DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY The Glenn Negley Collection of Utopian Literature Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2010 with funding from Dul- CHAPTER VII. I SHALL now continue the narrative which Bertie has so well begun for me, and endeavor to weave into a harmonious whole the various items supplied me from the sources at my com- mand. Next to Bertie Greathead, it is mainly from the Avenil family that I have drawn my information. The whole of the Wilmers, to whom I belong, early left the scene, and only reappeared on it towards the end. It was by general acclamation of the whole party of the ice- berg, and of their relatives, that Bertie undertook the charge of tlie little Christmas Carol. As his calling caused him fre- quently to be absent, and as the child's property promised to be considerable, Bertie begged that the fathers of Avenil and of my father might be associated with him in the trust. This was done, and when my father and Avenil came of age they also were made ti-ustees. The only difficulty was about the place of residence for the child and Alma Nutrix, for so the new nurse was called. Ber- tie insisted on their living with him, so attached had he be- come to the child. But his bachelor's quarters were altogether too straitened to admit such a party. His fellow guardians wished him to come into the Triangle. But he was not a member ; and on making application, and being asked which division of tlie club he desired to join, he found himself ineligible for any. He could not have the child and its nurse BY AND BY. 33 with him in the single men's quarters ; and he could not go with them to the single women's quarters. As for the married folks' division, he would not hear of it. He was not qualified, he said, and did not mean to he qualified, to occupy that department. In the meantime, the child and nurse were accommodated hy the Avenils, in their own quarters in the club, and Bertie used to visit them there. The Avenils had thus an excellent oppor- tunity of becoming well acquainted with Alma's character. What they saw of her led them to have a high regard for her, and it occurred to them that the best solution of the difficulty would be her marriage with Bertie. She, however, made no secret of her unwillingness to enter again upon an association of the kind. Bertie became more and more dissatisfied at the barrier to his complete ownership of the child. At length he abruptly, and some say very crossly, proposed to Alma, that as they both liked having the child with them, they should over- come their mutual aversion and be married, for the sake of the better taking care of it. She said, that if that was all he wanted, she had no objection ; and so the couple, after entering into a contract of the third class, became with the infant, inmates of the married folks' quarters. It was said that they continued to be very cold and distant to each other for a con- siderable period after this. But the child, who so early in its career had power thus to bring these two persons together in spite of themselves, exhibited its power yet more in reconciling them to their union afterwards. For, to the great amusement and delight of their friends, Bertie and Alma fairly fell in love with each other after their marriage ; and so long as she lived, no more truly attached couple was to be found. It was his reminiscence of this tender passage in his history that caused Bertie's voice to falter in his recital. She died when little Criss was between three and four years old, leaving no child of her own to divide Bertie's affection ; and has been sincerely mourned by him ever since. Bertie then, for his own solace, took the child with him on an aerial journey. It had begun to pine a little, as if for its 3 34 - BY AND BY. foster mother. The journey did it so much good that Bertie couchided that, having been born in the air, the air was its natural ehMuont. After this it was his constant companion, until old enough to go to school. It was doubtless in a meas- ure owing to the action of the life aloft upon a peculiar tem- perament, that little Criss grew up to be the man he was. It served to develop a temperament which was itself the result of an union between two races of opposite characteristics. A careful examination of the contents of the balloon, made after Bertie's arrival in England, revealed letters and other docu- ments which proved that the old man, though himself of Jew- ish extraction, had married an European wx)man ; and that Oriss's mother Zoe was their daugliter, being named after her mother. She, again, had a husband or lover, who was a Greek, whose child Criss was. Her father hated this Greek, and believed him to be the emissary of enemies who were plotting against him. It was to escape from their malevolence that he had embarked in his balloon with his daughter and his wealth, intending to settle in some country where he would be more secure than in Syria. He was completely in the dark as to how far matters had gone between his daughter and her lover. It had been with a breaking heart, and on the eve of her expected confinement, that she had received his command to enter the balloon and start instantly. She dared not dis- obey him. Her lover was not at hand. A hasty, blurred half-finished letter which was found in the balloon, evidently intended for him, revealed much of the above. It remained doubtful whether her fall was accidental or intentional. The fact of her child being there, newly-born, and helidess, made it impossible that she could have contemplated abandoning it, if in her senses. But agony and terror have sometimes been kno\\'Ti to induce women to do even this, under a condition of society in which they and their affections were regarded as the property of their parents or other relatives, and it was accounted a crime of the deepest turpitude to assert a right of ownership in their own hearts and persons. Thank heaven we have got so far past that stage of woman's BY AND BY. 35 long martyrdom, that her mistakes in the bestowal of her affec- tions are now met by a smile of encouragement to be wiser in the future, and not by a fierce frown of unrelenting condemna- tion for all time to come. Bertie found some confirmation of these conclusions after- v;ards, on visiting Damascus. There was much mystery about the old man; and his sudden disappearance was only in keep- ing with all that was known of him. He was believed to be connected in some way with one of the ancient Royal Families of the East, and to be in constant fear of attempts on his life or property. Besides his house in Damascus, he had a summer residence on Lebanon ; and as no claimants had appeared for these, they were taken charge of by the authorities, to be kept sealed up for the period appointed by law in such cases. Of Criss's father, the Greek Lover of Zoe, Bertie found no trace whatever. And he and his fellow-guardians decided that it was not necessary to advertise the finding of the child and the property, inasmuch as there could be no doubt that any lawful claimant would not hesitate to advertise for them him- self. No such advertisement appeared, and Bertie owned to himself that it was only with vast reluctance that he could have brought himself to yield his charge even, to its own father. The non-appearance of a claimant was therefore a great relief to him. To one portion of the contents of the balloon I must recur ; it is a portion which plays an important part in my story. The examination made by Bertie on the iceberg had neces- sarily been hasty and superficial. It was shortly after reaching home that he requested the elder Avenil and Wilmer to be present at the opening of the boxes, as he considered whatever of value they might contain to be the property of the child, and therefore vested in them jointly as its trustees. Mr. Avenil's knowledge of mineralogy was sufficient to enable him to perceive that some of the gems w^ere of great value. A jeweller with whom he was acquainted being called in, the report he gave was so startling, that they determined, 36 BY AND BY. with the jeweller's advice, to consult a first-class diamond merchant. There was one in London at that moment, a Jew, who was connected with the great houses in the principal capitals, and was acknowledged as standing at the head of his profession. This man, on being introduced to a view of the gems in Avenil's rooms, was so astounded that he sank hack in his seat and looked wistfully at the trustees. Eecovering him- self, he enquired if he might be made acquainted with the history of the jewels, and the mode in which they had come into the present holder's hands. Bertie contented himself with saying that they were heir- looms in the family of the ward of whom he and his two friends were trustees. Finding that nothing more was forthcoming, the merchant said : " Diamonds like these are always catalogued. No two famous stones have precisely the same weight or form, and few have jirecisely the same hue. Here is a printed list of all the prin- cipal diamonds in the world, including those which have dis- appeared ; for such things are never destroyed. They are always kept out of the way of fire, but they disappear through being stolen and hidden away, and the thieves dying and leaving no note. I propose, with your permission, to weigh some of these larger ones, and compare them with my list." He then produced a balance of a marvellously delicate con- struction, and having ascertained the exact weight and counted the sides of a wonderfully magnificent diamond, he referred to his book. What he found there made him start again. He said nothing, however, but proceeded with tremulous hand to make a like comparison with some of the others. After refer- ' ring to another part of his book, he addressed the trustees and said: " Gentlemen, when you have heard what I am about to say, you will not wonder at my surprise, and, I trust, not be averse to giving me the information I have already requested of you. The last time that these gems were seen in public, it was in the capacity of crown jewels of the brilliant but short- lived empire of the North Pacific. You ~ are doubtless all BY AND BY. 37 familiar with the extraordinary career of the Californian sailor- warrior, who maintained the independence of the states of 'North America which border on the Pacific, against those on the east of the Rocky Mountains, and erected them int6 an empire unrivalled in grandeur and extent, bringing all the islands of that great ocean, with their enormous wealth of produce, beneath his sway ; and who was*finally baffled in his scheme of universal dominion in that hemisphere, by the de- termined and heroic resistance of the allied powers of Australia and New Zealand. Ah, gentlemen, those were exciting times ill that hemisphere. Then, for the first time since the days sung by Moses, Homer, and Milton, earth, sea, and air bore an equal share in the contests of men. The lofty ranges of the Bocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada witnessed many a terrible struggle between the armies of the eastern and western powers of the continent. The Pacific swarmed with war-ships, swifter and mightier than any before imagined. And ever and anon in the upper regions of the atmosphere, occurred dreadful •conflicts between the aerial armies of the rival powers ; while here and tlaere on the lovely but lonely isles of the great ocean would drop down a detachment of invincible warriors, and in the name of one or the other of the contending parties reduce them to submission and tribute. " Forgive my repeating what every school-boy knows, and the oldest of us can almost remember ; but professional enthu- siasm has invested that period with an overpowering interest for me ; for never before or since have gems attained such a value as under that brilliant and reckless ruler. It was on the downfall of the adventurer, for so I suppose I must call him, seeing that he did not succeed in establishing his kingdom, that these gems were lost. His end was as strange as his ori- gin and career. " Born in a Californian placer, and carrying in his veins the blood of that long famous heroic family of France, the Bona- partes, and of the renowned high priest of the once powerful sect of the Mormon.s, King George Francis, on the collapse of his empire, quitted his capital, San Francisco, in an atiromotive. 38 BY AND BY. His hope was to reach the Sandwich Islands, the chief depot and head-quarters of his fleet. Once there, lie could for a long time defy the concentrated forces of his foes, and enjoy the luxuries' of the voluptuous court he was accustomed to hold there. His flight was at once known to his enemies, who were assenilded on the coast of California, and an aerial sqiuidron started in pursuit. The distance being but two thousand miles, there was no time to be lost if he was to be overtaken on the way. He was known to be heavily laden, and to have his chief valuables with him ; and he was accompanied by his minister of finance, a man of Oriental extraction, who had extraordinary influence over the emperor, and over whom hung some mystery. Many believed him to be a Jew. " His pursuers reckoned on their superior speed to reach the islands first unperceived, and capture him on his arrival before he could land. Fixing their rendezvous for the summit of Mouna Roa, tliey got there in time to conceal themselves in the hollows of an extinct crater, and take up their posts of ob- servation. Heavily laden though they knew the car of the fugitive to be, its machinery was so powerful that they had no reason to suppose he would depart from his usual custom of fly- ing high until directly over his intended destination, and then dropping straight down upon it. Their plan was to intercept him at the moment of his descent, and its success depended mainly upon his being unaided by his partizans in the islands. Had he telegraphed to them of his coming, a detachment of guards and officials would have risen to meet him, in too strong force to be withstood. The absence of any such demonstration led the party on the look-out to surmise that either through confidence, haste, or treachery, he had not announced his coming. " They had not long to wait. In a very few hours a spot appeared in the north-eastern horizon, which soon developed into the well-known outlines of the imperial car. Rising at once into the air, the enemy disposed themselves so as to be able to make sure of intercepting their prize. The comparative diminutiveness of their vessels would have rendered them BY AND BY. 39 unseen by liim, while his was plainly visible to them ; moreover, the smoke which arose from the volcano beneath, the terrible Kilauea, then in a state of violent activity, would serve to make the whole scene on their side indistinct to one at a distance. Even when on his near approach the emperor perceived the hostile squadron, he had no reason to suppose it to be other than some of his own islanders, or other excursionists, on a visit to the renowned volcano. " Too late he discovered that he was surrounded by enemies. The imperial car had been brought to a stand-still preparatory to its descent. They had considerable way on them, while lie was motionless. This was the moment for which they had watched. They darted on him like a flock of swift eagles on an unwieldy swan. Seeing the capture of his vessel imminent, the Emperor, who was a man of unbounded intrepidity, com- mitted himself to a parachute, in the use of which he was a tolerable adept ; and presently his enemies, to their immense chagrin, saw him slipping through their hands, as he descended, at first rapidly, and then, as the resistance of the air began to tell, slowly and steadily towards the earth. "Now came the catastrophe which led to my telling this long story. During the struggle aloft, the contending parties had drifted immediately over the vast crater of Kilauea. Let me describe it, for I have seen it. No diamond merchant con- siders his education complete until he has made a pilgrimage to that fiery sarcophagus of so much beauty and wealth. "Ascending the mountain, and traversing the table-land, you come suddenly to the brink of a gulf at least a mile in diameter, and with vertical sides from one to two thousand feet deep. The whole interior of this abyss is a furnace of molten lava, agitated like the ocean in a tempest, and tossing aloft billows of fire, which do not, as in the ocean, flow in one direction, impelled by a steady wind, but meet from opposite quarters with such violence as to dash their fiery spray high in the air. And all this fierce contention goes on amid such appalling sounds of rage and sighs, and groans and murmurs, that it is impossible to avoid fancying one is gazing upon the fabled hell 40 JiY -^^NB BY. of the poets, and watcliing tlie throes of giant fiends in their agony. " How the Emperor came to meet his fate none could tell. Probably the niei)liitic vapors stifled his senses, and made him unable to direct his course. But he was seen to descend into the very midst of this furnace, and with him went the finest collection of diamonds in the world. There can be no doubt of it. They had disappeared from the Palace at San Francisco. They were not found in the captured balloon ; and they have not been heard of since. I ought to mention, if only for the credit of my.o\ni countryman, that