornament. On the contrary, it is illustrated by eminent artists: the
illustrations consisting of the waves of a watermark made in the paper;
a large black blot, with the statement in white letters of the sum which
is promised to be paid; and the portrait referred to in a former part of
this account of the Wonderful Old Lady.

She makes it a practice to print thirty thousand copies of these works
daily. Everything possible is done by machinery,—engraving, printing,
numbering; but we refrain from entering into further details of this
portion of the Old Lady’s Household here, as we are preparing a review
of her valuable works, which shall shortly appear, in the form of a
History of a Bank note. The publication department is so admirably
conducted, that a record of each individual piece of paper launched on
the ocean of public favour is kept, and its history traced till its
return; for another peculiarity of the Old Lady’s establishment is, that
every impression put forth comes back—with few exceptions—in process of
time to her shelves; where it is kept for ten years, and then burnt.
This great house is, therefore, a huge circulating library. The daily
average number of notes brought back into the Old Lady’s lap—examined to
detect forgeries; defaced; entered upon the record made when they were
issued; and so stored away that they can be reproduced at any given
half-hour for ten years to come,—is twenty-five thousands. On the day of
our visit, there came in twenty-eight thousand and seventy-four of her
picturesque pieces of paper, representing one million, one thousand, two
hundred and seventy pounds sterling, to be dealt with as above,
preparatory to their decennial slumber on her library shelves.

The apartment in which the notes are kept _previous_ to issue, is the
Old Lady’s Store-room. There is no jam, there are no pickles, no
preserves, no gallipots, no stoneware jars, no spices, no anything of
that sort, in the Store-room of the Wonderful Old Lady. You might die of
hunger in it. Your sweet tooth would decay and tumble out, before it
could find the least gratification in the Old Lady’s Store-room. There
was a mouse found there once, but it was dead, and nothing but skin and
bone. It is a grim room, fitted up all round with great iron-safes. They
look as if they might be the Old Lady’s ovens, never heated. But they
are very warm in the City sense; for when the Old Lady’s two
store-keepers have, each with his own key, unlocked his own one of the
double locks attached to each, and opened the door, Mr. Matthew Marshall
gives you to hold a little bundle of paper, value two millions sterling;
and, clutching it with a strange tingling, you feel disposed to knock
Mr. Matthew Marshall down, and, like a patriotic Frenchman, to descend
into the streets.

No tyro need be told that these notes are representatives of weightier
value, and were invented partly to supersede the necessity of carrying
about ponderous parcels of precious metal. Hence—to treat of it
soberly—four paper parcels taken out, and placed in our hands—consisting
of four reams of Bank notes ready for issue, and not much more bulky
than a thick octavo volume—though they represent gold of the weight of
_two tons_, and of the value of two millions of pounds sterling, yet
weigh not quite one pound avoirdupois each, or nearly four pounds
together. The value in gold of what we could convey away in a couple of
side pockets (if simply permitted by the dear Old Lady in Threadneedle
Street, without proceeding to extremities upon the person of the Chief
Cashier) would have required, but for her admirable publications, two of
Barclay and Perkins’s strongest horses to draw.[1]

Footnote 1:

  One thousand sovereigns weigh twenty-one pounds, and five hundred and
  twelve Bank-notes weigh exactly one pound.

We have already made mention of the Old Lady’s Lodge, Hall, Parlour,
Store-room, and Drawing-room. Her Cellars are not less curious. In these
she keeps neither wine, nor beer, nor wood, nor coal. They are devoted
solely to the reception of the precious metals. They are like the caves
of Treasures in the Arabian Nights; the common Lamp that shows them
becomes a Wonderful Lamp in Mr. Marshall’s hands, and Mr. Marshall
becomes a Genie. Yet only by the power of association; for they are very
respectable arched cellars that would make dry skittle-grounds, and have
nothing rare about them but their glittering contents. One vault is full
of what might be barrels of oysters—if it were not the Russian Loan.
Another is rich here and there with piles of gold bars, set cross-wise,
like sandwiches at supper, or rich biscuits in a confectioner’s shop.
Another has a moonlight air from the presence of so much silver. Dusky
avenues branch off, where gold and silver amicably bide their time in
cool retreats, not looking at all mischievous here, or anxious to play
the Devil with our souls. Oh for such cellars at home! “Look out for
your young master half a dozen bars of the ten bin.” “Let me have a
wedge of the old crusted.” “Another Million before we part—only one
Million more, to finish with!” The Temperance Cause would make but slow
way, as to such cellars, we have a shrewd suspicion!

Beauty of colour is here associated with worth. One of these brilliant
bars of gold weighs sixteen pounds troy, and its value is eight hundred
pounds sterling. A pile of these, lying in a dark corner—like neglected
cheese, or bars of yellow soap—and which might be contained in an
ordinary tea-chest, is worth two hundred and ten thousand pounds.
Fortune herself transmuted into metal seems to repose at our feet. Yet
this is only an _eightieth_ part of the wealth contained in the Old
Lady’s cellars.

The future history of this metal is explained in three sentences; it is
coined at the Mint, distributed to the public, worn by friction (or
“sweated” by Jews) till it becomes light. What happens to it then we
shall see.

By a seldom failing law of monetary attraction nearly every species of
cash, “hard” or soft, metallic or paper, finds its way some time or
other back to the extraordinary Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. All the
sovereigns returned from the banking-houses are consigned to a secluded
cellar; and, when you enter it, you will possibly fancy yourself on the
premises of a clock-maker who works by steam. Your attention is speedily
concentrated to a small brass box not larger than an eight-day pendule,
the works of which are impelled by steam. This is a self-acting weighing
machine, which with unerring precision tells which sovereigns are of
standard weight, and which are light, and of its own accord separates
the one from the other. Imagine a long trough or spout—half a tube that
has been split into two sections—of such a semi-circumference as holds
sovereigns edgeways, and of sufficient length to allow of two hundred of
them to rest in that position one against another. This trough thus
charged is fixed slopingly upon the machine over a little table as big
as that of an ordinary sovereigns-balance. The coin nearest to the
Lilliputian platform drops upon it, being pushed forward by the weight
of those behind. Its own weight presses the table down; but how far
down? Upon that hangs the whole merit and discriminating power of the
machine. At the back, and on each side of this small table, two little
hammers move by steam backwards and forwards at different elevations. If
the sovereign be full weight, down sinks the table too low for the
higher hammer to hit it; but the lower one strikes the edge, and off the
sovereign tumbles into a receiver to the left. The table pops up again,
receives, perhaps, a light sovereign, and the higher hammer having
always first strike, knocks it into a receiver to the right, time enough
to escape its colleague, which, when it comes forward, has nothing to
hit, and returns to allow the table to be elevated again. In this way
the reputation of thirty-three sovereigns is established or destroyed
every minute. The light weights are taken to a clipping machine, slit at
the rate of two hundred a minute, weighed in a lump, the balance of
deficiency charged to the banker from whom they were received, and sent
to the Mint to be re-coined. Those which have passed muster are
re-issued to the public. The inventor of this beautiful little detector
was Mr. Cotton, a former governor. The comparatively few sovereigns
brought in by the general public are weighed in ordinary scales by the
tellers. The average loss upon each light coin, on an average of
thirty-five thousands taken in 1843, was twopence three farthings.

The business of the “Great House” is divided into two branches; the
issue and the banking department. The latter has increased so rapidly of
late years, that the last addition the Old Lady was constrained to make
to her house was the immense Drawing-room aforesaid, for her customers
and their payees to draw cash on checks and to make deposits. Under this
noble apartment is the Strong Room, containing private property,
supposed to be of enormous value. It is placed there for safety by the
constituents of the Bank, and is concealed in tin boxes, on which the
owners’ names are legibly painted. The descent into this stronghold—by
means of the hydraulic trap we have spoken of—is so eminently
theatrical, that we believe the Head of the Department, on going down
with the books, is invariably required to strike an attitude, and to
laugh in three sepulchral syllables; while the various clerks above
express surprise and consternation.

Besides private customers, everybody knows that our Old Lady does all
the banking business for the British Government. She pays the interest
to each Stock-holder in the National Debt, receives certain portions of
the revenue, &c. A separate set of offices is necessary, to keep all
such accounts, and these Stock Offices contain the most varied and
extensive collection of autographs extant. Those whom Fortune entitles
to dividends, must, by themselves or by their agents, sign the Stock
books. The last signature of Handel, the composer, and that upon which
Henry Fauntleroy was condemned and executed, are among the foremost of
these lions. Here, standing in a great long building of divers stories,
looking dimly upward through iron gratings, and dimly downward through
iron gratings, and into musty chambers diverging into the walls on
either hand, you may muse upon the National Debt. All the sheep that
ever came out of Northamptonshire, seem to have yielded up their skins
to furnish the registers in which its accounts are kept. Sweating and
wasting in this vast silent library, like manuscripts in a mouldy old
convent, are the records of the Dividends that are, and have been, and
of the Dividends unclaimed. Some men would sell their fathers into
slavery, to have the rummaging of these old volumes. Some, who would let
the Tree of Knowledge wither while they lay contemptuously at its feet,
would bestir themselves to pluck at these leaves, like shipwrecked
mariners. These are the books to profit by. This is the place for X. Y.
Z. to hear of something to his advantage in. This is the land of Mr.
Joseph Ady’s dreams. This is the dusty fountain whence those wondrous
paragraphs occasionally flow into the papers, disclosing how a labouring
thatcher has come into a hundred thousand pounds—a long, long way to
come—and gone out of his wits—not half so far to go. Oh, wonderful Old
Lady! threading the needle with the golden eye all through the labyrinth
of the National Debt, and hiding it in such dry hay-stacks as are
rotting here!

With all her wealth, and all her power, and all her business, and all
her responsibilities, she is not a purse-proud Old Lady; but a dear,
kind, liberal, benevolent Old Lady; so particularly considerate to her
servants, that the meanest of them never speaks of her otherwise than
with affection. Though her domestic rules are uncommonly strict; though
she is very severe upon “mistakes,” be they ever so unintentional;
though till lately she made her in-door servants keep good hours, and
would not allow a lock to be turned or a bolt to be drawn after eleven
at night, even to admit her dearly beloved Matthew Marshall himself—yet
she exercises a truly tender and maternal care over her family of eight
hundred strong. To benefit the junior branches, she has recently set
aside a spacious room, and the sum of five hundred pounds, to form a
library. With this handsome capital at starting, and eight shillings a
year subscribed by the youngsters, an excellent collection of books will
soon be formed. Here, from three till eight o’clock every lawful day,
the subscribers can assemble for recreation or study; or, if they prefer
it, they can take books to their homes. A member of the Committee of
Management attends in turn during the specified hours—a self-imposed
duty, in the highest degree creditable to, but no more than is to be
expected from, the stewards of a Good Mistress; who, when any of her
servants become superannuated, soothes declining age with a pension. The
last published return states the number of pensioners at one hundred and
ninety three; each of whom received on an average 161_l._, or an
aggregate of upwards of 31,000_l._ per annum.

Her kindness is not unrequited. Whenever anything ails her, the
assiduous attention of her people is only equalled by her own bounty to
them. When dangerously ill of the Panic in 1825, and the outflow of her
circulating medium was so violent that she was in danger of bleeding to
death, some of her upper servants never left her for a fortnight. At the
crisis of her disorder, on a memorable Saturday night (December the
seventeenth) her Deputy-Governor—who even then had not seen his own
children for a week—reached Downing Street “reeling with fatigue,” and
was just able to call out to the King’s Ministers—then anxiously
deliberating on the dear Old Lady’s case—that she was out of danger!
Another of her managing men lost his life in his anxiety for her safety,
during the burning of the Royal Exchange, in January, 1838. When the
fire broke out, the cold was intense; and although he had but just
recovered from an attack of the gout, he rushed to the rescue of his
beloved Old Mistress, saw everything done that could be done for her
safety, and died from his exertions. Although the Old Lady is now more
hale and hearty than ever, two of the Senior Clerks sit up in turn every
night, to watch over her; in which duty they are assisted by a company
of Foot Guards.

The kind Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has, in short, managed to
attach her dependants to her by the strongest of ties—that of love. So
pleased are some with her service, that when even temporarily resting
from it, they feel miserable. A late Chief Cashier never solicited but
one holiday, and that for only a fortnight. In three days he returned
expressing his extreme disgust with every sort of recreation but that
afforded him by the Old Lady’s business. The last words of another old
servant when on his death-bed, were, “Oh, that I could only die on the
Bank steps!”




                         THE SERF OF POBEREZE.