an heroic attempt was made to save him. His Chancellor of the Exchequer seeing his dan- ger, made a dash at him on another parachute, and actually succeeded in overtaking and grappling with him for several moments. But he was forced at last to let him go, and with difficulty saved himself. '' And now, pardon me if once more I ask how these jewels which, a couple of generations ago, were thus lost in the crater of Kilauea, have returned into existence in the hands of their present owner. If I am exceeding discretion in making inqui- ry, I apologize and withdraw it." All looked to Bertie Greathead. He had resolved to keep the matter secret, at least for the present. He lelt the tempta- tion strong upon him to reply — " Lost in a crater of fire, they were found in a crater of ice ! " But he resisted it, and observed merely that it was probably a case of mistaken identity. The merchant shook his head, and looked disappointed. But he only said, — " In that case the previous history of the lost jewels can have no interest for you. Now what do you want done with these ? I may be able to find you a purchaser, but I can undertake no responsibility about title." " Of course not," said Mr. Avenil, somewhat sharply ; " that is our business. All you have to do is to describe them as heir- looms in a family that wishes to realize their value. And it BY AND BY. 41 occurs to me, that as we are disposing of the property of a mi- nor, it will be well to make a condition providing for their re- purchase at his option on the occasion of his attaining his majority." The merchant declared that such a condition was without a precedent, but that he would do his best. He had at that very time a commission to provide a set of diamonds to be worn at the coronation of the Emperor of Central Africa, a ceremonial which had been long deferred, owing to the loss of the crown jewels of that country, and the failure to procure any worthy to replace them. Not to multiply details, I will only add that a sale of the jewels was effected in the manner projjosed, the eagerness of the African monarch to obtain them at any price the moment he received his agent's report, leading him to consent to the unusual proviso for their future redemption, rather than forego their jjresent possession. It was highly improbable that any private individual would care to keep such an amount as that of the purchase-money lying idle in the shape of jewels, but the trustees were agreed as to the propriety of retaining the option, and the method they adopted of investing the fortune accruing from the sale Avould enable its possessor easily to re-purchase them on com- ing of age. For it was carefully placed in good governmental and co-operative securities, to average the moderate rate of ten per cent., the income being re-invested as it came in, so as to allow the capital to accumulate by compound interest. Bertie was unwilling to accept any portion of the child's income towards its maintenance and education. But he was overruled by Mr. Avenil, who said that the immensity of the fortune would give his scruples about such a trifle the appear- ance of affectation, and also that it would be unfair to the boy himself to restrict his advantages to suit the far narrower means of any of themselves. 42 BT AND BY. CHAPTER VIII. Under the loving guardianship of Bertie Greathead, little Criss Carol throve wondrously. Mr. Avenil and Mr. Wilmer knew well that they were doing the best for the child's highest welfare in committing it to such superintendence. They knew that the hardness and irresponsibility of character likely to be engendered by the jjossession of ample wealth would find its best corrective in the companionship of one so simple, tender, and true as Bertie the aeronaut. Whatever intellectual supervision was needed, Avenil would himself supply, but he agreed fully with Mr. Wilmer in ranking char- acter as above attainments, especially for one exempted by fortune from the struggle for existence, and endowed with an almost unlimited power of influencing others. The struggle for existence ! I shall not, I trust, be neglect- ing my story for my reflections, if I make here some observa- tions respecting the origin and development of the period which produced the character I have undertaken to present. AVe are, each one of us, the product, not of the present only, but of the past. Nature, though it repudiates the vicarious principle, links all things together in an inevitable sequence. It is to the ever-memorable nineteenth century — a period to which we trace the first dawning of our glorious Emancipa- tion — that we are indebted for the clue whereby we have escaped entanglement in those labyrinths of transcendental speculation, in which our forefathers lost themselves. How would they have rejoiced coidd they have seen in their day the revelation of the divine method of the universe which has been made to us ! — could they have known that in the original substance which filled infinity was such capacity for evolution as would account for all subsequent phenomena what- ever ; that the various steps of physical motion, heat, life, light, sensation, thought, conscience, follow each other necessarily, evolved, as the spark from the contact of steel with flint, from BY AND BY. 43 the contact of'part with part, — given only time, or rather eter- nit}^, for the process ! and this not ovi'r the infinite wliole merely, but throughout each separate jjortion. It was the struggle for existence, — a struggle often, doubt- less, in those who are too weak to endure to the end, fatal to that Conscience, which alone we recognize as worthy to be the final cause of all things — that at length produced the con- science which now governs the world, — at least, in its niaturer parts, — and constitutes the salt of its preservation. Read by this light, history exhibits nation after nation, race after race, Aryan, Turanian, Semitic, all faltering and failing, tried and found wanting, through lack of capacity for development up to this the crowning point of the structure of humanity. No single race was equal to the achievement ; and so it comes that now the first place on the earth is held by the peoples into whose composition enters something of each of these, but most of the Aryan, and that under its Anglo-Teutonic form, this being preeminently the race which acknowledges the supremacy of man's brain and heart, and ranks the intellect, the moral sense, and the affections of living humanity, as above all traditions, and conventions whatsoever. Such was the significance of " the glorious Emancipation." Young Christmas Carol was fortunate alike in the period of his existence, and in the persons among whom he fell. Had he, with his beauty, his wealth, and his mystery, lighted upon our isles in the days when Money was king and Conventionality was god, the story of his life could scarcely have been other than a tale of the degradation and ruin of a character, of his essential innermost sacrificed to his accidental outermost, to the utter effacement of the divine capacities of his being as an individual. But he came in a time when the dominant charac- teristics and achievements of modern society were such as found fair representatives in men like those who became his friends and guardians. Greathead, Wilmer, and Avenil, each was an exponent of a different yet co-ordinate factor in the sum of triune perfection. With Goodness, Beauty, and Use thus im- 44 BY AND BT. personated, to preside over his youth, Christmas Carol had all the external advantages that the world even of these our days could bestow. I assign the function of representing Beauty in the above- mentioned category, to my grandfather and father, each of whom in turn were the lad's trustees and guardians ; for the same exquisite spirit of poesy animated them both, and their influence had much to do with the nurture of the lad's nature on its softer side. Would that death had not so early removed my father. Yet even Criss's ample repayment to me would not have exceeded his indebtedness to him. I believe my father's chief regret in dying arose from his desire to cany on to com- pletion the education of which he had helped to lay the foun- dation. Phj^sically and mentally little Criss Carol exhibited the char- acteristics of his ancestry. The Greek came out in his keen appreciation of knowledge and beauty ; the Semitic showed it- self in his sensitiveness to the imaginative and emotional. Never was- prophet-poet of the ancient Hebrews possessed by a more vivid sense of a divine personality. Soar far aloft with him as Bertie would on his voyages while yet a child, or after- wards when as a lad he had become an adej^t unsurpassed in the management of his beloved "Ariel," and mounted by him- self to regions of air inaccessible to others, even the most dar- ing, his foster-father owned himself startled at the boy's abso- lute inability to comprehend the feeling of loneliness. Some- times he seemed as if he held commune with beings palpable only to himself. But Bertie, while he watched and wondered, respected the individuality of the child's manifest genius, and therefore abstained from any remark that might chill his Si>irit, and throw him back upon himself. When permitted to make ascents by himself it was Criss's delight to shoot rapidly up to a great height, and there remain almost stationary, like an eagle poised on outspread wings, without help from his propelling apparatus. Here he could re- BT AND BY. 45 main floating about on his parachute. The perfection wliicli he soon attained in the use of this appliance was so great as to relieve Bertie of any misapprehension on the score of accident. His parachute was one of the flat kind, so difficult to master, but so admirable in its action when mastered. It would almost float on the air by itself when expanded ; and Criss, who was slenderly built, of moderate stature, and a wonderfully active and wiry frame, was able by its aid alone to raise himself from the ground and remain in the air for a considerable time. In- deed to fly, seemed to be almost as instinctive with him as with the birds ; and it was one of the prettiest sights to see him, quietly and without ajoparent effort, soaring aloft in the clear blue, sustained by the white expanded wings of his parachute, with a crowd of birds flocking round him, and seeming to re- cognize him as of their own order. As he grew up he was allowed to have for his own a rocket- spiral machine of the most perfect make that the skill of Ave- nil could devise and his own fortune purchase. This was worked by the power long ago discovered, but for the secret of whose practical application our ancestors for generations sighed and toiled. Their mistake consisted, not in their con- ception of the potentialities of the magnetic coil, but in sup- posing that the power produced was only in proportion to the amount of the chemical and metallic elements consumed. It was the discovery that these agents are but a necessaxy initia- tive, and that the power is capable of almost indefinite en- largement without a corresponding increase in their consiimp- tion, but merely by bringing other and more subtle elements into cooperation, that has made possible all our modern me- chanical developments. So naturally did Criss take to flying, that it needed no laborious instilment of the formulae respecting the relations of atmospheric pressure to falling bodies, to produce the confi- dence indispensable to the exercise of the art. The ancient hymn, " Heaven is my home," had for him from the first a peculiar and literal significance. ******* 46 BY AND BY. Bertie was long profoundly affected by the loss of the wife he had so curiously acquired; and partly under the influence of this feeling, partly for the sake of a more bracing air for Ciiss, he removed his head-quarters from the Triangle to a cottage on the Surrey hills, situated near the new town which was then rapidly spinging up. It was here, where, except on one side, there was scarce a tree or impediment for miles, that Criss made his first essays, and acquired his chief skill in aerostation and aeronautics. Had Alma lived, and their home continued to be in the city, it would scarcely have been possi- ble for Criss to become what he was ; and had his lot fallen in a wooded country, it would have been equally impossible. We have here an illustration of the apparent fortuity of the events which dictate fate. An open down, and a convenient starting point in the shape of an old chalk quarry, from whose brink he could take his first flights, were the leading agents in the formation of his career. His skill once acquired in the country, its exercise was not interfered with by a return to tow^n. Every house-top afforded him a resting-place, and it was one of his chief amusements to pass, sustained by his parachute alone, from one street to another, without ever descending lower than the roofs, but merely touching them lightly in order to spring from them onwards. We in our days are so accustomed to things as we have them, that we are apt to forget they were not always so. There was a time when the roofs of their houses were as strange and mys- terious to the inmates, as the interior of the earth on which they stood. But, the practice of aeronautics, and the substitu- tion of magnetism for coal in the production of heat, combined to bring about a great revolution in our architecture and habits, and affected even our system of jurisprudence. For it was found necessary, in the interests of that privacy^ which is essen- tial to the development of the character and affections, to secure our interiors from the observation of impertinent aerial- ists, by making certain changes in our window system, and BY AND BY. 47 also to add certain stringent provisions to the laws relating to libel and slander. The most effective of these provisions was one that was in direct opposition to the enactment of our ancestors. There was a period when they suffered the libeller to go free on pleading justification and sustaining his plea by- proof of its truth. We, on the contrary, treat such a plea as an aggravation of the original offense, and punish it accord- ingly. But what would our ancestors have said, could they have seen the London of to-day, on a fine evening ! The growing scarcity of coal once deplored by them as the commencement of Britain's decline and downfall, proved in reality its' greatest blessing, through the impulse it gave to scientific research and the discovery of substitutes. Not to dwell upon the mechanical and economical gains thus effected, I will mention only the gain in comfort and health. Who now that sees our flat and commodious roofs, with their friendly gatherings, and elegant adornments, can realize the time when for an aerialist to pass over a large town, at a moderate height, would have been to court destruction by suffocation ! For then every house was a volcano, and every chimney a crater, in a state of perpetual eruption, vomiting forth fire and smoke that made the atmos- phere lurid, and loaded it with darkness and poison. Now, the roofs of our houses are the favorite resort of iuA^alids, where the freshest air and the quietest repose are to be found, and not a " London black," once so proverbial, comes to soil their garments. Instead of seeking pure air in the country, as people used to do, such is the perfection to which sanitary science has been brought in our time, that invalids leave the country to seek the purer air of the town. The abolition of coal-gas for the pur2:)ose of lighting has much to do with this. So brilliant, now, are our towns at night, that in many a house little extra light is needed beyond that which comes from with- out. Many a pleasant acquaintance did Criss make in his town sallies over the roofs, and many a sick person learnt to watch eagerly for his bright look and cheerful converse. Whether dwelling in town or country, the scholastic part of 48 BY AND BY. Criss's education was carried on with the utmost care, under the admirable National School system for which our country has now for a long time been noted. It was, indeed, a happy day for .England, when her people determined to throw all public endowments of Church and School iuto one common fund, and apply it on a consistent and homogeneous system to the cultivation of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual faculties of the whole people, in a manner neither coldly secular nor harshly sectarian. The steps whereby the country arrived at a solution of that once famous ReUfjioiis Dijffindtij, by Avhicli our unhappy ances- tors suffered themselves to be rent and divided into hostile fac- tions, to the utter destruction of all patriotic impulses; and the part played by that Difficulty in idtimately promoting the establishment of an uniform Canon of Reference, for the solu- tion of all questions requiring to be solved, I may have occasion, later on, to give some account. They form part of the larger history of the great movement which we know as "The Eman-' cipation," a movement which constituted the crown and com- pletion of the still more ancient ''Reformation." A great result often springs from a mean-looking germ. It was the cost of the original " School-board " system, that led the over- burdened rate-payers to look about for means of relief. These were ultimately found in the enormous and ill-applied resources of the National Church Establishment. Under the perfect organization of the National School sys- tem, Christmas Carol was able to take his place in the classes of whatever school chanced to be near him. Thus he could equally pursue his studies when dwelling at " Ariel Cottage " with Bertie, or with his other friends in the Triangle. In his case, as is usual now-a-days for the youth of all classes, the scliool-life was combined with the home-life, both being uni- versally regarded as essential to right education. For we have got rid of the old system, under which children were in child- hood relegated to the care of illiterate and ill-bred domestics, and in youth banished for months together to establishments where their parents could exercise no supervision over their progress or associations. BY AND BY. 49 We have got rid also of the system which recognized and fixed a broad distinction between classes. All now are taught in the same institutions*; the only differences being such as are rendered needful by the different vocations they are intended to follow. Avenil, Bertie, and my grandfather, as well as their relations male and female, were educated in these schools. My father's premature death led to my being dejDrived of the same advan- tage, to my irreparable loss. The adoption of this system of united instruction for all classes was accompanied by an access of patriotic enthusiasm, such as has rarely occurred in the his- tory of our country. The class antagonisms and differences out of which had grown so- many of our social diflSculties, at once fell to a vanishing point. England's rich and poor ceased to constitute two hostile nations. It is recorded that the edu- cation of the poor was never efficiently administered until the rich determined to avail themselves of the National Schools for their own children. The mechanism of the system was contrived not merely to allow, but tp encourage, the development of individual charac- ter and opinion on the part of the scholars. While inculcating methods rather than results, it trained each individual to refer all questions, neither to authority nor to tradition, but to the criterion of his own carefully cultivated intelligence and moral sense. To develop, not repress, the faculty of thinking, was now the object of education ; and this with girls as well as boys ! The inculcation of opinions based upon mere authority, and hearing no relation to evidence or utility, was reckoned immoral. The *' Religious Difficulty " had been solved by the substi- tution of careful definitions for the old harassing dogmas. Church and School, rej^resenting severally the development of the religious and the intellectual facilities, were able to un"« upon the basis of the axiom, that — As in the region of Morals the Divine Will can never Oo flict with the Moral law ; so, in the region of Physics, t/Ki Divine Will can never conflict with the Natural law. 4 50 BY AND BY. Wbatovor may liave been the mental capacity of primitive man, it has been found that under its modern development the human mind is unable to conceive of universal law as proceed- ing from'^any source short of the Divine, that is, the supreme all-pervading creative energy of the Universe. And we find it to be equally impossible for us to regard as Divine a Avill or law that is variable and self-contradictory. So that, did we find a conflict occurring between Law and Will, we should necessarily and involuntarily determine that one or the other was not entitled to be regarded as Divine. This axiom or definition is not a "dogma," inasmuch as it does not claim to be true independently of reason and evidence. It is a necessary basis of consciousness. We cannot conceive of the opposite of it being true, any more than we can conceive of Space as limited, or Time as terminable. The close and affectionate relations maintained between his fellow-guardians, secured for Criss all the advantages of a home and society Avhenever Bertie's avocation took him to a distance. Whether in the private dwelling and working rooms of the A^'enils and Wilmers, or in the common salon of the Triangle, Criss was always warmly received as a favorite member of the coterie. Ofttimes when left by himself in the cottage on the downs, to follow his studies in Bertie's absence, he would tele- gra])h to his friends at the Triangle (for all the members have a private wire between the club and their country houses,) telling them that he was coming to spend the evening with them, and asking them to have tea on the roof, when he would alight among them in his car. The extent of the boy's wealth was kept a secret among his trustees, but his character and history made him a constant subject of interest, and his friends delighted to draw him out on matters which excited his attention. As affording a glimpse of his life at this time, as also of those with whom he was con- nected, the following letter of the elder. Mrs. Avenil to my grandmother will be read with interest — BT AND BY. 61 " Criss was to join us a few evenings back on the roof of the Triangle, and as he was late, we looked out for him. Some of us thought we had caught sight of the Ariel's light over one of the poorest parts of the city, but it remained there soflong that we concluded we were mistaken. When a"t length he dropped among us, he said in reply to our questionings, that he had lingered in that neighborhood as one that always had a special attraction for him. My son Charles exclaimed at this, and asked what he could want in the very worst part of London. " The boy looked surprised and puzzled, and then said — " ' Why ivorst ? what do you mean by tvoj'st ? ' " ' I mean,' said Charles, ' that it is inhabited by the poorest and most vicious classes.' " ' Poor, yes ; but what is vicious ? ' asked the child. '"ISTow, Mr. Wilmer,' said Charles,' 'here's a chance for you.' " ' Nay,' replied Mr. Wilmer, ' surely your twenty-seven years are competent to instruct his ten. Let us hear your definition.' " 'I have not kept up my Morals since I left school,' said Charles, ' as I have been so much occupied with Mathematics ; but if I remember aright, we used to define vice ?is a course of conduct produced by a defect in the faculty of sympathy, so that vice means selfishness, or the practice of self-indulgence to the detriment of others.' " ' If that be it, you have used the wrong word. Master Charles, dear,' cried little Criss with vivacity: 'for it is just because I find so much sympathj^, and therefore so little selfishness or vice, among those poor people, that I delight to drop down among them.' "'But you hate squalor and ugliness, I know,' returned Charles, ' and admire every beautiful thing you see, in building and landscape.' "'Yes, yes, that is quite true,' pleaded the child, 'and I do Hot know quite how it is; but — ' and here his voice sank and faltered a little, 'it always seems to me that dii-ectly something living and human appears, all my interest and sense of beauty 52 BY AND BY. centres in that. I never see ugliness in those districts; for I see poor people helping each other in their struggles for a living. I see poor mothers tending their own children, instead of leaviil^ them to servants, as some of the very rich do : and poor husbands and wives nursing each other in sickness, in- stead of sending for a hospital nurse.' " ' And pray, how do you see these things ? ' asked Charles. * I hope 3'ou don't go and look in the windows ? ' " ' I don't know how I see them,' the child answered, thought- fully. * I seem to myseK sometimes, when I am passing over a dwelling, to he as well aware of all that is going on inside as if I saw it with my bodily eyes. Perhaps it is by means of that same sympathy, the absence of which, you say, is the cause of vice.' "Here I made a sign to Charles that he should not lead the child on to talk in this direction : for we have often observed in him symptoms of a belief that he possesses some occult faculty, which makes him different in kind from other folk. A notion of this kind is often but a germ of insanity, and requires careful management to eradicate it, the most essential point being to suppl}' plenty of occupation in another direction, and allow it to die of inanition by never encouraging or even heeding it. The sympathetic faculty exists in him to an ex- tent altogether extraoi'dinary, and unless its growth be judi- ciously repressed, and kept proportionate to other sides of his nature, we shall have reason to be anxious about the excesses to which it will carry him when he comes into the very consi- derable fortune which I understand will be his. Bertie Great- head insists on his being kept in ignorance of his prospects while his education is going on. Xo doubt it would injure the character of any ordinary youth to be brought up to regard himself as independent of parents or guardians, for such sense of dependence plays an important part in the develof)ment of our best feelings. But Crissy is not aS other children. The affections are already too predominant in him. He is capable of sacrificing himself to any extent. Their development needs precisely such a check as would be given by the knowledge of BY AND BT. 53 his own independence. It would give liim a more practical turn. Admirably as he has learnt the theoiy and practice of aeronautics, there is in him far too great a predominance of the contemplative and subjective element. It is true that, when excited and eager in his talk, his wonderful eyes shine out upon his audience with startling brilliancy and suggestiveness ; but when in repose, his gaze is manifestly turned inwards, as if there lay the real absorbing topic of his soul ; and he has a singular passion for being alone, a passion which grows upon him. Already his favorite reading is, not in the literature of our own day, but in such ancient writings as the Hebrew Psalms, and the Gospels, and the curious old English poem called 'Ii* Memoriam.' We w.ho have learnt to discern the real significance of the Beautiful Life, cannot but feel uneasy at the proclivity thus shown towards sentimental contemplation by one so endowed and so young. All are not eagles to gaze with impunity upon the sun. I know there are some points upiMi which you and I do not coincide, but I shall be glad to know how jonv motherly heart judges this dear child and his bringing uj)." The district to which reference was made in the conversation of which the foregoing letter records the commencement, is mainly inhabited by that large class of operatives, who are dis- qualified for being co-operatives. As all my home readers must be aware, the great mechanical trades and industries of the country are in the hands of large bodies of artisans, male or female, who are associated together for their own exclusive mu- tual benefit, except in the cases in which they are allied witli outside capitalists. Much of the land is similarly held ; and tlR' workers divide among themselves all the profit of their work, employing as managers and secretaries, men or women, ot high education and social position, whom they pay liberally. The members of these associations and their families are all well to do, and run little risk of poverty from lack of work, while they have reduced the risk from natural causes to a mininuim. For not merely liave the members of the various trades, by 54 BY AXD BY. breeding in and in among themselves, acquired an hereditary aptitude for their work, but they are careful to obtain the finest specimens of women to be the mothers of their children, so that incapacity, mental or physical, is scarcely known among them. There is thus no longer a perpetual drafting .off from these classes of the best looking girls to recruit the ranks of wealthy vice and dissipation, and no leaving to the working man only the poorest types of womanhood from which to choose his wife. It is therefore outside of the ranks of the co-opera- tive, that the pinch of pauperism is found. To be qualified for membership, a man or woman must be up to a certain working power. Those who are above this standard are at liberty to remain aloof and work independently, making if j;hey can, larger wages than are to be got in the association, but at their own risk in case of illness or failure through^ other causes. Owing to the advantages in the shape of capital and machinery at the command of the associations, few do this except in those higher branches of art-labor, where individual genius finds scope for its exercise. The great bulk of the outsiders are ex- cluded by reason of their inability to come up to the mark re- quired, as regards either the quality or the quantity of their work. I mention this as I do not wish to appear to claim for our civilization that it has already attained a condition so perfect as to be incompatible with the evil of pauperism. The princi- ple followed by our artisan classes is still the principle inaugu- rated and insisted on by the church in bygone ages. As the church utterly disregarded human individuality in respect of the nature and operations of the mind, so the co-operative labor associations disregard it in respect of man's powers of physical work. The church doomed its heretics to dire condemnation here or hereafter. The co-operatives doom all artisans who are unable to comply with their arbitrary standard, to the dire pangs of poverty. The progress of enlightenment, by removing the shackles placed by the church upon thought, has emancipa- ted mind from its slavery. A further progress will similarly enlarge the conditions of co-operative labor until all classes of BY AND BY. 55 workers can be included without the sacrifice of individual differences. The old restricted church maintained its authority by force. The old trades-unions, adopting the ecclesiastical method, also used force. Like the clum-h, too, they rejected the principle of nationality, and set up tiioir caste against the state. These things are not so now. Individualism, or the rights of the man, had to struggle long and hard against the fanaticism of organization, ecclesiastical or communistic. The helpless Celt had succumbed to the tyranny for ever, but for the indomitable energy of the self-reliant Anglo-Saxon, who taught him what freedom meant. Such advance have we made. But the end is not yet. The fold is not yet capacious enough to contain all the sheep. But time will accomplish even this. The curious part of it is that the artisans, even while following the old ecclesiastical principle in this respect, profess the greatest hatred of the old ecclesiastical regime. Such is the vitality of the systeni which dates from old- Eome : — Bome that was for ever forcing its law upon men whether they would or not. . « ».» » CHAPTEE IX. In- their anxiety to do the very best for their charge, the scientific Avenils and the festhetic Wilmers held many a con- sidtation with Bertie Greathead. Under the term aesthetic I include the whole range of subjects which appeal to the emo- tions. It was to my grandmother's strong religious feeling that Mrs. Avenil alluded in the closing sentence of her letter. The family temperament, which in her and in my mother took the form of devotion, took in my father the poetic — and in my- self the art — direction. My father had married his cousin, and after his death, which occurred in my childhood, my mother, under the influence of my grandmother, abandoned herself utterly to the sway of their dominant sentiments. Tliey with- 56 BY AND BY. drew altogether from their old associations, and huried them- selves and me in the dwindling hut tenacious sect of religion- ists, who, as representing the cliurcli prior to the Emancipation, assume to themselves the title of The Remnant. This, however, came after the time with which we are now concerned. One day the conversation ahout Criss was commenced hy Bertie referring to the hoy's talk with his schoolfellows about the things he was in the habit of seeing and hearing when aloft in his car. Bertie confessed himself unable to determine whether his utterances respecting another world of intelligent beings proceeded from any fixed or definite conviction, but many of his schooKellows thought that he believed in something akin to the docti-ine of the transmigration of souls, and held the ujjper air to be inhabited by angels, who met and conversed with him. "Does he think that he finds albumen and life-plasm up there ? " asked the younger Avenil, with a laugh. " I understand that he calls them angels, but does not pro- fess to know what they are made of," said Bertie, dril}^ "He has sufficient scientific comprehension to avoid assuming a dis- tinction in kind between the entities of matter and spirit. It was to a conversation he had with some of his schoolfellows on this point that I was about to refer in disproof of Mr. Avenil's notion of his unpractical character." " Surely the other boys ridicule him when he speaks to them of such things ? " " Far from it," replied Bertie. " They have too much rever- ence for the earnestness and simplicity of his character to let any irony appear. The only time he ever manifested im- patience was at first, when they assumed as a matter of course, that he took for realities the products of his own imagination. On this occasion he told them tliut the beings of whom he spoke were as real to him as his own schoolfellows. They had been tending some pet animals, which Criss allowed some of his schoolfellows to keep in the cottage garden. One of the boys had said that it would be a very dull and stupid world if all the living creatures had developed into human beings. And an- BY AND BY. 67 otlier said it would be duller still if all the human beings were grown-up men and women, without any boys or girls. And a third said that people used to fancy one yet more dull than that, for they imagined heaven as peopled with beings who M'ere all alike, and had no difference even of sex. Then the first speaker turned suddenly to Ci'iss, and exclaimed, — " ' Carol can tell us all about it. Carol, are there any ani- mals in heaven ? ' "'You know our bargain,' was his reply. 