The materials for the following tale were furnished to the writer while
travelling last year near the spot on which the events it narrates took
place. It is intended to convey a notion of some of the phases of
Polish, or rather Russian serfdom (for, as truly explained by one of the
characters in a succeeding page, it _is_ Russian), and of the
catastrophes it has occasioned, not only in Catherine’s time, but
occasionally at the present. The Polish nobles—themselves in
slavery—earnestly desire the emancipation of their serfs, which Russian
domination forbids.

The small town of Pobereze stands at the foot of a stony mountain,
watered by numerous springs in the district of Podolia, in Poland. It
consists of a mass of miserable cabins, with a Catholic chapel and two
Greek churches in the midst, the latter distinguished by their gilded
towers. On one side of the marketplace stands the only inn, and on the
opposite side are several shops, from whose doors and windows look out
several dirtily dressed Jews. At a little distance, on a hill covered
with vines and fruit-trees, stands the Palace, which does not, perhaps,
exactly merit such an appellation, but who would dare to call otherwise
the dwelling of the lord of the domain?

On the morning when our tale opens, there had issued from this palace
the common enough command to the superintendent of the estate, to
furnish the master with a couple of strong boys, for service in the
stables, and a young girl, to be employed in the wardrobe. Accordingly,
a number of the best-looking young peasants of Olgogrod assembled in the
broad avenue leading to the palace. Some were accompanied by their
sorrowful and weeping parents, in all of whose hearts, however, rose the
faint and whispered hope, “Perhaps it will not be _my_ child they will
choose!”

Being brought into the court-yard of the palace, the Count Roszynski,
with the several members of his family, had come out to pass in review
his growing subjects. He was a small and insignificant-looking man,
about fifty years of age, with deep-set eyes and overhanging brows. His
wife, who was nearly of the same age, was immensely stout, with a vulgar
face and a loud disagreeable voice. She made herself ridiculous in
endeavouring to imitate the manners and bearing of the aristocracy, into
whose sphere she and her husband were determined to force themselves, in
spite of the humbleness of their origin. The father of the “Right
Honourable” Count Roszynski was a valet, who, having been a great
favourite with his master, amassed sufficient money to enable his son,
who inherited it, to purchase the extensive estate of Olgogrod, and with
it the sole proprietorship of 1600 human beings. Over them he had
complete control; and, when maddened by oppression, if they dared
resent, woe unto them! They could be thrust into a noisome dungeon, and
chained by one hand from the light of day for years, until their very
existence was forgotten by all except the jailer who brought daily their
pitcher of water and morsel of dry bread.

Some of the old peasants say that Sava, father of the young peasant
girl, who stands by the side of an old woman, at the head of her
companions in the court-yard, is immured in one of these subterranean
jails. Sava was always about the Count, who, it was said, had brought
him from some distant land, with his little motherless child. Sava
placed her under the care of an old man and woman, who had the charge of
the bees in a forest near the palace, where he came occasionally to
visit her. But once, six long months passed, and he did not come! In
vain Anielka wept, in vain she cried, “Where is my father?”—No father
appeared. At last it was said that Sava had been sent to a long distance
with a large sum of money, and had been killed by robbers. In the ninth
year of one’s life the most poignant grief is quickly effaced, and after
six months Anielka ceased to grieve. The old people were very kind to
her, and loved her as if she were their own child. That Anielka might be
chosen to serve in the palace never entered their head, for who would be
so barbarous as to take the child away from an old woman of seventy and
her aged husband?

To-day was the first time in her life that she had been so far from
home. She looked curiously on all she saw,—particularly on a young lady
about her own age, beautifully dressed, and a youth of eighteen, who had
apparently just returned from a ride on horseback, as he held a whip in
his hand, whilst walking up and down examining the boys who were placed
in a row before him. He chose two amongst them, and the boys were led
away to the stables.

“And I choose this young girl,” said Constantia Roszynski, indicating
Anielka; “she is the prettiest of them all. I do not like ugly faces
about me.”

When Constantia returned to the drawing-room, she gave orders for
Anielka to be taken to her apartments, and placed under the tutelage of
Mademoiselle Dufour, a French maid, recently arrived from the first
milliner’s shop in Odessa. Poor girl! when they separated her from her
adopted mother, and began leading her towards the palace, she rushed,
with a shriek of agony, from them, and grasped her old protectress
tightly in her arms! They were torn violently asunder, and the Count
Roszynski quietly asked, “Is it her daughter, or her grand-daughter?”

“Neither, my lord,—only an adopted child.”

“But who will lead the old woman home, as she is blind?”

“I will, my lord,” replied one of his servants, bowing to the ground; “I
will let her walk by the side of my horse, and when she is in her cabin
she will have her old husband,—they must take care of each other.”

So saying, he moved away with the rest of the peasants and domestics.
But the poor old woman had to be dragged along by two men; for in the
midst of her shrieks and tears she had fallen to the ground, almost
without life.

And Anielka? They did not allow her to weep long. She had now to sit all
day in the corner of a room to sew. She was expected to do everything
well from the first; and if she did not, she was kept without food or
cruelly punished. Morning and evening she had to help Mdlle. Dufour to
dress and undress her mistress. But Constantia, although she looked with
hauteur on everybody beneath her, and expected to be slavishly obeyed,
was tolerably kind to the poor orphan. Her true torment began, when, on
leaving her young lady’s room, she had to assist Mdlle. Dufour.
Notwithstanding that she tried sincerely to do her best, she was never
able to satisfy her, or to draw from her aught but harsh reproaches.

Thus two months passed.

One day Mdlle. Dufour went very early to confession, and Anielka was
seized with an eager longing to gaze once more in peace and freedom on
the beautiful blue sky and green trees, as she used to do when the first
rays of the rising sun streamed in at the window of the little forest
cabin. She ran into the garden. Enchanted by the sight of so many
beautiful flowers, she went farther and farther along the smooth and
winding walks, till she entered the forest. She who had been so long
away from her beloved trees, roamed where they were thickest. Here she
gazes boldly around. She sees no one! She is alone! A little farther on
she meets with a rivulet which flows through the forest. Here she
remembers that she has not yet prayed. She kneels down, and with hands
clasped and eyes upturned she begins to sing in a sweet voice the Hymn
to the Virgin.

As she went on she sang louder and with increased fervour. Her breast
heaved with emotion, her eyes shone with unusual brilliancy; but when
the hymn was finished she lowered her head, tears began to fall over her
cheeks, until at last she sobbed aloud. She might have remained long in
this condition, had not some one come behind her, saying, “Do not cry,
my poor girl; it is better to sing than to weep.” The intruder raised
her head, wiped her eyes with his handkerchief, and kissed her on the
forehead.

It was the Count’s son, Leon!

“You must not cry,” he continued; “be calm, and when the filipony
(pedlars) come, buy yourself a pretty handkerchief.” He then gave her a
rouble and walked away. Anielka, after concealing the coin in her
corset, ran quickly back to the palace.

Fortunately, Mdlle. Dufour had not yet returned, and Anielka seated
herself in her accustomed corner. She often took out the rouble to gaze
fondly upon it, and set to work to make a little purse, which, having
fastened to a ribbon, she hung round her neck. She did not dream of
spending it, for it would have deeply grieved her to part with the gift
of the only person in the whole house who had looked kindly on her.

From this time Anielka remained always in her young mistress’s room; she
was better dressed, and Mdlle. Dufour ceased to persecute her. To what
did she owe this sudden change? Perhaps to a remonstrance from Leon.
Constantia ordered Anielka to sit beside her whilst taking her lessons
from her music-masters, and on her going to the drawing-room, she was
left in her apartments alone. Being thus more kindly treated, Anielka
lost by degrees her timidity; and when her young mistress, whilst
occupied over some embroidery, would tell her to sing, she did so boldly
and with a steady voice. A greater favour awaited her. Constantia, when
unoccupied, began teaching Anielka to read in Polish; and Mdlle. Dufour
thought it politic to follow the example of her mistress, and began to
teach her French.

Meanwhile, a new kind of torment commenced. Having easily learnt the two
languages, Anielka acquired an irresistible passion for reading. Books
had for her the charm of the forbidden fruit, for she could only read by
stealth at night, or when her mistress went visiting in the
neighbourhood. The kindness hitherto shown her, for a time, began to
relax. Leon had set off on a tour, accompanied by his old tutor, and a
bosom friend as young, as gay, and as thoughtless as himself.

So passed the two years of Leon’s absence. When he returned, Anielka was
seventeen, and had become tall and handsome. No one who had not seen her
during this time, would have recognised her. Of this number was Leon. In
the midst of perpetual gaiety and change, it was not possible he could
have remembered a poor peasant girl; but in Anielka’s memory he had
remained as a superior being, as her benefactor, as the only one who had
spoken kindly to her, when poor, neglected, forlorn! When in some French
romance she met with a young man of twenty, of a noble character and
handsome appearance, she bestowed on him the name of Leon. The
recollection of the kiss he had given her ever brought a burning blush
to her cheek, and made her sigh deeply.

One day Leon came to his sister’s room. Anielka was there, seated in a
corner at work. Leon himself had considerably changed; from a boy he had
grown into a man. “I suppose Constantia,” he said, “you have been told
what a good boy I am, and with what docility I shall submit myself to
the matrimonial yoke, which the Count and Countess have provided for
me?” and he began whistling, and danced some steps of the Mazurka.

“Perhaps you will be refused,” said Constantia coldly.

“Refused! Oh, no. The old Prince has already given his consent, and as
for his daughter, she is desperately in love with me. Look at these
moustachios, could anything be more irresistible?” and he glanced in the
glass and twirled them round his fingers; then continuing in a graver
tone, he said, “To tell the sober truth, I cannot say that I
reciprocate. My intended is not at all to my taste. She is nearly
thirty, and so thin that whenever I look at her, I am reminded of my old
tutor’s anatomical sketches. But, thanks to her Parisian dress-maker,
she makes up a tolerably good figure, and looks well in a Cachemere. Of
all things, you know, I wished for a wife with an imposing appearance,
and I don’t care about love. I find it’s not fashionable, and only
exists in the exalted imagination of poets.”

“Surely people are in love with one another sometimes,” said the sister.

“Sometimes,” repeated Anielka, inaudibly. The dialogue had painfully
affected her, and she knew not why. Her heart beat quickly, and her face
was flushed, and made her look more lovely than ever.

“Perhaps. Of course we profess to adore every pretty woman,” Leon added
abruptly. “But, my dear sister, what a charming ladies’ maid you have!”
He approached the corner where Anielka sat, and bent on her a coarse
familiar smile. Anielka, although a serf, was displeased, and returned
it with a glance full of dignity. But when her eyes rested on the
youth’s handsome face, a feeling, which had been gradually and silently
growing in her young and inexperienced heart, predominated over her
pride and displeasure. She wished ardently to recal herself to Leon’s
memory, and half unconsciously raised her hand to the little purse which
always hung round her neck. She took from it the rouble he had given
her.

“See!” shouted Leon, “what a droll girl; how proud she is of her riches!
Why, girl, you are a woman of fortune, mistress of a whole rouble!”

“I hope she came by it honestly,” said the old Countess, who at this
moment entered.

At this insinuation, shame and indignation kept Anielka, for a time,
silent. She replaced the money quickly in its purse, with the bitter
thought that the few happy moments which had been so indelibly stamped
upon her memory, had been utterly forgotten by Leon. To clear herself,
she at last stammered out, seeing they all looked at her enquiringly,
“Do you not remember, M. Leon, that you gave me this coin two years ago
in the garden?”

“How odd!” exclaimed Leon, laughing, “do you expect me to remember all
the pretty girls to whom I have given money? But I suppose you are
right, or you would not have treasured up this unfortunate rouble as if
it were a holy relic. You should not be a miser, child; money is made to
be spent.”

“Pray, put an end to these jokes,” said Constantia impatiently; “I like
this girl, and I will not have her teased. She understands my ways
better than any one, and often puts me in good humour with her beautiful
voice.”

“Sing something for me, pretty damsel,” said Leon, “and I will give you
another rouble, a new and shining one.”

“Sing instantly,” said Constantia imperiously.

At this command Anielka could no longer stifle her grief; she covered
her face with her hands, and wept violently.

“Why do you cry?” asked her mistress impatiently; “I cannot bear it; I
desire you to do as you are bid.”

It might have been from the constant habit of slavish obedience, or a
strong feeling of pride, but Anielka instantly ceased weeping. There was
a moment’s pause, during which the old Countess went grumbling out of
the room. Anielka chose the Hymn to the Virgin she had warbled in the
garden, and as she sung, she prayed fervently;—she prayed for peace, for
deliverance from the acute emotions which had been aroused within her.
Her earnestness gave an intensity of expression to the melody, which
affected her listeners. They were silent for some moments after its
conclusion. Leon walked up and down with his arms folded on his breast.
Was it agitated with pity for the accomplished young slave? or by any
other tender emotion? What followed will show.