'If you want me to tell you about the Above, you must first sing my favorite song for me.' " ' Yes ! yes ! the balloon song ! the balloon song ! ' cried a number of little ones, hastening to range themselves before him, as he seated himself on a grass-covered mound. And then the little voices burst with tremendous energy into the old nur- sery rhyme, which dates from the days when men could mount into the air only by tying themselves to a huge bag of gas.* *lt may not be worth preserving for its own sake — what nursery rhyme is? But time is only too ready to drop things into oblivion ; so here it is. Balloon! Balloon! Balloon! Go up and hunt the sky, Then come and tell us soon What you have found on high. So many things we want to know, We cannot see down here: Where hides the sun when day is done, Where goes the dried-up tear. And when our laughter dies away, Who stores it up for future day. Balloon ! Balloon ! Balloon ! Tell us of what the stars are made, What are their children like? We're always told they're good as gold, And never sulk or strike. But ar'n't they often giddy found, With always rolling round and round? 58 J5y AND BY. '• 'Now what is it you want to know ? ' lie asked, when they had finished. " ' K there are any animals in heaven.' " ' Certainly there are/ he replied, with the utmost serious- ness. 'One of the principal delights of the angels is in ten- derly tending them. They regard them as incipient intel- ligences of higher natures, and only a few steps below their own children.' "'And are there any baby angels?' inquired a little girl. She was sister of the lad who had spoken first, and listened with awe to his account of the Above. " ' Certainly,' he said ; ' why not ? Would not this be a very poor world were there nothing but grown men and women in it, no tiresome children, no beautiful birds, no noble horses, no sleek cats, no dear, affectionate dogs ? Ah, they are not worse off up there than we are down here, you may be sure.' " One of the older boys here asked him whether the beings he spoke of possess any specific gravity, or are altogether inde- pendent of graviiation. Balloon! Balloon! Balloon! What makes the thunder peal? Where are the old gods gone ? We like to think 'tis they who drink The clouds wlien rain is done. But don't you often quake with fright So far from earth to be at night ? Balloon ! Balloon ! Balloon ! We know what you have got to say, You've told us oft before: That if would we the old gods see, We must our best adore : And shines the sun, perpetual day, 'Tis only we who turn away. Balloon ! Balloon ! Balloon Go up and hunt the sky ; Then come and tell us soon What you have found on high. BY ANT) BY. 69 " He replied that doubtless tliey vary from us in density and weight, as they live at so different an elevation in the atmos- phere ; and that in some respects they hold the same position towards us as fishes of the sea, inasmuch as they do not require, a solid element to rest upon, and can sustain themselves at different elevations. They inhabit mainly, he said, the junc- tion of the atmosphere with space, and breathe the pure ether of the latter ; but are endowed with an apparatus whereby thoy can secrete the fluid necessary for breathing when they wish to descend into the atmosphere. He delighted, he said, to note the resemblances between things there and here. " One of the lads said he supposed that every one was much more perfect up there than in this world. To this Criss said : " '1 do not understand. What do you mean by more per- fect ? All God's worlds must be perfect.' " ' But not the people in them ? ' suggested one. "'Hush, hush,' exclaimed Criss, 'we cannot call anything imperfect unless we know the end it was designed to fulfil, and that it falls short of fulfilling that end.' " ' He talks as if they were all real for him,' said another, ' Come, Carol, tell us, do you ever use the clouds as a bed, and go to sleep and dream when you are lying on them ?' " ' Oh, yes, often and often,' he returned ; ' but these things are as real for me as you all are. Call them what yoy will, they are forces external to myself, and which make me con- scious of their existence by operating upon my senses just as you yourselves do. Please do not call their existence into question. Fancy my having to try hard to persuade them of the existence of j^ou my schoolfellows ! It would seem just as absurd to me ; and the}- have too much sense to require it. Surely it is but a barren, superfluous sort of talk that consists in our questioning each other's existence. We, too, who have the microscope, telescope, spectroscope, and such things, to make perpetual revelations to us of worlds otherwise invisible ! If it seems odd to you that I should have experiences which you have not, you should remember that you have experiences which I have not. The difference between us in this matter is ^0 J5r AND BY. only such as exists between a man who has an ear for music and one who has none, or one who has a keen eye for colors and one who is color-blind. It is all a question of sensitiveness.' " Here old Mrs. Wilmer interrupted Bertie's narration to re- mark that in saying this the boy did not do himself justice. He should have adduced the case of his own Israelitish ancestors as a proof that some races are endowed with a vividness of spiritual perception which others are incapable of compre- hending. " I myself heard him," said my father, joining in the conver- sation, " soon after the trip he made with us to the sea-side, describing to a group of little children some of the games and recreations with which, he said, the angels amuse their leisure hours. You would have thought he was actually gazing upon the scenery of the ideal world, as he described the particulars, so well did he make his audience realize it too. Had I been a painter I could have drawn a picture from his description, so vivid and graphic was it. There were rows above rows of angelic beings, attired in colors undreamt of by our rainbows, ranged along the sides of tall cliffs which, in the form of a vast amphitheatre, overhung an expanse of ether which lay at their feet, and stretched out and melted away in the distance like an illimitable sea. I thought at first he was going to describe something like the scene at Lord's at one of the cricket-contests between our ancient national schools of Harrow and Eton, where the rows upon rows of exquisitely-dressed women ranged round the ground, resemble a circular embankment of beautiful flowers. But he went on to describe this expanse as being of various hues, streaked in some parts with tints of tender blue, and ruffled as if with a light breeze, and in others white and glassy, or of a delicate green, and the whole scene wondrously beautiful even to the eyes of the angelic multitude. But it was not to gaze on a scene of still life that the celestial hosts were thus assembled. Some of the younger angels had been busying themselves in fabricating a number of vessels of various char- acters and forms, and they and their friends had met to witness a contest of speed between them, ^pme of those vessels con- BY AND BY. 61 tained ingeniously-devised machinery concealed within them. Others were provided with wide-expanding wings to catch the pulsations of the surrounding ether. And others were impelled by the young angels themselves ranged in ranks upon them, and impelling them hy their own physical strength. And now and then during the race would be seen some little craft with- out visible means of propulsion, making such rapid way as to outstrip all competitors; and then a shout would arise, as the spectators surmised that something unfair was being done ; and then from beneath the keel which was hidden in the element, the owner would em'erge, shaking the etherial particles from his wings, and making the welkin ripple to his merry laughter, for such method of propulsion was not within the conditions of the contest. I could have gazed long upon the enchanting scene, as he raised it before me ; but the bright and happy crowds of the celestial popidation, and the fairy forms darting over the luminous expanse, were in a moment all dispelled ; for one of the youngsters suddenly broke the rapt" silence with which we had been listening, by clapping his hands and ex- claiming, ' I know ! Yachts ! ' And after this Criss would not utter a syllable further." It was with considerable impatience that the Avenils had listened to these recitals of Bertie and Wilmer. AVhen they were concluded, Mr. Avenil said to my father — " We must turn him over to you, Wilmer, to make a poet of him. He will grow up a dreamy and unpractical man, and utterly unable to turn his fortune to good account." " I think," pleaded Bertie, " the skill he has acquired as an aerialist, indicates a sufficiently practical turn for all useful purposes." " You aeronauts," returned Mr. Avenil, " are too apt to judge the affairs of earth by those of the air. You know little of anything more substantial than the currents of wind and differ- ences of atmospheric density and temperatures. Yours is a pursuit that generates a disposition to drift rather than to act." Bertie laughed heartily at the idea of depreciating his voca- 62 BY AND BY. tion upon moral grounds ; aud, remarked tliat those who know what it is to dri\'e an acromotive at the rate of a hundred and iifty miles or more an hour, through mist and darkness and tempest, eh^aving the ice-cloud, and dodging the lightning, would hardly recognize the criticism as founded in justice. He added, that he, too, should he glad to see the boy in training for some definite career. " A rich man," remarked Mr. Avenil, " ought to find his oc- cupation in the em2_)loyment of his wealth. An income derived from investments, which require no care on the part of the owner, tends to make a man a mere desultory vagabond, unless he have some strong bias of his own to direct him. I should like to see young Carol, as the projirietor of a large landed estate, devoting his money to the improvement of agriculture,* by the application of science in all its available branches." " You read Poet in his every word and expression," said Wilmer, '' and would turn the Poet into a Farmer ! " " He certainly is an enthusiast," said the younger Avenil, " but his enthusiasm takes anything but an analytic turn. His marvellous aj)titude for languages, coupled with his locomotive propensities, convinces me that he will find his chief engross- ments among men rather than among things." There was good ground for Charles's remark. Criss had availed himself of the advantages afforded in the National Schools, to attain a facility of expression in many languages, which enabled him to converse freely with the nations of the various countries he had visited with Bertie ; particularly the Arabic, which, for his origin's sake, Bertie had urged upon him. Bertie said that the boy seemed to acquire them almost by sheer force of sympathy. It was a heart — not a head — faculty. The possession of it would be sure to encourage his love of travel. My father suggested that it was only part of the larger faculty of expression. The boy possessed language and insight. Travel would give him information and ideas. He ought then to turn his leisure to account as an author. The elder Avenil demurred to this. BY AND BY. 63 " The world and science," he said, " are the same everywhere ; so that time sjent in travel is for the most part time wasted. Accustom him to regard a piece of land as his own, — no matter whether he cultivates it or builds a town upon it, — and he will soon learn to love it, and devote himself to its improvement." " The hoy is a bird — a bird of passage ; and you would chain him to a clod ! " exclaimed Bertie. " The boy is an Israelite and a poet, and may be a prophet," said my grandmother, of hieropathic tendencies. "You are all thinking of the material, and forgetting the spiritual. Put , him, with all his endowments of soul and body, into the land of his forefathers, and who knows but that he may successfully devote himself to reviving the ancient glories of his race, so long overshadowed by its lust for gold. Though restored to the Holy Land, Israel has yet to be restored to the Divine favor. You may deem me superstitious, but there is something in his connection with those jewels, as well as in himself, that to me bespeaks him of royal destiny. You were quite right to make him learn Arabic, Bertie." They were all struck by this remark, coming as it did from one who dwelt apart from the world of the present, in a region of exalted sentiment, absorbed in theological studies, and making her chief companions the Sacred books of the ancient religions. Unobservant, however, and indifferent, as she was in regard to things around her, there was one portion of the earth that was ever present to her mind, with an overwhelming interest. It was Judjea, the ever memorable Hobj Land. In much the same way, as the religious system once known as Romanism was long kept alive by its offspring and supplanter Protestantism, so was Judaism kept alive by Christianity long after it would otherwise have perished by natural decay. The prophecies of the ancient Jewish patriot poets respect- ing the future resuscitation of their country's greatness had taken deep hold of old Mrs. Wilmer's mind, and she had viewed with exultation the return of the Jews to Palestine, and the vast influx of wealth and power with them into that country, under the commercial influences of the Suez Canal, C)4 liT AND BY. the Euphrates railroads, and the constitution of the Empire of Soudan or Central Africa. The whole of the circumstances attending the restoration were unusual. The financial embarrassments of the decayed Moslem Empire had led to the sale of Palestine to a company of Jewish capitalists. The purchasers had little difficulty in acting ujion the patriotism and commercial eagerness of their .people, and inducing large numbers of wealthy houses to migrate thither, or at least to establish branch houses in the capital. The barren places in the surrounding districts were replenished with rich earth brought by sea from the Egyptian Delta, or the Tufa beds of Vesuvius and Etna, and liberally spread on the terraced hills of the new Jerusalem ; and the whole desert tract of the lower Jordan and Dead Sea was filled with water up to the level of the Mediterranean, and made navigable, by a canal cut through the sandy wilderness from El Arish. The Ancient Court of the Sanhedrim was re-established, but on a purely secular basis, as the nature of the times dictated. By this were the home affairs of the country regulated ; its foreign relations being controlled by a committee of the Jeru- salem Stock-Exchange, a puissant institution in these days of the almost universal supremacy of wealth. Powerful and prosperous as the Jewish community in Pales- tine had become, it wanted yet one thing to complete its ambi- tion. The adjoining countries of Arabia and Syria were willing to withdraw altogether from their allegiance to the Sultan, and unite as one people with the Jews, but they could not abandon their allegiance to the principle of personal government. The expulsion of the Sublime Porte from Constantinoi:)le, and its withdrawal from the Golden Gate of the Holy City, had utterly destroyed its prestige with these populations. But these events Avere themselves the result of causes which are easily traceable to a period so far baclc as the twentieth or even the nineteenth century. It was then, that the vivacious, brilliant, and long dominant Celtic race had finally succumbed to patient, thorough, and conscientious Teuton. It was then that the BY AND BY. 65 silent, studious German, backed by the moral force of our own Anglo-Saxons at home and in North America, laid the first round of the political edifice of that modern civilization, whose subsequent stages have included the absorption by Germany of Austria proj^er ; the reconstitution of the Sclavonic confederacy, and consequent reduction of Russia within moderate dimensions by the withdrawal of her southern populations ; the re-estab- lishment of the "Holy Roman Empire," with Hungary as a royal appanage, in its own ancient capital on the Bosphorus ; and the waning of the Turkish dominion, through its inability to retain its hold upon its border provinces. My elder readers, who have all history, ancient and modern, at their finger-ends, must forgive the recapitulation of these details as not irrelevant to our story. There was no king in Israel ; and a king of Israel was the " roc's egg " of my grandmother's imagination. In such a potentate she saw the sole possible supplanter of the Grand Turk, whom she regarded