“My dear Constantia,” he said, suddenly stopping before his sister and
kissing her hand, “will you do me a favour?”

Constantia looked enquiringly in her brother’s face without speaking.

“Give me this girl.”

“Impossible!”

“I am quite in earnest,” continued Leon, “I wish to offer her to my
future wife. In the Prince her father’s private chapel they are much in
want of a solo soprano.”

“I shall not give her to you,” said Constantia.

“Not as a free gift, but in exchange. I will give you instead a charming
young negro—so black. The women in St. Petersburg and in Paris raved
about him: but I was inexorable; I half-refused him to my princess.”

“No, no,” replied Constantia; “I shall be lonely without this girl, I am
so used to her.”

“Nonsense! you can get peasant girls by the dozen; but a black page,
with teeth whiter than ivory, and purer than pearls; a perfect original
in his way; you surely cannot withstand. You will kill half the province
with envy. A negro servant is the most fashionable thing going, and
yours will be the first imported into the province.”

This argument was irresistible. “Well,” replied Constantia, “when do you
think of taking her?”

“Immediately; to-day at five o’clock,” said Leon; and he went merrily
out of the room. This then was the result of his cogitation—of Anielka’s
Hymn to the Virgin. Constantia ordered Anielka to prepare herself for
the journey, with as little emotion as if she had exchanged away a
lap-dog, or parted with a parrot.

She obeyed in silence. Her heart was full. She went into the garden that
she might relieve herself by weeping unseen. With one hand supporting
her burning head, and the other pressed tightly against her heart, to
stifle her sobs, she wandered on mechanically till she found herself by
the side of the river. She felt quickly for her purse, intending to
throw the rouble into the water, but as quickly thrust it back again,
for she could not bear to part with the treasure. She felt as if without
it she would be still more an orphan. Weeping bitterly, she leaned
against the tree which had once before witnessed her tears.

By degrees the stormy passion within her gave place to calm reflection.
This day she was to go away; she was to dwell beneath another roof, to
serve another mistress. Humiliation! always humiliation! But at least it
would be some change in her life. As she thought of this, she returned
hastily to the palace that she might not, on the last day of her
servitude, incur the anger of her young mistress.

Scarcely was Anielka attired in her prettiest dress, when Constantia
came to her with a little box, from which she took several gay-coloured
ribbons, and decked her in them herself, that the serf might do her
credit in the new family. And when Anielka, bending down to her feet,
thanked her, Constantia, with marvellous condescension, kissed her on
her forehead. Even Leon cast an admiring glance upon her. His servant
soon after came to conduct her to the carriage, and showing her where to
seat herself, they rolled off quickly towards Radapol.

For the first time in her life Anielka rode in a carriage. Her head
turned quite giddy, she could not look at the trees and fields as they
flew past her; but by degrees she became more accustomed to it, and the
fresh air enlivening her spirits, she performed the rest of the journey
in a tolerably happy state of mind. At last they arrived in the spacious
court-yard before the Palace of Radapol, the dwelling of a once rich and
powerful Polish family, now partly in ruin. It was evident, even to
Anielka, that the marriage was one for money on the one side, and for
rank on the other.

Among other renovations at the castle, occasioned by the approaching
marriage, the owner of it, Prince Pelazia, had obtained singers for the
chapel, and had engaged Signor Justiniani, an Italian, as chapel-master.
Immediately on Leon’s arrival, Anielka was presented to him. He made her
sing a scale, and pronounced her voice to be excellent.

Anielka found that, in Radapol, she was treated with a little more
consideration than at Olgogrod, although she had often to submit to the
caprices of her new mistress, and she found less time to read. But to
console herself, she gave all her attention to singing, which she
practised several hours a day. Her naturally great capacity, under the
guidance of the Italian, began to develope itself steadily. Besides
sacred, he taught her operatic music. On one occasion Anielka sung an
aria in so impassioned and masterly a style, that the enraptured
Justiniani clapped his hands for joy, skipped about the room, and not
finding words enough to praise her, exclaimed several times, “Prima
Donna! Prima Donna!”

But the lessons were interrupted. The Princess’s wedding-day was fixed
upon, after which event she and Leon were to go to Florence, and Anielka
was to accompany them. Alas! feelings which gave her poignant misery
still clung to her. She despised herself for her weakness; but she loved
Leon. The sentiment was too deeply implanted in her bosom to be
eradicated; too strong to be resisted. It was the first love of a young
and guileless heart, and had grown in silence and despair.

Anielka was most anxious to know something of her adopted parents. Once,
after the old prince had heard her singing, he asked her with great
kindness about her home. She replied, that she was an orphan, and had
been taken by force from those who had so kindly supplied the place of
parents. Her apparent attachment to the old bee-keeper and his wife so
pleased the prince, that he said, “You are a good child, Anielka, and
to-morrow I will send you to visit them. You shall take them some
presents.”

Anielka, overpowered with gratitude, threw herself at the feet of the
prince. She dreamed all night of the happiness that was in store for
her, and the joy of the poor, forsaken, old people; and when the next
morning she set off she could scarcely restrain her impatience. At last
they approached the cabin; she saw the forest, with its tall trees, and
the meadows covered with flowers. She leaped from the carriage, that she
might be nearer these trees and flowers, every one of which she seemed
to recognise. The weather was beautiful. She breathed with avidity the
pure air which, in imagination, brought to her the kisses and caresses
of her poor father! Her foster-father was, doubtless, occupied with his
bees; but his wife?

Anielka opened the door of the cabin; all was silent and deserted. The
arm-chair on which the poor old woman used to sit, was overturned in a
corner. Anielka was chilled by a fearful presentiment. She went with a
slow step towards the bee-hives; there she saw a little boy tending the
bees, whilst the old man was stretched on the ground beside him. The
rays of the sun, falling on his pale and sickly face, showed that he was
very ill. Anielka stooped down over him, and said, “It is I, it is
Anielka, your own Anielka, who always loves you.”

The old man raised his head, gazed upon her with a ghastly smile, and
took off his cap.

“And my good old mother, where is she?” Anielka asked.

“She is dead!” answered the old man, and falling back he began laughing
idiotically. Anielka wept. She gazed earnestly on the worn frame, the
pale and wrinkled cheeks, in which scarcely a sign of life could be
perceived; it seemed to her that he had suddenly fallen asleep, and not
wishing to disturb him, she went to the carriage for the presents. When
she returned, she took his hand. It was cold. The poor old bee-keeper
had breathed his last!

Anielka was carried almost senseless back to the carriage, which quickly
returned with her to the castle. There she revived a little; but the
recollection that she was now quite alone in the world, almost drove her
to despair.

Her master’s wedding and the journey to Florence were a dream to her.
Though the strange sights of a strange city slowly restored her
perceptions, they did not her cheerfulness. She felt as if she could no
longer endure the misery of her life; she prayed to die.

“Why are you so unhappy?” said the Count Leon kindly to her, one day.

To have explained the cause of her wretchedness would have been death
indeed.

“I am going to give you a treat,” continued Leon. “A celebrated singer
is to appear to-night in the theatre. I will send you to hear her, and
afterwards you shall sing to me what you remember of her performances.”

Anielka went. It was a new era in her existence. Herself, by this time,
an artist, she could forget her griefs, and enter with her whole soul
into the beauties of the art she now heard practised in perfection for
the first time. To music a chord responded in her breast which vibrated
powerfully. During the performances she was at one moment pale and
trembling, tears rushing into her eyes; at another, she was ready to
throw herself at the feet of the cantatrice, in an ecstacy of
admiration. “Prima donna,”—by that name the public called on her to
receive their applause, and it was the same, thought Anielka, that
Justiniani had bestowed upon her. Could _she_ also be a prima donna?
What a glorious destiny! To be able to communicate one’s own emotions to
masses of entranced listeners; to awaken in them, by the power of the
voice, grief, love, terror.

Strange thoughts continued to haunt her on her return home. She was
unable to sleep. She formed desperate plans. At last she resolved to
throw off the yoke of servitude, and the still more painful slavery of
feelings which her pride disdained. Having learnt the address of the
prima donna, she went early one morning to her house.

On entering she said, in French, almost incoherently, so great was her
agitation—“Madam, I am a poor serf belonging to a Polish family who have
lately arrived in Florence. I have escaped from them; protect, shelter
me. They say I can sing.”

The Signora Teresina, a warm-hearted, passionate Italian, was interested
by her artless earnestness. She said, “Poor child! you must have
suffered much,”—she took Anielka’s hand in hers. “You say you can sing;
let me hear you.” Anielka seated herself on an ottoman. She clasped her
hands over her knees, and tears fell into her lap. With plaintive
pathos, and perfect truth of intonation, she prayed in song. The Hymn to
the Virgin seemed to Teresina to be offered up by inspiration.

The Signora was astonished. “Where,” she asked, in wonder, “were you
taught?”

Anielka narrated her history, and when she had finished, the prima donna
spoke so kindly to her that she felt as if she had known her for years.
Anielka was Teresina’s guest that day and the next. After the Opera, on
the third day, the prima donna made her sit beside her, and said:—

“I think you are a very good girl, and you shall stay with me always.”

The girl was almost beside herself with joy.

“We will never part. Do you consent, Anielka?”

“Do not call me Anielka. Give me instead some Italian name.”

“Well, then, be Giovanna. The dearest friend I ever had—but whom I have
lost—was named Giovanna,” said the prima donna.

“Then, I will be another Giovanna to you.”

Teresina then said, “I hesitated to receive you at first, for your sake
as well as mine; but you are safe now. I learn that your master and
mistress, after searching vainly for you, have returned to Poland.”

From this time Anielka commenced an entirely new life. She took lessons
in singing every day from the Signora, and got an engagement to appear
in inferior characters at the theatre. She had now her own income, and
her own servant—she, who had till then been obliged to serve herself.
She acquired the Italian language rapidly, and soon passed for a native
of the country.

So passed three years. New and varied impressions failed, however, to
blot out the old ones. Anielka arrived at great perfection in her
singing, and even began to surpass the prima donna, who was losing her
voice from weakness of the chest. This sad discovery changed the
cheerful temper of Teresina. She ceased to sing in public; for she could
not endure to excite pity, where she had formerly commanded admiration.

She determined to retire. “You,” she said to Anielka, “shall now assert
your claim to the first rank in the vocal art. You will maintain it. You
surpass me. Often, on hearing you sing, I have scarcely been able to
stifle a feeling of jealousy.”

Anielka placed her hand on Teresina’s shoulder, and kissed her.

“Yes,” continued Teresina, regardless of everything but the bright
future she was shaping for her friend. “We will go to Vienna—there you
will be understood and appreciated. You shall sing at the Italian Opera,
and I will be by your side—unknown, no longer sought, worshipped—but
will glory in your triumphs. They will be a repetition of my own; for
have I not taught you? Will they not be the result of my work?”

Though Anielka’s ambition was fired, her heart was softened, and she
wept violently.

Five months had scarcely elapsed, when a _furore_ was created in Vienna
by the first appearance, at the Italian Opera, of the Signora Giovanna.
Her enormous salary at once afforded her the means of even extravagant
expenditure. Her haughty treatment of male admirers only attracted new
ones; but in the midst of her triumphs she thought often of the time
when the poor orphan of Pobereze was cared for by nobody. This
remembrance made her receive the flatteries of the crowd with an
ironical smile; their fine speeches fell coldly on her ear, their
eloquent looks made no impression on her heart: _that_, no change could
alter, no temptation win.

In the flood of unexpected success a new misfortune overwhelmed her.
Since their arrival at Vienna, Teresina’s health rapidly declined, and
in the sixth months of Anielka’s operatic reign she expired, leaving all
her wealth, which was considerable, to her friend.

Once more Anielka was alone in the world. Despite all the honours and
blandishments of her position, the old feeling of desolateness came upon
her. The new shock destroyed her health. She was unable to appear on the
stage. To sing was a painful effort; she grew indifferent to what passed
around her. Her greatest consolation was in succouring the poor and
friendless, and her generosity was most conspicuous to all young orphan
girls without fortune. She had never ceased to love her native land, and
seldom appeared in society, unless it was to meet her countrymen. If
ever she sang, it was in Polish.

A year had elapsed since the death of the Signora Teresina when the
Count Selka, a rich noble of Volkynia, at that time in Vienna, solicited
her presence at a party. It was impossible to refuse the Count and his
lady, from whom she had received great kindness. She went. When in their
saloons, filled with all the fashion and aristocracy in Vienna, the name
of Giovanna was announced, a general murmur was heard. She entered, pale
and languid, and proceeded between the two rows made for her by the
admiring assembly, to the seat of honour beside the mistress of the
house.

Shortly after, the Count Selka led her to the piano. She sat down before
it, and thinking what she should sing, glanced round upon the assembly.
She could not help feeling that the admiration which beamed from the
faces around her was the work of her own merit, for had she neglected
the great gift of nature—her voice, she could not have excited it. With
a blushing cheek, and eyes sparkling with honest pride, she struck the
piano with a firm hand, and from her seemingly weak and delicate chest
poured forth a touching Polish melody, with a voice pure, sonorous, and
plaintive. Tears were in many eyes, and the beating of every heart was
quickened.

The song was finished, but the wondering silence was unbroken. Giovanna
leaned exhausted on the arm of the chair, and cast down her eyes. On
again raising them, she perceived a gentleman who gazed fixedly at her,
as if he still listened to echoes which had not yet died within him. The
master of the house, to dissipate his thoughtfulness, led him towards
Giovanna. “Let me present to you, Signora,” he said, “a countryman, the
Count Leon Roszynski.”

The lady trembled; she silently bowed, fixed her eyes on the ground, and
dared not raise them. Pleading indisposition, which was fully justified
by her pallid features, she soon after withdrew.

When on the following day Giovanna’s servant announced the Counts Selka
and Roszynski, a peculiar smile played on her lips; and when they
entered, she received the latter with the cold and formal politeness of
a stranger. Controlling the feelings of her heart, she schooled her
features to an expression of indifference. It was manifest from Leon’s
manner, that without the remotest recognition, an indefinable
presentiment regarding her possessed him. The Counts had called to know
if Giovanna had recovered from her indisposition. Leon begged to be
permitted to call again.

Where was his wife? why did he never mention her? Giovanna continually
asked herself these questions when they had departed.

A few nights after, the Count Leon arrived sad and thoughtful. He
prevailed on Giovanna to sing one of her Polish melodies; which she told
him had been taught, when a child, by her muse. Roszynski, unable to
restrain the expression of an intense admiration he had long felt,
frantically seized her hand, and exclaimed, “I love you!”

She withdrew it from his grasp, remained silent for a few minutes, and
then said slowly, distinctly, and ironically, “but I do not love _you_,
Count Roszynski.”

Leon rose from his seat. He pressed his hands to his brow, and was
silent. Giovanna remained calm and tranquil. “It is a penalty from
Heaven,” continued Leon, as if speaking to himself, “for not having
fulfilled my duty as a husband towards one whom I chose voluntarily, but
without reflection. I wronged her, and am punished.”

Giovanna turned her eyes upon him. Leon continued, “Young, and with a
heart untouched, I married a princess about ten years older than myself,
of eccentric habits and bad temper. She treated me as an inferior. She
dissipated the fortune hoarded up with so much care by my parents, and
yet was ashamed on account of my origin to be called by my name. Happily
for me, she was fond of visiting and amusements. Otherwise, to escape
from her, I might have become a gambler, or worse; but, to avoid meeting
her, I remained at home—for there she seldom was. At first from ennui,
but afterwards from real delight in the occupation, I gave myself up to
study. Reading formed my mind and heart. I became a changed being. Some
months ago my father died, my sister went to Lithuania, whilst my
mother, in her old age, and with her ideas, was quite incapable of
understanding my sorrow. So when my wife went to the baths for the
benefit of her ruined health, I came here in the hope of meeting with
some of my former friends—I saw you—”

Giovanna blushed like one detected; but speedily recovering herself,
asked with calm pleasantry, “Surely you do not number _me_ among your
former friends?”

“I know not. I have been bewildered. It is strange; but from the moment
I saw you at Count Selka’s, a powerful instinct of love overcame me; not
a new feeling; but as if some latent, long-hid, undeveloped sentiment
had suddenly burst forth into an uncontrollable passion. I love, I adore
you. I——”

The Prima Donna interrupted him—not with speech, but with a look which
awed, which chilled him. Pride, scorn, irony sat in her smile. Satire
darted from her eyes. After a pause, she repeated slowly and pointedly,
“Love _me_, Count Roszynski?”

“Such is my destiny,” he replied. “Nor, despite your scorn, will I
struggle against it. I feel it is my fate ever to love you; I fear it is
my fate never to be loved by you. It is dreadful.”

Giovanna witnessed the Count’s emotion with sadness. “To have,” she said
mournfully, “one’s first pure, ardent, passionate affection unrequited,
scorned, made a jest of, is indeed a bitterness, almost equal to that of
death.”

She made a strong effort to conceal her emotion. Indeed she controlled
it so well as to speak the rest with a sort of gaiety.

“You have at least been candid, Count Roszynski; I will imitate you by
telling a little history that occurred in your country. There was a poor
girl born and bred a serf to her wealthy lord and master. When scarcely
fifteen years old, she was torn from a state of happy rustic freedom—the
freedom of humility and content—to be one of the courtly slaves of the
Palace. Those who did not laugh at her, scolded her. One kind word was
vouchsafed to her, and that came from the lord’s son. She nursed it and
treasured it; till, from long concealing and restraining her feelings,
she at last found that gratitude had changed into a sincere affection.
But what does a man of the world care for the love of a serf? It does
not even flatter his vanity. The young nobleman did not understand the
source of her tears and her grief, and he made a present of her, as he
would have done of some animal to his betrothed.”

Leon, agitated and somewhat enlightened, would have interrupted her; but
Giovanna said, “Allow me to finish my tale. Providence did not abandon
this poor orphan, but permitted her to rise to distinction by the talent
with which she was endowed by nature. The wretched serf of Pobereze
became a celebrated Italian cantatrice. _Then_ her former lord meeting
her in society, and seeing her admired and courted by all the world,
without knowing who she really was, was afflicted, as if by the dictates
of Heaven, with a love for this same girl,—with a guilty love”—

And Giovanna rose, as she said this, to remove herself further from her
admirer.

“No, no!” he replied earnestly; “with a pure and holy passion.”

“Impossible!” returned Giovanna. “Are you not married?”

Roszynski vehemently tore a letter from his vest, and handed it to
Giovanna. It was sealed with black, for it announced the death of his
wife at the baths. It had only arrived that morning.

“You have lost no time,” said the cantatrice, endeavouring to conceal
her feelings under an iron mask of reproach.

There was a pause. Each dared not speak. The Count knew—but without
actually and practically believing what seemed incredible—that Anielka
and Giovanna were the same person—_his slave_. That terrible
relationship checked him. Anielka, too, had played her part to the end
of endurance. The long-cherished tenderness—the faithful love of her
life could not longer be wholly mastered. Hitherto they had spoken in
Italian. She now said in Polish,

“You have a right, my Lord Roszynski, to that poor Anielka who escaped
from the service of your wife in Florence; you can force her back to
your palace, to its meanest work; but”—

“Have mercy on me!” cried Leon.

“But,” continued the serf of Pobereze, firmly, “you cannot force me to
love you.”

“Do not mock—do not torture me more; you are sufficiently revenged. I
will not offend you by importunity. You must indeed hate me! But
remember that we Poles wished to give freedom to our serfs; and for that
very reason our country was invaded and dismembered by despotic powers.
We must therefore continue to suffer slavery as it exists in Russia;
but, soul and body, we are averse to it: and when our country once more
becomes free, be assured no shadow of slavery will remain in the land.
Curse then our enemies, and pity us that we stand in such a desperate
position between Russian bayonets and Siberia, and the hatred of our
serfs.”

So saying, and without waiting for a reply, Leon rushed from the room.
The door was closed. Giovanna listened to the sounds of his rapid
footsteps till they died in the street. She would have followed, but
dared not. She ran to the window. Roszynski’s carriage was rolling
rapidly away, and she exclaimed vainly, “I love you, Leon; I loved you
always!”

Her tortures were unendurable. To relieve them she hastened to her desk,
and wrote these words:—

“Dearest Leon, forgive me; let the past be for ever forgotten. Return to
your Anielka. She always has been, ever will be, yours!”

She despatched the missive. Was it too late? or would it bring him back?
In the latter hope she retired to her chamber, to execute a little
project.

Leon was in despair. He saw he had been premature in so soon declaring
his passion after the news of his wife’s death, and vowed he would not
see Anielka again for several months. To calm his agitation, he had
ridden some miles into the country. When he returned to his hotel after
some hours, he found her note. With the wild delight it had darted into
his soul, he flew back to her.

On regaining her saloon a new and terrible vicissitude seemed to sport
with his passion:—she was nowhere to be seen. Had the Italian cantatrice
fled? Again he was in despair; stupified with disappointment. As he
stood uncertain how to act in the midst of the floor, he heard, as from
a distance, an Ave Maria poured forth in tones he half-recognised. The
sounds brought back to him a host of recollections; a weeping serf, the
garden of his own palace. In a state of new rapture he followed the
voice. He traced it to an inner chamber, and he there beheld the lovely
singer kneeling, in the costume of a Polish serf. She rose, greeted Leon
with a touching smile, and stepped forward with serious bashfulness.
Leon extended his arms; she sank into them; and in that fond embrace all
past wrongs and sorrows were forgotten! Anielka drew from her bosom a
little purse, and took from it a piece of silver. It was the rouble.
_Now_, Leon did not smile at it. He comprehended the sacredness of this
little gift; and some tears of repentance fell upon Anielka’s hand.

A few months after, Leon wrote to the steward of Olgogrod to prepare
everything splendidly for the reception of his second wife. He concluded
his letter with these words:—“I understand that in the dungeon beneath
my palace there are some unfortunate men, who were imprisoned during my
father’s lifetime. Let them be instantly liberated. This is my first act
of gratitude to God, who has so infinitely blessed me!”

Anielka longed ardently to behold her native land. They left Vienna
immediately after the wedding, although it was in the middle of January.

It was already quite dark when the carriage, with its four horses,
stopped in front of the portico of the Palace of Olgogrod. Whilst the
footman was opening the door on one side, a beggar soliciting alms
appeared at the other, where Anielka was seated. Happy to perform a good
action, as she crossed the threshold of her new home, she gave him some
money; but the man, instead of thanking her, returned her bounty with a
savage laugh, at the same time scowling at her in the fiercest manner
from beneath his thick and shaggy brows. The strangeness of this
circumstance sensibly affected Anielka, and clouded her happiness. Leon
soothed and re-assured her. In the arms of her beloved husband, she
forgot all but the happiness of being the idol of his affections.

Fatigue and excitement made the night most welcome. All was dark and
silent around the palace, and some hours of the night had passed, when
suddenly flames burst forth from several parts of the building at once.
The palace was enveloped in fire; it raged furiously. The flames mounted
higher and higher; the windows cracked with a fearful sound, and the
smoke penetrated into the most remote apartments.

A single figure of a man was seen stealing over the snow, which lay like
a winding-sheet on the solitary waste; his cautious steps were heard on
the frozen snow as it crisped beneath his tread. It was the beggar who
had accosted Anielka. On a rising ground, he turned to gaze on the
terrible scene. “No more unfortunate wretches will now be doomed to pass
their lives in your dungeons,” he exclaimed. “What was _my_ crime?
Reminding my master of the lowness of his birth. For this they tore me
from my only child—my darling little Anielka; they had no pity even for
her orphan state; let them perish all!”

Suddenly a young and beautiful creature rushes wildly to one of the
principal windows: she makes a violent effort to escape. For a moment
her lovely form, clothed in white, shines in terrible relief against the
background of blazing curtains and walls of fire, and as instantly sinks
back into the blazing element. Behind her is another figure, vainly
endeavouring to aid her,—he perishes also; neither are ever seen again!

This appalling tragedy horrified even the perpetrator of the crime. He
rushed from the place; and as he heard the crash of the falling walls,
he closed his ears with his hands, and darted on faster and faster.

The next day some peasants discovered the body of a man frozen to death,
lying on a heap of snow,—it was that of the wretched incendiary.
Providence, mindful of his long, of his cruel imprisonment and
sufferings, spared him the anguish of knowing that the mistress of the
palace he had destroyed, and who perished in the flames, was his own
beloved daughter—the Serf of Pobreze!




                         A STROLL BY STARLIGHT.


          We left the Village. On the beaten road
          Our steps and voices were the only sound.
          The lady Moon was not yet come abroad,—
          Our coyly-veiled companion. We found
          A footway through the corn; upon the ground
          The crake among the holms was occupied;
          Rapid of movement, from all points around
          Came his rough note whose music is supplied
        By iteration while all sounds are hushed beside.