as the Anti-Christ, the sole symbol of empire powerful enough to draw the peoples surrounding her beloved Jerusalem under the shelter of its wings. And it is not a little remarkable, that what with her was purely a religious sentiment, had become, for astute politicians, a master- key to the solution of the principal remaining Eastern Question. As I have already stated, the popidations of those countries re- tain all their ancient immemorial attachment to the personal principle both in religion and politics. They have not followed the northern races in their recognition of abstract right and wrong apart from the will of an individual. With us, wherever ' an individual is invested with power, it is for the sake of con- centrating vigor and responsibility in a single executive ; our- selves, the people, being the beneficiaries and judges. With the semi-Semitic races, on the contrary, the ruler is the master, not the servant, of the people. We have long passed the stage in which people held strong convictions respecting mere forms of government. Together with other dogmas we have got rid of the dogma of monarchy and the dogma of republicanism. Whatever form of government best combines the liberty of the 5 66 ST AXD BY. individual with the general security for any people, is approve! of by us. As the genius of races and peoples varies, so will these forms vary. The detail must be a matter of experitmce for all, not of dogma for any. AVe have, thus, learnt to recognize the sanctity of Individu- ality in Races, as well as in persons. And there was no incon- sistency in the statesmen of the great and highly-civilized republics of Europe, America, and Australia desiring to see a monarchy established in the East, having its throne in Jerusa- lem. The fact that such a result was desired by the leading Jews themselves, who were on the spot, was deemed a very strong argument in its favor ; for, trained as they had mostly been, in our free communities and institutions, they were naturally favorable to a continuance of the state of things under which they had flourished, and grown rich enough to re-acquire the land of their forefathers, and raise it to such an eminence among the nations of the earth as it had never before attained or imagined — an eminence based on material wealth. Without a king, however, they were unable to avail themselves of the readiness of the populations inhabiting the regions extending southwards from the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf to the Eed Sea, to make one nation with them ; for those populations were essentially and intensely anti-democratic. With a king, this object so desirable to us as well as to them, would at once have been accomplished ; and we should have had a strong and friendly power to guard our main connections with our allies in India and Japan, and our dependencies in China, on the one side ; and on the other, to keep in order the restless and still semi-barbarous empire of Central Africa. So they were all struck by INIrs. Wilmer's remark. But it Avas not in the same way that they were struck by it. To Ber- tie it was simply preposterous. '• My little Criss a king ! " he exclaimed. " I am sure that it is no kingdom of this world that he would care to have, any more than a farm. His heart is above the clouds." " He cannot spend his money there," said Mr. Avenil. " By the way, have you ever, Mr. Greathead, taken him to the Holy Land in any of your voyages ? " asked Mrs. Wilmer. BY AND BY. 67 " Once only/' returned Bertie, and then I was so alarmed at tlie attention his looks attracted, and also at meeting the diamond merchant, that I hurried away without completing the enquiries I was mahing ahout his family. I hardly know why, hilt I have a suspicion that that merchant knew more ahout the real history of those jewels than he was willing to tell us, and I thought it best to leave well alone. Did I ever tell you that I have seen them since we parted with them ? " "Indeed!" " It was on the occasion of my going to Bornou, the capital of Central Africa, on a commission connected with the cotton trade, that I was invited to witness, a religious ceremonial at the court of His Majesty the Emperor of Soudan. You must know that though the country professes Christianity, the royal family have never abandoned the rite of circumcision. This is inflicted on its members in infancy, the rite of baptism being deferred until the seventh year. The ordinary and orthodox usage on the former occasion, is to bind the principal crown diamonds on the pit of the royal infant's stomach, there to be worn for nine days. The jewels in question are regarded with a peculiar and superstitious reverence, as coming directly from King Solomon, and they are combined in an oval form as a tiara, and called the Talisman of Solomon. But the crown jewels had for several years been missing, and were not forth- coming on the occasion of the first rite being performed on the heir-apparent. It was said that they had recently been recovered, and there was great public rejoicings in conse- quence ; for the people are still excessively superstitious, in spite of their having Christianity and the Bible. And it was determined to rectify the omission at the first ceremony, by using them at the baptism in the same way that they ought to have been used at the circumcision. "Well, I found that this famous and sacred Talisman of Sol- omon consisted of no other than the jewels belonging to Criss, . and which we had sold for him." " Curious," observed Mr. Avenil ; "I wonder 'whether it was a lie of the Emperors, or whether they were really the crown jewels which he had If so, they must have been stolen." G8 BY AND BY. " At any rate," said Bertie, " the Emperor's readiness to give a larg« sum of money for their recovery, without asking any questions, sliows that he had strong misgivings respecting the validity of his own title to them." " I don't like one remark which you made, Mr. Greathead," said my grandmother. " Instead of saying these people are superstitious in spite of their having Christianity and the Bible, say they are religious owing to their having them." " I was anticipating a somewhat different remark from you, m}"^ dear Mrs. Wilmer," said Mr. Avenil. " I thought j^ou were about to claim the throne of Central Africa, at least, for the lad. At any rate, I hope you all agree with me that this story must be kept from him. It would foster his propensity for dreaming, which to me is really alarming, and one that re- quires correction by vigorous treatment." " He must know all when he comes of age," said Mrs. Wil- mer, with energy. " His duty and mission in life may depend upon it." " Well, well," said Mr. Avenil, " whatever the future may contain for him, it is clearly our business to make a man of him first, and not a visionary." CHAPTER X. It was no small gratification to Bertie to be able to relate to the Avenils anything concerning his beloved foster-child that might tend to disabuse them of the notion that he was a mere visionary. One possessing Criss's acute sympathy with liuman- ity could not, he thought, be liable to the charge, no matter how he might love to cultivate solitude and meditation in the intervals of his activity. During a holiday absence of the boys, one of the Avenil girls was telling her sisters, how that he had lamented to her the fulness of the world, aiid wished that he had lived before the modern system of emigration had done so BY AND BY. 60 much towards spreading population everywhere. And another said he acted as if he possessed an extra sense, and one that required for its exercise a total withdrawal from human inter- course. Bertie happened to call while they were talking, and they at once turned to him, asking — " Where is he now, Mr. Greathead ? " " Meaning Criss ? I scarcely know. I had a message from him a few days ago from the top of Teneriffe, which is one of his favorite perches. He has a friend in the observatory there. There is a wire on the summit, as on most other summits, for the convenience of aerialists, and he generally sends me a mes- sage when he alights anywhere." '' Oh, I know," exclaimed one of the girls, " he delights to rest awhile on some high peak, and thence take flight into the air, and return again to it, as a lark to its nest, after being poised aloft. It was a happy inspiration of Mr. Wilmer's which gave him his name, for never did name and nature more closely correspond. However dreamy he may be, he must see many things by moving about so much, which other people miss. He ought to meet with adventures, too. Did he say whither he was going next ? " " Yes, to Algiers to visit a school friend who is son of the British minister there. I have not heard from him since, but I have brought you an Italian paper with an account of an extraordinary rescue of people from destruction by the eruption of Etna, which I, as an aerialist, find exceedingly interesting, and which I thought you might like to see." ''Anj-thing about Criss in it?" " It is only as I have said." " Do tell us all about it." "Well, you must know that for a veiy long time Etna had been so quiet that a large population had come gradually to settle upon its slopes, thinking the days of its activity were over. Last week, however, a tremendous eruption rent the mountain in various places, and there poured out torrents of lava, which, meeting below one of the most thickly peopled 70 BT AND BT. slopes, completely cut off the escape of the inhabitants. The Italian Government sent its best aiirialists to try and extricate them, but these, after many and disastrous attempts to pass the* barrier of intense heat, and alight exactly upon the very limited area available, were compelled to desist ; and then from within the flaming circle, from the wretches doomed to be burnt or starved to death, and from their sympathizing but helpless comrades without, went up a cry of agony, which, as you know, has rung through all the wires of the world, appealing for aid. I and others of my craft were on the point of starting to see what we could do, when a telegram came to say that the rescue had been effected. I have now got the details, and as I con- sider them a whole bunch of feathers in the cap of aiirialism, I have come to glorify my calling and its professors among my friends. " It j*ppears that at the moment when despair was at its height, an aerialist whose approach had been unperceived, alighted in the terror-stricken crowd, and signified his readi- ness and ability to save them, one at a time. The peasants, who are still as much a parcel of children as they were five or ten thousand years ago, rushed upon him, determined to be saved all at once. Seeing that their violence would be the destruction of himself and his machine, as well as of themselves also, he dexterously disengaged himself, and leaping aloft out of their reach, was lost to their view in the smoke of the burn- ing mountain. On hearing their renewed wail of desjiair, he presently returned towards them, and hailing them, said he hoped now that they would do as they were told, and not attempf to get into the car again. He then stopped a few yards over their heads, and bade them depute one of their num- ber to hold parley with him, the rest keeping at a distance. Luckily their padre was with them, — it is he who has given the account, — and it was under his influence that the stipulations of the aerialist were observed. 'The important question who should go first, was settled in favor of the children. The ai-rialist said he could carry two of these at once ; so the padre brought two children himself, and placed them in the car, for BT AND BY. 71 he could not trust the mothers to obey the orders given. He describes it as a moment of agonizing anxiety when the car arose with its first load, and disappeared in the smoke. But not a voice ventured to utter a sound. Presently, however, there arose from the multitudes who were assembled on the out- side of the ring of fire, a cry and a shout of joy which told those within of the safe and unexpected arrival of the car and its contents. All was delirious delight for a moment, and then came an interval of suspense. But soon the car returned and carried off more children ; and then the aged and infirm, and then the able bodied, the good padre himself being reserved for the last, the lava having by this time approached so near that a little delay would have rendered his escape impossible. The rescue had occupied all the day and a part of the night, though much time had been saved by the plan of suspending a large basket beneath the car in which the passengers were car- ried. But it was not, and could not be intermitted until com- pleted, though it must have tasked the endurance of the aerial- ist and the powers of his machine to the utmost." " You haven't told us who he was," said Avenil, who had en- tered during the relation. " Was he an Italian ? " " Ah, that is one of the strangest parts of the story," said Bertie. "When the people had done congratulating them- selves and each other, they bethought themselves of their deliv- erer : but on searching for him he was nowhere to be found. The Government has advertised the thanks of the nation to the unknown aerialist, and offered to make any acknowledgment of hfS services in its power." "Do you know any professional likely to have done it ? " " I know none who has an aeromotive corresponding with the description of this one ; ancf it is not like a professional to tliink of concealing himself after doing a piece of business. I suspect it was some accomplished amateur, though I know of but one in the world capable of the feat." " Could it have been Criss ? " " Here he comes to speak for himself," exclaimed one of the girls, who was looking out of the window. And presently the Ariel alighted on the broad verandah, and Criss entered. 72 BY AND BY. But to all the questions with which they assailed him, he said only that he had hoped to escape heing found out, and that the reason of his delay in returning was that he was so exhausted with the job that he had hurried off the moment he had let go the padre and the basket, and slept for twenty-four hours in a secluded nook on the opposite side of the mountain. " Well, there is an Italian countship waiting for you when- ever you choose to come out of your shell and claim it," said Bertie. " Count Carol sounds charmingly," exclaimed the girls. '' You may find it of immense use when you fall in love. A woman likes to be called Countess:'' " Xot a woman of much account, though, I suspect," re- turned Criss, making his first and last joke, as he disappeared and went to his own room. . " There, girls," said Avenil to his j^ouuger sisters after Criss Was gone. " You see, a woman who wants to catch him will have to be on her best behavior. By the way, has he ever shown any signs of falling in love, any preferences for any of 3'our sweet sex ? " " Never," said the youngest, Bessy Avenil, a blooming, prac- tically-disposed damsel of nearly Criss's own age, now about seventeen. " And I believe he would need a good shaking to bring him to the point ; or, rather, that a woman would have to do the proposing herself. But I don't believe it is ' good- ness' that will win him; at least, not if opposites have the most attraction for each other." " At any rate he won't find his dujjlicate," said another, who was a little older. " My belief is that he will be better single, for he is just dne to expect so much that he will always be disappointed with what he finds to be really the case. He seems to me like one of those men who in old times women would have thought it a sacrilege to love." " At any rate," added Avenil, " he was now proved himself to be something more than a visionary ; so let us hope that this adventure will develop his practical side." BY AND BY. 73 " Meaning his matrimonial ? " asked Bessie. ' Do you know," said Bertie to Avenil, " that I think you carry your aversion to the contemplative to an extreme." " Call it rather the unpractical speculative," replied Avenil, " The world's whole history down nearly to our own time has been little else than one long martyrdom, in which man has sac- rificed himself at the altar of his own unverifiable phantasies. Ours is the first millennium of the Emancipation. It is the product of that scientific spirit, which refuses to divorce belief from knowledge. It is not that I find dear Criss's disposition aught but of the noblest, but that I fear the indulgence of that style of thought may lead to his sympathizing rather with the world's ancient worst than with its modern best." " You know a good deal about his education," said Bertie ; " have you found him defective in his views of history ? " " No, far from it. The professor of history at his school told me the boy's sympathies, as shewn in his essays, were invariably of the widest and most radically catholic kind." " And in chemistry, which you yourself undertook to teach him ? " " Ah, there is an illustration of what I mean. He applied himself to that with wonderful assiduity and success, making himself in a short time a complete master of chemical analysis. Then he suddenly dropped it ; and on my enquiring the reason, said that it would not take him where he wanted to go, inas- much as it failed to discover the universal entity that underlies all phenomena. It was not processes or stages that he cared for, but the ultimate analysis of things, whereby he could resolve the various material substances into their prime element. ' Is it past finding out, Avenil dear ? ' he cried, his eyes glis- tening with eagerness, as if his whole heart lay in discovering for himself what men call God. ' Of course I told him that it is past finding out by chemistry. " ' But it must be there, and must be homogeneous !' he cried, with the same eager manner. 