          The stars were out, the sky was full of them,
          Dotted with worlds. The land was all asleep.
          And, like its gentle breath, from stem to stem
          Through the dry corn a murmur there would creep,
          Murmur of music: as when in the deep
          Of the sun-pierced Ægean, with turned ear,
          The Nereids might have heard its waters leap
          And kiss the dimpled islands, thus, less near,
        Fainter, more like a thought, did to our hearts appear,

          The midnight melody. Our way then led
          Where myriad blades of grass were drinking dew;
          Thirsty, to God they looked, by God were fed,
          Whose cloudless heaven could their life renew.
          A copse beside us on the starry blue
          Cut its hard outline. Through the leaves a fire
          Shone with enlarging brilliance; red of hue
          The large moon rose,—did to a throne aspire
        Of dizzy height, and paled in winning her desire.

          A change of level, and another scene;
          Life, light, and noise. The roaring furnace-blast,
          Flame-pointed cones and fields of blighted green!
          The vivid fires, dreaming they have surpassed
          The stars in brightness, furiously cast
          Upward their wild strength to possess the sky;
          Break into evanescent stars at last,—
          Glitter and fall as fountains. Thus men try,
        And thus men try in vain, false gods to deify.

          The roar and flame diminish. Busy light
          Streams from the casting-house. The liquid ore
          Through arch and lancet window, dazzling Night,
          Flows in rich rills upon the sanded floor.
          Steropes, Arges, Brontes, from the shore
          Of Acheron returned, seem glowing here;
          Such form the phantom of Hephæstus wore,
          Illumined by his forge. Each feature clear,
        Men glorified by fire seem demon-births of fear.

          But the ray reddens, and the light grows dim.
          The cooling iron, counterpaned with sand
          By those night servitors, no longer grim
          In unaccustomed glow, from the green land
          And yonder sky, now ceases to command
          Our thoughts to wander. As we backward gaze,
          The blast renews; with aspiration grand
          The flames again soar upward: but we raise
        Our glances to God’s Lamp, which overawes their blaze.

          So forward through the stillness we proceed.
          Winding around a hill, the white road leaves
          Life, light, and noise behind. We, gladly freed
          From human interruption, we, mute thieves,
          Pass onward through Night’s treasure; each receives
          From her rich store his bosom full of wealth,
          For secret hoarding. Now an oak-wood weaves
          A cloister way to sanctify the stealth
        Practised in loving guise, and for the spirit’s health.

          We climb into the moonlight once again.
          A broken rail beside the way doth keep
          Neglectful guard above the Vale’s domain.
          The Vale is in the silence laid asleep,
          Not far below. Among her beauties peep
          The wakeful stars, and from above her bed
          The grey night-veil, wherein to rest so deep
          She sank, the Moon hath lifted; yet the thread
        Of slumber holds, the dream hath from her face not fled.

          Yon meadow track leads by the church; it saves
          Ten minutes if we follow it. We laugh
          To see our saving lost among the graves.
          Deciphering a moonlit Epitaph
          We linger, laugh and sigh. All mirth is half
          Made up of melancholy. There is pure
          Humour in woe. Man’s grief is oft the staff
          On which his happy thoughts can lean secure;
        And he who most enjoys, he too can most endure.

          We leave the tombstones, death-like, white, and still,
          Fixed in the dim light,—awful, unbeheld.
          A squalid village, straggling up a hill
          We pass. In passing, one among us yelled,
          And from no gallinaceous throat expelled
          A crow sonorous. From the near church tower,
          Through the cold, voiceless air of night there knell’d
          The passing bell of a departed hour:
        What sign of budding day? How will the morning flower?




                                 CHIPS.


There is a saying that a good workman is known by his chips. Such a
prodigious accumulation of chips takes place in our Manufactory, that we
infer we must have some first-rate workmen about us.

There is also a figure of speech, concerning a chip of the old block.
The chips with which _our_ old block (aged fifteen weeks) is overwhelmed
every week, would make some five-and-twenty blocks of similar
dimensions.

There is a popular simile—an awkward one in this connexion—founded on
the dryness of a chip. This has almost deterred us from our intention of
bundling a few chips together now and then. But, reflection on the
natural lightness of the article has re-assured us; and we here present
a few to our readers,—and shall continue to do so from time to time.




                    DESTRUCTION OF PARISH REGISTERS.


As the poorest man cannot foresee to what inheritance he may succeed,
through the instrumentality of Parochial Registers, so in their
preservation every member of the community is more or less interested;
but the Parish Register returns of 1833 show that a general feeling
seemed to exist in favour of their destruction. Scarcely one of them
pronounced the Registers in a satisfactory state. The following
sentences abound in the Blue Book: “leaves cut out,” “torn out,”
“injured by damp,” “mutilated,” “in fragments,” “destroyed by fire,”
“much torn,” “illegible,” “tattered,” “imperfect,” “early registers
lost.”

Thanks to the General Registry Act of William the Fourth, all such
records made since 1835 are now properly cared for; but those prior to
that date are still in parochial keeping, to be torn, lost, burnt,
interpolated, stolen, defaced, or rendered illegible at the good
pleasure of every wilful or heedless individual of a destructive
organisation. Some time ago Mr. Walbran, of Ripon, found part of a
Parish Register among a quantity of wastepaper in a cheesemonger’s shop.
The same gentleman has rescued the small but very interesting register
of the chapelry of Denton, in the county of Durham, from the fate which
once had nearly befallen it, by causing several literatim copies to be
printed and deposited in public libraries. Among other instances of
negligent custody, Mr. Downing Bruce, the barrister, relates, in a
recently published pamphlet, that the Registers of South Otterington,
containing several entries of the great families of Talbot, Herbert, and
Fauconberg, were formerly kept in the cottage of the parish-clerk, who
used all those preceding the eighteenth century for waste paper; a
considerable portion having been taken to “singe a goose!”

Abstraction, loss, and careless custody of registers is constantly going
on. Mr. Bruce mentions, that in 1845 he made some copious extracts from
the dilapidated books at Andover, “but on recently visiting that place
for the purpose of a supplementary search,” he says, “I found that these
books were no longer in existence, and that those which remained were
kept in the rectory-house, in a damp place under the staircase, and in a
shameful state of dilapidation.” The second case occurred at Kirkby
Malzeard, near Ripon, where the earliest register mentioned in the
parliamentary return was reported to be lost. “Having occasion to
believe that the statement was not correct,” Mr. Bruce states, “I
persevered in my inquiries, and at length fortunately discovered the
book, in a tattered state, behind some old drawers in the curate’s back
kitchen. Again, at Farlington, near Sheriff Hutton, the earliest
registers were believed and represented to be lost, until I found their
scattered leaves at the bottom of an old parish chest which I observed
in the church.”

Even as we write, an enquiry appears in the newspapers from the parish
officers of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, addressed to “collectors” and
others, after their own Registers; two among the most historically
important and interesting years of the seventeenth century are nowhere
to be found.

The avidity and dishonesty of many of these “collectors,” or
archæological cockchafers, are shocking to think of. They seem to have
passed for their own behoof a universal statute of limitations; and when
a book, an autograph, or a record is a certain number of years old, they
think it is no felony to steal it. Recently we were interested in
searching the Register for the birth of Joseph Addison; and at the altar
of the pretty little church of Milston, in Wilts, we were told that a
deceased rector had cut out the leaf which contained it, to satisfy the
earnest longings of a particular friend, “a collector”—a poet, too, who
ought to have been ashamed to instigate the larceny. It is hoped that
his executors—his name has been inserted in a burial register since—will
think fit to restore it to its proper place at their early convenience.

Mr. Bruce recommends that the whole of the Registers now deposited in
parish churches, in rectors’ coal-cellars, churchwardens’ outhouses,
curates’ back-kitchens, and goose-eating parish clerks’ cottages, should
be collected into one central fire-proof building in London.

Innocent Mr. Bruce! While the great historical records of this land are
“preserved” over tons of gunpowder in the White Tower of the Tower in
London; while the Chancery records are feeding a fine, fat, historical,
and uncommonly numerous breed of rats in the cellars of the Rolls
Chapel; while some of the most important muniments existing (including
William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book) are being dried up in the
Chapter-House of Westminster Abbey, by the united heats of a contiguous
brew-house and an adjacent wash-house; and while heaps of monastic
charters and their surrenders to Henry the Eighth, with piles of
inestimable historical treasures, are huddled together upon scaffolds in
the interior of the dilapidated Riding-School in Carlton Ride—can Mr.
Bruce or any other man of common sense, suppose that any attention
whatever will be paid by any person in power to his very modest
suggestion?




          FROM MR. T. OLDCASTLE CONCERNING THE COAL EXCHANGE.


              “SIR,      Blue Dragon Arms, South Shields.

“I have just read in your ‘Household Words’ a pleasant enough account of
the ‘Coal Exchange of London,’ in which my name is mentioned. I suppose
I ought—and therefore I do—consider it a great honour; and what Captain
of a collier-brig would not? So, no more about that, except to thank
you. Same time, mayhap, there may be a trifle or two in the paper to
which I don’t quite subscribe; and, as I seem to be towed astern of the
writer as he works his way on, it seems only fair that I should overhaul
his log in such matters as I don’t agree to, whether so be in respect of
his remarks or reckoning.

“In the first place, the writer says the Coal Exchange is painted as
bright as a coffee-garden or dancing-place on the continent. Well—belike
it is. And what o’ that? Did he wish it to be painted in coal-tar? as if
we didn’t see enough of this at home—whether collier-men or
coal-merchants! I make no doubt he wanted to see all the inside just of
the same colour as your London buildings are on th’ outside—walls, and
towers, and spires, like so many great smoke-jacks. Then as to his taste
in female beauty, he seems more disposed to the pale faces of
novel-writers’ young ladies than such sort of brown and ruddy skins as
some of us think more mettlesome. I confess I do; and so he may rig me
out on this matter as he pleases. Howsomever, I must say that I believe
most people will prefer both the bright ladies, and the bright adornment
of the building, to any mixture of soot and blacking, which has,
hitherto, characterised the taste of my old friends the Londoners. And
it is my advice to the artist, Mr. Sang, just to snap his fingers at the
opposite taste of your writer, which is exactly what I do myself, for
his comparing my ‘hard weather-beaten face’ to the wooden figure of a
ship’s head.

                                             “I remain, respected Sir,
                                                 “Yours to command,
                                                     “THOMAS OLDCASTLE.”

“P.S. What the writer of these coal-papers says I told him about Buddle
of Wallsend, is all true enough; but why did he tell me, in return, that
his name was ‘Gulliver?’”




                               NEW SHOES.


The following “Chip” is from the chisel of a blacksmith—a certain Peter
Muller of Istra, son of the person to whom it refers. It was gathered
from his forge by M. Stæhlin, who inserted it in his original anecdotes
of Peter the Great, collected from the conversation of several persons
of distinction at St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Among all the workmen at Muller’s forge, near Istra, about ninety versts
from Moscow, there was one who had examined everything connected with
the work with the most minute attention, and who worked harder than the
rest. He was at his post every day, and appeared quite indifferent to
the severity of the labour. The last day on which he was employed, he
forged eighteen poods of iron—the pood is equal to forty pounds—but
though he was so good a workman, he had other matters to mind besides
the forging of iron; for he had the affairs of the State to attend to,
and all who have heard of Peter the Great, know that those were not
neglected.

It happened that he spent a month in the neighbourhood of Istra, for the
benefit of the chalybeate waters; and wherever he was, he always made
himself thoroughly acquainted with whatever works were carried on. He
determined not only to inspect Muller’s forge accurately, but to become
a good blacksmith. He made the noblemen who were in attendance on him
accompany him every morning, and take part in the labour. Some he
appointed to blow the bellows, and others to carry coals, and perform
all the offices of journeymen blacksmiths. A few days after his return
to Moscow, he called on Muller, and told him that he had been to see his
establishment, with which he had been much gratified.

“Tell me,” said he, “how much you allow per pood for iron in bar,
furnished by a master blacksmith.”

“Three copecks or an altin,” answered Muller.

“Well, then,” said the Czar, “I have earned eighteen altins, and am come
to be paid.”

Muller went to his bureau, and took from it eighteen ducats, which he
reckoned before the Emperor. “I would not think of offering less to a
royal workman, please your Majesty.”

“Put up your ducats again,” interrupted the Czar, “I will not take more
than I have earned, and that you would pay to any other blacksmith. Give
me my due. It will be sufficient to pay for a pair of shoes, of which
you may see,” added he, as he raised his foot, and displayed a shoe
somewhat the worse for the wear, “I am very much in need.”

Muller reckoned out the eighteen altins, with which the Czar hurried off
to a shop, and purchased a pair of shoes. He put them on with the
greatest delight; he thought he never had worn such a pair of shoes; he
showed them with a triumphant air to those about him, and said, “See
them; look how well they fit; I have earned them well—by the sweat of my
brow, with hammer and anvil.”

One of these bars of iron, forged by Peter the Great, and bearing his
mark, was kept as a precious relic in the forge at Istra, and exhibited
with no little pride to all who entered. Another bar which was forged by
his hand is shown in the Cabinet of the Academy of Sciences at
Petersburg.