'If it is not homogeneous, it is not God. I cannot think of God as made up of substances eternally and essentiallj' different.' • And he went on to declare 74 ay AND BY. that if the crucible failed to carrry analysis back to the stage where all things meet, and to reveal to him the universal Sub- stance or essential spirit of things, he should exchange the crucible of the chemist ftjr the crucible of his own mind, and continue the search there. "Considering it a perilous temperament that prompts the longing to merge one's individuality in the inscrutable uni- versal, — for what else is the Nirvana of the Buddhist ? — I endeavored to check his indulgence of it by saying that as our faculties, being themselves phenomenal, cannot transcend phenomena, it is clearly our duty to rest content with phenomena, and not seek to trespass upon forbidden ground. He asked what the penalty is for making the attempt. I told him a wasted life, fatuity, and oftimes madness, as the history of the world amply showed. And I spoke seriously, as I wished to impress him with a sense of the danger he runs through in- dulging his theistic tendencies. But he laughed, and said with that winning way he has, — " ' Dear Master Avenil, if I were made so, no doubt I should be able to remain content with mere phenomena, without seek- ing to know what it is that appears in and through them. But I feel that I am not made so. Suppose me, then, to be a bit of the universe, a conscious particle -of the great whole, would you have iiie balk my longing to recognize, and be recog- nized of, the whole of which I am a part ? Nay, supposing the theory which you favor to be correct, and that it is only in our consciousness that the Universe attains self-consciousness, would you forbid Nature such crowning satisfaction as it may attain through my consciousness ? ' " What could I say? Bertie, what would you have said? " "If the longing be genuine, fulfil your nature, only do not cultivate fancy to the neglect of experience." " Well, that is very much what I contrived to say, and the boy cried, ' Ah, that is just as my own dear wise Bertie would have spoken.' "He added, too, that even if madness be the penalty for presuming to endeavor to penetrate the unfathomable, it was a BY AND BY. 75 penalty tliat was quite as likely to overtake him if he refused his nature full liberty of exploration. I suspect that his habits of physical discursiveness have something to do with this mental characteristic." "You know his favorite motto, which he inscribes in his most private entries ? " asked Bertie. " No, what is it ? " " A text from Scripture, ' One with God.' " Avenil sighed, for he really loved the lad. CHAPTER XI. The women of the Avenil family, both for their connection with Criss, and as types of a dominant class, deserve a special chapter to themselves. Although by describing our recent social developments and the steps whereby our national church was brought into accord with them, I may delay my story, my readers must not think that I am digressing from the main purpose of my book. The connection may not be at once obvi- ous, but neither in these fortunate days is the special connection obvious between the church and the female part of the com- munity. It was not so in the times to which I shall have to recur in order to make my story, as a story of the day should be, an index to the manners of the age. I wish that it came within my scope fully to delineate the characters of old Mr. and Mrs. Avenil, who disappear from the scene about the time at which we have arrived. It is only per- mitted to me to say that they died as they had lived, content- edly resigned to the operation of the laws of that Nature which had ever been the subject of their deepest study. United, in harmony with the dictates of their consciences, in a marriage of the third class, and therefore trusting solely to their own sense of mutual fitness and sympathy for the continuance of their association, no cloud had ever intervened between them 76 BY AND BY. and the full sunshine of tlioir happiness. Hand in hand they lived and loved and worked, trusting to their respect for the physieal laws of life to find its due issue in the development of their moral natures. So they passed through life cheerful, reli- ant, and self-sustaining, emulating in their own method the con- summate ease and enchanting rhythm of the oi'der of the uni- verse; keenly enjoj'ing in their heyday the rewards reaped of knowledge and obedience, and, in their decline, still finding pleasure in tracing and recognizing the inevitable sequence of the steps which marked their decay. To the very last, their delight in studying the phenomena of the present, made them indifferent to those of the past or future. Neither regret nor hope found a place in their minds. Wherever is existence, tliey said, we shall find something worthy to be studied. What- ever lasts as long as we do is sufficient for us. Anticipation serves only to spoil the actual. Anxiety about the -future im- plies dissatisfaction with the present. Such was their religion, a term surely not misapplied, though devoid of that yearning towards a personified ideal which constitutes spirituaUty. They left a large and distinguished family to inherit a tem- jierament in which the intellectual faculties dominated to the exclusion of the spiritual. For they held it as an axiom that the spiritual faculty which has not the intellectual and moral for its basis — that is, which ignores evidence and utility — is apt to be as pernicious as the imagination which ignores experience and fact. Of this family Mistress Susanna Avenil (to give her tlie usual designation of women living in such wedlock as she insisted on) was the eldest ; Charles himself coming next ; and the younger ones, whom I have termed the Avenil girls, bring- ing up the rear. There was thus a very considerable interval between the eldest and the youngest of the brothers and sisters. Bright, intelligent, cheerful, and active, the sisters were a model of self-helpfulness and prudence. Though not devoid of sentiment in regard to the delicate matters of the affections, they were too practical in their management to let their affec- tions minister to their discomfort. They had one and all asserted the privilege accorded to girls now-a-days, of quitting BY AND BY. 77 the parental shelter at the same age that their brothers quit it, in order, like them, to follow the vocations they have chosen. No sickly exotics were they, such as their foremothers of ages long past. For them was no herding together under the per- petual parental eye^ like silly sheep sure to he lost if once they strayed ; no sacrificing the individuality of their genius or their characters, and passing their lives in worthless frivolity or listless indolence, envious of the active careers of their brothers, powerless to earn or to spend, and absolute slaves to the exigencies or caprices of their parents, until marriage should come to deliver them to a new bondage. The days happily are long past, in which, while to men all careers "were open, to women there was but one, and it depended upon the Avill of individual men to accord them that. It is little wonder that, thus placed, the women of those times should have devoted themselves to the pursuit of marriage, with an eagerness com- mensurate with the iincertainty of success, and reckless whether the issue promised ill or well. Nor is it strange that, caring nothing for the characters of the men, but only for their wealth, the women should have so deteriorated in their own characters that the men ceased to care for them, except as companions of the moment, and declined to ally themselves with them in any but the most temporary manner. The literature of the Victo- rian era, just preceding the Emancipation, abounds in evidences of the hapless condition of the British female of that period, particularly in the middle and upper classes. It was the very intensity of her despair of any amelioration of her condition by conventional remedies, that precipitated the radical change of which we are now so richly reaping the benefits. That .this change was not effected long before, was owing, it must be confessed, to the timidity of the men, and their want of faith in the inherent goodness of the female heart. The men had suffered the women to retain their belief in ecclesiastical infalli- bility long after they themselves had abandoned such belief. The irrevocability of marriage, dictated as it was b}' priests, had at least the appearance of being a revenge taken by them 78 BY AND BY. for their own exclusion from it. It was the disastrous result of ecclesiastical restriction upon the relations of the sexes, far more than a process of rational investigation, that opened the female mind to the baselessness of ecclesiastical pretensions. The men fought their own way to freedom by dint of hard brain-work. It was for them a battle royal between truth and falsehood, or rather between the right to obey the dic- tates of their own minds and consciences, and the claims of antiquated tradition. But they did not take their women with them. Either through difference of nature or difference of training, these were not amenable to the considerations which had influenced the men. Woman cared nothing for the abstract truth or falsehood of her religion. Her heart was the sole instrument whereby she judged such matters. The ordinance of the cliurch which rigidly forbade all inter- course with the other sex, save on condition of an indissoluble life-long contract, had come to have the effect of abolishing even those very contracts. While those who were already involved in them, finding themselves unable to part, were driven more and more to desert. Woman had so far subor- dinated her intellect and moral sense to the authority of her priests, so far forgotten her heart, as to accept at their hands a deity and a faith which were independent of any considera- tions recognizable by those faculties. Her new-born infant might be consigned to everlasting torture for the omission by its parents of a prescribed ecclesiastical ceremony ; but the system that kej)t her from getting a husband in this world was intolerable. And by insisting on the absolute perma- nence of the tie, the church had virtually abolished marriage. That a great change was necessary and inevitable, was seen by both men and women long before the particular nature of the change could be forecast. The patience of the British people never received a more signal illustration. Desiring gradual amelioration, and not sharp revolution, generation after generation went on hoping against hope. But the evil continued to increase. The women flocked to their temples, and performed ardent devotions j but they did not obtain hus- BY AND BY. 79 bands ; neither did they lose the desire for them. In those few generations, when the evil was at its worst, millions of fair, well-grown, noble-minded women, lived and died in hapless longing to fulfil their nature, and find a scope for their affec- tions. The causes were numerous, hut they were all traceable to one general cause, the violation of natural law. Destructive wars, huge standing armies, colonization by males alone — these had served to destroy the proper numerical proportion between the sexes. Added to this was the artificial tone of society, whereby women had come to-be regarded as weaklings unfit to bear the storms of life, or to help men to fight and win their way in the world; equal, however, to sharing the spoils after the victory had been won. Even parents preferred to see their daughters pine and wither in singlehood, to their wed- ding on other terms. It was not to destroy, but to restore marriage that the country at length consented to extend the principle of limited liability to the relations between the sexes. The evil was at its height when the legislature passed an enactment recogniz- ing as valid other contracts than those on which it had hitherto insisted in marriage. As is well-known, the relief was in- stantaneous, the morals of the country were saved, marriage was restored, the family was preserved. Many, remembering the ancient feuds, declared that this only was wanting to com- plete the triumph of Protestantism. Our institutions were now free from the reproach of immorality attaching to all vows in- volving irrevocability. While many took this view of the indissoluble contract, ninions without any contract were held in universal repi-obation. People were free to make their own terms of partnership, but a contract cognizable by the state was regarded as indispensable for all persons possessing self- respect, and to marry without a formal contract was, as is still the case, regarded as highly improper. But it is for breaches of contract, whether formal or implied, that society reserves its strongest condemnation. The ingenuity of the lawyers proved equal to the require- ments of the new regime. Forms of contract suitable to all 80 ^y AND BY. tastes and circumstances were duly invented. Practically, the marriages were (and are) of three kinds : those which were dis- soluble only through the intervention of a court of law : those ■which required the mutual consent of the parties : and those which were voidable at the will of one of the parties. But in all of them room is generally found for legal assistance. They are called, respectively, marriages of the first, second, and third class. Thus, the sequel showed how huge is the mistake made by man when he seeks to regulate existing society by ideas belong- ing to a remote past. The feelings of the living will not be ignored. Admitted to their due share in the council, they are an indispensable ally. The Maids' Revolt, as the woman's movement, which had its origin on the other side of the Atlantic, was called, was an important contribution towards the achievement of "the glorious Emancipation," which in- volved the utter fall of the old church system. It was a comparatively' small spark that fired so great a train. Had the ecclesiastical mind been of a more practical cast, it would have consented to concessions that might have saved the edifice for a long time to come. A movement was made (it was in the latter part of the nine- teenth century) for relieving the church-going public from the recitation of a creed which contained clauses repugnant alike to their intellect, their moral sense, and their good taste. This creed, called, according to ecclesiastical wont, by the name of a jjerson who was well known to have had no hand in its pro- duction, not only contained statements which were altogether incomprehensible or self-contradictory, but by virtue of what, in the vocabulary of the female theologians of the j)eriod, were designated its drat-^toxy clauses, it consigned to everlasting misery all who failed implicitly to accept those statements. The ecclesiastical mind, incapable of appreciating that finer sense of truthfulness, which led the laity to hesitate about de- claring their belief in statements avowedly beyond evidence and probability; or of charity, which made them demur to passing upon their neighbors such sentence, and for such cause, BY AND BY. 81 stuck to the obnoxious formulary with all the obstinacy of a papal infallibility. The so-called " Creed of St. Athanasius " thus operated as a seton to keep the sore open, until at length all the other creeds and dogmas of the church were brought into question. Of these, the dogma of marriage was the one that ultimately enlisted the women on the side of freedom ; and for the first time in the history of the world the Woman was arrayed against the Priest. The cause of freedom was won once for all. Thenceforth, for all civilized peoples, experience took the place of tradition and authority in the guidance of life.