                    THE MODERN “OFFICER’S” PROGRESS.


                         III.—THE CATASTROPHE.

What the Psalmist said in sorrow, those who witnessed the career of the
Honourable Ensign Spoonbill and his companions might have said, not in
sorrow only but in anger: “One day told another, and one night certified
another.”

When duty was to be performed—(for even under the command of such an
officer as Colonel Tulip the routine of duty existed)—it was slurred
over as hastily as possible, or got through as it best might be. When,
on the other hand, pleasure was the order of the day,—and this was
sought hourly,—no resource was left untried, no expedient unattempted;
and strange things, in the shape of pleasure, were often the result.

The nominal duties were multifarious, and, had they been properly
observed, would have left but a comparatively narrow margin for
recreation,—for there was much in the old forms which took up time,
without conveying any great amount of real military instruction.

The orderly officer for the day—we speak of the subaltern—was supposed
to go through a great deal. His duty it was to assist at inspections,
superintend drills, examine the soldiers’ provisions, see their
breakfasts and dinners served, and attend to any complaints, visit the
regimental guards by day and night, be present at all parades and
musters, and, finally, deliver in a written report of the proceedings of
the four-and-twenty hours.

To go through this routine, required—as it received in some regiments—a
few days’ training; but in the Hundredth there was none at all. Every
officer in that distinguished corps was supposed to be “a Heaven-born
genius,” and acquired his military education as pigeons pick up peas.
The Hon. Ensign Spoonbill looked at his men after a fashion; could swear
at them if they were excessively dirty, and perhaps awe them into
silence by a portentous scowl, or an exaggerated loudness of voice; but
with regard to the real purpose of inspection, he knew as little, and
cared as much, as the valet who aired his noble father’s morning
newspaper. His eye wandered over the men’s kits as they were exposed to
his view; but to his mind they only conveyed the idea of a kaleidoscopic
rag-fair, not that of an assortment of necessaries for the comfort and
well-being of the soldier. He saw large masses of beef, exhibited in a
raw state by the quartermaster, as the daily allowance for the men; but
if any one had asked him if the meat was good, and of proper weight, how
could he have answered, whose head was turned away in disgust, with his
face buried in a scented cambric handkerchief, and his delicate nature
loathing the whole scene? In the same spirit he saw the men’s breakfasts
and dinners served; fortifying his opinion, at the first, that coffee
could only be made in France, and wondering, at the second, what sort of
_potage_ it could be that contrived to smell so disagreeably. These
things might be special affectations in the Hon. Ensign, and depended,
probably, on his own peculiar organisation; but if the rest of the
officers of the Hundredth did not manifest as intense a dislike to this
part of their duties, they were members of much too “crack” a regiment
to give themselves any trouble about the matter. The drums beat, the
messes were served, there was a hasty gallop through the barrack-rooms,
scarcely looking right or left, and the orderly officer was only too
happy to make his escape without being stopped by any impertinent
complaint.

The “turning out” of the barrack guard was a thing to make an impression
on a bystander. A loud shout, a sharp clatter of arms, a scurry of
figures, a hasty formation, a brief enquiry if all was right, and a
terse rejoinder that all _was_ remarkably so, constituted the details of
a visit to the body of men on whom devolved the task of extreme
watchfulness, and the preservation of order. If the serjeant had replied
“All wrong,” it would have equally enlightened Ensign Spoonbill, who
went towards the guardhouse because his instructions told him to do so;
but why he went there, and for what purpose he turned out the guard,
never entered into his comprehension. Not even did a sense of
responsibility awaken in him when, with much difficulty, he penned the
report which gave, in a narrative form, the summary of the duties he had
performed in so exemplary a manner. Performed, do we say? Yes, once or
twice wholly, but for the most part with many gaps in the schedule.
Sometimes the dinners were forgotten, now and then the taptoo, generally
the afternoon parade, and not unfrequently the whole affair. For the
latter omission, there was occasionally a nominal “wigging”
administered, not by the commanding officer himself, but through the
adjutant; and as that functionary was only looked upon by the youngsters
in the light of a bore, without the slightest reverence for his office,
his words—like those of Cassius—passed like the idle wind which none
regarded. When Ensign Spoonbill “mounted guard” himself, his vigilance
on his new post equalled the assiduity we have seen him exhibit in
barracks. After the formality of trooping, marching down, and relieving,
was over, the Honourable Ensign generally amused himself by a lounge in
the vicinity of the guardhouse, until the field-officer’s “rounds” had
been made; and that visitation at an end for the day, a neighbouring
billiard-room, with Captain Cushion for his antagonist or “a jolly pool”
occupied him until dinner-time. It was the custom in the garrison where
the Hundredth were quartered, as it was, indeed, in many others, for the
officers on guard to dine with their mess, a couple of hours or so being
granted for this indulgence. This relaxation was made up for, by their
keeping close for the rest of the evening; but as there were generally
two or three off duty sufficiently at leisure to find cigars and
brandy-and-water attractive, even when consumed in a guard-room, the
hardship of Ensign Spoonbill’s official imprisonment was not very great.
With these friends, and these creature-comforts to solace, the time wore
easily away till night fell, when the field-officer, if he was “a good
fellow,” came early, and Ensign Spoonbill, having given his friends
their _congé_, was at liberty to “turn in” for the night, the onerous
duty of visiting sentries and inspecting the reliefs every two hours,
devolving upon the serjeant.

It may be inferred from these two examples of Ensign Spoonbill’s ideas
of discipline and the service, what was the course he generally adopted
when _on_ duty, without our being under the necessity of going into
further details. What he did when _off_ duty helped him on still more
effectually.

Lord Pelican’s outfit having “mounted” the young gentleman, and the
credit he obtained on the strength of being Lord Pelican’s son, keeping
his stud in order, he was enabled to vie with the crackest of the crack
Hundredth; subject, however, to all the accidents which horseflesh is
heir to—especially when allied to a judgment of which green was the
prevailing colour. A “swap” to a disadvantage; an indiscreet purchase; a
mistake as to the soundness of an animal; and such other errors of
opinion, entailed certain losses, which might, after all, have been
borne, without rendering the applications for money at home, more
frequent than agreeable; but when under the influence of a natural
obstinacy, or the advice of some very “knowing ones,” Ensign Spoonbill
proceeded to back his opinion in private matches, handicaps, and
steeple-chases, the privy purse of Lady Pelican collapsed in a most
unmistakeable manner. Nor was this description of amusement the only
rock-a-head in the course of the Honourable Ensign. The art or science
of betting embraces the widest field, and the odds, given or taken, are
equally fatal, whether the subject that elicits them be a match at
billiards or a horse-race. Nor are the stakes at blind-hookey or
unlimited loo less harmless, when you hav’n’t got luck and _have_ such
opponents as Captain Cushion.

In spite of the belief in his own powers, which Ensign Spoonbill
encouraged, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that he was every day
a loser; but wiser gamblers than he—if any there be—place reliance on a
“turn of luck,” and all he wanted to enable him to take advantage of it,
was a command of cash; for even one’s best friends prefer the coin of
the realm to the most unimpeachable I. O. U.

The want of money is a common dilemma,—not the less disagreeable,
however, because it _is_ common—but in certain situations this want is
more apparent than real. The Hon. Ensign Spoonbill was in the
predicament of impecuniosity; but there were—as a celebrated statesman
is in the habit of saying—three courses open to him. He might leave off
play, and do without the money; he might “throw himself” on Lord
Pelican’s paternal feelings; or he might _somehow_ contrive to raise a
supply on his own account. To leave off just at the moment when he was
sure to win back all he had lost, would have been ridiculous; besides,
every man of spirit in the regiment would have cut him. To throw himself
upon the generosity of his sire, was a good poetical idea; but,
practically, it would have been of no value: for, in the first place,
Lord Pelican had no money to give—in the next, there was an elder
brother, whose wants were more imperative than his own; and lastly, he
had already tried the experiment, and failed in the most signal manner.
There remained, therefore, only the last expedient; and being advised,
moreover, to have recourse to it, he went into the project _tête
baissée_. The “advice” was tendered in this form.

“Well, Spooney, my boy, how are you, this morning?” kindly enquired
Captain Cushion, one day on his return from parade, from which the
Honourable Ensign had been absent on the plea of indisposition.

“Deuced queer,” was the reply; “that Roman punch always gives me the
splittingest headaches!”

“Ah! you’re not used to it. I’m as fresh as a four-year old. Well, what
did you do last night, Spooney?”

“Do! why, I lost, of course; _you_ ought to know that.”

“I—my dear fellow! Give you my honour I got up a loser!”

“Not to me, though,” grumbled the Ensign.

“Can’t say as to that,” replied the Captain; “all I know is, that I am
devilishly minus.”

“Who won, then?” enquired Spoonbill.

“Oh!” returned the Captain, after a slight pause, “I suspect—Chowser—he
has somebody’s luck and his own too!”

“I think he must have mine,” said the Ensign, with a faint smile, as the
alternations of the last night’s Blind Hookey came more vividly to his
remembrance. “What did I lose to you, Cushion?” he continued, in the
hope that his memory had deceived him.

The Captain’s pocket-book was out in an instant.

“Sixty-five, my dear fellow; that was all. By-the-bye, Spooney, I’m
regularly hard up; can you let me have the tin? I wouldn’t trouble you,
upon my soul, if I could possibly do without it, but I’ve got a heavy
bill coming due to-morrow, and I can’t renew.”

The Honourable Ensign sank back on his pillow, and groaned impotently.
Rallying, however, from this momentary weakness, he raised his head,
and, after apostrophising the spirit of darkness as his best friend,
exclaimed, “I’ll tell you what it is, Cushion, I’m thoroughly cleaned
out. I haven’t got a dump!”

“Then you must fly a kite,” observed the Captain, coolly. “No difficulty
about that.”

This was merely the repetition of counsel of the same friendly nature
previously urged. The shock was not greater, therefore, than the young
man’s nerves could bear.

“How is it to be done?” asked the neophyte.

“Oh, I think I can manage that for you. Yes,” pursued the Captain,
musing, “Lazarus would let you have as much as you want, I dare say. His
terms are rather high, to be sure; but then the cash is the thing. He’ll
take your acceptance at once. Who will you get to draw the bill?”

“Draw!” said the Ensign, in a state of some bewilderment. “I don’t
understand these things—couldn’t you do it?”

“Why,” replied the Captain, with an air of intense sincerity, “I’d do it
for you with pleasure—nothing would delight me more; but I promised my
grandmother, when first I entered the service, that I never _would_ draw
a bill as long as I lived; and as a man of honour, you know, and a
soldier, I can’t break my word.”

“But I thought you said you had a bill of your own coming due
to-morrow,” observed the astute Spoonbill.

“So I did,” said the Captain, taken rather aback in the midst of his
protestations, “but then it isn’t—exactly—a thing of _this_ sort; it’s a
kind of a—bond—as it were—old family matters—the estate down in
Lincolnshire—that I’m clearing off. Besides,” he added, hurriedly,
“there are plenty of fellows who’ll do it for you. There’s young
Brittles—the Manchester man, who joined just after you. I never saw
anybody screw into baulk better than he does, except yourself—he’s the
one. Lazarus, I know, always prefers a young customer to an old one;
knowing chaps, these Jews, arn’t they?”

Captain Cushion’s last remark was, no doubt, a just one—but he might
have applied the term to himself with little dread of disparagement; and
the end of the conversation was, that it was agreed a bill should be
drawn as proposed, “say for three hundred pounds,” the Captain
undertaking to get the affair arranged, and relieving Spoonbill of all
trouble, save that of “merely” writing his name across a bit of stamped
paper. These points being settled, the Captain left him, and the
unprotected subaltern called for brandy and soda-water, by the aid of
which stimulus he was enabled to rise and perform his toilette.

Messrs. Lazarus and Sons were merchants who perfectly understood their
business, and, though they started difficulties, were only too happy to
get fresh birds into their net. They knew to a certainty that the sum
they were asked to advance would not be repaid at the end of the
prescribed three months: it would scarcely have been worth their while
to enter into the matter if it had; the profit on the hundred pounds’
worth of jewellery, which Ensign Spoonbill was required to take as part
of the amount, would not have remunerated them sufficiently. Guessing
pretty accurately which way the money would go, they foresaw renewed
applications, and a long perspective of accumulating acceptances. Lord
Pelican might be a needy nobleman; but he _was_ Lord Pelican, and the
Honourable George Spoonbill was his son; and if the latter did not
succeed to the title and family estates, which was by no means
improbable, there was Lady Pelican’s settlement for division amongst the
younger children. So they advanced the money; that is to say, they
produced a hundred and eighty pounds in cash, twenty they took for the
accommodation (half of which found its way into the pocket of—never
mind, we won’t say anything about Captain Cushion’s private affairs),
and the value of the remaining hundred was made up with a series of pins
and rings of the most stunning magnificence.