- It was in pursuance of the same princijjle that the enfran- chisement of women was restricted to matters purely social. In all that affected the mutual convenience of rhe sexes, they were allowed to bear their jjart. From politics, as resting upon strength of muscle, and therefore fitted only for men, they were excluded. It is true they did not readily acquiesce in the lim- itation. And the argument based upon Babies failing, the men fell back on the argument based upon Biceps. " When you can share," they said, "our place as policemen, soldiers, and sailors, by land, sea and air, then we shall be happy to ad- mit you to a share in the enactment of laws, of which, at pres- ent, the execution falls upon us. We grant that taxation in- volves a certain right, but it is, so far as you are concerned, the right, not of representation, but of protection." But though we declined to confer public legislative and executive functions upon women, we were not unwilling to con- ciliate them by utilizing their suggestive powers, and so created the chamber which bears the name of the House of Female Convocation, the members of which are elected by women, though they need not themselves be women. The powers of this body are investigatory, deliberative, and recommendatory, in regard to the Houses of Legislature. It thus serves as a place for initiating the discussion of questions especially affect- ing women and children. It is worthy of remark, that although in the first enthusiasm for its institution, a very small propor- 6 83 J^y AND BY. tion of those elected were men, the nuinher of women has, ever since, steadily declined, until it now amounts to scarcely five per cent, of the whole body. Considering moreover, the great- ness and importance of its constituency, the House of Female Convocation has not attained the eminence and influence which might fairly have been expected for it. Two hypotheses have been framed to account for this com- parative failure. One, that women do not choose the best per- sons to represent them. The other, that the circumstance of being chosen by and having to represent women, has a delete- rious effect upon the persons chosen. "Mistress Susanna Avenil, who was for a term Vice President of the chamber, is acknowledged to have been one of the most useful it has ever possessed. CHAPTER XII. And what had the Church to say for the new social devel- opment ? Its once famous Reformation had delivered it from the tyranny of Rome. But how came it to consent to the Emancii?ation, which delivered it from the tyranny of its own dogmas and traditions ? Deprived of its life-blood, how could the Church continue to exist ? For one reared as I was, in the ranks of the old orthodox Remnant, such questions as these involve far greater signifi- cance than is now-a-days generally recognized. I can see now that what I and my fellow-religionists took for the church's life- blood, was in reality its death-poison. I shall save'space in my narrative, and at the same time fulfil one essential part of its design, if I anticipate by some years the introduction of myself into the story, and relate here the incident which led, ultimate- ly, to my return to The Triangle, and intimacy with Christmas Carol. From all things external to our own sect, we of the Remnant BY AND BY. 83 rigidly kept aloof, regarding ourselves as a peculiar people, en-, dowed with the high duty of keeping alive on earth the light of Divine tradition, as derived from remote antiquity, and in- terpreted by the teachers whom for the correctness of their views we selected to he its exponents. We thus represented the secession from the Emancipation, for we consisted of that party which refused to acknowledge, as being a church at all, an institution which did not define the faith and practice of its members according to standards de- rived from antiquity, but left it to the congregations and their teachers to follow their own individual perceptions in faith and morals. As was to be expected, so vast a movement was not made without causing considerable inconvenience and distress. The number of the malcontent clergy was too great for more than a fraction of them to find employment within the Remnant. Of the rest, some entered upon a secular life, and others, to a consid- erable number, accepted a proposal made by the Emperor of Abyssinia, that they should settle in that country, which already was Christian, and attempt the conversion of his newly acquired provinces in Soudan. It is owing to their labors that throughout nearly the whole of the Central African plateau, from the ISTile to the Niger, the profession of Christianity has succeeded to that of Mahometanism. The achievements of Christmas Carol in those regions, thus have for me, as an old member of the Remnant, a peculiar interest. Of course, I see now plainly enough, that a civil government cannot Avith any reasonableness or propriety claim to be quali- fied to decide between different points and modes of faith, or to select one form of belief in preference to another. All that such a government can know is that it depends for its own existence and stability upon the general intelligence and moral sense of its citizens •, so that it cannot with any show of con- sistency, or regard for the common security, maintain a system which sets that intelligence and moral sense at nought. But we of the Secession did not think so, for those whom we had appointed to be our teachers did not think so, and we 84 SY AND BY. were bound to follow tliera. Aiid so it came, that wliile. the vast mass of our countrymen were rejoicing in the freedom of the Emancipation, we stood aloof under the old banners and declined all advance towards compromise or reconciliation. We declined even to read books and newspapers which ema- nated from the other side, but were content with those which we could ourselves produce. And, though existing like a congested mass in the midst of an otherwise healthy system, we were entirely without thankfulness for the tolerance which left us unmolested. Such tolerance, I remember, struck me in my early youth as inexplicable, except on the ground that our opponents were possessed b}- a secret conviction that they were in the wrong. Had our side been in a large majority, we certainly should not have suffered any who differed from us to exist. Why, then, did the other side, who must often be irritated by our con- temptuous assumption of superiority, and even of infallibilit}^, not annihilate us ? We assuredly could not put forward our good citizenship a i^y- The partners made no secret of their method, and the result was so gratifying to the public that they soon found imitators. In this way the practice of oratory became, like the Stage, a regular and liberal profession, and one that persons of position and culture were not ashamed to follow. And we now possess a class of professional orators, always ready, for a fee, to stand up and deliver a speech on any question, or side of a question, required, it being well understood that they are responsible neither for the Avords or the sentiments, but are mere machines of eloquence and grace. To them the vast audiences of modern times are indebted for many an intellectual treat, of which, but for such addition to the author's function, they would be alto- gether deprived. The convenience of the system at length procured its intro- duction into Parliament and the Church ; and so it has come to be no unusual thing for a minister of state to have his ora- torical secretary, whom he deputes to deliver his speeches in the Legislature ; or a teacher, his deputy in the pulpit, or on the platform. Sometimes a party of orators combine to give an exhibition of their skill, and few exhibitions prove more attractive than such a performance, or more valuable as an educational agency. Our co-opei-ative artisan classes have always taken especial delight in them. They say it is the best way of learning histor3^ On the evening of my presence for the first time at one of these contests, the subject for the recitations was an ancient parliamentary debate, partly real and partly imaginary, in the upper chamber of the Legislature towards the triumphant close of the great emancipation controversy in the Victorian era. It was with no slight uneasiness that I found myself compelled to witness a performance which was strictly prohibited by the rules of the Remnant / but as I was not a transgressor by intention, and could not get out except by being hoisted over the heads of a mass of people, — an operation from which my retiring disposition made me shrink, — I reluctantly acquiesced in mv fate. • BY AND BY. 87 The first speech, however, served, to reconcile me to my posi- tion. The precise subject for the evening was, Tlie Church : should it he loosened from the State, to follow its own tradi- tions, or should it be made that which it has since actually become — a national, rather than a denominational, institution — and retained as a department of the State. The leader of the discussion opened with a speech which completely satisfied me, so convincing on my side of the ques- tion did his arguments appear. He took the line that, the Church being altogether a Christian institution, and Christian- ity consisting of dogmas, to deprive the Church of its dogmatic basis would be to un-Christianize it. The secular power of course was not competent to judge of dogmas ; it must there- fore leave the Church sole mistress of itself. If the connection between them was to be maintained, it was for the benefit of the State, for the Church needed it not. She preferred to be independent. Only, under either alternative she must I'etain her possessions. To deprive her of these would be a fraud. After this clear statement of the case for the Church, I breathed more freely, and felt indifferent as to what might be said on the other side. But I was perplexed by the heartiness of the cheers which greeted the orator ; even at the points which told most against the popular view of the day — the view which I knew to be probably unshared by a single person present except myself. I tried, therefore, to think that it was the orator, not the argu- ments, for whom the applause was given. Of the beauty of method in statement, I was then altogether ignorant. The progress of the debate made me very uncomfortable. The tone of it was admirable in its elevation, and wonderfully illustrative of the difficulties through which our ancestors had to steer their way. I began to feel more tolerant of my oppo- nents, now that for the first time I was enabled to comprehend somewhat of their stand-point. I experienced,' too, a certain twinge of bitterness at having been .so long shut out from the advantages enjoyed by my fellow-citizens. For the first time the real history of my country began to unfold itself to me. It 88 BY AND BY. was very curious to see how completely the attention of the vast audience became engrossed by the merits, not of the rival orators, but of the controversy itself. The assembly seemed to have receded from the present, and to be composed in reality of tories and radicals, churchmen, nonconformists, positivists, and all the other strangely nomenclatured sects of those ages. And they shouted their assent and their dissent as eagerly as ancient records tell us used to be done in the Legislature itself ; though of course without the vocal excesses, savoring of the farm-3'ard, which disfigured those ruder times. I was already in a state of intense mental conflict when the new orator rose to produce what was expected to be the sensa- tion of the evening. Should this story ever come under the eyes of any who are still in the bondage that afHicted ray youth, they will comprehend and share the anguish I felt on first hearing it seriously asserted and plausibly argued that our dearly cherished religion is a mode of life, and not a set of opinions ! and that whatever it be, whether practical or doc- trinal, if it be not capable of development and adaptation by modification, it cannot be divine or suited to humanity ; inas- much as the divine life of the universe, of which man is a por- tion, is ever advancing towards loftier capacities and more com- plex conditions. Well, at length it came to the turn of the man of the even- ing. Little availed the buzz of curiosity round me to remind me that the debate was but a recitation, and no real conflict of opinions. Like a half-drawn tooth, I was too far gone to be recalled. The process could not be stayed there. Of the new orator himself I can say little. My inability to describe him, or his style, is perhaps the best testimony to his power. Under the first strong impressions analysis fails. The maidens of old, when visited by a god in their sleep, did not forget their rapture to note the details of the interview. At least, the rap- ture must have been very much qualified to admit of their taking such notes. In a few short sentences he dismissed much of what had been said as worthier of a council of ecclesiastics, than of a na- tional senate. BY AND LT. 89 " Our function," he said, turning to his fc41o\v-orators who sat upon tlie platform, looking wonderfully like a real senate, " our function is not to discover abstract truth, or determine historical problems, but to do justice and prevent spoliation." Now when he said this, I thought, why he is going to speak on my side, for if ever there was a case of injustice and spolia- tion, it was when the legislature turned the Church out of the Establishment, and appropriated its property to other uses. " Whatever religion be the tru,e one," he continued, " it cannot be incompatible with honesty and justice. And it is not honesty, not justice, to take from a nation that which it has set apart for the whole, and give it over to a sect which comprises but a part. Thus, the first question we have to deal with is not one of disestablishment, not one even of reform, but one of ownership. Who is it that is entitled to have a voice in the management and direction of the Church, or of any reforn^ to be made in it ? " And then he went on to answer this question in terms which I can but indicate, without any claim adequately to reproduce the original, or describe their effect. " I, sir," he said, " speaking neither as Churchman, nor as Nonconformist, but as a simple citizen, utterly rejmdiate the notion that this, our National Institution for promoting, not the suppression of Thought, but the highest welfare of our whole people, — (for such is my definition of a State-Church,) — is in any sense whatever the rightful exclusive property of that limited company which at present sits within and enjoys the monopoly of it, holding fast the door in the faces of the rest of their fellow-citizens — even of us, who stand without and knock, seeking in vain for admission, or else turn away in disgust, and resign ourselves hopelessly to our exclusion. No — as a citizen I claim this noble appanage of the Established Church, this splendid and far-reaching organization, this affluence of re- source, this accumulation of prestige, as Ours ! ours to use and enjoy, ours to preserve and amend, ours to hand down as a fair inheritance to our posterity, in the highest degree of efficiency to which we can raise it. It is not that we have out- 90 P^y ^l-V7) BY. grown all noed of such an institution. The fact tliat we liave calk'tl into existence, or are actively maintaining, numerous private institutions of a similar character, proves that day to be still far distant. It is not that its shortcomings are due to its connection with the State. As well might the shortcomings of the Police, the Railways, or the Post Office, be ascribed to their connection with the State. No, the shortcomings of which we complain in the Established Church are due solely and ex- clusively to the self-imposed limitations of that body to which the State has committed the management and control of the dej)artment. Namely, those limitations upon opinion and expression which have led to the exclusion of more than one- half of the people, and at least nine-tenths of the intelli- gence, of the country, from participating in its conduct and advantages. " We hear," he continued, after a brief pause, " those who affect to be friends of liberty, demanding what they are pleased to call the liberation of religion from State control. Liberty ! What a spell must lie in that word, when even its enemies venture to conjure with it ! Fancy the man bound hand and foot, a willing slave, to religious dogma, pretending to wish to ' liberate religion ! ' You all know what it is we mean by Papist. But away with these old terms. They mean nothing now. There are Protestant papists as well as Catholic papists. The contest is now not between Romanism and Protestantism. It is between Dogmatism and Science ; between Credulity and Knowledge ; between Assumption and Proof ; between Dream- ing and Waking ; between Slavery and Freedom. For an organization which rests upon a dogmatic basis, to demand exemption from State-control, is for a tyrant to demand liberty that he maj^ be free to impose a heavier bondage. " No, no, there is but one way of liberating religion, of nationalizing the Church-establishment. Let the State, for that alone is competent for the task, abolish all limitation of Article, Test, and Creed, which serve but to close the human soul to the divine voice speaking through man's developed mind and conscience. Let it abolish these barriers, which were BY AND BY. 91 reared in the dark ages of the past, and put Humanity in direct rapport with its Maker. In place of a caste and a sect of narrowly-educated perfunctionaries, let all good and capable men be free to speak to their fellows that which the universe has revealed to them concerning itself. Then, and then only, shall we he free to hearken to the voice of that Spirit of Truth- fulness of which long ago it was declared that, when it is come, it will guide us into all truth." I was fast being vanquished, when he proceeded to describe the results of the opposite course, and showed the danger that would inevitably accrue to the State by erecting in its midst a vast power like the Establishment, bound by virtue of its tra- ditions for evermore to crush the souls of men beneath a load of incomprehensible and unverifiable statements, and restrain the development of that very intellect and moral sense upon which the State itself subsisted. The proposed rival scheme of Disestablishment he denounced as being thus a suicide for the State, and a robbery for the