This was the Honourable Ensign Spoonbill’s first bill-transaction, but,
the ice once broken, the second and third soon followed. He found it the
pleasantest way in the world of raising money, and in a short time his
affairs took a turn so decidedly commercial, that he applied the system
to all his mercantile transactions. He paid his tailors after this
fashion, satisfied Messrs. Mildew and his upholsterers with negotiable
paper, and did “bits of stiff” with Galloper, the horse-dealer, to a
very considerable figure. He even became facetious, not to say inspired,
by this great discovery; for, amongst his papers, when they were
afterwards overhauled by the official assignee—or some such fiscal
dignitary,—a bacchanalian song in manuscript was found, supposed to have
been written about this period, the _refrain_ of which ran as follows:—

           “When creditors clamour, and cash fails the till,
           There is nothing so easy as giving a bill.”

It needs no ghost to rise from the grave to prophesy the sequel to this
mode of “raising the wind.” It is recorded twenty times a month in the
daily papers,—now in the Bankruptcy Court, now in that for the Relief of
Insolvent Debtors. Ensign Spoonbill’s career lasted about eighteen
months, at the end of which period—not having prospered by means of
gaming to the extent he anticipated—he found himself under the necessity
of selling out and retiring to a continental residence, leaving behind
him debts, which were eventually paid, to the tune of seven thousand,
two hundred and fourteen pounds, seventeen shillings, and tenpence three
farthings, the vulgar fractions having their origin in the
hair-splitting occasioned by reduplication of interest. He chose for his
abode the pleasant town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he cultivated his
moustaches, acquired a smattering of French, and an insight into the
mystery of pigeon-shooting. For one or other of these qualifications—we
cannot exactly say which—he was subsequently appointed _attaché_ to a
foreign embassy, and at the present moment, we believe, is considered
one of those promising young men whose diplomatic skill will probably
declare itself one of these days, by some stroke of finesse, which shall
set all Europe by the ears.

With respect to Colonel Tulip’s “crack” regiment, it went, as the saying
is, “to the Devil.” The exposure caused by the affair of Ensign
Spoonbill—the smash of Ensign Brittles, which shortly followed—the duel
between Lieutenant Wadding and Captain Cushion, the result of which was
a ball (neither “spot” nor “plain,” but a bullet) through the head of
the last-named gentleman, and a few other trifles of a similar
description, at length attracted the “serious notice” of his Grace the
Commander-in-Chief. It was significantly hinted to Colonel Tulip that it
would be for the benefit of the service in general, and that of the
Hundredth in particular, if he exchanged to half-pay, as the regiment
required re-modelling. A smart Lieutenant-Colonel who had learnt
something, not only of drill, but of discipline, under the hero of
“Young Egypt,” in which country he had shared that general’s laurels,
was sent down from the Horse Guards. “Weeding” to a considerable extent
took place; the Majors and the Adjutant were replaced by more efficient
men, and, to sum up all, the Duke’s “Circular” came out, laying down a
principle of _practical military education, while on service_, which, if
acted up to,—and there seems every reason to hope it will now be,—bids
fair to make good officers of those who heretofore were merely idlers.
It will also diminish the opportunities for gambling, drinking, and
bill-discounting, and substitute, for the written words on the Queen’s
Commission, the real character of a soldier and a gentleman.




                     HOW TO SPEND A SUMMER HOLIDAY.


If the walls of London—the bill-stickers’ chosen haunt—could suddenly
find a voice to tell their own history, we might have a few curious
illustrations of the manners and customs—the fashions, fancies, and
popular idols—of the English during the last half century,—from the days
when a three feet blue bill was thought large enough to tell where
Bonaparte’s victories might be read about, to the advent acres of
flaring paper and print which announce a Bal Masque or a new Haymarket
Comedy. One of the most startling contrasts of such a confession would
refer to the announcements about means of locomotion. It is not very
long ago that “The Highflyer,” “The Tally-ho,” the Brighton “Age,” and
the Shrewsbury “Wonder” boasted, in all the glory of red letters, their
wonder-feat speed of ten miles an hour,—“York in one day;” “Manchester
in twenty-four hours;” and so on. The same wall now tells the passer-by
a different tale, for we have Excursion Trains to all sorts of pleasant
places at all sorts of low fares. “Twelve Hours to Paris” is the burden
of one placard, whilst another shows how “Cologne on the Rhine” may be
reached in twenty-four.

Nor is this marvellous change in speed—this real economy of life—the
only variation from old modes; for the cost in money of a journey has
diminished with its cost of time. The cash which a few years ago was
required to go to York, will now take the tourist to Cologne. The
Minster of the one city is now, therefore, rivalled as a point for
sight-seers by the Dom-Kirche of the other. When the South Eastern
Railway Company offers to take the traveller, who will pay them about
three pounds at London Bridge one night, and place him by the next
evening on the banks of the Rhine,—the excellent tendency is, that the
summer holiday folks will extend their notions of an excursion beyond
the Channel.

Steam, that makes the trip from London to Cologne so rapid and so cheap,
does not stop there, but is ready now to bear the traveller by railway
to Brunswick, Hanover, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna,—nay, with one short gap,
he may go all the way to Trieste, on the Adriatic, by the iron road.
Steam is ready also on the Rhine to carry him at small charge up that
stream towards Switzerland. Indeed, afloat by steamer and ashore by
railway, the tourist who leaves London Bridge on a Monday night may well
reach Basle by Thursday or Friday, seeing many things on his way,
including the best scenery of the Rhine. The beautiful portion of the
banks of that river forms but a small part of its entire length; indeed,
on reaching Cologne, the traveller is disappointed to find so little
that is remarkable in what he beholds on the banks of the famous stream.
It is not till he ascends many miles higher that he feels repaid for his
journey. _The_ scenery lies between Coblenz and Bingen, and in extent
bears some such proportion to the whole length of the river as would the
banks of the Thames from Chelsea to Richmond to the entire course of our
great river, from its rise in Gloucestershire to its junction with the
sea. In addition to the part just named, there are some few other points
where the Rhine is worth seeing,—such as the fall at Schaffhausen,—but
Switzerland may claim this as one of _its_ attractions. It is a fine
river from Basle, even down through the Dutch rushes and flats to the
sea; but, with all its reputation, there is only a morsel of the Rhine
worth going to look at, and that lies, as we have just said, between its
junction with the picturesque Moselle at Coblenz and the small town of
Bingen. Between those points it passes through hills and near mountains,
whose sides and summits boast the castles and ruins so often painted and
often sung; and these spots are now within the reach of the three pounds
first-class railway ticket, now-a-days announced by placard on the walls
and hoardings of London.

Once on a Rhine steamer, and Switzerland is within easy reach.

On our table, as we write, lies the second edition of a volume[2]
written by the physician to the Queen’s Household, Dr. Forbes, showing
how a month may be employed in Switzerland. He adopted the South Eastern
Railway plan, and, starting by a mail train at half-past eight in the
evening of the 3rd of August, found himself and companions on the next
evening looking from the window of an hotel on the Rhine. Steam and a
week placed him in Switzerland. Here railways must be no longer reckoned
on, and the tourist, if he be in search of health, may try what
pedestrian exercise will do for him. This the Doctor strongly
recommends; and, following his own prescription, we find him—though a
sexagenarian—making capital way; now as a pedestrian, anon on horseback,
and then again on foot, only adopting a carriage when there was good
reason for such assistance. He describes the country, as all do who have
been through it, as a land of large and good inns, well stored with
luxurious edibles and drinkables. Against a too free use of them, he
doctor-like gives a medical hint or two, and goes somewhat out of his
way, perhaps, to show how much better the waters of the mountains may be
than the wine. Indeed the butter, the honey, the milk, the cheese, and
the melted snows of Switzerland win his warmest praises. The bread is
less fortunate; but its inferiority, and many other small discomforts,
are overlooked and almost forgotten in his enjoying admiration of what
he found good on his way amidst the mountain valleys and breezy passes
of his route. The bracing air, the brilliant sky, the animating scenes,
the society of emulous and cheerful companions, and, above all, the
increased corporeal exercise soon produce a change in the mind and the
body, in the spirits and the stomach of the tourist.

Footnote 2:

  “The Physician’s Holiday.”

What a marvellous change it is for a smoke-dried man who for months,
perhaps years, has been “in populous cities pent,” to escape from his
thraldom, and find himself far away from his drudgeries and routines up
amongst the mountains and the lakes, and surrounded by the most
magnificent scenes in nature; where he sees in all its glory that which
a townsman seldom gets a glimpse of—a sunrise in its greatest beauty;
and where sunsets throw a light over the earth, which makes its beauties
emulate those of the heavens! Day by day, during summer in Switzerland,
such enjoyments are at hand. One traveller may choose one route, and
another another; for there are many and admirable changes to be rung
upon the roads to be taken. Dr. Forbes, for instance, went from Basle to
Schaffhausen, thence to Zurich, and, steaming over a part of the lake,
made for Zug, and thence to the Rigi. He returned to the Zurich-See, and
then went to Wallenstadt, Chur, and the Via Mala. Had he to shorten his
trip without great loss of the notable scenes, he might, having first
reached Lucerne, have left that place for Meyringen, and then pursued
his subsequent way by the line of the lakes, visiting the various
glorious points in their neighbourhood that challenged his
attention—Grindelwald, Schreckhorn, Lauterbrunnen, Unterseen, and so on
to Thun; then by the pass of the Gemmi to Leuk, and, from there, to what
is described by our author as the gem of his whole Swiss experience—the
Riffelberg, and the view at Monte Rosa:—

“Sitting there, up in mid-heaven, as it were, on the smooth, warm ledge
of our rock; in one of the sunniest noons of a summer day; amid air
cooled by the elevation and the perfect exposure to the most delicious
temperature; under a sky of the richest blue, and either cloudless, or
only here and there gemmed with those aerial and sun-bright cloudlets
which but enhance its depth; with the old field of vision, from the
valley at our feet to the horizon, filled with majestic shapes of every
variety of form, and of a purity and brilliancy of whiteness which left
all common whiteness dull;—we seemed to feel as if there could be no
other mental mood but that of an exquisite yet cheerful serenity—a sort
of delicious abstraction, or absorption of our powers, in one grand,
vague, yet most luxurious perception of Beauty and Loveliness.

“At another time—it would almost seem at the same time, so rapid was the
alternation from mood to mood—the immeasurable vastness and majesty of
the scene, the gigantic bulk of the individual mountains, the peaks
towering so far beyond the level of our daily earth, as to seem more
belonging to the sky than to it, our own elevated and isolated station
hemmed in on every side by untrodden wastes and impassable walls of
snow, and, above all, the utter silence, and the absence of every
indication of life and living things—suggesting the thought that the
foot of man had never trodden, and never would tread there: these and
other analogous ideas would excite a tone of mind entirely
different—solemn, awful, melancholy....

“I said at the time, and I still feel disposed to believe, that the
whole earth has but few scenes that can excel it in grandeur, in beauty,
and in wonderfulness of every kind. I thought then, and I here repeat my
opinion in cool blood, that had I been brought hither blindfolded from
London, had had my eyes opened but for a single hour on this astonishing
panorama, and had been led back in darkness as I came, I should have
considered the journey, with all its privations, well repaid by what I
saw.”

Having seen this crowning glory of mountain scenery, the tourist intent
only upon a short trip might adopt one of many variations for his return
to Basle. If on going out he had missed any bright spot, he should see
it on his way back. He must remember:

Interlachen, one of the sweetest spots in all Switzerland, which, though
only about four miles in extent, affords a perfect specimen of a Swiss
valley in its best form.

The Lake of Thun, inferior to that of Wallenstadt in grandeur, and to
that of Lucerne in beauty, but superior to the Lake of Zurich in both;
and in respect to the view from it, beyond all these; none of them
having any near or distant prospect comparable to that looking back,
where the snowy giants of the Oberland, with the Jungfrau, and her
silver horns, are seen over the tops of the nearer mountains.

The “show glacier” of the Rosenlaui, which is so easy of access.

The view from the Hotel of the Jungfrau on the Wengern Alp.

The lake scenery near Alpnach.