nation, inasmuch as it would involve the transfer of an organization and appliances invalu- able for the nation's educational uses, to a sect comprising but a fragment of the nation, and vowed* to repress the devel- opment of the national mind. " Let it not be for nothing," he said, " that we once dared to use Ireland as a corpus vile on which to experiment for our own benefit. The statesman who robbed Ireland of its national Establishment, and endowed a sect with the proceeds, has other claims to the national grati- tude. For this, he has none." After a rapidly sketched comparison between England torn by religious factions, and oppressed by dogmas and traditions, and England united and free, he concluded by asking, in the words of one who in that age was regarded as being at once- poet and prophet : — " Is it never to be true that ' God fulfils himself in many ways ? ' If so, if the Church is to declare that He shall fulfil Himself in but one way, and that the Church's way, — that is, if He is to be prevented from 'fulfilling Himself at all, let us leave the Church asit is, or rather, let us raise higher its bar- 92 BY AND BY. riers, and strengthen its chains ; let us stereotype our minds and consciences into dull inanimate uniformity, and sink re- signedly to the monotonous level and torpid existence of marsh monsters; but no longer let us flatter ourselves that we are made in the image of Him who loves to 'fulfil himself in many ways.' Lacking such faith in the All-Living and All-Being, it is the Church; not the world, that is Atheist." After the conclusion of the recitations, I sat absorbed in my reflections, heedless of the buzz and tramp of the departing crowd ; heedless even of the darkness in which the hall was fast being wrapped, through the withdrawal of the lights. So real for me had been the whole scene and controversy, that it seemed as if the ages had rolled back, and I was an interested partaker in the conflicts of the past. But, far back, in one respect, as the ages seemed to have rolled, in another respect they had made a wondrous advance. The change in me was as great and profound as that which passes over a woman between the day before and the da}'^ after her marriage. I felt that I could never become again as I had been. The leprous scales of big- otry and sectarianism' had dropped from me, and I was now a citizen and a free man. And more than this. I felt that it might yet be possible for the god of this world to be other than the devil. I looked round for some one to greet as brother, I who had ever been walled-up in the pharisaism' of orthodoxy ! At this moment a light step, coming from the room whither the orators had retired after the contest, approached, and stopped by me. Looking wistfully up, I beheld a face bent upon mine, a face such as I had never before seen except in ancient paintings. It was the face of a man about double my own age — I was about sixteen — -and beautiful exceedingly, it seemed to me upon reflection, for at the moment I was conscious of nothing beyond the glance of the most mysterious, and pene- trating, yet kindest eyes, which, as it were, took in my whole being, and made all self-revelation superfluous. Then a voice, low, measured, distinct, and unutterably symjjathetic, said to me: BY AND BY. 93 " My young friend, — pardon my freedom in addressing you, — I sat near you this evening, and read all that passed in your soul. The times of which we have been hearing were the grandest in their issues that the world has seen. Had you and I lived then, how eagerly would we have thrown ourselves into the conflict, and struck for God and Humanity! What were ever the battles of flesh and blood compared to that tremendous conflict of principles, which hajipily for us resulted in the Emancipation ? You feel this, now, at last ? " Won by his look and tone, I said, — "Ah, sir, what then becomes of the Revelation ? " " My friend," he replied solemnly, " so long as there exist God and a soul, there will be a revelation, but the soul must be a free one." I make no answer, and he added, — " I must not aggravate the impertinence of which I have already been guilty in addressing you, by withholding my name, though I am satisfied you do not consider it one. Here is my card, and if ever you desire to improve our acquaintance, or think I can serve you, seek me out. Good night." On the card was C. Carol, Triangle. It was not until long afterwards that I saw him again. < »«» > CHAPTER XIII. The Nationalization of the Church Establishment — achieved as it was by the practical sense of the English people, and in spite of those who loudly clamored for a policy of severance or destruction, — proved to be the gateway of the Emancipation. By it religion, education and society were at once set free to re- model themselves in accordance with the perceptions and needs of the age. The desire to separate the Church from the State, vanished entirely so soon as the department was thrown open and adapted to the wants of the people. Kow, for the first time 94 BY AND BY. in the history of the world, was tliere a really free church, and it was to the scientific spirit that the achievement was due — the spirit that said that if a thing were true and necessary to be received, men could always hold it in virtue of its demonstra- bility and usefulness, so that dogma was a mischievous super- fluity. Under the accession of a new bond of citizenship, the vast majority of the dissenting sects brought their wealth of organization and appliances, their learning and their zeal, and added them to the common national stock. The " religious difficulty," as I have already explained, vanished, and thence- forward Church and School worked together in the common cause of universal education, and upon a common basis ; for there was no longer a conflict between faith and knowledge, religion and science, theology and moials — except, of course, in the little clique to which I belonged, arrogantly self-styled The Remnant. In the newly-constituted National Church, the State insisted that in order to be teachers, men must be edu- cated up to a certain standard. Upon that basis they were free to rear their own fabric of thought. Thus the Emancipation consisted in the substitution of ex- perimental and intuitional morality for the old traditional sys- tem. This involved the release of women from their previous condition of social dependence. The adoption by them of several new modes of living was the instantaneous result of their enfranchisement. And from the first the experiment was found to work better than even its advocates had anticipated, multitudes of persons who had hitherto lived together un- married, eagerly entering into contracts recognizable by the State, and thereby legitimatizing their children. Indeed, the proportion that abused their newly-won liberty was almost inappreciable, and these few would doubtless have proved fail- ures under any system. Moreover, being made far easier of attainment through the relaxation of its conditions, marriage ceased to be an object of morbid desire. Women had some- thing else to occupy their thoughts, and were more frequently content to follow other careers. Girls were brought up to look upon it as a thing that might some day overtake them as an BY AND BY. 95 accident, more or less liappy, but in no wise as their sole des- tiny, to miss which would be to fail in life. Our ancient customs in regard to women were such that we can hardly refer to them without a blush : so fatal to their morals was apt to be the struggle to secure their virtue. The Emancipation changed all this. It reinstated Modesty in the high place so long monopolized by mere Chastity. And, woman having learnt to respect herself, man, no longer a prey hunted and scared, learned to respect her also. It is worthy of note that in some cases the consciousness of freedom produced an astringent effect upon manners. For instance, previously to the removal of the prohibition against the intermarriage of brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, such marriages were exceedingly frequent, but since that event they have rarely or never occurred. Kot that there is anything against them, but it is a notable commentary on the principle of artificial restraints, to find that the restraint itself operated against itself. It was the intimacy fostered under cover of the legal fiction of relationship between persons so situated, that produced the desire for a closer connection. When there was no longer any law against a man's marrying his wife's sister, such sister could no longer enter her brother-in-law's house, except on the same terms of distance which regulated his inter- course with other women. There was thus no longer the attraction so apt to be engendered of custom and propinquity. There is yet another variety in our mode of marrying to which reference must be made, as it is that Avhich was adopted by Susanna Avenil. Her marriage was not only of the third class, but it was of that class and the separate system com- bined. Though married, she did not live with her husband. These marriages are far from rare, and their origin is somewhat curious. It had from time immemorial been an almost univer- sal practice of girls, and even of grown women, of independent means and gentle nurture, to surround themselves with pet animals, upon which they were proud to be seen expending their tenderest sympathies. Scarce a maiden lady in Britain but possessed one or more of these creatures, whom she main- tained at great expense of feeling and money. f)6 BY AND BY. At length, some time after the Emancipation, some ingenious - and benevolent person, seeing how many destitute children the country still contained in its streets and other asylums, pro- posed to place a heavy tax on all animals which were kept for luxury and not for use, but to convert it into a premium where the pet in question was an adopted destitute child. The suggestion was favorably received by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, a supposed descendant of the once famous occupant of that office who excited boundless ridicule and wrath by a proposal to tax certain indispensable machines for procuring light and fire, called Matches. Many a sly innu- endo was launched to the effect that the new tax now pro- posed might operate as a set-off to the previous one, by its tendency to multiply matches, a poor joke indeed, yet not at the time deemed too poor to find frequent utterance. The suggestion, however, was adopted, and many a pet beast was discarded in favor of an adopted youth or damsel. Young women who lived and worked alone, were found especially willing to take upon themselves the charge of some destitute child. And such was the independence of spirit which they acquired under the Emancipation, that they boldly faced the charges brought against them by some of their more conser- vative fellow-citizens with the answer, — " Well, and why not ? If we choose to exercise our mater- nal sympathies without parting with our liberty, why should we not do so?" Tradition being discarded, there were no grounds on which to found a remonstrance. Parents could not complain, for their daughters, no longer dependent upon them, had ceased to encumber the paternal roof. They were free also from the obligation of making marriage settlements, and providing costly trousseaux. It is even said that the young women themselves, finding themselves prized for their more solid qualities, came to place less value upon their dress — dress, that supreme temptation of the sex, before which even our mother Eve is represented as having succumbed: for with her perfections she must have foreseen thus much of the consequences of her disastrous action. BT AND BY. 97 It is true that there had as yet heen no experience to justify the practice. But life has room for varieties, and experience said Tr7/. And so the women of England, considering that all social expedients are necessarily the result of experiment, did try; and not heing degraded hy the consciousness that their unions were unrecognized by the law, succeeded beyond their most sanguine anticipations. For the men, finding them wor- thier of their love and confidence in their new-born independence and consequent elevation of character, offered themselves far more readily as partners in the higher classes of marriage than in any period of our history. Indeed, to have already proved her qualifications as a tender and judicious mother, came to be regarded by men of sense as a woman's strongest recommenda- tion for marriage ; and the question they asked was, not " Is she already a mother ? " but " What sort of a mother is she ? " It is thus that modern society has escaped the evil which once constituted the greatest blot upon our social system. 'No longer called upon in the struggle for existence, to sell them- selves either with or without marriage for the means of exist- ence, women now give themselves only where they have already given their affections. Those affections being, by virtue of their very nature, not readily transferable, sexual vagabondage is reduced to a minimum, and its evils are altogether abrogated. Inheriting the strongly marked independence of character belonging to her race, Susanna Avenil was one of those women who valued liberty above love, and placed her own individu- ality and work before her affections. She felt that as a woman she had a right to complete herself, and she regarded no human being as complete until he or she had become a parent. In her own case, it was a duty owed to the race, as well as to herself ; a duty from which, had she been weakly in bodyor brain, she would have considered herself exempt; or, rather, her duty would have lain the other way. The lowest types and worst specimens of humanity, she argued, are sure to breed ; so that if the best abstain, the world will soon be given up to the worst, and the struggle for existence will end in the survival of the least fit. 7 98 BY AXD BY. Her brother used to twit her by declaring that if she had her wa}', all the links would soon be missing which connected man with his rudimentary basis. Already had the ape, the savage, and the negro nearly disappeared, each in turn thrust out of existence b}' the race just above it, and she would still further widen the gap by eliminating the inferior specimens of the higher types. It was Avithout a particle of vanity that she regarded her own noble development of constitution and form. She had inherited them, and it was no merit of hers to have them. But the inheritance brought a duty with it. Having inherited, she must transmit them. It was only by repaying to posterity the debt owed to her ancestry, that she would deserve well of her kind. The old-fashioned domestic life had no charm for her. She deemed it fatal to independence and individuality ; and scorned, as an oriental extravagance, the notion that it is a woman's chief end to minister to the comfort of a man. She scorned also ti\e man who wanted such comfort. People had said that although so fine a creature, she was of a hard nature. But a time came when she appeared to them to soften. She had exj^erienced a grief, a mortification, and for some time held her head less high than had been her wont. Had she been crossed in love ? No ; the man with whom she had entered into matrimonial partnership had exhibited no sj^mptom of indiffer- ence to her. He was a noble fellosv, but she had failed to be- come a mother, and the failure was to her a bitter sorrow. She feared that, after all, she was not to be a complete woman, and at this thought her stately head drooped. The terms of her contract made a severance easy, even had the legislature not regarded childlessness as a valid plea. Their compact had been one into which but little of sentiment, as commonly understood, entered. Mingling with his feeling of profound respect for her nobility of character, was a regret on the score of the too business-like nature of her disposition. Her temper- ature could not rise to the level of such love as was likely to prove creative. BY AND BT. 99 At least, such was his theory. As for himself, he soon mar- ried again, and then came a new mortification for Susanna. It did not consist in that which ordinarily constitutes a humili- ation for women. She knew not how to be jealous. But in his new association her late husband became a father. At length she gathered courage to try again. This time, to her joy and pride, she had the success for which she pined. It seemed then as if nature had reversed its usual order of sequence. Love for her children was followed by love for their father. Under this feeling she wished to renounce the principle upon which she had dwelt apart from him in a home of her own, with independent establishment and liabilities, and follow the ordinary domestic usage. She was ready even to encounter the taunts and reprobation of the party of whose tenets she was one of the most distinguished exponents. Disapproving of the familiar intimacy of ordinary married folk, as ministering to indifference and contempt, the conception which this party had of wedlock was that of men and women dwelling apart from each other, like gods and goddesses on the peaks of Olym- pus, always on their good behavior, and seeing each other only at their best. In accordance with this idea Susanna had been " content to dwell in decencies for ever," »