All these points should be made either out or home. They are not likely
to be forgotten by the tourist when once seen. On the pilgrimage to
these wonders of nature, the other peculiarities of the country and its
people will be observed, and amongst them the frequency of showers and
the popularity of umbrellas; the great division of landed property; the
greater number of beggars in the Romanist as compared with the
Protestant Cantons, and the better cultivation of the latter; the
numerous spots of historical interest, as Morgarten, Sempach, Naefels;
where the Swiss have fought for the liberty they enjoy (to say nothing
of the dramatic William Tell, and his defeat of the cruel Gesler); the
fruitfulness and number of Swiss orchards (which give us our grocers’
“French plums”), the excellent flavor of Alpine strawberries and cream;
the scarcity of birds; and the characteristic sounds of the Swiss horn,
the Ranz des Vaches, and the night chaunts of the watchmen.

On the map attached to Dr. Forbes’s volume are the dates, jotted down,
when our traveller entered Switzerland, at Basle, and when he left it on
his return to smoke and duty in London. He reached the land of mountains
and lakes on the 11th of August; he quitted it on the 12th of September;
four days afterwards he was being bothered at the Custom-House at
Blackwall. The last words of his book are these:—“In accordance with a
principle kept constantly in view while writing out the particulars of
the Holiday now concluded, viz. to give to those who may follow the same
or a similar track, such economical and financial details as may be
useful to them, I may here state that the total expenses of the
tour—from the moment of departure to that of return—was, as near as may
be, _One Guinea per diem_ to each of the travellers.”

The thousands of young gentlemen with some leisure and small means, who
are in the habit of getting rid of both in unhealthy amusements, need
hardly be told that a winter’s abstinence from certain modes and places
of entertainment would be more than rewarded by a single summer holiday
spent after the manner of Dr. Forbes and his younger companions. No very
heroic self-denial is necessary; and the compensation—in health, higher
and more intense enjoyment, and the best sort of mental improvement—is
incalculable.

What we have here described is an expensive proceeding compared with the
cheap contract trips which are constantly diverging from the Metropolis,
to every part of England, Ireland, Scotland, and to all attainable
places on the Continent. These, so far as we are able to learn, have
hitherto been well conducted; and although the charges for every
possible want—from the platform of the London Terminus back again to the
same spot, are marvellously moderate—the speculations, from their
frequent repetition, appear to have been remunerative to the projectors.




           CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE ON THE “DECLINE OF ENGLAND.”


                         _To Mr. Ledru Rollin._

 Sir,

I generally believe everything that is going to happen; and as it is a
remarkable fact that everything that is going to happen is of a
depressing nature, I undergo a good deal of anxiety. I am very careful
of myself (taking a variety of patent medicines, and paying particular
attention to the weather), but I am not strong. I think my weakness is
principally on my nerves, which have been a good deal shaken in the
course of my profession as a practising attorney; in which I have met
with a good deal to shock them; but from which, I beg leave most
cheerfully to acquaint you, I have retired.

Sir, I am certain you are a very remarkable public gentleman, though you
have the misfortune to be French. I am convinced you know what is going
to happen, because you describe it in your book on “The Decline of
England,” in such an alarming manner. I have read your book and, Sir, I
am sincerely obliged to you for what you have made me suffer; I am very
miserable and very grateful.

You have not only opened up a particularly dismal future, but you have
shown me in what a miserable condition we, here, (I mean in Tooting, my
place of abode, and the surrounding portion of the British Empire) are
at this present time; though really I was not aware of it.

I suppose that your chapter on the law of this land is the result of a
profound study of the statutes at large and the “Reports of Cases
argued,” &c.; for students of your nation do not take long for that sort
of thing, and you have been amongst us at least three months. In the
course of your “reading up” you must doubtless have perused the
posthumous reports of J. Miller, Q. C. (Queen’s Comedian). There you
doubtless found the cause of Hammer _v._ Tongs, which was an action of
_tort_ tried before Gogg, C. J. Flamfacer (Serjeant)—according to the
immortal reporter of good things—stated his case on behalf of the
plaintiff so powerfully, that before he could get to the peroration,
said plaintiff’s hair stood on end, tears rolled down his cheeks in
horror and pity at his own wrongs, and he exclaimed, while wringing his
pocket-handkerchief, “Good gracious! That villain Tongs! What a terrific
box on my ear it must have been! To think that a man may be almost
murdered without knowing it!”

I am Hammer, and you, Mr. Rollin, are Tongs. Your book made my ears to
tingle quite as sharply as if you had actually boxed them. I must,
however, in justice to the little hair that Time has left me, positively
state that, even while I was perusing your most powerful passages, it
showed no propensity for the perpendicular. I felt very nervous for all
that; for still—although I could hardly believe that a French gentleman
residing for a few months in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square,
London, could possibly obtain a thorough knowledge, either from study or
personal observation, of the political, legislative, agricultural,
agrarian, prelatical, judicial, colonial, commercial, manufacturing,
social, and educational systems and condition of this empire—yet, from
the unqualified manner in which you deliver yourself upon all these
branches, I cannot choose but think that your pages must, like certain
fictions, be at least founded on _some_ fact; that to have concocted
your volume—of smoke—there must be some fire somewhere. Or is it only
the smell of it?

For, Sir, even an alarm of fire is unpleasant; and, to an elderly
gentleman with a very small stake in the country (prudently inserted in
the three per cent. consols), reading of the dreadful things which you
say are to happen to one’s own native land is exceedingly uncomfortable,
especially at night; when “in silence and in gloom” one broods over
one’s miseries, personal and national; when, in fact, your or any one
else’s _bête noire_ is apt to get polished off with a few extra touches
of blacking. Bless me! when I put my candle out the other night, and
thought of your portrait of Britannia, I quite shook; and when I lay
down I could almost fancy her shadow on the wall. Even now I see her
looking uncommonly sickly, in spite of the invigorating properties of
the waves she so constantly “rules;” the trident and shield—her
“supporters” for ages—can hardly keep her up. Grief, and forebodings of
the famine which you promise, has made her dwindle down from Great to
Little Britain. The British Lion at her feet is in the last stage of
consumption; in such a shocking state of collapse, that he will soon be
in a condition to jump out of his skin; but you do not point out the Ass
who is to jump into it.

Fortunately for my peace I found, on reading a little further, that this
is not Britannia as she is, but Britannia seen by you, “as in a glass
darkly”—as she is to be—when some more of her blood has been sucked by a
phlebotomising Oligarchy and State-pensionary; by an ogreish Cotton
lordocracy; by a sanguinary East India Company, whose “atrocious
greediness caused ten millions of Indians to perish in a month;” by the
servile Parsonocracy, who “read their sermons, in order that the priest
may be able to place his discourse before the magistrate, if he should
be suspected of having preached anything contrary to law;” by the
Landlords, whose oppressions cause labourers to kill one another “to get
a premium upon death;” and by a variety of other national leeches, which
your imagination presents to our view with the distinctness of the
monsters in a drop of Thames water seen through a solar microscope.

But, Sir, as Mr. Hammer said, “to think that a man may be almost
murdered without knowing it!” and so, _I_ say, (one trial of your book
will prove the fact) may a whole parish—such as Tooting—or an entire
country—such as England. If it had not been for your book I should not
have had the remotest notion that “English society is about to fall with
a fearful crash.” Society at large, so far as I can observe it (at
Tooting, and elsewhere), seems to be quite innocent of its impending
fate; and if one may judge from appearances (but then you say, we may
not),—we are rather better off than usual just now: indeed, when you
paint Britannia as she is at the present writing, she makes a rather fat
and jolly portrait than otherwise. In your “Exposition” (for 1850) you
say: “The problem is not to discover whether England is great, but
whether her greatness can endure.” In admitting, in the handsomest
manner possible, that England _is_ great, you go on to say, that “Great
Britain, which is only two hundred leagues long, and whose soil is far
from equal to that of Aragon or Lombardy, draws every year from its
agriculture, by a skilful cultivation and the breeding of animals, a
revenue which amounts to more than three billions six hundred millions
francs, and this revenue of the mother-country is almost doubled by the
value of similar produce in its colonies and dependencies. Her industry,
her commerce, and her manufactures, create a property superior to the
primal land-productions, and all owing to her inexhaustible mines, her
natural wealth, and her admirable system of circulation by fourscore and
six canals, and seventy lines of railway. The total revenue of England
then amounts to upwards of twelve billion francs. Her power amongst the
nations is manifest by the number and greatness of her fleets and of her
domains. In Europe she possesses, besides her neighbour-islets,
Heligoland, Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Islands; in Asia, she holds
British Hindostan with its tributaries, Ceylon, and her compulsory
allies of the Punjab and of Scinde—that is to say, almost a world; in
Africa she claims Sierra Leone with its dependencies, the Isle of
France, Seychelles, Fernandez Po, the Cape of Good Hope and Saint
Helena; in America, she possesses Upper and Lower Canada, Cape Breton,
the Lesser Antilles, the Bermudas, Newfoundland, Lucays, Jamaica,
Dominica, Guiana, the Bay of Honduras, and Prince Edward’s Island;
lastly, in Oceania, she has Van Dieman’s Land, Norfolk Island, Nova
Scotia, Southern Australia; and these hundred nations make up for her
more that one hundred and fifty millions of subjects, including the
twenty-seven to twenty-eight millions of the three mother kingdoms. As
to her mercantile marine, two details will suffice to make it known; she
has about thirty thousand sailing-vessels and steamers, without counting
her eight thousand colonial ships; and in one year she exports six or
seven hundred millions of cotton stuffs, which makes for a single detail
an account beyond the sum total of all the manufacturing exportation of
France.”

But now for the plague spot! All this territory, and power, and
commercial activity is, you say, our ruin; all this wealth is precisely
our pauperism; all this happiness is our misery. What Montesquieu says,
and you Mr. Ledru Rollin indorse with your unerring imprimatur, _must_
be true:—“The fortune of maritime empires cannot be long, for they only
reign by the oppression of the nations, and while they extend themselves
abroad, they are undermining themselves within.”

Upon my word, Mr. Rollin, this looks very likely: and when you see your
neighbours gaily promenading Regent Street; when you hear of the “Lion
of Waterloo” (at whom you are so obliging as to say in your Preface, you
have no wish “to fire a spent ball”) giving his usual anniversary dinner
to the usual number of guests, and with his usual activity stepping off
afterwards to a ball; when you are told that a hundred thousand
Londoners can afford to enjoy themselves at Epsom Races; and that
throughout the country there is just now more enjoyment and less
grumbling than there has been for years, I can quite understand that
your horror at the innocent disregard thus evinced at the tremendous
“blow up” that is coming, must be infinitely more real than that of
Serjeant Flamfacer. “Alas!” you exclaim with that “profound emotion”
with which your countrymen are so often afflicted; “Government returns
inform me that during the past year English pauperism has decreased
eleven per cent., and that the present demand for labour in the
manufacturing districts nearly equals the supply? The culminating point
is reached; destruction must follow!”

Heavens! Mr. Rollin, I tremble with you. The plethora of prosperity
increases, and will burst the sooner! We, eating, drinking, contented,
trafficking, stupid, revolution-hating, spiritless, English people, “are
undermining ourselves within.” We are gorging ourselves with National
prosperity to bring on a National dyspepsia, and will soon fall asleep
under the influence of a national nightmare! Horrible! the more so
because

                      “Alas! unconscious of their fate,
                The little victims play.”

Now, Sir, I wish to ask you calmly and candidly, if there _is_ any fire
at the bottom of your volumes of smoke? or have you read our records,
and seen our country through a flaming pair of Red Spectacles, that has
converted everything within their range into Raw-Head-and-Bloody-Bones?

Indeed I hope it is so; for though I am very much obliged to you for
putting us on our guard, you have made me very miserable. This is the
worst shock of all. With my belief in “what is going to happen,” I have
led but a dog-life of it, ever since I retired from that cat-and-dog
life, the Law. First, the Reform Bill was to ruin us out of hand; then,
the farmers threatened us with what was going to happen in consequence
of Free Trade; and that was bad enough, for it was starvation—no less.
What was going to happen if the Navigation Laws were repealed, I dare
not recall. Now we are to be swept off the face of the earth if we allow
letters to be sorted on a Sunday. But these are comparative trifles to
what you, Mr. R., assert is going to happen, whatever we do or don’t do.
However, I am resolved on one thing—_I_ won’t be in at the death, or
rather _with_ the death. I shall pull up my little stake in Capel Court,
and retire to some quiet corner of the world, such as the Faubourg St.
Antoine, the foot of Mount Vesuvius, or Chinese Tartary.

                                                       Yours truly,
                                                   CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE.

 Paradise Row, Tooting.

                  *       *       *       *       *

                Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’
                      Conducted by CHARLES DICKENS.

                        _Price 2d., Stamped 3d._,

                         THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE

                                   OF

                             CURRENT EVENTS.

  _The Number, containing a history of the past month, was issued with
                             the Magazines._

                  *       *       *       *       *

    Published at the Office, No 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
            Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
 ● Renumbered footnotes.
 ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
 ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
     single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
     1^{st}).



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